By: Iris P. Concepcion
Once upon a time, there lived a group of people with extraordinary skills they planned to rule the world. Somewhere along the road, they forgot about their goals and decided to do personal things. They frequented beerhouses, travelled in places in lieu of country work and produced things they often pass off as splendid outputs (they are not). In short, they forgot about the......................world.
Something like this then emerges from this heap of observation:
I just came from a mass that has a very noisy layman giving hosts to a flock. I think he was having terrible problems with his nails. Anyhow, the youth, lots of them, started lining up on front of him and just muttered the very powerful "Laban" mantra. It delighted me to watch his face: that red-pocked face that did not know how to parry the influx of young men and women chanting the L world. It is one for the movies.
Sometimes too, we create an environment of mistrust to suit our own ends. When caught with our trespasses, we blame everything to everyone except ourselves: that sly, stuttering defense of the trapped "goodness." I have a premise for this:
It is always a thorny issue to be dubbed mediocre in this island filled with holy people basking in their own crowns. There are not enough people brave enough to tell them: you can do it better.
How to discern though, I got this from one of my sons.
He was writing then about the limited access to brilliance due to closed patronages. I did not understand then why he was nitpicking the inputs of what I regarded then as exceptional outputs. I never realized, he has travelled far and wide, is exposed to the richness of the craft, has a long lineage to show for it. I thought then that he was malignantly arrogant: his choices were delimited; he was not praising much.
Last night though, I finally learned what he had been telling me over the years. He was keen on telling me I had been fed crap even in my list of music and letters and perhaps, I deserve more expansive outlets for my passion.
Gladly, he did provide me that silently: trodding along paths of unique education, hooking me up with people without monetarial motive except to further my craft. Believe me, there are lurking impotents out there dangling you (insulting even) with things that hover between stupidity and callousness (like their facelifted faces). SAMple: "You must be amenable to amorous advances or the ticket shall not be yours."
As if my son is not richer than the danglers. But that is beside the point. I mean, I say this as a figure of speech. Just to spite: I am a sucker for lineage. Perhaps, I shall be tried spitefully for this too but take it as it is: a braggart's way has its own equivalent booty.
Of course, you want to get some rifle and shoot it just below the leg of this injured man's misplaced haughtiness. The things they write for free facelifts.
Anyhow to this malevolent son, I write:
Thank you for enlarging the capacities of my mind; for widening the patience of my soul even for the plain obnoxious; for allowing me to see a world that could be improved without the noise. Thank you for the reward of limitless offers of visual magic, far beyond what my imagination can even conjure. You did not give me light: you gave me a shining one. You did not give me courage to pursue my own dream: you gave me a weird environment to finetune my bravery.
You thrust upon myself a potpourri of creative individuals I dare not thought I could bump into: but they were there, in live theaters, showing me a potent connectivity to the kindred club. I envy your lushness of creative charity, to myself who had been poorly given choices of the substandard ones.
Thank you for providing the love of this corn's cob a wider latitude to show what he is capable of: him who had been put through a lot by reason of my candor but I am not a tightlipped crab, am I?
So many times, you had been mimicked and pruned and cloned but any glance of this track, you easily shift: to the edges of greatness, you tilt.
Continue flying, embrace the winds, soar more.
Your surrogate mother did not have wings to see you off alone. He is doing it with you.