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, for years, has been considered our contemporary national hero [primarily 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 keen sensitivity, perhaps squeamishness, 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?

Written in the context of the Filipino experience, the plight of Clarissa spells the struggle for survival in this country where individual’s hopes are shattered piece by piece—what with the crisis they face every single day, always seeking to make the ends meet, until they find some place definite until one day, like Clarissa, they arrive at their final destination some place else—anywhere but here.

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,] at the time, 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.

Some three

Jose Garcia Villa

We first meet him as the author of “The Coconut Poem,” a lyric brimming and overflowing with coconut milk and sexual juices whose testosterone-loaded innuendoes caused him his expulsion from the University of the Philippines. Enough said.

But what else could you make of JGV?  Never contented with the commonplaceness of the literary environment at the time, the self-proclaimed Doveglion [dove eagle lion] Jose Garcia Villa literally rose among the ranks of writers to his own ivory tower.

An arrogant literary critic who scathed other writers’ works more than cared for them, JGV gained the ire of other promising sensibilities, perhaps primarily Angela Manalang Gloria whose poetic works he greatly berated. No one cared for his poetry which others had declared no more than intellectual masturbations that made only him orgasmic [and him alone].

But when he started making sense to other people with his comma poetry and philosophy, no one bothered him in his ivory tower. Up there, the self-proclaimed prophet of poetry can never be more alone.

Henry David Thoreau

When Henry David Thoreau wrote that he is perhaps most anxious when he is in the throngs of people, he did not really complain of agoraphobia nor did he publicly declare that he admires some of them in private. He merely harped on how man can attain wholeness through self-possession.

Living with Ralph Waldo Emerson could not have made him more social, only antisocial. A religious minister who himself fell out from the fold, Emerson’s influence on the young Thoreau helped create the masterpiece titled Walden, an insightful individualistic journal that highlighted how man can go back to his primal nature and still survive civilization.

But Thoreau’s Walden campout is not just an NSTP immersion; it is a return to man's spiritual nature in which  he can rethink his purpose not really by living alone away from the noise or far from the madding crowd, but by practicing simplicity which is man’s true nature.

Emily Dickinson

American recluse Emily Dickinson is one interesting soul who selected her own society, choosing few for many and simplicity for ornament. With her hyphenated--and her Caps and Lowercase intimations about flowers and things, life and death, morbidity and turgidity, she stood out through history as another genius of the language.

Emily Dickinson’s life seemed no more than that of Eleanor Rigby in Paul McCartney’s song--“Aaaaa look at all the lonely people”--and if she were alive today, she would have preferred less than 10 friends on her Facebook account. She would not really refuse a means of networking like FB or even multiply, as she sought to bond and correspond with people following too many deaths in her family.

But would you ever forgive Dickinson for being so selfish she relished her own poetry by herself? Her poetry was made so private by her that her genius was only discovered up on a roof after her death.

Villa, Dickinson and Thoreau must have attended only one school: the University of Solitary where the major graduate paper was an Individual vs. Society thesis. By insisting on individuality in their rhetoric and poetry, consciously or otherwise they defied an existing social order that rather imposed conformity monotony lethargy. All three graduated with highest honors.

Ngonyan na Banggi

Ngonyan na banggi, masiramon gayod makanamit giraray nin tiniktik na ginisa sa kamatis, dangan sinabawan nin dikit lang, tapos binerdurahan nin ogbos kamote.—Nonoy! Nonoy!, Iloilo, September 2, 2007, 5:45 p.m.

Hehehe puli ka ngani digdi bakal kitang punaw, tiniktik. Ingat pirmi Noy! God bless you always. We miss u Uncle Nonoy!—Manoy, Manay and kids, Sto. Domingo, Camaligan, 6:04 p.m.

Ay talagang nang siram na…—Bembem, Dayangdang, 6:05 p.m.

Iyo talaga. Mami-miss mo an kakanon na iyan digdi satuya sa Bicol.—Amy Bañes, Banat, 6:07 p.m.

Ano kun kusidong balanak na piglako ni Unding na may ayon kalunggay na pighagad ki Tiyang Gunday?—Uncle Awel, Davao City, 6:13 p.m.

Kun gusto mo magpuli ka na muna digdi where you find green pastures and find yourself beside still waters!—Uncle Jun, Bagacay, 6:30 p.m.

Masiram talaga, arog kaiyan panira mi last night. Puwerte garo man lang luto ni Lola. Pula na an sabaw dahil sa berdura.—Tomo, Bagacay, 6:37 p.m.

Naga Nostalgia

Let me start by saying I love Naga City. I don’t care whether it drips with salvation or sin, I love it. True, at four or five every morning I wake up to the peal of church bells and the voice of my favorite priest telling me to beware of hell. But what else can awaken me, not even hunger at the sound of voices crying bread. 

I love the processions snaking through the narrow streets, the school parades, the speeches on the plazas. But most of all I love the peanut vendors and their peanuts. Every night I walk about among them in their usual places on the park. Their flickering lamps transform my city into a dreamland, but I do not sleep. The best way to enjoy a dream is to be wide awake. 

—Bienvenido N. Santos, cited in “Bienvenido N. Santos: A Homecoming” by Leonor J. Aureus in Filipina II: An Anthology of Contemporary Women Writers in the Philippines—Essays edited by Mila Astorga Garcia, et.al., Quezon City: New Day Publishers, 1985. 

Sweets and spices

Sang nagligad nga June 2010, ginlagda sang De La Salle University (DLSU) Press ang limang e-books o electronic books, isa ka pioneering initiative sang DLSU Academic Publications Office sa pangunguna ni Dr. Isagani R. Cruz, ang premyado nga kritiko sa pungsod Pilipinas. Isa sa lima nga libro amo ang Maharang, Mahamis na Literatura sa Mga Tataramon na Bikol (Sweets and Spices in the Languages of Bikol) ni Paz Verdades Santos, literature professor sang amo man nga unibersidad.  

Matahum ang unod sang Maharang, Mahamis na Literatura sa Mga Tataramon na Bikol ni Santos kay tiniripon niya ang madamu nga mga obrang literatura sang mga kontemporaryo kag mga antiguhan nga Bikolanong awtor. 

  

The e-book can be purchased and perhaps only read through Amazon Kindle, a software and hardware platform developed by Amazon.com that renders and displays e-books and other digital media.

The book offers something sweet and something spicy, as it were, that speak much of the Bikol sensibility. Maharang, Mahamis features the creative works of past and contemporary Bikol poets, fictionists and playwrights. The pieces of poetry, fiction and drama were chosen based on the individual text’s contribution to Bikol literary history, its literacy value, the peculiar Bikol turn of phrase and the distinctive Bikol identity, or as Santos herself perceived it.  

Centered on the said criteria, the book surveys representative works that could constitute Santos’s appropriation of the concept of maurag(best) and magayon (beautiful) in Bikol literature. 

  

The roster of authors in this collection is indispensable. It includes, among others, the poetry of Rudy Alano who passed away in August this year. Alano, erstwhile professor of literature at the Ateneo de Naga  helped usher in the teaching and appreciation of the vernacular literature in the said school. Alano also produced plays in Bikol in the same institution.  

The book also includes the work of Alano’s student Frank Peñones Jr., who was awarded the CCP literary grant in 1991, and whose work Bikol scholar Ma Lilia Realubit considered to have sounded “the clarion call” to revive the Bikol writing in the 1990s. 

It also features the short stories of Ana Calixto and Gloria Racelis who published in the Bikolana magazine in the 1950s. Calixto’s “Dupyas” and Racelis’s “An Doktor,” for one, read as moral tales in the post-war era countryside even as they tackle taga-bayan/taga-bukiddichotomies. 

  

Also featured are the works of the bemedaled Abdon Balde, Jr.; the prolific Jason Chancoco, whose book of Bikol poetry critiquePagsasatabuanan came out last year; the indefatigable poet Kristian Cordero who has been making waves here and there; and the Manila-based Bikol poet Marne Kilates from Daraga, Albay. It also features Gode Calleja, publisher of the Canada-based poetry folio Burak; and Estelito Jacob, former president of Kabulig, an aggregate of Bikol literati.  

  

The book also published for the first time Orfelina Tuy and Fe Ico’s “Handiong,” a full-length play written in the 1970s as a school project when they were teachers at Naga Central School. 

What is noteworthy in this collection is the inclusion of English translations of the published Bikol texts, an opportunity for Bikolano and non-Bikolano readers alike to appreciate the region's literary genius. 

  

And because the e-book can be purchased and perhaps only read through Amazon Kindle, a software and hardware platform developed by Amazon.com that renders and displays e-books and other digital media, this unprecedented effort is an opportunity to get acquainted with the Bikol genius in today’s times. 

The book is virtually what we can call the life’s work of Paz Verdades Santos, featuring the products of her research in Bikol literary history and sensibility. Santos spent three decades teaching literature in Ateneo de Naga and De la Salle University. In 2003, she publishedHagkus: Twentieth -century Bikol Women Writers, which profiles the evolution of the Bikolana writer from the 1900s to the present.

In her work, Santos, who is herself not a Bikolana, but whose passion for Bikol is perhaps unprecedented, has featured the sweets (matamis) and the spices (makahang) rendered by the creative juices of past and contemporary Bikol writers which altogether lend "additional flavor to the feast of Philippine literature."

 

Desire to acquire

Ours is now a world of things.

Everything around us these days is commodified, (meaning: produced or made, sold, bought, and consumed.) Every single day, we consume—we eat, we use things, we burn up anything, everything. In fact, we consume too much. While we are overwhelmed with too many things, there is  yet no satisfying our desire to acquire, to fill ourselves with everything until we tell ourselves we still want more.

In simpler terms, we could say that the mall culture rules our sensibilities these days. In this one-stop business establishment, we people  are over-empowered to conquer our lack of everything. The presence of almost everything inside a convenient edifice affords us the luxury we did not have before.

The mall culture has gradually and successfully ingrained in us that we can always desire to acquire. And that we can always acquire more than what we need. Who can resist the itch of malling and shopping when midnight sales and bargains come almost every week? Backed up by television and newspaper, these business strategies do not only deplete our ATM funds; they intensify our desire to constantly acquire.

Consumerism has become our chronic tendency to have and have more.

Madeline Levine, an American psychologist, writes, "Beginning in the 1990s, the most frequent reason given for attending college had changed to making a lot of money, outranking reasons such as becoming an authority in a field or helping others in difficulty. This correlates with the rise of materialism, specifically the technological aspect: the increasing prevalence of compact disc players, digital media, personal computers, and cellular telephones. Levine criticized what she saw as “a shift away from values of community, spirituality, and integrity, and toward competition, materialism and disconnection.”

While Levine's study only involved the American community, the same can be said in this country. Nowadays, what we live for may, in fact, depend on what we have. To the extent of spreading ourselves thin, we have required so much of ourselves  and we have acquired so much for ourselves, that our gauges for success or worse, happiness and contentment are mountains of things which we have to acquire and possess and burn up and use up, until it is time for us to have another one and another one and another one and more and more and more and more.

It is ridiculous, for instance, that even one newspaper ad reads—“It’s your watch that tells most about who you are.” If we take it literally, though, this is not true—you are not your watch. It’s a pity that you depend on a mere wristwatch to say much of yourself. It’s a pity that it is a thing that might just sum you up. Truth is—you use the watch for a purpose, not to tell you essentially who you are. Even then, you are worth more than your watch. Among other things, you’re a human person with a soul; your watch is not. In this sense, it is hilarious how consumerist propaganda can persuade us to think this way about our lives; funny how this sensible persuasion has so pervaded our modern life.

We now perceive that everything that is of value is on the shelf and so we should buy them; otherwise, we cease to live—as if not being able to buy them lessens our value.  We go out in the mall, in the flea markets, every stall we can find, we look for the things we usually look for to satisfy ourselves.

As we browse and read books, read ads, fit clothes, read product labels or watch movies, we seem to devour anything we find on the shelf. And in any merchandise we take out from all types of shelves—books, CDs, DVDs, shoes, store products, anything, or everything—we always seek to benefit from them.

Yet, isn't it better to see these things simply as our means to get to where we want to go, or we ought to be. Do we really [just have to] use things, so we as human beings survive, and prosper, and as one friend puts it, “elevate”?

We hardly wonder what can make us see that we can use things beyond their normal end. We hardly consider what can make us see that we can desire to acquire other things, those things beyond the usual purpose of the tangible things we normally acquire. We hardly bother what else can convince us that we are worth more than our new pair of pants or imported watch.

At the end of the day, isn't it good to ask what we are here for, and not how much more we can acquire further? While we are here.



Being Able to Provide, Providing to Be Able

The Farmer Scientists of Western Visayas

If there’s one thing common to Ramon D. Peñalosa, Jr., Rebecca C. Tubongbanua, Margarito R. Andrade and Baltazar J. Gumana, all farmer scientists of the Western Visayas Agriculture and Resources Research and Development Consortium (WESVARRDEC), it would be social responsibility. All of them have been given the gift to share what they know that can certainly make other people’s lives better.

Appointed Magsasaka Siyentista (MS) by the Philippine Council for Agriculture, Forestry and Natural Resources Research and Development (PCARRD) for their cutting-edge practices, these farmer scientists have continuously been developing innovative technologies and making significant contributions to the lives of their people and community.

Ramon Peñalosa, Mr. Organic

For one, Ramon Peñalosa’s passion for organic farming has inspired a growing number of agriculture enthusiasts from across the country. In the Peñalosa Farms situated in Victorias City and Manapla, Negros Occidental, Peñalosa showcases an integrated farming system where good, healthy food comes from fruits and vegetables and livestock harmoniously grown for productivity and profit. In more ways than one, Peñalosa’s constant efforts championing markets creation have helped increase awareness and even appreciation of agri-tourism in Negros Occidental. In 2009 alone, a significant increase in the number of agri-tourists coming from across the country was noted by the Office of the Provincial Agriculturist in Negros Occidental. The said influx can be attributed partly to the dynamic efforts of Ramon Peñalosa, whose number of visitors to his organic farms posted one of the highest for the province. Acting more than a marketer himself, Peñalosa tours his visitors to his farm like a staunch advocate of organic farming, a technology he himself practices in the said farms. In turn, the marketer is abundantly rewarded with productivity and celebrity that both work to make him and the community prosper. Among others, WESVARRDEC takes pride in Ramon Peñalosa’s La series Technology, a good farming practice that maximizes swine production with the right procedures and attitude toward farming.

Margarito Andrade, Mr. Incubator

Similarly, Margarito Andrade’s venture into the incubation technology has gained PCARRD’s nod for a Science and Technology-Based Farm (STBF) through a 1700 sqm. lot situated in Barangay Libas, Banga, Aklan. After having worked as banker for more than two decades, Andrade set to consider his innovative tendencies for some purpose. In 2003, he developed an AC-DC incubator prototype that can hatch up to 2,000 eggs at a time, a technology that helps propel darag native chicken production in the Western Visayas. From then on, the darag chicken farm given him by PCARRD has been producing considerable amount of hardened chicks ready for raising and production. Recently, he incubated some 200 eggs needed by Aklan State University’s Darag station for the Angara-sponsored darag native chicken project based in the Banga campus. Andrade’s original incubator concept has also attracted some following, even as it is copied by a number of enthusiasts from across Aklan and even Negros Occidental, where it was featured at the Panaad Festival by WESVARRDEC. In particular, Andrade’s advocacy on organic farming which allows for the use of natural fodder for chickens has even intensified his support in the darag native chicken initiative continuously being bannered by WESVARRDEC and PCARRD.

The Birds and Flowers of Baltazar Gumana

Meanwhile, in the outskirts of Iloilo City, Pavia-born Baltazar Gumana, a civil engineer by profession, has developed a number of practices allowing flowers (and even birds) to make for a natural therapy for the common people. An avid grower of ornamental plants including fruit-bearing trees, Gumana envisions a self-sustaining horticultural organization in Panay Island that suffices the needs of Iloilo businesses and households and trends of the covered sectors like florists and landscapists, to name a few. Gumana is a forward-thinker, always willing to take risks, all for the purpose of making people aware that horticulture is one alternative means of livelihood for farmers nowadays. Recently he spearheaded Iloilo HORTI 2010, a ten-day plant fair-exhibit that showcased ornamental plants, herbal plants and other plant varieties produced by the members of the Horticultural Development Cooperative of Iloilo City (HDCIC), of which he is an active member. Significantly, Gumana’s is affiliation with HDCIC allows Gumana to propagate plants even as he propagates awareness among the public that active and committed involvement in horticulture affords the farmer a win-win situation even in dire times.

Rebecca Tubongbanua, Reyna ng Mangga

Then, a former chemist working for the Guimaras Foods, Inc., Rebecca Tubongbanua’s decision to focus on food processing has virtually gained fruition through the years. In 2003 she started processing mango jams on a 7,000-peso working capital. From then on, her innovative recipes have gained considerable acceptance from consumers that she expanded to several other bestselling mango processed products that continue to rake profits in Iloilo and Guimaras. The innovation lies in Rebecca’s ability to maximize—as in, without waste—the whole mango fruit into sensible processed products. Rebecca Tubongbanua can be considered a celebrity farmer producer, wowing some national media outfits to produce for and feature her innovative home-based technology on television and newspapers. Her McNester product line which features low-sugar and sulfite-free dried mangoes and the delectable Mango ketchup has also been luring foreign buyers and investors since her business expansion was in full swing. More important, Rebecca’s openness to change and commitment to industry has inspired her to share the technologies to other people. In countless instances, various entities from the local government units to the academe have asked her to share her know-how in these process technologies, much to the delight of students, public officials and the general public. Since her appointment as MS in 2007, Tubongbanua has generously been sharing her mango recipes, while her products constantly sell like hotcakes in local and national trade fairs and exhibits. There is no stopping Rebecca’s mangga-nimous (magnanimous) momentum these days.

In these various capacities, the farmer-scientists or Magsasaka Siyentista of WESVARRDEC very well exemplify lives well-lived because of their talents and resources being maximized for the benefit of the people in Western Visayas. All of them have a sense of purpose found in the genuine service of others, perhaps one of the best reasons for being alive.

DOERS, PROVIDERS, INNOVATORS
(Clockwise from top left) Ramon Peñalosa hosts visitors in his agri tourism farm in Manapla, Negros Occidental; Baltazar Gumana tours visitors in his cutflower farm in Mali-ao, Pavia . Iloilo; Rebecca Tubongbanua poses before a Christmas tree adorned with mango seeds which were leftovers in her production in Guimaras; and Gary Andrade addresses the crowd who visited his Libas, Banga farm during the Darag Field Day hosted by Aklan State University.

Chiaroscuro

Sa banggi an kadaihan nin ribok

minapatarom sa bagting nin oras

kan simong pagturog.

An simong daing pundong pagngalas

sa kadikloman nin langit minapasabong

na ika palan matakton

pag an dating mararambong

na liwanag nin mga bituon

natatambunan nin mahibog na ambon.         

          Kagurangnan kong Diyos! Pumondo ka

na nganing kahihiling sa diklom.

Pabayae an saimong aldaw

maging ribayan nin saldang asin uran

ugma asin kulog sa simong kalamnan

verso asin pangadyi nin saimong kalag.

Baka igwa diyan nin anghel sa kadikloman

na nagtao nin kasimbagan paramientras

na ika nakaluhod, takot na minatubod.

Ngonyan an simong puso buminilang logod--

mga tiket, mga sinurat, mga ritrato,

mga subang nginisihan, mga kinantang lahos

miski ngani mga serbesang nainom--mamate lang

kun ano man yan senyal nin Diyos.

Na sa kadikloman an Diyos. Sa buhay.

Pero hilinga--an langit minaliwanag giraray

pag minahulog an uran, ini minasalak

sa daing-pundong hinangos nin dagat; an burak

minahalat sa saldang asin an saldang minataong buhay

sa daga asin sa tubo nin kakahoyan

asin an banggi minagayon pag simong nakakaptan

an nagbabados na tulak kan simong namomotan

na padagos minahangos sa kasulok-suloki

kan saimong kalag.

                         Asin duman sa dai ta aram

na istaran may sarong anghel sa kadikloman na dai

makatubod sa nadadangog niyang daing-pundong

bagting nin simong puso.

--ni Rudy Alano, "Sabihi Daw Ko, Padi Kun Ano Man Ning Sinasabi Tang Buhay."

Sinusog hali sa Haliya: Anthology of Bikol Poets and Poems

ni Ma. Lilia F. Realubit, NCCA, mayo nin petsa.

*Chiaroscuro (Italian for light-dark), noun.

In art, is characterized by strong contrasts between light and dark,

usually bold contrasts affecting a whole composition.

Extension work

You have been doing extension work for quite a while.

As time passes, you see the difficulty of researchers and extension workers in expressing themselves and taking pride in their output, which some of them even fondly call their labor of love.

Consider the regional symposium you are now tasked to cover. You listen to the researcher who sounds awkward presenting the project on the production of this crop. During the panel evaluation, you pity her because the evaluator loudly scores points off the study because it lacks the right methodology. The national crops expert tells in her face that the study being reported presents only common-sensical information that needs neither explanation nor further study. You realize from among the crowd she turns out to just fill in to report for the said study. She virtually "extended" her services for her absentee fellow researcher.

While the other researchers may be articulate in the technology they must have studied, er, mastered in all their 20 years or something of government service, you find it revolting that they do not sound good in their English. They sound funny speaking in their borrowed language. In the presentations conferences and contests, what you will appreciate are those who are well versed in their studies as they are fluent in speaking the technical terms in English.

You wonder whether there have been efforts through the years in the academic world to allow for researches to be written in the Filipinos' native language, if the purpose is to advance the technologies and not how the English-speaking world understands or wants to receive them.

Why does the presenter who is fluent in English impress you more? The mussel community researcher sounds fishy to you because he has this twang, an accent probably spoken in one northern town of this province.

Sadly, because you were taught English this way and not that way, you yourself are isolated from what you see and hear. The Filipino tongue that makes the most correct English inflections sound more pleasing and seem to merit your attention. You rather notice the researcher who could not fully express his efs and vees. To you he sounds less persuasive. His wrong enunciations distract you that you don't want to reconsider what he has to say while he is being aided by his PowerPoint slides.

Further in the presentation sessions, you notice the presenter on biogas digester did not use parallel structures in his objectives. You wonder if he cares about these at all. He even sounds like a military general who cannot distinguish his e's from his i's. He reminds you of the military chief over the television who munches English as if it were peanuts.

You ask when you can start to admire.

Here, you realize that everyone presenting the study for scrutiny might as well have the heart to extend to what other people have to say about their labors of love; extend further to see whether they are valid judgments so they can improve the study. Extend further to understand, if the said judgments are rather prejudiced and therefore should only be ignored.

This presenter on site-specific nutrient management very well understands her figures as she reports her rice research. Asking her questions now, the panel evaluator sounds like she speaks the same language. It seems she is going to win because they sound alike when they begin the discussion. Perhaps she will win the top prize in this summit because the presenter's words slide into your ears and your sensibility. Other extension workers seem to mince words. But she doesn't. Does this study prove to have more social impact than those presented by less articulate ones? While there are criteria set for all this research business, you start to wonder who deserves the prize.