As I look into the window of one manâs past, imagining a one-way flight or passing through the turbulence of deep waters, he welcomes me to his home. I trod through the footsteps of his journey in a rather poetic language.
The narrative begins with foreign blood invading native soul, the time when the Americans and the Japanese had occupied the Philippines. The cruelty of those akin to aliens in foreign soil incited racial abhorrence from the natives towards the colonizers. For some inhabitants in âGuinhalinan, the place where everything springs, the sourceâ, they had unspoken rules to live by regarding other islanders (Veric, 11). Obeisance to these rules would connote citizenship to a certain extent. It is a traditional way of showing affiliation to a certain community, a sign of kinship that the locals were bound to emulate. As the aphorism goes, âthe lands unwritten law: Never abandon the place where you were bornâ. In Vericâs Boyhood, prejudice, for the locals, was a mere fantasy that was the result of being corrupted by the unfamiliar (37).
âLifeâs a fool. Itâs market day!â (51) This was said to be âthe folk philosophyâ (51). As I continued my perusal, I have come to terms with the discernment that somehow this could amalgamate the marvel of life in its entirety. In my own experience, market day reminds me of waking up early in the morning, heading to the local marketplace, and hearing the sound of loud vendors yelling for goods to be sold at a certain cost. Meanwhile consumers meticulously scout the place for fresh fish, meat or poultry with the best quality at the most affordable price. In some instances, I find myself staring at butchers chop off flesh of different shapes and sizes. I would look at them with astonishment in the way they hastily, but at the same time, cautiously slice and dice, and afterwards measure their goods and commodities. I end up realizing that market day turns out to be a metaphor of life. I can compare this snippet of the past to that of life at large. How life manages to pass us by going unnoticed. How we try to accurately plan things yet circumstance gets its way of intertwining unexpected upshots. How numerous complications intervene every living human being each day. How anybody, regardless of social class, can never get a free pass to the fright of lifeâs uncertainty.
To exemplify this in Vericâs poetry, a man went out dancing one night with his wife in the barrioâs fiesta, and amidst the romance of a festive evening, little did he know, he was losing his home and children to tragic flames. To what extent can a person take just to get by despite lifeâs imperfections; despite its unpredictable capability of being so perfect in one moment, and so suddenly grim the next?
Every day is another market day, life is a fool, and this simpleton cannot be given the chop because his chances of survival comes close to nothing (51).
Onto a more intriguing progression, a chapter depicts a time when the unconventional affairs, such as same-sex relations, were more fraught with scandal as some still consider this controversial to date. The story of a maiden having an affair with the carpenter, the likes of Carlos, bachelor and loverâ these were intolerable to society (41). Some argue that these are still unacceptable in present times. Fortunately, time changes the perspective of convention. Providentially, equality is more attainable nowadays, nevertheless, it remains inevitable that âto live was to hear the misdeeds of the livingâ (52). Because even now, there is a tendency to succumb to the system when society permits that it is more convenient to follow the norm. Louis Althusser in his Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses put this situation into words, wherein he discussed the concept of âhailing.â He elaborated that, âideology interpolates individuals as subjects,â and âindividuals are always already subjectsâ (186). This instance was vehemently explicated in Boyhood as well. First, when a person becomes a pariah to a place they call home out of unorthodox love, and perhaps, due to self-preservation, gradually submit to the mores.
In a much larger scale, as rebels attempt to break the norm, innocent lives are taken aback. The woman baking bread is a victim of political vendetta (Veric, 95). Where a personâs youth could be nourished, their lives repressed as âthe men in battle fatiguesâ complete the bidding (96). Hence, the militia that had become an ideological state apparatus, and the individuals that refute societal convention replicate the conflict in attaining the realization of ideology.
And when death becomes the ultimate standoff, life bids farewell, signalling the finish line. Several kinds of denouement befall. For others, there is such a thing called âpatnog,â believing that âthe soul returned to roam the earth on the third night of deathâ (102). For âold men who loved in quiet ways,â there is just hope for his beloved to awaken from the cold and lifeless even when there is nothing left to save (103).
As I look into the window of one manâs past, his life as a meek chid, his tales of folklore, his misadventures, the atmosphere of countryside, the air of youth so innocent, so pure, it leaves me to all sorts of enthralment. It is not every day that I come across, and be fascinated in such an uncanny narrative brought inventively through poetry. So, perhaps, it may be the reason why I marvel at the life he has led, of the story he had told, the lyrics he had sung. A person so enamoured as he alone could have the audacity of sharing the tumultuous chronicles of his past. His life reflected through this lyric poetry that has become his anthem, the series of events that came prior to his adolescence. This is the story of Vericâs boyhood, a metamorphosis, and youth of a lifetime that I have, with good grace, inclined to lose myself in.
