‘Hope for the Flowers’, Mr. Abonal and the Creative Influence

Sa Hope for the Flowers (1972) ni Trina Paulus na binasa mi kaito sa klase ni Mr. Abonal, dai ko nalilingawan itong “part” na si Stripe sagkod si Yellow nakaabot na sa ibabaw kan pigparasákat nindang “caterpillar pillar”—tapos sabi ninda ni Yellow, “mayò man baga digding nangyayari”.

“Ano man daa ‘ni?”

Hunà ko ngaya magayon digdi. Napayà si duwang ulod.

Si Yellow kayà sagkod si Stripe duwang ulod na nagkanagbuan sa kumpol-kumpol na mga ulod—sa pagkadrowing ni Trina Paulus garo nganì mga lipay, o alalásò—na nagpaparatiripon nagkakaramang nagsasarakat sa caterpillar pillar.

Hunà kaya ninda kun ano an pigpaparaurusyúso pigpaparákaramángan pigdúdurumanán kan mga kauulúdan pasákat sa halangkáwon na ito.

Kada sarò nakisùsùan sa kadakuldakul na arog ninda antes na magkanupáran an duwa sa hìbog kan kauulúdan na ito. Kan mahiling ninda mismong nagpapatirihulog sana man palan an mga ulod na nakaabot na sa ibabaw, nadisganár si duwa.

An nahiling ninda, pagkatapos kan pagparapakisùsùan ninda sa gatos-gatos na ulod na nag-iiridós nagkakaramáng nagkakaranáp pasiring sa tuktok, mayò man palan nin saysáy. Kayà piglukot na sana ninda an mga sadiri sa kada sarò. Dangan luminitong sinda ta nganing magpatihúlog marakdág makahalì sa tuktok na ito. Nakabalik giraráy sinda sa dagà.

Mayo palan daa duman an hinahanap ninda—kun anong dapat nindang gibohon mayo man duman.

Sa pag-agi kan mga aldaw, nakahiling sinda nin sarong arog man nindang nakabítay sa sangá, saka sana ninda naaraman na malúkot palan sinda kan sadiri. Mabitáy sa sanga. Máluom sa saindang sápot nin haloy. Duman mahilumlòm. Ta nganing magsanglì an saindang itsura. Magdakula, magtalúbo.

Dangan magin sarong magayon na alibangbang. Apod ninda sa Ingles butterfly.

‘Hope for the Flowers’ came alive to us because Mr. Abonal didn't just assign us but took effort to read the story with us—meeting after meeting after meeting.

Our English class then was a bedtime of sorts, with Mr. Abonal reading classic stories to us throughout the year.

He was feeding into our minds that we were Stripes who had to be taught when and how and why we will be meeting the Yellows of our lives even as we were dazed and confused about why we had to go join the other caterpillars who were going somewhere—yes, I remember—to the top of the caterpillar pillar where, well, there’s nothing.

Dai palan daa kaipuhan na magin ulod na sana. Kaipuhan magrisgo—kaipuhan magnegar kan sadiri tanganing magdakulà. Magtalubò. Magbàgo. Ta nganing makua an sinasabing “more of life”. 

Kayà palan. Swak sa “magis” philosophy kan mga Heswita. Now I know why it has been a required reading. 

So an siram kan buhay palan—segun sa buhay kan alibangbang—yaon sa burak. The caterpillar ought to become a butterfly to be able to feed on the flower’s nectar to pollinate it. And make it bear fruit. Tà nganing may saysay. Tà nganing may bunga. May kahulugan. An buhay. Bow.

Ano daw tà—siring kan Little Prince ni Antoine de-St. Exupery o The Prophet ni Kahlil Gibran—mga arog kaining libro an minatatak sa nagbabasa?

Haros gabos ming binaràsa sa klaseng ito ni Mr. Abonal daradara ko sagkod ngonyan. Yaon an dramang “Lilies of the Field” ni William Barrett na pinelikula kan Hollywood tapos binidahan ni Sidney Poitier, African-American, na saro sa mga enot na nagrumpag kan all-white Hollywood kan manggana siya nin mga honra sa pag-arte.

Sa “Lilies of the Field”, yaon an makangirit na pag-urulay-ulay kan tolong lengwahe—Espanyol, Aleman sagkod an colloquial American English. Sa mga madreng Aleman na binuligan niyang magtugdok nin chapel, nanùdan ni Homer Smith an balór kan teamwork, kan collective effort. Na “no one can really do it alone” na garó man sana “no man is an island” kan metaphysical poet na si John Donne na garo man lang ngani “together each achieves more,” o T.E.A.M. Balik-GMRC?

Binasa mi man an short storyng “Flowers for Algernon” ni Daniel Keyes, manongod sa deterioration kan sarong 32-anyos na lalaking may helang sa payó.

Kawasà epistolaryo an style kan obrang ini, nasúsog mi an istorya kan pasyenteng si Charlie Gordon sa mga daily log, o diary entry niya—puon kan siya momóng pa, o an IQ 68 sana, dai aram an isfelling kan mga pangaran ninda—astang maglumpat an saiyang IQ sa 185, nagin matalion siyang magsurat—kawasa sa gene surgery na piggibo saiya—tapos kan buminalik na siya sa dating IQ niya, sagkod na siya magadan bilang garo consequencia. Pesteng bakuna—tibaad man Dengvaxia!

Nahiling ko giraray an ining istorya ni Charlie kan madalan ko an pelikulang “Phenomenon” (1996) ni John Turtletaub na binidahan ni John Travolta. Talk of “selected readings” in the truest sense of the phrase. 

Ano daw ‘to? Nátaon sana daw na puro may flowers an gabos na idto? O bakò man daw itong Year of the Flower? Selectang-Selecta an flavor kan literaturang pinabarasa niya samo kan mga 15 o dies y seis años pa sana kami.

Antes nagin serbidor kan siyudad nin Naga, haloy na nagin maestro sa English si Mr. Abonal asin principal kan Ateneo de Naga High School.

Masuwerte kaming mga estudyante niya kaidto: kadakuldakul kaming giniribo sa English 4 ni Abonal. Pagkabasa mi kan “Julius Caesar” ni William Shakespeare, nagpublikar kami nin mga diyaryong petsadong 44 B.C. para i-Balalong, i-Aniningal i-Weekly Informer i-Vox Bikol mi (man daá) an pagkaasasinar ki Julius Caesar, an emperador kan Roma.

Then, in one quarter, we were required to dig deep into the life of one prominent person in history from A to Z. Assigned to the letter “F”, I short-listed Michael Faraday, Robert Frost and Sigmund Freud. Eventually I chose Freud. Whose episode, if you may, merits a separate essay. These were no days of Wikipedia ever—we had to source out the lives of these famous people from books and other hardbound materials  in Amelita’s Verroza’s Circulation and Periodicals Sections of the high school library then in the ground floor of the Burns Hall.

Some of us even had to ‘invade’ Ms. Esper Poloyapoy’s and Mrs. Aida Levasty’s cubicles across the hall inside the College Library where I, for instance, found the juicier Freud—in the definitive biography by his confidante, er, bosom buddy Ernest Jones. Encyclopedia Britannica, World Book, American, all encyclopedias and primary sources—these were the heyday of index cards filed in that brown box—title, author and yes, subject cards. I did not know why oh why but of all these cards, it’s the subject card that looked the most beautiful to me.

In that single class, some fifty personalities were featured enough to collect in a compendium of sorts. We were also asked to present these famous men and probably women in class (ambiguity intended). That project alone was legendary.

Sa parehong klase, pigparapatararam niya pa man kami—as in speeches, as in oratories—poon sa mga classic poems na yaraon sa libro mi kaidto sagkod sa mga popular song na nadadangog sa radyo, pati na an sadiri ming obrang sinurusog sa mga bersikulong binarása hale sa Biblia.

Ano man daw ‘to ta kada quarter, igwa kaming obra-maestra kumbaga—kun bako sa pagsurat o pagtaram, sa pagbasa?

We also produced an album of our recorded readings of the some verses we wrote or poetry we chose from anthologies. That was how busy we were in this class. Our English skills were really being put to use, exhausted and maximized in this class—listening, speaking, reading and writing. 

In this class, too, he made appealing to us a topic as uninviting as diagramming—or subject-verb agreement—like I never saw in any other teacher.

Cool and composed, he tackled tenses and conjugation as a doctor does with a scalpel. He made grammar literally clinical. We, his apprentices, looked to him with notes and keen eyes—and probably asked ourselves: “Really? Is this how it works—so it can be done!”

He discussed grammar and usage with such passion so that I, for one, would eventually see coordination (and, or,  and ; ) and subordination (but, while, despite, etc.)—and later transitional devices (meanwhile, however, furthermore, therefore, etc.)—not only as necessities but also styles in writing.

Coming in the classroom, he would cut a small figure—but carrying books which we knew contained enormous ideas he knew like the back of his hand.

Our principal—rather, this particular English teacher—discussed pieces of literature with finesse. Articulate and fluent, he read the text aloud in class, raising points for discussion and urging us to participate and speak back. In turn, we were rather always made speechless by his opinions on passages—and enjoined to make our own—whether aloud or later in our papers.

An English major from the same school himself, he was steeped in the text he was sharing to us. He graduated in the 1960s, deemed the Golden Days of English—well, beginning in the 1950s—of this Jesuit school, along with others in the city including University Nueva Caceres and Colegio de Santa Isabel.

It was a great time to be a student of English and literature. Saen ka pa ka’yan?

Pigtaram ko bilang oration piece an “People Are People” kan Depeche Mode; nagdrama man daa ako para ihiras sa iba an lyrics kan “Lift Up Your Hands” ni Nonoy Zuñiga na sarong gospel song.

Mantang an iba paborito kan mga klase ko si mga sikaton kadtong kanta ni Bette Midler na “From a Distance” kan mga early 1990s sagkod an “My Way” ni Sinatra. After reading and discussing Langston Hughes’ “Dreams” series in class, we were also made to recite poems that we ourselves chose.

I remember a classmate of mine picked Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s “Charge of the Light Brigade”. He delivered it in class much to our pleasure and admiration—how he internalized it so much that until now his voice, his enunciation and inflections still resonate. Some thirty years later.

While I chose Howard Nemerov’s “Trees”. What? What poem is that? Ini sarong dai-bantog na lyric poem—siempre manongod sa mga kahoy. But I remember I chose it because I thought it best to shy away from the staples or usual favorites Langston Hughes, Shakespeare, siisay pa? Ano pa ngani ‘to, “Desiderata?”

While Nemerov is not popular but also not obscure (he’s a poet in the Americas along with Wallace Stevens, Robert Penn Warren and W.S. Merwin), that seventeen-line verse didn’t even rhyme. I chose it because I felt I was going against the grain. 

Pinasururat niya pa kami nin sadiri ming short story dangan pig-urulayan mi si tolong pinakamagagayon sa klase.

Dahil man sana to ta sa kada meeting mi araaldaw—kaiba na kan Practical Arts—duwang sessions palan an igwa kami. Suba suba ka ka’yan. English Lit Combo overload man nanggad.

Sa gabos na giniribo ming ini sa klase ni Sir Greg, siisay man dai maoogma ta an marka sa kada quarter kun bakong 99 o 97, 100? Si iba nganì daa 103. An sábi.

As if these were not enough, the English teacher made us keep a journal every quarter where we could write random reflections—insights, now blogs, or v-logs, or what this social media site now calls “status updates”. Yes, he termed them journals, or albums, probably to do away with the dreaded, hackneyed “diary”— which might have otherwise scared us off.

Each week, we needed to turn in entries so that he would return them to us the next, with his responses, insights and pieces of advice, not as a principal—but like a parent ‘quite removed’, like a friend to his tropa, his barkada. Throughout the year, each of us must have produced four albums.

Through these journals, the avid language teacher must have patiently pored over our impressions on anything but also probably laughed at our impressionable, infantile incantations on crushes and first loves—and surely teenage angst.

One day, he gave each one of us a copy of “Roots”, an illustrated monograph of Latin root words, prefixes and suffixes and asked us to study it—so that we could score high in NCEE’s verbal aptitude section which tested vocabulary.

It details how most English words are derived from dozens of roots but are also created through affixations or adding prefixes and/or suffixes. More than anything, he advised us to learn the meanings of the entries there so that we could guess or recognize them, or make them out in any words that we encounter. I still have my copy. 

These were not all, indeed. Parts of our afternoon sessions were also devoted to reading lyric poems including those by Sara Teasdale, Edgar Allan Poe and some Frost. And of course, his favorite—or rather everyone’s favorite: Langston Hughes. 

You guessed it right. We, too, read Rudyard Kipling’s rather more famous lyric “If” and worked with our seatmates to read an assigned couplet asking ourselves if it related to our lives at all or plans whatsoever. And he didn't stop there. He also asked us to assert all these thoughts—or however we believed in the words we wrote—in speech. 

He designed our class as if they probably designed “Pistaym”, at the time Ateneo's academic and sports field day, or even the school’s intramurals itself—seamless, organized, efficient. Such attention to detail, such incisiveness, such efficiency.

All those days in English at the Ateneo—steeped in the wonders of the language and the beauty of literature—generously invited me to a life of words—and worlds—which I have relished and would always look forward to.

One which I have now, one which I wouldn’t trade for anything else.

Sa ining maestrong pirming busy kadakuldakul pinapa-activity, mayong lúgi an agít-agitán na estudyanti.

Ganito Kami Noon, Paano Kayo Ngayon?’

Ngonyan na agang Domingo, kaipuhan mong makapabulog ki Tiyo Ben, sa kataid nindong barbero—kun sa Lunes habo mong mairikán ka ni Chancoco. 

“Arogon mo po an drowing na ini ho.” 

Yaon sa Student Handbook kan Ateneo. 

“Salamat po, Pay. Uni po bayad ko. Kwatro.” Iyo. Ta ini pa kan taon otsenta y otso. 

Kaidto, mayo nin dulagan an burulugan ta nganing makalaog sa eskwelahan. Kun dai ka mabulugan, ma-jug and post ka sa opisina ni Sir Generoso.  O kun dai man pagabihon kamo sa likod kan Module 2. 

Maabot ka sa classroom nindo tapos na an first period ki Delos Trino. Bugok ka na naman sa quiz na itinaó.

Ngonyan na panahon, pag-start kan saimong Google Zoom—pag-alas otso, an mga second-year sa klase mo, garo nagirios pa sana sa higdaan kan mga iniho. 

Long hair na, nakatururban pa, tibaad dai pa ngani nakakalsonsilyo. Dai daa kaya nakakaluwas, pa’no?

Good morning, class. Let’s call the roll.

When I call your name, say present.  Abella… Present, Sir.  Abella, what’s your connection—WiFi? Mobile data? WiFi po, Sir. Kumusta man an signal mo? Ok man po, Sir. 

Abragan… Abragan? Adoracion… Adoracion…? Balanlayos… Balanlayos…Haraen daw an mga estudyanteng ini? 

Si Adoracion po Sir mayo po daang mobile data. Sabi sa Messenger.

Colarina… Here, Sir. Coralde… Present, Sir. Diaz… Yes, Sir. Yaon si Diaz.

Duza… Duza... Duza? O, ta dai ka Noy nagsisimbag , yaon ka baga. Haen na, Noy, an uniporme mo? 

Sorry, Sir. Mayo po. Yaon po kaya ko sa balyong harong. nakikigamit lang po Wifi. Nawalat ko po Sir. Anong plano mo, Noy? Next time, Sir. Sorry po talaga.

Makusogon an boot nindo ta dai mararabraban ni Sir Rolando Saboco. Online, pa’no!

Dai mo mairikan, ta sa screen mo lang magkakahirilingan.

Makukusog na an buot nindang dai magsunod kan palakaw kan eskwelahan—an rason dai makaluwas sa sentro. Dai nanggad makahiro ta haros gabos limitado.

Ano an magiginibo mo, sarong agit-agitan na maestro? 

Bakong sabi kan dekano nindo, intindihon daang gayo an mga ‘aki’ ta mayo kitang grabeng magiginibo:

Dear teachers, the dean said, “the new normal calls for more responsiveness on our part. We do not really know how much our leniency could help them these days.” 

“Nowadays let’s be more patient to our students. Please be considerate.”

OK, Sir.

Mapping My Literary Journey

“The struggle to be a writer does not end,” said panelist Angelo “Sarge” Lacuesta in one of our sessions during the Silliman Writers’ Workshop in Dumaguete in May 2009. Now a recognized Filipino fictionist in English, Lacuesta was then citing on how a creative writer must invest time, effort and yes, as clichés go, resources—sure, their lifetime—to be able to master the literary craft, or so that whatever he or she has written could at least make sense.

 

The statement stuck the moment I heard it, there and then admonishing me and making itself a tall order for me. So I responded by asking back that if writing does not really not end, I could at least throw an equally valid question: So, therefore has it ever begun at all? I could start clarifying the statement by first asking the wherever, whenever, however—or the circumstances—involved in its inception. 

 

In other words, I would like to begin today by answering the question taken from that sweeping statement—particularly, when does the struggle to write even begin in the first place? Or more clearly—when does a literary life ever begin?  

 

When did my literary life begin? Just when did my “whole affair” with literature begin?

 

Darakulaon mata niya namumulaag, garong kakakanon ka. Sa basug mo nanuparan pasiring ka sa eskwelahan. Kuminutipas kang pauli na maski dai pa lamo retira. Tuminago ka sa likod kan platera nindo, nagrurulungsi ka. Nasabatan mo itong asbô sa libro ni Mrs. Páya.—“Anayo II” , Facebook Post Dec. 25, 2014.#AraaldawMaanayo

 

Imaginative and young as I was, already I chose to make my own reality; and invented my own tawong lipod which I probably thought could tell others about. 

 

In mapping my own literary journey, I take many, many steps back to retrace where I came from—and as I do, I look to the many experiences and not only the various opportunities but also the many different sensibilities who took part, were part or helped shape these events.

 

For this piece, I will try to answer this question, but also know that when I do, I will be raising more questions than answering them.

 

FROM BAGACAY TO BAGUMBAYAN

Born the youngest of six to two under-compensated public schoolteachers in the 1980s, when Salary Grade (SG 11) was probably not yet assigned to a Teacher I, I began school when my mother was already a widow, working hard to make ends meet for her six growing children. 

 

Was I the perfect candidate to win the most coveted Little Boy Blue award? Being labeled achiever and typecast as bright slash loner slash weird slash “siisay lamang an amigo kaiyan,” was I being groomed to befriend books for life, as it were?

 

What else could this little fellow do? How else was an 11-year-old boy supposed to respond after being chosen by Grade 4-Yakal adviser Ella Mariscal to memorize and deliver a “A Child of Woe” declamation piece to represent our humble school in the bigger Tinambac schools?

 

What else could he do—being rehearsed even during regular classes and weekends—to internalize a clichéd character of a child beggar asking for alms in the busy city streets only to be run over by a car and become an amputee for the rest of his life? 

 

And what could be more heartrending than this piece ? Can you think of something else that will better teach the bitter truth about poverty to such young, emotionally vulnerable—too impressionable—sensibility?

 

Laughable. Yes, Virginia, you might even say that of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” monologue as it might just pale in comparison to my declamation piece—if we talk in terms of literally making “audience impact”. 

 

While “Hamlet” actors must make sense by vacillating between “To be or not to be” only because the audience know the lines by heart, I simply made my audience cry when I did cry.

 

I mean who wouldn’t be affected by a boy onstage, crying hard about his misfortune in tattered outfits? Almost every sentence in that overwrought declamation—piece of “tragic” proportions—required me to act out grief—which I did so accordingly generously, much to the satisfaction not just of my coach when I qualified for the District Meet, but also of the school district supervisor who was already counting their high marks in performance evaluations.

 

At a young age, this boy was already being taught the gravitas—correct diction and serious emotions delivered to the audience—in tattered and dungis and dugyot outfit—eventually winning the hearts of many a judge, bringing me to represent Tinambac district in San Miguel Bay Meet in 1987. Nom! Saen ka pa?

 

But more than anything, the “Woe” monologue could have had more impact only because I was speaking my own character. I come to think now: was it really acting—or was it simply acting out what I really was? 

 

Because my mother was struggling so hard for her children, so probably my teacher thought that her youngest son could best interpret the piece to evoke the sentiment being exaggerated and—in the words of Rosario Cruz-Lucero—overdone or “over-killed” in that weepy declamation piece. 

 

Interestingly, I have yet to know the name of whoever wrote that “woeful” attack on poverty. At the time, my coach considered it a cousin to the more popular “Vengeance Is Not Ours,” which was a staple piece and made rounds in the DECS (Department of Education, Culture and Sports) community.

 

As an essay writing contestant, too, I—sadly—was asked to memorize words from a previously written piece and just rewrite them using pencil (so I could easily erase any errors) during contests proper in Tinambac district or San Miguel Bay. I wonder why they called it essay-writing contest then—when I was just asked to rewrite a piece I memorized. It should have been called Essay Rewriting Contest.

 

Looking back to all these, I should say I had the good fortune of not only being given these opportunities but also having enjoyed them. To me, these early “literary” involvements, these engagements couldn’t just be ignored; for they served as cornerstones and milestones which directed me and cleared the ways for me to consequently pursue the road to literature. 

 

To me, these and other such exposures were simply the asbo which I saw on Mrs. Paya’s book and from which I couldn’t just be torn away.

 

            When I entered Ateneo de Naga in the late 1980s, fortunately through a scholarship, I was overwhelmed by the Ateneo’s English PowerHouse Department. By this I mean the privilege of being taught by this batch of teachers—whom I now call renaissance men and women inspired and nurtured by Fr. Raul Bonoan’s repackaging of Ateneo’s human resource which historically dramatically helped salvaged saved rescued the said institution from its near-closure. 

 

While my early (freshman) membership in the schoolpaper Blue and Gold afforded me opportunities to train and, if you may, intimate with the English language, fellow Knight of the Altar member Xavier Olin’s proactive editorship sparked in me the love of publication itself, especially when I was being tasked to write and make significant contributions for the paper.

 

Well, I loved Alejandro Roces’s “My Brother’s Peculiar Chicken” under Mrs. Bernadette Eduardo-Dayan. But who am I to forget Jesuit scholastic Rene Repole’s incisive phonetics classes? More than anything, they inspired me, too, not only to enunciate the keywords but really project the nostalgia in Horacio de la Costa’s classic essay oratorical piece “Jewels of the Pauper”.

 

Meanwhile, in my junior year with Mrs. Eden Maguigad, we did not only see real, familiar characters, who were not far different from ourselves—as the boy protagonist in N.V. M. Gonzalez’s “Bread of Salt” or the other one in James Joyce’s “Araby”; we also role-played Alberto Florentino’s The World Is An Apple” and metaphorically took a bite at poverty to its core.

 

Not to be left out are my Filipino subject teachers Delia Villanueva with whom we read and understood European culture from a Filipino author writing in antequarian Tagalog, namely: Francisco Balagtas “Florante at Laura” 

 

There is also Delia Volante under whom we dissected Inang Bayan’s literal and figurative maladies in Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo.

 

Then, to have one Gregorio Abonal for an English or even Practical Arts teacher was legendary at the time in our campus. In his English and journalism classes, we did not only see ourselves as Stripes looking for our own Yellows after reading Trina Paulus’s “Hope for the Flowers”; we also relished and probably held our tears after reading Daniel Keyes’s “Flowers for Algernon”. 

 

Who was I to hold back my tears seeing how Charlie’s mental deterioration is reflected in her notes to Ms. Kinian, making the story probably the least clinical but the most poignant doctor-patient meeting ever written? The teacher’s love of the letters, such appreciation of the language culminated in our production of Roman scrolls based on William Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar”. For me who was still growing up doing so much already with these opportunities, it’s simply difficult to just forget them. 

 

After all, someone said that whatever an individual did best and/or loved doing when he was 15, he would be probably be do(p)ing all his life. This has proven true to me. From the day I found copies of my uncle’s 1980s newspapers Balalong and Bikol Banner as a kid playing with my cousins in the second story of their house, I have always loved journalism. And when I became editor of the Blue and Gold in my senior year, producing an issue with the gang was the pinnacle of everything I probably did in high school.

 

What could be a more fitting practicum for all the years of training in the languages for the last three years but a stint at the school paper which allowed me to offer back my contribution to the community who taught me the love of the language but more importantly, the flavourful life lived with literature?

 

Indeed, newspapers overwhelm me ceaselessly—while some are produced to make profits, I relish how thousands of sensibilities are gathered in one page or publication by a more organized mind—which puts everything into place, so as to create a sensible whole, one that makes any reader more knowledgeable and wiser than he was before.

 

Besides the required weekly journal submission, which asked us to write observations, experiences and insights—now status updates or blog entries, as in a diary—Abonal’s English classes did more—how can I forget a class when it mixed your taste for New Wave music to building up your speech skills? What happens to you if you were allowed to act out the lyrics of Depeche Mode’s “People Are People” as in a speech, or dramatize a scene based from a gospel song, Basil Valdez’s “Lift Up Your Hands”? 

 

And what could be more flattering than being asked to reflect one Sunday and write a homily-like essay on the concept of the Holy Spirit but stand and deliver it in front of our all-teenage-boys “congregation”?  During these times, your classmates, including those who bullied you in one way or another, will be made to listen to you for one moment in their lives.

 

In all these, I did not remain a performer of other people’ art; I also did create my own work of art myself, just like what Dame Edith Tiempo said in that one summer of 2009—“the moment you look at a flower, you already own that flower.”

 

You wouldn’t just be able to forget it even as it prefigures what you predict yourself to be –standing in the pulpit persuading people to believe in what you have to day.  I mean nothing else was more empowering to me than that. The English classes, projects and exercises were my life, my lifeblood, if you may—because virtually, all these could answer the present-day coffee ad question: “Para kanino ka gumigising?” Yes, indeed, I could not wait for the classes to resume or projects to be unveiled, or activities to unfold. All these excited me.

 

FROM CAPILIHAN TO KATIPUNAN

The strong influence of Abonal and later, the De los Trinos (who made homes in Capilihan Street in Bgy. Calauag and where I personally submitted class projects or retrieved them) would sustain me enough until I attended Rudy Alano’s classes as a full-time Literature major in Ateneo de Naga college.

 

While college English was a requirement across the courses, this was also the time when I could chose what to learn—even as I could choose my courses and schedules and electives to suit my tastes.  

 

Inspired from my previous English teachers in high school, I continued journaling under Joy Bonafe-Capiral, who read my juvenilia, or my hormones-induced incantations and intimations on girl crushes from Nabua and Iriga. Most of these written works impressed them and eventually made my rom-com life possible. 

 

Along side, even in college, I still benefited from the literary fellowships I began with my high school teachers. Grace Dorotea Nobleza-Rubio lent me not only her Scribner’s first-edition Hemingway (The Old Man and the Sea), a worn copy which I carried me through college but also—Conrado de Quiros’s Flowers from the Rubble, from which I witnessed the profound simplicity and the simple profundity of the essay.

 

Not to be left out is my younger Pillars associate and layout artist’s Karl Llorin’s predilection for Jessica Zafra when she rose to the literary firmament with her Twisted essays. On days at the college paper Pillars which I edited in my senior year, I led to publish proofs of how we, too, caught the Zafra fever in campus through versions of our own Twisted universes.

 

If there was a clincher of our sad, literary lives in Ateneo, it would be our Rudy Alano experience. The Bikolista sensibility in Alano afforded our batch the chance to interpret his Bikol adaptations of two Western classic plays—Shakespeare’s “An Pagkamoot ninda Romeo & Juliet” which the English and Literature majors staged in 1994 and Edmond Rostand’s classic Cyrano de Bergerac, now “Cyrano de Queborac” (after the Bagumbayan sitio) also showcased by the same group the following year. 

 

The Alano interlude will not be complete without the mention of the publication of “Bilog at Iba Pang Mga Tula, a Knight literary folio I edited which was a response to Miriam College’s seminal “Libog at Iba pang Mga Tula”. The latter similarly drew huge criticism at the Time when Jane Campion’s The Piano, an independent film displaying male and female nudity was censored and cut by the prudish Movies and Television Regulation and Classification Board (MTRCB) led by one Henrietta Mendez. 

 

More than anything, it was a privilege for me to be taught by what I call the DE LOS TRINO TRIO, namely: the husband-wife tandem of Vernon and Maria Liwayway, or the most indispensable Maa’m Y; and their younger brother Joeby in the Social Sciences department.

 

Vernon de los Trino’s speech class allowed me to mark American minor poet Edwin Markham’s “The Man with the Hoe” a weighty and heartfelt oral interpretation seeing Jean-Francois Millet’s realist classic “The Man with the Hoe”.

 

Liwayway de los Trino’s narration and expository writing techniques and Jose de Los Trino’s weekly Rizal essays afforded me the gravitas, to take seriously the essay form—how the essay form can glorify an idea and elaborate it using details freely and sometimes unabashedly. 

 

More writing opportunities became my points of directions, including Lourdes Huelgas’s Essay class which required me to react to an essay in the form of another essay; Danilo Gerona’s Philippine history class, which trained me to stick to facts and interpret history using concise language and of course, Ranilo Hermida’s weekly Philo essays which asked me to illustrate the ideas advanced by Plato, Aristotle, Augustine or Aquinas using my own experiences as examples. 

 

Moreover, my affiliation with my fellow Literature majors surely came with even firsthand literary awakenings. F. Sionil Jose’s green Tree novel was lent to me by my classmate-cum-almost-confidante Jennifer Jacinto while John Steinbeck’s The Pearl by Corazon Uvero at one time made rounds among us Literature majors. These two slim volumes on nostalgia and realism taught me that novels and novellas are enough to give us a perspective with which we can view reality meaningfully.

 

All these served as training ground to appreciate the essay and extend it in my personal letters to family members or even experimental pieces which found space in the Bikol Daily, a new paper I worked in 1996 right after college graduation.

 

FROM DERRIDA TO DERIADA

After graduating from Ateneo de Naga, I chose to pursue graduate studies in literature at the bigger Ateneo in Loyola Heights, a sprawling Jesuit commune in Katipunan, Quezon City. There, my Literature professors, Dr. Edna Manlapaz, Jonathan Chua, Danton Remoto and D.M. Reyes are my “shimmering” lights at this time, guiding me to steer clear of traps in literary studies where I may have otherwise fallen but at times mentoring me and inspiring me to read works of literature seriously. These teachers taught me to treat literature as a doctor does a patient with a scalpel—clinical and exacting, but most importantly, aware of the diagnosis from which I will benefit.

 

The poetry electives I enrolled in—Rofel Brion in 1999 and B.J. Patiño and Alfred Yuson in 2003—helped produce subsequent poems written in English in Bikol not only because the weekly meetings cum workshops required output but also because I was being taught that to write about the self is not the only way to write. In these expisures, I was taught about being a creative writer. In particular, Krip Yuson urged his students to depart from the “I” persona in writing our weekly poem submissions. He asked us to produce poems which are of consequence not just to ourselves but to the general reader.

 

In recent years, I enjoyed literary fellowships from schools and the National Commission for Culture and the Arts. These experiences I cherish deep in my heart because while they probably made me see my inadequacies, they have also not really dissuaded me from writing.

 

Joining Iyas fellows in 2007 chase ghosts in the Administrative Building of the DLSU Bacolod, I had the privilege of achieving enlightenment through poet par excellence Marjorie Evasco. More than anything, Evasco told Rodrigo de la Peña and myself, fellow Iyas poet, to “attend to your art,” admonishing us to clearly “pay attention to the things I have chosen to invest time in,” another tall order which I have not taken seriously.

 

Then, attending Iligan Workshop in 2008, the words of Waray poet Victor Sugbo sounded more than flattery when he said that learned a poetic style from my poem submission “Anayo”, which also received a Special Prize for Poetry. It was more than a fortune to be mentored and guided by the likes of Rosario Cruz-Lucero, who zeroed in on the folk elements she found alluring in the same poem “Anayo”. The praises for the poem came with admonitions on how it pales or fails even as, they said, it could achieve more.

 

That summer some ten years ago, I had the good fortune of studying poetry and fiction with some of the most illustrious names in Philippine literature in English, including poets Gemino Abad and Alfred Yuson and the Visayan sensibility Rosario Cruz-Lucero.

 

Among others, our batch was one of the last to listen to Dame Edith Tiempo, the mother of a big number of contemporary literati writing today. Though already frail at the time, Ma’am Edith still generously accommodated us in her legendary home in and profusely admonished us on the indispensable symbiosis of form and content. The home of the Tiempos is legendary because it is where writers are born; or made. A bug number of prominent writers are alumni of the Silliman Writers Workshop, including not only our homegrown talents Rudy Alano and his wife Selena, Maryanne Moll or Jason Chancoco, but also, believe it or not—Leoncio Deriada and the New York-based Magarao poet Luis Cabalquinto.

 

I give credit to every bit of learning I had during when I at the Ateneo, absorbing copiously seriously whatever a member of then powerhouse English and Filipino departments would cook up for their students. 

 

FROM ATENEO TO ANAYO

Beginning with verses in my journals, I relished words through my experimentations—amateur, juvenilia, and so on. But later on, my lessons in literature afforded me models to emulate, words, to borrow, phrases to elaborate, and ideas to expound.

 

All of which found expression in my random notes and jottings, which later became poems that I submitted to magazines; and essays which I gave to friends and confidantes. 

 

I love the essay. In my current outputs of saysay, which fuses Bikol and Hiligaynon and even Bikol and English at times, I would like to embed personal writing with something else which I create. I am working hard to make the usual informal essay become a creative non-fiction; with the plethora of personal experiences which I have now penned as drafts, I believe they also can become materials for a poem or even a short story. 

 

I began writing rawitdawit or Bikol poetry in 1995 which were also published in the Knight literary folio. This formed part of our Vernacular literature exposure through the same Rudy Alano, who promoted Bikol along with Dr. Lilia Realubit of the pioneer Kabulig writers group in 1992.

 

Whatever words come out of my mouth today, whatever sensibility I have I owe to the men and women with whom I encountered the beauty of language and its evocations of truth, universal and temporal. Or to put it more awkwardly, “I am legion”—infamously said by Lucifer when asked who he was by an exorcist priest.

 

As American poetry father Walt Whitman said, “I contain multitudes,” through my works, I invoke the many sensibilities which have affected me, and indicate the plurality of the voices I myself engendered in my poems and essays. This was echoed by the seminal Tagalog modernist Alejandro Abadilla when he famously wrote, too, “Ako ang daigdig”, prefiguring for the next generation of poets the primacy of the individual. 

 

My own private pursuits of literature were equally beneficial to me as reader. The fact that I chose to read them indicates to me how I wanted to see and feel and experience literature and do something to me. All these literary involvements and pursuits only become meaningful not really because I will write about them—but they will all be ingrained in my memory. 

 

Whether I did them during one cozy summer vacation (when I read Sidney Sheldon’s Master of the Game because everyone else in our household was reading it) or assigned myself a Holy Week reading to observe the Lenten season (I devoured Og Mandino’s The Christ Commission from page to page, seeing Christ come alive in the yellowed pages lent to my brother by his classmate)—I chose to be affected by literature that’s why I read them. I wanted to enjoy and be entertained and so I did, and so I was. 

 

The otherwise public experiences—I played a gay character in Alano’s “Romeo & Juliet” and Clarissa Guadalupe’s “Tao, Tao Saan Patungo ang Basura Mo?” embedded in me their serious message, which I would remember long as I live.

 

Then there was a time when I was being published. I began to enjoy publication from individuals and institutions. Foremost, these were the fruits of my partnership with my benevolent teacher in college, Paz Verdades M. Santos, who has in countless ways encouraged me to pursue literature like a mother would sing to her son to pursue his own path—herself a Gawad Paz Marquez Benitez awardee for promoting Bikol literature. 

 

Madam Doods had seen me as a promising writer in college, checking my journals and urging me to write further and be published. She sent me people to send works to.

 

First published by the Canada-based Bikolista Gode Calleja from Albay, my epistolary poem “Surat sa Pinsan na Taga-Libmanan pagkatapos kan Bagyo” was picked up by Ma’am Doods Santos to represent one of the many voices and/or flavors in the watershed anthology “Mahamis, Maharang na Manlain lain na Literaturang Bikolnon or Sweeets and Spices. This feast in Bikol literature also first saw an e-publication or digital platform. 

 

While I have yet to know how personal writing like that qualifies easily as creative writing. The poem’s shines even as it reflects a marital drift or crumbling marriage 

 

The “Leoncio Deriada” of Home Life’s “Poetry Workshop with Tito Leo” is admittedly my literary father who gave birth to my earliest attempts at English poetry—worthy or publishable or otherwise. Still in college I sent Sir Leo my English poems, some of which he found publication-worthy. 

 

My contributions to this magazine would soon find print in St. Paul Publications’ In Time Passing, There are Things, Deriada’s edited collection of works by 100 poets published in the long-running poetry column. 

 

Considered the father of contemporary Western Visayan literature, Deriada’s landmark anthologies including Patubas have been instrumental in the birthing of poetic and literary sensibilities who have since sprung from anonymity to prominence in the national literary scene.

 

My early works also saw print in Carlos Arejola’ short-lived Makata literary journal while has was still based in Laguna. 

 

In 2004, my rawitdawit was first published online by Muse Apprentice Guild, and later published by E manial poetry. In Sa KAbila ng Ritmo

 

Oragon Republic.com and its subsequent folio, Salugsog sa Sulog also featured my rawitdawit titled “Ki Agom,” admittedly inspired by of T.S. Eliot’s dedicatory “To my Wife”, which I wrote as my own incantation to my wife in 2005/.

Published in 2012 by Salabay Press and Abkat group bannered by enterprising young poets led by Eduardo Uy, the Anayo chapbook reflects my poetic sensibility. 

 

Anayo is a tapestry that weaves together some 30 Bikol poems or rawitdawit representing a variety of voices or personas with their own sense of enchantment or acquired a kind of malady, a motley crew of disenfranchisement.

 

The whole irony of this publication is that I don’t even have a copy of it at the moment. The limited number of publications and its being out of print is pushing me for its republication of a bigger, more expanded version, to include newer pieces to date. I plan to reissue an Anayo Redux in 2020 from publisher who would even dare read its contribution to the conversation, as it were.

 

FROM ANAYO TO DAYUYU

Soon after graduation, I suffered from this dilemma of how to relate to my truer Bikol self, particularly after obtaining or seeming to have assumed an English-clad sensibility. Such vacillation or being torn between seeming to know something in English but knowing Bikol better by heart surfaced or was given full description in a Bikol essay I penned more than 20 years later, thus:

 

BAGAQAY, TINAMBAQ, QAMARINES SUR—Ano daw an matabô sa sarong English major, idtong nag-adal dangan naqapagtapos nin Bachelor of Arts uqon A.B. English sa Naga? Qun pagbuwelta niya sa sadiring banwa, dai niya na aram qun siisay an pwedeng maistorya. 

 

Sain niya na daw maipamugtaq an sadiri sa dating estada? Diin siya maqahanap nin tawong maqaistorya nga arog man niya? Dawa muya qaining mag-istar sa poblacion na dinaqulaan niya, mapilitan siyang magtiner na sana sa mas daqulang banwa.

 

Siya iyo idtong dai naqamove-on pagqabasa qan si “Araby” ni James Joyce sa qlase qadto ni Mrs. Habla: Grabe an hugop-hugop qan solteritong bida na igwang mabaqal para sa iya nga hinahangaan na daragita. Haloy niyang linangqaba dangan ginibong qalis na garong sa Santa Misa. Alagad, lintian. 

 

Pag-abot niya sa baligyaan, mayong lábot si tindera ta uto man duman naqiquhulnaqan sa gusto qaining qapareha. Nawaran lugod nin gana si idtong bida, sarong nagdadaqula pa sana. Pagqanuod pa sana nganing mamoot, sinampaling na tulos nin pagqaanggot. Mababasol mo daw siya qun magdaqula siyang angót? 

 

Siring qaining bida sa istorya, grabe an hugop-hugop niyang igwang maihiras sa iba an nanudan niya, may maqaututang-dila, maqaistorya, alagad mayo nin madangog maqaqaintindi saiya.

 

Sabihon pa saiya qan tugang niyang matua, “nag-E-english qa, Noy, digdi sa harong ta? Spoqening dollars qa na!” Dangan sa ila nga harong mangirisi sinda. Dai niya mabal-an qun maingít sainda o maoogma. 

 

Sa siring na qeha, siya idtong persona sa “Coming Home” ni Leoncio Deriada. Pagqauli qaining bida ta hali sa siyudad pag-esquwela, dai niya na baga maqaulay su mga magurang niya. Qawasa nag-iba na daa siya. Si dating mga amigo niya, dai niya na maqaistorya, diyata naqapag-adal na sa daqbanwa, halangqaw na daa an pinag-adalan niya. Garo palan “Laida Magtalas, Version Two Point O” ang peg qan satong bida. An saiyang inadalan nagi pa lugod na qaulangan. Daindáta.

 

Mayo siyang qinalain qi Pedro, a.k.a. Peter na iyo an bida sa “Letter to Pedro, U.S. Citizen, Also Called Pete” qan Cebuanong si Rene Estella Amper, na paboritong pang-midterm sa Intro to Philippine Lit qaidto sa Ateneo de Naga: Pagqahali sa abroad, nag-i-English na; an dating pangaran niyang Pedro, ngonyan “Pete” na.

 

Garo man sana idtong sabi qan iba sa mga Biqol na mga inistorya: nasa riles pa sana ngani daa, sa Pamplona, nag-Tatagalog na. Suba-suba qa ka’yan. An pagqálain sana qan bida ta sa ining mga istorya: dai siya naqapa-Ameriqa ta nganing mag-iba an dila niya. Imbis na mag-upod sa esqursyon qan mga dating qaesqwela, dai na sana daa qawasa taposon pa niya an napunan na poetry collection ni Anna Akhmatova. Ha?

 

Sarong aldaw naman, pagduruman qan mga tugang niya sa handaan qan mga pinsan ninda, mapawalat na sana daa ini sa harong ta ito palan, nagumon na sa Crossword Puzzle, gamit an bagong thesaurus na tinauhan pasalubong saiya qan tiyuon na nasa Toronto na.

 

Kaya maghapon, solo-solo ngonyan sa harong. Maqiqilaghanan siya qan iqos na nag-unas qan dai naluqduan na sira sa saindang qusina. Out of the blue, siniqa niya ini, binadag ini nin plato alagad dai tatamaaan, dangan masabi: “What the f… Get out! Out! Out! You’re not welcome here!!! Haaayop na ini!”

 

Si malutongon na muda niya sa mother tongue, na garo iyo man sana an iqinabuhay qaini, yaon na sana sa puro qan dila niya. Secondary language niya na sana palan an wika ng kanyang Inang Bayan. 

 

Nasa puro na sana ini; alagad dai niya malingaw-lingawan. Dai niya nang gayo mataratandaan alagad iyo an nahambal niya sa qaanggotan. Nasa puro sana qan dila niya. Pero dai niya maiquruquspa sa hugasan. 

 

In mapping my literary journey, I give tribute to all the men and women who kindly generously ushered me into the world of language and literature—the stories and their lessons—the myths and their meanings, and the sense and their sensibilities. 

 

In every poem I turn in, or work so hard finishing, in every closure I render to every poem, in all stories I helped unravel and even insights rendered in an essay, I invoke those who also devoted to seeking joy or enjoyment from them, or equally found truths and uncovered realities about being human.

 

In writing, I have been guided by some tenets which make sense to me everywhere I go, or wherever I find myself writing, or aching to write. 

 

Úsip ni Carl Sandburg, saróng Amerikánong saindá man saná pamóso, tolóng bágay daá an kaipúhan tangáning mahimô kan parasurát an saiyang obra-maestra, ukón dakulang-gibo: Énot an toil, ukón trabáho. Panduwá, solitude, ukón pagsoló-sólo. Dángan, prayer, ukón pangamúyo.

 

Toil. Kaipuhan mong magparasúrat saná tangáning ika makánood magsúrat. Iyo ni an imo nga trabaho. Magsúrat ka sa adlaw; magbása ka sa banggi; káyod-kabáyo, garí. Pwede mo man idungán: magsurat sagkod magbása barabanggi. O uruáldaw. Segun saimo, dipindi. Bastá mayo nin palusot sa trabáho nin pagsurat, hadí? Iní an importanti. Magparabása saná daá kita, ta ngáni man igwa kitang maipabasa, iyo pa an sábi.

 

Solitude. Dapat daá saímo pirming solo-solo? Dai man siguro. Tibáad gusto sanáng sabihon, igwá ka nin espásyo. O kutâ na, silencio. Ngáni na tibáad sa rárom kan bangging ini, magriliwánag na an ribo-ribong bitúon sa itaas kan saìmong harong, sa lindong kan langit na saìmong imahinásyon.

 

Prayer. Bako man gayod itong maaráng ka saná sa altar kawasâ naanáyo. Bakô man gayód dapat parasimba ka o relihiyóso. Ukón paralinig sa patio, o nagdakulang akolito. Dai man káso kun luminuwás ka sa semináryo o sa beateryo.

 

Kundi lang gayod, sa boót mo, bal-án mong bakô kang perpekto; kayâ ka nagpapang-amígo o nangangayo-ngáyo, bako man kaipuhan sa anito ukon sa rebulto. Bakô man dapat an ngaran mo sagrado, ukon apelyido Divino, kun saen-saen nagmimilagro; nagpaparasámba sa macho, o sa kalalawgon ni Piólo.

 

“Dayuyu”—it’s always the poet needs the pain. The poet vacillates because he has been trained in English but is also being admonished to produce in Bikol which was never taught to him in the first place. Nagdadayuyu kawasa naskukllgan an sarong sensibilidad. Naaapi an saro sa saiyang doble kara.

 

Just like the Bikol language (and of course Filipino) still being marginalized in academic institutions or being considered irrelevant in the age of K to 12, call centers and skilled workers, the writer is writhing in pain crying because he doesn’t know where to begin. He is taught one thing but also needs to advocate for another. 

 

Quo Vadis? Where Am I Going?

Ever since I could remember I have been writing—I had written so many things in the past, presently I am writing—I’ve done it not because I want to tell [you] something which I remember or already know. As far as I am concerned, I will continue to write—as long as I live—because I can hardly wait what it wants to tell me.

 

Protacio, 38

Garo man nanggad ribo-ribong dagom an duros ngonyan na banggi—siring sa ginhalâ niya saimo kaidto.

Tinuturusok kan kada panas an pusikit mong kublit; kinikiriblit ka; pinapasalingoy na paminsaron mo idtong mga aldaw na dai kamo nagpopondo kangingisi. Kawasa ika an saiyang pirming binabangít—sa kapikunan na naturalisa mo, ika man biyóng naiingít; minangiriil sa sinasabi tungod sa imo kan bâbâ niyang matabil.

An pagkamoot abaanang kapeligroso. Tibaad igwa kamong namate sa kada saro poon kadto—kung kaya an puso mo nawaran nin diskanso. Siya man nagparalagaw, nagparatrabaho; kadakuldakul inasikaso; garong an iniisip nindo pirmi kun pâno makapalagyo.

Mayo na siya ngonyan; sa mga kabukidan kan Kabikolan, igwang kung anong kapaladan an saiyang napadumanan; sarong aldaw sa Juban, kaiba kan saiyang mga kasama, siya tinambangan kan saiyang mga kalaban.

An parasuba sa buhay mo nagtaliwan na; mayo nang maolog-olog kan saimong ngaran; mayo nang malapaskan saimong mga kanigoan; mayo nang malangkaba kan saimong kamahalan. Bwelta ka na naman sa pangabuhi na tibaad igwang kamanungdanan.

Sinurublian sa Hiligaynon 
ginhalâ, sinabi
paminsaron, pag-iisip
naiingít, nababalde
bâbâ, nguso
makapalagyo, makadulag
nagtaliwan, nagadan

All the Sadness in the World

I first heard of the Irish singer Dolores O’Riordan as a college freshman when CJ, a classmate who adores all kinds of music, particularly female pop artists, made a mixtape for me of the alternative rock band The Cranberries. CJ recorded for me “Linger,” “Dreams” and some choice tracks from their “No Need to Argue” album, including “I Can’t Be with You,” “Empty” and “Ridiculous Thoughts.” The latter also featured young actor Elijah Wood on MTV. At the time, alternative music dominated both radio and TV, giving us more choices besides the clichéd popular tunes. It was a great time to be alive: alternative music straddling both pop and rock were in, both here and abroad. But more than anything, alternative music simply meant a different sound. Different meant new. Different meant fresh. I first heard “Linger” on DWEB-FM, the local rock station where I would find myself working as a DJ years later. It's a slow tune lamenting the infidelity of one’s beloved. I liked its unhurried rhythm; the song makes you take it easy and imagine lazy afternoons. But I think it is O’Riordan’s keening voice that makes the song last. Her background vocals sounds sadder than the deep, sad voice singing the lyrics, which makes it more appealing. It is her grieving voice that makes it worth listening to. Besides this, I suppose it’s the repetitive “Do you have to let it linger? Do you have to, do you have to, do you have to let it linger?” that really makes the song “linger.” Listening to the radio, it was also hard for me to resist humming along with her singing “Dreams,” especially the last part, which stands out even with the African background vocals and instruments: Laaaaaa laaaaa la la la laaaa laaaaaa; laaaaaa laaaaa la la la laaaa laaaaaa; laaaaaa laaaaa la la la laaaa laaaaaa:” These are the parts that would last in your head. Through my equally fanatic cousin Jokoy, I learned more about the Cranberries: O’Riordan, the Hogan brothers and Fergal Lawler. The band projected restrained, generally discontented youth minus the sloppy outfits of the grunge artists. I found their packaging consistent with their music, particularly Dolores’s vocals, not only “linger”-ing but poignant and especially affecting. Two years later, I would publish a review of their “To the Faithful Departed” album for the short-lived Bikol Daily. Writing the review in 1996, I was drawn not to the more popular hits “When You’re Gone” or “Free to Decide” but rather to the more elegiac “Joe” and “Cordell,” tributes to the countless nameless victims of the much-publicized Bosnian war in Bosnia-Herzegovina (Sarajevo) in the mid-1990s. To understand the voice of O’Riordan and the band Cranberries is to understand where the group are coming from. They have lived in a war-worn Ireland which normally inspires artists to harp not anymore on the personal issues but also the more serious, bigger themes like war and death. Departing from the hackneyed themes of love, their songs advocate something bigger than the self. The lyrics of “Free to Decide” speak of a person's right to expression or freedom of choice, while “Zombie” immortalizes the tragedy of war, lamenting that: “It’s the same old theme, since 1916. In your head, in your head, they’re still fighting… in your head, in your head, they are dying…” Then, watching “Animal Instinct” in 2003, an upbeat piece featuring her beautiful, more mature voice which now sounded almost like Karen Carpenter’s, I was drawn to the music video depicting a mother’s separation from her children and the her innate nature to protect them. If at all, O’Riordan was one of the influences predating the "emo" generation; her voice is predominantly sad, what with all the songs she made popular with The Cranberries. If not about broken relationships or deaths in war-torn Europe, their music, , especially her voice, laments all the sadness in the world. I must have even typecast her and the band as “sad-sounding singers” especially when later, more positive pieces like “Analyse” or “Just My Imagination” came out in early 2000s. Not only that I could hardly relate to their happier expressions; I now found her cheerful voice hardly believable. Despite the happier tune it had, her voice was always sad to me. Nevertheless, it amazes me how Dolores O’Riordan’s voice has become iconic, probably cutting across social classes. I think “Zombie,” “Ode to My Family” and their early hits “Linger” and “Dreams” enjoyed much airplay over the local FM radio, so that they became anthems of probably most listeners. Consider the song “Zombie,” which, like “Ode to My Family” or “When You’re Gone,” is now a staple song in any videoke songs list or probably any local karaoke bar, with its signature yodelling, “eehh eehh eehh ooohh ooohh ooohh ooohh ooohh ooohh ooohh eeehh aahh aahh aahh.” With all these pieces, it would be hard to forget so much sadness in ourselves and in the world. O’Riordan’s voice sings our restrained, sad selves; her voice is primarily ours, not only belaboring all its maladies, but also grieving life’s tragedies. Even her first name, “Dolores,” comes to me now as consistent with her voice. It comes from the word “Dolor,” meaning “painful grief”; the word dolorous as an adjective also means “showing sorrow”. So there: her name and her voice are one and the same. However, what is appealing in Dolores O'Riordan and The Cranberries is how they have turned bitter personal and social experiences into beautiful anthems not only of death and loss but also of healing, of life and gain. Her beautiful voice is grieving but it also evokes hope and the capacity to move on. The news of her death doubtless surprised me, but it only rather made me think that the songs, which strike a chord in most of us who grew up in the 90s, will linger even after she’s gone. Her songs—I mean, her voice—will remind me of the sadness of life, but also of the necessity of grief, which I suppose can help me weather the tragedies of life. #ripdolores #doloresoriordan #cranberries

An Harong Mi

I remember our house. It was a two-floor house that stood tall in an open yard, by the side of the hill, perhaps some 20 meters away from the highway. Going there, one had to pass a rice field lined by trees of palo maria, madre de cacao, and green shrubs. There were days when the house—seen from the national road—was almost covered by lush green vegetation that all you could see was the second storey.

If it pleases you, simply picture a typical Philippine postcard: green farm on the foreground, a two-storey house in the middleground, and a hill of trees and vegetation on the background, where the sun rises.

If one enters the main door in the first floor, there was our living room, where we had a wooden sala set: a sofa good for three average-size visitors, four arm chairs and a rectangle center-table—all draped in red and orange florals. (Let it be added that the sala set was made of a very hard wood—I was too small to ask my mother where she bought it, or what kind of wood it was made of. But certainly, not one of the furniture was broken until all of us could really grow up.)

The living room then lead the visitor to our dining space where a long wooden rectangle table was flanked by two long benches for the diners. Each of the benches could seat three children. There was only one chair or silya which served as the kabisera—yes, indeed, for Mama, the head of our family.

Going further, one was greeted by the kitchen, where cooking was done on stove and later, dapog, and also the lavabo. Further to the left going to the back, the visitor could relieve himself in either of the two comfort rooms—one was the toilet and the other was the shower room.

Our house was cool. It did not have much stuff inside. It was airy inside the house. We had few but very functional fixtures. We had jalousie windows in all corners of the house. In the first floor, there were windows in front by the sala and in the dining area; and a very big window by the kitchen.

To reach the second floor, one ascended the wooden stairs, going to the second living room, where a former platera now stored old books from the school library. There, in the second floor, we had glass jalousie windows fronting the road. At the back, or inside the two bedrooms, we also had wooden jalousie windows. Air from the farm and the mountain entered all corners and sides of the house.

Not just that. From the living room in the second floor, one could see the open view of the highway where the barangay folks passed from the Triangle or visita to Banat, a sitio near the barangay elementary school where our parents served and yes, indeed, made their own marks as teachers and leaders.

But through all those years, I wonder why we had a house in a place that was almost idyllic like the one in Wuthering Heights. It was far from other people or even our own folks in libod (meaning backyard), the compound where the rest of our uncles and cousins lived.

Did our parents see the need to raise six kids even before all of us were born so they sought to establish their own family in  a bigger, wider space, away from the neighborhood of the growing clan—which we call libod, where our grandparents began their own?

Around the house, we made our own toys, we planned our own games, and relished our place in the sun, especially during summer vacations, when we played in the hay in the morning and toward sundown. The house was one of solitude where we children were rather drawn to fend for themselves, or find leisure and life for ourselves.

Bolaobalite, 1976

Ma, pasensiya dai na ko nakapaaram saimo
amay-amay pa si first trip marhay ngani
ta nakasakay ako. Dai ta ka na pigmata
paggios ko ta turog-turog ka pa, pagal-pagal
kakaaling ki Nonoy pirang banggi na man
nagpaparapastidyo; pero kun kinakarga ko,
pwerte man baga, nagsisilencio.

Hilingon ko na sana tibaad yaon na
man ko diyan sa Sabado. Pero sabi mo
man ngonyan na semana tibaad mag-abot
na si Onding ni Jeremias. Marhay kun siring
ta igwa na kitang mawalatan kan mga sadit.

Digdi sa eskwelahan, siribot naman kami
ngonyan ta muya kan mga maestrang
mag-Christmas party kaiba kan mga magurang
sa plaza—apwera pa kan sa mga kaakian.
Nahugos na samo an PTA kaya dakulon
gibohon ko digdi. Mga lesson plan ngani
dai ko pa ubos macheck-an. Pero marhay
man ta igwa ako digding masarigan.

Kansubanggi—iparayo nin Dios—
nagralaen naman si pagmati ko. Nagimata ako
sa init; ginagaranot ako; basa-basa si sakong
ulunan, tumtom pati higdaan. Pero tinutumar ko
si bulong na pigreseta kadto sa Naga. Dai ka na
maghadit ta maboot man si May Peling; siya
an kasera ko digdi. Pinapatundugan niya ko ka’yan
sa mga aki nin pangudtuhan o minsan mirindalan.

Nurong semana, makompleanyo ka na baga
kaya maghalat-halat ka ta ako may surpresa.

Alumni Homecoming

Susog ki David Ray

Abaana! Ano man daw ta nakabali ako

sa grupo kan mga polongóng iniho—

mayo nang giniribo ngonyan na banggi

kundi mag-irinuman tapos magharambugan—

túgbo digdi, túgbo duman, garo man daa

ngonyan lang naman nagkanuruparan.

Mayo na nin ibang pig-iristoryahan

kundi an saindang nagkágirinibuhan

na aráram kan gabos na man, mga lugar

na nagkádurumanan, mga chicks nindang

nagkátsaransingan—mga nagkágirinibuhan

nindang inda kun anong kamanungdánan.

Igwang nagharáli sa lugar mi pagkatápos

kaidto; tapos ngonyan pagkauruli, huna mo

sainda kun sáirisay na man daang Polano.

Pagkatápos kang tînuhon, mákua man daá

nin serbesa sa lamesa tapos dai ka kakauláyon—

garo dai kamo nagkáibahan nin pirang taon.

Yaon sana sa táid mo, mayong girong.

Ukon kauláyon ka na, masabi siya: dai ka

man giráray palán nag-iinom. Nin huli ta

kaáabot niya pa man saná, dai niya áram

na nakapirá ka na antes mag-sinárom.

Iyo ka man ngaya giráray: dai man nag-iinom,

mayo pa nin agom.  An ibang mga beer belly-hon

huna mo kun sáirisay na iriigwáhon, mga parainom!

Dai man daw an mga empatsádo nindang tulak

an iyong pinag-iimon kan saindang mga agom?

Yaon si Sulpicio, si Crisanto dangan si Claveron.

Padarakuláan nin tulak, pagarabátan nin buy-on.

Ngonyan, garo pa lugod sinda binabayadan

ubuson an pirang kahon kan serbesang dinunaran

kan mga kaklase pang nakabase sa Taiwan.

Kaya na sana man gayod an iba samo

amay nagkagaradán, nagkángaranáan

sa rarâráan sa kada taon na urulian.

Siring sa dati, mayong sistema ining tiripon  

apwera sa limang kahang baseyong

pwede na naman iarapon.

Mauli na akong amay—babayaaan ko

sindang agit-agitan naman magtiripon

sa bagong sumsuman na inorderan pa

sa luwas kan eskwelahan—inasal na hito

sagkod an pinaluto pang dinuguan.

Maagi an mga aldaw siring kan dati,

ma-check ako nin FB sa sakong Galaxy 3;

sa status message sa Group mi, dai ko

mangalas kun igwa na naman R.I.P. 

Tendernesses

Where you grew up, hugging was not reserved between people with certain closeness and affinities. In some instances, hugging and similar acts of tenderness was also common outside the circles of family and friends.

Back in your small town then, you witnessed hugging between Cursillistas, the members of a religious renewal group called Cursillos de Cristianidad that had their heyday in the 1980s in your parents’ ancestral house in Bagacay.

Probably a precursor of the Couples for Christ, or those of the Parish Renewal Experience (PREX), the Cursillistas, among others, displayed physical manifestation of affection during Sampaguita, the third day morning’s fellowship when the new members were surprised and greeted by their family and friends, the old Cursillistas and sometimes even the barangay community.

Sampaguita was always sentimental and emotional even as the new members were literally showered love and care in the forms of, leis, embraces and words of comfort by their fellow Cursillistas. After having been made to realize that God loves them “despite” themselves, the new members were hugged by the old members to make them feel the love of Jesus Christ the Saviour.

But in your clan, you had also seen from people how to be showy about their feelings for others. Among your uncles, it was the youngest Uncle Tony who literally showed his affection to his sisters, your mother Emma and your aunt Ofelia. He did the same to his mother, Margarita and his father, Emiliano. The youngest of six, your Uncle Tony joked his ways around his folks with ease, his naughty antics soliciting laughter or extremely otherwise annoyance from those who did not patronize them.

Your uncle even earned the bansag (moniker) lâya, perhaps corrupted from lâyab, which hardly translates to an English equivalent. Roughly, lâyab refers to someone’s inclination to be soft or weak in order to earn the sympathy comfort or even affection of somebody else, who is usually older—sort of lambing in Tagalog, but not exactly.

Your grade school had also taught you something on acts of tenderness. Whenever two pupils were caught fighting or quarrelling, they would be brought to the principal’s office for interrogation. After they were asked to air their respective sides, they would be asked to shake hands and put their arms around each other’s shoulders to indicate that they have reconciled.

Then, they would be asked to remain locked as they were asked to go out of the office for all the students to see. This practice had become legendary in your small town—something which had drawn innocent laughter but also admiration from the parents and the community.

Nowadays, you realize that more and more people are learning to hug more openly. In some communities these days, you are now beginning to see that hugging and other similar physical forms of affection are becoming the norm.