wednesday woes

pierre and i are as different as fingerprints. morning and night. north and south. lifetimes and lifestyles. sometimes these differences hurt us but almost always, he unknowingly blames it on me and it hurts me all the more because i try.

there are moments when i can not seem to get through him. to him, my actions, words and feelings are all contradictions and he is never convinced that i love and appreciate him.

i love him for everything that he is and i have long stopped asking why.

i wish this man who vows to love me would spare me some of the faith he has in God. too much to ask? faith needs no expalantion and neither does love.

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a Sillimanian mind

ok, enough of my cheesiness.

this morning, tere asked me if i could give her some of my notebooks so she wouldn't have to buy anymore. my notebooks? my notebooks i have labeled the box containing my precious notebooks "please prioritize in case of fire"--is she kidding? oh but of course, i did give her two. that's too much already.

while looking for notebooks i would have the heart to part with, i stumbled upon an old test paper of one of my best students in Silliman. Lee Vincent was a freshman engineering student at that time. he didn't talk much in class (it was an Expository Writing). he went to my classes in grungy shirts, torn jeans and Chuck Taylors and would just stare ahead as if i weren't making any sense. for a while there i really thought i wasn't making any semblance of sense with the way i taught. most of his classmates would turn in late papers which were eventually returned to them bleeding: the grammatical errors and incoherence made me doubt my worth as a teacher.

however, Lee was different. i would always sort his paper from the lot and read it last, and always, his paper would be on the top of the pile after i finished checking them. he was brilliant.

i kept his Final Exam paper and i am posting excerpts from it---with the hope that Lee wouldn't sue me. i am just so proud of this kid, and i used to tell him that through my comments on his papers and through my emails after i left Dumaguete.

Lee, i hope you're still writing. you're one bright thing, you know that.

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on descriptive/narrative devices

a man started to speak

A gaunt man with the shadows of his past began to feel the rage burn from within his stomach, rising upwards, till it gripped his voice like a microphone, weilding like a fistful of steel at a past never forgotten.

the crowd began to move

All stepped forward, like a southern fist rising through the jungle mist, taking the first step which they know will be the first move to taking back what is theirs from the rubble of rich empires...

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and another one

"...then it hit me. i felt like i was there, in that Mexican pasture, being herded off to that place they call "free"...do you know what that felt like? that felt like a Jew being trussed up like a ham on a trainload of his own blood and kin, herded on by Nazi pigs. sweat and vomit are thrown in that congested pig pen, prayers suffocated by the stench of dying, flesh and urine. some die. and they're the lucky ones...."

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students like Lee, students who think, who have things to say, passion and angst even, are the ones who make me want to teach all my life.

in teaching, what matters is that you make your students think and pose questions and challenge the world because a mind as impressionable as theirs make it even richer. it makes language and experiences beautiful and terrifying at the same time.