At 60

AKIN TO a near-death experience.

That’s what turning 60 turns out to be. At least, to me.

Two things those who’ve come back from the threshold of the hereafter invariably, if untiringly, talk about: 1) seeing a blinding white light at the end of some tunnel whence emerge some long dead close kin; and 2) milestones of their lives flashing before their very eyes.

It is the second that my passage to dual citizenship assumed. Through the mist of memory now…

Age 3, mangroves at our backyard were cut to widen the river. Gone with the trees was the kingfisher that perched on their branches, day after day patiently waiting to pounce on the small gurami swimming below.  Come to think of it now, that could have served as my first lesson in ecology, in the symbiosis of living things.

Altar boy at 7, memorizing the Tridentine Mass – Introibo ad altare Dei, celebrant intones; Ad Deum qui laetificat juventutem meam, acolyte me answers…Confiteor Deo omnipotenti beatae Mariae…with only mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa still extant in the mind now. 

Wanted to be a priest at 10 – to be “the greatest gift of God to men, and the greatest gift of men to God,” in the words of my cura parroco Quirino Canilao – off to the Mater Boni Consilii Seminary at 12, after my first and only year at the Jose Abad Santos High School (now reverted to Pampanga High School) where I first saw my name in print: in the Pampangan for the story “Discipline via the squad system” and Sinukwan for a sanaysay on the school, its facilities and people which headline I cannot anymore recall. Alas, that fling started this lifelong affair with journalism

Out of the seminary at 18, and out of the Faith too. The contradictions, historical as well as dialectical, between God and Marx sowed in so pliant a mind as a mediano, that is second year high school at Mater Boni, and nurtured onward coming to a head at the San Jose Seminary. Nietzsche’s right: God is dead. It did not matter that Nietzsche was even deader than dead.

In college now, an essay in Creative Writing class with my obsession to die at an early age as topic sentence. Why so? My teacher asked. Then I would achieve the ultimate in greatness.

And what was that? He inquired.

“That of being young, gifted, and dead.”

Faced not so much with death as with incarceration and torture, being an activist in the military’s order of battle upon the declaration of martial law, I ran – to my spiritual director and Mater Boni rector, the Rev. Paciano B. Aniceto. Time and again I have written, were it not for the unconditional love of the good Apu Ceto I would have most surely ended along the road to perdition.  

A contradiction: from shouts of “Ibagsak ang diktadurang US-Marcos”  to the strains of “May bagong silang, may bago nang buhay, bagong bansa, bagoong galaw, sa Bagong Lipunan…”  Work after graduation, the National Intelligence and Security Agency did not leave me with much choice.    

At 21, the firm resolution: “Only fools get married.”

At 24, I made myself one. Before my firstborn, managed to co-father the Central Luzon Media Association, the first and still only regional association of working media persons in the whole Philippines.

Regional director, albeit an OIC, of the Department of Public Information at 27. All thoughts of continuing a career in government – buttressed by studies at the Development Academy of the Philippines and a scholarship grant at the Perhubungan Raya Malaysia – banished by the EDSA Revolution of 1986.

Mainstream journalism followed: correspondent of the Journal Group – People’s Tonight, People’s Journal, and Times Journal contemporaneously stringer for the Associated Press; columnist and editorial consultant of The Voice and Angeles Sun; opinion editor of Headline Manila and news editor of Headline Extra.

Interlude in early 1990s, government consultancy, in public affairs, primarily: the Department of the Environment and Natural Resources with Sec. Jun Factoran, interspersed with the FVR presidential campaign; the Department of the Interior and Local Government with Sec. Raffy Alunan.

At 41, backstopped the gubernatorial campaign of Lito Lapid and served as his senior consultant officially, and spinmeister, covertly, upon his assumption of the Capitol. Contemporaneously, helped Joe Pavia established Pampanga’s and Central Luzon’s first daily, Sun-Star Clark, now Sun-Star Pampanga and served as associate editor.

At 44, back to mainstream media – Pulitika, Atbpa over dwGV-AM, and The Voice again, cut short by the ambush right in front of the radio station, sending me fleeing to the USA, and a desk editorial job at Ang Peryodiko in L.A.

Back home in barely six months, back to dwGV-AM with Alas-4 Na and with a column in Pampanga News. More importantly, back to hard-hitting commentaries.

The political phenomenon that was the Among Ed gubernatorial campaign in 2007, timed perfectly with the birthing of Punto! Central Luzon. And the chronicles of irreverence that was Reverend Governor came to publication.

New day dawning or old order restoring in the mag-inda now at the Capitol…

What have I been seeing, it’s all the me in turning 60. This is not so. This must not be.

Or, is it really? As in death – so ‘tis said – one accounts for one’s life. Still, that’s simply chronicling, life’s got to have some real meaning.

Maybe, there’s some good philosophy in that witticism of 60 as the new 40, taking after that adage on life beginning at 40.

At 60, born a new me. Emancipated from the shackles of the libido – at this age, sex should only be a matter of gender, as that line from a movie or a book – memory fails now – decreed, I can only be the intellectual Aldous Huxley defined: “someone who has discovered something more interesting than sex.”

More interesting things as travelling, while physical mobility and financial viability still allow it, thus St. Augustine: “Travel is like a book, those who have been to only one place have just read one page.”  

More interesting things as reading and writing, to quote Francis Bacon: “Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.” More specifically, on philosophy to feed the mind – so important with the advancement of age, and on spirituality to nurture the soul – with intimations of one’s mortality becoming more and more apparent. In order for the former is a renewal of acquaintanceship with Kant and Kierkegaard, Hegel and Hobbes, Schopenhauer  and Spinoza, Nietzsche too. And for the latter, Augustine and Aquinas, Buddha.   

More interesting things as being… just be.