Reflection

09/13/06, Reflection on a Wednesday

Alone. I am alone. And it's thinking time. Time to look back. Time to separate the good old days from the bad. I turn on the computer.

There's stillness in the house. Not a soul move. I cringed to my left.I saw my figure from my chair on a 3-piece mirror.On the front was another mirror; while immediately in front of me is my PC, an hp pavilion mx70.The 32-inch Sony TV is on the right with the antenna, the artificial flower and the small sony radio and CD player.

I heared a car screeched to a stop as there was a stop sign between Jersey Ave and Ardmore. And another one.

I sat. I gazed at the wall. I saw the number 38. That's 5 weeks & 3 days). A couple of days and it's done. Unbelievable!

I thought of what brought me to the facility, to meet people of wisdom in medical and spiritual fields making this world a wholesome, wonderful, happy place despite  its shattered dreams, fraudulence, and drudgery. To them, I said deep in my heart -Thank You Very Much. To All of you and to the new friends I met in that memorable 38 days, may you be at peace with God, whatever you call Him. He is our Hope, our Light, our Guide, our Healer, our ALL. Seek Him anywhere, knock on His door anytime, and of course you have to ask Him on the whys of your seeking and knocking. However, we should not only seek, knock and ask during our trying moments but also on our happy hours.

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In my mental meandering,I found these paragraphs interesting written by Carlos Bulosan (11/24/1913-09/13/1956), well-known Filipino writer writing in the West Coast, who at the age of 17 came to America and spoke little if any English. He never went back to the Philippines.This is from the introduction of Carey McWilliams on Bulosan's book, America Is In The Heart, A Personal History by Carlos Bulosan.

" America is not a land of one race or one class of men. We are all Americans that have toiled and suffered and known oppression and defeat, from the first Indian that offered peace in Manhattan to the last Filipino peapickers. America is not bound by geographical latitudes. America is not merely a land or an institution. America is in the hearts of men that died for freedom; it is also in the eyes of men that are building a new world. America is a prophecy of a new society of men: of a system that knows no sorrow or strife or suffering. America is a warning to those who would try to falsify the ideals of free men.

America is also the nameless foreigner, the homeless refugee, the hungry boy begging for a job and the black body dangling from a tree. America is the illiterate immigrant who is ashamed that the world of books and intellectual opportunities is closed to him. We are all that nameless foreigner, that homeless refugee, that hungry boy, that illiterate immigrant and that lynched black body. All of us, from the first Adams to the last Filipino, native born or alien, educated or illiterate -
We are America!"