i viaggiatori e loro ombre

a film that featured an old song, "sarong banggi," hums of pitch darkness and light of dawn; there was the awe inspiring rhythmic dance of shadow and life...

critic cum writers scampered at comparing the film with greek tragedy, sophocles and the guy-king with inflamed feet (oedipus). it was a tragedy alright but again tragic is a psyche that wanted to feel educated by grasping at foreign parallels without going through one's own!

the film was not only about the boy who can't wait to be a man - it was also about the prostitute who has seen too many summers. it was the haunting of maternity that confronts the truth "one can only give what one has." in the tragedy of her parenthood, she can only impart to her own son what she is good at, unnatural as it may be.

the psyche that produced such an art is deeper than those who mime western tragedy. parents who struggled with "the family that prays together stays together" adage learned holiness in the sacrifice of being apart - unnatural as the saying may let it seem. the economy at near collapse is kept afloat by elders who went away and left their young; following "you can only give what you have" they fore go naked freedom, warm comfort and a firm stance on one's own soil.

oh yes it was finding oneself in the tragic awakening of breaking the rules of nature and the laws of the gods. however, it was in its unnaturallity that it found stasis; in its journey to the ends of inhuman wretchedness that it felt humane peace; in its brokenness that cries to heaven and confronts whoever's there!