Tuesday, October 1, 2013

The return of oppression

The original Spaniards and Americans and have merely left imprints upon the Philippines. However, those imprints are too heavy of consequence to simply ignore.

Spaniards, Americans compete with the Chinese and some other nationals in owning the Philippine archipelago. On paper, the originally indigenously owned land, is a possession of some individuals who do not even know the exact composition of the soil in the places encompassed by the fantastic pieces of paper they hold as evidence of rights to the Philippine estate.

That all of the country we the Bruns have loved as our own is mostly in the hands of these barbars, is the legacy of what the original Bruns in the Philippines have died fighting against.

As if this were not enough, today, the graces by which a kingdom shall serve its subjects, are sprinkled instead to a set of ogres who we can not ever imagine to be of the quality needed in nobles, royalty and aristocracy.

But that is of little concern for now. For certain, a day will come when this return of excesses in oppression will explode without nary a warning nor call. The little people that carried the torch of the French Revolution into the castilles of the monarchy in France, the miniscule forces of Bavaria that defended itself from the Roman conquerors - losing at one, winning at another in many battles, will become a sight in these parts.

There is no wrath greater than when a monarch like the one they call noynoy, takes away the poor man's few grams of rice and a meagre count of grains of salt that is the family's breakfast, lunch and supper all made into one.

Lest the guillotine strikes this monarch, it is cautioned that he beware of his greed and check his machines for any loose screws left lying around.

Monday, September 30, 2013

Why the Clan Should Interact

There can be cited too many a reason for holding your hand for the first time, if you are of the Brun family stock.

First, it was agonized over some generations and so many decades since before 1900, why the Brun forebear came to Philippines and was by his lonesome. And why, after all that time, there were no evident relatives with whom to pray, spend Christmas, give to or receive gifts from, send letters, invite to a wedding, a christening or whatever else occasion there was.

It was a complete mystery from the beginning until this void talking space spoke of Bruns - so many of them, with the original ones having crests and heralds never even heard of since the time of our grandfathers who spoke of important and symbolic birds and other animals on their baby dresses. That was a wow, but perplexing all the same. What could be important with birds or animals? They're all of them everywhere.

Of course, there was the story of Bruns getting mighty pissed with Spaniards and Americans and vice versa and in the course of dispute, laying their lives honorably for the sake of their independent spirit. There was a puzzle about why Bavarians preferred to be on their own rather than lace the boots of German counterparts with their precious saliva. Our own fathers even proudly told of Bavarians being rebels, rebellious, but is that not being juvenile and childish after all? Again, that void talking space, explaining that and this, this and that, the conquest of that and the defending of this and without end, those stories flowed. Even more, adding to the bewilderment of the poor sots, whose fathers had to die without making the proper linking to the branches sprung from the same root of which they so affectionately made tall tales about.

One father had to die of a sudden incident, a traffic side swiping one, where the taxi driver, unconscionable up to this day, had not shown his face to the authorities for killing a Brun with no applicable decent reason in the commission of such act.

So the, before the dilemma goes on forever with the children of this present parents' generation not getting into the same confused or flustered state as their fathers or mothers, the birdbox's formerly secret name is broken out into the open and possibly someone will make the invite on one of these bright days to let us hold their hand.

May this void talking space do wonders then, so that the Bruns out there will learn of the people of the woodlands, highlands, eking out an existence not uncommon to theirs and longing to get word about long lost relations that sometimes are too embarrassing to mention to our own children for fear that they will never really believe (as we fiercely doubted our own fathers too before they died and left journals of their search in the municipal and city registrars of authentic Bruns who could be the missing members of our kind. The searches yielded only the names of the cattle rustlers and robbers that either married into, or simply adopted the surname for fear of arrests out of lives of crime.)

It is dared not to overly imagine the insanity our fathers had to go through trying to connect to something that can never be found (with the greatest exception of the void talking space). That would have been painful for sure, but at least it was merely something that the generation after them only read in the hidden journals and heard from their fantastic tales. Exceedingly hard to get connected with such triviality, until the yearning our fathers felt suddenly dawns upon us when we start having tots who ask where did we ever come from Poppa?

That, it is hard to tell them, God is truly the Maker of all things.

Like our fathers, we will never have been believed by the instant.


Our Clan

We are of the original Brun family stock. It is not ever known how our forebear came to the Philippines and made horse's saddles and other leather ware as well as brewed beverages, smoked meats and other preserves. Our elders also tell of good knowledge and hand for blacksmithing, but we are out of that as for now even when we know that craft is buried somewhere in our genes.

If there are any Bruns or Browns, Braun, and Bruins, or even with Bruno surnames out there, feel free to shoot an arrow with a message into this site of ours.

The target is this lion.of.the.woodlands@gmail.com, our birdbox that we have kept for years but have only announced at this time.

Our original stock comes from the south of Germany, Alemain or Deutschland as it were, and we were the independent minded brothers of the common Germanic people. We are called Bavarians or Bayerns.

Since a number of marriages happened in the past had bred the spread of our name, and while our forebears have fiercely defended our independent spiritedness, the Spaniards who came after us killed many of our kind. As much as we suffered deaths from the prison inmate-turned-guards-soldiers, our clan claimed many a life from their side. More, so much more than the numbers by which we were decimated. A good number of our people hid from the Spaniards for long periods - coming out only bearing names native to the Philippine country and staying with those names until this day, only to be hunted again this time by the Americans who had again faulted us for our free-mindedness. Those Americans that came in the recent past even had German names, but Germans and Bavarians do not exactly see eye to eye all of the time. So we killed Americans too, while they took many more than a few of our kind.

What is of interest is that while we, the original Brun stock have become Filipinos with Filipino names, have married into the local tribes, our relations by marriage or acquaintance (but shamelessly changed into our surname of Brun being wanted by the authorities for cattle rustling or any other crimes), have retained the beloved name of Brun. That is of no consequence to us, since the blood of Brun is what defines our clan and our own stock, even if we have mixed marriages with a large number of races - native Filipino, Fujianese Chinese, Spanish and several others. Some have even married Mindanao Muslims with Arabic stock.

So now, whether we are of the clans of Molabola, Pareja, Botictic, some being Algas and many others, we are definitely as Brun as our original forebears are. Some of our parents, although married only to the originals, curious as to what we are, have studied at the Goethe Institut to learn about Germany and Bavaria, as well as the Deutsche language.

There will be time to interact later, so for now, we end the brief introduction here. We repeat our call to our relatives from Germany, France, England, even the Cajun in the US, to shoot their arrows to our birdbox so we will learn of how you fare and we may tell of what we are and who we are now.

Auf wiedersehen, abschied für jetzt. Farewell for now meine sehr lieben Freunde - my well-loved friends in this void talking space.

Sunday, August 18, 2013

The Last Of A Kind

It took ages and ages and ages as well as ages more, before this could ever be written. Now that it is finally writ, these pieces bare our thoughts, mirror our tears, speak of our flowing blood and depict our sensing all that goes about.

But unlike many, my people live with us far away from the bustling metropolises. Born of aristocrats, but the last of our kind. Like many nobles in many lands, we have no longer been born in opulence; deaths and conflicts, disease or other indisposition and by some stroke of inadequacy, such as gambling too much on foretold fortunes, or simple betting against greed, our forebears divested.

It is not disheveling to live thus, but a mere challenge. More than eight parts of ten in the entire country are much too poor than all of us in the woods and our sympathy goes with them, as we well know how most awful their conditions are than ours.

True, we subsist on meagre victuals whilst the rest of our brethren in high places live importuned by the blood of the small folk who are suffered by these thieves and robbers.

We die small and big deaths in the woodlands, we succumb often to perilous ailments, but there is no one to blame, except ourselves, for not fighting to live longer, breathing longer, filling up with sustaining life to take us farther many days out into the future. We are devastated, yes, but not defeated. Ours is a credo of living with the pride and joy imparted by our many a jolly forebears. We sing and laugh - never unlike the ones who can take life with a pinch of mirth. We cry and wail - never different from the one who experiences pain, suffering and piercing solitude.

We are a fierce people, our subjects and us all, but we are gentle. We do not always follow straight paths as in the mountains and woods you walk where the roads and paths are extremely too crooked to fathom. We see what we see of every one in our sphere, because we are just what we are, having no need to place layers and layers and layers of mud over our selfs to masque what must be hidden and never revealed. Only the age old hypocrites do that, until now. We do not worship things, except just one God.

But at the end, we will join with the Others more different from us. There will be catastrophe, danger, death, pestilence, we would at least want to be where we may be of help, for we have been taught to prepare. As I said, we truly are, the last of our kind.