Land of the morning

When I entered primary school shortly before I was 5, born five days before the fateful day over Hiroshima, I started my school singing of the national anthem in English, called Land of the Morning, a 1920 translation by an American Commission of the Spanish version with Camilo Osias and A. L. Lane at the pen. The words were Elizabethan era poetic:

Nationalistic orientation biased me against the original Spanish poem Filipinas by Jose Palmas of 1899, but tuned to the 1998 Marcha Nacional of Julian Felipe, I learned the English version by rote. Ramon Magsaysay resuscitated the Japanese-era Tagalog version titled Diwa ng Bayan, and Ferdinand Marcos’ pushed an official version, so we made acquaintance with Lupang Hinirang of 1956 (I learned it as Bayang Magiliw), with the 1960 revision becoming the final copy.

This is probably too long of a context to remind my feet of plans to return back to familiar soil next month. The last time my shoes got hinirang’d was more than five years ago, and this next three weeks’ trip that might include a visit to the land of my birth could very well be my last in a long while, if not the final one.

Our peripatetic journeys that took me through the whole length of the Jolo-to-Aparri canopy (missed Batan, Palawan, Sibuyan, Calamian and the Polilio islands), also led me to call on Jakarta and Bangor, Kuala Lumpur, Johor and Singapore, and Bangar Seri Bagawan of Brunei. Folks from Sabah, Sarawak, Kalimantan, Sulawesi, Irian Jaya, Java, and Sumatra, and the rest of the Greater and Lesser Sunda Islands, exchanged smiles with me across international conference tables.

When Diosdado Macapagal proposed the formation of a Malay Federation called Maphilindo in 1963, I understood and gave it a nod. It was short-lived as Sukarno went on a konfrontasi stance against UK’s plan to turn Malaya into Malaysia. The ASEAN has since expanded the impetus, no longer limited to the political boundaries set by Spain, the English and the Dutch, in the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia.

Europe’s Orient was simply east (oriens) of Pinsk and the Bosporus, but units within it promoted their own native understandings as Nippon is the Land of the Rising Sun, Choson/Hanguk is the Land of the Morning Calm, Thailand is the Land of the Free, and Pakistan is the Land of the Pure. China, previously of five homogeneous physical macro-regions, now markets itself in its new economic preeminence as the Land of Opportunity. The Philippines still claims to plant its rice early from its humble bahay kubo dwellings as the Land of the Morning! My heart throbs to that sentimental image.

It is 2014. The cross ocean currents off Catanduanes and Polilio no longer push the fresh airs of Lamon Bay to Laguna de Bay, incapable of clearing the smog-laden fog of Metro Manila, even as only the pollution filter of mussels from Manila Bay and the sturdy galonggung (scad) still survive the toxic waters of the archipelago. What were once lush watersheds of Marikina and slopes to the Tagaytay crater have become funnels for rainwater to quickly flood the low-lying areas of the capital metropolis.

Resilience of Pinoyze (will explain that word in another article) in Tacloban, in west Mindanao and Jolo floods, in Bohol and Siquijor quakes, Sugbu and Cagayan de Oro tremors, have joined the people’s signature of “people’s power” of EDSA employed by Khmer reformers now vs. Hun Sen.

In our appropriation of the cognitive overview occasioned by the earthrise image of Apollo 8 of ’68, the glow of the Land of the Morning got shifted to the whole planet. As alluded to earlier, the Philippines is a political unit separate from its neighbors Brunei, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Indochina only by virtue of the competing powers that colonized them!

This was, of course, different from our nationalistic Lupang Hinirang understanding of the ’60s, so returning to the land of our birth is not so much a journey home as a visit to the original site that nurtured my earth-sense of home.

Land of the morning now comes with a precarious reality of climate change as the Child of the sun returning pushes us to the possibilities of solar energy and power even as With fervor burning invest no less than the height of our passion on things green and human, and to Thee do our souls adore is an intentional but solemn regard of that solitary blue orb in the sky revolving around an insignificant sun in a few billion year trek in the universe.

The Land of the Morning has since become a state in the topography of our soul, applicable wherever we are in this planet. China is our current battlefield as forces eager to define the Land of Opportunity in terms of environmental abuse just for the sake of the short-term financial bottom dominate the landscape. We shall operate inland Far East knowing that global pressure might be needed to call attention to an obvious but ignored worldwide plight.

OK, ah, one, ah, two….Land of the morning…