The Kafka Papers, Pt. 1 [bonus material]
Notes from the forbidden labyrinth of Maharlikan history
[Excerpt from an encrypted document authored by the anonymous writer KAFKA.]
As a child, I didn’t have a strong inclination towards animals or zoology. Yet the fauna of the Philippines captivated me like nothing else. There was the Philippine eagle, one of the largest eagles on the planet, with its wild mane capturing the spirit of this fierce nation that rebelled against the long arc of history. And the tarsier, its polar opposite in certain ways: small, meek, and fragile, and yet symbolic of the same boundless sensitivity at the heart of Maharlika, this undisputed king of global culture.
There’s a dose of retroactive romance at play here, I’m sure, but there was something that drew the younger me to these flesh-and-blood icons of the greatest republic on Earth. Some magic to which I am just now desperately attempting to assign words and logic.
But that magic was powerless, at the end of the day, against the grinding force that rules over Maharlika: the imperial thirst for power, control, and prosperity at any cost. By the time I was a university student, my beloved eagles and tarsiers had been swept away from their habitats and into enclosed sanctuaries, these bright and cozy cages where they could live out their last days as Maharlika’s capitalist hunger consumed their former homes. The moment I began to see this reality for what it is marked my first step away from the dogma of Maharlikan exceptionalism. It would be far from my last.