At the Edge, On the Verge

* Note: This was written as a contribution to the Himagsik at Protesta Exhibit, 40th year Martial Law Comemoration, at the UP Diliman Library.

At the edge, On the verge

His characters on reel are people you can see and experience in real life. They still walk the streets to this day. They live under bridges of highways. Anywhere you look, you see the same children begging in the streets. You see his images in mothers with babies in their arms, going from one car to the next, eyes staring into yours, hoping you feel their pain as they ask for food, money, anything that will help them feed their children, their family. After spending a day at that mall that has managed to single-handedly cause the death of many trees and small businesses in your neighborhood, you head out and get into your comfortable air-conditioned car, you drive by houses packed so close they can hear each other snore at night. There is nothing beautiful about squalor. The word itself speaks volumes– squalor. It is real, to this day, the Dictator has gone, it is still so real. Lino Brocka’s storytelling had you on the edge, clutching your seat, holding your breath and getting you involved by reminding you of what you do not know. You do not know how hard life is for the magtataho that comes by your door every morning, you do not know the story of the mamang fishball you buy from every Sunday. His movies told us the stories of the people that we do not want to make eye contact with. It’s just too scary to look into their eyes and see that we have not done much to care. It reminds us that what we do in our life does not yet amount to much until our results reach out and make someone’s life better, someone outside of our selves. The images in his movies haunt you because there is something at the core of each character that speaks to you. While it is true that there a lot of people who do not know much of poverty either because they choose to blind themselves or they are just out of touch, those characters had the same hopes and dreams as you or I. Hopes that someday every parent will be able to put food on the table, the dream that poverty will end and their children will have the chance to have a better, fairer and kinder future.

Everywhere in the world, stories have a way of reaching out to people, touching their hearts, telling them that they are not alone. We tell the same stories, we tell human stories. There are bits and pieces of our stories that might change, names and places but we all tell the same stories. Stories about family, about joy and pain, love and loss, suffering, defeat. There are stories about courage, bravery and heroism. There are stories about the triumph of the human spirit. Lino Brocka’s heart for storytelling shook us awake, until our spirits recognized that there were parts of our stories that were the same as the characters in the stories and then the veil lifted and we could see what was wrong and we clenched our fists up in the air because of it, we could also see what was right, we could see what needed to be done. We saw then what we see until now that things have to change, Life can be made better, but that it is up to us.

His storytelling reached out to me, held me, and made me weep for my country, weep for my fellow women and men. His storytelling left me with this constant lump behind my throat and this thud in my gut that only served to feed my resolve. I will do what I can, write what I can, speak when I can until we are all truly, truly free. That way maybe my tears and the tears of all other mothers and sisters will not be in vain.