Nestor Maniebo Pestelos’ Under- & Aboveground Experiences From UP Los Baños Through Martial Law To Abroad To Bohol Are Worth X Million Dollars – He Has An Unfinished Book!

Betty Hemsley, American poetess, has “Talking To The Wild” – her collection of poems she calls “The Bedtime Stories We Never Knew” (facebook.com). Ampy, my wife, saw this one, link shared on Facebook by my old friend Felix Eslava 26 Feb 2023. My wife says this reminds her of my old friend Nestor Pestelos, who shared about a year ago on Facebook that he has begun and I notice he has stopped writing what could be his last book of un-pleasant memories.

From Ms Betty’s book:

We all of us have chapters
That we wish we’d never written
Pages that we’ve torn or burned
Or locked away and hidden
We all have masks and costumes
That we wish we’d never worn
And lines that we have spoken
That we wish could be withdrawn
We all of us have characters
We’d strike clean from the page
And maybe big decisions
That we’re desperate to change
And we are very tempted
To pretend they don’t exist
To tell a perfect story
Where these things are all dismissed
But do not hide those chapters
They’re your story’s little scars
And they’re crucial to your tale
Though you might not think they are
See without them all your story
Isn’t quite the one you wrote
And we have to make mistakes
If we’re to learn what matters most
Yes, without them all your story
Will be hard to comprehend
Remember - some things only make sense
When we’re getting to the end

Nestor was a batchmate of mine at UPCA, now UP Los Baños, in the early 1960s. We met, he a Tagalog from Tiaong, Quezon, and I an Ilocano from Asingan, Pangasinan – because we joined the competition to find the Editor In Chief of the student paper Aggie Green & Gold (AGG). He won – but I also won because he made me the historical 1^st Tagalog Editor of the AGG who was an Ilocano! (I could be, because in high school, I was already an avid reader of the Tagalog magazines Liwayway and Bulaklak.) That is how our friendship started – on paper!

Before or after (I don’t know) our President Ferdinand “FM” Edralin Marcos declared Martial Law on 21 Sept 1972, Nestor joined the underground. (Elsewhere, I was “invited” but I declined as it was not my cup of tea. My “inviter” has since died, of natural causes.) Nestor today is aboveground – first, for having been saved from physical harm by “Fr Acong” (Fr Ciriaco Sevilla); second, by First Lady Imelda Romualdez Marcos, yes, “embracing” him in her project “Habitat For Humanity” – and no, Nestor never forgets how important they are!

But Nestor forgets and/or hesitates and/or neglects to continue writing his book to share with the world! I quote Jerry Pratchett saying above (quotefancy.com): “You can’t die with an unfinished book.” Here I am saying, “You can, but why should you?!” Note that Ms Betty’s poem has no period at the end