Loving Americans with goo-goo eyes

I’m rightist, revanchist, reactionary, totally un-PC, and a shock trooper of a potential fascist. So you can take it with a grain of iodized salt whenever I expound on my political and ideological views.

They can be as shameless as the decades-old insistence of one Atty. Ely Pamatong – you know, that fella who sports a turban in front of the U.S. Embassy while leading his pro-Am demonstrators – that all Pinoys born before July 4, 1946 are American citizens.

In Atty. Ely’s view, that makes me American. Hooray!

But heck, self-respecting blokes should never want to be where they ain’t wanted, so Atty. Ely can go it alone. And if you ask me, if I’m not wanted here either (and y’all got to show otherwise), the heck as well with current, foisted, accidental citizenship.

But if we were to deal with one another in this "crazy planets" (as NCCA Writers Prize awardee for the Essay Roland Tolentino partially titles his winning entry, quoting from the defunct boldstar Pepsi Paloma’s famous quote: "It’s a crazy planets!"), as human beings, it becomes clearer where we should stand.

Personally, I like the idea of being grateful. Well, perhaps it can get boring to stay eternally grateful for anything. But if the legacy one feels he’s benefitted from is on a substantial level, then I’m on your side, America – against terror, against provincialism, against emotionalism, and yes, squarely against the variant, misguided missile of nationalism.

My fellow Yankees, you can come in and help us rid our islands of bandits and kidnappers and all links to Al-Qaeda or the Dark Ages. You can come in and wow us with the high-tech gadgetry. It’ll pay dividends for our soldiers to go drooling over equpment; nothing like techno-envy to inspire the less privileged to make up for lack of gear with an extra dose of drive and can-do spirit.

You’re most welcome to my country. Just as the Thomasites had been. Yeah, those predecessors of a century past to whom my grateful generation owes the ability to tell you off, on occasion, in your own write.

Re the dubious merits of nationalism, there’s a simple exercise one can play in terms of the imagination. One can always reduce – not to absurdity but to something more microcosmic – geopolitical situations to cell-unit size. No, I’m not speaking of cellphones – but geographic units, political units, hometown units. Reduce the notion of state or country to village; essentialize the turf, in short. Go to town, as they say. Or village, barrio, barangay.

Say you were born in one. Are you then doomed – okay, fated – to stay there forever, pledge allegiance to geographical kinship for all time?

Obviously NOT. Most of us wander about, find our luck and loves elsewhere. Greener pastures, larger ponds, the whole irradiating, centripetal motion towards larger, fresher circles. Unless one liked to stay physically rooted forever.

If our supra-nationalists are to be believed, where one is born and grows up is where he/she has to pledge eternal allegiance to. Not so. Someone from Dupax, Nueva Vizcaya, has all the right to migrate to Moto Sur, Loon, Bohol, perchance to follow his heart‚s desire. Same thing with the Moto Sur to Montreal route.

Zoom out all the way to globalization. Once and future is the phemom. Before tribal leaders turned officious and engaged in mergers and protectionism, and worse, started issuing visas, our ancestors could roam anywhere around – they were global. And now it’s the season, the millenium, to turn full circle. It’s about time we all came around.

There too is the microcosmic scenario: we’re of, say, Brgy. Bato – poor, downtrodden, squatter-proof – and for a long season we’ve gazed with envy at Brgy. Damo across the stream – where a factory puts rice and sardines, not just camote, on the table. Oh, a lot of us Bato natives begin to ford the stream to share in some of that rice ourselves, even send surplus back home. But when the Damo-sites come slumming to help fix up a water pump for us, the fiercely indigenous Bato-batos, as purist as they come, put up their dukes and say, Keep to your side of the stream, or there’ll be hell to pay in the name of sovereignty.

Zoom out a little, and such is life in our islands. Such is the state-of-the-art, bolo-cutting-edge quality of minds and hearts with fervor burning of our... it’s a kite, it’s a Haribon, it’s our supra-nationalists!

Sure, think me weird. End of lecture.

No regrets for that extended prologue. Had to get some steam off before I can segue to my acknowledged area of expertise. To Islands Far Away: The Story of the Thomasites and Their Journey to the Philippines is a 76-page booklet that’s billed as "A special Thomasites Centennial Project publication of the Public Affairs Section, U.S. Embassy, Manila, to commemorate the August 1901 arrival in the Philippines of the Thomasites."

A reprinted edition of the Log of the USS Thomas, it serves as the companion volume, however slim, to Bearers of Benevolence, an anthology of historical narratives by the Thomasites and their sudents, edited by Mary Racelis and Judy Ick, and launched by Anvil Publishing last November.

The booklet offers a Preface, a long Introduction, and the meat of the story of the Thomasites‚ voyage to our islands far away, conducted from July 23 to Aug. 21, 1901.

From the Intro: "So it was that in 1901, a hearty band of American teachers set put to perform an arduous task as they left behind their families and comfortable homes ‘back in the States.’ Armed with books, pencils, paper and slates, fired by the highest ideals and a genuine desire to help build a new nation across the seas, hundreds of young men and women trained by some of the best educational institutions in the United States established a modern public school system which was to have far-reaching effects on the Filipino way of life."

Unfortunately, it may be said, they didn’t stay long enough to hone us further in the science of rational thinking, else the Filipino way of life might have done away with unnecessary concatenation from the likes of Pamatong and his counterpart extremists of the makabayan mode.

Section Two, titled "The Log of the Thomas," (which is acknowledged in the Preface as "not the ship’s actual log, technically speaking,"), comprises prose and poetry of the voyagers en route to Manila across the Pacific. Consider it a collective journal that might find parallel, however miniscule, in the possible haiku or odes or epigrammatic diary entries and creative effusions penned by any of the 600-man contingent flown in to Basilan recently by C-130, Chinook and Black Hawk vessels.

A poem by Bradford K. Daniels, titled "Our Mission," reads thus: "First, with the scourge of the sword/ We went to the dusky race./ Broke with one blow the chains/ That fettered; now, in their place,/ Bring we the bonds of peace./ Invisible, lighter than air,/ Stronger than engines of war,/ Binding the near and the far,/ Aliens of aim and of blood,/ In a mighty brotherhood."

Okay, the metaphorical hyperbole may suck for not a few. Yet ’tis fair to consider the past century as a loss of innocence or naivete. But not of idealism. "Aliens of aim and of blood" strike me as a strong poetic line, albeit I wonder if it would have been more appropriate as "allies of aim and of blood"? On second thought, nope. Stet, Gary.

There’s another, curious verse attributed to Force And Thomas (!?), titled "Just Because She Made Those Goo-goo Eyes." Why, it’s a song, with Chorus parts narrating how "the fishes made those goo-goo eyes" upon receiving a barfed meal from a lady teacher leaning against the ship’s rail, and how too a couple partook of romance on deck.

"Just because she made those goo-goo eyes –/ And all the while he thought he had a prize!/ But she’d played the game before –/ When he finds out he’ll be sore,/ He’s not the first to see those goo-goo eyes."

I say curious, because this version seems to belie the notion that "goo-goo eyes" referred only to "Flips" – and eventually the Viet "Gooks" – as posterized in another, possibly earlier, marching song, with the phrase "goo-goo-eyed ladrones" in reference to what the U.S. military had to deal with at that turn of the century.

The rest of the booklet makes for fascinating reading, inclusive of such research stats as the background and specs of the good ship Thomas, "a detailed statement of the amounts of various kinds of food required for the trip" (under "Steward’s Department"), the kitchen and laundry features, a sample menu for Aug. 12, 1901, a detailed costing of the expedition, Scientific Notes that cite sightings of flying fish or Exocoetus californiensis a few days out of San Francisco, and the "German cockroach, erstwhile the croton bug, Ectobia germanica (which), may be said to be in full possession of the ship."

Then there are the brief essays, gushing in parts, such as by C.H. Maxson: "We are a happy family on board the Thomas and not without evidences of natural affection. Honeymoons by the dozen glow with a soft effulgence fore and aft, while romance spoons in sheltered places, and Cupid whispers his secrets under the lee of the life boat. Goo-goo eyes (!) look unutterable tings to eyes that look again, and love, beautiful to behold, flourishes upon the teacher transport like the royal palms in the queen’s gardens."

The last simile may be misplaced; totally incongruous, thus ineffective. Unless it hints at royal imperialism. Ooops.

Whatever. This booklet comes at a time when we’re all under a royal watch, and we can’t help but note the way things come around, the way things change and remain the same, the way Americans are so loving of one another whether onboard ship or Chinook, and how we must continue to love them for what they are, not necessarily with goo-goo eyes.

Oh yes, History repeats itself in funny ways.

In his ode, "To the Philippine Teachers," E.E. Schneider versifies: "O’er boundless seas and to a foreign land/ A chosen and devoted band you go...// So let no fear of failure fill your hearts,/ Or dash your courage, or your spirits grieve;/ And let no petty doubts becloud your brain,/ Remember, while you try to do your parts,/ That, if one single spark of light you leave/ Behind, your work will not have been in vain."

Why, this is must reading for all participants in the Balikatan exercises.

Thanks, Pepsi, thanks, Roland. I tell you: "It’s a crazy nations. It’s a crazy planets."