voices

Why do I write? When I was very young, my parents would describe my temperament as layab-layab. The root word which is layab means to “flare up.” On not so good days, this would mean that I am a hot-head. On good days, my grandfather would describe layab-layab as somewhat like the movements of a butterfly that flutters happily and silently over the elders. My family liked the good days. But when the not so good days where becoming more frequent, my father decided to rechannel all that silent energy into something less troubling. He gave me old magazines with clean, white paper pasted on each leaf and encouraged me to write down what I cannot verbally express.

I continued writing on these journals for years. Writing on these journals is a form of catharsis for me. It is very different from the writings I do in my line of work, although sometimes my project partners include some portions of my journals to emphasize a certain point in our evaluation paper. I likened my writing to photographs, sometimes I write snapshots that could not pass muster even for my teenage daughter, and sometimes I do get the correct perspective and can clearly capture the colors, textures, lines and all the essentials of a good photograph. All in all, my writing is as erratic as my thoughts. Focus, I would often be advised. But what I discovered is that, in writing I could never go wrong when I note down the insights of the people in the communities that I met and worked with. There I find my focus. On my own, with my own thoughts, I seemed like I am in a big library with so many picture books to describe and I don’t know where to end and where to start again.

It is difficult for me, oftentimes, to pick up where I left off when I write non-technical matters, or should I say, when I write from the heart. The momentum is gone and the nuances of feeling are different.