(via sleuths)
(Source: carry-on-my-wayward-wesley, via thymoss)
If you look at the other European languages, you will discover that the word for history, as in “historia” (Spanish), “historie” (French), and “gesichte (German), is the same word in those languages for story. Don’t we in Pilipino, sometimes use the Spanish word “historia”, which sounds the same as “istorya”? Now what about the word “kasaysayan”? I do not know how old the word is, but it is definitely richer than the Western words for history which are based largely on the Greek “historie” which means “an inquiry”. “Kasaysayan”, as it is taught in the University of the Philippines, Diliman (or at least when I was teaching there) is rooted in two words: “salaysay”, which means a narrative or story and, more important, “saysay”, or meaning.
In my history classes I always propose the working definition of “kasaysayan” or history as a narrative (which can be written, visual, oral or a combination of all three) about past events that has meaning to a certain group of people in a given time and place. These two components of “kasaysayan” - “salaysay” and “saysay” are inseperable. Without both, you cannot have true history.
I feel more strongly about “kasaysayan” than the Western words for history because in the latter, history can be a mere narrative of past events while “kasaysayan” is not just a narrative or a “salaysay” - it MUST have “saysay” or meaning. If we find meaning in history, then it will gain the power to change our lives. “Saysay” gives us a way of looking at the world, a Filipino viewpoint that influences the way we see the past, the present, and hopefully, the future.
"(Source: gregoriodelpilar, via wehatefilipinoracism-deactivate)
I read in the paper that my brothers are being thrown from rooftops blindfolded with their hands tied behind their backs for violating sharia law. I heard the crowds stone these fallen men if they move after they hit the ground. I heard it’s in the name of God. I heard my pastor speak for God too, quoting scripture from his book. Words like abomination popped off my skin like hot grease as he went on to describe a lake of fire that God wanted me in. I heard on the news that the aftermath of a hate crime left piles of bodies on a dance floor this month. I heard the gunman feigned dead among all the people he killed. I heard the news say he was one of us. I was six years old when I heard my dad call our transgender waitress a faggot as he dragged me out a neighborhood diner saying we wouldn’t be served because she was dirty. That was the last afternoon I saw my father and the first time I heard that word, I think, although it wouldn’t shock me if it wasn’t. Many hate us and wish we didn’t exist. Many are annoyed by our wanting to be married like everyone else or use the correct restroom like everyone else. Many don’t see anything wrong with passing down the same old values that send thousands of kids into suicidal depression each year. So we say pride and we express love for who and what we are. Because who else will in earnest? I daydream on the idea that maybe all this barbarism and all these transgressions against ourselves is an equal and opposite reaction to something better happening in this world, some great swelling wave of openness and wakefulness out here. Reality by comparison looks grey, as in neither black nor white but also bleak. We are all God’s children, I heard. I left my siblings out of it and spoke with my maker directly and I think he sounds a lot like myself. If I being myself were more awesome at being detached from my own story in a way I being myself never could be. I wanna know what others hear, I’m scared to know but I wanna know what everyone hears when they talk to God. Do the insane hear the voice distorted? Do the indoctrinated hear another voice entirely?
(via demiunique)