Do You Believe in Spirits?

It was dawn. In the borderline between sleep, dream and waking-up stages, I got up as scenes during the Tejeros Convention in 1897 — between Andres Bonifacio and Daniel Tirona played in my head. I sat still on my bed thinking of Emilio Aguinaldo at the trenches while the convention was on. Everything was quiet. Slowly, I heard the sound of a ticking clock inside the room fading in. It became loud that I wondered where the sound was coming from. My sight landed on the clock of my deceased brother – a historian – [colleague of Dr. Zeus Febski, at sympre pa, ni Prof. Teodoro Agoncillo]. It’s his birthday tomorrow. But that clock’s battery has long been drained. It’s been dead for months, for a year or more, in fact. Why it suddenly ticked again after a long time, and loudly quite surprised me. I had goosebumps. I knew my brother was around. I took his message, and his reminder that his birthday is coming, and more importantly, it seemed he wanted me to finish what I have started writing – a script outline on the life of Aguinaldo. I have done the script outline of Act 1 already – which I then believed also came from him. That was last year – when I also suddenly got up from sleep when images clearly played in my head re one of the most crucial segments in the life of Aguinaldo and Bonifacio — I wrote them down continously as if I was guided. I felt as an instrument merely to concretize the story by jotting them down. Dahil nagparamdam na naman, I do feel obliged to continue the rest of the story in film script outline form. But I need to read again their history. Anyway, lots of history books are still in the house. [Half or maybe about 2500 books were already moved to Novaliches to form part of the future Dr. Isagani R. Medina Library and Museum].

Tomorrow, I will consult with my brother. Will “meet” him at the Manila Memorial Park to get more notes. Ha!Ha! This is no joke. Last year, before I started shooting Mi Ultimo Adios I brought my “proposals,” my “storyboard studies”, my whole file – for his blessings, as well as my parents of course! Blessed by them, and by God-who else? everything turned out well as you must have seen on the outcome.

Do you believe in spirits? Well, it must be pretty obvious, that I do.

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