Confessions

I've got a confession to make.

I am turning into a history buff.

Ever since my uncle first introduced me to Ambeth Ocampo's Looking Back, Dirty Dancing, and Death by Garrote, I have been hooked into his books. Right now I'm reading Rizal without the overcoat. I learned a lot of things about our national hero that makes him more 'human'. After that, I want to borrow Luna's moustache.

The thing is, history in Ocampo's essays came alive for me, unlike the boring discussions we used to get in classrooms. Graciano Lopez-Jaena was rendered real with that funny little anecdote about his dirty coat and how his peers would force him to write with a round of drinks. Commonwealth President Manuel Quezon was no longer just the face on a twenty peso bill. I found Andres Bonifacio and Gregoria de Jesus' story very romantic and dramatic, stuff for a primetime telenovela. Actually, the lives of all our heroes could be made into telenovelas, if producers only paid more attention to our history and culture rather than thinking that the people still like mushy love stories with a lot of violence.

It was also quite interesting that even though Jose Rizal is our national hero there is still so much that we don't know about the man. There are dozens of documents pertaining to him and yet students only know two facts: he wrote the Noli and El Fili and was shot on Bagumbayan (now Luneta). There are so many things we miss out on because we're too lazy to read and dig up all these interesting tidbits about our heroes that make them human. For instance, I discovered that Rizal is so thrifty that he would often leave the boarding house to stroll outside. He would look into the windows of restaurants and watch people eat. Then he would go back to the house with a straight face, leaving his landlady thinking that he had enjoyed a good meal. It is also interesting that Filipinos abroad before and today's Overseas Filipino Workers (OFW) have something in common: they both longed for Filipino food. Our heroes had stocks of bagoong and in one essay, it was said that Rizal's specialty was pancit. Fancy Rizal, del Pilar, the Lunas, and their friends eating pancit in Madrid!

The point is, we would appreciate our history more if we only took the time to do more research. I'm dying to go to museums and risk the allergic reactions to see for myself what stuff our heroes left us. Given the chance, I'd love to go around Fort Santiago and see it with clearer eyes.