gods

To title my anthology “gods” is more than appropriate. It is destined to be its title. What comes to mind when gods are mentioned? Do you think of power, of control, of manipulation, of divine intervention, of driving force, of a person, of an object or of a state of being? People automatically associate gods with idol worship, of a pagan sort that religions like Buddhism, Hinduism and Catholicism revere. Did it ever occur to you, even once, that gods do not only mean carved idols of the catholic churches and Chinese temples or even of the popular gods and goddesses of the Greek Mythology like Zeus, Athena, Apollo, Neptune, Venus among others? Gods do not refer only to idols and the gods of the Greek Mythology. Gods, in my opinion, are those that drive you and make you.
Gods are ambitions, that need to prove one’s self, the past, the future, fear, beliefs, death, the crave for power, for control, for manipulation, vanity, culture, and everything else that occupy you and drives your whole being. It becomes a mentality, a something, a state of being, that would dictate your every action and, ultimately, enslave you to the point of exhaustion, and, even, death. These gods make a person. I have to be clear that there is nothing wrong with ambition, there is nothing wrong in wanting to be a success, there is nothing wrong with being powerful or the ambition to have power, nothing wrong at all in following traditions and being loyal to one’s culture and beliefs, nothing wrong in the need to be beautiful, appreciated, liked, loved. But when all these things control you, then, these things become your gods.
Estrella Alfon’s “Magnificence” is one that speaks of a god of punishment, that need to avenge, that need to grasp justice and hurt the ones who caused you pain. Because of this, she never hesitated to show it by inflicting physical pain. But, of course, her god is not as strong as the god of the man whose inflicted pain on the child would forever torment and would eventually create a god out of it.
This, then, proves that your past, both ugly and beautiful ones, would make you. Take for example John Cheever’s “The Swimmer” whose longing for his past made him do something unheard-of and caused him to block the present situation he was in. His god made him unable to move on with his life. Ninotchka Rosca’s “The Goddess” deals with an experience of the past that tormented the main character, Martha, and gripped her being. The god she created was one of fear, thus, it changed and dictated her decisions from then on.
Speaking of fear, this one god is felt strongly and is, actually, the root of a lot driving forces in people’s lives. This is best exemplified in “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber” by Ernest Hemingway, “The Masque of the Red Death” by Edgar Allan Poe, “In Exile” by Anton Chekhov, “The Necklace” by Guy de Maupassant, and “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner. If you examine closely, however, you would see that most, if not all, gods are rooted by the god of fear. It is fear of the future that drives one to success, to wealth. It is fear of abuse, of oppression, of enslavement that drives one to power, to manipulation, to control. It is fear of being neglected, discarded, that make one pressured into driving themselves into exhaustion by constant pleasing of other people. It is the fear of being unwanted that would drive a woman or a man to vanity. It is the fear of punishment that would drive a person to kill, to get away with something, to lie, and to point sins to other people. One could even pinpoint the fear of being ridiculed, castrated, reprimanded, insulted, hurt, risk in some of the characters in the stories of this anthology.
“The Necklace” by Guy de Maupassant, “The New Dress” by Virginia Woolf, “Short Happy Life of Walter Mitty” by James Thurber, “Tomorrow is A Downhill Place” by Erwin Castillo speak of that god of proving one’s self. This god resulted into good and bad thing. Woolf’s “The New Dress” is a reflection of vanity in its real sense. One could see, smell this god in most celebrities whose concept of beauty is physical appearance. One couldn’t blame them, of course.
“The Last Rite” by Lee Yu-Hwa and “The Summer Solstice” by Nick Joaquin are of the old system, of tradition, of culture. I challenge you to look at both of these closely. Tradition, the Old System has a way of enslaving the people, of closing the doors to changes, of affecting your state of being, of dictating your future. The story by Lee Yu-Hwa focuses on Chinese tradition and the conflict of the old and new system within the young man’s mind. Tradition dictates another and the new-found beliefs say another thing. It is not so much as him creating his god, but of the powerful presence of these gods that made him helpless. These are gods that tore him apart and demands of him to choose only one.
Joaquin’s “Summer Solstice”, on the other hand, is another god of tradition, of culture. But it speaks of a god that empowered and emboldened a woman to liberate herself from the manic presence of an old system.
“The Other Wise Man” by O. Henry, “Faith, Love, Time and Dr. Lazaro” by Gregorio Brillantes, and “God Sees the Truth but Waits” by Leo Tolstoi speak of another god. This is a god that Christian reveres and a god that most claimed “Supreme”, a god that is God and Lord. These stories show this “Supreme Being” in different lights: one that calls for disregarding yourself and completely searching for Him, one that is within your grasp but you could not understand, thus, you wave it off, and one that teaches through a bad experience, an experience that made you a better person. These stories show faith in a Lord, of searching with your whole being and finding Him within you.
In this anthology, you would see for yourself what gods the characters revere. You would see how these dictated them, how powerful their gods are, and how stupid and awesome it all is. Either you get frustrated or you applaud. But, more importantly, I hope that, as you read the stories, you would come to identify which god you worship, which god made or is making you.