Reading dead people

published 30 Jun 2008, MST

Think of the classics. Novels we had to read in high school -- and had to write book reports about. The hardbound ones we took out of our college libraries and read over and over until we had to pay fines for overdue. The ones we lovingly make time for despite our busy grown-up schedule. We read dead people all the time. But I don't mean those dead people.

I mean, instead, those who put up their own sites and maintain personal blogs. Maintained, I mean. The Internet has a way of tuning everything to the present tense. Why else do we say “real time”? So long as one’s thoughts are in the Net, accessible by keying in the correct address, it is as if one is simultaneously on another computer terminal somewhere. Only the entry dates provide some sort of clue.

And in the case of bloggers whom you know for a fact have passed away, the dates and the words, taken together, can be particularly haunting. It's like watching a movie where you know something that the main character doesn't. That something – death -- is final, irrevocable.

There is, for instance, American Julia Campbell (www.juliainthephilippines.blogspot.com), living in Ifugao Province as a peace corps volunteer. Julia was from Fairfax, Virginia, worked as a journalist, writing for the New York Times and People Magazine. She chose to abandon all that to do something more meaningful. Her work took her to remote places in the Philippines, teaching people from faraway provinces and basically immersing herself in their way of life. Her blog was her link to her friends and family; it was here where she described her living conditions, her new friends, her “adventures,” so she called them.

Her first entry, called A Few Mouths To Feed, was made in April 2005, presumably soon after she arrived in the Philippines. The posts did not come regularly, but every time Julia got excited about a specific project or was fascinated with a certain person's tales, she wrote.

On 13 January 2007, she posted Buhay Pa Tayo, her piece on Filipinos' peculiar manner of responding when one asked them how they were. It was as if they were thankful to just be alive despite the hardships. Unfortunately, Julia herself would not be staying alive for much long. In April of that year, she went missing. A few days later, her body was found in a shallow grave near Batad village. “A search party of Philippine Army soldiers noticed her feet sticking out of a mound of fresh earth in a creek near the remote village,” Wikipedia said.

The tragedy was that her death, after her conscious decisions to help make the world a better place, was much too random. The man who had confessed to killing her claimed he just had a fight with his neighbor and, when walking home, bumped into Campbell. Fuming from his fight, and incensed that the bumping incident made him drop what he was carrying, he hit Julia with a rock. He said he never intended to kill her.

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Another blog is that of multi-awarded playwright and author of children's literature Rene Villanueva (www.renevillanueva.blogspot.com). The blog is entitled Personal and is, like all of Villanueva's work, entirely in Filipino.

Sir Rene, as I called him during college when I worked part-time writing scripts for puppets in the children's television show Batibot (of which he was creative director), started blogging only in September 2007. He was, as always, prolific. He posted 15 entries that month, 27 in October, and 32 in November. He died on December 5 of the same year.

His topics in these blogs are fairly varied. There are a few socio-political commentaries, such as on that girl from Davao who committed suicide and one senator’s luxury hotel adventurism. The earlier pieces were about projects he was working on, on his playwrights' group, on being a teacher, on being a friend. There, too were a few translations – for instance, he posted his own translation of the song “Vincent,” about the great painter Vincent Van Gogh.

But there are, for me, three subjects that stand out. There are his essays on his parents (Kailan Hindi Sapat Ang Pagmamahal? [When Is Love Not Enough?]). Villanueva recalls that the mere sound of his name, spoken aloud, could bring back the terror he felt when it was his parents making that call. Almost certainly, punishment for some misdeed, real or imagined, would follow.

Another entry, posted sometime in October but actually written several months before, articulates his rage at the helplessness his sickness subjected him to. He had to take a leave from his teaching job just because he was taking medicines that made him feel bloated all the time.

And then there are the celebratory entries.

On November 19, he said he finally felt Christmas coming. In another entry, “Perpektong Araw [Perfect Day]) written on the same day, he recounted a happy reunion with friends, when they spent time just talking and making holiday plans. Could he have known he would have only 16 days to live? Maybe. After all, he himself said he had donated all his books to a Bulacan School (Paalam sa Aking mga Libro [Farewell to My books]). Or maybe he didn’t. He never made it to the Christmas he was so excited about.

Villanueva has, to his credit, 18 full-length plays, 14 one-act plays, a two-act documentary play, 6 translations and adaptations, 3 screenplays, 2 teleplays and 17 children’s books. He also wrote the lyrics for the Batibot theme song. Aside from these, he also published his memoirs. That book carried the same title as his blog.

The achievements are many and far-reaching but what ultimately what lingers is the person’s unadorned thoughts, simple and straightforward, as he tries to makes sense of the events, circumstances, choices and the people around him.

Is blogging, then, a form of self-preservation? Of course. But it can transcend being just a monument of one’s accomplishments or an album of the places one has gone to. It ceases to be a tool of narcissism when readers recognize a bit of themselves and are thus inspired to tackle their own monsters, big or small. That’s building a legacy in the age of information.