The Lola Within a Material(ist) Girl: When Words are Not Enough

I love this top! And I guess it shows. This vintage floral halter top's previous owner is my Mother who also happens to have designed it, herself. I swear, whenever I feel like shopping, I just take a dip into Mama's closet. It's insane. Anyways, I've been thinking a lot about how people stick labels on everything so easily. What is an "immoral" art exhibit that perfectly illustrates the Filipino Catholic religious fanaticism, compared to the heinous crimes against humanity committed by Ferdinand Marcos and his cronies during the Martial Law? And why has his wife, the "Imeldific"--as she is often glamorized by those who easily forget--suddenly earned enough moral authority to deem Mideo Cruz's "Poleteismo" as "blasphemous," having gone as far as remarking that "even the Igorots wear bahag" and questioning freedom entirely? Where was the beauty of freedom in the Marcos regime? What are "dangerous students" throwing paintballs at a landmark structure like, say, the so-called "Peace Arch" whose gates actually keep the people a hundred meters away from the Presidential Palace, another structure that houses the so-called "legacy," one who shamelessly claims to be serving us, his "boss," while he merely nods to the continuous repression of the Hacienda Luisita farmworkers as well as all the other landless and impoverished farmers in the country?; to the constant reductions from the national budget allotted to basic social services such as education?; to the disturbing rise in the number of human rights violations in the name of "fighting terrorism" and whose victims are mostly, in fact, fighters of democratic rights (advocacy journalists, student leaders and activists, cultural workers, national democratic organizers, and the list goes on)?

Words. Labels. They do not hide the stench, the ugly, the evil, and the truth. The senses perceive what is real. And they will guide us in the unending struggle for what is just and what is not, for what is freedom and what is mere pleasure. In fact, even if I go on about the misuse of words, I may very well confirm my premise. And that is, not even I--who might cite the number of Filipinos experiencing involuntary hunger, or tell you of the crises that befall the residents of Barangay Central and other communities that are demolished in the Ayalas' favor, or recount how so damn hard it is to arouse, organize, and mobilize a population of which a huge percentage has been raised by a cynical, middle-class oriented and upper-class dominated society--can possibly express the people's struggle in its absoluteness.

And I cannot think of a far better sentence to end this spoonful. Fuck euphemisms.