bopis

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 imahe 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?

Etiquetas: damgo

Reming’s warnings were up when the three Aguinaldo men went out to watch Casino Royale. One bought the tickets, another shelled out for snacks, and father took care of coffee. I imagined that such a night won’t ever happen again, a night of tropical depression laughter and the nostalgia of elementary school day floods. We made jokes, one about how the storm was more spiritual than anything else. Laughs about the common stupidity: no one brought an umbrella. Then we ran in the rain, laughed some more. But of course, I thought, we had a sturdy roof to come home to. Even if we didn’t catch a jeep or cab and had to walk the whole way, we would have gotten nothing more than chill troubles and fun. What was the place of such a thought as those about the unroofed and suffering at such a good time? It was a night charged with the thrill of some threat yet the solid confidence: we’ll get through, see, we’ve done it when we were younger. Bond always wins. As for this film, one of us liked it, another was disappointed, another half-loved it. Or was it half-hated? I wondered: how would a fourth would find the movie? My son or my brother’s, I mean. Would he ruin the future possibility of such a night, mute our laughs, slow our steps, endue us with much more caution than was happy? Then it occurred to me, maybe we three already achieved some Euclidean equilibrium with the night and the weather. Possibly a balance that a next generation Aguinaldo would have ruined. Still I asked myself: when would we have the young one? Even with the thought of a possibly perfect stretch of years with such movie nights offering a silent spine to us three, I still want this fourth. No matter where it will come from. Even if maybe from the sisters. Maybe better if so. Even if maybe this fourth would drain us of such moments, maybe deprive us of a night as that last with the proper care of the running elder, the ready ear for each other, the well-placed disagreements. Three of us were silent desires. Our fourth, if captive of the rain with us, would have become our center. Our only concern. The fourth would come home the least wet, the most tickled. Great how an unborn possibility could have such bright prospects.

Etiquetas: woman19

Yesterday, I went home after classes, lunch with the girl, and my uneventful trip home. Seems always sad to call something uneventful. It’s like I either I didn’t have the eyes to explore the moment or there was no moment to be explored in the first place. Which is more sad? Anyway, maybe I did see some things. Maybe the few migraine pages of Bellow’s The Dean’s December were events in themselves. Maybe that English-speaking swell-breasted youth with a spongebob cap, a short braid, pedal pushers, and sweet-looking calves was an event. Especially because she’s seating across me. Especially because she put her legs up and possessed what should be a seat for three. Her eyes were on the cover of my book. Possibly, if I read this that "Why every day is a ride" six years and eighteen days from now, I would have forgotten the girl’s face. Even forget the flesh of her stomach when she tried to adjust the aircon and failed. There were two people with her, a tot and another girl with no shoulder straps. They sat in the seat in front of hers. With their backs to me, it is possible to forget them. Even this girl with white rubber shoes an arm's length away is forgettable. It is possible to someday say I had an uneventful ride.

Etiquetas: woman19

Found him appalling. Hated the fact that I did, but I did. I mean, I wanted to find as much value as I could in a person. But he thinks that he controls his lies, that his lies are some sort of subversion – political and literary – and we of lesser intellect (and commensurate faith) could not presume to judge his most minute fib. Took me all my energy to keep myself from telling him that he was a compulsive liar, that his lies controlled him, and his lies had little political value because he – despite claims about the military lusting after his cellphone – had as much political value as a singular farmer. And what literary value? I discovered no truth in his claim that he won both fiction and poetry fellowships. Funny how a phone call’s worth of research can annihilate his illusory struggle and move me to view his tearful production of one amber lie. There, I wrote it, and having written my disgust, ceased to hate him. There must be a way to stroke his head as if it were a kitten’s.

Etiquetas: warcousin

This comes to me, this old thing. A smile I have forgotten to wear. Do not look too surprised. See, I tried to shake it off with anger. Tears would have proved useless, so I abstained from squeezing them from my eyes. Then the choice of laughter, the only improbability that still made some sense. Yet there was no denying such an impervious pleasure. Acknowledge: my students have gotten themselves enemies. Hurrah for them. There remain things a friend could never teach them. No matter how perky, how depressed, how hostile.

Started too many things, continued enough. Troubling that I look forward, always forward. Possibly, I am not looking at my most intricate piece so far, my best student, my dearest organization. So far. Possibly I am looking at my last group, friend, and story. All our human grasping entails this. We never see the tip of our fingers.

Etiquetas: woman19

Today at the Brebant dinner, we talked about the crushing of the minds of children and young men under the huge volume of things taught them. We agreed that an experiment was being carried out on the present generation of which it was impossible to predict the consequences. And in the course of the discussion somebody advanced the ironical idea that our present-day system of universal education might well deprive society of the educated man and endow it with the educated woman: not a reassuring prospect for the husbands of the future.

The Brothers Goncourt
Diary entry
February 5, 1884

Still here in Makati where I sit in this moment an hour after fiesta and ten hours before of my first class. Guadalupe! One of those nights when I locate myself within a prayer. You see, it was a Sunday of checking a chockfull of essays and poems. Two sets belonged to my two Humanities 160 classes. I usually resort to comparing the classes. But I just finished computing their partial grades and found no cause for contrast. At least, not according to the numbers. The two bore identical ratio of passing to failing students, 14:7 and 20:10. Exactly one damned third of each class failed the first half of my course. Now, if I fail to attract sleep within the next pair of hours – Guadalupe! – give me a bus where I won’t have to stand for the rest of my hundred-minute ride.

I know how it will go. A row of resorts will pass, some road, mountain. Buko pie stands, then illegal funeral parlors, and more buko pie. Then come the boiled egg yellow facade of Olivarez. The bus will stop in front of this mall, a gas station where the jeeps that will take the curve lie in wait. UP COLLEGE, UP GATE. But before this mall, some small vending buildings before the station, the bus will pass by a vacant lot the size of a classroom. The viridian grass marks a time that I never experienced, nevertheless the time remains known to me: the greener days of Los Banos. This lot is the green shadow of rising cement. Off-center, I shall find a tree, short like a sidewalk tree, but lush, well-fed by a steady stream of foul waste. A sign on the tree, and I shall read it. Maybe it will announce glass-cutters. Or, like the other times, it will crudely advertise vulcanizing shops. Or maybe, as I read once or twice before, it will speak of keys and duplications. When I pass, this next time, this first time after week upon week of first times, shall I bother to read it? Or shall I sleep thirty seconds more, believe it gives NO VACANCY? There will be miles in my step down from the bus. Too little of this measure will belong to the coming gate.

Etiquetas: woman19

Home by 2am with very aching feet. Who’d be a courier?

Peter Hall
Diary entry
February 11, 1975

A person I knew loved lying as much as he or she hated being lied to. Another person I knew could not express her or his self from a spirit of gratitude. Another person I knew wanted people – people: let’s not call them children encouraged to read her or his blog and write her or him their heartfelt testimonies – to think she or he was against US Capital-I Imperialism. But this she or he was as much a President Arroyo to another Smith. She or he will never even give Nicole an oh so sorry. One of all the people I will ever know was touted a peace lover and would make love with the outrage that would rise from the pit of her or his stomach. Another person I knew would assure him or her, “It is not fear. You are righteous. It was a liar who said Dennis forgave you, you who were loved. Not yet such a thing as quits.” Another person I knew lost a phone and wanted everyone to make the intuitive leap and believe camouflaged fingers took it. Another person I knew would ask this person with kidnapped or hostaged phone, “have you read his blog?” One way or another. One day or another. God knows it is possible she or he would have the mind to do even this. Another person I knew would think I was – all along – writing about her or him.

Etiquetas: warcousin

Thinking so much these days about what it is to be a woman, I wonder whether an ingrained sense of guilt is not a feminine characteristic. A man who has no children may feel personally deprived but he does not feel guilty, I suspect. A woman who has no children is always on the defensive.

May Sarton
Diary entry
February 4, 1975

Endeavored to write versus the cold. Typed: “You go against a good thing and sometimes the good thing fights back.” Nice to have little need for fury. Just type away, generate heat between the bone of your finger and the plastic key. Type and type until that spark of faith: somewhere there must be fire. Scrolling along the pages I wrote and rewrote, I found something of value. I stroked the letters on the monitor as if they were strands. I traced the font and imagined depressions of an old lost pen. Saw the ink feather out to the white of the screen. I called the file "daughter.rtf" but felt need for a more specific name. Cold usurped my lungs the moment I understood that when I successfully renamed her, I would amount to deletion.

Under the reptile scales of the date palm lotus-sat the Botanical Garden Master. Morning and her fingernails caught the sun. Her fingers stood as candles from her thighs. I approached her. Maybe she failed to notice. Maybe she knew so much about me that she did not condescend to care. What issued from her mouth was not the Aum exhale. She was breathing out No. With every long breath, No. In need of confidence, I sat alongside her and meditated on her No. How to accept No to fill life? How to grow content with life by sucking substance from it? No is difficult for artists in search for what is newest, what is – could it be a misnomer? – original. Whybecause No is an old word. A word before mothers and sires. No is especially hard for artists seeking what is oldest, what it is that came first. Whybecause No is an ancient word, but when they ask it if it is the oldest, No says its name like it’s the most recent fruit that suddenly made a garden out of the world. Heady with enlightenment, I said to the Master, "Teach me." She opened her mouth, blew out her answer to my nostrils. I thought of a score of foolish rejoinders, among them “Please, please teach me,” “Please do not teach me,” “Where is this garden,” and “By whose authority do you know all you know?” But the only words my tongue beat from my mouth was “Who then could embrace the No?” Her answer was so thoroughly cloaked in a cough that she could have said anything between All the Just to All of Us. Either way, I disbelieved her and went my way, my back heavy with someone’s laughter.

Etiquetas: woman19

Woke up to a photograph of a mustachioed soldier of a nationality other than Filipino. He was drinking from his canteen, his eyes staring beyond his water, straight out to his front – which at the moment happened to be my left thumb. Rifle slung on his shoulder like a duffel bag of a forgotten wife’s imperishable laundry. He was in side view, so I failed to see what he was looking at. But my next moment cut me with a sense of inadequacy, but I attempted to restore myself by saying out loud to an anotherless morning that it was the picture that was incomplete, flat as it was, and spreading only to the size of an old man’s hand span. Picture ought to stretch to five yards or a mile, depending on what got my drinking soldier’s attention. Picture at a further distance from entirety, yes, if what he was looking at was an animal or an enemy because – unless that it or she was merely returning the soldier’s gaze – the responsible photograph ought to show what that it or she was looking at. For totality’s sake, if that it or she was looking at some other thing with eyes, then we needed rolls of photo paper. Ah me, I did not have a camera. No kilometric photo paper, so I better not blame myself, I said. Out loud. I could not see what my soldier saw. I could only see that he was looking. While drinking. Louder, I said that that was enough vision, given the limitations of white borders. Exactly ss the previous moment gave me a self-incompleteness to defeat, the next provided me a self-loathing to kick or persuade away. The picture, the picture! Hate the picture. The dimensions and nothing else. I said, loud. I looked at the unwilting photograph. I saw the soldier. He was looking out beyond his water. He was drinking from a canteen which seemed to me a grenade, which seemed to me a bloody good French kisser.

Etiquetas: woman19

Thought it would take more than a gift watch to make me this giddyhappy. Thought it would take less. But then, it was given to me so I felt what I felt, and a watch was precisely what it took. Came from a student before I ended the school week, from a not-any-student. One of university’s writers, a hard worker and a consummate girl of letters. One of the few who actually believed in the need to read while writing. Listen while speaking. This fan of Genoveva Edroza-Matute. This high-spirited but quiet girl. This flat one of a human being. Too familiar a face that none of us knew how to say goodbye when she left for one of them States. This pure of dream girl. We had to convert her into a familiar phantom as soon as possible. We still had work to do. The ghost months, and then she returned the morning before closing shop. This sighting. And right in my very cubicle. Bearing news, bearing chocolates, with questions, with watch with face – all of which I had to take then brush away because two students were deeply scheduled for consultation. Work to do. It was all I was or could be. Watch was perfect.

Etiquetas: woman19

Wish you a better day, my friend. Better than the ones you have been having lately. Cold wind out, and we both know how these things of weather can get abused in literary circling. Like a vulture. Don't let it get to you.