Finding Our Watch: A Personal Journey
through the Filipino Imagination
as Wrought in Our Own Voice
by Anna Alves

            “In some of those towns below would be all sorts of sky-watchers;
            for we all have our own galaxies to describe in a book, only we
            are doomed right from the start by the finitude of our watch.”

                              —From the novel, The Bamboo Dancers
                                       by N.V.M. Gonzalez 

At once, it was a part of my history, yet unfamiliar to my experience.  An invaluable treasure trove, it initiated a whole new world for me to explore and eventually, inhabit.

Finitude: A Beginning

It was spring 2009.  We were in Honolulu for the annual Association of Asian American Studies Conference, at a hotel café sharing a huge chocolate chip pancake, when Remé Grefalda, the intrepid editor of Our Own Voice, said “Yes, I do think you are the best person to write an evaluation of OOV at this time.”  We had been discussing it on email occasionally, back and forth from coast-to-coast—she in D.C. and me in Los Angeles—and finally, face-to-face again, she cut my doubtful inquiry off at the pass, keeping me firmly in the saddle and staying in Dodge.

Remé and I met at the beginning of this decade, through our work on the national report “Towards a Cultural Community: Identity, Education and Stewardship in Filipino American Performing Arts.”  I was with the Ford Foundation at the time, a Program Associate learning how to give grants in arts and culture and Remé was a consultant with the National Federation of Filipino American Associations (NaFFAA).  We were looking at the way Filipino performing arts enabled folks to tell their community stories in different cities and towns all across America, sustaining their identities and histories through active creativity and education.  It was an extension of personal passions for both of us.  For her, it was a natural progression of the work she was already doing—finding Filipino voices telling their tales in far-flung corners, in places no one might look, by people that perhaps could be bypassed, but that she ensured were not.  For me, it was seeking and discovering Filipino stories in different contexts, with varying resources, multiple generations, and diverse aesthetics.  I was a product of California—specifically UCLA—Pilipino Cultural Nights (PCNs), those ubiquitous annual shows on college (and some high school) campuses that showcase Filipino identity and experience in a specific, and immediate, moment in time.  For young adults of my generation, starting in the 1980s, PCN was the place we tried to recreate a connection to a “homeland” even while establishing a firm presence in America, using Philippine history, traditional cultural dance and music, and scripted explorations of contemporary Filipino American issues to entertain and inform.

I had always been seeking and discovering ways that the Filipino imagination manifested itself. Fortune (or sassy serendipity) allowed me as an undergraduate, during a summer research program in 1989, to discover two whole bookshelves of Philippine Literature in English in UCLA’s Research Library.  I recall sitting the entire afternoon on a stool, poring over dusty hardbound tomes, pulling out several at a time.  Ligaya Fruto.  Rowena Tiempo-Torrevillas.  Carmen Guerrero Nakpil.  Ninotchka Rosca.  F. Sionel Jose.  Bienvenido Santos.  Jose Rizal.  Linda Ty-Casper.  N.V.M. Gonzalez.  Jessica Hagedorn. Michelle Cruz Skinner. At once, it was a part of my history, yet unfamiliar to my experience.  An invaluable treasure trove, it initiated a whole new world for me to explore and eventually, inhabit.

Not long after that, N.V.M. Gonzalez came to UCLA to teach a special course on Filipino American Literature.  I enrolled in his class and then served as his research assistant the rest of that academic year, working on a literature anthology that he was assembling.  It was the beginning of a long-standing acquaintance that lasted until his passing in November 1999.  In that interim, we had several conversations about Filipino identity and values as well as how the Filipino imagination takes shape in the diaspora.  Me, reaching from an American birth and grounding and he, taking my hand, pulling me beyond myself and my established place, seeking with him an anchoring Filipino sensibility across a myriad of spaces.

Finding kindred spirits in one another, Remé concludes in the first-ever FROM THE EDITOR'S LAPTOP narrative: “All of us who have felt connected by the written word have transcended the ‘virtual’ and have become quietly real to each other.”

At that Honolulu hotel café, sitting with Remé, I flashed on those conversations that had started with N.V.M. almost two decades ago as she pondered the position of Our Own Voice, now approaching a decade-long anniversary. What makes a Filipino?  And what does s/he create from that singular point of imagining wherever s/he stands at that moment of being? I felt I needed to be a part and parcel of the whole OOVoperation since its inception to effectively speak about where it is poised now.  I thought about all the great writers and artists that have contributed to these cyber-pages.  It was such a daunting precursor.  And here I was, a newbie, a looky-loo, with no real relationship to Our Own Voice except that I know and admire its editor.  Then I realized—as Remé probably knew already and N.V.M. surely would attest—that finitude is a good place to start.  As stated above, we are, each of us, sky-watchers, generating galaxies of our own.  The universe that Our Own Voice has wrought in cyber-space is large enough for anyone, at any point, to begin a journey.  And so, with good intentions and a curious heart, this sky-watcher begins.

A Carabao and Riding The Rhizome: A Reader’s Landscape

During his final teaching stint at UCLA as a UC Regents professor in 1998-99, N.V.M. Gonzalez was considering the carabao:

You might say a Philippine landscape is not quite authentic without a carabao.  This work animal used to be everywhere there were loads to carry, a cart or sled to pull.  Otherwise, in the noonday heat, you found it enjoying the shade of the acacia or a cluster of bamboos.  If there are a few things in the landscape that evoke peace and security these days, a carabao munching on grass or straw does that for me.

—from a Regent’s lecture at UCLA, Fall 1998.

 

 

N.V.M. told his good friend Enrique de la Cruz, the Assistant Director of the UCLA Asian American Studies Center at the time: “I am looking for an image that can represent the Filipino.”  They discussed intrinsic values, focused on “diwa” as in “diwang Pilipino,” and tried to find English equivalents that could embody what that meant.  Though close, “spirit,” “soul,” or “consciousness” just did not cut it.  So as writer and artist, N.V.M. began “searching for a metaphor that could represent these values.”  Working from the notion that the Filipino comes from three main places—the metropolis, the barrio or the mountain—he seized upon the carabao as a unifying image to represent these common values.  The animal was the Philippine farmer’s means of livelihood yet he must take care of it too, an inherent dynamic of survival and nurturing resilience that seems to characterize a universal Filipino sensibility. Yet as Enrique pointed out in his remembrance of N.V.M. delivered at the Los Angeles Public Library’s Mark Taper Auditorium in February 2000 after the writer’s passing: “We began to see the limits of the metaphor. . . it falls flat for Creoles in the Metropolis or those in Gringo land who have never seen a carabao.”

To poke and prod at these limits, to seek out new metaphors or investigate further images, N.V.M. had wanted to form a group for the study of Filipino thought and culture—in cyberspace!  Forward-thinking even then, though already in his eighties, he was not at all daunted by computers, emerging technologies or the Internet.  He sought fresh ways to connect, create and critique Filipino expressions, beyond borders, boundaries, even himself.  As Enrique also quoted from N.V.M. that same evening in 2000, inserting his presence, even in his absence:  “All we do as writers is carve away at the mountain of reality, and then pass on the pick and shovel to the next in line.”

Yet a funny thing happened along the way from there to here: the interest in exploring a literary landscape that galvanized Our Own Voice’s original founding expanded beyond standard notions of “literature” and embraced other artistic and writing forms as well—music, visual art, performing arts...

Perhaps it is divine coincidence (or again, sassy serendipity) that the very next year in January 2001, Our Own Voice was born in cyberspace.  OOV’s mission states an intent “to provide a home space for the creative expression of Filipinos in the diaspora” and called for short stories, poems, essays, book reviews, critiques and play excerpts to highlight a credo that believes in “a growing breed of Filipino who is a foreigner in his old home, an alien in his new land: straddling two cultures without belonging to either one or who may be trying to belong to either one.” Finding kindred spirits in one another, Remé concludes in the first-ever FROM THE EDITOR'S LAPTOP narrative: “All of us who have felt connected by the written word have transcended the ‘virtual’ and have become quietly real to each other.”

Almost a decade later, a look back within OOV’s virtual pages engenders this musing: How has its existence impacted the way Filipinos in the diaspora understand the Filipino imagination? Answers—or rather, spin-off investigations—offer themselves up in the anchoring FROM THE EDITOR'S LAPTOP and WELCOME READER, dual missives that open each of the 29 archived issues that extend from the beginning of 2001 to the verge of 2010.  As Editor, always, Remé kicked things off with her LAPTOP letter, then handed off the greeting duties to someone else—her Associate Editor, writer Nadine L. Sarreal (until July 2004), occasional guests such as writer/poet Luisa Igloria, critic/essayist Leonard Casper and novelist Linda Ty-Casper (October 2004 to March 2006), and eventually current Associate Editor Aileen Ibardaloza (August 2006 through the recent August 2009 issue). Meanwhile, throughout, Art Director Geejay Arriola spun the web pages and cyber-links, visual frontispieces and graphic art, illustrating the words with vibrant visions.

OOV October 2002 Frontispiece

The opening two-handers provided warm salutations and a portal through which an itinerant reader could pass through, halt briefly, settle in, and partake of Filipino creativity, even if for just a little while.  Yet a funny thing happened along the way from there to here: the interest in exploring a literary landscape that galvanized Our Own Voice’s original founding expanded beyond standard notions of “literature” and embraced other artistic and writing forms as well—music, visual art, performing arts, experimental prose and poetry, hip-hop, children’s tales, biographical portraits of artists and cultural workers, historical narrative and archival documents, to name a few.

Recalling N.V.M. once more, another image we explored in our conversations comes to mind—the notion of a rhizome root and the Filipino imagination:

True to its rhizomatous nature, the Filipino imagination may be expected to keep on testing the American soil for spots where more of its rootstalks can break through.  Although there is no indication of a change in the cultural weather, roots in the nature of things are not so much a fact of life as rootedness itself.

—N.V.M. Gonzalez from Passing Through, Filipino American Literature, An Interethnic Companion to Asian American Literature, edited by King-kok Cheung, 1997.

 

 

 

I had to look up the word rhizome, of course:

A somewhat elongate usually horizontal subterranean plant stem that is often thickened by deposits of reserve food material, produces shoots above and roots below, and is distinguished from a true root in possessing buds, nodes, and usually scalelike leaves

—Online Merriam-Webster Dictionary

 

 

The idea of the Filipino imagination shooting stories and experiences above-ground in varying sites simultaneous to grounding itself with roots in dispersed soils, yet still, horizontally-linked, is a fascinating one to consider.  What the reader has encountered on the OOV journey “along the rhizome” expands beyond America and embraces the global.   Along the way, Our Own Voice has relied on a number of images and metaphors to build and sustain its virtual network of imagination seekers and surveyors, to depict their growing community, even to characterize the energies they often assembled on each production outing.

To bolster this expansion, OOV “adopted” the Filipino American Library (FAL) in Los Angeles, extending the literary reach from coast-to-coast.

In its first year of existence (2001), the notion of a “literary harvest” was most prevalent.  January’s Maiden Issue set the parameters, embracing established and emerging writers, and making space to create and critique. Nadine proclaims in Welcome Reader,

We need to take responsibility for putting out our image, painting our portraits, instead of leaving our documented reflections in the hands of non-Filipinos who have no ethnic investment in us. Here is Our Own Voice, a place for our stories.

Celebrated poet/artist Eileen Tabios kicked off with an essay entitled “Meditations on Ilokano Abstractions.” Utilizing a grounding affinity to legendary Filipino poet Jose Garcia Villa to analyze the aesthetics of the abstract painter Venancio "V.C." Igarta and establish her own work’s artistic and aesthetic intentions alongside, in dialogue with both, yet also interrogating the Filipino imagination within its historical neo-colonial contexts, she fortuitously set a cross-artistic sensibility that developed further in later OOV issues and essays.  April 2001 was a grab bag recounting stories of war and adding childhood tales as part of its repertoire as well as a “Book” section to feature new publications, expanding the available literary realm.  To bolster this expansion, OOV “adopted” the Filipino American Library (FAL) in Los Angeles, extending the literary reach from coast-to-coast and enabling a larger repository within which to store and celebrate written work. 

In the June 2001 WELCOME READER, the staff asked:

Has it occurred to you, dear readers, that we have the essentials today to gather the building blocks of Filipino literature for tomorrow as at no other time in our history?  With inherent technology we stand poised to share our literary works more quickly and to a wider readership than ever before.  What a fantastic chance to make up for lost time and lost opportunities! 

They proceeded to encourage pieces from writers and expatriates beyond U. S. borders and announce submission calls from upcoming anthologies and journals.  The issue also celebrated efforts to archive and access Philippine literature, especially the “one-woman crusade” of Southern California-based Linda Nietes, the proprietor of the book-order store, Philippine Expressions.  And it offered experimental aesthetics, showcasing poetry of the visual.

OOV September 2001 Frontispiece

Eerie in its inadvertent timeliness, the September 2001 retrospective issue that remembered writers who had passed away—both those with barely-tapped potential as well as for those more polished and published—came out the month of 9/11, a dark time for grief, yet also gratitude for what remained.  As Remé solemnly states in LAPTOP,

We are immersed at the present time in a world we no longer understand. We find no logic in the senseless carnage that took the lives of thousands. No logic. No comfort. Paradoxically, within that which we cannot understand, we will discover the necessary path that will lead us to the point of transformation—but only in the quiet of reflection, in the poetry of slow processing.

Five-issues-old by December 2001, a Poetry Implosion was in place and Nadine was exhorting those dear readers,

Instead of judging the poems by scholarly standards, that you find yourself invited into that spongy frame of mind where old concrete givens can be set aside for the moment and you can try out new possible realities, see the world through other senses.  Here is an issue rich with varying paradigms.  Come read. Savor. 

Just prior, Remé had set the tone from LAPTOP: “We began this venture of a magazine with no inkling that within a year, we would harvest such rich literary fare.”  That inaugural year was a virtual harvesting of bounty—Our Own Voice enthusiastically reaping what had already been sown.  And planting seeds for later harvests to come.

In her imaginings, she jumps a decade into the future, seeing a friend’s daughter in a school library, introduced to that now vintage hard-copy of Our Own Voice...

The next year, Our Own Voice moved from harvest to a hunt.  Remé  proclaimed in October 2002’s LAPTOP:

We want to reach you, dear reader.  You may not think that being solo, you can move mountains.  But you can.  How better to reach you than by sharing our scavenger hunts, our mix and match discoveries, the telling of the times when we were distracted by an invitational ‘Psst! Psst!’ of either a rumor of a new book or a new writer’s efforts in Antarctica (maybe?). 

Part of that hunt included excavating history, leading OOV to put out several history-themed issues over the years—from the Philippine-American War in 1899 (April 2003) to the 1904 St. Louis Exposition Philippine Village Exhibit (March 2004) to Martial Law (September 2007)—as well as highlighting specific segments of the Filipino diaspora such as Overseas Contract Workers (March 2002), the performing arts (July 2002), including musical, dance, theater and visual artists young and old, and children (January 2003).  These expeditions sought to capture “our story in our voice,” as Nadine put it in WELCOME READER, April 2003. That year also saw the establishment of OOV’s annual Global Filipino Literary Award in fiction, non-fiction and poetry, as well as publication of its winners later that year, contributing fresh voices to the cacophony of creativity.

OOV April 2003 Frontispiece

The end of 2003 generated a print edition of Our Own Voice, “extending the shelf life of the literary harvest,” as Nadine states in the December 2003 Welcome Reader. In her imaginings, she jumps a decade into the future, seeing a friend’s daughter in a school library, introduced to that now vintage hard-copy of Our Own Voice, where

she will take the book dubiously, and start by looking at the pictures and art work.  She will sink to a sitting position on the floor between the shelves and dive into the book, becoming oblivious to the world around her, to the passing of the warm afternoon hours as she drinks in words about the lives of Filipinos in Saudi Arabia, Hong Kong, America, Italy; about Filipinos today, long ago, and in the not too distant past, during World War II. Finally, she will see words in print that she's only heard from the lips of her elders—Tagalog, Iloko, Bikol, Ilonggo. Her friends will grow impatient as they cannot take her away from the book. ‘We're leaving,’ they warn her and she will nod and wave farewell without looking up from the pages.

From that intimate imagined moment of stillness and connection, Our Own Voice morphs into intrepid navigator, traveling “all over the map,” boldly exploring myriad topics, poetic languages, worldly events 100 years later, tracking the “diversity in a sexy republic” of a vast “cultural geography” (WELCOME READER March 2004).  Yet by July 2004, a brief lingering posited by Remé from LAPTOP states:

We had some discussion among the staff as to whether or not we ought to continue issues of the ezine, that is. It's a fair question. The dialogue became an occasion to air out the Unasked: What exactly did we get ourselves into and for how long do we go on?...You see, dear readers, the staff and I have noticed that Our Own Voice today has a life of its own. We, at the helm, only steer. 

That same issue, Nadine recalled a childhood memory, offering up the transposed image of OOV as a house with a porch upon which she tarries upon, postponing a reluctant goodbye after “a long, full dinner.  The coffee has been served and the dessert plates scraped clean.”  At that 14th issue—halfway through the journey that is poised here today at Number 30—a first farewell occurred as she stepped down in her role as Associate Editor.  Yet OOV journeyed on, with Nadine’s assurance that “This isn't an ultimo adios. I'm still here in the Diaspora and I will see you again.”

This notion of insular steadfast cultivation, then a metamorphosis into a more gorgeous, multi-color external existence perfectly exemplifies OOV’s production process as well as the multi-faceted creativity it was generating, transforming the Filipino imaginative space.

By September 2005, guest editor Leonard Caspar was recalling the navigator image again in a WELCOME READER special essay, measuring the imaginative experience of the Filipino writer abroad along a back-azimuth (a mapping term alluding to an about-face turn of sorts, that is 180 degrees from the original azimuth, yet still not back to its base line or origin).  Linda Ty-Casper ventured further in December 2005, offering her own special essay in Welcome Reader on those writing in the United States as she posited this question: “Is the American Dream of Filipino writers to write ‘the American novel’ or to write ‘the Filipino novel in America’?”  In addition, Our Own Voice inaugurated the Ivy Terasaka Short Story Competition that year, in honor of an emerging literary voice tragically and prematurely silenced, in effect, creating “a room of her own” for others to stay and manifest that creativity.  Thus, sustaining her spirit and establishing even more voices to venture out into the world.

After such a flurry of activity (five full issues in 2005, productivity unseen since its inaugural year in 2001), 2006 saw a slowing down of focus, keeping to a comprehensive examination of one historical icon (the Carlos Bulosan Issue in March 2006) and even a more introspective and reflective issue on the concept and season of Winter (December 2006).

OOV August 2006 Frontispiece

In-between, in August 2006, Our Own Voice found its new (and current) Associate Editor, Aileen Ibardaloza.  In her first WELCOME READER, she tossed out yet another image to represent OOV, borrowing some of the words from Remé: “How very apt, I thought, seeing how Our Own metamorphosed—as Remé puts it, ‘[into the quintessential] butterfly . . . In the final analysis we all fed the caterpillar, massaged it, helped spin the cocoon’.”  This notion of insular steadfast cultivation, then a metamorphosis into a more gorgeous, multi-color external existence perfectly exemplifies OOV’s production process as well as the multi-faceted creativity it was generating, transforming the Filipino imaginative space.

Interestingly, Aileen’s last words in December 2006’s Welcome Reader (“Maybe, just maybe, we are perennial, after all.”) are taken up again by Remé in her LAPTOP in May 2007, making of those words one more image to succor its readers: “By any stretch of the imagination, it is a remarkable adventure when you consider that no commercial ad pops up in our pages. And the pages, like perennials, bloom year in and year out.”  In keeping with that notion, its pages emphasized family histories and genealogies, archives and documentarians.  Its lone sibling issue that year (September 2007) offered a retrospective—and introspective—set of pieces investigating and recontextualizing the continuing trauma of Martial Law in the Filipino psyche.  It was almost as if the Filipino imagination and experience, as perennials, would not deter its perseverance to grow, even when planted in rancid soil.

In February 2008, Remé’s LAPTOP celebrated the century that was her mother, Remy Cabacungan, an entire intimate yet vast history unto herself.  In WELCOME READER, Aileen highlighted Boston street artist Bret Bataclan and his Smile Project that “colorizes” playfulness onto gray concrete neighborhoods by painting jaunty creatures in random places, encouraging strangers and friends alike to smile.  In August 2008, Remé announced her new job as Librarian-Curator for the Library of Congress newest collection, the Asian American Pacific Islander Collection, bringing renewed vigor to her own curating in Our Own Voice; while in WELCOME READER, Aileen spoke of OOV once again navigating, but in neighborhoods—little worlds unto themselves—saying, “Our maps may be hopelessly vague, but we make it for you, nonetheless. Perchance we may agree on the same enchantments.” 

OOV as a cup of Tsokolate—concocted with love, mindfulness and a deeply personal touch, a fitting image for a year that illuminated the intimacy of individuals and a deeply humane vision of community.

The December 2008 LAPTOP finds Remé describing the flocking of communities to Simbang Gabi, “a series of masses at dawn taking place in the Filipino Diaspora for nine days every December to commemorate Advent in Christendom in anticipation of the birth of Christ.”  In this space she states that, “At no other time of the year am I more achingly aware of my spiritual being than during these December Times when I am most Filipino.”  In WELCOME READER Aileen asks “How to enjoy the perfect cup of hot chocolate?” and proceeds to describe an issue dedicated to “all our traditions of heart and home” that include button artistry, a meditation on cultural nights (and UCLA PCN!), a historical reprint, poetry (of course!), book reviews and the ever expansive bibliography section.  She ends with

Isn’t it festive that we concocted this issue the way we make Tsokolate: with thick, dark, fresh tablea (tablets of pure chocolate from cacao beans) melted in water and evaporated milk, and with sugar added to taste. We sip it and dip into it, slowly.  Leisurely.  Propter legens.  For the sake of the reader. 

OOV as a cup of Tsokolate—concocted with love, mindfulness and a deeply personal touch, a fitting image for a year that illuminated the intimacy of individuals and a deeply humane vision of community.

OOV September 2007 Frontispiece

2009, so far, has seen only one other offering.  In August, LAPTOP lamented the recent passing of Cory Aquino, leader of a peaceful revolution that shook the world in 1986 and former President of the Philippines, with a moving memoriam and the poignant phrase: “We laid yellow roses for you in our hearts, Cory.”  In Welcome Reader, yet another late great, recently passed, was honored—Manong Al Robles, the San Francisco Manilatown poet/activist. “There are Invisible Heritages all around us, Love, being the most powerful,” Aileen states, laying out an issue full of tributes and remembrances.  “Our Pilipino history is in the stories of the manongs, the jars of bagoong, it is in the love of Al Robles, in the words of our poets.  As for me, there will be cookies to bake and poetry to write, and may the grandchildren remember the cookies.”  And, I thought, as my journey through the OOV archives came to an end, may they remember to have a Tsokolate of OOV alongside, always.

Coming To Chimera: An Expanding Universe

In summer 1997, I chanced upon N.V.M. at his office at the University of the Philippines, Diliman.   I was in Manila to serve as maid of honor in my cousin’s wedding at the San Agustin Church in Intramuros.  Just returned from a trip to Romblon—N.V.M.’s birthplace—I discovered I missed him by merely a day.  He was in town with poet Russell Leong, filming scenes for the documentary “NVM Gonzalez: A Story Yet to be Told.”  N.V.M. and I had lost touch in recent years, our letter correspondence interrupted by my own youthful wanderlust and inattention, having strayed away from literature and delved more deeply into the performed expressions of Filipino American identity. 

Yet here was serendipity again, engineering a reconnection.  I was tagging along on a campus errand by another cousin and went looking for N.V.M., just on the off-chance he would be there.  The university was not in session that month.  Yet he happened to be in his office.  We had lunch with him and a colleague and then went to his house afterwards to have tea.  We resumed our conversation about the Filipino imagination as if it had never been interrupted. Sitting on his couch, eating warm pan de sal spread with butter, he showed me a magazine that had just been published, for which he was interviewed.  Entitled Chimera, it was full of articles, stories, colorful artwork and graphic design.  “Look at this quality, the diversity of art, the embrace of multitude!”  He was excited about its existence, its out-spreading sensibility, and the inclusion of writers, poets, critics and visual artists all together within its pages.  Unfortunately, there were no funds to sustain it.  Only able to produce two gorgeous issues, it then had to close shop.  “How wonderful it would be,” N.V.M. wistfully said, “if it could be resurrected.”

As I pored over the 29 archived issues of Our Own Voice, I thought about that moment, marveling at the way serendipity works.  I could see that Chimera sensibility unfolding right before my eyes in cyberspace, taking it even further, pushing it beyond that print journal, exploring resolutely past any margins.

What is a chimera?  According to the ubiquitous Wikipedia:

In Greek mythology, the chimera was a monstrous fire-breathing creature of Lycia in Asia Minor, composed of the parts of multiple animals: upon the body of a lioness with a tail that terminated in a snake's head, the head of a goat arose on her back at the center of her spine. The Chimera was one of the offspring of Typhon and Echidna and a sibling of such monsters as Cerberus and the Lernaean Hydra. The term chimera has also come to mean more generally, an impossible or foolish fantasy.

OOV April 2008 Frontispiece

The Chimera was a creature whose sighting was an omen, often for storms, shipwrecks and natural disasters (of particular note, volcanoes erupting). And in that moment of revelation, its seer stands poised toward ruin or rapture. The Chimera always kept navigators on their toes, a portent for those who journeyed beyond into great unknowns, girded for adversity, seeking signs for the next guidepost, a new adventure, and sometimes, a safe harbor to land.  In that instant of sighting, a universe of potentialities opens up.

Maybe to those Filipinos seeded, planted and/or cultivated in the rhizomatic diaspora, long-distanced from the original barrio, mountain and metropolis of their Philippine ancestors, perhaps the initial image referenced in this essay—the carabao—comes across as chimeric: a mythical creature within the context of their contemporary, far-flung realities, indeed, “an impossible or foolish fantasy.” Or maybe, Our Own Voice itself is the figurative carabao, stalwart companion and entrusted livelihood, offering its steady source of nurturing imagination to the wayward Filipino reader with each progressive issue. 

“. . . but my mind was distracted by something else.  By the vastness of the Pacific, for one; and, for another, by the thought that every wave that broke upon the shores of California had its twin that swept down the length of some shore on Leyte or Luzon.  What feat it would be to put this idea across in stone or marble, I thought.  We had become a rare generation; we had made of the Pacific a small pond.”

—The Bamboo Dancers

Vigorously chimeric in all its shifting, evolving, fusing creativities, Our Own Voice has made of the globe a small ball, able to be put in play by a myriad of players, great and small.  The oceans are mere ponds to cross over; the continents, stepping-stones to more stories.  Who knows where this “impossible or foolish fantasy” can go from here? But where OOV has been is possibility.  And finitude can never constrain that.

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