Brats and Other Failures, Scholars and Success Stories
We cannot remain silent anymore. We do not wish to contain this discontent to any further extent. It would be sheer hypocrisy and outright uselessness on our part, or on the sensibility of those teachers and other constituents in this community who commit their time and effort to help produce a genuine scholar, one student whom we do not consider ideal—but rather one real, attainable person.
There is a pervasive culture of spoiled brats in our school today. Everyday we see scholars—students of the Philippine Science High School Diliman Campus—going in and out of our high school, baring their persons in disgraceful degrees of being unruly, undisciplined, gang-like, virtually becoming a bunch of hooligans. These people have to be told something, at least something.
The solid waste management campaign we recently initiated during the Do Day has the most visible proof of apathy and lack of concern—erosion if not a disgusting absence of values—among our students. The students’ recommendation that there be one janitor in charge for every floor to clean their classrooms only presents a depressing scenario for us, teachers—does it now mean that students cannot deliver the simple task of segregating or at least throwing their trash sensibly to where they belong? What a scholar-ly modest proposal!
In the boys’ main dormitory, most if not all students are hardly disciplined—they read Sunday papers and leave all pages scattered and crumpled. Maybe they expect their maids to put their litter properly. Unfortunately they have to be told they are not in their homes—they have to be reminded they are dormers. Or maybe they have to be told about an axiom that says live and let live.
Oftentimes dormers bang the office telephone and the phone in the booths. They dribble basketball even during nighttime inside their rooms, in the corridors, and the lobby. Most of the time they watch television in an unreasonably loud volume. They leave electric fans switched on after they used them. They slam the doors of their rooms every time—every time, any time.
They are hardly grateful for any help offered them on their fast food orders or laundries by a teacher or staff desk volunteer. After eating their stuffs, they scatter styros everywhere—ground floor benches, water dispensers, stairs, everywhere.
Some of them scamper around the halls minutes before midnight—even when some of their roommates are already asleep. They make noise and all noise in the dead of night. They scatter their trash and leftover food like there is no tomorrow. The janitors—who have come and gone one after the other—constantly lamented the waste perennially scattered everywhere in the comfort rooms and the halls.
Many times in the cafeteria we encounter students interrupting the queue to get their orders ahead of those who are persistently falling in line. In this instance, a cafeteria staff would be kind enough to accommodate these singits while the rightful people are kept waiting. This is chiefly unforgivable. The basic rule of falling in line and waiting for one’s turn is as elementary as a kindergarten policy. Students who hardly see others in front of their noses just need to be told to go back to kindergarten. We pity these students if ever they do this inconsiderate act with a queue of cafeteria-goers who compose Bin Laden’s lot or Bush’s army. We do not know where they might find themselves once they get to face their fellow brats.
In classrooms, students are said to haggle everything with the teacher—from lessons to grades. They always negotiate to do other stuffs aside from the ones the teacher has designed or agreed with them to do. Even though it is too unreasonable, they would insist on doing what they want. What? It seems that they want to believe they know better than the teacher because the teacher always ought to “take off from where students are coming from.” We do not think the teacher is just there to be among their clique—intelligent or otherwise. In other words, a little bit of respect for the teacher—at least the fact that the teacher is older than them—should send them to think they need to first listen to a teacher before they negotiate anything, regardless of their predicament. If they need no instruction or directions, then, they must be told they must have come to the wrong place.
In spite of their brilliant ideas, which we recognize, acknowledge and applaud—they have no right to be arrogant about their knowledge. Such attitude only validates the fact that they do not really know enough. Failure then looms for these persons who see their teachers as inferior to them because in their own senses, they know they are better. This is too sad.
In this teacher writer’s three classes, many students failed in the first quarter. These failing students hardly complied with most class requirements necessary to pull up their grades. In language arts and journalism classes, we cannot help but wonder why most students would not turn in critical papers for evaluation—classic reviews, poems, homework, group or quad output. Despite countless extensions of deadline, some students would not turn in anything. They could not simply seem to care. Maybe we have extended the deadline more than enough that they lost interest in the subject matter—because they were stolen the thrill or pressure with which they can finish an impressive work. But we cannot just accept such excuse. A sensible student can always do better than staying mediocre the rest of his student life.
We recognize that all these apparent attitudes—the students’ value system—have to be redirected and led into something which everyone can admire or at least hope for. We cannot be so sadder than now, given such attitudes affecting our sensibility. Something has to be done—something has to be done. And we will, we will.
If we do not, we would simply spoil students and make them all brats, who will later mutate into successful monsters in any civilization where they can choose to thrive. Suffice it so say, anywhere they go, brats will never succeed—unless we accept that ours is a world ruled by brats. Yes, indeed Bush and other brats are ruling the world now. But we believe further that the world will not end in him or Bin Laden or Saddam or other brats who made news and money out of some childish folly or some foolish childhood.
As far as our brats are concerned, their gross lack of any values—technically, virtues—poses a challenge to all of us around here who still believe that basic and traditional values can prove true all through.
Our students—scholars, as we aptly call them—need to be told to grow up. They cannot remain pampered in all wrongly defines senses of the word “nurture.” We cannot just give them the fattest fish all the time. We will be forever condemned if we realize one day we would have not taught them how to fish by which they can survive all their way through. We would have been useless. This would be utter futility.
On the contrary, we see traces of an admirable scholar in some students. In their presence we see a glint of hope that all our efforts here—present, past, future—appreciated, underrated, or uncompensated—will never go to waste.
There is an apparent culture of admirable scholars pervading the school today. Everyday we see scholars—students of the Philippine Science High School Diliman Campus—going in and out of our high school, baring their persons in commendable degrees—a well-mannered, dutiful, cultured lot, whose real persons and stories need to be emulated. Or to the very least, appreciated. At least appreciated.
An inspiration we can obtain from the presence of students who are otherwise courteous, basically tactful, reasonably straightforward, and not necessarily quiet or submissive. In this environment inhabited by hooligans and grade hagglers, we can find a dormer who still secures gate pass duly from the dorm manager when he goes to the church on weekends or worship days. We also have a devoted student who keeps his word about submitting his late paper on Friday. Or what a delight it would be to meet a young junior who greets you one unholy afternoon with a forthright smile and a warm “Hi, Sir!” By these students we cannot just help but be dumbfounded. And inspired.
We see streaks of hope in a student who gives way to a teacher when he passes by their clique. We most admire one who asks to be given a task not only because he knows he will be graded for it but because he or she is convinced that there is something to learn from it. How about a student who offers a teacher to carry their notebooks to and from their classrooms? Or an anonymous someone—barely a class officer—who willingly borrows the eraser from the teacher and cleans the writing on the board?
We salute these scholars.
These basic, admirable values are redundantly the essentials. Sadly, however, some of our students referred in the first part of this lamentation are not through getting to know any elemental thing about these or any aspect of genuine learning, which can prepare them for life.
All the same we remain optimistic that we have hope in some others who do otherwise; who are otherwise. So we move on to looking beyond what is obvious here and now.
Frankly we believe it is not so hard to find a hero, an odd man out. Daily we launch a search for a martyr who does not conform with a culture that is tolerant of the vices of a child, the whims of Peter Pan or the caprices of a Dennis the Menace.
He or she is one growing person who is willing to live and live well in good manner. One who will succeed and whose name will be worth every frame in a world’s nameless, priceless, unadvertised, and insignificant hall of fame—because he or she will be one etched in a teacher’s heart—one who will inspire the teacher enough until his or her retirement. It will not be so difficult to stumble on admirable persons who can make sense of what we have been doing the most of our lives. The search for these persons has always been on going.
If the failures referred here cannot be molded anymore, there will be some out there whose young lives can shed light to others—some who can be the genuine scholars.
For sure, there will be some.
Friday, October 30, 2009
Contemplating Cruz Contemporary
In the heyday of Philippine Panorama’s fiction prize some ten years ago, Isidoro Cruz’s “Chalk Dust” won first prize for 1996.
A short story originally submitted to the Iligan National Writers Workshop the year prior to its win, “Chalk Dust” must have won the coveted national literary prize for its sensitivity to the individual plight of the overseas Filipino worker who, in recent years, has been considered our contemporary national hero, because of the dollars they scrape and scrimp for one of the lamest economies around the world.
Cruz’s “Chalk Dust” weaves a piece in the life of Clarissa, a former teacher back in the Philippines who went to work as a domestic helper in Singapore. After her contract failed because her original employers backed out, Clarissa eventually worked for the Tangs, a couple with two boys—and with whom the story virtually takes an unforgettable turn.
The situation of the protagonist comes in handy—one morning Clarissa is leaving the Tangs. Apart from a cheap card that she gives to Clarissa, Mrs. Nancy Tang has only few words to say to her as she starts for the airport.
The rest of the story unfolds quite symbolically through flashback, a narrative device that best renders a regretful tone—the one portrayed by the protagonist herself. Right away, we get to ask why Clarissa is leaving the Tangs. What must be the reason why she stops employment?
We answer this question by taking the trip with Clarissa as she journeys home. As memories flash back and forth—we are bit by bit drawn into her sad story. We learn that Clarissa was a former teacher back in her country. We also learn that her father is totally outrageously against her working abroad as a domestic helper, lamenting that they had labored much to help her through college, but not just to end up “scrubbing somebody else’s bathroom.”
We then know that Clarissa left teaching because she did not like it, and it didn’t really pay. We also learn that Clarissa could not really stomach her students’ behavior. That is why she must have left the country to seek the virtual “greener pastures,” whatever that means to her. Because the previous employers whom she applied for backed out, we get to know that Clarissa had to make do with what is in front of her nose—she had to work for a couple with two kids.
Through her sensitivity, we also learn that her employers’ residence is a stifling enclosure, squeezed in a rising metropolis, a busy city where probably progress dissipates the very energies of people, and where the only thing you are given to eat is noodles.
In the midst of this cloistered, monotonous life [which she finds too irksome even exasperating], Clarissa does not at all realize that at any rate she lives in a home that instead rises from the stifling smog and pollution which can kill her.
Eventually, Clarissa realizes her work is not much different from her classroom work. Yes, she may have fewer kids to attend to—just the two sons of her employers, but she is rather convinced they are not much different from her students whom she despised back home.
In the airport, Clarissa meets Trining, a fellow domestic helper. Unlike Clarissa, Trining is a “full-fledged” maid, who must have worked for a number of employers already—so much so that she has been going abroad back and forth, seeking to earn a living for relatives back home who rather only tell her what to bring home next time, and perhaps shying away from the neighbor’s prying eyes or gossip about her work abroad.
And unlike Trining, Clarissa cannot talk as much because hers is a different story—she is not happy from where she came. She’s not excited about going home to family with bags full of pasalubong.
Along the way, after all that was said and done, Clarissa vacillates between what has beens and what ifs. Inasmuch as she does not want to return home, she is doing so right now. She is even catching her trip on time.
What has she gone wrong? When asked about her whereabouts, she also wonders why is she going back to the place where she once despised because she did not like it—everything, what she was doing, what she was, what she was not doing, etc.—there. Was it something she did?
“I’ll tell her! I’ll tell her.!”—Clarissa cannot forget the boy’s face. When the mischievous elder son Jimmy saw Clarissa eating her favorite noodle soup, he started teasing her, soliciting the attention of his younger brother Sam, and told him they’d be playing cooking. Jimmy took condiments from the countertop and sprinkled sorts of other condiments on to Clarissa’s soup.
Even when Clarissa tried to stop Jimmy, the boy did not listen to her until he completely spilled what Clarissa was eating. When Clarissa flared up and then physically reprimanded the boy, the situation only got complicated—the boy spat at her, and on impulse, she slapped him until he cried and kicked her away. When the boy cried and threatened to tell his mother, Clarissa equally threatened that she’d burn the whole place should he squeal.
Interestingly, we do not learn whether the boy ever did tell his parents about it. The slightest hint we learn is that Clarissa must have grown tired of her wards’ misdemeanor which, to some, might have been unobjectionable—if one is well oriented enough to work there for the sake of money to send home, or if one is totally disposed to earn money in a foreign country.
In all, she must have only relived the days when she was a teacher, perennially irritated by the slight, mischievous ways by her students, and taking all these things personally. After all, how else can she take all of these, without her being a person?
At least, her employers are quite civil enough to just let her go—no questions asked. Whether the boy squealed to his parents, she can only assume. She cannot demand as to ask them how come she has to go. On the ways with which they rear their children, her gracious employers must have learned a number of lessons in the past—so maids like Clarissa cannot do as much.
The story’s title “Chalk Dust” forges the clearest image for the whole story, as it spells the dichotomy between the good and bad elements of the protagonist’s experience.
She is going home now because the Tangs simply fired her for her misbehavior. Funny that it was her who most probably misbehaved. Once she must have thought she cannot be a teacher. But now she thought she cannot also be a helper—inasmuch as she must have hated the chalk dust, it is also easy for her dust off any irritating situation she finds herself in. Shouldn’t she realize that a teacher is also a helper? Or has she ever realized that?
Of course, the story ends as the journey ends. She has arrived home, but what still pesters her is how that boy made fun of her picture, and made her see it when he put it on her pillow.
Clarissa’s plane landed already, but her disgust about the whole thing has not yet subsided—truly, she must have been home now, but is she at all unscathed?
In the bigger picture, “Chalk Dust” was hewn just as when the country would witness the tragic fate of Flor Contemplacion, a domestic helper charged of murder of the child of her employers. For months, Flor Contemplacion dominated the country’s headlines, as it was not just the case of one Filipina maid working in a foreign country.
It was rather the Filipinos’ global repute—the sheer dignity that people have come to associate with the “dignity of a Filipino” which reads much like our national pride.
Despite the intervention pursued by the Ramos government who was rather concerned with globalization [read: the fast-rising export of domestic helpers,] Contemplacion still was hanged in the Changgi prison. The most that we succeeded in doing was to immortalize her story via Nora Aunor, whose performance raked more profits for film and media moguls.
A short story originally submitted to the Iligan National Writers Workshop the year prior to its win, “Chalk Dust” must have won the coveted national literary prize for its sensitivity to the individual plight of the overseas Filipino worker who, in recent years, has been considered our contemporary national hero, because of the dollars they scrape and scrimp for one of the lamest economies around the world.
Cruz’s “Chalk Dust” weaves a piece in the life of Clarissa, a former teacher back in the Philippines who went to work as a domestic helper in Singapore. After her contract failed because her original employers backed out, Clarissa eventually worked for the Tangs, a couple with two boys—and with whom the story virtually takes an unforgettable turn.
The situation of the protagonist comes in handy—one morning Clarissa is leaving the Tangs. Apart from a cheap card that she gives to Clarissa, Mrs. Nancy Tang has only few words to say to her as she starts for the airport.
The rest of the story unfolds quite symbolically through flashback, a narrative device that best renders a regretful tone—the one portrayed by the protagonist herself. Right away, we get to ask why Clarissa is leaving the Tangs. What must be the reason why she stops employment?
We answer this question by taking the trip with Clarissa as she journeys home. As memories flash back and forth—we are bit by bit drawn into her sad story. We learn that Clarissa was a former teacher back in her country. We also learn that her father is totally outrageously against her working abroad as a domestic helper, lamenting that they had labored much to help her through college, but not just to end up “scrubbing somebody else’s bathroom.”
We then know that Clarissa left teaching because she did not like it, and it didn’t really pay. We also learn that Clarissa could not really stomach her students’ behavior. That is why she must have left the country to seek the virtual “greener pastures,” whatever that means to her. Because the previous employers whom she applied for backed out, we get to know that Clarissa had to make do with what is in front of her nose—she had to work for a couple with two kids.
Through her sensitivity, we also learn that her employers’ residence is a stifling enclosure, squeezed in a rising metropolis, a busy city where probably progress dissipates the very energies of people, and where the only thing you are given to eat is noodles.
In the midst of this cloistered, monotonous life [which she finds too irksome even exasperating], Clarissa does not at all realize that at any rate she lives in a home that instead rises from the stifling smog and pollution which can kill her.
Eventually, Clarissa realizes her work is not much different from her classroom work. Yes, she may have fewer kids to attend to—just the two sons of her employers, but she is rather convinced they are not much different from her students whom she despised back home.
In the airport, Clarissa meets Trining, a fellow domestic helper. Unlike Clarissa, Trining is a “full-fledged” maid, who must have worked for a number of employers already—so much so that she has been going abroad back and forth, seeking to earn a living for relatives back home who rather only tell her what to bring home next time, and perhaps shying away from the neighbor’s prying eyes or gossip about her work abroad.
And unlike Trining, Clarissa cannot talk as much because hers is a different story—she is not happy from where she came. She’s not excited about going home to family with bags full of pasalubong.
Along the way, after all that was said and done, Clarissa vacillates between what has beens and what ifs. Inasmuch as she does not want to return home, she is doing so right now. She is even catching her trip on time.
What has she gone wrong? When asked about her whereabouts, she also wonders why is she going back to the place where she once despised because she did not like it—everything, what she was doing, what she was, what she was not doing, etc.—there. Was it something she did?
“I’ll tell her! I’ll tell her.!”—Clarissa cannot forget the boy’s face. When the mischievous elder son Jimmy saw Clarissa eating her favorite noodle soup, he started teasing her, soliciting the attention of his younger brother Sam, and told him they’d be playing cooking. Jimmy took condiments from the countertop and sprinkled sorts of other condiments on to Clarissa’s soup.
Even when Clarissa tried to stop Jimmy, the boy did not listen to her until he completely spilled what Clarissa was eating. When Clarissa flared up and then physically reprimanded the boy, the situation only got complicated—the boy spat at her, and on impulse, she slapped him until he cried and kicked her away. When the boy cried and threatened to tell his mother, Clarissa equally threatened that she’d burn the whole place should he squeal.
Interestingly, we do not learn whether the boy ever did tell his parents about it. The slightest hint we learn is that Clarissa must have grown tired of her wards’ misdemeanor which, to some, might have been unobjectionable—if one is well oriented enough to work there for the sake of money to send home, or if one is totally disposed to earn money in a foreign country.
In all, she must have only relived the days when she was a teacher, perennially irritated by the slight, mischievous ways by her students, and taking all these things personally. After all, how else can she take all of these, without her being a person?
At least, her employers are quite civil enough to just let her go—no questions asked. Whether the boy squealed to his parents, she can only assume. She cannot demand as to ask them how come she has to go. On the ways with which they rear their children, her gracious employers must have learned a number of lessons in the past—so maids like Clarissa cannot do as much.
The story’s title “Chalk Dust” forges the clearest image for the whole story, as it spells the dichotomy between the good and bad elements of the protagonist’s experience.
She is going home now because the Tangs simply fired her for her misbehavior. Funny that it was her who most probably misbehaved. Once she must have thought she cannot be a teacher. But now she thought she cannot also be a helper—inasmuch as she must have hated the chalk dust, it is also easy for her dust off any irritating situation she finds herself in. Shouldn’t she realize that a teacher is also a helper? Or has she ever realized that?
Of course, the story ends as the journey ends. She has arrived home, but what still pesters her is how that boy made fun of her picture, and made her see it when he put it on her pillow.
Clarissa’s plane landed already, but her disgust about the whole thing has not yet subsided—truly, she must have been home now, but is she at all unscathed?
In the bigger picture, “Chalk Dust” was hewn just as when the country would witness the tragic fate of Flor Contemplacion, a domestic helper charged of murder of the child of her employers. For months, Flor Contemplacion dominated the country’s headlines, as it was not just the case of one Filipina maid working in a foreign country.
It was rather the Filipinos’ global repute—the sheer dignity that people have come to associate with the “dignity of a Filipino” which reads much like our national pride.
Despite the intervention pursued by the Ramos government who was rather concerned with globalization [read: the fast-rising export of domestic helpers,] Contemplacion still was hanged in the Changgi prison. The most that we succeeded in doing was to immortalize her story via Nora Aunor, whose performance raked more profits for film and media moguls.
Friday, October 23, 2009
Facebook Poetry
May 6 Friend Requests ka pero saro sana
man an bisto mo sainda: si Noel Blancaflor.
Saiirisay man 'ni? May Sally Diaz, may Stanley Po.
Saiirisay man 'ni? Add mo daa as Friend?
Mayo ning Add as Non-Friend? As Acquaintance?
Dai man daw na an ngaran mo kapangaran mo?
Nag sign-up ka kaidto ta sabi kan amiga mo
ma-Reply siya saimo. Pero perang bulan ka nang
member since April 2009 pa, mayo man siya baga.
Naka-Thumbnail an mga Friends mo Recently Added
pero dai man nagi-reply sa comment mo. Dai mo aram
kong nababasa an pira nang pangungumusta mo. Inutil!
You like this. You sagkod si Polana sagkod si Polano like this.
Ano ta "Comment. Like. Delete." sana? Mayo nin Dislike?
Ay, uni ho, mga quiz-quiz na maski ano na sana.
Anong kanta ka ni Britney Spears? Who cares?
What time will you die? Paligsok man ni ýo.
Igwang Which Sexual Position Are You? Buray ni Ina niya!
Kulang na lang Anong Gamit ni Barack Obama
sa White House an Garo Ika? Stapler.
Kadakul-dakul Causes an inaagdang ayunan mo--
ta'no mayo kang mauyunan? May Plant A Tree,
Donate a Book, Adopt a Child. Ta'no mayo nin
Sire a book, plant a child, write a tree?
Hadaw mayo nin Sue a Government Official
o baad mas magayon: Meet God in Person?
Pirming Mafia Wars an pinsan mong si Ardo--
si Saddam Hussein an nahihiling mo sa logo.
Haros gabos sa Friends List mo nagkakawat
nin harong-harong, kagrugaring nin mga baka,
manok, tuka-rig, gadya, kurasmag na marayo man.
Farmville na pahingurag na lintian.
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Ugayong ni Uryol
Pirang taon ta kang pinaistar sa harong ko.
Tinata’wan pa nin balon kun natitikapo.
Kun kamong magturugang mayong kinakarakan
Dinuhulan kamong sud-an hali sa sakong karihan.
Kulang na lang nganing hurungitan ko kamo.
Sako baga an dalagan mo pag mayo an ina nindo.
Ano man an pinakakan saimo kan ilusyon mo?
Lingaw ka nang ika an matuang aki kan tugang ko?
Saimo sinda maasa, Noy, gabos sa pamilya nindo.
Dai man daw linumay ka kan babaying ito?
Dai na pati kamo nasupog sa itsura nindo.
Nakaabra-siete daa, parasad-pasad sa kanto.
Dai ka pa baga tapos, Noy, dai mo girumdon?
Tapos ngonyan, daog mo pa an may agom.
Ako baga an nagparatustos sa pagpaadal saimo.
Tapos naaraman ko nang nagsasaro na kamo?
Lintian! Badong, dai mo ko pagprobaran,
‘Baad an kasaruan mo sakong makasturan.
An utang na boot, Noy, dai puwedeng bayadan.
Pero kun kamo kan babaying ito an magkadagusan
Sisingilon ta ka nanggad kan saimong mga utang.
Maglikay ka, Noy, ‘baad an ina mo an mautsan.
QatarSis
Nagbuwelta na si Manay hali sa Doha.
Dai daa klaro kun ano an trabaho niya.
An nakaagi, garong pirang bulan pa sana
Pero nagbareta siya samo; mapuli na siya.
Kadtong huring apod, yaon siya sa pabrika.
Gibuhan daa nin tela; harani sa may siyudad.
Sarong hapon, basang na lang nag-apod siya.
Nagpaparahibi; ta’ samuya pu’ngaw na daa.
Pigparaanggotan siya ni Papa pag-abot;
Inutangan pa kaya an kwartang napugrot.
Paghatod mi sa Manila iyo an pinanggastos;
Tapos ngonyan, mayo lamang daang pulos.
Dai pa ngani tulos siya kadto nakalarga;
Sinangra mi muna an sarong ektaryang oma.
Sambulan siyang naghalat sa pinsan mi sa Naga.
Astang napagaran an placement sa ahensya.
Kaya binabasol siya ni Mama ara-aldaw
Sinesermonan siya antes magpamahaw.
Kaya daa siya nagpuli ta pirming hinihidaw
An ilusyon niyang pulis na taga-Pasacao.
Sahot ni Manay, masakiton duman an trabaho.
Pirmi sindang tinatabuga kan saindang amo.
Minsan ngani daa dai makakakan sa tiempo.
Digdi na lang daa maski hababa an suweldo.
Pero sarong aga, kinaulay siya ni Papa
Garong ki Manay napu’ngaw na man siya.
Maray daa nganing yaon digdi an matua
Para may mag-ataman sa saindang duwa.
Pero dawa nagpupungot, nagsugo si Mama;
Mag-obra daa tulos siya para makaagwanta.
Maray pa daang magbalik siya sa Naga;
Ta kaipuhan nin kahera sa tindahan ni Nora.
Hinghing sako ni Manay, pabor siyang sun’don
Sugo ni Mamang sa Naga na mamuhon.
Puwedeng maghilingan sinda kan saiyang ilusyon
Basta dai ko daa siya ki Nanay isusumbong.
Sabi pa ni Manay, ako an puwede sa abroad
Ta an trabaho, maski ano, kaya kong maagod.
An kontrata daa dire-diretso, kun ako mahigos.
Kun pamilya matitios, igwa nanggad panustos.
Pag sa Qatar daa, madali lang magkuang visa.
Pero dapat andam ako kun ako na an malarga.
Dapat basog ako nin memorya kan pamilya;
Sa hadok kan ilusyon dapat ‘gurong mapurga.
Dai daa klaro kun ano an trabaho niya.
An nakaagi, garong pirang bulan pa sana
Pero nagbareta siya samo; mapuli na siya.
Kadtong huring apod, yaon siya sa pabrika.
Gibuhan daa nin tela; harani sa may siyudad.
Sarong hapon, basang na lang nag-apod siya.
Nagpaparahibi; ta’ samuya pu’ngaw na daa.
Pigparaanggotan siya ni Papa pag-abot;
Inutangan pa kaya an kwartang napugrot.
Paghatod mi sa Manila iyo an pinanggastos;
Tapos ngonyan, mayo lamang daang pulos.
Dai pa ngani tulos siya kadto nakalarga;
Sinangra mi muna an sarong ektaryang oma.
Sambulan siyang naghalat sa pinsan mi sa Naga.
Astang napagaran an placement sa ahensya.
Kaya binabasol siya ni Mama ara-aldaw
Sinesermonan siya antes magpamahaw.
Kaya daa siya nagpuli ta pirming hinihidaw
An ilusyon niyang pulis na taga-Pasacao.
Sahot ni Manay, masakiton duman an trabaho.
Pirmi sindang tinatabuga kan saindang amo.
Minsan ngani daa dai makakakan sa tiempo.
Digdi na lang daa maski hababa an suweldo.
Pero sarong aga, kinaulay siya ni Papa
Garong ki Manay napu’ngaw na man siya.
Maray daa nganing yaon digdi an matua
Para may mag-ataman sa saindang duwa.
Pero dawa nagpupungot, nagsugo si Mama;
Mag-obra daa tulos siya para makaagwanta.
Maray pa daang magbalik siya sa Naga;
Ta kaipuhan nin kahera sa tindahan ni Nora.
Hinghing sako ni Manay, pabor siyang sun’don
Sugo ni Mamang sa Naga na mamuhon.
Puwedeng maghilingan sinda kan saiyang ilusyon
Basta dai ko daa siya ki Nanay isusumbong.
Sabi pa ni Manay, ako an puwede sa abroad
Ta an trabaho, maski ano, kaya kong maagod.
An kontrata daa dire-diretso, kun ako mahigos.
Kun pamilya matitios, igwa nanggad panustos.
Pag sa Qatar daa, madali lang magkuang visa.
Pero dapat andam ako kun ako na an malarga.
Dapat basog ako nin memorya kan pamilya;
Sa hadok kan ilusyon dapat ‘gurong mapurga.
May Sarong Harong
na dai nahaman yaon naitugdok
sa gilid kan tinampo. Hali sa kinatu-
tukawan mo, tiso an pagkatugdok
kan mga harigi. Mahibog sagkod
purusog an lanob. Mga bintana
najalousiehan na. Kun hilingon
mo sa luwas pwerte an tamanyo.
Tapos an atop pininturahan pula.
Pero hali sa kinatutukawan mo,
garo kabrot an sagurong sa wala.
An lanob sa kusina dai napalitada.
An kinatutugdukan dinuduruot na.
Mahibugon an mga ba’gangan
sa prantera. Gugon sagkod balagon
nagkaranap na. An puon kan kawayan
sa may gilid kan harong nakapukan.
yaon ka sa balyong kan salming
na bintana kan Philtrancong nakaparada,
ara-atyan, an awto malarga na.
sa gilid kan tinampo. Hali sa kinatu-
tukawan mo, tiso an pagkatugdok
kan mga harigi. Mahibog sagkod
purusog an lanob. Mga bintana
najalousiehan na. Kun hilingon
mo sa luwas pwerte an tamanyo.
Tapos an atop pininturahan pula.
Pero hali sa kinatutukawan mo,
garo kabrot an sagurong sa wala.
An lanob sa kusina dai napalitada.
An kinatutugdukan dinuduruot na.
Mahibugon an mga ba’gangan
sa prantera. Gugon sagkod balagon
nagkaranap na. An puon kan kawayan
sa may gilid kan harong nakapukan.
yaon ka sa balyong kan salming
na bintana kan Philtrancong nakaparada,
ara-atyan, an awto malarga na.
Indulgencia
Ne, sabihan daw sako
kun gurano kamuraway
An makidurog sa lalaking
garo daing pinagkakautangan;
Bakong an kaglalang kundi
an sadiri niya an nahihiling
sa altar, dangan ika minaluhod
sa saiyang garo nangangadie.
Ano man daw an nginangayo-
ngayo mo saiya? Sa ritwal
na imbuwelto kamong duwa,
ano an saindong indulgencia?
Ukay Ukay
Pirang aldaw matapos mag-agi an bagyong Frank sa Iloilo, igwang nabareta na sa kasagsagan kan bagyo, manlaen-laen daang ataman na hayop an nakaburutas; tapos an iba nagkagaradan. Sa Janiuay, may mga orig na nagkaralamos ta nagkaruluom sinda sa mga tangkal; sa Maasin, igwang mga baka saka damulag na dai nakaralangoy pag-rarom kan baha kaya nagkaralamos man. Igwa man daang nagkaburuhay—sa Guimbal, may mga ayam na nagralangoy-langoy; sa ibang banwa, may mga kanding na nagkaaratong man lang. Pero sa may parte kan Jaro, igwa daang ibang mga hayop na bisan yaon lang sa tugsaran kan saindang kagsadiri, nakaburutas pa man giraray sa saindang gakod, tapos sagkod ngonyan, nawawara pa.
Magagayon pang maray an mga badong ini.
Mas bara’go pa an mga pantalon na ‘ni kaysa sa
mga nagkatarawad ko kadto sa ukay-ukay sa Leganes.
‘Puon nang magrasyon an mga ka-barangay ko sa Jaro.
Kaya sabi sako ni Father, mawalat na lang muna ‘ko
digdi sa parokya. Ilain ko na daa an mga donasyon
na ipapanagtag mi sa mga taga-Janiuay sa aga.
Kun relief an sasabihon, nangangaipo man kaming maray.
Maaati na mga bado mi; kaipuhan mi man nin masusulot.
Haros marugba ngani an harong mi pag-agi kan baha.
Irigo gayod ‘ning mga T-shirt saka short ki Christian.
Pwerte ‘ning blusang blue. Puwede ‘ni ki Shiela Mae.
haloy na si tinuga’ ko sainda; pero dai ‘ko nakakabakal.
Maray-rahay, ultimong an mga kurtina, magagayon pa.
Kadakul-dakul man pati si ibinabang donasyon hali
sa sarong Starex ‘subago. Garo duwang karton pati ‘ni
kaya pilian ko lang an saro; kaipuhan ko man ‘ni sa harong.
An Tawong Naanayo
Pagkagios kan lalaking naanáyo,
susukulon niya an lanob gamit an sarong samod;
dangan maparakanta siya sa Sagrado Corazon.
Malakaw siya pa-baybayon pag-abot
kan sinarom. Pag-agi sa may kamposanto,
masasabat niya sarong kabaong; pinuprusisyon.
Malaog siya sa simbahan, pauli pa sana
an mga gurang; sa luludhan na garaba’ saiya
may masunson, “Nag-abot ngonyan si Mamo’.
Dapat nagpabendisyon ka saiya.” Hihiribunan
siya kan mga kanturang tapos nang mag-nobena.
Hihirilingon siya; sasabihan, “Dai ka pa baga
Noy, omay. Haen na man si Lucio?” Ipapalamag
ninda an pinsan niyang sa tangá pa naglahod. Maiba
sana siya pag ‘gakod na sa hikot an kamot niya.
Sa harong, dai siya mapamanggi kan sira.
Papainumon siya ninda nin dahon na gina’ga’,
sinalakan nin suka, haloy na tinalbong sa daga.
Pero dawa ipasantigwar siya ki Nana Guling
o ipahilot pa pirang beses ki Tiyang Onding,
an lalaking naanáyo dai na mabubulong.
Pag banggi, dai tulos siya makakaturog.
Atyan na matanga’ sa bintana siya masaprang
Ara-atyan pa, an bulan aawitan niya na.
Makaturog man, pero uum-omon siya;
Mangingiturog siya ki Mamo, kaiba an mga kantura
sindang gabos naghuhuruba sa may kapilya.
susukulon niya an lanob gamit an sarong samod;
dangan maparakanta siya sa Sagrado Corazon.
Malakaw siya pa-baybayon pag-abot
kan sinarom. Pag-agi sa may kamposanto,
masasabat niya sarong kabaong; pinuprusisyon.
Malaog siya sa simbahan, pauli pa sana
an mga gurang; sa luludhan na garaba’ saiya
may masunson, “Nag-abot ngonyan si Mamo’.
Dapat nagpabendisyon ka saiya.” Hihiribunan
siya kan mga kanturang tapos nang mag-nobena.
Hihirilingon siya; sasabihan, “Dai ka pa baga
Noy, omay. Haen na man si Lucio?” Ipapalamag
ninda an pinsan niyang sa tangá pa naglahod. Maiba
sana siya pag ‘gakod na sa hikot an kamot niya.
Sa harong, dai siya mapamanggi kan sira.
Papainumon siya ninda nin dahon na gina’ga’,
sinalakan nin suka, haloy na tinalbong sa daga.
Pero dawa ipasantigwar siya ki Nana Guling
o ipahilot pa pirang beses ki Tiyang Onding,
an lalaking naanáyo dai na mabubulong.
Pag banggi, dai tulos siya makakaturog.
Atyan na matanga’ sa bintana siya masaprang
Ara-atyan pa, an bulan aawitan niya na.
Makaturog man, pero uum-omon siya;
Mangingiturog siya ki Mamo, kaiba an mga kantura
sindang gabos naghuhuruba sa may kapilya.
Thursday, October 01, 2009
Ukay Ukay
Pirang aldaw matapos mag-agi an bagyong Frank sa Iloilo, igwang nabareta na sa kasagsagan kan bagyo, manlaen-laen daang ataman na hayop an nakaburutas; tapos an iba nagkagaradan. Sa Janiuay, may mga orig na nagkaralamos ta nagkaruluom sinda sa mga tangkal; sa Maasin, igwang mga baka saka damulag na dai nakaralangoy pag-rarom kan baha kaya nagkaralamos man. Igwa man daang nagkaburuhay—sa Guimbal, may mga ayam na nagralangoy-langoy; sa ibang banwa, may mga kanding na nagkaaratong man lang. Pero sa may parte kan Jaro, igwa daang ibang mga hayop na bisan yaon lang sa tugsaran kan saindang kagsadiri, nakaburutas pa man giraray sa saindang gakod, tapos sagkod ngonyan, nawawara pa.
Magagayon pang maray an mga badong ini.
Mas bara’go pa an mga pantalon na ‘ni kaysa sa
mga nagkatarawad ko kadto sa ukay-ukay sa Leganes.
‘Puon nang magrasyon an mga ka-barangay ko sa Jaro.
Kaya sabi sako ni Father, mawalat na lang muna ‘ko
digdi sa parokya. Ilain ko na daa an mga donasyon
na ipapanagtag mi sa mga taga-Janiuay sa aga.
Kun relief an sasabihon, nangangaipo man kaming maray.
Maaati na mga bado mi; kaipuhan mi man nin masusulot.
Haros marugba ngani an harong mi pag-agi kan baha.
Irigo gayod ‘ning mga T-shirt saka short ki Christian.
Pwerte ‘ning blusang blue. Puwede ‘ni ki Shiela Mae.
haloy na si tinuga’ ko sainda; pero dai ‘ko nakakabakal.
Maray-rahay, ultimong an mga kurtina, magagayon pa.
Kadakul-dakul man pati si ibinabang donasyon hali
sa sarong Starex ‘subago. Garo duwang karton pati ‘ni
kaya pilian ko lang an saro; kaipuhan ko man ‘ni sa harong.
Magagayon pang maray an mga badong ini.
Mas bara’go pa an mga pantalon na ‘ni kaysa sa
mga nagkatarawad ko kadto sa ukay-ukay sa Leganes.
‘Puon nang magrasyon an mga ka-barangay ko sa Jaro.
Kaya sabi sako ni Father, mawalat na lang muna ‘ko
digdi sa parokya. Ilain ko na daa an mga donasyon
na ipapanagtag mi sa mga taga-Janiuay sa aga.
Kun relief an sasabihon, nangangaipo man kaming maray.
Maaati na mga bado mi; kaipuhan mi man nin masusulot.
Haros marugba ngani an harong mi pag-agi kan baha.
Irigo gayod ‘ning mga T-shirt saka short ki Christian.
Pwerte ‘ning blusang blue. Puwede ‘ni ki Shiela Mae.
haloy na si tinuga’ ko sainda; pero dai ‘ko nakakabakal.
Maray-rahay, ultimong an mga kurtina, magagayon pa.
Kadakul-dakul man pati si ibinabang donasyon hali
sa sarong Starex ‘subago. Garo duwang karton pati ‘ni
kaya pilian ko lang an saro; kaipuhan ko man ‘ni sa harong.
Ugayong ni Uryol
Pirang taon ta kang pinaistar sa harong ko.
Tinata’wan ka pa nin balon kun natitikapo.
Kun kamong magturugang mayong kinakarakan
Dinuhulan kamong sud-an hali sa sakong karihan.
Kulang na lang nganing hurungitan ko kamo.
Sako baga an dalagan mo pag mayo an ina nindo.
Ano man an pinakakan saimo kan ilusyon mo?
Lingaw ka nang ika an matuang aki kan tugang ko?
Saimo sinda maasa, Noy, gabos sa pamilya nindo.
Dai man daw linumay ka kan babaying ito?
Dai na pati kamo nasupog sa itsura nindo.
Nakaabra-siete daa, parasad-pasad sa kanto.
Dai ka pa baga tapos, Noy, dai mo girumdon?
Tapos ngonyan, daog mo pa an may agom.
Ako baga an nagparatustos sa pagpaadal saimo.
Tapos naaraman ko nang nagsasaro na kamo?
Lintian! Badong, dai mo ko pagprobaran,
‘Baad an kasaruan mo sakong makasturan.
An utang na boot, Noy, dai puwedeng bayadan.
Pero kun kamo kan babaying ito an magkadagusan
Sisingilon ta ka nanggad kan saimong mga utang.
Maglikay ka, Noy, ‘baad an ina mo an mautsan.
Tinata’wan ka pa nin balon kun natitikapo.
Kun kamong magturugang mayong kinakarakan
Dinuhulan kamong sud-an hali sa sakong karihan.
Kulang na lang nganing hurungitan ko kamo.
Sako baga an dalagan mo pag mayo an ina nindo.
Ano man an pinakakan saimo kan ilusyon mo?
Lingaw ka nang ika an matuang aki kan tugang ko?
Saimo sinda maasa, Noy, gabos sa pamilya nindo.
Dai man daw linumay ka kan babaying ito?
Dai na pati kamo nasupog sa itsura nindo.
Nakaabra-siete daa, parasad-pasad sa kanto.
Dai ka pa baga tapos, Noy, dai mo girumdon?
Tapos ngonyan, daog mo pa an may agom.
Ako baga an nagparatustos sa pagpaadal saimo.
Tapos naaraman ko nang nagsasaro na kamo?
Lintian! Badong, dai mo ko pagprobaran,
‘Baad an kasaruan mo sakong makasturan.
An utang na boot, Noy, dai puwedeng bayadan.
Pero kun kamo kan babaying ito an magkadagusan
Sisingilon ta ka nanggad kan saimong mga utang.
Maglikay ka, Noy, ‘baad an ina mo an mautsan.
Bagacay, 1981
Kinalot na ninda kun sain nakalubong si Papa.
Sugo kaya kan mga tiyuon ko, pagsaruon
na lang daa sinda ni Nanay sa bagong pantyung.
Mas maray daa ‘ni para saindang duwa
saka daa sa gabos na aking nagkawaralat ninda.
Pinaluway-luway ko lang sa T’yo Doro sa pagkalot.
Nakua mi an mga restus. Humo na an kabaong.
Ralapa an barong sagkod an pantalon.
Paghaloy-haloy, may nakakua kan singsing niya.
Kinitkit ko an nadukot nang maray na daga.
Kiniskis ko ‘ni sa bado ko para malinigan.
Nagkintab an mital pero bako man bulawan.
Garong may nakasurat sa laog kan singsing.
May nababasa akong nakaukit na pangaran.
Dai ko aram may ibang apod si Papa ki Mama
Tama daw an pantyung na sinabing kaluton?
Sugo kaya kan mga tiyuon ko, pagsaruon
na lang daa sinda ni Nanay sa bagong pantyung.
Mas maray daa ‘ni para saindang duwa
saka daa sa gabos na aking nagkawaralat ninda.
Pinaluway-luway ko lang sa T’yo Doro sa pagkalot.
Nakua mi an mga restus. Humo na an kabaong.
Ralapa an barong sagkod an pantalon.
Paghaloy-haloy, may nakakua kan singsing niya.
Kinitkit ko an nadukot nang maray na daga.
Kiniskis ko ‘ni sa bado ko para malinigan.
Nagkintab an mital pero bako man bulawan.
Garong may nakasurat sa laog kan singsing.
May nababasa akong nakaukit na pangaran.
Dai ko aram may ibang apod si Papa ki Mama
Tama daw an pantyung na sinabing kaluton?
Dayabitis
Dai ka baya muyang pagsabihan kun ano
An puwede mong kakanon na pangudto?
Sabi kan doktor, dapat mi nang bilangon
An pagkakan mo ngonyan ta marugion
Nang entiro an mga lugad mo sa bitis.
Linutuan ka na ngani nin dikit na dilis;
Sinahog ko sa alugbati para masiram.
Tilawi muna an saimong pangudtuhan.
Maski para-pano, igwang namit ‘yan, ay.
Pero habo mo na bagang magpasaway.
Mapabakal ka pa nin kaldereta sa plaza;
Dai mo ngani aram kun ano an berdura.
Sige, ‘Tay, an bitis mo, dayaon mo na sana.
An nagdadakulang lugad, sige, parakraka.
Inutil nang maray na ika pagiromdomon
An tabletang ini kaipuhan mo nang inumon.
Mapaumay saimo an mapait na kakanon.
Mamuya ka daw na an bitis mo lagadion?
An puwede mong kakanon na pangudto?
Sabi kan doktor, dapat mi nang bilangon
An pagkakan mo ngonyan ta marugion
Nang entiro an mga lugad mo sa bitis.
Linutuan ka na ngani nin dikit na dilis;
Sinahog ko sa alugbati para masiram.
Tilawi muna an saimong pangudtuhan.
Maski para-pano, igwang namit ‘yan, ay.
Pero habo mo na bagang magpasaway.
Mapabakal ka pa nin kaldereta sa plaza;
Dai mo ngani aram kun ano an berdura.
Sige, ‘Tay, an bitis mo, dayaon mo na sana.
An nagdadakulang lugad, sige, parakraka.
Inutil nang maray na ika pagiromdomon
An tabletang ini kaipuhan mo nang inumon.
Mapaumay saimo an mapait na kakanon.
Mamuya ka daw na an bitis mo lagadion?
May Sarong Harong
na dai nahaman yaon naitugdok
sa gilid kan oma. Hali sa kinatu-
tukawan mo, tiso an pagkatugdok
kan mga harigi. Mahibog sagkod
purusog an lanob. Mga bintana
najalousiehan na. Kun hilingon
mo sa luwas pwerte an tamanyo.
Tapos an atop pininturahan pula.
Pero hali sa kinatutukawan mo,
garo kabrot an sagurong sa wala.
An lanob sa kusina dai napalitada.
An kinatutugdukan dinuduruot na.
Mahibugon an mga ba’gangan
sa prantera. Gugon sagkod balagon
nagkaranap na. An puon kan kawayan
sa may gilid kan harong nakapukan.
Yaon ka sa balyong kan salming
na bintana kan Philtrancong nakaparada,
ara-atyan, an awto mo malarga na.
sa gilid kan oma. Hali sa kinatu-
tukawan mo, tiso an pagkatugdok
kan mga harigi. Mahibog sagkod
purusog an lanob. Mga bintana
najalousiehan na. Kun hilingon
mo sa luwas pwerte an tamanyo.
Tapos an atop pininturahan pula.
Pero hali sa kinatutukawan mo,
garo kabrot an sagurong sa wala.
An lanob sa kusina dai napalitada.
An kinatutugdukan dinuduruot na.
Mahibugon an mga ba’gangan
sa prantera. Gugon sagkod balagon
nagkaranap na. An puon kan kawayan
sa may gilid kan harong nakapukan.
Yaon ka sa balyong kan salming
na bintana kan Philtrancong nakaparada,
ara-atyan, an awto mo malarga na.
Ni Isay Na Poncio Felato
Ne, sabihan daw sako
kun gurano kamuraway
An makidurog sa lalaking
garo daing pinagkakautangan;
Bakong an kaglalang kundi
an sadiri niya an nahihiling
sa altar, dangan ika minaluhod
sa saiyang garo nangangadie.
Ano man daw an nginangayo-
ngayo mo saiya? Sa ritwal
na imbuwelto kamong duwa,
ano an saindong indulgencia?
kun gurano kamuraway
An makidurog sa lalaking
garo daing pinagkakautangan;
Bakong an kaglalang kundi
an sadiri niya an nahihiling
sa altar, dangan ika minaluhod
sa saiyang garo nangangadie.
Ano man daw an nginangayo-
ngayo mo saiya? Sa ritwal
na imbuwelto kamong duwa,
ano an saindong indulgencia?
An Tawong Naanáyo
Pagkagios kan lalaking naanáyo,
susukulon niya an lanob gamit an sarong samod;
dangan maparakanta siya sa Sagrado Corazon.
Malakaw siya pa-baybayon pag-abot
kan sinarom. Pag-agi sa may kamposanto,
masasabat niya sarong kabaong; pinuprusisyon.
Malaog siya sa simbahan, pauli pa sana
an mga gurang; sa luludhan na garaba’ saiya
may masunson, “Nag-abot ngonyan si Mamo’.
Dapat nagpabendisyon ka saiya.” Hihiribunan
siya kan mga kanturang tapos nang mag-nobena.
Hihirilingon siya; sasabihan, “Dai ka pa baga
Noy, omay. Haen na man si Lucio?” Ipapalamag
ninda an pinsan niyang sa tangá pa naglahod. Maiba
sana siya pag ‘gakod na sa hikot an kamot niya.
Sa harong, dai siya mapamanggi kan sira.
Papainumon siya ninda nin dahon na gina’ga’,
sinalakan nin suka, haloy na tinalbong sa daga.
Pero dawa ipasantigwar siya ki Nana Guling
o ipahilot pa pirang beses ki Tiyang Onding,
an lalaking naanáyo dai na mabubulong.
Pag banggi, dai tulos siya makakaturog.
Atyan na matanga’ sa bintana siya masaprang
Ara-atyan pa, an bulan aawitan niya na.
Makaturog man, pero uum-omon siya;
Mangingiturog siya ki Mamo, kaiba an mga kantura
sindang gabos naghuhuruba sa may kapilya.
susukulon niya an lanob gamit an sarong samod;
dangan maparakanta siya sa Sagrado Corazon.
Malakaw siya pa-baybayon pag-abot
kan sinarom. Pag-agi sa may kamposanto,
masasabat niya sarong kabaong; pinuprusisyon.
Malaog siya sa simbahan, pauli pa sana
an mga gurang; sa luludhan na garaba’ saiya
may masunson, “Nag-abot ngonyan si Mamo’.
Dapat nagpabendisyon ka saiya.” Hihiribunan
siya kan mga kanturang tapos nang mag-nobena.
Hihirilingon siya; sasabihan, “Dai ka pa baga
Noy, omay. Haen na man si Lucio?” Ipapalamag
ninda an pinsan niyang sa tangá pa naglahod. Maiba
sana siya pag ‘gakod na sa hikot an kamot niya.
Sa harong, dai siya mapamanggi kan sira.
Papainumon siya ninda nin dahon na gina’ga’,
sinalakan nin suka, haloy na tinalbong sa daga.
Pero dawa ipasantigwar siya ki Nana Guling
o ipahilot pa pirang beses ki Tiyang Onding,
an lalaking naanáyo dai na mabubulong.
Pag banggi, dai tulos siya makakaturog.
Atyan na matanga’ sa bintana siya masaprang
Ara-atyan pa, an bulan aawitan niya na.
Makaturog man, pero uum-omon siya;
Mangingiturog siya ki Mamo, kaiba an mga kantura
sindang gabos naghuhuruba sa may kapilya.
Harong-harong
Kakakanon niya pa kuta an bahaw na bangus,
Na binakal niya sa carenderia pag-duty
kansubanggi pero tinataranga na.
Kan pinarong niya ini, mapa’nuson na.
Apodon niya daw an agom para magluto nin panira?
Dai gayod ta aram niya na an sasabihon kaini—
Ika daw maglaba maghapon!
‘Hapoton niya daw kun anong gustong kakanon
tibaad pu’ngot lang an isimbag saiya.
Magsala—baad ngonyan inabutan pa.
Tama man daw sabihan niya na an agom:
Mag-urulian na kita nin kandila?
Garo habo niya pa man.
Sa planta na lang siya makakan.
Dai na siya puwedeng magpalta.
Otro semana na an singil sa arkila.
Maray pa kaidto pag naghaharong-harong sinda ni Nora,
grabe an gama-gama niyang maka-uli man daa
sa saindang payag-payag sa likod kan bubon
ta may naluto nang pamanggihan an agom-agom niya.
Tapos siya may dara man daang
kuwara-kwartang itatao niya ki Nora
ta panggastos sa harong, pambakal
bagas-bagas na mga pisog kan ipil-ipil;
sira na mga dahon-dahon sa may gilid kan kali.
May pambakal pa nin lana-lanang pinuga sa gumamela
ipinapabakal na Lala sa balyong harong-harong.
Makakan-kakan man daa sindang sabay
kan linutong mga dahon sagkod kahoy.
Siya mapahiran-hiran kaupod an babaying kakawat.
Pag sinarom, aapodon na si Nora kan tugang niya.
Siya man mapuli na sa harong ninda.
Pag arog ka’yan, aram niyang harabuan na.
Na binakal niya sa carenderia pag-duty
kansubanggi pero tinataranga na.
Kan pinarong niya ini, mapa’nuson na.
Apodon niya daw an agom para magluto nin panira?
Dai gayod ta aram niya na an sasabihon kaini—
Ika daw maglaba maghapon!
‘Hapoton niya daw kun anong gustong kakanon
tibaad pu’ngot lang an isimbag saiya.
Magsala—baad ngonyan inabutan pa.
Tama man daw sabihan niya na an agom:
Mag-urulian na kita nin kandila?
Garo habo niya pa man.
Sa planta na lang siya makakan.
Dai na siya puwedeng magpalta.
Otro semana na an singil sa arkila.
Maray pa kaidto pag naghaharong-harong sinda ni Nora,
grabe an gama-gama niyang maka-uli man daa
sa saindang payag-payag sa likod kan bubon
ta may naluto nang pamanggihan an agom-agom niya.
Tapos siya may dara man daang
kuwara-kwartang itatao niya ki Nora
ta panggastos sa harong, pambakal
bagas-bagas na mga pisog kan ipil-ipil;
sira na mga dahon-dahon sa may gilid kan kali.
May pambakal pa nin lana-lanang pinuga sa gumamela
ipinapabakal na Lala sa balyong harong-harong.
Makakan-kakan man daa sindang sabay
kan linutong mga dahon sagkod kahoy.
Siya mapahiran-hiran kaupod an babaying kakawat.
Pag sinarom, aapodon na si Nora kan tugang niya.
Siya man mapuli na sa harong ninda.
Pag arog ka’yan, aram niyang harabuan na.
Sa Talipapa sa Felix Plazo
Luminagapak
an kutsilyo
sa pigi kan
karneng orig.
Nagdudurugo
pa, kinilo niya na
na ara-atyan gigi-
bohon kong liempo.
An tindero
garo soltero.
Kulas an ngaran
siguro
mga
diseotso.
an kutsilyo
sa pigi kan
karneng orig.
Nagdudurugo
pa, kinilo niya na
na ara-atyan gigi-
bohon kong liempo.
An tindero
garo soltero.
Kulas an ngaran
siguro
mga
diseotso.
QatarSis
Nagbuwelta na si Manay hali sa Doha.
Dai daa klaro kun ano an trabaho niya.
An nakaagi, garong pirang bulan pa sana
Pero nagbareta siya samo; mapuli na siya.
Kadtong huring apod, yaon siya sa pabrika.
Gibuhan daa nin tela; harani sa may siyudad.
Sarong hapon, basang na lang nag-apod siya.
Nagpaparahibi; ta’ samuya pu’ngaw na daa.
Pigparaanggotan siya ni Papa pag-abot;
Inutangan pa kaya an kwartang napugrot.
Paghatod mi sa Manila iyo an pinanggastos;
Tapos ngonyan, mayo lamang daang pulos.
Dai pa ngani tulos siya kadto nakalarga;
Sinangra mi muna an sarong ektaryang oma.
Sambulan siyang naghalat sa pinsan mi sa Naga.
Astang napagaran an placement sa ahensya.
Kaya binabasol siya ni Mama ara-aldaw
Sinesermonan siya antes magpamahaw.
Kaya daa siya nagpuli ta pirming hinihidaw
An ilusyon niyang pulis na taga-Pasacao.
Sahot ni Manay, masakiton duman an trabaho.
Pirmi sindang tinatabuga kan saindang amo.
Minsan ngani daa dai makakakan sa tiempo.
Digdi na lang daa maski hababa an suweldo.
Pero sarong aga, kinaulay siya ni Papa
Garong ki Manay napu’ngaw na man siya.
Maray daa nganing yaon digdi an matua
Para may mag-ataman sa saindang duwa.
Pero dawa nagpupungot, nagsugo si Mama;
Mag-obra daa tulos siya para makaagwanta.
Maray pa daang magbalik siya sa Naga;
Ta kaipuhan nin kahera sa tindahan ni Nora.
Hinghing sako ni Manay, pabor siyang sun’don
Sugo ni Mamang sa Naga na mamuhon.
Puwedeng maghilingan sinda kan saiyang ilusyon
Basta dai ko daa siya ki Nanay isusumbong.
Sabi pa ni Manay, ako an puwede sa abroad
Ta an trabaho, maski ano, kaya kong maagod.
An kontrata daa dire-diretso, kun ako mahigos.
Kun pamilya matitios, igwa nanggad panustos.
Pag sa Qatar daa, madali lang magkuang visa.
Pero dapat andam ako kun ako na an malarga.
Dapat basog ako nin memorya kan pamilya;
Sa hadok kan ilusyon dapat ‘gurong mapurga.
Dai daa klaro kun ano an trabaho niya.
An nakaagi, garong pirang bulan pa sana
Pero nagbareta siya samo; mapuli na siya.
Kadtong huring apod, yaon siya sa pabrika.
Gibuhan daa nin tela; harani sa may siyudad.
Sarong hapon, basang na lang nag-apod siya.
Nagpaparahibi; ta’ samuya pu’ngaw na daa.
Pigparaanggotan siya ni Papa pag-abot;
Inutangan pa kaya an kwartang napugrot.
Paghatod mi sa Manila iyo an pinanggastos;
Tapos ngonyan, mayo lamang daang pulos.
Dai pa ngani tulos siya kadto nakalarga;
Sinangra mi muna an sarong ektaryang oma.
Sambulan siyang naghalat sa pinsan mi sa Naga.
Astang napagaran an placement sa ahensya.
Kaya binabasol siya ni Mama ara-aldaw
Sinesermonan siya antes magpamahaw.
Kaya daa siya nagpuli ta pirming hinihidaw
An ilusyon niyang pulis na taga-Pasacao.
Sahot ni Manay, masakiton duman an trabaho.
Pirmi sindang tinatabuga kan saindang amo.
Minsan ngani daa dai makakakan sa tiempo.
Digdi na lang daa maski hababa an suweldo.
Pero sarong aga, kinaulay siya ni Papa
Garong ki Manay napu’ngaw na man siya.
Maray daa nganing yaon digdi an matua
Para may mag-ataman sa saindang duwa.
Pero dawa nagpupungot, nagsugo si Mama;
Mag-obra daa tulos siya para makaagwanta.
Maray pa daang magbalik siya sa Naga;
Ta kaipuhan nin kahera sa tindahan ni Nora.
Hinghing sako ni Manay, pabor siyang sun’don
Sugo ni Mamang sa Naga na mamuhon.
Puwedeng maghilingan sinda kan saiyang ilusyon
Basta dai ko daa siya ki Nanay isusumbong.
Sabi pa ni Manay, ako an puwede sa abroad
Ta an trabaho, maski ano, kaya kong maagod.
An kontrata daa dire-diretso, kun ako mahigos.
Kun pamilya matitios, igwa nanggad panustos.
Pag sa Qatar daa, madali lang magkuang visa.
Pero dapat andam ako kun ako na an malarga.
Dapat basog ako nin memorya kan pamilya;
Sa hadok kan ilusyon dapat ‘gurong mapurga.
Saturday, September 19, 2009
Ngurob-ngurob
Maninigo daw an magduman ka sa simbahan, magkanta
Sa pag-omaw sa Dios, magsulo nin kandila, magpangadie?
Dai man daw mayo kang nadadangog na ibang tingog
Kundi an sadiri mo, nagpaparangungurob-ngurob?
Sa pag-omaw sa Dios, magsulo nin kandila, magpangadie?
Dai man daw mayo kang nadadangog na ibang tingog
Kundi an sadiri mo, nagpaparangungurob-ngurob?
Friday, September 18, 2009
Mini-Hydro, Sabado
Amay nag-uli si Kristina.
Nagpaaram siya ka Shiela
sagkod ki Glenn, na nagpapara-
hulnakan na sana poon pa kan aga
pag-abot mi digdi. Siguro nalipot
siya sa paglangoy kansubago.
Pa'no man ko makakalangoy,
amay pa lang baragol na tulos
si bitis ko. Amay pa man talaga
ta dai mi pa nauubos ni Paulo
si panduwang Gilbey's. Maenot
na siya; habo pating magpahatod.
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
In the Chapel
In the chapel, you were never prepared to act out your faith, perhaps in the grandest manner, along with the worshiping crowd. There was always this force that kept you from being calm or still while you knelt in one of the pews. You just hoped you could hear a voice, One that you have always badly wanted to hear, but has never spoken a word.
Monday, August 31, 2009
A Filipino’s Song of Myself c. 21st century
“Manifesto for Myself”
by Eric Gamalinda, Zero Gravity, 1999
Know all persons by these presents
1. Wherever
2. I
3. go
4. I carry the sorrow of my country
5. its memory of water
6. its calendar of inclemencies
7. if my voice sounds far away
8. if I argue with the logic of ideograms
9. I insist I can’t help it
10. this is the language
11. I speak in my dreams
Whereas
12. I carry the light of all centuries
13. everywhere I go
14. I declare myself responsible
15. for the upkeep of their bridges
16. their poor their balconies
17. the fading lamps
18. and evanescence of dawn
19. I claim you as my burden
20. the you I will never meet
21. I bear your music
22. and your histories
23. and your children begging in the streets
24. and your mothers
counting the bullets
in the hollow nest of corpses
25. I am that one made of copper of shadow and salt
26. I have asked my poems
27. to bear the weight
28. of illicit conversations
29. dead letters
30. the insatiable murmur of the penitent
31. the two faces
32. of joy and sin
33. Everywhere that a man
34. goes hungry
35. is denied his speech
36. is driven from his home
37. I am the one who must accept
38. his bitter music
39. his silence
40. his terrifying oracle
41. Wherever I go
42. I remain who I am
43. I bear the weight
44. of light passing
45. over the cemeteries
46. the ripening fruit
47. and the nails
48. yanked from the hands
49. of the crucified Christ
50. Keep this under your hat
51. and when they ask about me
52. Tell them he knew
53. a lot of things
54. but he never learned
55. to shut up.
In “Manifesto for Myself,” Filipino expat poet Eric Gamalinda presents a persona who is the Filipino everyman, one who seems to have seen, witnessed and experienced the travails of his ‘sad republic.’ In particular, the persona is one who is way from his country—so that wherever he goes, he takes with him his country’s geography of sadness, and misfortunes. Perhaps not being able to have enough of his sad republic, and still dreaming much of his “empire of memory,” Gamalinda’s persona speaks in behalf of all Filipinos.
Employing the cataloging technique, this litany of stark realities confronting the common Filipino is beautifully expressed in a sensible and artistic fashion. This manifesto motif renders the poem its charm—the persona through a sort of a legal document, utterly declares to the rest of the world the Filipino race.
Having left his country, the persona feels the need to defend why he is exotic of Other to whom he is speaking—he does not berate himself for not sounding natural to others; rather he takes pride in being what he is because of the language he is born to or with. From the beginning of the poem until line 11, we know the persona asserts how he as a captive of his own country’s geography an sensibility is by nature Filipino, perhaps one who speaks the myriad languages—his country is as diverse as its ethnic groups, an archipelago of differences.
Lines 12 through 24 say much further of his Filipino-ness, which he seems to proclaim. Was it being ostracized or plainly isolated that drove Gamalinda’s sensibility to lament on his own race perhaps marginalized in the western world? Everywhere he goes, he carries the “light of all countries”—the Filipino is himself the emblem of diversity—a hybrid of a number of influences—the offspring of mixed cultures and senses and sensibilities. Being such, he takes responsibility for whatever these cultures imply or entail—favorable or otherwise—as in the fading lamps and the evanescence of dawn.” Ultimately, the Filipino everyman will relish the joys and sustain any ills of these cultures, traditions an influences that consist his being.
Burden to him is the ‘you’ whom he will never meet—the unnamed colonizer whose cultures subjugated him—who is but liable for the children begging in the streets, who feeds on the casualties of war or social unrest, the ones who are answerable to “the mothers counting the bullets in the hollow nest of corpses.” The persona tacitly deems himself responsible for all these—as in the Malay’s sense of bravery or valor.
Further on, the persona slowly reveals himself as a poet of sorts—an advocate of the bitter truths, more of a herald than a victim, a seer who has seen portents of the soul of his own race. His poems, according to him, carry for him a number of burdens—virtually the weight of the world: “illicit conversations” were because the sacred was perhaps mistaken for the profane; “dead letters” render meaningless rhetoric to him who uses them; the penitent is said to murmur insatiably, vacillating between good and evil; truth I traded for convenience or jeopardized by loose morals.
Heralding lots of truths now, the poet persona assumes the moral responsibility for his own kinsmen deprived of freedom, who are stolen their basic rights to life or livelihood. He feels, though, he is not worthy; he is apprehensive about the sad fate suffered by anyone who is continually deprived, suppressed, mothered, and silenced.
Wherever he goes, then, he will go further on to herald resurrection to the lot. Perhaps like Hermes who bore the light for the mortals, the persona hovers the dead countrymen, whose sorrows and malady, he himself continues to suffer.
Carrying the light in graveyards of tears and repression, he will [help] usher in the new life, he will help everyone prevail, “yanking away the nails from the hands of the Crucified Messiah, redeeming his fellowmen from their trials and tribulations.
He promises redemption to come not now but anytime sooner—in the end, he says he knows a lot of thing and he will never cease telling about these things he knows. He will not stop speaking truths; he will go on until truth prevails, until the Filipino everyman prevails.
Christmas with a Boy
I got to watch “Christmas with the Voice” unexpectedly. My colleague Rey, who is Jed Madela’s higsuon, insisted that I buy two tickets to the latter’s concert in his home city. I appreciated Rey’s offer since I and Dulce Maria have not been to any form of entertainment lately, or at least in the last two weeks. Or was it more factual that I can’t afford to refuse Rey out of utang na loob.
In almost two hours inside SM Cinema 6, we found ourselves transported to the audience seats applauding Sinatra, or the ones being serenaded by 90s Kilabot Ariel Rivera. We would later realize we were also part of a South Border gig or a Josh Groban’s disciplined moshpit. He simply sang every songs from any genre—virtually from Jose Mari Chan’s “Sound of Life” to Freddie Mercury’s “Crazy Little Thing Called Love.”
It was—in fact—a Christmas with the Voices. Despite the audience’s sense of wonderment evident in their passive reception of the artist’s questions [which turned out as monologues anyway], Champion of the
World Jed Madela was clever enough to un-bore his audience with his versatile voice—the former Dye Vest vocalist dabbled in pop, Broadway, and R& B, rock, and God-knows-what-else.
His chart-topping “Love Always Finds A Way” is an ambitious attempt to render a more convincing cover to a song that had been famous in the 80s. Or to sing a Chaka Khan cliché classic— “Through the Fire”—was indeed one of the Ilonggo champion’s best numbers, since the artist sang to his heart’s content while being seated, (and lying down later).
He also performed Brian McKnight’s “One Last Cry,” Ariel Rivera’s “Sana Ngayong Pasko”, and Toto’s “I’ll Be Over You,” proofs that his versatility knows no bounds and cannot thus be overrated. In the string of songs he sang, Jed Madela has woven a tapestry of sensible [appreciation of] music.
He must have not written any song in the second album, Songs Rediscovered, but the concert showed he has a lot of possibilities onstage when he displays versatility in his performance. The Hollywood Champion panel even recognized this.
His intense emotions while singing any song—make his mark. He is an artist that has yet to make waves. Someone can still write songs for him, or he can write his own pieces. His stage presence captivates the audience since the voice simply goes straight into the listener’s sense and sensibility.
Jed Madela’s strong sense of family did much of the talking in the Christmas with the Voice. The artist took pride in his roots—he related his grandmother’s sentimentality for “Memory,” one of the Broadway pieces he interpreted. He hinted at his father’s all-out support to his dream of pursuing a music career. He cited his mother and siblings as inspiration—indeed a more sincere and honest-to-goodness motivation for such a passion that can set the fashion, so to speak.
That he also acknowledged his roots and school where he went was enough reason to believe this Ilonggo dreamer and winner has yet a long way to go. He is able to proceed because he has with him the inspiration that can take anyone to places.
His slightly humorous conversations with the audience reflected both an Ilonggo accent and an English education that has yet to thrive and be internalized by a more appreciative audience.
As a national TV celebrity these days, Jed Madela knows what he should do to survive, or at least sustain his slot in the world of music-dom. He confesses he finds things difficult backstage. He has experienced discrimination, but says he’s challenged all the more to work harder.
In the concert, he lamented on the discrimination in show business. He confessed what setbacks there can be in the field he chose to pursue. In the end, he turned out seeking support from his fellow Ilonggos to help him and recognize talents such as his.
Jed Madela’s business to perform has become his aching to confess about show business. His performance along with his stories in the business calls out to the audience for help. And to buy his Rediscovered album can be the least but most important gesture a fellow Ilonggo can do to show his support and even affinity with this young rising star.
His sensitivity to the audience and his treatment of the numbers he rendered only showed that the probinsyano has not yet given up the fight in the field of show business.
His is a talent that has yet to shine beyond these shores. In the world championship where he reaped all awards, he was just given the needed break. Certainly his task now is to follow through.
In essence, Tec 7’s “Christmas with the Voice” was a wonderful treat. Projects such as that have to be replicated if it were the cultural workers’ task to help send people to dream their own possibilities and achieve them.
The concert was more than an appreciation or showcase of world music. It was entertainment at its best. Yet, as expected to happen in a laidback lifestyle in the provinces, cultural shows like this transform into avenues for self-identification. Grimly, it has rather become an artist’s desperate, sweet, quiet clamor to locate oneself in the bigger geography of differences.
Wo(e')man's Beast Friend
Two Tragic Characters in August Strindberg’s “Miss Julie”
& Leoncio Deriada’s “Dog-Eaters”
Unsolvable.
This is what August Strindberg’s “Miss Julie” and Leoncio Deriada’s “The Dog Eaters” make clear about the woman problem. In both works, the woman is portrayed as the modern tragic hero, powerless and insignificant character, who is not able to achieve her full person and make the best use of her existence, for it is largely hinged on her being smothered, silenced, suppressed, and considered insignificant.
In the two plays, women are depicted in a desperate state—not being able to do what their hearts desire or when they do, rather suffer their consequences in the most dismal forms. The powerlessness of a woman is highlighted by her futile attempts in antagonizing the male ego and is suppressed, regardless of her status in any society—aristocratic or urban poor. The patriarchal society constituting the male order presses too hard on their lives, and pushes them to despair and eventually, downfall.
One dismal reality is common in both plays. Both works bring to light the battle of the sexes—for domination—in an effort to create an order in a given society. When, at the end of the day, the question is asked—who survives? Certainly, it is not the woman. And more interestingly enough, both have naturalistic treatments of the same subject: the suppressed female sensibility never—if at all—triumphs over the otherwise impersonal male order. Her fate is largely determined by her enclosed, cloistered and restrained status in any given social setting where the male reigns supreme, intact, unmoved.
In the Strindberg classic, Miss Julie, a count’s daughter in the turn-of-the-century Sweden, seduces her father’s footman Jean, but succumbs to the dire consequences of her action that leads to her own ruin. In Deriada’s social realist piece written in the late 1960s, one cloistered wife Mariana realizes the stark poverty she consciously drew herself into, where her husband Victor lives the dog-like existence with his dog-eating friends. Desperate and resigned, her existence disintegrates within the filth of the slums.
Both dramatic tragedies spell the inevitability of the protagonist’s disintegration and ruin. In each of these works, the protagonist’s fate is inexorable, something that no one can escape. When we see the woman as the victim of a superior force, it arouses our pity. When we realize that the action demonstrates universal truths and that we feel that the victim could just as easily be ourselves—it arouses our fear. In the tragic hero’s death, we feel a sense of loss, but only because she has demonstrated his great worth. It is said that in tragedy, the forces of life being what they are, and human nature what it is, the protagonist wrestles with these forces, but he can never hope to win over them, and ultimately he is defeated.
“Miss Julie” delineates a series of unfortunate events for its protagonist, Countess Julie. We come to know that Miss Julie is the daughter of a count and that this affords her the blessings of a good life. We also get to know that Miss Julie has been brought up by her mother to hate men. When she—to express her contempt for them—forced her fiancé to jump over a horsewhip at her command, the man broke the engagement. Then, Miss Julie joins in a servants’ party and flirts with Jean, a footman. Through the entire unfolding of events, the countess seduces him and, unable to live with the conflicts this act creates in her, commits suicide.
In “The Dog Eaters”, Mariana laments the fact that hers is not a good life and scorns her husband Victor for not having a permanent job. She nags him for their poor life, and blames him for their sorry living conditions. Like a mad dog, she is hysterical at her husband: “I am mad because I want my husband to have a steady job… I want my husband to make a man of himself.” Mariana is cloistered within dismal poor circumstances which virtually dictate her sense of values. When she finally resorts to aborting her second child, it is because despair and resignation spell her entire character. She becomes irresponsible in her acts—hardly recognizing its consequences.
While making a problematic of the woman’s issue, Julie’s character emphasizes the dilemma that men and women are different—they want different things; and each is determined to dominate. In Miss Julie,” the battle of sexes is depicted very intensely ravishing (Krutch, 1953). Countess Julie, who belongs to the highly privileged class “plays with fire with the working-class constituent Jean who rather appears refined and even schooled. Bit by bit, through the play, we see how their respective roles are reversed on grounds of the more dominant sex. The male gradually dominates the female sex—regardless of where he is situated in the society, or economically determined.
Ruled by her instincts, on a frenzied mardi gras, Julie gets attracted to his father’s valet Jean—composed but virile and ambitious—but later fails to recognize the consequences of her wild act. She starts to engage him in a verbal war, and later an intimate affair—
Julie: Kiss my hand first!
Jean: Don’t you realize that playing with fire is dangerous?
Julie: Not for me. I’m insured.
Jean: No, you’re not! And even if you are, there’s combustible material nearby.
Julie: Meaning you?
Jean: Yes! Not because I am who I am, but just because I’m a young man…
Here, the male character very well recognizes the male-female chemistry is highly combustible; the woman hardly knows the male hormones are highly excitable, fact which never has been familiar to an otherwise naïve Julie who subconsciously desires to subdue the male sex. She has done so to her former fiancée who later broke off engagement with her on grounds of her wild domineering act—making him jump on a horsewhip.
Jean: And so you got engaged to the country commissioner!
Julie: Exactly—so that he should become my slave.
Jean: And he wasn’t willing?
Julie: He was willing enough, but he didn’t get the chance. I grew tired of him.
Early on, Julie, the count’s daughter utterly declares her domination of the other sex to her father’s footman, Jean, who patronizes such seduction until Julie furthers on to flirt with him:
Julie: What incredible conceit! A Don Juan, perhaps? Or a Joseph? I’m prepared to believe you’re a Joseph!
Jean: You think so?
Julie: I almost fear so.
[Jean makes a bold move to embrace and kiss her.]
Julie: [Slaps him] Insolence!
Jean: Serious or joking?
Julie: Serious.
In this part, Julie does not the consequences of her actions until the time Jean plays his part to poke fun at her, being lured in turn by her “statutory” seduction—one imposed to the male servant by her female master.
Julie: Have you ever been in love?
Jean: That’s not the word we’d use. But I have run after plenty of girls. And once, when I couldn’t have the one girl I wanted, I became sick. Really sick, I tell you, like those princes in the Arabian nights who could neither eat nor drink for love.
Julie: Who was she? [Jean is silent.] Who was she?
Jean: You can’t make me answer that.
Julie: If I ask you as an equal? As a—friend? Who was she?
Jean: You.
Julie: [Sits] Priceless!
An ambitious member of the working-class serving the aristocrats Julie and her father count, Jean is now compelled to make use of his being male to obtain what he desires—to become himself the powerful though anonymous Count who has control on everything in the household. And after several instances of seduction by his female master, the male servant becomes the male usurper who affords himself the chance to use his sex and sexuality and prey on her female sensitive character to conquer her.
When footman Jean becomes the abuser, he delineates a potent character of the patriarchal order. He represents the virile but unfeeling phallus, seeking its own pleasure and self-preservation. He serves the entire purpose of the masculine sensibility—sheer sex and bodily satisfaction—attaining for the male order its clout and control.
After the seduction results in consummation, whether compelled or otherwise, Julie realizes what she has drawn herself into. The subservient Jean is now someone who says much about the real story about parents of the countess herself. He then makes her realize that like her mother who hated men, she is also crazy. She is definitely crazy—
Jean: It’s what comes of getting mixed up with women. Miss Julie, I know you’re suffering but I cannot understand you. I think you’re sick. Yes, you’re definitely sick.
Julie: Please be kind to me. Speak to me like a human being.
And when they both realize that their action is shameful before the whole household, the woman character has something clear in mind—she’d run away with the footman to escape disgrace.
Jean: So what do we do then?
Julie: Go away together!
Jean: To torment each other to death?
Julie: No—to enjoy ourselves for two days, or a week, or for as long as it’s possible to enjoy oneself. And then—die.
Here is proven that the man-woman disparity is perennial as that of life and death. Though Julie foresees harmony in their coexistence, Jean does not share this idea, especially with Julie, who he considers not his equal, but now someone lower than him—after committing such an act. Jean very well knows how it works for the aristocrat—a member of the aristocrat cannot simply commit what Julie has brought for herself. Now he considers himself “higher” than Julie herself—not only because he is a male, but because the act has—as if—reversed their status. Truth now dawns upon Julie that with such an act, she could never regain her purity—or even honor—again. The male character’s rhetoric is working so much against the female’s sensitivity whose worth and sensibility is as though hinged on what the patriarchal order declares.
And when Julie summons him to join her in her plans to flee the Count’s household to establish their lives some place else, the male stands his ground to make her see—he has only fooled her as much as she did him prior to the consummation of the sexual act.
Julie: Come up with me!
Jean: To your room? Now you’ve lost your mind again! Go, at once!
Julie: Speak kindly to me, Jean.
Now disillusioned and given to disgrace and later death, Julie’s character is transformed as it is disintegrated. Here she appears to be the sorriest character after the swift turn of events. Jean only made her believe that he desired her—after patronizing her own seduction of him. The woman becomes the unwanted sex—the pathetic sex that pulled to itself its own ruin.
Julie: What would you do in my place?
Jean: In your place? Let me think. As a Count’s daughter, as a woman, after this kind of mistake. I don’t know. Yes, now I do know.
Julie: [makes a gesture] Like this?
Jean: Yes. But I wouldn’t do it—be clear about that! There’s a difference between us.
Julie: Because you’re a man and I’m a woman? What difference does that make?
Jean: Same difference as between—a man and a woman!
Close to her suicide, the naïve Julie does not recognize the difference of the two sexes insinuated and illustrated by the footman—that in her parent’s marriage, it is the Count, her father himself who ruled after all—not her mother. It is the man who has dominated.
These final exchanges of rhetoric between the male and the female highlight the failure of the woman to attempt at changing her own destiny. It is the male that still defines the female. It is he on whom she will hinge her existence into. Her existence is largely defined by how he allows [or not] it to be. Rendered immobile by everything surrounding her, Julie succumbs to her own ruin, and the male dominates in the end—
Julie: I’m unable to do anything any longer! Unable to feel remorse, unable to run, unable to stay, unable to live—unable to die! Help me! Order me, and I’ll obey you like a dog. Do me this last service, save my honor, save my name! You know what I should do, but can’t—will me to do it. Order me to do it!
Jean: I don’t know why—but now I can’t, either—I don’t understand it. It’s as though this jacket here actually kept me—from being able to order you—and now, since the Count spoke to me—now—how can I explain it—ah—it’s this damned servant boy sitting on my back! I think if the Count were to come down here right now—and he ordered me to cut my throat—I’d do it on the spot.
Here, Julie realizes that her existence cannot at all be given meaning beyond this thing she’s “ordered to do.” Everything has dawned on her, thus—
Julie: Then make believe you’re my father, and I’m you. You were such a good actor before, when you got down on your knees—you were the gentleman then—or haven’t you ever been to the theater and watched a hypnotist? He says to the subject, take the broom! And the subject takes it. He says, sweep! And the subject sweeps—
Jean: But the other one has to be asleep.
Julie: I’m already asleep.
The woman is given to accepting her destined place in the world where man reigns powerful and prevails. We come to realize that the woman problem is perennially unsolvable—irresolvable, or fixed in a number of ways. It declares that the woman is a predictable social character whose ill destiny in the patriarchal society can never be less than tragic or devastating.
We can infer a number of things about the predictable plight of the woman in an otherwise irregular reality put forth by the existing patriarchy. The fact that Julie approaches derangement, prior to her self-murder, tells us that a woman is doomed for life. When Julie approaches derangement, Julie both desires and rejects the male ego. She both abhors and adores Jean, the male culture constituent, the phallus that lures an otherwise reluctant female crevice into its traps. When Julie sets out to kill herself as per hypnotism by the animal, brusque Jean, the female sensibility succumbs to the male, phallic, patriarchal order—and reaffirms its control over human affairs.
Because “Miss Julie” illustrates a love-hate relationship between a noblewoman and one of her servants, reminiscent of D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover, this presupposes that the woman character is hinged on the male’s animal nature. Nothing much more can be said about this work but about its author’s strong aversion against women. The stark reality unfolds in this brazen work that depicts one gruesome male ego that stalks and preys on the female sensibility as it seeks to elevate itself by way if raping the female—physically and subconsciously.
In Leoncio Deriada’s “The Dog Eaters”, we see the tragic fate of Mariana, the wife of a jobless Victor who prefers drinking with his dog-eating friends to finding a stable job that could support his family. When Mariana recalls her expectations when she eloped with Victor, she is frustrated when she realizes that her dreams of having things she didn’t possess did not materialize after her elopement.
Mariana: Do we have to be like this all the time? Why don’t you get a steady job like any other decent husband?
Victor: You don’t have to complain, Mariana. True, my job is not permanent but I think we have enough. We are not starving, are we?
Mariana (with a flourish): You call this enough? You call this rat’s nest of a house, this hell of a neighborhood—enough? You call these tin plates and cheap curtains enough? (Bitterly.) This is not the kind of life I expected…
Mariana becomes the pathetic icon of irony when she pastes pictures on the walls so their house could get some sense of cheerfulness of the rather gloomy living conditions. Of course, the pasted pictures and plastic fixtures in the house all the more emphasized their destitution.
Mariana is the morally upright, goal-oriented, perhaps sensible modern woman who becomes a misfit—she has to indeed fall into despair—for she doesn’t belong to the slime of the slums. She despises the dog-like existence inasmuch as she abhors her husband’s affinity with their dog-eating neighbors. She prefers a better life. But she is living with the likes of Aling Elpidia, the vegetable vendor who sells her a concoction that can abort her unborn. Along with these characters, Mariana fails to realize that the worst that can happen to them is to become human refuse—yielding to their animal nature.
Aling Elpidia: (one hand still flat on Mariana’s belly) Are you sure you do not want another child?
Mariana: I don’t want another child. (She moves away and holds the bottle like a trophy.)
Aling Elpidia: Well, it’s your decision. The bottle is yours.
Mariana: How shall I take this?
As for the woman’s act or attempt to kill her unborn—moralists would immediately retort—the end does not justify the means—and perhaps make comments to the same effect. Mariana will never be judged by her intention—but primarily by the act. In the play, the act of abortion was never executed but Mariana’s attempt to do so has already propelled the worse circumstances and consequences for her. Though Mariana initially posed as a catalyst for change in that desperate part of the world, her being a wife to a macho Filipino husband more clearly draws her real fate—helplessness and despair altogether cause her downfall.
Mariana: One spoonful in the morning and one spoonful in the evening. It’s bitter, Victor, but I can bear it. I will be safe.
Victor: What’s that? (Then the truth dawning upon him) What? What? My baby! You? You!
Mariana: Yes! And I’m not afraid!
Victor: You won’t do it.
Mariana: No!
Victor: What kind of woman are you?
Mariana: And what kind of man are you?
Victor: It’s my baby!
Mariana: It’s mine. I have the right to dispose of it. I don’t want another child.
Victor: Why, Mariana, why?
Mariana: Because you cannot afford it! What would you feed another child, ha, Victor? Tuba for milk? Dog meat for rice?
Though Mariana appears to be a good woman, she is the quintessential woman whose morals are sacrificed—falling prey to an unrelenting male ego-dictated society, one that is hostile and aloof, cruel and impersonal, unkind and stern. Like the countess Julie—and like Ramir whom she butchers—Mariana succumbs to the slavering tongues of the dog-eat-dog society where she finds herself in.
When Victor tells Mariana, “Behave, you woman,” he articulates a macho rhetoric that attempts or obviously, starkly impose silence or seek to silence the woman and her possibilities. But to Mariana, Victor’s macho image is not in fact masculinity, but otherwise. She tells him she’s a coward because he hardly could provide for his growing family. For her, the measure of manhood is not something between his pants, it is his being able to provide and provide well and enough for his family.
The man-woman clash is caused by the male’s skewed sense of himself, his virility that makes not a sensible sense to the other sex. Mariana has a husband who has no ambitions, who never makes efforts to alleviate them from their stark poverty. Her natural circumstances largely determine her character, thus her story, thus her destiny.
Mariana: You men can talk because you don’t have to bear children. You cowards!
Victor: Shut up!
Mariana: Go away from me! Go away from me! Get out! Get out! Leave me alone!
(Victor goes out…She goes to the kitchen and comes back with the basket of vegetables and throws everything out of the window. Ramir barks.)
Mariana: Shut up, you miserable dog! (Pauses) Ramir—ah yes, Ramir. Now I know what to do.
(She goes to the kitchen and returns with a huge kitchen knife. Kicking the scattered tin plates on her way, she crosses to the room to the right exit.)
Enclosed in a strongly patriarchal structure, Mariana cannot just achieve her full potential as a person, much more a moral agent who strives to do what is right, or morally upright. Though she consciously takes chances and risks to change her husband’s disposition, she fails. In the process she loses herself. And in the end, she loses her self.
Mariana: here, Ramir. Come, come, Ramir. Come. Victor loves you very much. Perhaps more than he loves me. Come, Ramir. Do you see this knife? (The dog growls.) I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you, Ramir. I’ll slit your throat and drink your blood and cut you to pieces and stew you and eat you. Damn you, Victor. Damn this child. Damn everything. I’ll kill you, Ramir. (Final yelp.) I’ll cook you and eat you and eat you and eat you! Uhu! Uhu! Uhu! (And for the first time, Mariana cries.)
Very well, both texts highlight that the woman problem can never be solved because the unrelenting male sensibility will perennially make ways—consciously or otherwise—to suppress it, and make it realize its own insignificance, its unimportance.
Man [read: man and woman] is said to be the victim of conflicting desires, and the strongest of them, like his desire for a member of the opposite sex, are irrational and yet stronger than reason. He despises himself for not being able to cease desiring what he also hates (Krutch, 1953). Such generalization rings true in these two characters. Miss Julie obviously cannot do away with her desire for her father’s footman. So she desires him incessantly, while she also abhors his sex because she has been taught by her mother to hate men. This puts her in an irrevocable dilemma from which she could hardly get out one piece. Mariana, meanwhile, is a female sensibility which unconsciously or unknowingly brings upon herself her own ruin. The moment she decided to elope with a good looking animal named Victor instead of finishing her college course, she already degraded herself inasmuch as she belonged to a society where poverty defines the majority of its constituent. When she yielded to Victor’s virility and sex, she also stole from herself the right to a better status in an even more male-dictated society.
The essence of man’s tragic dilemma is that there is no rational—only an irrational solution of this dilemma (Krutch, 1953). Highlighted by the two tragic women characters and their sorry plights, the two works pursue a naturalistic tragedy that highlights pity, fear, and catharsis. Pity is aroused in us by the women’s inherent weaknesses and the social class structures they inhabit. Fear is evoked when we realize that the same fate could overcome any of us.
Both plays highlight the weak woman spirit. The plays enunciate that the woman indeed is a weak species—cloistered in the midst of the male-dominated society. Women are rendered to have tragic lives. Their fate—determined by the egoistic male society where they are situated—or where they are rather placed—is highly predictable. But the fact that these women characters defy such destiny is what makes their lives worth telling. The fact that they defied the boundaries of the oppressive, brusque, virile, and unfeeling patriarchal order—altogether redefines the character of a woman.
In the bigger picture, it is the woman who is put in bad light—or is she? Mariana rebels against the stifling patriarchal structure—antagonizing Victor when she resorts to aborting the second child and hurting his male ego when she kills his pet dog Ramir. Mariana resorts to abortion to spite Victor and perhaps make him aware of his responsibility. By wanting to kill her second child, for they cannot practically feed them well, she would rather redeem him from earthly suffering and damnation. Here the modern woman is one admirable character for she seeks to challenge an otherwise dismal structure that oppresses more her inane existence, and transforms her very sensibilities.
“I told you I didn’t want another child. You broke that bottle but I will look for other means. I’ll starve myself. I’ll jump out of the window. I’ll fall down the stairs,” runs the litany of despair, of Mariana’s exasperated existence as well defined by the male world of Victor’s. This makes clear the nature of woman to liberate herself from the restrictions of the male structure that encloses her—or rather defines her—one that subjects her as a wife or that subjugates her as a woman [secondary or insignificant to man]. Only by rebelling against such dismal structure can the woman afford herself her liberty, her individuality, her self.
In Mike Figgis’s rendition of Strindberg’s masterpiece, Saffron Burrows’ Julie is one unforgettable tragedy in literary and cinema consciousness. Her sexually hungry, angst-ridden female countenance spells the female nature—”vessel and damsel” but defiant and irreverent. She delineates one discontented and disturbing female character, a bored individual whose hollow existence is not compelled or desired but naturally determined. She has been taught by her mother to hold grudges against men; she is a man-hater gone haywire.
Both Julie and Mariana do not recognize the futility of their actions to free themselves from these patriarchal enclosures until they actually succumb to it. In both works, there’s an attempt to define a helpless, ill-fated woman whose existence is hinged on the brusque and indifferent male feeling, the two characters clarify that the patriarchal setups such as family largely determines their very sensibilities. Neither of them triumphs in their attempt to resist the patriarchal vacuum. It sucks up their persons, influences their consciousness, and determines their destinies.
Deriada, Leoncio P. The Dog Eaters and Other Plays. Quezon City: New Day Publishers, 1986.
Dickinson, Leo T. A Guide to Literary Study. Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich College Publishers, 1987.
Jurilla, Jonathan P. “Socio-Cultural Conflict Depicted in Selected Short Stories of Leoncio Deriada.” Iloilo City: University of the Philippines in the Visayas, 1996. Undergraduate thesis.
Krutch, Joseph W. Modernism in Modern Drama. New York: Cornell University Press, 1953.
Nato Eligio, Generosa. “Some Recent Writers and The Times: A Socio-Critical Study of Selected Short Stories in English Anthologized in the 1980’s.” Manila: University of Santo Tomas, 1991. Doctoral dissertation.
Picart, Roland M. “Social Commentary in Leoncio P. Deriada’s The Road to Mawab and Other Stories.” Baguio City: Baguio Colleges Foundation, 1986. Graduate thesis.
Rose, Phyllis. Writing of Women: Essays in a Renaissance. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1985.
Szondi, Peter. Theory of the Modern Drama. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987.
& Leoncio Deriada’s “Dog-Eaters”
Unsolvable.
This is what August Strindberg’s “Miss Julie” and Leoncio Deriada’s “The Dog Eaters” make clear about the woman problem. In both works, the woman is portrayed as the modern tragic hero, powerless and insignificant character, who is not able to achieve her full person and make the best use of her existence, for it is largely hinged on her being smothered, silenced, suppressed, and considered insignificant.
In the two plays, women are depicted in a desperate state—not being able to do what their hearts desire or when they do, rather suffer their consequences in the most dismal forms. The powerlessness of a woman is highlighted by her futile attempts in antagonizing the male ego and is suppressed, regardless of her status in any society—aristocratic or urban poor. The patriarchal society constituting the male order presses too hard on their lives, and pushes them to despair and eventually, downfall.
One dismal reality is common in both plays. Both works bring to light the battle of the sexes—for domination—in an effort to create an order in a given society. When, at the end of the day, the question is asked—who survives? Certainly, it is not the woman. And more interestingly enough, both have naturalistic treatments of the same subject: the suppressed female sensibility never—if at all—triumphs over the otherwise impersonal male order. Her fate is largely determined by her enclosed, cloistered and restrained status in any given social setting where the male reigns supreme, intact, unmoved.
In the Strindberg classic, Miss Julie, a count’s daughter in the turn-of-the-century Sweden, seduces her father’s footman Jean, but succumbs to the dire consequences of her action that leads to her own ruin. In Deriada’s social realist piece written in the late 1960s, one cloistered wife Mariana realizes the stark poverty she consciously drew herself into, where her husband Victor lives the dog-like existence with his dog-eating friends. Desperate and resigned, her existence disintegrates within the filth of the slums.
Both dramatic tragedies spell the inevitability of the protagonist’s disintegration and ruin. In each of these works, the protagonist’s fate is inexorable, something that no one can escape. When we see the woman as the victim of a superior force, it arouses our pity. When we realize that the action demonstrates universal truths and that we feel that the victim could just as easily be ourselves—it arouses our fear. In the tragic hero’s death, we feel a sense of loss, but only because she has demonstrated his great worth. It is said that in tragedy, the forces of life being what they are, and human nature what it is, the protagonist wrestles with these forces, but he can never hope to win over them, and ultimately he is defeated.
“Miss Julie” delineates a series of unfortunate events for its protagonist, Countess Julie. We come to know that Miss Julie is the daughter of a count and that this affords her the blessings of a good life. We also get to know that Miss Julie has been brought up by her mother to hate men. When she—to express her contempt for them—forced her fiancé to jump over a horsewhip at her command, the man broke the engagement. Then, Miss Julie joins in a servants’ party and flirts with Jean, a footman. Through the entire unfolding of events, the countess seduces him and, unable to live with the conflicts this act creates in her, commits suicide.
In “The Dog Eaters”, Mariana laments the fact that hers is not a good life and scorns her husband Victor for not having a permanent job. She nags him for their poor life, and blames him for their sorry living conditions. Like a mad dog, she is hysterical at her husband: “I am mad because I want my husband to have a steady job… I want my husband to make a man of himself.” Mariana is cloistered within dismal poor circumstances which virtually dictate her sense of values. When she finally resorts to aborting her second child, it is because despair and resignation spell her entire character. She becomes irresponsible in her acts—hardly recognizing its consequences.
While making a problematic of the woman’s issue, Julie’s character emphasizes the dilemma that men and women are different—they want different things; and each is determined to dominate. In Miss Julie,” the battle of sexes is depicted very intensely ravishing (Krutch, 1953). Countess Julie, who belongs to the highly privileged class “plays with fire with the working-class constituent Jean who rather appears refined and even schooled. Bit by bit, through the play, we see how their respective roles are reversed on grounds of the more dominant sex. The male gradually dominates the female sex—regardless of where he is situated in the society, or economically determined.
Ruled by her instincts, on a frenzied mardi gras, Julie gets attracted to his father’s valet Jean—composed but virile and ambitious—but later fails to recognize the consequences of her wild act. She starts to engage him in a verbal war, and later an intimate affair—
Julie: Kiss my hand first!
Jean: Don’t you realize that playing with fire is dangerous?
Julie: Not for me. I’m insured.
Jean: No, you’re not! And even if you are, there’s combustible material nearby.
Julie: Meaning you?
Jean: Yes! Not because I am who I am, but just because I’m a young man…
Here, the male character very well recognizes the male-female chemistry is highly combustible; the woman hardly knows the male hormones are highly excitable, fact which never has been familiar to an otherwise naïve Julie who subconsciously desires to subdue the male sex. She has done so to her former fiancée who later broke off engagement with her on grounds of her wild domineering act—making him jump on a horsewhip.
Jean: And so you got engaged to the country commissioner!
Julie: Exactly—so that he should become my slave.
Jean: And he wasn’t willing?
Julie: He was willing enough, but he didn’t get the chance. I grew tired of him.
Early on, Julie, the count’s daughter utterly declares her domination of the other sex to her father’s footman, Jean, who patronizes such seduction until Julie furthers on to flirt with him:
Julie: What incredible conceit! A Don Juan, perhaps? Or a Joseph? I’m prepared to believe you’re a Joseph!
Jean: You think so?
Julie: I almost fear so.
[Jean makes a bold move to embrace and kiss her.]
Julie: [Slaps him] Insolence!
Jean: Serious or joking?
Julie: Serious.
In this part, Julie does not the consequences of her actions until the time Jean plays his part to poke fun at her, being lured in turn by her “statutory” seduction—one imposed to the male servant by her female master.
Julie: Have you ever been in love?
Jean: That’s not the word we’d use. But I have run after plenty of girls. And once, when I couldn’t have the one girl I wanted, I became sick. Really sick, I tell you, like those princes in the Arabian nights who could neither eat nor drink for love.
Julie: Who was she? [Jean is silent.] Who was she?
Jean: You can’t make me answer that.
Julie: If I ask you as an equal? As a—friend? Who was she?
Jean: You.
Julie: [Sits] Priceless!
An ambitious member of the working-class serving the aristocrats Julie and her father count, Jean is now compelled to make use of his being male to obtain what he desires—to become himself the powerful though anonymous Count who has control on everything in the household. And after several instances of seduction by his female master, the male servant becomes the male usurper who affords himself the chance to use his sex and sexuality and prey on her female sensitive character to conquer her.
When footman Jean becomes the abuser, he delineates a potent character of the patriarchal order. He represents the virile but unfeeling phallus, seeking its own pleasure and self-preservation. He serves the entire purpose of the masculine sensibility—sheer sex and bodily satisfaction—attaining for the male order its clout and control.
After the seduction results in consummation, whether compelled or otherwise, Julie realizes what she has drawn herself into. The subservient Jean is now someone who says much about the real story about parents of the countess herself. He then makes her realize that like her mother who hated men, she is also crazy. She is definitely crazy—
Jean: It’s what comes of getting mixed up with women. Miss Julie, I know you’re suffering but I cannot understand you. I think you’re sick. Yes, you’re definitely sick.
Julie: Please be kind to me. Speak to me like a human being.
And when they both realize that their action is shameful before the whole household, the woman character has something clear in mind—she’d run away with the footman to escape disgrace.
Jean: So what do we do then?
Julie: Go away together!
Jean: To torment each other to death?
Julie: No—to enjoy ourselves for two days, or a week, or for as long as it’s possible to enjoy oneself. And then—die.
Here is proven that the man-woman disparity is perennial as that of life and death. Though Julie foresees harmony in their coexistence, Jean does not share this idea, especially with Julie, who he considers not his equal, but now someone lower than him—after committing such an act. Jean very well knows how it works for the aristocrat—a member of the aristocrat cannot simply commit what Julie has brought for herself. Now he considers himself “higher” than Julie herself—not only because he is a male, but because the act has—as if—reversed their status. Truth now dawns upon Julie that with such an act, she could never regain her purity—or even honor—again. The male character’s rhetoric is working so much against the female’s sensitivity whose worth and sensibility is as though hinged on what the patriarchal order declares.
And when Julie summons him to join her in her plans to flee the Count’s household to establish their lives some place else, the male stands his ground to make her see—he has only fooled her as much as she did him prior to the consummation of the sexual act.
Julie: Come up with me!
Jean: To your room? Now you’ve lost your mind again! Go, at once!
Julie: Speak kindly to me, Jean.
Now disillusioned and given to disgrace and later death, Julie’s character is transformed as it is disintegrated. Here she appears to be the sorriest character after the swift turn of events. Jean only made her believe that he desired her—after patronizing her own seduction of him. The woman becomes the unwanted sex—the pathetic sex that pulled to itself its own ruin.
Julie: What would you do in my place?
Jean: In your place? Let me think. As a Count’s daughter, as a woman, after this kind of mistake. I don’t know. Yes, now I do know.
Julie: [makes a gesture] Like this?
Jean: Yes. But I wouldn’t do it—be clear about that! There’s a difference between us.
Julie: Because you’re a man and I’m a woman? What difference does that make?
Jean: Same difference as between—a man and a woman!
Close to her suicide, the naïve Julie does not recognize the difference of the two sexes insinuated and illustrated by the footman—that in her parent’s marriage, it is the Count, her father himself who ruled after all—not her mother. It is the man who has dominated.
These final exchanges of rhetoric between the male and the female highlight the failure of the woman to attempt at changing her own destiny. It is the male that still defines the female. It is he on whom she will hinge her existence into. Her existence is largely defined by how he allows [or not] it to be. Rendered immobile by everything surrounding her, Julie succumbs to her own ruin, and the male dominates in the end—
Julie: I’m unable to do anything any longer! Unable to feel remorse, unable to run, unable to stay, unable to live—unable to die! Help me! Order me, and I’ll obey you like a dog. Do me this last service, save my honor, save my name! You know what I should do, but can’t—will me to do it. Order me to do it!
Jean: I don’t know why—but now I can’t, either—I don’t understand it. It’s as though this jacket here actually kept me—from being able to order you—and now, since the Count spoke to me—now—how can I explain it—ah—it’s this damned servant boy sitting on my back! I think if the Count were to come down here right now—and he ordered me to cut my throat—I’d do it on the spot.
Here, Julie realizes that her existence cannot at all be given meaning beyond this thing she’s “ordered to do.” Everything has dawned on her, thus—
Julie: Then make believe you’re my father, and I’m you. You were such a good actor before, when you got down on your knees—you were the gentleman then—or haven’t you ever been to the theater and watched a hypnotist? He says to the subject, take the broom! And the subject takes it. He says, sweep! And the subject sweeps—
Jean: But the other one has to be asleep.
Julie: I’m already asleep.
The woman is given to accepting her destined place in the world where man reigns powerful and prevails. We come to realize that the woman problem is perennially unsolvable—irresolvable, or fixed in a number of ways. It declares that the woman is a predictable social character whose ill destiny in the patriarchal society can never be less than tragic or devastating.
We can infer a number of things about the predictable plight of the woman in an otherwise irregular reality put forth by the existing patriarchy. The fact that Julie approaches derangement, prior to her self-murder, tells us that a woman is doomed for life. When Julie approaches derangement, Julie both desires and rejects the male ego. She both abhors and adores Jean, the male culture constituent, the phallus that lures an otherwise reluctant female crevice into its traps. When Julie sets out to kill herself as per hypnotism by the animal, brusque Jean, the female sensibility succumbs to the male, phallic, patriarchal order—and reaffirms its control over human affairs.
Because “Miss Julie” illustrates a love-hate relationship between a noblewoman and one of her servants, reminiscent of D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover, this presupposes that the woman character is hinged on the male’s animal nature. Nothing much more can be said about this work but about its author’s strong aversion against women. The stark reality unfolds in this brazen work that depicts one gruesome male ego that stalks and preys on the female sensibility as it seeks to elevate itself by way if raping the female—physically and subconsciously.
In Leoncio Deriada’s “The Dog Eaters”, we see the tragic fate of Mariana, the wife of a jobless Victor who prefers drinking with his dog-eating friends to finding a stable job that could support his family. When Mariana recalls her expectations when she eloped with Victor, she is frustrated when she realizes that her dreams of having things she didn’t possess did not materialize after her elopement.
Mariana: Do we have to be like this all the time? Why don’t you get a steady job like any other decent husband?
Victor: You don’t have to complain, Mariana. True, my job is not permanent but I think we have enough. We are not starving, are we?
Mariana (with a flourish): You call this enough? You call this rat’s nest of a house, this hell of a neighborhood—enough? You call these tin plates and cheap curtains enough? (Bitterly.) This is not the kind of life I expected…
Mariana becomes the pathetic icon of irony when she pastes pictures on the walls so their house could get some sense of cheerfulness of the rather gloomy living conditions. Of course, the pasted pictures and plastic fixtures in the house all the more emphasized their destitution.
Mariana is the morally upright, goal-oriented, perhaps sensible modern woman who becomes a misfit—she has to indeed fall into despair—for she doesn’t belong to the slime of the slums. She despises the dog-like existence inasmuch as she abhors her husband’s affinity with their dog-eating neighbors. She prefers a better life. But she is living with the likes of Aling Elpidia, the vegetable vendor who sells her a concoction that can abort her unborn. Along with these characters, Mariana fails to realize that the worst that can happen to them is to become human refuse—yielding to their animal nature.
Aling Elpidia: (one hand still flat on Mariana’s belly) Are you sure you do not want another child?
Mariana: I don’t want another child. (She moves away and holds the bottle like a trophy.)
Aling Elpidia: Well, it’s your decision. The bottle is yours.
Mariana: How shall I take this?
As for the woman’s act or attempt to kill her unborn—moralists would immediately retort—the end does not justify the means—and perhaps make comments to the same effect. Mariana will never be judged by her intention—but primarily by the act. In the play, the act of abortion was never executed but Mariana’s attempt to do so has already propelled the worse circumstances and consequences for her. Though Mariana initially posed as a catalyst for change in that desperate part of the world, her being a wife to a macho Filipino husband more clearly draws her real fate—helplessness and despair altogether cause her downfall.
Mariana: One spoonful in the morning and one spoonful in the evening. It’s bitter, Victor, but I can bear it. I will be safe.
Victor: What’s that? (Then the truth dawning upon him) What? What? My baby! You? You!
Mariana: Yes! And I’m not afraid!
Victor: You won’t do it.
Mariana: No!
Victor: What kind of woman are you?
Mariana: And what kind of man are you?
Victor: It’s my baby!
Mariana: It’s mine. I have the right to dispose of it. I don’t want another child.
Victor: Why, Mariana, why?
Mariana: Because you cannot afford it! What would you feed another child, ha, Victor? Tuba for milk? Dog meat for rice?
Though Mariana appears to be a good woman, she is the quintessential woman whose morals are sacrificed—falling prey to an unrelenting male ego-dictated society, one that is hostile and aloof, cruel and impersonal, unkind and stern. Like the countess Julie—and like Ramir whom she butchers—Mariana succumbs to the slavering tongues of the dog-eat-dog society where she finds herself in.
When Victor tells Mariana, “Behave, you woman,” he articulates a macho rhetoric that attempts or obviously, starkly impose silence or seek to silence the woman and her possibilities. But to Mariana, Victor’s macho image is not in fact masculinity, but otherwise. She tells him she’s a coward because he hardly could provide for his growing family. For her, the measure of manhood is not something between his pants, it is his being able to provide and provide well and enough for his family.
The man-woman clash is caused by the male’s skewed sense of himself, his virility that makes not a sensible sense to the other sex. Mariana has a husband who has no ambitions, who never makes efforts to alleviate them from their stark poverty. Her natural circumstances largely determine her character, thus her story, thus her destiny.
Mariana: You men can talk because you don’t have to bear children. You cowards!
Victor: Shut up!
Mariana: Go away from me! Go away from me! Get out! Get out! Leave me alone!
(Victor goes out…She goes to the kitchen and comes back with the basket of vegetables and throws everything out of the window. Ramir barks.)
Mariana: Shut up, you miserable dog! (Pauses) Ramir—ah yes, Ramir. Now I know what to do.
(She goes to the kitchen and returns with a huge kitchen knife. Kicking the scattered tin plates on her way, she crosses to the room to the right exit.)
Enclosed in a strongly patriarchal structure, Mariana cannot just achieve her full potential as a person, much more a moral agent who strives to do what is right, or morally upright. Though she consciously takes chances and risks to change her husband’s disposition, she fails. In the process she loses herself. And in the end, she loses her self.
Mariana: here, Ramir. Come, come, Ramir. Come. Victor loves you very much. Perhaps more than he loves me. Come, Ramir. Do you see this knife? (The dog growls.) I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you, Ramir. I’ll slit your throat and drink your blood and cut you to pieces and stew you and eat you. Damn you, Victor. Damn this child. Damn everything. I’ll kill you, Ramir. (Final yelp.) I’ll cook you and eat you and eat you and eat you! Uhu! Uhu! Uhu! (And for the first time, Mariana cries.)
Very well, both texts highlight that the woman problem can never be solved because the unrelenting male sensibility will perennially make ways—consciously or otherwise—to suppress it, and make it realize its own insignificance, its unimportance.
Man [read: man and woman] is said to be the victim of conflicting desires, and the strongest of them, like his desire for a member of the opposite sex, are irrational and yet stronger than reason. He despises himself for not being able to cease desiring what he also hates (Krutch, 1953). Such generalization rings true in these two characters. Miss Julie obviously cannot do away with her desire for her father’s footman. So she desires him incessantly, while she also abhors his sex because she has been taught by her mother to hate men. This puts her in an irrevocable dilemma from which she could hardly get out one piece. Mariana, meanwhile, is a female sensibility which unconsciously or unknowingly brings upon herself her own ruin. The moment she decided to elope with a good looking animal named Victor instead of finishing her college course, she already degraded herself inasmuch as she belonged to a society where poverty defines the majority of its constituent. When she yielded to Victor’s virility and sex, she also stole from herself the right to a better status in an even more male-dictated society.
The essence of man’s tragic dilemma is that there is no rational—only an irrational solution of this dilemma (Krutch, 1953). Highlighted by the two tragic women characters and their sorry plights, the two works pursue a naturalistic tragedy that highlights pity, fear, and catharsis. Pity is aroused in us by the women’s inherent weaknesses and the social class structures they inhabit. Fear is evoked when we realize that the same fate could overcome any of us.
Both plays highlight the weak woman spirit. The plays enunciate that the woman indeed is a weak species—cloistered in the midst of the male-dominated society. Women are rendered to have tragic lives. Their fate—determined by the egoistic male society where they are situated—or where they are rather placed—is highly predictable. But the fact that these women characters defy such destiny is what makes their lives worth telling. The fact that they defied the boundaries of the oppressive, brusque, virile, and unfeeling patriarchal order—altogether redefines the character of a woman.
In the bigger picture, it is the woman who is put in bad light—or is she? Mariana rebels against the stifling patriarchal structure—antagonizing Victor when she resorts to aborting the second child and hurting his male ego when she kills his pet dog Ramir. Mariana resorts to abortion to spite Victor and perhaps make him aware of his responsibility. By wanting to kill her second child, for they cannot practically feed them well, she would rather redeem him from earthly suffering and damnation. Here the modern woman is one admirable character for she seeks to challenge an otherwise dismal structure that oppresses more her inane existence, and transforms her very sensibilities.
“I told you I didn’t want another child. You broke that bottle but I will look for other means. I’ll starve myself. I’ll jump out of the window. I’ll fall down the stairs,” runs the litany of despair, of Mariana’s exasperated existence as well defined by the male world of Victor’s. This makes clear the nature of woman to liberate herself from the restrictions of the male structure that encloses her—or rather defines her—one that subjects her as a wife or that subjugates her as a woman [secondary or insignificant to man]. Only by rebelling against such dismal structure can the woman afford herself her liberty, her individuality, her self.
In Mike Figgis’s rendition of Strindberg’s masterpiece, Saffron Burrows’ Julie is one unforgettable tragedy in literary and cinema consciousness. Her sexually hungry, angst-ridden female countenance spells the female nature—”vessel and damsel” but defiant and irreverent. She delineates one discontented and disturbing female character, a bored individual whose hollow existence is not compelled or desired but naturally determined. She has been taught by her mother to hold grudges against men; she is a man-hater gone haywire.
Both Julie and Mariana do not recognize the futility of their actions to free themselves from these patriarchal enclosures until they actually succumb to it. In both works, there’s an attempt to define a helpless, ill-fated woman whose existence is hinged on the brusque and indifferent male feeling, the two characters clarify that the patriarchal setups such as family largely determines their very sensibilities. Neither of them triumphs in their attempt to resist the patriarchal vacuum. It sucks up their persons, influences their consciousness, and determines their destinies.
Works Cited and Sources Consulted
Deriada, Leoncio P. The Dog Eaters and Other Plays. Quezon City: New Day Publishers, 1986.
Dickinson, Leo T. A Guide to Literary Study. Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich College Publishers, 1987.
Jurilla, Jonathan P. “Socio-Cultural Conflict Depicted in Selected Short Stories of Leoncio Deriada.” Iloilo City: University of the Philippines in the Visayas, 1996. Undergraduate thesis.
Krutch, Joseph W. Modernism in Modern Drama. New York: Cornell University Press, 1953.
Nato Eligio, Generosa. “Some Recent Writers and The Times: A Socio-Critical Study of Selected Short Stories in English Anthologized in the 1980’s.” Manila: University of Santo Tomas, 1991. Doctoral dissertation.
Picart, Roland M. “Social Commentary in Leoncio P. Deriada’s The Road to Mawab and Other Stories.” Baguio City: Baguio Colleges Foundation, 1986. Graduate thesis.
Rose, Phyllis. Writing of Women: Essays in a Renaissance. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1985.
Szondi, Peter. Theory of the Modern Drama. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
-
Reading Two Women Authors from Antique Mid-May 2006, the University of San Agustin ’s Coordinating Centerfor Research and Publicatio...
-
Iníng mga nagpaparapansúpog o nan-iinsúlto sa mga tarataong mag-irEnglish—na ngonyan inaapod sa social mediang “English shaming”, “smart-sha...
