BANANACUE
REPUBLIC
Vol I, No.2
Sept 15, 2004
by Dulz Cuna
ARCHIVE #007
Table of Contents
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Rizalitis: A Past Life Disorder
What if you thought you were Jose Rizal in your past life? I'm here to confess my D-I-S-O-R-D-E-R, Disorder! Mind you...This Malady came to me as a child in the 2nd Grade when I memorized my Camilo Osias Philippine Readers..that part that told about Jose Rizal's anecdotes in his childhood.
When the Mercado household killed a chicken for lunch, Rizal cried over the fate of the poor fowl and I remember I shared the same painful emotion when I was three years old. I was horrified when our cook told my tender heart that the only way to kill a chicken "lovingly" was to slit its throat...And I watched as its blood turned into a coagulated pancake in a cup...thus it took years for me to accept Yaya Leoning's commendable "chicken tinola"..but little then did I know it was a window to a life which I related as my own, a turn of a century and years ago...
At the age of three, I did not know anything about Reincarnation nor past lives, but when stories of our National Hero crop up, there's always this nostalgia and clairvoyance on the mere mention of his life...Power of suggestion was unknown to me then..the Hero and I had the same birthdates, except for the years...
In Mama's bookshelf, I came across "The First Filipino" by Leon Ma. Guerrero. I always hear the words "Fuego!" as a psychic locution when I flip through the pages..and I rush towards my bed, cowering. On the pages of the book I see and feel pain..blood red sky...and release...
I shared the visages of Rizal's Ateneo de Manila life when I attended 7th grade at St. Theresa's College in Cebu. Like him, the aura of the illustrado, peninsulares and encomendero came in, as "hacienda mestizas, buena pamilias, chinese taipans and midclass pamilias" in our dormitory. The mestizas group spoke Visayan-intoned Spanish with each other, the Buena pamilia group spoke "yaya" english, the chinese taipan children were the quiet and brainy group...while I belonged to the middleclass pamilia because I could neither speak Spanish, Mandarin nor was brainy, nor Yaya English to my groupmates...I just stuck to my slowboat ride going home on holidays, while the Hacienda hijas went home to Negros in private planes...Yes, it was colonial times too at Interna STC.
I have this phobia of facing my back to the
open door, during my days in a residence hall in Diliman, I toothbrushed
sideways, not facing the mirror atop the lavatory sink because it faced
directly to the open door. I do not also put my back against the door of a
restaurant or in public places..I have this never-ending eccentricity that
somebody might come and riddle bullets at my back...
My short teaching stint at the Divine Word University gave me an
odd course to teach--History 17: The Life, Works and Writings of Dr. Jose
Rizal. I pondered why the Department Head issued me this teaching load
when my discipline was the Fine Arts! But at the end of the term I was
well evaluated by my students who thought I had been handling the course
for many semesters with skill because I debunked their Zaide book...
Perhaps I feel emotionally for Pepe, like him, I have a fickle and "pusong mamon" heart (no wonder he had many loves!). When I went to visit Rizal's ancestral house in Calamba, I could not help hearing (feeling) the gleeful giggles of girls in the sala, the wafting aroma of pancit guisado in the comedor, the big "caing" (basket) in the Silong where I used to hide when Nina crept upon me in hide and seek..and in the backyard outhouse where I kept my drawings in a chest and Inay's stories of the supernatural...I missed them so..It seems that it was only this lifetime...
I usually come across books written about Jose Rizal, Ambeth Ocampo's "Rizal without an Overcoat" feels like an Expose to me...Did Ocampo really know the the Hero smoked hashish in Barcelona? That a Fakir introduced it to him? There's that dreamyflash in my eyes that it cost "ME" to cough for a month that "I" spent Paciano's money on medicines to take away that infernal ague..I came upon Felice Sta Maria's coffeetable book on Rizal, I fingered it lovingly...it was "my Family's" portrait...very commendable...
I still have this "Disorder" within me..This
iconographical malady I know will stay with me as long as I live. Rizal to
me is my long lost Twin, born in another time..in another place...And next
week, in hopeful melancholia, "I" will visit my hometown again, Calamba,
with my Talisay-students (there's a talisay tree outside my classroom in
UP Tacloban) in Humanities I- Literature, Society and the Individual..to
retrace a Life, so shining and stellar as it is, into my Own...
National Hero,
Dr. Jose Rizal