USA AIRSPACE, AIR CANADA FLIGHT 761 (from Montreal to California) – The last time I wrote a blog was more than five months ago. It isn’t because I do not have time to write, in fact, I wrote pages of insights on my personal journal, thesis drafts, and teaching modules. It is only now that I felt like sharing. “Being away” from my usual place of study gave me a sense of inspiration especially now that I am way, way up above the ground, flying-away from a tiring cold winter place to a sunny, summer-like destination like San Francisco, California.
On board, I just finished watching The Kite Runner, a film that tells the story of two brothers torn by personal and public troubles . These lives historically spanned from Afghanistan’s Taliban regime to the diasporic challenges of finding a new safer home (the U.S.A.). The story plot was made more dramatic by the culture of honour and patriarchy; made open and yet subtle in ways that unravel both personal and familial secrets. The goal of the film was once again, the portrayal of the “good” and the chance to do “goodness”, which for me, is an interesting dimension of this world’s religious social constructions. This film made me cry twice: the first was the collage of scenes between Amir and Hassan revolving around faith, honour, loyalty, friendship, and deep-seated brotherly love; the second was Amir’s heroic desire to save the child of Hassan after discovering that he is his step-brother. My most favourite line in the film was when Amir’s uncle explained to his honour-driven father that “Children are not colouring books; you cannot fill them up with your favourite colours”.
This film is full of symbols, which are both sources of power and decay, of strength and weakness, and of life and death. This is a writer’s tale similarly captured in recent films like Capote and Atonement. The approach is to portray the specificities of persons by locating their social mind in the historical contexts, thereby capturing the social drama of their respective times.
This is the creative that I wish to capture as I write my thesis on and about the Filipino youth istambay. I hope the world will also find the value of the istambay narrative as a reflection of the negotiating script between the vulnerable Filipino youth and the contemporary Philippines.
