01.31.08 kulturnatib

For good?

Are you staying there for good? Or, are you leaving for good? These, and their variations, were some of the most common questions asked of me when my departure was certain and, then, imminent.

Despite their proximity in that previous sentence, there was, it turned out, a lot of time between certainty and imminence. Enough, certainly, for these questions to percolate, then steam off.

To help things along, in the interregnum, there were the despedida parties, official and unofficial. And for those who were not in those parties, or who would have heard about them yet were unable to show up, or simply would have heard about my certain then imminent departure, the questions, when I bumped into them, would be blurted out, preceded by; Oh, you're still here?

Yes, was naturally the answer. And, yes, also to the succeeding questions.

I am staying, leaving, or, otherwise, as I write; I am now here for good.

Then, as my departure documents were wending their way -- every so slowly, it seemed -- to my apartment door, this answer was more than less tongue in cheek. But then, also with some truth.

I was leaving for good. I was going to stay for good. I am now here for good. There are actually, as always, many goods.

First of all, it is good that I be with my wife and, soon to be, family. It is, or should be, good for the practice and production of the kind of art that I have, in recent months, been practicing and producing. It is good for the cross-cultural facility, a foundation perhaps, that we are envisioning to help Filipino artists and Filipino art education institutions. It is good for our involvement with development issues and practice among Filipinos here and in the Philippines as well as other immigrant communities here.

About these I think of, as I survey the rack of Filipino publications, one of which banners a story about a Filipino-Canadian community coming together to try to save a Philippine government office from certain closure; as I wonder if it is just this particular office that has an obviously retouched photo of GMA or if this photo is now the standard issue to Philippine missions abroad and, even; as I feel, as soon I stepped in, that, if not for the subzero cold outside, this could be just any government office in the Philippines.

Actually, by international law, this is more than just a government office. This is sovereign Philippine territory. For all practical purposes, this is the Philippines. In Canada. This is the Philippine Embassy in Ottawa.

There is no mistaking that this is a Philippine office. No wonder; it is cramped, office tables are bunched up together, there is a radio playing rather loudly, office people are chatting even louder, the forms to fill up look like they're mimeographed – could those dinosaurs still be alive? -- and you are advised on filling up the form that clearly is not what the form is asking for but can be made to still be acceptable somehow.

I am renewing my passport. Doing this, I think, answers or tries to answer that other dimension of those questions about leaving, staying for good. This dimension really asks the question about identity. Are you leaving behind your being Filipino? Are you staying in that other-hood identity of being also-Filipino or not-any-much-more-of-a-Filipino? And, these, for good?

A passport, of course, is not everything about identity. Yet, it can also be a lot of things that in many ways can simply spell the difference between getting around different countries – except and especially the U.S. -- easier or more difficult depending on the passport on hand.

For those with simple utilitarian attachments to their passports, dual-citizenship is an acceptable, even preferable contingency. And this embassy offers information about that for the asking.

Kudos to this embassy, they were rather fast. In less than an hour I had my new passport. Handwritten and all, but still new and official and good for another five more years. A year less, I found out later to some dismay, when I realized that I really didn't need a renewal until next year.

Still, enough time to sort out some more this question; for good?