Then & Now & Then

Back then, what you had was padalan or pasali, Bikol words for the more familiar Filipino term palabas. This referred to any film showing in the small barangay where you grew up.

This included the comedy flick Max & Jess featuring Panchito and Dolphy shown one summer afternoon in your grade school’s Industrial Arts building. It was probably led by your mother, who was then in charge of raising funds for the school’s non-formal education.

The movie was shown using a projector which flashed the film reel to a very big white mantel probably borrowed from your grandmother’s kitchen collection locked in the platera of the dakulang harong in the libod. The tickets were probably sold at P1.50 each for two features that provided some three hours of quality entertainment to your barrio folk.

There was also the health documentary sponsored by the Ministry of Health top-biled by then Minister Alfredo Bengzon, who gave out health advisories for the barangays. This was in the early 80s before Marcos stepped out of Malacañang. When it was shown in the Triangle, the open barangay hall, it rained heavily, much to the chagrin of some barangay folks who just went home disappointed. The others who did not leave the show made do with umbrellas and raincoats. But back then, the big telon was enough for them to get hooked: talk of being able to watch something on a big screen once in a blue moon. The documentary featured practices that can be adopted by the barangay folk to avoid diarrhea and dysentery, diseases that can be acquired from unsanitary and unhygienic toilet practices.

Then, there were the nightly treats of Betamax showing on black and white and later colored TV monitors in three key areas in the barangay.

There was one in the house of the Molata family which catered to the Baybay and Iraya residents. There, movies were shown inside the cramped sala of the Molatas, which was just inside their big retail store.

Bruce Lee

There was also the one owned by Tiyo Magno San Andres, a distant relative of your parents, who would clear his own bodega of grains and household supplies to make space for the nightly flicks of Bruce Lee, Dante Varona or Ramon Revilla, among many others. But you hardly had the chance to get in there, probably because you already enjoyed the free entry in your relatives’ “bigger movie house.”

This was your Auntie Felia’s bodega movie house where mostly new tapes were shown nightly for the entertainment of the barangay. Used as warehouse for copra transported in your Uncle Harben’s 10-wheeler truck from Tinambac to Naga, that place was in fact the biggest movie house because it could house 75 moviegoers or more at one time, particularly when it had no copra.

Yet, from time to time, moviegoers also sat on top of copra sacks even piled 10 times high while they revelled in Redford White’s antics or Cachupoy’s capers, or while they were kept alive and awake till midnight, enjoying the burugbugan or suruntukan in the movies of Fernando Poe, Jr., Rudy Fernandez, Rey Malonzo or George Estregan and a host of many other action stars. Talk of orchestra and balcony seating at the time.

Aside from the word-of-mouth shared by folks in the barangay, the nightly flicks were announced having their titles written  in chalk on your cousin’s green Alphabet Board displayed in front of their two-storey house just in front of Triangle, which for a long time served as the barangay market.

There was a time when the Acuñas’ bodega served as the official theater for the barangay, catering to the nightly entertainment of the folks—sometimes families (parents and children)—from Baybay to Pantalan and from Tigman and Banat, two bigger sitios situated at the two opposite ends from the Triangle.

When new tapes were brought in for the same movie house, you could expect a Standing Room Only; therefore, you could expect to be uncomfortable being seated or haggling for an inch of space with children your age, some of them even smelling rich of kasag (crabs).

Baad taga-Baybay ta parong-parong pang marhay an pinamanggihan. Linabunan na kasag tapos dai palan nagdamoy. (Probably from Sitio Baybay who had boiled crabs for supper and forgot to wash their hands afterwards.) Nom!

Among others, the Acuña movie house had the most strategic location, serving as the hub where most of the residents converged.

But that movie house would serve the barangay but only up to the time when your folks decided to settle and stay more permanently in the city. The kids, you and your cousins, were all growing up or had to grow up—so some things had to go. Besides, the place had only gotten smaller. (But certainly it was you who had grown bigger.) 

You had been initiated to the world of the movies at a very young age.

Growing up in that small barangay with all these movies you saw, you readily recall the pictures in your head: The loud and bright colors of the characters in Max & Jess, inspired from a komiks cartoon, only complemented the loud mouths of Dolphy and Panchito who raved and ranted against each other all throughout the movie.

There was also the sepia appearance of the Ministry of Health’s documentary flashed on the barangay telon, which only made it look like a news reel further back from the 1960s. You realize now that it was rather a mockumentary because at the time people were being taught on health practices under the rain, which had only ironically endangered their health.

And of course, the many varied colors in the smaller screen of your relatives where you probably saw—through the movies—all the worlds possible.

Now what readily comes to mind? You had the medieval heroine Hundra, which featured axing and butchering of warriors and amazons for most of the film; and the sharp colors of the characters in the animation Pete’s Dragon, which you must have watched with your cousins a hundred times only because unlike the rented copies used for the nightly showing, this was an original Betamax tape sent by the Acuña relatives from the United States.

There was also the flying dog in the Never-Ending Story; and the cyborgs in Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Terminator.

And of course there was the wave of melodramas favored by the women in your household probably because most of them were tearjerkers—from Dina Bonnevie’s Magdusa Ka to Maricel Soriano’s Pinulot Ka Lang sa Lupa to Jaypee de Guzman’s Mga Batang Yagit to Helen Gamboa’s Mundo Man Ay Magunaw, and a hundred other (melo)dramas.

These were the movies peopled by characters you would remember; characters whom you would, every now and then, find or seek in others; characters whom you would, in later years, see yourself become.

Back then, you got to enjoy a movie and even memorize the scenes in it only because it came once in a blue moon, as it were.

You always looked forward to one weekend when your parents would bring you all to watch the latest release in Bichara Theater in downtown Naga.

The whole week you looked forward to that Saturday or Sunday they promised because it surely would come with a date at the Naga Restaurant where you would be treated to bowls of steaming asado mami and toasted or steamed siopao—not to mention a probable new pair of shoes or a cool shirt from Zenco Footstep or Sampaguita Department Store.

But now, you have already brought home an audio-visual entertainment. You will watch a movie from your USB to your LCD TV, full HD, complete with the frills of the latest technology. Now the movie is only yours to play—and play back again and again and again, as many times as you like.

Back then, if you liked some scene in the film which you’d liked to watch again, you’d have to wait till the next feature so you would wait until you spend some three more hours inside the theater. But now, you won’t worry anymore. With your latest downloaded movie flashing on your 40” LCD screen, you can freeze that scene and relish the drama or action—complete with subtitles—to your heart’s content.

Back then, watching a movie was something to talk about with your siblings or cousins when you got back from the city. Now, watching a Torrentzed film from your USB drive is what you can only do because it would be so hard for you to talk to them who are thousands of cities away from where you are.

Words and Worlds

There are moments when you recall some words you first heard when you were young; these words easily bring you back to the past. Whenever you get to encounter them again, you begin to picture people and places, faces and spaces; colors and presences. As if in a dream, these images pour onto your mind at random; sometimes from one face to another; from one place to another; from one scene to another.

You could do only this when you type away the keys: letter by letter, word by word, this daydreaming brings you to these spaces and faces; these times and places; these worlds. Through this daydreaming, which you do usually through the day, yourealize that they are worlds that you would want to rather be in again.

Jamboree. You have never been to an actual jamboree. Vaguely you recall one afternoon in grade school when your mother's Grade 6 pupils were being led by Mr. Domingo Olarve, the industrial arts teacher, to build tents and take part in varied group games, complete with teams and cheerleading. They even built a campfire toward the late night inside the grade school grounds. But you were hardly in school by then. Burubuglangan—that’s how they called you. You just tagged along your mother who was one of the teacher leaders then. It also refers to that kind of player in your games who was not considered an official opponent or competitor. Sort of like understudy—as you were barely 6 years old.

Some years later, when you stepped into the sixth grade yourself,you hardly had one. Probably because Mr. Olarve was now either un-motivated tolead the scouting activities for the school; or that you school principal Mr. Virgilio Abiada’s projects did not include the scouting for the students when October came. You never had jamboree even as you were constantly told that Ardo and Zarina, your cousins in Iriga, almost had it every year and even in their high school.

Timpalakan. You remember this word very well. Across the year, and even across your entire elementary school life, your teachers sought you to take part in an event in the district level—arts contest, essay writing contest and even quiz bees. In these activities, you never wondered why they would not get somebody else.

Bivouac. You first heard the term from your elder brothers Manoy, Ano and Alex, who went to the city trade school. In that school, your brothers had undergone bivouac, that you remember there was a time they could not shut their mouths about their own experiences. You thought it’s bibwak. Years later, youwould know the correct spelling and even encounter the same in one of the stories in the komiks which they asked you to rent from the Bago store downtown. It’s a French word,referring to a temporary camp or shelter. Ah, probably, their own version of summer camp. It must have been exciting.

Library. Back in college, whenever you were in the library, you searched for books dating back to the 1880s or earlier, those set in an old typeface,soft-bound and probably published before 1970s. 

You were excited if you happened to find one by an author whose love for nature was clear in his works. These kinds of books were very difficult for you to find; but you really allotted time to look for them. In a week, you would be able to borrow at least one which you would reserve to read for the weekend.Then come Monday, you would be refreshed, as if nothing bad happened on your Sunday morning’s ROTC drills in the school grounds.

Leo Tolstoy’s diaries, Oscar Wilde’s De Profundis, F. Sionil Jose, Nick Joaquin, or sometimes poetry in the Philippines Free Press magazine or Bikol poems in Kinaadman—you  loved to read them, copy them in your notebook, put some drawings along with the excerpts from a book.

Doing all these made your day—some of them you shared with your sister,your close friend, your teachers; and your significant other. At the time, you had felt fortunate because there were many, many good books in the library.

Among others, it always thrilled you to read short, powerful verses.Some of them answered your questions; others rid you of confusion. Some cleared your mind; and about a few spoke to you loud; spoke to you hard: “We are/Leaves on Life’s tree/And Death is the wind/that shakes the branches/Gently till its leaves/All fall” (“Death” by Herminio Beltran, pre-war Filipino poet).

No Country for Old Men

The Commission on Elections (Comelec) in Capiz headed by Mr. Wil Arceño recently dismissed the forthcoming Sangguniang Kabataan (SK) elections as needless if not unnecessary, deeming it a futile exercise primarily because it is not the youth themselves who call the shots, but other members of the barangay or the community.

Comelec’s dismissal was revealed even as it also announced that the barangay elections will proceed along with the youth polls in October this year.

How important is the Sangguniang Kabataan? We randomly surveyed members of the voting youth—and what we got was a mixture of opinions. While one said that “Wala man gid obra sa SK (Wala naman talagang trabaho sa SK),” saying that it only exists during basketball games or pa-Liga sa Barangay, another quipped, “Depende man na sa barangay (It depends on the barangay),” adding that what is important is that the voice of the youth is duly represented in the barangay council.

While we now find ourselves contemplating the same dilemma, one barangay captain randomly relayed to us how this issue remains debatable. He said that there is nothing wrong with the senior members of the council interfering with the matters of the youth. Besides, they who ought to be the future leaders need to be taught or mentored on governance and everything it requires. This presupposes that the elected youth are naïve in matters of governance or say, implementing projects for their fellow youth constituents or even the bigger community. 

But it is a different matter altogether when funds reportedly appropriated for youth projects in the barangay are not accordingly given or shelled out for their purposes. Across the country, stories are told about how senior members of the barangay council or even the parents of the elected youth appropriate projects and funds for purposes other than the development of the youth. As such, the SK that prevails is still SK—only that it means Sangguniang Kamagulangan (Council of the Elders) or Sangguniang Katingulangan (Council of the Elderly).

As per the Local Government Code of 1991, the 10 percent of General Fund of the Barangay earmarked for SK “shall be spent to initiate programs designed to enhance the social political, economic, cultural, intellectual, moral, spiritual and physical development of the members.” The SK chairperson also serves as ex-officio member of the barangay council and is entitled to a barangay councilor’s honorarium.

The presence of Sangguniang Kabataan is the privilege given for the youth. Therefore, the best thing that the members of the non-youth in the barangay council can do is to let them speak out their concerns, without being dictated by anyone. Parents and the senior members of the barangay can only do so much as to provide for the youth and their well-being—perhaps extend to them pieces of advice on matters of how to improve themselves, but the SK privilege is not in any way reserved for them. Never should the senior members of the community speak or assert anything in their behalf.

Nothing Writes So Much As Blood

Nothing writes so much as blood.

The rest are mere strangers.

—corrupted from Lawrence Kasdan’s Wyatt Earp, 1994

Dear Mother

Some twelve years ago, when I was working for Plan International Bicol, gathering information from the NGO’s beneficiaries-respondents in the upland barangays surrounding Mount Isarog and the Bicol National Park, I kept a notebook where I wrote the following verse for my mother Emma, who passed away in January 1996.

In that job, I kept a journal wherever I went—perhaps to relive the days with my mother whom I dearly lost during her life [I hardly had time for her when she was sick because my editorship in the college paper ate up my schedule] and tearfully loved after her death [after college graduation, there was not much to do aside from job-hunting and freelancing with media entities around Naga City]. And there was not much reason to hunt for jobs at all because there would be no one to offer my first salary.

The original scribbles below were written on a yellow pad paper.

The Sea House

For Emma, who loved so much

1996

Tomorrow 

I will build a house

by the forest near the sea

where

six palm trees 

will become 

brave bystanders by day—

and 

warm candles by night.

Pride from a Published Poem

After so many versions and revisions, a national magazine then edited by the National Artist for Literature Nick Joaquin—published a longer submission (see below) before the end of the year. The publication of my poem in Philippine Graphic Weekly thrilled me to no end. I felt too lucky to have my [too personal a] sentiment printed in a national publication.

It even seemed like the tribute to my mother was more heightened. For one, she would have loved to see my work printed on a national paper. Sad to say, though, it is my contemplation on her death that would give [her or me] such pride.

The Sea House

Philippine Graphic Weekly, November 1996

I hate to leave really.

But I should go home tonight.

Tomorrow I will build a house 

by the forest near the sea 

where I alone 

can hear my silence.

For it, I gathered six palm trees

stronger than me, to become

the pillars, firm foundations

of my tranquil days to come

which I will not anymore hear.

I know the trees are good 

for they survived many typhoons in the past

which uprooted many others

and which made others bend,

and die.

I hope they become bright lamps

along the black road

where I will pass through 

when I go home tonight.

I hope they’d be there

and that they would recognize me.

And if they don’t, it wouldn’t matter.

I would not want any trees other than them.

For I know they are very good.

But tonight, please 

let them be 

my warm candles.

And when I’m home 

I will be certain:

Tomorrow, I will have built a house

in the forest near the sea where

Every palm tree can hear his silence. 

And the others can listen.

A Reader’s Response

Finding the poem in one of my diskette files when I applied for work in Quezon City and Manila, my brother Mente—perhaps to while away his time in SRTC [his workplace then where I typed hundreds of my resumes] in Kalayaan Avenue back in 1997—must have liked it so much that consequently, he translated it in Bikol, rendering a rather old, archaic Bikol version.

An Harong Sa May Dagat

(Para qui Emma, na sobrang namoot)

1997

Magabat an boot co na maghale,

Alagad caipuhan co na mag-uli 

Ngonyan na banggui.

Sa aga, matugdoc aco nin harong 

Sa cadlagan harani sa dagat,

Cun sain aco na sana an macacadangog 

Can sacuyang catranquiluhan.

Sa palibot caini, matanom aco 

Nin anom na poon nin niyog 

Na mas masarig sa saco, 

Na magiging manga harigi—

Manga pusog na pundasyon 

Can manga matuninong cong aldaw

Na dae co naman madadangog.

Ma’wot co na sinda magserbing 

Maliwanag na ilaw sa dalan

Sa macangirhat na diclom, 

Cun sain aco ma-agui 

Sa sacuyang pag-uli 

Ngonyan na banggui.

Ma’wot co man na yaon sinda duman 

Asin na aco mamidbid ninda. 

Alagad cun sinda malingaw saco, 

Dae na bale. Dae nungca aco mahanap 

Nin caribay ninda, nin huli ta aram co 

Na sinda manga marhay.

Alagad sa atyan na banggui, 

Hahagadon co na sinda

Magserbing manga maiimbong 

Na candela cataid co.

Asin cun aco naca-uli na

Sigurado aco na sa aga

Naca-guibo aco nin harong 

Sa cadlagan harani sa dagat

Cun sain aco na sana 

An macacadangog 

Can sacuyang catranquiluhan.

Asin an iba macacadangog.

My Brother, My Reader, My Writer 

Perhaps having the spirit of the classicists who dearly loved the classical age before them, for one, reinventing an old manuscript to serve their own purposes, Mente made an English version based on his English translation.

Perhaps wanting to relive for himself the memory of our dear mother who was rather fonder of him [than the rest of us], Mente turned in his own masterpiece based on the published poem. Notice how the versification has radically changed—from irregular free verses to a series of couplets—and ending with a one-liner which is supposed to be the poem’s closure.

In the process, the version he rendered would become totally his original work. Comparing his piece with the original published piece, I see that the new work now brims with new meanings and warrants a different, if not disparate interpretation.

The House by The Sea

(For Emma, who Loved So Much)

1997

I leave with a heavy heart 

But I need to go home tonight.

Tomorrow, I’ll build a house by the sea,

Where only I will hear my tranquility.

Around it I’ll plant six coconut trees

Which are stronger than I am.

Trees that will become the stable foundation 

of my quiet days, which I will no longer hear.

Undoubtedly, these coconut trees are of the best quality

Because they have overcome a lot of storm, that uprooted the others.

I want them to light the way through horrible darkness,

Where I will pass when I go home tonight.

I like them to be there and for them to know me

But never mind if they’ve forgotten me.

Nobody can replace them 

Because I know they are good.

But tonight I’ll ask them to be like candles,

Warm, beside me.

And when I am home

I will have surely built a house by the sea 

Where only I will hear my tranquility.

And others will hear it, too.

A Promise to Write (A Poem)

After having undergone a number of literary workshops, I realize that images, symbols and metaphors [if any if at all] I used in the first draft are confusing and too overwhelming—giving it a puzzling dramatic situation. Now, I realize that the poem published in the past and wholly appreciated by my dear brother—with my sister perhaps, my sole readers at the time—carried double and mixed metaphors which rendered the piece fragmented, incoherent and totally not a good poem at all.

And perhaps because it was dedicated to my dear mother, I never subjected this piece to any workshop which granted me fellowships. I submitted other pieces, and not this one, perhaps because I considered the work too sacred to be “desecrated”—or more aptly slaughtered by the write people.

The images in the poem were drawn mostly from emotion, not reason. There was not even a clear use of figurative language or tropes such as metaphor or irony, a fact that would be abhorred by the American New Critics (who espoused that everything that we need to know about the poem should already be in the poem itself—and to the very least, never in the author’s intention, never in my sincerest wish to dedicate it to my mother.

Servicio

“Ich dien,” iyo ni an panáta kan prinsipe kan Wales—maserbe ako. Sabi ni Jose Ortega y Gasset sa libron Invertebrate Spain, kadtong panahon an pagserbe bako sanang kagalang-gálang sagkod magayon gibohon kundi iyo sana ini an paagi ta nganing an tawo makapadágos, ta nganing an katawohan makaantos. Ngonyan na sana man an servicio bako nang gustong sabihon regalo,  kundi sarong kontrata; ngonyan saro na sana ining obligayon na an katumbas kwárta. Ngonyan na sana man an inaapod na servicio igwa nin presyo—kadaklan na beses halangkáwon pa an singil sa kagamáy na gibo. Alagad an totoong kantidad kan servicio sa tawo bako sanang kwarta, kundi an saiyang kalipayan, an saiyang kaogmáhan. An ginasiling tang servicio nagi na sana ngonyan isa ka produkto—ginapangdalok kun bagaman ipabakal, kaya tinatawad, binabarát—parating linalangkába sa mga karatula sagkod media na dai na man makatutubod.

Sinurublian sa Hiligaynon

kagamay, kadikit

kalipayan, kaogmahan

ginasiling, sinasabi

isa ka, saro na

ginapangdalok, pinapan-imot

Biligaynon [Binikol sagkod Hiniligayon] kan “Service.” Yaon sa Worldy Virtues: A Catalogue of Reflections ni Johannes A. Gaertner, Viking Press, 1990.

Wishes

Saysay kan Paggirumdom

Sa nanok kan banggi mapapagimata ka, magios dangan tibaad dai na mapaturog pa. Sa kauntukan kan mga bagay, marurumduman mo an mga nakaagi. Sa daing girong na palibot, mapapanumdum mo an mga dai pa nangyayari. Tibaad dai ka winarasan kaidto nin grasya na masadiri an mga yaon sa palibot mo. Bisan ngonyan mayo ka nin kapas na sadirihon an mga bagay na dai pa naarabot. Ta nganing sa mga oras na arog kaini, magrumdum ka o panumdumon mo sinda dangan ihiras sa iba. An saimong pagrumdom, ining kanigoan na makapanumdom sarong balaog saimo na mayo nin kaagid. Nadudumanan mo an mga lugar na gustong kadtohan. Nabubuweltahan mo idtong mga tiempong inirokan. Nakakaulay mo an mga tawong marayo na, naiistorya o an mga tinugang maarabot pa sana. Masasabat mo an gabat kan dai napapamugtak na kaisipan, dangan kun kun ini malampasan, kanigoan na gian sa daghan.