oh-8

News say that, compared to last year, this New Year caused less deaths, less wounds. This is how we take stock. For example, 2008 and there are still six of us. A family. The year of the five will come. Will come.

The Un-invites

I officially have more contacts than blocked people. That's as good an index as any: I've gotten lazy.

Chalk It Up

My father celebrated his 61st birthday, December 23. I've yet to get him a present. I remember telling him about four years ago that his birthday was earmarked by those pioneers of the calendar, the Mayans. They called their calendar the Tzolkin. It's so accurate as ancient calendars go, and after all these centuries it's still only off by a few odd seconds. According to the Mayans, the world ends with a cataclysm on December 23, 2012. That would be Dad's 65th.

I'm going to buy him a pair of pants and wish him a long life.

Molar revolution

The dentist called the wisdom tooth he extracted "exotic." Made me feel special. Like I'm supposed to do a dirty dance on the chair or something.

That was a month ago. Last week, he got the other wisdom tooth and said nothing.

But he got my cell number from the records. Texted me once just to prove it. I saved his number and wrote it on the cardboard spine of my calendar.

Maybe he's still looking at the tooth, a thing as nonfunctional sitting before his eyes as it was in my mouth, ranked along with Cadmus and the gums. It's probably something in his pocket right now, in its small plastic tube. A tube transparent enough for his eyes whenever he's commuting and in a jam. Or when he's in between patients or reports or chapters of that favorite book of his that bears infinite rereading. Maybe every night he takes a look, after dinner, before he goes to sleep.

So for me, every night it's tossing and turning. Every morning, for six days now, it's my cell phone alarm and zero messages.

Mommies Attack!

Nothing against them, really. Don't get me wrong. I've got one myself and I want to believe I love her dearly. Fact is, it was her life entire that shyly suggested - voicelessly - that I teach. So my pupils may blame her. Voicelessly.

What I find interesting's how moms go with their kids to fetch classcards. Or how they get it themselves, sans the child. And I mean moms - not dads.

Oh. I teach college. I've been at it four years running and I've never seen so much mothering. I don't know how to take it. On one hand, it's all good. Kids honest with their grades and all. Also, I don't mind if they tag along to interrogate my colleagues: "Where did this five come from? My little angel was valedictorian." UP Teachers need all the checking and balancing, what with the liberties in the way of responsibility (that elusive fourth R). These teachers! Ugh, such delinquents like you wouldn't believe.

I don't mind. Maybe children nowadays, eighteen year-old, twenty-two year old children nowadays, they could do with the extra bonding.

Maybe we should consider college-level PTA. And family days.

I've been guessing at many reasons. One foremost: the Tuition Fee Increase must have left the prole kids and has begun cutting from the upper strata. Where the babies are. A hypothesis, nothing more.

Okay. Let me come off honest. I'm just pissed I couldn't get anywhere to eat lunch what with all the students and their friends and their moms crowding the queues, taking in all the aircondition. Matter of national security, my dad would say.

First day on November 14, UPLB. I'm expecting some kids to freak me out, sobbing quietly as I hand them the college tertiary level university coming of age independence day syllabus. How to shoo the mothers with their hands on the windows mouthing goodbyes. Never walking that talk.

Maybe they're mouthing I love you. Puh-lease. Let me chew your children in peace.

what to right here aaaight the simple singularity of celibate little bombons and the trobadours of the troubled lands need the hands that feed that are the clothed ministers of mandela and candela of the human horoscopes all scattered in terms of celestials and blackholes mut never muse or the man shall shiver and find no rest and what is rest for what the hell should motivate us into so much spyware and that tech must never necessitate war and I always say that peace is the easy part because at the very least of your brethren war has profit written all over the ears of corn and the stupid shall never want the stupid shall never want please

By Rote

Visit to Jane Austen’s house... I put my hand down on Jane’s desk and bring it up covered with dust. Oh that some of her genius might rub off on me! One would have imagined the devoted female custodian going round with her duster at least every other day.

Barbara Pym
August 11, 2007
Diary entry

This is the method. I read the diary entry. I imagine how your voice would have wrapped itself around each word.

How would your tongue carry ‘desk’? Would it hiss out ‘genius’, would it settle with ‘female’? In a flash, I see how your tongue clicks up female, and this sets off a crystal bell where I never thought I kept any.

I read the entry again and again, trying to get your tone right, hoping to catch the rise and fall of your breath. It disappoints me that I cannot recall you ever saying the word ‘rub’ or ‘custodian’. I have not heard enough from you. I console myself with the clarity of your pronunciation of ‘imagine’, for I hear it as if you were whispering it to the back of my ear, a place which is mine and I cannot see.

You have that chewing mannerism. Have you noticed? I do not know if anyone called it to your attention. It is not a knowledge that would save the world. This is just something I recall, a digression from the method of course, yet excusably, something in the same province. Anyway, it is just a manner of yours that I am glad to remark before my death. One thing – like a peculiar burp or the accident of a dimple – a quick thing, for which one requires neither dream nor logic to push up and again into the light of memory.

Do you care if I pull myself up from the digression? Do you hear me? Do you hear me listening to you? Do you hear how I tried to eat your voice so I could write my words on the strength of your tongue? But then, I find some difficulty. A common enough phrase – ‘at least every other day,’ ‘at least every other day’ – a slow phrase, yes, but one with which I shall never allow you to help me.

Pscychosomatism

Down to the cottage, housekeeperless, to a weekend of hard domestic work and cooking. No one has any idea of the problems of a woman Minister!

Barbara Castle
July 29, 1966
Diary entry

My dearest readers must have guessed the process. You read through a handful of diary entries written the same day, across the years since the press was invented. You choose one which resounds inside you for some reason. Then write your own.

You don’t need to explain the resonance. You need not even clarify it to yourself. Just snip and paste. Then hope that what you write will make some parallel sense.

Cross your fingers. Sometimes it does. But I have not given the full account of this inane method.

Anyway, I had read through some of my recent entries and noted my many mistakes with a dancing pair of dismay and a resolution to let the faults stand. But what I romanticize as resolution may in actuality be laziness. I must be startling my parents whenever I curse the monitor. Their weekend son who switches on the PC only to lacerate his eyes.

I sometimes wish I were more outgoing. Yesterday my brothers and sisters went out to take in the Saturday sun in their respective fashions. I asked none of them where they were headed. Meanwhile, I missed my afternoon meeting because of a toothache. Since my father has been having toothaches all week, I suspected the reality of mine. What if the pain was brought on by the power of suggestion coupled with some desire to stay home. How could that be when I wanted to attend the meeting? We were set to discuss extrajudicial killings and forced disappearances.

The razors between gum and tooth kept me from further thought. I resorted to my father’s meds and an insane PC aquarium game. Think like a fish. Think like a binary fish. And there goes what’s left of your pathetic social relevance, gargled out and down the drain.

Pain is a good thing because you’re assured that you don’t have to miss everything in the world that came and went. This is a better day because I woke with a cooperative mouth and a story in print. A pocket of reflection issues from this relief and the little sense of achievement. In this space, I wondered how much a person can take of other people’s thoughts and aches. How many pages of diaries must you read? How many pounds of pains and confidences must you hear?

So this bad feeling, for I recall encouraging and auditorium full of people to read and read. I used to level a pile of at least fifty books a year, a quota set by my friends. A different manner of teaching advises only five books for two years or longer, a prudent selection of the teacher. These the student would read over and over until he had thoroughly absorbed them. The next two years are then set to surpass the intelligence of the five books.

I find this method greener grass lovely because I realize what the numbers game generates: too many mirrors, too many selves.

For the sake of equilibrium, I recall why I promoted the race in the first place: there’s the faithful danger of narrowing men to a singular Word.

Part Eleven

-Alice Walker, Possessing the Secret of Joy.

What do you see when you turn out the light?
I can't tell you, but I know it's mine...

-Ursula K. Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven.

“Let’s hope it’s enough.” Kane looked out over the giant reservation, searching the northern horizon for some sign of the approaching flood.

–Christopher Hyde, The Wave.

V. Headache of the Delusional, Conversion, or Hypochondrial States. Headaches of illnesses in which the prevailing clinical disorder is a delusional or conversion reaction and a peripheral pain mechanism are nonexistent. Closely allied are the hypochondrial reactions in which the peripheral disturbances relevant to the headache are minimal. These are called “psychogenic” headaches.

N.B.: The foregoing represent the major clinical disorders dominated by headache–those which are particularly common and in which headache is frequently recurrent and disabling.

–Lawrence R. Boies, Jr., “9–Facial Pain, Headache, and Otalgia,” in Fundamentals of Otolaryngology: A Textbook of Ear, Nose and Throat Diseases, by George L. Adams, Lawrence R. Boies, Jr., and Peter A. Hilger.

An Occasion of Three Seams

Invalid Children's Exhibition by Norman St. J. Stevas. A moving and desperate occasion. One of the prize winners, sitting in his chair like a piece of crumpled-up paper thrown into a wastepaper basket, emits regular whoops of (I hope) pleasure. The pride of the parents, teachers and helpers in the achievement of their charges brings tears to the eyes.

Sir Hugh Casson
Diary entry
April 28, 1980

We know this chore. We take a vehicle to somewhere, thinking of a place that is neither the coming from nor the going to. We understand this moment: not being in three places at the same time. Especially poignant when something is happening in that place where the mind lingers. A birth for example, a wedding or a graduation. This afternoon, the latter, that all-important and futile exercise we call "commencing;" and call thus with some taste for the ironic and the fond. This afternoon, a particular batch - pride and bane both, house of my anger and my love - shall be destroyed before the steps of the Umali Theater. This familiar theme of mustard seed and rotting elephant: destruction, else nothing will grow. This afternoon too, after my sister returns from the seamstress, after my brother switches off basketball television, after my other other sister wakes up; I take that singular jeepney ride of at least three places. Despite the first idea of poignancy, there is a situation more notable: when something is happening in more than one of the three places. In more than three places really, so that only the vehicle is thought to hold everything together. Yet, if we do suspect such a center, we suspect wrong. Therefore, despite pride and memory, I attend to more solemn errands this afternoon.

Caduceus Suki

This sickness of a brother. An ugly affair from where I stand, and no human instrument will tell me his exact pain. His face is a sweaty mask when he says it is painful, and that is that. What else can you say about that which you are trying to throw away to a skinless void? I walked to the drugstore on the other side of the highway. So up over the pass. I stand at the queue, give the pharmacist our prescription, and wait some more as she fetches the meds. Small hours, but there's never a drugstore without customers. In fact, there are so many of us that I have to quell a plural hate. A good thing everybody's after medicine, and each face represents someone somewhere sick in the dark or under antiseptic light. Maybe much more sick. So I handle a feeling of neither love nor hate, just a blank and observant waiting. It's not enrolment line waiting or traffic jam waiting. More of a ferris wheel high seat waiting with dangling feet. My spin comes at the cashiers. Her hands and eyes at the keys, she gives me a question, Do you have a Suki Card? I ask in turn, A drugstore suki; isn't that the saddest thing to have? She's still down on the digits and do not think to look at me when she says, Unless it's your ID, sir; don't go making it anyone's ID. I receive the plastic and walked back home. I do not recall ever being called sir at a drugstore.

Static

Panaginip ng videoke. Malaki ang makina at walang tigil ang kanta at inom. Hindi ko maalala ang imahe sa makina. May away na mula pa sa unang panaginip ko na hindi ko maaaring isulat. May dalang barena ang aking tiyo. Kaaway niya ang videoke na dinuduro niya ng barena. May lupa at ugat-ugat pa sa dulo ng barena ngunit kita pa rin ang tilos ng bakal. Nagstatic ang makina. Tuloy ang kantahan, medyo pabulong na nga lang. Todo ngiti pa rin ang mga humahawak ng bote at mikropono. Galit na galit ang tiyo sa videoke.

Mountain Lyric

Summer, and under the shade of a shut up Carillon, I begin the practice of distance. Beloved will work elsewhere, live elsewhere, leaving her incandescent metaphors. Co-teachers stay, but do they really? Do I know who they will be besides their same names and sane faces? Also, students go. That’s what they’re supposed to do, study and go. What I hear are tricycles and people cooing at their expensive dogs and the wind that hisses and hints at a catalog of all that I do not hear. And will never. Friends stop the flow of words dead and the only way these could live is to say them again and again until I wear the meaning out of them, like how imagine there were once cities back in the day when Makiling held back her volcano words. Then the accursed snakebird brought her a gift, the thought she might one day lose them, these people she loved. Already missing them, she sang her grief and she cried and she sang. It was in this manner of fire that she lost them. It would be 300,000 years before a university was possible. When I entered this university four years ago, there was kapok in the air and a tower could yet sing.

Cat and Cross

Was what it was. You know how it goes,
full moons and intersections.
Only, it was I slain,
Bones won, white from pink flesh.

Black cat out with agimat:
What it forever is.

Confetti

Nanaginip ako ng sanlaksang bata. Takbo sila nang takbo kahit matindi ang buhos ng confetti(2). Delikado ang hangin at natakot ako na mapigtas at manghagupit ang mga banderitas(3). Tawa lang nang tawa ang mga bata. Sa ikalawang panaginip(5), may isang magulang na baboy(7) sa kural at may halong confetti(8) ang putik. Nasa loob ng kural ang ilang bata. Sinuotan nila ng sinturon(10) ang baboy. May isang batang babaeng nakaunipormeng St. Joseph’s(12). Dumapa siya sa lupa na madamo na at isa nang football field. Marumi ang field, maraming kalat na plastik na baso at paper plate (15).

Mga sipi:
2—Maaaring piyesta dahil sabay-sabay ang mga school fair pati ang alaala ng mga fair.
3—Wala akong maalala ni isang kulay ng banderitas.
5—O sumunod na eksena nitong tinatalakay na panaginip. Depende sa dami ng REM stage, maaaring may apat hanggang limang panaginip ang tao sa isang regular na tulog. May mga taong tumututok sa kanilang panaginip na kayang paghiwahiwalayin ang mga ito. Ang iba, napagsusunod-sunod pa.
7—Higit sa interpretasyon, mas mahalaga para sa akin ang mga pinagkuhanang eksena o teksto ng panaginip. Maraming maaaring pagkuhanan ng baboy. Maaaring ang matagal ko nang namalas na paggilit at pagkatay ng baboy. O ang trak ng mga baboy sa SLEX. O ang Valentine sisig. Puwedeng ang lektyur ko hinggil sa “Babycakes” ni Gaiman ang nakaimpluwensya. O ang tulang “El otro tigre” ni Borges. Puwede rin na noong pinaglaruan ni Nicolas Cage ang kanyang ilong sa pelikulang “Ghost Rider,” ang pumasok talaga sa isip ko ay ‘baboy’ sa halip na ‘bungo’. Pero ang una kong naisip pagkagising ay baka dahil Year of the Fire Pig ngayon. Ikalawa, baka dahil sa muling pagtalakay ng pork barrel. Maaaring wala ni isa sa mga ito. O lahat, pinagsama-sama. (Habang nagtitipa, tumugtog ang Radioactive Sago Project sa isip ko. Ngunit malamang naisip ko lamang iyon dahil sa ginagawa kong pagsasaayos ng tema. Malayo man, baka may naimpluwensya rin.)
8—Hindi ko matanggal sa isip ko ang bird flu habang kinokonsidera ang imahen ng confetti. Hindi ko naman naisip o naramdaman ang anumang pahiwatig ng sakit o ibon habang nananaginip.
10—Itim ang sinturon. Tiyak ako pagkagising ko. Nang isipin ko kung tiyak ako habang nananaginip, hindi ko maalala. Kaya ngayong nagtitipa na, hindi na ako sigurado. (Sa katunayan, nang maisip ko ang pork barrel, dumami ang bilang ng sinturon, naging tatlo. Hindi na rin ako sigurado kung ilang sinturon ang isinuot sa baboy. Ang alam ko lang, suot ito ng bata na hinila mula sa shorts bago isinuot sa baboy.)
12—Hindi ko maintindihan ang imaheng ito. Bagamat nakita ko noong elementarya ang unipormeng St. Joseph’s, hindi ko na maalala ang eksaktong hitsura.
15— Walang katiyakan kung may confetti pa sa hinihigaan ng bata. Wala akong maalala kahit isang kulay ng confetti. Hindi ko maalala ang hitsura ng isang partikular na confetti. Papel ba iyon o plastik o yero?

This Godfriday

No es un viernes,
el dia regido por la divinidad que en las selvas
entreteje los cuerpos de los amantes.

Jorge Luis Borges, “Cambridge”

This invulnerable day with the knowledge that I will not die. Although somebody lies dead and somewhere certainly somebody is dying as much as I am, I decide to draw none from my last breath. Today my word feels binding. Therefore, it is. Having chosen life, I decide further: I shall become a something. Something, while the druidic school feasts and plays; while my students and friends tease out a spiny vine of drama from rock ruins; while she mourns. I shall become this something which is all I could become to be of some use: a worker. Not a craftsman, no. Let the others climb such an illusory hierarchy of skills. Not an artist, definitely. Let others feed on the concrete self-importance that they can never imagine as dream. Surely not – today – a godcreator. I shall not presume to toil under so a grand an assumption. A laborer is all I am, all I shall be in this indestructible moment. I am this employee of the universe. I am the drafting of the lesson plan, checking of the tests, breathing and all its corrections. I am the tossing of the square-holed coins. I am the work, the sheer telling of a story. Somewhere under this sun, within my pages, and among the wilting carnations, I will write: “Allow her rest. Allpeace upon her.”

Well, I visited old Susma. I don't think D'karabaw's up and running. Susma's got no substantial word. I hope Hawhaw is in a good way. I have never been able to support him (or the others) and so none of my intentions count. I intend them anyway, these foolish little things called hopes.

This greatspace of goodleg room. I wish I knew if anyone came by here. And why. These things may never be known to me. Nevertheless, this is a good place to put some things. I wonder how to use this in the scheme. One thing for sure: it must remain formless. Even when the skeletons stiffen to brittle perfection. This room must never distinguish between a doorknob and a lightbulb.

My oh my what have we done here? Strange to see this, a log cabin in a Deadbaguio hill. On the strange bed I find hairs. They were mine, once upon a time.