Projection

After arriving home, I was caught by my mom - accused me of drinking, she did.. and I can't deny it.. I had been drinking - 2 glasses of punch and half a bottle of beer, enough to get my face blushing pink. I also have a whole folderful of high school compositions (poems, stories and essays) to correct that night since my mom needed them the next day.

While trying to edit the students' works, I begun to notice their fondness for handsome caucasian men with blue eyes as deep as the ocean, green luminous eyes and blond locks of hair. French sons of royalty and sultry paramours with blood red hair. Hello, we're Asians, we don't live amongst such beings.

Not to mention, there were frequent mentions of spring, snow, winter, fall and all such Western symbolisms which are not observable nor applicable here in the Philippines. Does such an esteemed perspective towards western culture healthy for us? Or does it simply reflect how much we are still under the colonialism of the Western countries, more particularly the US?

My mom told me that the students were just executing their fantasies and I should treat their work with respect, since I did also pass that stage wherein my characters were rough shadows of how I picture foreign people and locations to be. I just find it irritating that my manner of thinking then is echoed in the works of high school students now. In time, they will learn and grow out of those fanciful and shallow interpretations of the world, but still I wonder.. is that stage of "colonialism" really necessary?