A particular Monday morning

The Myth called B'la

Gecko

Last night, I listened to the sound of the gecko. He loves me. He loves me not. He loves me. He loves me not. He loves me. You don’t have any idea how much each stop or pause of the gecko can affect me. I feel some tightening in my stomach as I lay still thinking of you. I came here by way of Kialeg, where I heard about a new bike trail being carved in one of the mountain barangays in time for the approaching local festival. I learned about the B’laan community in a village called Tagaytay. On my way home, he stopped by the roadside, fiddled with his phone and gave me your number. I couldn’t resist taking it. The number would bring me a step closer to you, a proximity that is fret with risks or dangers, depending how I would use it. I noticed the way he slumped his shoulders. I kept thinking of what I should (or should not) do with your number. With each sound of the gecko, I keep thinking of you. He loves me, he loves me not. He loves me. He loves me not. I lie still in utter darkness until I drifted off to sleep.

Inventory

Pawned my Samsung tablet for the second time after redeeming it from the New World, pawned it again at RV, the guy appraising it nodded his approval and threw a sneaking look at me, thinking this woman must be in dire need of money, this woman is not used to pawnshops, does this woman ever have a piece of jewellery, why does she have to pawn a tablet? and suddenly, I was seeing myself through the man’s eyes, I see this middle-aged woman in a dark blouse, a knitted chalico over it, drawing from a heavy black bag what must be her last treasure in the world, did the man ever see that that tablet was my reading tablet; that I read from there W.H. Auden’s essays on poetry, W.H. Auden’s essay on reading and writing, that guy Nathan Poole’s impressive short story, “Stretch out your Hand,” which won first prize at Narrative.com in 2014,  Joyce Carol Oates, “Fragments of a Diary,”  Salman Rushdie’s The Duniazat, Salman Rushdie’s Personal History; I’ve been reading from that tablet about Stalin’s daughter, and volumes of poetry I downloaded from Narrative.com and The NewYorker and The Paris Review; and plenty of books about photography and the past presidents of the Philippines. Can’t the man see, how that piece of equipment has sustained my life, given me a rare source of pleasure when things are becoming unbearable? But as I said, these are times of extreme difficulty, when the pay I receive could not last until the next payday; and so I have to forego the source of life’s greatest pleasure to buy a kilo of fish and vegetables and rice, pay the fare, and most of all, feed the cats, and the boys, until the next payday comes again with a shock, because no matter how hard I work, the pay always run short, and life always ground to a halt before the next payday arrives. Now, I know that even though man (woman) does not live by bread alone, woman also needs bread to live and have a soul, I’m not sure if I still sound right at this point.

Still, I hope pawning the tablet  will not completely deprive me of my secret pleasure. I can still find so much to read everywhere. I can still make do with the books at home, mounds of them staying unread in one corner, gathering dust; on top of my cabinet, towering over my table, threatening to fall. Books are growing on the floor, at the side of my desk, on my table. Haven’t I told Sheilfa books are streaming in my room, like a river? A copy that I bring home one day can first be seen on my table, and then on the bookshelf next before it succumbs to the floor; and then gone to sea afterwards because I could no longer find it. My books don’t stay in a fixed place, in a fixed position. They form part of a bigger universe where everything is revolving around something and rotating.  At times, they grow wings or gills, they begin to have lives of their own. Sheilfa was shocked. At first, she hesitated lending me a book; but because of desperation, she left me some of her most prized collections, Edith Wharton’s Old NewYork, Proust’s The Germande’s Way, Zeotroppe’s, Willa Cather’s, when she was hurrying to leave for Jolo.  So, here I am now, friendless and tablet-less; my friends are faraway, battling their own battles. I’m fighting my own battles vigorously but I can now feel the strength draining out of my body. I just discovered that I’m now a 47-year-old woman, without a past and a future; trying hard to retrieve my past to understand it; turning it over into the light, like a piece of jewellery you’ve seen for the first time. For a moment, I believed that by understanding the past—my past—I might discover the future—though, the future for me is already way too late. Now that I no longer have that tablet, I feel naked.

Declaration

Since my frequent comings and goings, and my infinite trips back and forth to my hometown are causing so much disruption and severe hemorrhage to my writing life, which also means, my financial life, I promise to spend every tiny bit of a rest day or holiday only with books, and not with people. I will get back by totally boycotting all forms of inebriating liquid, and by avoiding like plague all types of merriment and the wrong type of people.

Dreaming of you

Awakened from a dream at 1:45 am. I was in a group, the usual crowd of journalists herded for an event, trying to find a restaurant. We were on a bus, as usual; and in a strange city. Aboard, we walked and ran while the bus was running, trying to keep pace with its speed inside the abnormally-shaped narrow space near the steering wheel.
The  woman next to me was a journalist from Manila, she had that look; and later on I saw my old buddy Bong Sarmiento, sidling up to me, and we beamed at this pleasant recognition. He used to call me, Luka, which was actually loka (crazy) but in this dream, he did not do such a thing. He was dressed in an old red shirt and he appeared so thin and bedrraggled, which was not quite like him in real life. Awakening with a headache and a bloated feeling in my stomach, I went down the house and did some stretching and kicking exercise before the big mirror. I forgot to say, I was in Ma's house inB'la. W hen I was huffing and puffing, the sweat threatening to burst, I stopped, fanning myself vigorously with Ma's paperfan, the kind the stores at the malls give you to advertise their products. 
When I went back to bed, I dreamed of you but couldn't remember anything from that more important dream.

Growing Wings

My Ma had asked my Pa, so, how is the copra going? And Pa thundered, “How should I know?!” and I told Ma in a whisper, “Don’t worry, Ma, I will go, I am your Magick Daughter, your runner, I am your Mercury, I go where ever you want me to go and you don’t have to worry because I run so fast; just like Mercury, I grow wings on my feet.” She looked at me with amused disbelief, and when I came back, she was surprised that I have paid her tax dues, paid the electric bills, pre-empting impending disconnection, talked to the people at the farm, all in one sweep. I said, I told you Ma, I’m your magick daughter, do you believe now? 
I’ve been intrigued by life at the farm. I’ve never been here for years except to sleep in Ma’s bed and then gone off the following morning, chasing love and happiness, which was always beyond reach.
But now, Ma’s crumbling memory, Pa’s ailment which we want to believe is only old age - [sisters don’t want to talk about Pa’s lungs anymore now that Pa has stopped taking painkillers] - have forced me to stay here several days a week to find out how they’re doing. 
I always find them in the mornings staring into space, their faces devoid of any sense of urgency; and so, I get disoriented, too.  I couldn’t touch the things I was supposed to write, as I stare into space myself.  
But life in this place intrigued me a bit.  Some curious things always happen to people and the rawness of them sometimes struck me dumb. As soon as I arrived here Thursday night, for instance, I heard about a boy the neighbors rushed to the hospital because he cut off the tip of his penis. They’re still in the hospital now, I hope the boy survives, and why would he do such an unimaginable thing? People here are asking. His classmates at the public high school said it must be the exams which are getting tough, but I suspect it must be something about his mother or father’s attitude towards sex, the rest of the folks said it must be that madness running through the family. His elder brother was mad, his father was mad, they’re not the kind of madmen you can see running around naked, but still they’re mad, said T, our househelp. 
I forgot to tell her madness is also a sign of genius, and I hope, I’m also mad—but I mean that in another sense.  I spent the morning reading part of The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, thinking about you; and about what he said about the two of you, target shooting inside the property you inherited from your Pa and Ma. He asked, what did you two call each other before? Luv? Swiddah? I cringed. Questions I’ve been longing to ask you: What is your name? Who are you? Where did we meet? Where were you when I left my childhood?  Where were you when I arrived? 

Thinking of you

At 45

She’s old enough to think and behave like her age, but right now, she’s behaving like an infant straight out of the crib. Maybe, Mother had spoiled her with too much bad milk that must have stunted the growth of her brain; and so, as a consequence of spoiling her, Mother had to suffer. At 45, she tried to justify her lack of foresight, her abject ignorance, and all the weaknesses in her character by pointing out that she is the youngest of the three sisters; but at 45, that’s hardly justifiable anymore, considering that there were only two or three year gap between her and her sisters; which more or less even out the differences in years. At 45, she was supposed to make some discernment in her judgment because at 45, a woman is supposed to have reached her peak as a person, everything that goes from there would be going down; a downward spiral, that is, they say. So, if you’re not getting sense at 45, there’s no hope you could still get some sense at all towards the end of your life.  Besides, I knew of so many people who are much younger than her and yet, they make sense. They would not just leave a sick man alone or ask someone to quit their job in 10 days or else. They can’t even abandon a sick kitten. But she, as a shock, would have a stranger in the house for company of her two ageing parents because suddenly she wanted to serve other sick strangers abroad. Some people have well developed sense and sensibilities, which are utterly lacking in some people like her at 45. At 45, she cannot stand my reasoning, so she preferred to assassinate my character in front of a domestic help who knows nothing about the world. At 45, a person is already considered middle-aged, a scary phase; it is assumed that she has gone through life’s numerous learning experiences. To be haplessly ignorant at 45 is such a big shame for there are so many things she could have known at 45, which she would not have anticipated at 20. Right now, she’s behaving like she missed some important learning of some 25 years of life. She’s utterly lacking in sense and sensibilities alone. She’s such a pathetic character, this woman of 45. 

Chanced Meeting?

That afternoon, I was a bit restless. I thought I needed to go to Upper to find out the next schedule for copra. I asked Ma if she wanted me to go, but Ma said, it’s getting dark, it’s not good to be out at this hour. I said I waited for the sun to cool to be able to go; and so, disregarding Ma and her fears, I walked out of the house all the way to the Crossing to wait for a ride.  I did not like the look of the motorcycles I met along the way. I did not like the look on their faces, those calculating look. So I texted him if he was in B’la. He said yes and asked if  I needed a ride. I said I was at the Crossing on my way to the Upper B’la and when I turned around, I heard a motorcycle engine revving up, and saw him emerged from under the trees. We were already a way off when I asked him where he’d been when I texted because it seemed he was just very close by. He said he had been up to your house. “His house?" I froze. "Is he here?” 
"Yes," he said. 
“Let’s go back, " I said.  
“Why?" he asked. "He is so busy, he’s got work to do.” 

“Let’s go back,” I said.

And so, he turned the motorcycle around so fast that before I knew it, we were already in your house, the motorcycle going right up to your front yard, what would your mother say? I did not know what to do. He stopped and pointed to you, “There, he is,” he said, saying your name. “That is him!” 
When I looked up, I saw several you’s at the same time, all seated there under the tree; and the eldest one, wearing a dark blue polo shirt, was looking at me, nodding, confused. Briefly I was able to say, “Just excuse us, we’re just passing by,” and then, we were gone, me, trying hard to hold on to the back of the motorcycle without touching his shoulders, and then, when we passed a hump, bumped upon his shoulders anyway.

We left you wearing a puzzled look on your face, watching me very closely; watching me and our friend sped away. 

Lover's Tryst

Will I ever have a chance to tell you at the right moment and the right time how you played an important part in my life, that the memory of you astride a horse treading the river ford is forever etched in my mind? Will there be a right moment and a right time now that we no longer own our time, our space, our bodies?

Happiness

Wish me luck!

A glimpse of you

The motorcycle skidded, the driver said something; called out your name, asked me if I knew you, before I turned around, and very briefly, so briefly that it never even allowed my mind to register until long afterwards, flashed your image—your face, a little bit rounded now, your faded blue and gray collared shirt, your feet stretched out before the whole length of your body in perfect calmness, just the way I thought you used to do—as the motorcycle skidded past, so fast that I couldn’t even register in my mind the meaning of your sudden presence. As I turned around again you were gone. All I saw were trees, the coconut fronds, some weeds, the wall of some houses, the iron gate of Uncle’s house, and my heart sank.  What followed was the stillness that lay between us through the years; the long quiet that has forbidden me to speak your name. Can we ever cross that stillness? Will I ever hear your name again? When will I ever find the courage to ask: Where have you gone? Why did you leave?  What were you thinking when you used to sit on the porch of our old house? What did we use to talk about? Did we ever have anything to talk about? Or, did we just stare at each other as the seconds and the minutes ticked by; and eternity swirled in a moment of stillness? 

Hearing about you

On our way back to town the previous week, someone brought up your name to ask if I still remember you.

But how could I forget? Those nights you used to sit on the porch, which we’ve torn down long ago to give way to a ground floor terrace that remains unfinished until now. That porch remained in my memory, haunting me in my dreams. It had a rectangular trough, which used to hold Ma’s potted plants that included a palmera, and other ornamentals that made the pit of my stomach churn with longing every time I remember them now. 
Enclosing the trough was the open-air window whose frame was carved with wood of various geometric shapes. 
On the nights that you would come by for a visit—you’d sit on this porch, your back to the plants, your whole frame of a lovely body directly facing us. The porch gave the full view of the insides of the small house, the living room opening to an adjoining dining room, the edge of the dining table directly on the line of your sight. 
What were you thinking back then? I was thinking of hiding somewhere but the house offered no extra space to hide! We used to be taking dinner every time you drop by for a visit but no matter how we prodded you, you'd refuse to join us. Instead, you stayed there where I could not see you, eating me with your eyes, tearing away my soul from my body.  How did it feel back then, to be feasted on by your eyes in the dark, in full view of Mother and Father? It was something I could have enjoyed sumptuously in private, but right then and there, it was such a discomfort. 
Now that I'm hearing your name again, I remember those secret feasting we had, and wondered when our feasting ended, replaced by long years of your absence? 

Pa's Story

Over the weekend, I was lucky enough to bring Pa and Ma to the shrine of the Infant of Prague, which has always been my favorite place, an airy place full of greenery overlooking the city. The place has a personal significance to me because it was here where, when Sean was still a toddler, and I was oftentimes left without a house help at home, I would go up here with Sean to light candles. Candles, I know, have their religious significance--but for me, at that time, a candle was not only the light of my own darkness, it was also the balm to my frayed nerves. The simple act of lighting candles and watching them melt seemed to melt away all my troubles (until I go back to the house again)!
It was this secret pleasure that I wanted to share with Ma and Pa. We spent the Saturday afternoon strolling about, doing nothing, staring at the greenery. Pa, as usual, was his grumpy self. Shortly after we arrived, I asked if he was tired. "Ngano gina-treat ko nimo parang bata? Bag-o pa ko naabot diri (Why are you treating me like a child? I just arrived here)," he replied. We went to an adjoining property, where I pointed to him the coal dome of the coal-fired power plant near the sea. "That is Binugao, Pa," I said, because Binugao held a special place for my Pa. The place always figured in his stories about his arrival in Mindanao. But he said,  "Ambot, kung motuo ba ko nimo (I don't know if I should believe you)."
I told sister, who was left at home, we should just be patient with Pa because of what he endured since he was nine years old. Sister replied, "Kay imo jud diay nang gisukitsukit (So, you really dug it up?!)" and I felt I was stealing Pa's history, as if Pa's story is not my own story; and Pa's story is not our story. As if it was not a story about Mambusao, as if it was not a story about Capiz, as if it was not a story about Davao, as if it was not a story about Binugao, as if it was not a story about B'la, as if it was not a story about Upper B'la. As if it was not a story of our people, as if it was not a story of our country.

Cassandra

In our family, I am a Cassandra. I can “see” but no one believes me, so I ran the risk of suffering the fate of being slaughtered, as Cassandra did after the Fall of Troy when she—along with the rest of the family—was taken by the winning army of Agamemnon as part of the war booty. Cassandra was the distraught woman standing with Agamemnon at the foot of the stairs, before Agamemnon took the red carpet welcome prepared for him by Clytemnestra upon his arrival home. The red carpet led directly to his death in the poisoned tub.

Unlike Cassandra, I did not wait for the total devastation to come. I escaped to tell the story. My Pa arrived in Mindanao from Capiz as a nine year old boy after the war, when people in the villages of Tum’lalud and Sinunduhan (just across the river), in the town of Mambusao, were talking of migrating to Mindanao to look for better life, or perhaps, a better land. Pa told me this story, sitting on his hospital bed, the dextrose on his left arm, as he emerged seventy years later, trying to make sense of the pain.

He was still a boy when they arrived. What prompted Grandma to bring her children to Mindanao was not really the need to look for better land, but that row between her and Grandpa over the eldest daughter Maria, who ran away with a man not of their choice and went to live with him in Iligan. [[This story seems to be lost now, because Maria died years ago and the only cousin who I knew can link me to her also died the following years.]] But according to Pa, Manang Maria ran off with a man. She was the eldest daughter in the family—engaged to someone important back in Mambusao. As a result of her elopement Grandma and Grandpa had a row, which ended up with Pedro (the name of Grandpa), already drunk, chopping off the leg of their table, which like the house, was made of logs, a sturdy material. As a result of this quarrel, Grandma rushed to migrate to Mindanao, where everybody was heading.  She was a tough, strong-willed woman, and as I imagine, high spirited. Women were not allowed to go to school during her time, so, she only reached up to Grade 2, while her brothers went to Manila to become a priest and a pilot. Yet, she was an intelligent and ingenuous woman, who, during the war, was able to feed some hungry souls straying to her house because she never ran out of supply of rice from her harvests. She immediately secured the money (sold their land? Borrowed? I’m no longer sure) for the trip to Mindanao, where they eventually landed in Davao and came to settle in Binugao, where Pa eventually worked as the encargador of the land of the Gods (Guinoo).

In Binugao, the teacher was distraught when all the Grade six pupils failed to solve the Math problems he had written on the board. When he came upon Pa during lunchtime solving all the problems on the blackboard with ease, he asked, “What grade is this?” and someone answered, “Grade 1V.” Pa suddenly basked at the attention of all those girls (dalaga), most of them Haponesa, regarding him with awe, which slightly embarrassed him, though, he said he felt assured to realize he was wearing his Boy Scout uniform on that day, with the matching shoes at that.  He was also amazed that the lessons in Binugao could be that easy compared to those in Mambusao.

When Mr. Espanol and Mr. Buenaluz, the teachers from Luzon, realized Pa was already tilling the land and planting corn in it, they asked with concern, “Why, where is your father?” Pa blurted out, just like a nine-year-old child, “They kept fighting with each other so they agreed to separate. Mother left him in Mambusao.”  His teachers never let him work in school after this. “Parang Luzon (like Luzon),” they said to describe his farm because they were Ilocanos, and might have missed the land where they came from.

Reading the Paris Review

...and loving the feel of it while mulling over the fact that they took Father and Mother away from the rented apartment in Nova Tierra only to move them in a poorly-ventilated one-room apartment in a seedy area not easily reached by taxi, where they were in constant threat of floods when it rains; and how about leptospirosis and other water-borne diseases? Why can't they think about these things when they consider Father or Mother and why did they not tell me about the whole idea in the first place, as if I were a woman from Outer Space? Is it because they hate my penchant to say the things I had to say; which they they equate with creating trouble?

To the Best Beloved

March 18, 2015. Fourteen years ago today, when everyone else was preparing to leave graduate school, I entered Silliman University Medical Center at 1 pm, gladly and fearfully, expecting your birth. I was glad because finally I would be meeting you, not just any other child any mother can give birth to, but the special subject of the personal essay, “Letter to the Womb: Writing and re-Writing Woman in the Literary Text,” I submitted for the final exams of our Contemporary Criticism class under Dr. Ceres Pioquinto. The idea came to me out of the blue, after the realization that on the verge of childbirth, I could no longer think in a clear, linear and logical way but in swirling, maddeningly spiraling fashion; and so, to suit this particular frame of mind, I abandoned the methodical way most scholars used to write their “scholarly” texts and wrote instead a personal essay addressed to you, Best Beloved, applying the critical literary theories I learned by heart.
And so, in a gist, this was how you came into this world, Gloria Steinem spewing words on the TV screen in between my throes of labor, making the pain slightly bearable, Kuya Karl watching at the hospital lobby, as my stretcher rolled by; and Ja, your Dad, trading jokes with the nurses in a voice grating to my ears.
Now, I can’t believe it’s been 14 years; and I'm slightly disoriented. Where is that toddler who used to grab my books every time I attempted to read? Where is the one who tirelessly climbed over my body? Where is the tireless watcher, who used to monitor the hands of the clock inside the newsroom, who used to tell me, Ma, the sky has turned black outside, are we not going home?! What a delight to have you! Happy 14th year, Sean!

Dear Tea

I remember some years ago as I sat in a veranda facing the road towards Genting Highlands, and someone said, “Good morning, how was your sleep, shall I make you tea? Right, I'll make the right tea for you,” and he disappeared into the charming little kitchen of the hut in Kuala Kubu Baru. That was how I got  introduced to Teh Tarik, so sweet, so heady, I thought I could never get over it, in fact, I was crying uncontrollably on the airplane weeks later when it was time to go. I called the Teh Tarik the Malaysian counterpart of the Filipino coffee, which is sweet and creamy, and speaks something about our relationship with either Spain or America; the Malaysians, of course, had their British; and that explains their right-hand-drive cars on the road. I said, we, Filipinos, are coffee drinkers; we rarely drink tea, except when we're sick; and that explains why, traveling by land from Davao to other parts of Mindanao, I always find myself asking the stores in every bus stop for tea, a cup of hot, bitter, sugarless tea, preferably piping hot; because when I travel I endure some discomfort that only the taste of hot bitter tea can ease. But to my dismay, not one of the sarisari stores at the terminals is selling tea. I said, Filipinos are coffee drinkers; some want their coffees pitch black and very strong; some style themselves as real coffee connoisseurs, buying their coffee beans on e-bay from as far as Yemen and developing appropriate drinking rituals to heighten the effect of their every sip. But others like me, want our coffee sweet and creamy, to make us dream and forget the bitterness of life, which in one way or the other is brought about by the convoluted history of its arrival to our shores. But back to you, Tea, you are the love of my life, your benign flavor, your soothing effect, even the sound of the tinkling silver spoon against the dainty cups. I love the shape of teapots, reminding me of some rich godmothers forcing us to take the obligatory afternoon naps. “I have fallen in love with Malaysia,” I once told our Malaysian professor as we inched our way into the jungle called Quiapo, years after Kuala Kubu Baru, hunting for pirated rare DVDs. “I thought you said you fell in love with a Malaysian,” he said. I said, I love the sound of the Malaysian names, it gives me the feeling of deja vu.  But it was you, Tea, that I was talking about. I love you, Tea.