Sure of being unsure

By Emmanuelle

It’s classically typical.

When the legitimacy of your present status and tenure is under a permanent cloud of doubt but still you insist on holding on to your seat through wind and storm, it is definitely certain that you and everyone loyal to you and all things around you shelter under a hugely billowing plastic tent of definite uncertainty.

You and everyone and everything take on a face that is clearly unclear, of inexact exactness, undefined indefiniteness, indeterminate determination, indecisive decisiveness, unhesitant hesitancy.

Under a collective poker’s mask and the rippling muscles of your highly-paid security, you hide the truth – that within your skull, your mind is relentlessly without rest; that within your chest, your heart is eternally without peace.

The period dangles at the end of your statement, or it assumes the wiggle and the vague dot of a question mark. You have to threaten the tattooing of an exclamation point to enforce whatever your message is.

But, as all matters are in this world, permanence is impermanent.

In lingua franca, everything is temporary, everything is subject to change, the wheel of fate turns and when you-up-there-you-god but when you-down-you-the-ground to our feet, etcetera.

Sometime soon or later, the wind shall gather its forces, it shall blow away your hugely billowing plastic tent, and the storm shall tear it to shreds. The nation may be poorer but history is richer with the experience. Whether you are a principal who abuses a child or corrupts your position, a mayor or governor whose ignorance of the executable law is inexcusable excuse, a presidential appointee who heads then hides a commission, a president who takes on the powers of the gods and by sheer chutzpah halts any further turning of the wheels of fate.

So, until then, what do we do but – magtimpi, magtiyaga, maghigpit ng sinturon at bulsa. What other choices do we have?      

If it’s any indication of forewarning of our matagalang paghihintay sa pagbabago, are we not alarmed with the thrashing of the impeachment case by the majority of our respectable, honorable gentlemen and ladies of the lower house? If their number who voted against it in the previous year is impressive enough considering the sentiment of the people as shown in social weather surveys, their number now is truly staggering!

And heaven save us, how were their respectable, honorable fears calmed? What endless possibilities were they promised? How much were their hunger or thirst allayed? 

And what of the Cha-Cha movement still waiting to blow the last of its wind in the wings? 

It is not the system of government that is faulty. It is the people that man that system. The system is without feeling, without hunger, without thirst. Those who man it are the ones forever hungry, thirsty, and emotionally attached to comfort and power.       

Readers ask why I use a pseudonym to hide the most wonderful sound that is supposed to reach one’s ears – one’s real, most wonderful name. Would you believe – to prove (even just to myself) that fulfillment does not necessarily come with fame of the name and the thickness of the wallet and the power of having both.       

It is hard but it can be done. I softly tiptoe around, a finger pressed on lips, big eyes wider still, a perpetual sssshhhhh sound issuing from between the teeth. Lately, I entered a government office. They read Emmanuelle; they know she is I; they do not know the real name. As soon as the office workers caught sight of me, they were doing the sssshhhh secret sign!

It felt like, uhm, give-me-five, a clap of our palms, then a clasp of our hands.

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