Corporal, this is not coincidence, I believe. This is designed by some divine principle, I hope. After our Christmas drink you vowed to end our friendship and so have an honest encounter with my command somewhere in Northern Samar or Western Leyte. I shall then forget we were ever classmates in the seminary high school, forget we were ever neighbors in our hometown, yes forget we started as heroes together, you and me at eighteen, killing a dog who went mad, just you and me, who were both with our Barangay Tanod. It seems you are more interested now with heroics, though. You know I’ve only been interested in ideas, and, God help me if you’d laugh again, with morals. Yeah, you laughed. And as always you’d now refuse to discuss morality with me, you always say all this is propaganda. And so you had to test me, and indirectly wound me in front of my men, who you knew wouldn’t touch you unless I ordered it—for it was you, you, who let us out of a barracks prison one post-midnight.

What’s happening now is not coincidence, Corporal. It had to be parallel to the beginning of a Gregorian year, perhaps so that it may be emphasized to readers of history. I believe this is all part of a design, with me as instrument, towards a final presentation and clarification of your standpoint’s real baselessness. Though I do not like it, I feel I am being made a hero of the people.

I accept the role. But I’d accept it with the utmost humility. That is to say, I have in my mind the desire not to go at it alone. Yes. For I am taking you with me, Corporal, I swear to God. And, if I should fail in bringing you with me in this operation, then I’d rather be forgotten, sir. Oh yes, I accept my role as possible hero, but . . . I’m taking what may still be the real you in you, your conscience, Sir, with me. Now, just in case your conscience refuses to budge, for your coming with me must be yours to finally decide on, in becoming a hero too with me and so kill the mad dog of the nation’s morality, then I shall accept with a double modesty the insignificance of my death, should I die soon (in the same manner our people have habitually accepted with a contented disinterest the insignificance of the revolutionary army people’s individual or slow organizational deaths).

Yes, Corporal, death. For I have just here accepted your wish (or vow) for us to meet again, and have an "honest encounter," you accompanied by your roaming intelligence command led by your sergeant. Haha, I vow to take the first shot at your sergeant. Will you sacrifice him? But listen here, Captain Corporal, I plan to be defeated by you, sir. Yeah. I wish to be killed by your platoon, corporal, perhaps I shall have to sacrifice too my men in the process. Well, they do not know of my plan.

But you shall have to know of it. You shall have to know I shall be moving to the right of my men, away from them who shall have to lose sight of me. There shall you search me. There shall you have your men kill me. There shall you ask to be the one to carry your friend’s body or head to your field or barracks superior. They shall have to know it is me, and you’ll tell them it is me, but you shall have something else to know.

A day before the date I plan to have the encounter, I shall send you the message. Which shall mention: you, Corporal, shall look for codes tattooed under my neck, codes we invented in high school, codes only you and me can read, unless you’ve forgotten it, and these shall all instruct you where to find my diary. Yes, sir, you heard right. My diary. (As you read this now, all this—of course—had been done quite admirably by you already, otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this now; I only repeat the arrangement for the reader’s benefit, it is them we both exist for, after all.)

Well, yes, Corporal, I write/wrote this diary for you, . . . supposedly. But for the people, finally. And your part in it? It will be you, Sir, to whom I leave the responsibility of getting it published in Japan, with publishers whose names appear on the leather wrapping it here, this that you found in the location which I latituded and longituded for you, you son of a bitch.

JANUARY 1st. I shall speak in the present tense, Corporal, this is a diary after all. Now, . . . I know I can trust you. I know this will get published somehow. Thus I now prepare this design of presenting my story in the present tense, that every consequent reading may be thus contrivedly insistent in that said tense, excepting of course historical glimpses, recapitulations, flashbacks, and references to how you found this diary, if you found it at all. I do this with several things in mind. One, just in case the revolution itself, as a whole, becomes "past" in tense, my here using the present tense will then be proper enough not to offend anyone in the party. That is because any tale told about the war and told in the present will, hopefully, truly bring back the spirit and historical rationales of the struggle in its most emotional form. Should we be truly defeated, the present tense shall only bring in the picture of the practicability of our philosophy for impending situations, and that would certainly not hurt our position, in fact should nourish it widely—if not in elusive logic and necessity, then at least in sincerity and moral firmness vis a vis what you have offered to the present, the present that you now have. Talk about an accessible comparison.

Pardon me; as I begin to write this part, I realize I shall have to be writing in the past tense, too. For tonight is obviously night, dark it is and primitive, and I just came back from a visit to my hometown, our hometown, Corporal, four hours I rode the bus to reach my present location. . . . This is just as well, this minimal past-tensing. Bergson, or the Taoists, won’t mind. They all realized the delusions of the theory of time and chronology as a flow of ethical, moral, or scientific innovations, history is not progressively linear or spiral, after all, is it? I believe that morality, for instance, hangs majestically high above the flow of quick tensions within the various tenses, yeah.

Corporal, pardon me. Sometimes I just wish to think in terms of the present life and the beyond; I am still religious, you see, just as you boasted of being still so yourself (but let me present how we argue for the perspectives of our respective religiosities only later on in this journal, Corporal. Perhaps as I recapitulate and call memories here and there of our arguments).

As I was saying, I went to town to see a classmate of mine in college. She is now a writer. You know her. I can trust her; she’s going to be my editor and typist. Now, since we were one-time rivals at winning her person’s intelligence, I just fear you might take it all on her, what your possible rage may fail to comprehend in this my modest unsurrender that has nothing to do with her. I remember how you once became so fresh with a waitress at Lola’s when, while boasting of your last semester at the academy, one of your disciples quickly told you about Catherine’s constant sweet company, me, always seen at the town beach, every Sunday.

2nd. I have been rereading what I’ve already put in this diary, and I think I should explain why I often address you here as corporal, even though God knows you’ve been a PMA graduate since six years ago. Boy, how time flies . . . I remember how we entered our respective armies exactly at the same time, barely five months after I told Catherine to look for a new guy who can find her security, two months too after I got another rejection letter from a prospective employer (rejected, I was, all because I’ve been a mere college dropout, though I had the knowhow). And here today by some miracle I’m already the commander of two regional troops, a post I achieved in this my sixth year in the movement (attained with certain opposition, of course, and jealousies, mixed into the picture), this sixth year of mine accompanied by your naturally taking the badge of captain. "Captain," ho-hum. I shall also have to explain the urgent objectives of my writing this diary.

Let me answer the second question first. You so well know how I have been in ideological conflict with the newly-high-ranked hardliner ideologues in the Politburo and Central Committee, regarding several points in our social philosophy and consequent policies. You so well know my reformist beliefs, the very details of my reformist ideas within the movement even. Which are all slowly being defeated by the textbook Marxists high up.

Then, regarding the first question here, I address you as corporal because . . . I vow to regard you from now on as no more than a pawn. You do not know what you are fighting for, Corporal, let me repeat it, you yourself feel nothing but disgust for your capitalist/consumerist superiors, your casino-owning generals, Sir. Er, Corporal. Let me just repeat that. You are yourself a reformist, sir, aren’t you? You are yourself a gentleman. So that by calling you a corporal I am doing you great service, by implying in this label identity a lower criminality; by a "lower criminal," I mean to refer to the merely ignorant kind, sir, the kind that might desire to now be out of this miserable direction after thinking he might have been merely duped into participation. By your Christian language, Corporal, he that might have been merely "brainwashed" by the overwhelming culture.

I’ve been wanting to discuss with you semantics and truth, Corporal, as regards the words you use and the attitudes that drive these forms of usage. As with the word "propaganda," which you look upon as deception even as we mean by it the most true information. We make mistakes, though, I’d hasten to admit.

MARCH 6th. As far as our command is concerned, there was no truth to all that dumb intelligence reportage (propaganda?) from your quarters, sir, that we had been in alliance with Saddam Hussein’s obscure Sunni following in Mindanao.

There are minor elements in the lower Politburo who demand we study the methods of Moammar Gaddafy, but I have not been informed of any alliance we were supposed to have with Hussein, threatening American bases personnel with eliminations, stuff like that. Perhaps my ignorance about this matter is due to, assuming the reports were truly not by your black propaganda, the committee’s having been quite offended by the way I carried on with my arguments during our open session six months ago (to which I had been invited as leader of the right-wing—or is it left-wing—minority faction called here the Moral Progressives or MP’s). My person there representing the MP’s. Which party’s membership by the way consists of a not-so-influential number of 300 cadres, of which only but thirteen are active debaters.

I as leader of the faction became quite honest with the committee, and my statements truly went thus: "it is not necessary that we support the ouster of the U.S. bases in the country, for first of all, it is not even necessity for the bases to become nil here for us to win a revolution. In fact, it would even help us to turn it into a bargaining issue. Consider, comrades, that in the eyes of the international community the Philippines is party to an international alliance that would not lessen even with a bases phaseout. If the bases go, therefore, something else will have to be entertained, for America can’t allow a political defeat by leaving the country (and its resources/market) to the 'socialists' within and without the existing government. Maybe a furtherance of an interventionist direction shall have to be designed by America to maintain its control on the trend of Asia-Pacific politics, without the Philippine bases. Unless the country immediately elects moderate Socialists into high office, in which case an American-backed coup would be most probable. Comrades, I believe the thing for us to do is not to invite this possible direct intervention, and instead secretly support the bases’ stay. The thing for us to do, my dear fellow Socialists, is to confront, nay talk with, a U.S. and Philippine governments joint secret panel. We should tell them thereat that American intervention should not be so pursued, from either American imperialist wishes or Filipino government-designed invitations, against our 'insurgency' movement. That should there be deviation from this agreement, we shall deem it valid for our side likewise to seek direct outside help. And by direct outside help for our side I am thinking here of the possibility of a Palestinian and Japanese Red Army alliance with our revolutionary mission. In return for their detachment, we shall have to allow U.S. bases continued stay in the region after we have won the fight in our own capacity, with minor help from abroad (i.e. no obvious help from the socialist parties abroad from whom we borrow weapons, equipment, currency, and food). My dear fellow socialists, should this arrangement be acceptable to all concerned, we will then have become the first communist or socialist country to have U.S. bases voluntarily welcomed into its territory immediately after revolutionary success, though with the highest possibility that we might likewise invite Chinese bases here. . . . Of course, comrades, the U.S. has never been known to respect agreements, but there is a way to gain its respect. We all know the U.S.’s constant attitude is sheer macho confidence over its world dictate and veto powers all supported by a wide display of material prowess; but, you see, we can also always tell them how we know their weak points. One of these weak points, for example, is their very citizens. Their people, the average Americans, as against their capitalists/multinational corporations. For there are ways by which you can win their people. Win their people, they own the votes. Another weak point is their conflict with certain Socialist nations, or with Islamic states, or with nationalist cultures, whose sympathies and alliances they can’t push too far. The ultimate technique, however, is to play it morally and with the utmost honesty, knowing how dirtily they do it. The way to deal with America, ladies and gentlemen in this congress, comrades, is to befriend it, the way it deals with you everytime it wants to take your pineapples, your sugar, your manganese, or your uranium. Comrades, does America really care for democracies? Or does it only care for markets? And resources? For doesn’t it allow despots to flower in its puppet regimes, the governments it sponsors, despots America itself wouldn’t allow the likes of in the White House? So, comrades, we all know how America operates. Therefore, let’s be wiser than it and cease to behave like mere rallying students. If America threatens you, simply know where you can threaten it back. But, only be sure you’re on the moral side, and you’re sincere with your plea for fairness, and you’re certain to get the support of even the American people, they whose sympathies often run counter to the strategies of their leaders. Let the American government’s aggressiveness boomerang to them then by your firmness sheerly, by your correctness only. Because, ladies and gentlemen, everytime it happens that we fail correctness, America’s always ceases to be the evil side.

"The technique, too, is to reassure America's greed some. Give it a pat on the back, like pacifying a lion you know you can't poison, although you can certainly use him in a circus. That is my proposal, comrades. A proposal that should make everybody happy."

7th. I am back in my air-conditioned room here in Quezon City, where I am expecting in eight hours a guest from the Japanese Red Army. I intend to surprise him and his girlfriend with a Fidel Castro costume. Which reminds me, I have to launder three pairs of underwear forthwith, I only brought four with me; actually, Corporal, I really only have four.

8th. My girlfriend Evelyn, known to us as Ka Eve, sent off the guest and his girl companion at the airport; they're off to their "Metro Dumaguete" destination. The Jap is here to brief us on new strategic methods developed by the international(ist) movement, slight developments though, and he was quite disappointed with the policy, actually my policy that's fortunately being backed up by the highest people, that we can't entertain new terrorist warfare techniques. This strong anti-terrorist warfare policy in me is actually the reason, Corporal, why the Committee assigned to me this persona after this same was in turn briefed on the background of the faction I head.

Fortunately, if I may say this, the girl is Korean and of slightly different beliefs, so you can just imagine how probably different this Jiro is himself. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have tolerated hearing of a Taoist with detached views on the revolution—as I am this.

They were invited, anyway, perhaps to comfort certain factions’ clamor for a more emotional involvement for change.

9th. To my supreme commander, and went to a Polding’s eatery for a sip of beer with him. Who told me he heard about how my wound came to be, and who in particular was responsible—what I'm trying to tell you is he knows you, Corporal. He should, though. He should be familiar with our dossiers, but that's not what I mean. He knows how I stand with you (me as a potential recruiter), and how you stand with me (you therefore as a potential defector), and who's winning the psy war, if it's a war between us; that is to say, he knows you not sheerly as your PMA class' top strategist, he knows you to be of the type whose greed and indifference are unintended and temporary. He knows you to be free really of petty worries of how you can buy a new camera, or whether you should buy a Walkman or a portable CD player. He knows you're like him, enamored with objects, but likewise aware of the possibility of discarding these (being discarded of these) for the higher goal of our respective travels. Let me discourse on this further. My supreme commander, Captain, has a weakness for sunrises and sunsets, and he says that's because he doesn't own a house. Methinks you're of the same sentimentality, both of you belonging to the beauty of sunrises, and sunsets. Methinks you could both write a Christian novel. Or a book of Catholic poems. But is this my point? You could just as well turn out to be engineers, or men of medicine. What I'm really trying to emphasize here is how we're the three of us Travelers.

Corporal, I became a Socialist from a hatred for the freezing of the unemployed. But wanting to free all from that economic asphyxiation is not what I mean by a desire for freedom, for travel. I mean by Travel here something more epistemological, paraphysical—the effortless vision to embrace the transitoriness of a transistor radio, since everything new soon becomes old. I mean by this the constant desire to practice virtue, that we may escape our loneliness. That is my inverted fever, Captain, that's why I can worship new products without getting ecstatic. I enjoy moments, Captain, but then I move on. Never in a hurry, but never late either, Captain. That is my fever. A fever not measured by a thermometer, not even by the pressure of time.

Is this why I'm a Socialist? Certainly this is why I am a reformist. But think of the design, Captain. Think of being a Party member in Shanghai today. You can occupy the highest post in a Marxist corporation, but your wage just like an ordinary restaurant manager's, your remain of the people, with the people. You remain simple, free of the anxieties that accompany a cumbersome wealth. Certainly this is not for everyone. I myself feel a recurring envy towards yuppies with new synthesizer keyboards, being a musician myself enthusiastic about the new industrial sounds. My only treatment for this virus infection that provides me a non-healthy view of the consumerist city the struggles for water supply among the urban poor I eat with. So I remain a Socialist. Who knows? Maybe tomorrow I can corrupt myself with dreams of a new car. But then I guess I'd still move on, Captain. I'd travel. Why am I so? Is it by some god I subconsciously "believe" in? Is it by a certain form of madness? Economics aside, I offer it is by my religion, but allow me the humility of speaking thus: that this is not for everyone. Is this for you, Captain? Is this really for me, even, Captain?

10th. Read today what I wrote here yesterday. I see it's getting to seem I really mean to write an essay instead of a diary. But that's only how it seems, on the surface. For though I scrawl here so far mostly commentaries, I am likewise trying to demonstrate here to your stupid eye, Corporal, as a father might to a son, the reality of everyday living from our part of the conflict, the reality of these your characters in this "novella," that you may see how our routine is far from being your mere ‘routine and drills and waiting for the payroll checks’ but of progressive introspection, discussion, reassessment, planning, praying, sinning, stealing, money-raising, infighting, and so on. Ours, Corporal, is not the holding of a stupid war. It is your position that should be torturous to your very Christian reasons for existing. What is it you are defending? What is your idea os capitalism, sir? What ideas do your soldiers have about freedom, democracy, and its consumer society? Are these ideas correct? Have you been fooling them merely? For they all come from poor families! The last opinion I heard was an idea/impression from one of the privates first class we captured last February, who said he thought communism was a system of government where they kill all the handicapped! Isn't it in capitalism that the future of the capital-less are almost guaranteed to be handicapped, their ambitions for a greater influence killed? And you call that democracy? For you don't have to be that private-first-class' Communist to do things like these! Don't some businessmen execute their own employees during strikes, getting away with it? Are not the poor being tortured by diseases from the sheer neglect of their positions? Oh yes, communist governments you can survey the real sins of, for it is all by government, the old communists' governments' ways; but what about the subtle concentration camps in, or the injustices of, free enterprise systems elusive to statistics, here where government itself is enslaved by the desires of profiteers (aren’t your leaders and legislators factory owners themselves?), and what about the subtle and secret executions, tortures, suicides within the society this system produces? Oh Russia did send dissenters to mental hospitals, but how does Philippine capitalism send its subjects to these? Aren’t many of your unemployed under a sort of house arrest? And what’s their term? See here; private first class Tamano, he whom we arrested/captured, said he used to work as a boy helper at a beer garden owned by a colonel. He said his plan is to go into illegal business after soldiering, for he cannot allow himself to become a low-wage helper again, much more stomach becoming a bystander again. We asked him if he’d like to join us; but said if he’d be freed he’d choose not to, all because he thinks there’s no way we can win the war. He confessed to having unsure ideas about communism. What a soldier! Fighting devils he's not certain are devils? We released him. Of course, admittedly, we don't always release them alive, our commanders and collective leaders don't have the same moralities-in-aid-of-policy.

12th. Just came from a mission, Corporal, and it does not make me feel good that I had to kill a man. But I remember Jaime Cardinal Sin's offering an assessment of power-grabbing through coups-d'etat or forceful takeovers as a "sin." Like, it'd be salt to holy water. But where does he quote things from? Isn't it from a book of struggles against oppression and abuse and corruption? Did not Moses declare war on the occupants of Israel that this same land may be returned to the long-oppressed peoples of his nation? Well, then, Corporal, I see no difference of purpose between our mission and this Moses picture of things.

Anyway, as I was saying, while resting I read what I wrote here two days ago and sensed again that I have truly written too many sermons, less narrations, sensing then further a probable suspicion from your side now of sheer 'propaganda' in these tracts. But I do not seek to 'brainwash' you of anything, Corporal, I am not here doing a speech nor a teach-in session (not all speeches by communists are obfuscatory, as not all speeches by anti-communist leaders are enlightening or truthful!). Corporal, listen. What I wish to design in this diary, into this diary, is an essay of interrogatives written for the uninsistent page that should make all of my daily contentions and claims vulnerable to argument. That is the point, sir. By itself the act of writing this diary is a type of treason, I think, committed against my party. For this is the purpose of my writing this. I want you to see where it is I'm wrong, see it by your own answers to the things written herein. But once you get hold of answers to face my claims and tendencies of belief, ask yourself too as to who is lying, sir. Ask whether you are not yourself brainwashing your own person with things in your beliefs that go without debate. I agree, you may have good and moral answers that may quickly topple my claims, etc., but let those answers be truly honest, not sheerly defensive, sir. Let them be correct and doubly moral, my sir. Oh, let yourself be not deluded by some greed or self-gratification, sir, let yourself be correct!

Might you envy an absence of guilt in my position? Take my first paragraph today, Corporal. Do you really see guilt after that first sentence? None. Surely there is sadness there. But if I am to sentimentalize that sadness, this diary will be of no service. I might as well write a novella.

13th. At my fellow commander's lodgings, this commander too on leave from the field, who told me of rumors about my possible appointment to a Secretary's post in one major committee I don't have to mention now. Yeah, I can't mention it now; but, anyway, it's all about reviewing the educational program, looking at the program not merely from the informational level but more deeply into the cultural view, including new cultural discoveries, new approaches in/into the ideology as a whole. This is going to be one of the most wholistic committee programs to be designed by the central authority yet, but I still know nothing further about it.

Corporal, how things are making me backtrack a little. These new developments are beginning to frighten me. It is nothing of the sort I felt when I was promoted with merits to the level of brigade commander, bypassing oldtimers. It has more to do with the nervousness surrounding the aura of responsibility. Do I lack moral firmness, then? Perhaps I am not a Communist. How high I've reached the ladder of power! But this is the first time I've wondered about my certainty in this path! Perhaps I am merely a Socialist. Of course that is what I am, but how did I ever become a Communist? I mean, truly, how! Can I ever accept it? Have I ever accepted it before? Or has impossible policies by your government led me to ally myself with these people—mostly hardliners, Corporal. Perhaps, without my knowing it, I am only trying to involve myself in the communist morality—as I like, nay prefer, to call it—in order to discover things I could bring into the capitalist design for the improvement of capitalist systems (after getting bored with living in the frugality of our ideal communist existence, in struggle). Now, isn't the SSS a Marxist thing now quite active in the 'democratic' world? That's an elementary fact! But then, suppose I were to become an activist merely, would I still believe in rallies?

However, might this two-pronged leaning, if it be that, be the reason why I have hastened myself to write this diary? Might this be the reason why I can have a heart for my enemies, Corporal? But with you, sir, captain, my relationship is purely technical—we are both political engineers sent into this special mission, sir. So, no hard feelings, dumbhead, detach yourself from the passion of our social concerns. We are not selfish after all, you and me.

14th. To my fellow commander's again, he who often acts as the devil's advocate within the MP faction. Discussed with him quite informally where capitalism can be deemed a moral design, where not (or not yet). Also trustingly discussed with him by elliptical means my plan, which I here called (see what I wrote here yesterday) my special mission. I put it all to him as though all for the sake of argument. I said, "what if I write things about the struggle along with the sentiments that drive it, seeking in my audience a sympathy for those sentiments, wouldn't I happen to address by virtue of the publication the people within the capitalist kingdom who are to buy my book? And wouldn't that risk, assuming they feel sympathy towards said sentiments, their seeking reforms within capitalism? I say risk, for wouldn't this seeking for reforms within capitalism be directly destructive of/to the communist/socialist movement? And so, therefore, shouldn't desires to publish books like these, by partisans or armchair sympathizers, to be strongly discouraged?"

Then finally I asked: "from a higher perspective, though, wouldn't such an act be a sort of special mission for someone, that he may promote for future decades the merger of capitalism and communism?" (Sneers from some of his followers in the room.).

The thing that troubled me was that he was not aghast for long, leading me to fear a perhaps long-hidden reactionary suspiciousness in him of something evil in my rhetorical directions and thus from there report me to higher levels for more personal inspections. Dammit, now I would have to be on guard with him, and have to be friendlier, display more mainstream thoughts.

15th. Early packing up my things to meet with three central committee members in Bulacan, as per call I received last night (post-midnight). I am writing this perhaps from my seat, on this bus I'm riding with Comrade Fernando. Ka Fernan is my personal bodyguard for this journey; am here also with Ka Terry, a new recruit who used to be (get this!) a receptionist at a five-star hotel.

I am gearing myself for an interrogation.

15th/p.m. I feel so free! and now again am with my notebook. Ka Lemy, the fellow commander on leave, our devil's advocate at MP meetings, was there. Had they been in applause altogether, I would have sensed something dismal. But it turned out Ka Lemy was an angel on my horse. First they tested my firmness in holding on to my principles, and surprisingly I held on (despite the fear), and gradually spilled to me the news. I am to participate in a congress to be held somewhere in China, a consultative congress actually (with Chinese, African, Latin-American and European consultants), on how new communist countries can practice limited capitalism immediately and positively within the regulations of socialist economics. We are to discuss also big business inside socialist regulations, called in China 'state capitalism', foreign investment (in all its forms: franchises, affiliations, transnationals, etc.) and socialism, domestic socialism and international markets, other new developments, and so on. The congress is designed to put all economic cum political thoughts on these subjects in actual blueprints, translatable into instant concretes valuable for both existing socialist nations and yet struggling peoples. All our travel finances for this are to derive from CPP-NPA coffers, but host people will provide Third World participants with concrete hospitality. (All readers should realize of course that China has a hands-off policy towards the Philippine struggle, so they can't offer us more).

Our central committee has yet to see our delegation's performance, and if satisfied might send us to another friendship congress in N'Zerekore, Guinea, where political economists from capitalist countries are to meet delegates from socialist countries and countries with still struggling socialists, in a sort of friendship convention on the pragmatic virtues of communism or socialism that capitalist countries may find good potential in for application within "democratic" designs. The gathering is sponsored by diverse international organizations. (I read this is a sort of friendly note after several socialist nations opened themselves to more participation in the international market. I doubt, however, the IMF-WB would be tackled here, or the GATT, or veto powers of favored UN member-nations, I believe it will all be mostly diplomatic hoopla where each side would try to skirt-and-avoid getting into their real desires for the international realm. I am glad, however, if this friendship congress is to push through, that the singular agendum states the topics most limitingly already).

16th. My last day with leave. To get back to field by fishing boat owned by a town councilor friend. To meet him at his farm in his town in Quezon. Will have twelve escorts in the travel, five of them from Bulacan collectives, testing Visayan fields, six from the urban command now being dispersed into rural zones, and Ka Eve who will travel alone direct to the fishport. We are to take different jeepneys within Metro Manila in the dispersal, six of us to take different buses bound for Bicol, six to take two other fishing boats from Batangas. One will travel direct to Cebu, with his girlfriend, via boat, he won't be joining us at Quezon therefore. He will drop her in Cebu. He'll be our advance party. We are all to meet in a farm in town X in Leyte.

(As I just finished that last item above, a note came in. A memo once again against anybody's writing diaries or such like notes that may jeopardize any collective mission in cases of individual apprehension. But my writing this diary remains a secret; like I said, it is by itself an act of treason in its being addressed to you, Corporal.)

Now, where were we? Ah! I shall be taking a bus for Quezon disguised as a fifty-ish woman. I hope, by the way, by this last account, that you don't start a program harrassing every traveler, sir, tugging along with you in your searches size A photographs of your rewarding objectives. That would only be to our advantage, as it might let swell a massive hatred towards your parties.

By the way, by the existence of rewards for all correct information leading to the arrest of communist commanders, isn't it telling of the corrupt society you inhabit and uphold, sir? Can't you be like the Jews of Israel, who fight for their nation and sacrifice with their lives only from full knowledge of the insecurity they are living with? Yet you, you, sir, Corporal, you only fight for money. Spit on you! But then, holy be the spit on you, I pray, that you may be forgiven.

Hopefully no Judas with us shall be kissing you against us, hahaha.

17th. There is a truck owned by a Filipino-Chinese friend we can get to hitch a ride on. This according to late-night information we received yesterday, of his journey to same direction only short of our destination. At truck's destination, we hop off. I shall take a jeepney from there, with Ka Goroy, both of us to travel unarmed. Can you believe that, unarmed! That's how bold I am, captain. You cannot do that. You rely too much on material stuff. I rely more on the power of my virtue, sir. Oh, shit. Go ahead, laugh. You think this is all literature.

Well . . . Ka Eve to join us later, same with other parties.

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. . . Now am inside large van with the Chinese, not a truck after all, but he prefers to sleep and left me to finish all the imported cigarettes in his bag. Before closing his eyes he joked, "better smoke all you can, bright boy, because if you become leaders one of these days you might not allow smoking aymore!" We had a hearty laugh on that one, yeah while we still have hearts.

Now I'm here trying to write straight as we tread suddenly a rough concrete highway. We have weapons, after all. Had a change of decision. Two armalites on my two bodyguards, but that's all. All our other arms at the Leyte town destination. We don't have permanent storage there, Corporal, but don't believe that if you are smart. We don't have arms storage in the city, either (but I really can't deny anything anymore, can I?).

Now we can't take the jeepney, with these armalites. We'll take a tricycle with our disguised cargo, then. Put them inside horsefeed from the town.

20th. Arrived in Masbate after two full days of fishing around. At a fishport which I won't disclose name of for fear you'd be able to trace the councilor somehow, someway. Decided with Ka Eve to accompany the Quezon town councilor awhile on this island (he in AWOL from municipal duties), delay my arrival time at objective Leyte town for one day. This after I complained to Ka Eve of a returned pain on where my wound used to gape at me.

Have been reminiscing on deck about our Christmas drink in the hills, and my later brawl with your girlfriend at same party, Corporal, the brawl you obviously designed yourself. Am trying to analyze the real presence of a conflict between us, its causes, and how there might be things a bit removed from what we're here for, something beyond the ordinary context of the phrase "why we're here." And, also, how things may be too late now to save other souls from dying.

First, allow me to design a moral-psychological picture. I am considering a possible envy you might have for my position, even while you're a little rich now, even while you're quite happy now against your miserable neighbors, captain. Logistically, I admit it'd be easy to beat us. But I don't believe you have much of a war against us to erase us, sir, you being at it merely for a macho game or for a job. I believe we have much of a necessary war against you. I believe that what's between you and me is a terrible and remarkable dispute as between oppressors and defenders of the non-snickering oppressed, which you're aware of, and it makes you guilty. I have a reason to exist, then, sir, so what may be yours? Simply put, what is it you're fighting for, Corporal? Kindly picture it to me. I've pictured for you what I'd rather have. C'mon. Then we can fight as true moralists, you from your morality, me from mine---it doesn't matter if we end up both wrong. For as of the moment, Corporal, I doubt that you are more than just an animal. Or are you more of an animal now, sir? Have you become a Christian predator, perhaps?

Hahahaha. No, it's all too late. We've hurled too many invectives at each other to still stop this. We've become too angry at one another to think about each of our mistakes. To rethink both our systems, sir, which is this diary's futile prayer.

So let the fight resume, then, for God's sake! And, yes, travel unto destiny! . . .

(I shall postpone for tomorrow my discourse on what I think is the virtue of my position that makes me braver than you. For there is the mytho-poetic aspect to this Philippine situation, as when I think my political philosophy's unpopularity and intellectual repression raises socialism here to the temple of martyrdom or sainthood.).

21st. Corporal, here's my final insult. As per instruction in a telegram message, Catherine met me at this other fishing village in Leyte where I unboarded the boat without Evelyn, she knowing nothing about the plan—I had to protect her (Eve).

The barrio was still sleeping.

Well, I've been making love to her (Catherine) in this hut I'm writing now in, for three hours! I had the most magical series of climaxes in my life, Corporal!!!

This is your consolation, captain:

The barrio is not our "territory." It's one of your barrios whose poor are a snickering contented lot, whose men are devoted to the adolescent oneupmanship game of displaying their macho scars from petty spars, whose people think city men like me, even after years in the hills, are really just a handful of sissy thinkers. Note, Corporal, that as once my university's best guitarist I have acquired a taste for a hoop earring and a long hair tied at the back to all go along with my still pretty face, so that I might appear in photographs like some petty-bourgeois Gentlemen's Quarterly Magazine model modeling for musicians in current rock (what a bourgeois disguise, huh). This costume would sometimes however make me appear to these rural folk, to my utter surprise at first, as a "faggot" or bisexual, or as a drug hallucinator (to army men a pusher), which impression I should not now blame them for having, having been poorly educated to become unworldly, ill-informed, neglected, all these vis a vis my internationalized understanding of cultures and prejudices, tribes and ideals, myths and superstitions. To be honest with you, corporal, I have often felt more heroic from merely forgiving the ignorance of man than from promoting his welfare through war. But then, Corporal, as a member of the progressive elite who used to belong to the educated middle class of bourgeois society, it is precisely that former that keeps me sustained here as chief ideologue and leader of my men—that state of being forgiving, which actually presupposes a hatred for ignorance, all leading me to a missionary, unselfish zeal.

So, let this be your other consolation:

That while savoring my male triumph over Catherine, who received my valor with her own decision (we never copulated before, I swear), I felt within the barrio a feeling of defeat. And, Corporal, I today reluctantly concede. To what, I still don't know.

22nd. Catherine and I and some of my escorts traveled long to another town towards the hills, stopping at a barrio just at the foot of Hill __________. We're here now. Catherine to do her typing now, here where nobody'd be curious about the sound of typewriters.

She tells me she's trying to put this all into a form, and that she's making it sound a little like a famous diary, to make it appear literary. I said, do what you want with it, so long as what I want to say, my ideas, remain unexpurgated.

Now, Corporal, this is what I wanted to tell you yesterday at the beach barrio, which I will now resume to discourse on:

Corporal, we will never win this war. Because . . . because it is not a war of the people. It is but by a bunch of educated leaders whose urban ways and sophisticated thoughts cannot even begin to please the majority of the peasantry, even when we speak Tagalog or the local provincial language. It is greatly hard for us to penetrate the local soul with our natural angers deriving from knowledge. The DECS has to be congratulated on this, for succeeding in keeping the provinces from knowing much about the nation and the world, about history and cultures, overwhelming our mediocre talents at education, that the gap between the urban middle class (who love to deceive the poor as their habit) and the rural poor (who've maintained their favor for contented rumors and superstition) may become both material and numbingly cultural. Isn't the cultural gap between the urban middle class and the provincial nouveau-riche quite wide already? For, Corporal, this wide gap between the rich and the poor, and between the capital and the province, is now very much cultural too, that it is very much a problem now for us to come up with codes and behaviors understandable and acceptable to both elements of the struggle, so to eschew misunderstandings of motivation. We now derive from all the classes, as you well know, and from all existing religions in the Philippines. We have to understand each other first, like blacks trying to understand the rhythm of whites, so to be strong for our common objective. For we shall be strong, if we are all to realize now that this is really a movement of the left wing of the intelligentsia, not a movement of the people, now that the people has been conditioned towards the habit of being contented and happy beneath their meager diet, to be unthinking, to be pretentious and materialistic, to be competitive in this society of calumny, greed, and envy.

Therefore we are having these as our major difficulties at the moment, Corporal. Now, only those that have lost relatives in their farms listen to us 'madmen', because that keeps them from heckling at walls after we've left, giving them an enlightening rest from their daily Christian habit of, as it were, calumny, greed, and envy. The rest of the people, meanwhile, have come to love the stupidity of their assumptions and rumors and political speculations, so much that they now hate or are afraid to think further, to analyze and investigate. They feel proud when they can come up with conclusions, premised though these be by mere hearsay, ludicrous conjectures.

22nd/p.m. Now, as I—half-naked again—watch Catherine resting, sleeping, the sun now setting, the barrio stirring itself to preparations for the modest evening dinners, I continue to feel the returned slight pain from where my wound was, or wounds (how many were they?), from where your girl bodyguard's (or kidnapped barrio girl's) nail punctures once slashed deep their most uncivilized joke in a mountain forest one Christmas eve, breaking most of her nails there moments after you drunkenly told me to touch her breast because she was a hot one. Scratching me after I did so, and in the same spot giving me a wallop with a large piece of lumber while I gave the wounds medication, permanently hurting a rib then. . . . Well, today, perhaps this is all hypochondria. Perhaps my pain is sheerly due to sentimentality and an imagined messiah role. Perhaps all my pains have been illusions, leading to delusions. But, captain, the mystery of this returned stirring, this slight pain, I leave to the knowledge of doctors of medicine. I now seem to have lost all patience for all the bullshit from doctors of philosophy. . . .

Now, loyal as I am to Evelyn, allow me to ask, captain—why do we bring our women to war? They become vicious, when they don't have to. Why do we play with their emotions like with pawns or concubines? Have Moslems done us better in this? Now, our motherland has fast become a whore, our working women have gone tired with our play that they now prefer to become maids in London. While some, Corporal, frightened, retreat to peaceful country. While others prove themselves in the hills, to rise in the ranks—

Jesus, this weird stirring.

Perhaps it was the stirring salt of the seabreeze that called it back, to Eve, to Cathy. The varied worries women inflict on my ribs puzzle me now, my Christian brother. Has your girlfriend's claws given me now acrophobia with the hills, through some delayed venom that should soon be giving me epilepsy? Even minor injuries have to be checked at once among efficient leaders, especially if these include worries that cause depression, worries that launch themselves before simple cuts as though ominous of a bad karma. So, my fellow hero—I shall be postponing all active mission tonight to seek a friend doctor at the nearby city hospital to check on this funny weakness. At the nearby city (Ormoc or Tacloban), ______ kilometers from here. There, where no informer can follow me, in the white-clothed zone. Yes: we, sir, took our turns with the sword, I must not therefore grudge to take one at this simple pestilence.