Samuel S. Holmes

-An American explains why he is staying-

EXPATRIATE

CALL this a defense. Or an apology. Or whatever.

I'm an American soldier, and I'm

going to be discharged in the Philip-

pines.

I don't like the place so very much. I prefer flush toilets, telephones, hot baths, good jazz, speed, glitter, theater,

slickness, excitement, pace-and in Amer-

ica I can have those things. Not that they aren't availa):>le here for the rich, but I'm not rich.

Of course, there are the postcard values here, and I treasure them. I mean the clear, brightly colored scenes that moved me so when we first landed here, when the Philippines were ,as new and curious to me as the world to an awakening child. The carabao, the caretellas, the self-satisfied happiness of the fishwives in the market, squatting and singing their wares- these and thousand uther things seen and heard and smelled had for me color and newness and freshness, without too much reality.

But now the postcards fade and become finger-marked. I look back over them nostalgically, longing for childhood again and its simplicity.

I go to the market now not to watch but to buy fish, and I am annoyed !it the fishwife for the steepness of her prices. It is hot and, unlike everyone else, I am sweating horridly and mopping my brow. I look up to meet stares that draw a color line as pronounced as if my skin were bright green. I look up hoping to see a friend or mere acceptance. The stares are there. I light a cigarette and hide behind the hardened

by Samuel S. Holmes

eyes of composure. Things become mOI'e real. The postcards fade. Or is it my

vision?

Yet I am always hoping to find new and brighter postcard. Last Sunday I went on a picnic with the fourth grade of the San Leon (U mingan, Pangasinan) Barrio School where I'm trying to teach English. Now, for a while, I have the splendid mental postcard of huge shining leaves serving as both table and plates, piled with cotton-white rice and skewers of mudfish bent double like stylized dolphins on an American bathroom wall.

Yet postcards are not enough.

Still I'm staying here.

Let me tell you about a procurer. Call him Dionisio. His hair is long and black but not curly. His eyes are just as black, and very wide. He walks like a panther. He is the strongest Filipino

I have ever seen.

I met him in Baguio last May. From the first he fascinated me. We became friends.

And when he knifed an American soldier in a bar-room fight, the first thing he did was to go to a mutual friend and leave a message for me: "Goodbye, my friend. I have killed an American soldier, and I am sorry for that. I can't stay here any more. Godbye." Then he fled.

In all his haste he left that message for me. In the United States I am not capable of making so close a friend as that. I want to learn why.

I want to try to understand the forces which may produce an individual able to establish so close a human relationship.

THERE is a peculiar Filipino individuality which has not responded to the

stimulus of Spanish influence as, say, /the Mlexican and Latin-Alnerican

tions have. yet, Filipino artists and writers will surely agree that the potentialities of Philippine culture have scarcely begun to be realized, that is, felt as a force in the world.

I have used the word culture in per-

haps the most original sense of its meaning: a growing thing, a thing that

elops by growth. The art, the music, and the literature of a nation are the

reflections or expressions of its culture

by its individual artists. The Philippines is a living organism capable of growLh and culture. Of that I am sure.

The most hopeful and dynamic expe-

rience of my life has been seeing how

here, despite impossible obstacles, life

goes ea1'gerly on.

People glue old jalopies together some-

how, and ther.e is transportation in Ma-

nila. Crops get planted. Soap gets

manufactured, and shoes. Call some Jf

it black market if )'ou like, but still it's life going on. Perhaps never in the history of the world has there been .0

much conspiracy in restraint of trade as

in Manila this past year, yet still life goes on. Cakes and pies get baked, whiskey (foul) gets made and sold, pansit and coathangers, and candy, and soft drinks, and perfume, and pomade

get manufactured. Here in the province,

a friend of mine has built a rice mill out of long hours and energy.

The Philippines is indeed living, and

can grow as a culture. To live and to die

are human drives, yet I believe that the hope of the Philippines lies not only in its predominant will to live, but in the fact that its way of life has been traditional. This is the soil from which

its present life and present relative prosperity have grown. Filipinos are living

today, not only because they want to, but because they knew how yesterday and the day before.

Historically, the world's grea.t cultures-Egyptian, Greek, and Romanhave emerged during periods of economic prosperity, in times when at least some individuals have been economically free.

Now, I have read that there has never been mass famine in the Philippines, and

in view of current conditions, that seems to me a reasonable premise. It is, then,

a reasonably rich nation. By tradition it has reproduced itself, yet it has not produced a culture of any world force.

Here, I am convinced, lies fallow a huge reserve of economic fTeedom and cultural

energy.

Recently, the mass of the Filipino people has suffered horribly under the onslaughts (intentional or unintentional) of cruelly destructive machines. SUl'eJy they are entitled to the use of produc-

tive machi11l€s in achieving individual eco· nomic freedom, hence, in developing their

culture.

Yet the directing intelligences and spirit here (I mean every Filrpino gov-

ernment official, every businessman, clergyman, educator, artist, farmer, .

poet, writer) should study carefully the

record of the machine in America, where individual neurosis and insanity are high,

where men depend on machines which they do not understand and which destroy them on highways and in factori.s in unbelievably appalling numbers. They should remember the Pittsburgh smoke, and the toll it takes. They should be aware of the danger of industrial concentration in an atomic age. They should remember the traditional life here. For the people here love, or at least respect their land and would not willfully abuse it, as Americans have abused their land.

AMERICA has no culture in the sense of a growing thing that has developed, because America's won freedom is free·

dom from the past. Only lip-service is given to tradition in America where the past is a gorgeous picturesque costumepiece, like Gone Wi;lh the Wind. America has revolved into being, for better or for worse, and is still revolving, and I like it fine because I'm an American. Yet I am aghast at the shortcomings of spiritual and cultural potentiality in the United States.

The Philippines is all potential. The Philippines can be a cultural force in the world, and a force for peace in the Far East and in the world.

Well, I'm curious, and I'm going to stay here for a year or so to watch what happens and, where possible, to participate.

I want to see if the spiritual and intellectual energy of morally minded Fili-

pino leaders can overcome the inertia

and harness the forces of traditional life to produce a significant culture.

Of course, that doesn't happen in a year or two (but it can start in an hour, or a minute or a second) . For morality is not a fixed code but a state of mind which carefully evaluates relative truths

in a changing world, and initiates action

upon the results of its evaluation.

Well, I'm staying.

Then, after a while I'll go home.

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GOtD lA8U OoPIN

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