Note:
Domineko du Surigao is the pen name of an ‘invisible writer’ who actually was my townmate, neighbor and friend. He was a big brother and mentor to me in many ways. Not having seen nor heard of me for quite three long decades, here’s his discourse on the subject, ‘METAMORPHOSIS’.
Doods
A METAMORPHOSIS
By Domineko du Surigao
We know what we know viz what we do not. And what we know, we act on or do not...
This is the air pervading in the mind of the author months ago and it was only at this instance that, finally, the need to write it all came into fruition. That, in a manner of speaking, is in itself an evolution or a kind of lethargy awakened by the need to be heard..?
Doods at the onset, the owner of this blogsite, with all the plusses and minuses of being himself is a townmate, neighbor, little brother and above all, a friend to this invisible writer.
In fact, they are namesakes!
This seems to make the subject Doods an easy prey to dissect with. But wrong gentlemen, for reasons that the continuity of their familiarity had been frozen for the past 33 years - that, is owing to the diversities in their chosen paths. And while the subject was occupied in building his professional realm in that span of time, the friend was left in the proverbial pit of anonymity like the frog in the subject’s parable.
Nonetheless, this is the friend’s way of brewing his own tea and serving it with a fitting dough.
Set back. Take it sans prejudice. Never waste anything as overflow…
Lightning play:
What was once in the east
Is now in the west.
- Japanese Haiku
The rock speaks because it is silent;
the sand moves because it is still.
- Zen Philosophy
Then…
Bitbit ng umaga’y isang tula!!
Bukambibig, madugong tula
Na sa mundo’y ibig makialam
At mabasag – saplot ng kamangmangan !
Yaman ay basang papel –
Pluma’t tugmang di makikitil –
Sigaw ng budhi’y ibig ipaalam
Upang dunong sa madla’y mapagtikman !
-excerpts from TULA IV
By Domineko du Surigao
Years had passed since the poem was written and finally found print in the most unexpected medium largely at the insistence of the subject of this intellectual discourse.
Like the literary gem supposedly held within the poem’s lines, the subject Doods, was already a shining jewel in his hometown long before he had shone in the limelight of his inspiring career and accomplishments. Needless to say that starting from the lowest rung, the ‘boy in Doods’ with plenty of marbols in his mind had risen into what he is today: a man of substance, a complete engineer and a big brother to look up to.
LEARNING AS A PROCESS
But glancing back, it was not an easy task all the way. The road was full of potholes, the journey – rough. Still, he prevailed…
The subject’s encounter with the bitter truth began on his first job. He found, among others that what was learned only possessed a modicum of substance viz a viz reality. This, however, is the awakening and enlightening phase of any thought processes as mirrored in the Confucian premise that learning is an infinite cycle.
Knowing, as experienced, is repetitious. It is thru the knowing that we find resilience to cope with the demands of what we seek. It is in finding the path pointing to the truth that we undergo a kind of fulfillment bordering on the spiritual. Self-taught knowledge therefore conveys stranger facts than what was gleaned from the academe. Hence, the birth of his ‘cuaderno’ and consequently, the books it produced thereafter.
And he discovered another truth: that writing became his faithful mistress.
What a sweet reality. For from it, sprang the treatises on the axioms and logarithms of engineering and other facets of his personality. Writing too, as his mistress has transported his train of thoughts into a language that offered awe to the uninitiated and wonderment to the cynics.
Engineering English? Probably irrelevant. Because the point is: what then does it take to write? To write is to weave anew the fragments of the past – then fashion them into moments of splendor - into another flash of wholeness whilst opening more doors into looking beyond. What’s sought, after all, is the purity of truth and the beauty of the interwoven words in the best medium of expression and the simplest inflection of its metaphors. Thus, one feels safe that having written, the words became deeds and that these deeds having been acted and lived, finally defines the man. No fancy words - just the real ones...
Then words merely spoken become in fact, a simple fart in the wind.
So then, where does this repartee sit in with this man we know as Doods? In fact, as the distance reaching this far, the subject has been seen as the centroid and the fulcrum of the mass of knowledge he is imparting to all his audiences be they belong to the engineering discipline or not. He is also a disciple of the principle of creating opportunities when there was none at the time; discovering circumstances where there seems only to be a void in a space of a black hole.
What, then, is the purpose of his CESEEPS Blogspot?
Sigaw ng budhi’y ibig ipaalam
Upang dunong sa madla’y mapagtikman !
That.., is finger pointing to his working mind. That is supposedly, the purpose of all these…
THE METAMORPHOSIS
The subject as his friends knew, is an intransigent fan of the Pacman. Not surprising to this writer, by the way!
With some parallels, Doods and the Pacman have that same propensity to delve into the hypotheses of speed, force and timing - or the mathematical dissection of a problem in a surgical execution of a plan. Doods had some knowledge of what it has to be in the square ring. Of course, that was before the subject has shown a remarkable progress on his belly while indulging on his sedentary and physically inactive life form. Like Freddie Roach, this writer was there when Doods, should we say; 'was still fit, agile and a counter-dude more than three decades ago'.
But like the Pacman that becomes refined in every bout, the subject has in many ways, underwent a very distinguishable change from what he has been to what he is now - hence, the title of this article. And while he had shed most of the shell that enveloped him ages ago, he emerged as a leader in his own field but other than that, he is more like the Zen Policeman as told to us by Eric Van Lustbader.
Read on.
“Many centuries ago, there was a young Buddhist priest who travelled to Tibet to further his understanding of religion and philosophy. In due course, he was accepted into the monastery, but it was some days before he was summoned to the presence of the high lama.
“ ‘I understand that though you are a priest, you do not believe that your spiritual education is complete.’
“ ‘That is correct, sir,’ the young priest said in a somewhat overawed voice.
“ ‘What is it you seek to learn here?’ The old lama asked.
“ ‘Why, all there is to learn,’ the young priest said immediately.
“The old lama looked at him and smiled. ‘We shall see,’ he said. ‘In the meantime, we require you to remain awake and on guard during the night.’
“That night, the young priest was shown to the spot in the exact center of the monastery where he must keep watch. It was a crossing of the four corridors of the stone structure, and from his vantage point, he could see most, if not all the monk’s sleeping cells.
“The hours of the night crept by with agonizing slowness. Nothing happened. The silence became a weight on the young priest’s eyelids, so that once or twice he found himself drifting off into a slight slumber before starting awake. He yawned and stretched to keep himself alert.
“Then all at once, he stood up. He looked from corridor to corridor; sure that he had heard a sound. But there was only the awful silence, claustrophobic as the inside of a tomb. Then he became aware that the sound was an ethereal stirring, as if in his own mind, and he whirled around.
“Suddenly, it burst out of the corridor, coming upon him like a whirlwind, and he felt a chill down his spine. It was as translucent as the wings of an insect; he could clearly see the corridor behind it, through it.
“The young priest feels a fright welling up inside him. What were these forms? Were they the enemies of the Tibetan monks? If so, how was he to combat them when violence was anathema to him? But as if in a dream, he felt rooted to the spot. He did not know whether to fear for the loss of his mind or his life.
“Then he noticed a curious thing. The fear was coming from inside him. When he concentrated his spiritual powers, he realized that the wraiths, whatever or whoever they might be, posed no threat to him or to the people of the monastery. The CHAOS of their rushing to and fro was, in a way, self contained.
“And then the young priest understood everything.
“The wraiths were the spirits of the monks. Unleashed as they slept, freed from the bonds of their daytime work, these spirits were prone to the CHAOS that lurked within the innermost recesses of even the most disciplined mind. They lacked but a single soul – a kind of Zen Policeman – to see them on their proper paths, to keep them from the dangers inherent in CHAOS.
THE AWAKENING
Sometimes ways have to be changed in order to survive the demons peculiar to one’s genius.
This Zen Policeman could be the embodiment of the subject of this exercise – guiding and acquitting his colleagues from the constricting bond of orthodoxy with the old school of thought; setting about to provide harmony among the conflicting concepts permeating within their professional circle and finally propelling the minds into their proper organized state and purpose. Indeed as the lines say, ‘the rock speaks because it is silent; the sand moves because it is still’.
What can be said of the subject’s accumulated elucidation on the field of Electrical Engineering? Nothing sort of wonder if one merely digs on his scholastic record but everything of essence when viewed from the professional contributions and achievements that he had shaped on his person and his profession in particular. What was once the object of his co-workers mischievous tricks is now the prancing Big Chap in a world where ohms and volts remain the main condiments in turning the wheels.
“What was once in the east is now in the west.” That is the essence… The fundamental change in form and oftentimes the habits of a living thing accompanying transformation of a young into an adult is called: Metamorphosis. Can this be it?
The Haiku, in fact, imparts change that man courses thru on life’s strange panorama. Some are swift; some are slow as a snail’s gait. The visual perspective mirrors a different angle when one is perched on a promontory higher than the usual point of view or blander when seen from a lower plane.
It is then that the drama of light and shade comes into play to give meaning and depth to the composition. As in the trials faced man’s quest for the empirical reality.
In the end … it is Doods personified..?
The mystery writer:
Domineko du Surigao
(April, 2009)
Postscript: This invisible writer is known in Nasipit as DNA.
This is the air pervading in the mind of the author months ago and it was only at this instance that, finally, the need to write it all came into fruition. That, in a manner of speaking, is in itself an evolution or a kind of lethargy awakened by the need to be heard..?
Doods at the onset, the owner of this blogsite, with all the plusses and minuses of being himself is a townmate, neighbor, little brother and above all, a friend to this invisible writer.
In fact, they are namesakes!
This seems to make the subject Doods an easy prey to dissect with. But wrong gentlemen, for reasons that the continuity of their familiarity had been frozen for the past 33 years - that, is owing to the diversities in their chosen paths. And while the subject was occupied in building his professional realm in that span of time, the friend was left in the proverbial pit of anonymity like the frog in the subject’s parable.
Nonetheless, this is the friend’s way of brewing his own tea and serving it with a fitting dough.
Set back. Take it sans prejudice. Never waste anything as overflow…
Lightning play:
What was once in the east
Is now in the west.
- Japanese Haiku
The rock speaks because it is silent;
the sand moves because it is still.
- Zen Philosophy
Then…
Bitbit ng umaga’y isang tula!!
Bukambibig, madugong tula
Na sa mundo’y ibig makialam
At mabasag – saplot ng kamangmangan !
Yaman ay basang papel –
Pluma’t tugmang di makikitil –
Sigaw ng budhi’y ibig ipaalam
Upang dunong sa madla’y mapagtikman !
-excerpts from TULA IV
By Domineko du Surigao
Years had passed since the poem was written and finally found print in the most unexpected medium largely at the insistence of the subject of this intellectual discourse.
Like the literary gem supposedly held within the poem’s lines, the subject Doods, was already a shining jewel in his hometown long before he had shone in the limelight of his inspiring career and accomplishments. Needless to say that starting from the lowest rung, the ‘boy in Doods’ with plenty of marbols in his mind had risen into what he is today: a man of substance, a complete engineer and a big brother to look up to.
LEARNING AS A PROCESS
But glancing back, it was not an easy task all the way. The road was full of potholes, the journey – rough. Still, he prevailed…
The subject’s encounter with the bitter truth began on his first job. He found, among others that what was learned only possessed a modicum of substance viz a viz reality. This, however, is the awakening and enlightening phase of any thought processes as mirrored in the Confucian premise that learning is an infinite cycle.
Knowing, as experienced, is repetitious. It is thru the knowing that we find resilience to cope with the demands of what we seek. It is in finding the path pointing to the truth that we undergo a kind of fulfillment bordering on the spiritual. Self-taught knowledge therefore conveys stranger facts than what was gleaned from the academe. Hence, the birth of his ‘cuaderno’ and consequently, the books it produced thereafter.
And he discovered another truth: that writing became his faithful mistress.
What a sweet reality. For from it, sprang the treatises on the axioms and logarithms of engineering and other facets of his personality. Writing too, as his mistress has transported his train of thoughts into a language that offered awe to the uninitiated and wonderment to the cynics.
Engineering English? Probably irrelevant. Because the point is: what then does it take to write? To write is to weave anew the fragments of the past – then fashion them into moments of splendor - into another flash of wholeness whilst opening more doors into looking beyond. What’s sought, after all, is the purity of truth and the beauty of the interwoven words in the best medium of expression and the simplest inflection of its metaphors. Thus, one feels safe that having written, the words became deeds and that these deeds having been acted and lived, finally defines the man. No fancy words - just the real ones...
Then words merely spoken become in fact, a simple fart in the wind.
So then, where does this repartee sit in with this man we know as Doods? In fact, as the distance reaching this far, the subject has been seen as the centroid and the fulcrum of the mass of knowledge he is imparting to all his audiences be they belong to the engineering discipline or not. He is also a disciple of the principle of creating opportunities when there was none at the time; discovering circumstances where there seems only to be a void in a space of a black hole.
What, then, is the purpose of his CESEEPS Blogspot?
Sigaw ng budhi’y ibig ipaalam
Upang dunong sa madla’y mapagtikman !
That.., is finger pointing to his working mind. That is supposedly, the purpose of all these…
THE METAMORPHOSIS
The subject as his friends knew, is an intransigent fan of the Pacman. Not surprising to this writer, by the way!
With some parallels, Doods and the Pacman have that same propensity to delve into the hypotheses of speed, force and timing - or the mathematical dissection of a problem in a surgical execution of a plan. Doods had some knowledge of what it has to be in the square ring. Of course, that was before the subject has shown a remarkable progress on his belly while indulging on his sedentary and physically inactive life form. Like Freddie Roach, this writer was there when Doods, should we say; 'was still fit, agile and a counter-dude more than three decades ago'.
But like the Pacman that becomes refined in every bout, the subject has in many ways, underwent a very distinguishable change from what he has been to what he is now - hence, the title of this article. And while he had shed most of the shell that enveloped him ages ago, he emerged as a leader in his own field but other than that, he is more like the Zen Policeman as told to us by Eric Van Lustbader.
Read on.
“Many centuries ago, there was a young Buddhist priest who travelled to Tibet to further his understanding of religion and philosophy. In due course, he was accepted into the monastery, but it was some days before he was summoned to the presence of the high lama.
“ ‘I understand that though you are a priest, you do not believe that your spiritual education is complete.’
“ ‘That is correct, sir,’ the young priest said in a somewhat overawed voice.
“ ‘What is it you seek to learn here?’ The old lama asked.
“ ‘Why, all there is to learn,’ the young priest said immediately.
“The old lama looked at him and smiled. ‘We shall see,’ he said. ‘In the meantime, we require you to remain awake and on guard during the night.’
“That night, the young priest was shown to the spot in the exact center of the monastery where he must keep watch. It was a crossing of the four corridors of the stone structure, and from his vantage point, he could see most, if not all the monk’s sleeping cells.
“The hours of the night crept by with agonizing slowness. Nothing happened. The silence became a weight on the young priest’s eyelids, so that once or twice he found himself drifting off into a slight slumber before starting awake. He yawned and stretched to keep himself alert.
“Then all at once, he stood up. He looked from corridor to corridor; sure that he had heard a sound. But there was only the awful silence, claustrophobic as the inside of a tomb. Then he became aware that the sound was an ethereal stirring, as if in his own mind, and he whirled around.
“Suddenly, it burst out of the corridor, coming upon him like a whirlwind, and he felt a chill down his spine. It was as translucent as the wings of an insect; he could clearly see the corridor behind it, through it.
“The young priest feels a fright welling up inside him. What were these forms? Were they the enemies of the Tibetan monks? If so, how was he to combat them when violence was anathema to him? But as if in a dream, he felt rooted to the spot. He did not know whether to fear for the loss of his mind or his life.
“Then he noticed a curious thing. The fear was coming from inside him. When he concentrated his spiritual powers, he realized that the wraiths, whatever or whoever they might be, posed no threat to him or to the people of the monastery. The CHAOS of their rushing to and fro was, in a way, self contained.
“And then the young priest understood everything.
“The wraiths were the spirits of the monks. Unleashed as they slept, freed from the bonds of their daytime work, these spirits were prone to the CHAOS that lurked within the innermost recesses of even the most disciplined mind. They lacked but a single soul – a kind of Zen Policeman – to see them on their proper paths, to keep them from the dangers inherent in CHAOS.
THE AWAKENING
Sometimes ways have to be changed in order to survive the demons peculiar to one’s genius.
This Zen Policeman could be the embodiment of the subject of this exercise – guiding and acquitting his colleagues from the constricting bond of orthodoxy with the old school of thought; setting about to provide harmony among the conflicting concepts permeating within their professional circle and finally propelling the minds into their proper organized state and purpose. Indeed as the lines say, ‘the rock speaks because it is silent; the sand moves because it is still’.
What can be said of the subject’s accumulated elucidation on the field of Electrical Engineering? Nothing sort of wonder if one merely digs on his scholastic record but everything of essence when viewed from the professional contributions and achievements that he had shaped on his person and his profession in particular. What was once the object of his co-workers mischievous tricks is now the prancing Big Chap in a world where ohms and volts remain the main condiments in turning the wheels.
“What was once in the east is now in the west.” That is the essence… The fundamental change in form and oftentimes the habits of a living thing accompanying transformation of a young into an adult is called: Metamorphosis. Can this be it?
The Haiku, in fact, imparts change that man courses thru on life’s strange panorama. Some are swift; some are slow as a snail’s gait. The visual perspective mirrors a different angle when one is perched on a promontory higher than the usual point of view or blander when seen from a lower plane.
It is then that the drama of light and shade comes into play to give meaning and depth to the composition. As in the trials faced man’s quest for the empirical reality.
In the end … it is Doods personified..?
The mystery writer:
Domineko du Surigao
(April, 2009)
Postscript: This invisible writer is known in Nasipit as DNA.
1 comment:
Tol, DNA is not only a born writer but an exemplary poet. Like him, being a Nasipitnon, I'm proud of him. Tumatayo balahibo ko when I read this entry word by word particularly about the "priest fear." It was just like my own fear, scared that I can't make it. I was gripped and paralyzed by it. Things got even worst, I fall... and that fear became a reality. But as I slipped downwards I yelled out, "I don't want to fail!" Kudos to my fellow Libran's the Invisible writer. - Tol Bong
Post a Comment