YOU?D think being out in the cold Canadian winters would have chilled her into silence. Not Arlene Babst Vokey. Not even having to deal with laundry and cleaning out her basement while raising a son and nurturing her marriage of a quarter of a century could slow down her brain cell activity. That has always pitched at brilliant and has never taken a back seat as she kept her sights on her country of birth.

Well, she?s back?the witty, wildly brave woman who from time to time witched the Marcoses in those martial law days. Sniping, sometimes biting, taking swipes at the dictator and his wife in her own inimitable style, she is not easily forgotten, especially by us Quarter Stormers. She definitely livened up our reading, proclaiming that there were still sparks of life in the muzzled media of those Marcos years.

Still in top fighting form, Babst is in her finest vitriol, but this time, with the Marcoses out of the way, she?s out to get US (yes, you and me), in fact, the entire Filipino nation beset with a culture that is ?diseased,? in her latest book Echoes.

Living in the crisp, cold winters has certainly sharpened Babst?s perceptions of this country (which she still calls her own), sweltering and melting like yesterday?s flavor of the month in the heat of its own confused muddlings. She spares no one?from the upper crust (to which she belongs), to the middle class and the lowliest government clerk. She turns our hides inside out (including her own family and upbringing), and does so in lucid prose which makes it more bearable. Babst has always been elegant, even at her nastiest, which can probably be ascribed to those ?nunny bunnies? (nuns) at her convent school who made sure she was a proper young lady (and wrote like one) even when she was being sarcastic.

Ever the iconoclast, she swipes in one big swath all the icons, the manners, attitudes, the saints ( yes, even them) and other hallowed heroes that we held dear. Everything comes crashing to the ground under her incisive pen. Unthinking and accepting, we took all these to heart simply because that was the way things were done. But Babst remembers how stupidly inane it was to wear bloomers underneath our thick chemises underneath the ankle length skirts as a ?colegiala,? as she questions religious practices too.

The national thought pattern that believes ?I am above the Law? is mirrored before us in this book. We are dis-eased with laws, ill at ease and in denial. Any lowly government functionary will think nothing of driving through several red lights (with a police escort to clear the way). Is it considered a prerogative of office that officials can engage in big international business and skim off billions of pesos using public service as an excuse? The empty rhetoric is inversely proportional to fat bank accounts abroad; it goes on down the line, to the last clerk who types your documents and charges P100 for it (used to be P20) in some ratty court office where people are lunching on the judge?s table. And yes, someone is selling longaniza during office hours.

It?s surreal. It would make a wonderful indie film that would win accolades in Sundance or some other festival. Because that is the fabric of our everyday lives; that is who we truly are, reflected in the mirror Babst holds up.

Or that?s what we are becoming. Take a ride into Manila, our once beautiful city, and hold your breath at the stench, while you cry over the crumbling buildings inhabited by unwashed, unfed families whose children ply the streets with arms outstretched.

It could go on and on; and Echoes, the book, reflects it in a witty combination of essay and fiction (or thinly veiled personal accounts of her life). The terrible throes of this culture in which we are ?ill at ease? are embedded in the well paced fiction and the clear-eyed essays. They mirror us and we are forced to look at ourselves in this light. Though at times a hint of smugness sets in, she never sermonizes. However, she also, perhaps wisely so, does not offer solutions.

Many sections are sheer fun (e.g. cheering on an inebriated Nick Joaquin as he climbed up the flagpole), but she takes on different modes as she focuses on five aspects of our culture to reveal how ill we have become and how, in some instances, healing can happen?chapters on the "Filforfams" or Filipino-foreign families, (mis)education, media, foreign (mainly American) influence, and religion. More mixed marriages bring on a hotpot of culture and exotic looks, and she suggests that these infusions could be a healing answer to the disease.

Babst also examines Pinoy lifestyle quirks (a rich matron who thinks nothing of buying a designer bag worth much more than a home for her driver); she looks back on her own (mis)education and focuses on the repression and misconceptions, with special emphasis on sex, as well as the hypocritical lives people live.

An insider?s perspective on how newspapers hobbled along during the Marcos years, with first-hand stories of friendship with the publisher of the country?s biggest publication and personal brushes with her favorite punch target?Imelda Marcos?is another highlight. These she gathers in the final chapter on spirituality and religion, where she provocatively takes potshots at our Catholicism. She has been a Zen practitioner for decades. It?s a rich read, studded with fun anecdotes alongside subversive thoughts.

In an e-mail interview, Babst remarks ?Why do we have to suffer so much pain and violence? I think we go through mysterious phases of evolution, some of them very dark and horrifying.?

She continues: ?There were seismic changes in human perspective after Hitler and Co. So much more consciousness of the darkness that was happening in other parts of the world, not just their own sphere, so much more awareness of injustice, vulnerability and of unchecked ignorance and intolerance.?

Perhaps, our pain at what we have become will eventually lead us to these insights.

Babst exposes the disease but does not offer a resolution. As a journalist and writer, she can only mirror who we are and who we have become. We will need to discover our own healing path, which she can again document, if this should ever come to pass. ?

?Echoes? is available at National Bookstore and Powerbooks.