i read somewhere i couldn't recall now that parties of expatriates in strange lands always have this palpable feel of a very earnest church service, a high mass. and for a fellow exile to miss it is to cop a spot in hell.
by design, i missed another party of kababayan today, some congratulatory fete for someone finishing a masters from nyu. and i feel like banishing me from the communion of my pinoy community, a peer excommunication, is but an apt punishment for my absence. and yet at the same time, i feel right about my not being there, hell be damned.
here's a crazy wish. here's hoping any day now, some intrepid researcher would uncover the private journals of jose rizal or any one of those perpetually hungry propagandistas who fled to barcelona or paris before the end of the nineteenth century. wouldn't it be lovely to read in them, on top of the urgent talk of these political expatriates of country and god, some really low diss about the parties of fellow kababayan they have to drag themselves to? some filipino party fatigue, perhaps?
or not. for rizal and his compatriots didn't have to contend with this asinine but ubiquitous talk in any kababayan party these days of who is driving what. oh, you've got a lexus now? a bmw is still the best. of this simmering show among the new immigrants of who earns more. susmaryosep, my regular paycheck is but a third of what i get from my overtime. of this pathetic outdoing of what each other thought of as their perfect american accents. oh sheet.
the propaganda would have never blossomed had rizal fled to america in this century. for he and his high minded ilk would be drowned in this low class talk of money and status among the forever insecure kababayan.
in a way, a kababayan party these days feels exactly like a high mass celebrated in a provincial stone church where the parochial parishioners try to outdo each other in the public announcements of their offerings and the garishness of their sunday get ups. and the pastor's homily is just but a whisper in a party of untimid loud talkers.