Front
A draft of an e-book memoir in long blog posting-format, diary-like entry style, on my experiences and meditative notes that narrate how I had to cope with my youthful urges, without much benefit from having not that many identifiable positive role models (as may seemingly always the case when reading stories that highlight the sad and regretful, but highly valuable in terms of looking at such experiences) and growing up under decidedly restrictive social conditions, in Manila, Philippines.
For more convenient era references, the memories and reflections show those periods where I have grown up circa 1980s way much until after the Ramos administration. This memoir depicts my way of coming into terms with what life has got to offer me in my early years, and becoming more grateful in the process. I show here how certain risque behavior, and some would consider to be shameful experiences, in the thought that generations from now will use these materials as their written references about people who struggled and have made their lives more meaningful, given serious difficulties and amidst constricting social structures that continue to reward unfairly those who have been born into well-off family and relational linkages. Some of the descriptions here are certainly difficult to be considered to be functional, given the dysfunctional set-up of our family that may have originated itself in Philippine shores (but which certainly nowadays have been surely spread out to other parts outside of the Philippines), but we certainly have to face our own ghosts, imagined and otherwise.
The structures I attempt to highlight here, as very much representation in form of the ancient Intramuros Walls, will just have to be overcome and changed, or re-used for some other useful, updated purposes, when the right time comes. It’s always been a continuous process of change, as we all know by now. All these in the context of continuing redemptive work of the Lord, whose presence may have been denied and unseen in the sexual (or otherwise) chapters of this memoir. But they really happened and have taken place. I’m working now on the succeeding book in this series. God be praised!
