To yearn is to struggle; to struggle is to yearn!

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Tatág 25 ng̃ Noviembre ng̃ 2023
Lungsód ng̃ Quezon, S. P.

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This Web-site was designed and is maintained, for once, for mobile users principally.

Lumà'y Nagyáo, Pasiláng na ang Bágo
(What's New?)

An interview with Ka Marco of the CPP on its 53rd anniversary
26 December 2021

José Ma. Sison on various current issues
24 November 2021

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Pagká't Lahát Kundî Diyós may Kamámatayán
(To the Reader.)

Dear visitor, reader, and sibling in Christ:—

Thank you for taking the time to visit and browse through this humble site of mine on the Web, which as you may well know is as generous as it is miserly, as praiseworthy as it is contemptible, and as grand-spirited as it is petty. (Tapilók in Tagálog means "to stumble injuriously"; bángon means "to rise.")

Herein you will find—if my coding's any good—my work, which at this juncture is still very sparse, and thoughts on such things I hold dear or am interested in as Philippine revolutionary politics and history, Tagálog linguistics, Chinese eunuchism, fountain pens, typewriters, &c., &c. I hope that what I share can be of some use to people. I like to think that I do most things out of love, sweet love, critical love: love for my loved ones, love for my people, love for the Lord, and love for a thousand-thousand others.

The first picture on this page is of Prof. José María C. Sison, that poet-revolutionist who to the last thought of nothing but the Filipino people's struggle for national and social liberation, carrying his belongings post-release from the Hague's Scheveningen prison on the 13th September, 2007 (the year of my birth). He was detained there after his arrest in August on charges of murder fabricated by the Arroyo régime. I was his friend, comrade, and co-biographer for a year before his death in December of 2022. Another picture on the "Paninítik" (Writing) page is of him recording for one of his endearingly amateurish albums of revolutionary music sometime in the early 2000s. These two pictures are a way of remembering him for who he was: at once serious and silly, profound and vulgar, old and young, but always and unfailingly a revolutionary of the highest and most estimable calibre.

The picture immediately above this letter to you, dear visitor, reader, and sibling in Christ, is of Pai Hsien-yung and his lover Wang Kuo-hsiang in 1957. I first attached it here because of my then-husband's affinity for Mr. Pai's work and his resemblance to the same. Messrs. Pai and Wang stayed together, I am told, until the latter died in a coma on the 17th August, 1992. Theirs was a relationship of 38 years; Yixi’s and mine was one of four months. At all events, he was my first love and I don't think anyone can ever usurp that place in my heart peculiar to him and him alone. And so I am keeping the picture here.

I have told you a great deal and much more besides: what else can I say? Very little, I should think. If, dear friend,—and I hope that at this point we've enough friendly feeling between us for me to call you so,—you should like to reply to this letter with something related or unrelated thereto, please write to this address: baojingming1968@gmail.com. Whatever you may undertake to do, please count me, insofar as necessity permits,

Yours, &c., &c.,
Pao Ching-ming.