Pilit na Sagot sa Mga Tanong ni Kael

1. Nagalap ko, sa aking pagsasaliksik, na dati'y nagsusulat ka ng tula sa Tagalog. Ba't naging exclusive na sa Ingles ka na nagsusulat?

Long story. But principally because I don't think I can express myself as well in Filipino. Then again, maybe that's just a convenient excuse. I think it's an irrepairable consequence of taking Filipino for granted. I wasn't as fascinated with Filipino (I guess given that I grew up in a Tagalog-speaking province {Cavite}) as I was with English. When I went to U.P. for college, I spoke in halting English that made me really insecure. All this business of trying to lose one's thick provincial accent contaminated my speaking and, well, writing.

You might as well ask, "Why write poetry in English?" Of course, I'd be a hypocrite if I say I (didn't then and) don't have a choice now, to go back into writing fiction and writing it in Filipino. But there is no exclusivity clause here; it's more of a preference. I think the act of reading and writing is, as Harold Bloom puts it, "a solitary praxis". It is a selfish business, a sabbatical into a certain Sublime. I am not one to put labels on things and I will not invent an excuse for not writing in Filipino other than to address someone who reads for him/herself. I am paraphrasing Bloom here: The intention and pleasure of writing per se, can be terribly personal.

There is a political canopy above these (all?) things, yes, but I will not name theories than attempt to pigeonhole what's literary and what's not. The authentic writer, I think, is one who writes in a language that he feels most comfortable with--not in one that is dictated by matters, issues, and politics outside of the self. How people react to your work in a personal--or even primal--sense is what's important, I think. The politics of "representation" and "marginalization" come with the processing, the labelling.

2. Kung papipiliin, ano ang gusto mong maging propesyon/pasyon ng anak mong si Moira paglaki niya?

Kung papipiliin. I'd rather that she develops a passion for reading and, hopefully, an interest (at least) in writing. I want her (like all fathers, I guess) to be proud of my being a writer. It won't hurt if she likewise decides to pursue a career in writing. Of course, the more logical part of me would want her to choose a more financially-rewarding career (medicine, law, etc). Anyway, passion is not necessarily attached to a profession. I'd rather she gets to live out both "sions" without compromising the former.

3. Nagising ka ng isang umaga nang nakalimutan ang mukha at pangalan at lahat ng alaala ng kabataan mo (sa Cavite, say, hanggang high school), maliban sa pamilya at 3 pang tao. Sino ang 3 taong 'yun? Nagkikita pa ba kayo? Kailan mo sila huling nakausap.

Siguro si "Ime" (Elmer Javier), si "Jopri Snakeman" (Jeoffrey Matibag), at si "Val" (Valerie Javier). Lahat sila kaklase ko 'nung high school. Si Ime barkada ko na mula pa sa Silang Central School, isang public elementary school sa amin kung saan nagkalat ang masarap na tae at uod sa mga ihian at may malawak at madamong playground sa likuran para sa takbuhan, ninja-han, suntukan, tayaan-tulungan, at beysbol.

Parang magkapatid na kami ni Ime. Tawa lang kami ng tawa 'nun sa mga kaklase. May bansag kami sa lahat. Tulad ni Wilmer na tinawag naming "Baka" dahil may gusto sa kanya si Rebecca na bukod sa tunog-baka ang pangalan, mukhang baka pa. Si Bedo naman, tinagurian naming "Funeraria Bedo" dahil may kahawig na funeraria sa Silang, 'yung Funeraria Vedar. Si Royski Drikulangotski, si Bj Kalesa, si Rory Rokrakes, Si Lu-Jay-ga (si Jay, matabang kalaseng may luga). Lahat may bansag. "Saging" bansag sa kin 'nun. 'Di ko na papaliwanag.

Basta kagaguhan at pagtatawanan, kami ni Ime magkasundo. Pag naman robot, music, at komiks, kami ni Jopri ang bestprends. Unahan kami n'un sa Funny komiks tuwing huwebes. Ingat na ingat kami sa mga kopya. Sayang, ipinamigay ko na. Siguro mahal na 'yun ngayon...
Lahat ng transformers episodes pinapanood namin at pinag-uusapan kinabukasan. may listahan kami ng mga pangalan ng mga robots. may ginawa pa nga kaming alternatibong listahan ng mga bastos na transformers. Sina Percentor-tite, Si Sideswipekpek, atbp.

"Snakeman" bansag n'ya buong hayskul dahil minsan nang-ahas s'ya sa aming Chalk Basketball Association (CBA) at lumipat ng ibang koponan. Galit na galit sa kanya si Pinoy (na anak ng hapon).

Minsan, si Jopri ang takdang magwalis ng yero sa classroom namin. mezzanine s'ya kaya puwede kang lumusot ng bintana at walisin ang mga dahon at ipot sa yero. Kaso, pinagtripan s'ya ni Bj Kalesa. Sinara bigla bintana. Takot na takot si Joprey. Kinalabog ang bintana habang sumisigaw ng, "Buksan n'yo bintana! Hindi ako makahinga!!!" Sus.

Si Val, labs of my high school life. Grade two pa lang ako (pagkatapos mawala crush ko kay Jeng-jeng), si Val na mahal ko. Kaklase ko s'ya hanggang gumradweyt ako, mahal ko s'ya hanggang umalis ako papuntang maynila. Naaalala ko, umiiyak ako sa awiting "Here I Am" ng Air Supply nang malaman kong sinagot na n'ya si Butch, 'yung Adjutant namin sa CAT.

"Just when I thought I was over you
Just when I thought I could stand on my own,
Oh baby, those memories come crashing through..."

Nasan na kaya si Val?

Abangan...

Only Begin

Only begin, and the rest will follow.
--- David Wagoner, “The Source”

I’ve been meaning to tell you, for some time now,
How afraid I am of this age, of its dormant bodies.
Somewhere, an old window is opened and the charged air
Begins its steady reclaiming of spaces,
Whispering its many names to the furniture,
Nudging them into small motions. All around,
The cobwebs are dancing to wind music.
A spider, sensing the sudden change,
Scurries back into the shadows.

Someone has arrived. He takes off his hat,
Looks around, considers the architecture.
He runs his fingers on each object, names them.
He is walking to the window, his footsteps leaving good,
Clear prints on the floor, making good, clear sounds.

You may see this yet. Notice how the hours
Become the only constant, how the birds outside
Make only strange noises. The once familiar
Has given way to the private dark. Get up.
The ordinary days are slipping by.
Step to the window. So that one day

I may wake to the sound of footsteps, like a homecoming.
“Let me in,” I will say. “Let me share your long sorrow.”

Shannon Hoon 1967-1995

No Rain

All I can say is that my life is pretty plain

I like watchin' the puddles gather rain

And all I can do is just pour some tea for two

and speak my point of view

But it's not sane, It's not sane

I just want some oneto say to me

I'll always be there when you wake

You know I'd like to keep my cheeks dry today

So stay with me and I'll have it made

And I don't understand why I sleep all day

And I start to complain that there's no rain

And all I can do is read a book to stay awake

And it rips my life away, but it's a great escape

escape...escape...escape...

Purple Haze Rengga (June 2)

The truth is that everything begins
with sadness. The street lights are lambent,
loose, as if heavy with longing.
It's like holding music, or trying to,
the notes breaking into imagined fragments.
Yet it's there. Sad, shadow-filled.
LIke the spaces between rain,
with which we excuse this inarticulate thirst.
Remember when the sidewalks curled
like tongues, tingling with delusion?
Eyeball to eyeball light leaps like a wet dog
thru whose ears pass the puttering of small feet,
slender as a knife in the lung.
The quiet puncture.
The gentle loss of blood.

--kael, joel, naya, marie, gelo, c.j.

The Night, The Porch

To stare at nothing is to know by heart
What all of us will be swept into, and baring oneself
To the wind is feeling the ungraspable somewhere close by.
Trees can sway or be still. Day or night can be what they wish.
What we desire, more than a season or weather, is the comfort
Of being strangers, at least to ourselves. This is the crux
Of the matter, which is why even now we seem to be waiting
For something whose appearance would be its vanishing--
The sound, say, of a few leaves falling, or just one leaf,
Or less. There is no end to what we can learn. The book out there
Tells us as much, and was never written with us in mind.

-- Mark Strand

Down With the Sithness

I finally got to see Revenge of the Sith yesterday. It was well worth the wait because i got me the famed lazy and hellishly cozy seat in gateway's platinum cinema. panalo. free popcorn and drinks pa, with refills.

Tama nga sinabi ng mga kaibigang nanood na. daming cheesy lines. at masyadong ipinaliwanag lahat. Pero okay na rin; I'm not really complaining. Now that's done. Star Wars is done.

Now, what? Why, go back,
turn as I please.
My step is to the south.
-- Randall Jarrell

And to think I grew up on Star Wars. I think part of why I didn't want to see Revenge too soon was knowing sadly that it is the last. Naalala ko pa nung nakikipag-unahan ako sa SM City (ikalawa ako nakapasok sa Mall, ikalawa sa pila sa sinehan) para sa Phantom Menace. It was an odd sight: all those people rushing like Zergs, clambering up the stairs, not making any sound. Parang eksena sa Dawn of the Dead. At syempre, sa pila, daang-daang hapong-hapong Darths. It was beautiful.

You were saved because you were the first.
You were saved because you were the last.
-- Wislawa Symborszka

I'm on higher ground now. The view is good from here.

------------------

Lastly, from Ashbery's prose poem, "The System":

I know now that I am no longer waiting, and that the previous
part of my life in which I thought I was waiting and therefore
only half-alive was not waiting, although it was tinged with
expectancy, but living under and into this reply which has
suddenly caused everything in my world to take on a new
meaning. It is as though I had picked up a thread which I had
merely mislaid but which for a long time seemed lost. And all
because I am certain now, albeit for no very good reason, that it
was this one and no other...

jedi badiday

there's nothing remotely interesting about luke skywalker. he's just a wimpy, lame-ass version of his dad. i mean, anakin was d' bayaw!

the way i figure, luke didn't have to endure the kinds of pain and loss anakin endured. in A New Hope, luke returned to find his aunt and uncle killed and didn't seem as affected by it as he should. all he wanted was to leave, fly, je-die! he didn't actually lose anybody else; even obi wan was always around in his casper-like presence. at most, luke had abandonment issues.

but anakin's story is a lot different. you've all seen revenge by now, and it's perfectly understandable why anakin succumbed to the darkside. all these jedi, with their lofty counsel of control and discipline couldn't save anakin. he was tailor-made to follow the path of the dark.

and isn't that what revenge of the sith really wants to tell us? the logic of losing control? to let go of our emotions and feel? We should keep in mind that all this time, star wars is really anakin's story--his rise, fall, and, in the end, redemption.

make no mistake about it. luke was never the one. he was too wimpy for the dark side, too wholesome. nothing remotely poetic about it. pwe!

heck, they should have just given han solo a light sabre. he could've played the part better.

Perfect Blue Buildings -- Counting Crows

Just down the street from your hotel, baby
I stay at home with my disease
And ain't this position familiar, darling
Well, all monkeys do what they see
Help me stay awake, I'm falling

You got an atttitude of everything I ever wanted
I got an attitude of need
Help me stay awake, I'm falling

Asleep in perfect blue buildings,
Beside the green apple sea
Gonna get me a little oblivion
Try to keep myself away from me

It's 4:30 am on a Tuesday
It doesn't get much worse than this
In beds in little rooms in buildings in the middle
Of these lives which are completely meaningless
Help me stay awake, I'm falling

Asleep in perfect blue buildings
Beside the green apple sea
Gonna get me a little oblivion
Try to keep myself away from myself and me

I got bones beneath my skin, mister
There's a skeleton in every man's house
Beneath the dust and love and sweat that hang
on everybody
There's a dead man trying to get out
Help me stay awake, I'm falling

Asleep in perfect blue buildings
Beside the green apple sea
Gonna get me a little oblivion, baby
Try to keep myself away from me

Song of Sand (Suzanne Vega)

If sandwaves were soundwaves,
what song would be in the air now?
What stinging tune
could split this endless noon
and make the sky swell with rain?

If war were a game that a man or a child
could think of winning
What kind of rule
could overthrow a fool
and leave the land with no stain?

Brook

The old dirt road will lead you to it, eventually:
a depression visible through the gaps among the tall grass,
the air terribly lonely where a bridge should have been.

The descent will be difficult. The banks are steep
and riddled with roots and insects and mud.
But the brook will be there--the daily chorus of rocks

gurgling the sweet water, the dragonflies balanced
curiously above the laughter of lilies and fish,
the visiting kingfisher, blue, chest puffed, proud.

Late this afternoon a letter arrived from some country,
some memory, some small movement in the soul.
It had nothing to do with the brook, but still

I walked out of the house to stare at the gathering night
and to weep for the little deaths--the day's demise,
the loss of color, the brook I will not visit in the darkness

nor come back to, ever again. Return is the tragedy of time,
rotting the spoiled places, inconsolable by presence.
We handle grief by moving. Distance makes it intense.

Bayaw Ka Na Ba?

1. Sino ang sumulat ng mga kanta para sa Leon Guerrero, Julio Valiente, at Geronimo?
2. Saang commercial to galing: "I'm gonna knock on your door, ring on your bell, tap on your window, too"?
3. Nasa'n ang mole ng lolo sa Bear Brand commercial?
4. Ano'ng address ng Tape Productions (nung nasa Channel 9 pa ang Eat Bulaga)?
5. Sino yung kasama ni Apeng Daldal sa Cafe Aroma na laging may dalang gitara?
6. Kaninong boses si Dr. Smith sa Voltes V?
7. Anong kulay ng panty ni Annie sa Shaider?
8. Sa'n galing si Smurfette?
9. Ano'ng pangalan ng pusa ni Gargamel?
10. Anong okupasyon ni John Blackstar?
11. Ilang robot talaga ang nasa Getta Robot?
12. Bukas ulit. Trabaho muna...

Y.C.!

Y.C. Bikini Briefs,
Y.C. Bikini Briefs,
Y.C. Bikini Briefs,
For the man who packs a whallop.

Y.C. spells fashion,
Y.C. spells comfort,
Y.C. sets beauty in motion,
Y.C. is for you!

Y.C. Bikini Briefs,
Y.C. Bikini Briefs,
Y.C. Bikini Briefs...

bayaw terms part 2

1. pu-ge -- gwapo
2. ha-wey -- EDSA, mula sa Grenheels
3. tubero -- selp eksplanatori
4. Boy Bastos -- Da King Bayaw.
5. i like your candor -- hirit line ng mga bayaw
6. o, pubic hairful ha -- magpapasalamat pa sasabihan mo 'pag nahirit mo 'to
7. bawal umehi deto -- paboritong isinusulat sa pader ng mga bayaw
8. management -- mga bayaw na mahilig mangikil ng multang P500
9. mehn, cool pal ka talaga -- para sa taong kunwari'y kaibigan mo
10. arimwanan (seryoso 'to) -- convenient
11. Look for Henry Pawhay -- bayaw expression from waaay back
12. Bhoy Sakmal -- walang iba kundi the Dextrose Bayaw himself, si Chet
13. The Forces of Evil -- animal na banda 'to. rakenrol!!!
14. Good Morning Towel -- official towel of the bayaws
15. Froda -- ang nag-ayos ng blog na 'to. Salamat!!!

Four-Lane Poem

Maria/who has never
crossed the street/
now dragging her feet
back turned from/ traffic
/the blur of/sound of engines
a failed marriage of 28 years
/Maria can see sidewalk/
steady blackness of asphalt
the point of lanes
why lin/es are all broken
the road so close and how
cars like people
swe/rve
from such violent tricks/such
betrayal

bayaw terms

isang listahan ng mga salitang kabayawan

1. pabling bling -- hiphop na tsikboy
2. bardaging -- tawag sa sobrang bading na bading
3. badoy -- pag sobrang baduy ka, badoy ka na
4. bayaweh -- maka diyos na bayaw
5. animal (mabilis ang basa dito) -- hayooooop

The Speaking Landscape

------------------
The House On Marshland
Louise Gluck
Ecco Press, 1975
------------------

One bleak and bitter summer in Baguio, made colder by youthful encounters with self-inflicted sorrows (that is another story, of course), I plucked out a book from the shelves of one of our better-known poets, Maria Luisa Igloria. The book was The House on Marshland. The writer, Louise Gluck, is, according to the dedication (it was a gift for her daughter, Jenny), one of her favorite poets.

A couple of poems later, I managed to convince myself that no one would mind if I bring the book home with me (in other words, steal it) to warm Quezon City. But the next day, strangely, it disappeared.

Saved in a bizarre way from imminent theft, I have since made frequent visits to the poetic landscapes of Louise Gluck. But the one I keep coming back to is the one that literally escaped me, A House on Marshland.

While her succeeding volumes of poetry have been mainly more thematic--preoccupied with the defamiliarization and resurrection of myths--the earlier works of Gluck housed a collage of themes. First published in 1975, The House on Marshland is her second book, an important collection that iterated her distinct voice and style, perhaps paving the way for the Pulitzer Prize nearly two decades later and the Poet Laureate conferring last year.

The myriad subjects the poet tackled in this second collection were to become the building blocks of a poetics that championed fracture over wholeness, silence over exhaustive detail, and, in the words of the poet, a reluctance to conclude.

Many of the poets of the last 20 years have followed diverse roads into the lyric form. Jorie Graham, Mary Oliver, and Billy Collins are names poetry connoisseurs would easily associate with the contrasting schools of thought. Graham prefers an organic intertwining of the philosophical, historical, and personal in her subjects. Collins is preoccupied with the god of the small and mundane things. Gluck, for her part, champions the ethics of the short lyric, praising ellipses and dashes, the resonance of utterance, the authority of a pause.

There is a distinct and sonorous New Critical leaning in her concept of form that possible detractors could rarely fault her for.

What she has accomplished is to weave voice and tone with startling imagery, ultimately coming up with poetry that owe their power to utterance and some dark, ominous spirit-- what Lorca calls the duende--hovering above the page.

Gluck has lent her voice to myth, to the unspeaking, the inanimate. Reading her is to read about unearthed things. Her poetry acts as a medium speaking of the grief of plants in Wild Iris (her Pulitzer Prize-winning collection in 1992) or Penelope and Circe in Meadowlands( 1996).

The House on Marshland is read by many as a prequel of sorts to the more popular collections of Louise Gluck, but it has the same vivid imagery, and assertive voice, and well-rendered environs. Stanley Kunitz once said of her poetry: They are rooted in landscape and weather and, increasingly, in the intimacies of the heart. Though not confined by nature images, Gluck is a master at rendering nature-in-twilight imagery to express feeling in this collection. The opening poem, All Hallows, is at once ripe with scenery:

Even now this landscape is assembling.
The hills darken. The oxen
sleep in their blue yoke,
the fields having been
picked clean, the sheaves bound evenly and piled at the roadside
among cinquefoil, as the toothed moon rises:

This is the barrenness
of harvest or pestilence.
And the wife leaning out the window
with her hand extended, as inpayment,
and the seeds
distinct, gold, calling
Come here
Come here, little one

And the soul creeps out of the tree.

The same darkened backdrop is kept throughout the collection, staining the greenish white blossoms of the plum tree in Flowering Plum; bravely declaring the poison of the green landscape in The Shad-blow Tree; or allowing the growth of a marsh around the house, with schools of spores/(that) circulate/behind the shades, drift through/
gauze flutterings of vegetation. (For My Mother)

The shades and late afternoon silhouettes both carry and downplay the intensity of the Gluck lyric, often speaking in place of withheld lines that would have made the poems too obvious. Gretel in Darkness, a poem that resurrects the story of the famed storybook siblings, takes flight on a psychological level--questioning happy endings, remaining trapped in the black forest evening. Gretel mutters to herself, alone and longing, driven by blood-stained thoughts, her voice mimicking fire: Nights I turn to you to hold me/but you are not there./Am I alone? Spies/hiss in the stillness, Hansel,/we are there still and it is real, real,/that black forest and the fire in earnest.

In her Proofs and Theories: Essays on Poetry (1994), Gluck describes her writing as reliant on the deflection of emotion, the power of suggestion and deliberate silence, the power of the fractured. To Autumn hints auspiciously at the success of the poet, at the same time reverberating a somewhat misplaced optimism. She writes: …I am no longer young. What/of it? Summer approaches, and the long/decaying days of autumn when I shall begin/the great poems of my middle period.

The House on Marshland is a speaking landscape, the words whispering behind the bushes, fusing with early evening half-light, drifting in the marshes, lurking beneath murky ponds.

Disappearing from shelves, I should add.

And haunting the memory.

Everything is in Place

The dark vein of the pen, petrified hand.

Strand after strand of impeding light.
The paper sitting in its secrecy.
There must be something more

to these objects straining for movement,
solid and heavy, caught in the light.
The night keeps such cruel arrangement.

But how you can easily break

this symmetry. Now you are here,
pursing your lips, blowing strokes of smoke.
The air shimmers in your white noise.

The room is hung with the smell of wine,
tipping the bottles, rearranging the furniture.
I gather the punctuations, the shards

your breathing cuts into every corner.
The labor of speaking, lonely
as stones. I will leave, you will leave,

someone will write a poem.

After A Miracle,

The head of the dove falls to the ground.
The same happens to the unicorn's horn, lost
like a little happy ending.
But I see how the sound of a violin
would look, wounded in a dark corner.

Remember the simplicity of a tree,
or hugging your father
in the transitions of day. He is smiling,
the lines on his face like strings
ready to be strummed.

Today I give you a field of grass
moving to and fro in the descending wind.
Stoop low, then; part the blades.
And you will find the head of the dove,
wingless and moving, stirring your life.

Encounter

by Czeslaw Milosz

We were riding through frozen fields
in a wagon at dawn.
A red wing rose in the darkness.

And suddenly a hare ran across the road.
One of us pointed to it with his hand.

That was long ago.
Today neither of them is alive,
Not the hare, nor the man who made the gesture.

O my love, where are they, where are they going
The flash of a hand, streak of movements, rustle of pebbles.
I ask not out of sorrow, but in wonder

The Wild

What little I know of luminousness, I learned
from this: a cheerless child weaving into the night,
negotiating the paths of ghosts. He is ten, his frail hands
clutching small darknesses.

He doesn't understand fear.
The fireflies have drawn him out, the evening
a terrible beauty of jewels and gems. The house retreats,
farther and farther back, broken and tamed.

How he wants to touch the lights, to own them.
But he knows wildness cannot be held.
He just extends his hands, curls his fingers into a circle,
and peeks through, catching distant fireflies within.

I find him a short walk from the house,
caught in the tangle of night, arms straining
from the weight of what he cannot hold.
He is stabbing into the darkness, raging.

And if I come closer, I will hear his heart pounding
fiercely, keeping wild rhythms, child breaking

into light. But listen: we must let go of these things.
I keep back and let him be, broken, tamed.