Winnowing

I watch my grandmother
As she patiently winnows the grains
Moving the winnowing basket
Up, down; up down
Tossing its content into the air.
I see the chaffs being blown away
Leaving behind the grains.

Then, when there are no more chaffs left,
She stops, but she’s not yet done.
She spreads the grains out thinly on the flat basket
And looks for pebbles that might have
Been mixed with the grains.
She picks the pebbles and throws them away.

I stare at her hands, rough from hard labor;
Amazed at how patiently she works.
Then I begin to realize, life’s like that —
A continuous process of winnowing;
Of separating the grains from the chaffs.
Only that sometimes, we throw away
The grains; not the pebbles, not the chaffs.

[And then we spend the rest of our lives
Staring at the empty husks of our choices
Wondering where the grains went,
Chasing after them, and not seeing them
Amidst the mountains of chaffs
With which we have surrounded ourselves.]

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COMMENT

Kaya Pala!

A piece of the puzzle fits; understanding finally dawns. “Kaya pala…”

Someone sheds light on an issue, and finally we get a glimpse of the other aspects of things which we couldn’t see before. “Kaya pala…”

Kaya pala. Such a lovely phrase. It speaks of enlightenment, of finally seeing that which remained obscure for sometime.

It is also a phrase of admission, that before, there were things that we couldn’t see, which now, thankfully, we see rather clearly.

Kaya pala. How many times have I exclaimed it? Countless already. But every time I am gifted with the chance to exclaim it, I am always awed at the wonder of it.

I say kaya pala and I wonder…

 Continue Reading

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Remembering the Fall of Bataan

Today is the Fall of Bataan, and tomorrow is the 67th anniversary of the start of the tragic Death March.

During the past weeks, I spent some time reading several books on the defense of Bataan and Corregidor during the Second World War for my articles for Manila Times (Bataan Rising) and, God, it was very difficult to stop the tears rolling down my cheeks.

Friends, let us all bow down our heads and pray for the heroes of Bataan, and thank them for fiercely defending our freedom.

To our war veterans — living and dead — our great salute to you, Sirs/Madams. And to everyone who suffered from the Japanese atrocity, please know that I share your pain.

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As a Bataan Day special, please let me lead you to my article on Bataan. It’s posted on my main website because I couldn’t seem to arrange the pictures properly here. Please click HERE.  //Photo by Sherma E. Benosa

Through the Arts

In an article in 2006 (Art not just for Art’s Sake published in Health and Lifestyle), I wrote:

“Art accomplishes rather easily, what lectures, symposia, and other conventional awareness campaigns often fail to accomplish — an overwhelming impact upon and tremendous response from the audience. For when art speaks, barriers — be they religious, linguistic or cultural, are easily transcended; and the message, however subtle, is readily translated to a language we all understand, and echoed at a pitch too difficult for us to simply ignore. And with the barriers effectively reduced, and the message staring us in the face, we then become more equipped to listen attentively and act accordingly.”

I have always believed that the arts can be utilized to address our social problems and to put into proper perspective our idea of who we are as a nation.

The raping of our collective soul by our invaders, especially the Spanish, has made us believe we are lowly, and made us forget that we are as good as any other race in this world. And so now we have a fragmented idea of who we are. But focusing on the arts and getting deeply reacquainted with our culture can bring us the healing we sorely need. The arts can help us connect deep inside us, and remember and appreciate who we are as a people. Like a looking glass, the arts can help us what we are made of and make us realize that we have what it takes to effect the kind of changes we need to turn around our current situation.

Continue reading…

Disgusting!

Today, I read an article that made my blood boil: an opinion piece by a Chinese “journalist” named Chip Tsao published in HK Magazine. Here’s the article plus my comments in italics.

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The War at Home

By Chip Tsao

 

The Russians sank a Hong Kong freighter last month, killing the seven Chinese seamen onboard. We can live with that—Lenin and Stalin were once the ideological mentors of all Chinese people. The Japanese planted a flag on Diàoyú Island. That’s no big problem—we Hong Kong Chinese love Japanese cartoons, Hello Kitty, and shopping in Shinjuku, let alone our round-the-clock obsession with karaoke. [Is it just me, or is there really a big flaw in his reasoning?]

 

But hold on—even the Filipinos? Manila has just claimed sovereignty over the scattered rocks in the South China Sea called the Spratly Islands, complete with a blatant threat from its congress to send gunboats to the South China Sea to defend the islands from China if necessary. This is beyond reproach. The reason: There are more than 130,000 Filipina maids working as US$3,580-a-month cheap labor in Hong Kong. As a nation of servants, you don’t flex your muscles at your master, from whom you earn most of your bread and butter. [Yes, indeed, there is something wrong with his reasoning. Any high school (or even younger student) who knows a bit of logic can see breakdowns of reason in his sentences. Tsk! But I won't discuss his logical fallacies anymore. I'd focus on some of his factual errors. US$3,580 a month for a maid in Hong Kong? He better check his figures. They pay our kababayans much less, just about US$300-350 a month! And no, we are not a nation of servants. We do have degree holders who need to go overseas to find employment, even as domestic helpers, but not everyone in the country and even those who are working overseas are servants. We have lawyers, engineers, and other professionals as well. Besides, what's wrong with being a domestic helper, may I ask? At least, our maids can make logical statements and sound reasoning. Also, are the employers still called masters in this age? I thought the master-servant relationship no longer exists. Isn't it already an employee-employer relationship in the modern world?]

 

Continue Reading

Stripped, Yet Fully-Dressed

We put on many things that we often end up confusing these things as us.

Sometimes, it’s hard to separate our diplomas, positions, titles properties, stocks, and so on from us — that often, we fear being stripped of them, because having mistakenly equated our self-worth with our possessions and titles, we fear we would be nothing without them.

But while these are among the things that make up who we are, they are not just what we are.

The positions we hold can buy us semblance of respect — the kind that are afforded to the title, not necessarily the person who holds it. Our money can buy us those sorts of friends that scamper away as soon as we are broke. Our stocks and diplomas can give us some kind of security — one that could crumble the moment the tides start turning against us. But they can never buy us honest-to-goodness peace and happiness. They can only sow upon us discontent. And distrust.

If these are the only things with which we have clothed ourselves, then we have every reason to fear being stripped of them, because without them, we would be naked.

But the thing is, it is only after we undergo some stripping that we realize that these things we have sought to clothe ourselves with do not really matter — not in a way that what’s inside each of us matters.

 

Continue reading…

Conquering Poverty

For someone who had always had everything he needed, even if he had to work hard for it, imagining how it is like to be poor in the real sense of the word would be very difficult. It requires one to experience getting on in an empty stomach to know how it’s like not to have a roof over one’s head, or to send your kids to sleep without supper. Seeing emptiness on the eyes of people whose only possession is ‘nothing’ would never be enough to comprehend the desperation and the self-pity that set in in them who subsist on almost nothing.

I’ve been poor myself. No, not the kind of poor that required me to walk on streets to beg for alms, but I’ve experienced not eating three square meals a day. And I tell you, it was so hard, it brings tears to my eyes just thinking about the things my family and I had to go through.

My parents are hard working. And I know for a fact that they started our family okay. But a series of wrong decisions and some misfortunes brought the whole family to its knees, long before my brothers and I were old enough to remember how it was like to be born to a family with a thriving small-scale RTW business. As long as I remember, we had always been poor. I remember, Dad had had to divide our food equally so we all would have enough to eat. I still couldn’t fathom what kind of magic he and Mom must have exercised that they were able to feed the whole family on a regular-sized-fish meal, or a three-egg breakfast for a family of six.

Yes, we were poor, but we were doing fine. Until everything went further downhill.

CONTINUE READING

OFW Phenomenon, Mail-order brides, Prostitution, and More

Domestic helpers. Mail-order brides. Exporters of human labor. Scammers.

These are how people the world over have come to know us, Filipinos. And sometimes, I can’t blame them. For though it’s not completely true that these are what constitute us as a people, it’s not completely false either.

Our main export product is our people. A big chunk of our population — roughly ten percent — are Overseas Filipino Contract Workers (OFWs), many of whom are working abroad either as domestic helpers, construction or factory workers, or health workers. Our OFWs are our modern-day heroes, so they say, because they have saved the country’s economy many times over through their remittances. Without our OFWs, our economy would have long gone under.

And we do have mail-order brides — women who have become wives or girlfriends of foreign nationals through dating sites. I do not think this phenomenon is true only among Filipinos, or SouthEast Asian women for that matter, but our case seems to be out of proportion. Just type in the word “Filipina” in the search engine, and you’d see sites advertising Filipinas as if we were commodities. Being a Filipina, this situation affects me greatly, more so because I cannot claim that the conception that Filipinas are mail-order-brides is entirely false. Many Filipinas have actually taken the easy road to financial security — by marrying a foreign national they met only through the internet, and who they have never met before tying the knot, and someone they don’t — or at least, didn’t at first — love.

And so that’s what our women have come to be known — not just mail-order brides, but brides for sale.

CONTINUE READING

The Face of Peace: A Picture-inspired Poem

The voice of worry reigns over
my jaded soul’s fitful attempts
to rest my eyes from the landscape
of my broken dreams in the forsaken
sky of busted wings; its discordant tune
humming a boisterous music that knows
no melody; chanting lyrics
that cut through the hope that resides
within me.

CONTINUE READING (Will re-redirect you to the blog’s new address)

Discordant

Muted sighs your lips refuse to release

Linger in the air, snatching silence’s peace;

But I, looking through the hazy mist,

See only the caricature of what was once

Your beautiful face and, not really seeing it,

I read the thoughts that reside only in my head

Overlooking the warning in the smile

That escapes your tightly pursed lips.

 

(Continued at Brainteaser’s new address: http://bilingualpen.com/brainteaser/?p=536)

 

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New Address

 

BRAINTEASER has moved to a new address:

 

 

http://bilingualpen.com/brainteaser

 

 

Please visit me there!

Coming Soon!

Hello, friends! Once again, Brainteaser is on ‘pause mode.’ By now, I hope you know what that means. (Yeah, I’m pretending I have lots of faithful readers, hehehe.)

 

Anyway, being on “pause mode” means that this particular post does not contain a regular post, like poetry, reflection, essay, or any other ‘literary’ stuff. This is to give way to another special announcement, which, I hope, will explain my delayed response to your comments (hope you’ll forgive me) and my absences in your blogs. (I’ll be back to my blog surfing real soon. Promise!)

 

During the past weeks, a friend, Aiza and I have been working on a special project besides working on my thesis (yeah, finally!). This project is very important to me personally, because it is the first step to the realization of some dream of mine — to create a venue for friends to interact, learn, and share knowledge and ideas with each other.

 

Friends, I would like to invite you to be part of the community portal I am working on. It’s called Bilingual Pen. It will feature articles on writing, both literary and journalistic, and bilingualism; giving tips on freelancing, web writing, magazine writing, and literary writing and appreciation. It will have a page for new and established writers to showcase their literary works/attempts. It will also have two forums: one in English (Tea Room) and another in Ilokano (Pagdadapunan).

 

I look forward to seeing you there. Your presence will be highly appreciated. Please, please come, as this project will not be successful without your support.

 

Thank you!

 

The Parable of the Spectacles

“Why are you back?” The store-owner exclaimed when he saw Magico, the magic spectacles, back on his display shelf. He had just sold it to an odd couple — a pessimist and a dreamer. “Your new owners must be looking for you!”

 

Magico simply dropped his gaze.

 

The store owner’s brows creased. “What’s wrong, Magico? You look so sad. Did your new owners mistreat you?” he asked softly, opening the display cabinet. He took out the magic spectacles and made it sit on the glass top, facing him.

 

Magico shook his head. “No master,” he replied softly. Beads of tears were slowly forming around its framed eyes.

 

“Then why did you leave them? What happened?”

 

“Well, Master,” Magico sighed. “The dreamer put me on. Then he exclaimed, ‘Oh, how lovely everything is. Beautiful clouds across a clear blue sky, smiling flowers and swaying leaves, vast oceans, captivating sunset and sunrise, spellbinding moon, twinkling stars… ah! How beautiful earth really is.’”

 

“So? What’s wrong with that?” The brows creased deeper.

 

“I don’t know, Master. It just made me very sad. I thought it was sad that even with me on him, he still couldn’t see everything. He was only able to see the beautiful things, not the bad.

 

“So?”

 

“So,” Magico gestured helplessly, “it means he thinks he lives in a perfect world. Even with his sharpened vision, he still couldn’t see the troubles of this world. That means he never will. So he will never be able to address them.”

 

The master touched his chin with his right hand.

 

“Then,” continued Magico. “the pessimist put me on and exclaimed, ‘Moon? Captivating sunrise and sunset? Twinkling stars? My, you must be on to your pathetic dream again! I don’t see anything across the sky. All I see are the blackish clouds threatening to fall. And the flowers, the leaves… what’s so special about them? Can’t you see they will eventually wilt? Pathetic, that’s what life on earth is!”

 

“Oh, so they quarreled?” The master exclaimed. “Is that why you left them?”

 

“I don’t know if they quarreled, Master,” Magico shook his head. “I left them as soon as I heard them exclaim those things. I realized I’m of no use to them. Sure, I could make their visions clearer, I could sharpen their eyes, but I can never make them see the world as it really is. I can never widen their perspective nor inject understanding into them.”

 

 

//Sherma E. Benosa

24 July 2008; 11:30

 

WordCamp 2008

[Brainteaser is on a "pause" mode. This means that this post contains no reflection, anecdote, poem, or parable as is usually read in this blog. This is to give way to the following special announcement.]

 

September 6. That’s the date when bloggers will be camping here in Metro Manila for a day of learning and fun. I gathered it is the very first in the country and in Southeast Asia, and is initiated by Mindanao Bloggers. Some of my friends — Sonnet, Jane, Salve, and Penstalker — have signed up, so I’ve decided to join as well. We’ll gonna rock the WC! Eeeyaaahooooooooo!

WordCamp Philippines is made possible by the following sponsors:

• i.PH: the Domain for Individuals
• Free Online Flash Games
• Wazzup Manila Philippines
• Real Estate CRM
• Real Estate Website Designers
• Orange County Real Estate
• Auto Insurance Quotes
• Lane Systems Inc.
• RedMedia
• Orange County Business Lawyer

Wisdom in Hot Chocolate

Ever wondered why contentment seems to elude man? When we get that which we’ve always wanted, we are happy and seemingly content for a while. But soon, we will find ourselves wanting something else. Our needs, our wants, just keep coming. We are never content.

 

I am sure you’ve heard that to live life to the fullest, we should concentrate only on the essentials. But how do we know which of the things we have, or want, are essential, and which aren’t, when we tend to measure life by the non-essentials that we have?

 

The following article, which was sent to me via email, illustrates this point very well.

 

 

 

Wisdom in Hot Chocolate

(Author Unknown)

 

A group of graduates, well-established in their career, were talking at a reunion and decided to visit their old university professor, now retired.

 

During their visit, the conversation turned to complaints about stress in their work and lives.

 

Offering his guests hot chocolate, the professor went to the kitchen and returned with a large pot of hot chocolate and an assortment of cups — porcelain, glass, crystal, some plain-looking, some expensive, some exquisite — telling them to help themselves to the hot chocolate.

 

When they all had a cup of hot chocolate in hand, the professor said: “Notice that the nice-looking, expensive cups were taken, leaving behind the plain and cheap ones. While it is normal for you to want only the best for yourselves, that is the source of your problems and stress. The cup you’re drinking from adds nothing to the quality of the hot chocolate. In most cases, it is just more expensive, and in some cases, even hides what we drink.

 

“What all of you really wanted was hot chocolate, not the cup. But you consciously went for the best cups. And then, you began eyeing each other’s cups. Now, consider this: Life is the hot chocolate; your money, job, position in society are the cups. They are just the tools to hold and contain life. The cup you have does not define nor change the quality of life you have. Sometimes, by concentrating only on the cup, we fail to enjoy the hot chocolate God has provided us. God made the hot chocolate; man chooses the cup. The happiest of people do not have everything. They make the best of everything they have.”

 

 

So, how’s your hot chocolate? Can you say, “it’s very good” and truly mean it?

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