Ketsana
I stir in cream into my cup of freshly-brewed coffee
and it turns to the color of mud–
grey, brown, silent, granular,
reflects light at the edges.
It is warm.
These last few days, everyone to the color of mud
has been keenly familiar–
grey, brown, granular
but I do not think there’s light to reflect anymore.
At the edges, sticking out are things familiar.
It is not warm at all.
I sip my coffee before it gets cold.
Outside, impending rain.
—finally!
I can declare with freedom and candor
utter with brutal honesty—
without reservation—what for me,
and perhaps for many others,
amounts to: a heresy
against the sacred gods and goddesses
of the written word
a despoilment
of the Muses pure
for whom legions of hearts
have flown to their lofty dwellings
in adoration
and there hope to stay forever
borne by immortal words.
Words!
I gather in my hands
all previous anxiety
like sand—palpable, elusive, coarse
—and in one stroke
cast it to dissipate
among the turbulent storms
of the habagat.
I do not single you out
Auden, Pound, and cummings
but nor do you escape reprimand
Frost, Stevens, and Moore.
all the strange and foreign terrains
from words you have weaved to baffle me:
all your “mammoth turtles climbing sulphur dreams,”
your trees whose leaves
I have never seen grow nor wilt.
Even you Bautista, Abad, and Garcia Villa
do not to me sound any more familiar
although I have walked among mango trees
where probably at the foot of one
Amper buried Miguel’s cat Simeona.
they tell me your line breaks are mastery of craft
of enjambment
when they seem to me nothing but arbitrary.
(human whim)
they tell me your words
life imitates
and the life your words imitate
live for all time.
Any day I’d take a plain, direct statement
over confusing lyric lines.
so boldly here I make my admission
take my stand
and over the rooftops sound
my barbaric yawp:
I have never understood poetry!
Watching the film Bayaning Third World left me pondering the question, as it did to the film’s characters, Did Rizal retract on everything he wrote? While the retraction controversy shall never be proved or disproved historically for certain one way or the other, I would have to resort to determining, some would say constructing, Rizal for myself. As the film concluded, “Kanya-kanyang Rizal,” so did I set forth looking around for clues on Rizal’s frame of mind during his days in Dapitan when he was supposedly to have written the retraction document.
I stumbled upon a book entitled “The Rizal-Pastells Correspondence.” A phrase in its subtitle got my attention: hitherto unpublished letters of Rizal. The book was published in 1994. Guided, as it were, by some curious and inarticulate force of gut feel, I proceeded to peruse the book.
Introduction; notes on Pastells and the book
Pastells, it turned out, was Fr. Pablo Pastells, the Jesuit superior during the time Rizal was exiled in Dapitan. Pastells was Rizal’s spiritual director, perhaps even his confessor during his formative years at the Ateneo, as suggested in the letters themselves and by the footnotes of the author who compiled and published the letters, Fr. Raul Bonoan, himself a Jesuit. Or at least Pastells must have been one of Rizal’s professors. At any rate, they wrote to each other with such intimacy and familiarity that their being mere acquaintances must be ruled out.
The letters, five from Rizal and four from Pastells, were basically an exchange between an exiled revolutionary and an august figure of theology in the country at that time; between a liberal and a conservative; between Enlightenment and orthodox Catholicism (Bonoan’s insight, too). In fact, the letters were written with so much vigor by both parties that it can almost be considered a treatise on religion. The letters provide a good look at Catholic thought in the Philippines during at the turn of the 20th century and how much Rizal deviated from it.
Rizal’s Second, Third, and Fourth Letters to Pastells
So enough of preliminary information. A little background is necessary but dwelling on it defeats the purpose. On to the ideas on religion and on human morals Lolo Jose harbored after his European education and the start of his persecution.
Rizal explained his thoughts on God in his third letter to Pastells. In his second letter, Rizal said that if given the proper occasion, he would flesh out his ideas since his second letter was long enough. Pastells indeed challenged him to do so on his reply to Rizal.
The following section was condensed from excerpts from Rizal’s second, third, and fourth letters to Pastells. A few of the passages cited are direct quotations; most are paraphrased for brevity and clarity. And of course, it wasn’t presented like this, enumerated, in the letters.
Here are some of Fr. Pastells rebuttals.
Let us not be satisfied with studying God in his creatures. Let us listen with unswerving faith through the infallible teaching of the Catholic Church, to the voice of God who spoke to man directly by means of revelation.
You need not pass judgment on what you do not understand. All that is required is that you admit and believe in the truth and existence of the mystery which the Church proposes as credible and revealed by the infallible teaching office of that divinely established guardian of revelation, the Catholic Church.
That we must respect the most contrary ideas conceived and practiced with conviction, that different religions should make men brothers—all these are Protestant through and through for it sets a seal of approval on private judgment.
When Protestants interpret God’s will their interpretations can neither be good nor better, but can only be bad, some worse than others.
Sacred books are more than just the insights of entire generations put to writing. These are God’s revealed words and have God for its author.
Rizal ended their correspondence through his short fifth letter to which there was no reply from Pastells, or of there was one, that letter must have been lost forever. Rizal put a stop to the debate with these words.
“You say that we ought to hope that God will restore the faith which I lack. Let us then hope that he will do so, for this seems to me beyond our natural capabilities. Bougaud [a writer on religion whose book Pastells sent to Rizal as a gift] no longer convinces me. I am no longer able to comprehend any of your arguments and appreciate their merits…
“I deeply appreciate your desire to enlighten me and illumine my path. But I fear it is a useless task…”
Conclusion
While reading how Lolo Jose explained his unorthodox beliefs regarding religion and his misgiving on the teachings of Catholicism, I can’t help but feel a little reassured and somewhat flattered to discover that more than a century ago, someone no less than Jose Rizal harbored thoughts similar to those I arrived at independently. I, too, had a period of religious crisis and I still can’t say that I have completely settled but to be able to read my ideas through the eloquent pen of Rizal is nothing short of a mystical experience.
After reading the Rizal-Pastells letter, I do not wonder now why they shot him in Bagumbayan. And contrary to what was portrayed in Bayaning Third World, I do not sense anywhere in these letters any sign of wavering or loneliness on the part of Lolo Jose, which supposedly drove him to write a retraction in order to be married to Josephine Bracken.
And if you still haven’t got my drift, I know in my bones that Rizal never retracted. Kanya-kanyang Rizal.
Today, the razor wires and barricades lie in a neat pile on the sidewalk by the bridge.
Mendiola today, like other busy streets in Manila, is filled with people going about their daily routines. Establishments that line the intersecting streets of Mendiola, Recto, and Legarda open and conduct business as usual. Hustling, bustling, rushing to and fro, people engage another morning rush under a sky blanketed by clouds that although thin are enough to dull the early sun like a lamp shade.
Near the corner of Legarda and Mendiola, a newsstand is filled with newly arrived piles of the dailies. One of the broadsheets reads, “Satur taken for a ride.” Behind this newsstand, rows of photocopying machines take early orders from students who are perhaps cramming to review for exams or reproducing handouts for reports.
Delivery trucks park near the yellow MMDA sidewalk dividers. These yellow concrete blocks are stained by pollution, the smoke imprinted on the concrete like traces of fossiled grass. Two men in loose shirt with sleeves reaching up to their elbows unload piles of styrofoam food containers stamped with identical red labels that say “Chowking.” They unload more boxes of assorted supplies: piles of styrofoam cups, plastic jars of soy sauce, and sachets of ketchup, creamer, and sugar. A man in a Chinese collared polo, donning a navy blue apron over it, signs on a sheet of paper clipped on a springboard handed over by one of the delivery men before starting to take away the packages on a cart. Another man in a navy blue shirt and red pants arrives and helps in the loading.
People coming from the Recto side cross Legarda to Mendiola. Many among the crowd are students, betrayed by their white uniforms. There are young ladies whose white blouses are lined with pink at the edges and have four white buttons with pink inscriptions forming a square in the blouse’s midsection. There are also those who wear a one-piece white dress that reaches just above their knees; others have a navy blue tie and a navy blue skirt to go with their white collared blouses.
No matter in what fashion they wear white, the cut of their uniforms are generally the same: tight in proportion to their body size, but a bit tighter around the torso where the fabric clutch to their bodies, showing the curve from their stomachs to their hips. Some curve gracefully inwards, others outwards. As for the skirts, it was also cut such that the round contours of their legs get outlined through the fabric with each stride they take. And no matter the fashion of their uniforms, each one seem to have a leather bag slung on one shoulder and leather heels clicking on the pavement as they strut along the sidewalk.
Young men walk with the ladies in pink-lined white uniforms. The young men wear white collared shirts, blue denim jeans, and pointed leather shoes, some black, some brown. The men’s collared shirts are also of a tight fit, the sleeves clutching at their biceps.
The students carry either books, notebooks, clutch bags tucked in armpits, computer printouts of PowerPoint presentations, photocopies of readings, cell phones, or iPods. Many have earphones plugged on; those who do carry on with placid expressions on their faces which could be serenity, indifference, or a curious mixture of both. One man in a pink shirt and sunglasses walks by oblivious to others with his earphones on. His shirt says, “Mahal Q P Dn Sya.”
The streets themselves are busy, too. A smorgasbord of private and public vehicles crowds the streets, swelling the thresholds of the intersections at every red light. Green G-Liner buses (their signs say “Taytay”), yellow RRCG Transport buses, white Corolla and Sentra cabs, Pasig-Quiapo jeeps, Cubao-Divisoria jeeps, San Juan-Divisoria jeeps, Lealtad-Quiapo jeeps, and the FX counterparts for these routes all wait their turn to cross the intersection side by side with the Civics, Pajeros, Frontiers, Fortuners, Vioses, Crosswinds, Sport Runners, Cefiros, Optras, Bestas, and owner type jeeps among others.
At the mouth of Mendiola, just before the maroon island in the middle of the road, there’s a sign that says “PUJs without Mendiola franchise, no entry.” Occasionally, there’s a jeep, presumably with a Mendiola franchise, that turns right from Legarda to Mendiola, stops for a couple of minutes at the corner to wait for passengers then proceeds towards the direction of Malacanang Palace. There’s one such jeep now; its loud speakers booming out Air Supply’s “I’m All Out of Love.”
In the other side of the same corner, green- and black-topped pedicabs park in short queues of three or four at a time, five tops. Their drivers stand about chattering, running their hands through their disheveled and oily hair or stroking their stomachs under their shirts or sandos. Others slouch on their pedicabs, propping one of their feet up on the seat and stretching out the other lazily. They hug their knees, stroke their chin, and scratch themselves while staring out with glazed and unfocused eyes at passers-by. Occasionally, one among them would call out “O, Malacanang! Malacanang!”
Three stories above the busy intersection, suspended by a huge bridge-like structure, the train passes swiftly by, adding a low rumbling and high-pitched whistling to the indistinct but unmistakable din of motor noises, punctuated unpredictably by loud and horrible horns. The train, colored like the Lakers with purple and gold lines, glides along smoothly with seemingly supernatural grace above the clutter and entropy below.
On one of the massive cylindrical concrete posts that support the train, the one towering in the spot where Recto Street meets with Legarda, a tarpaulin hangs that says “Call Center Job Fair.” These words go with a smiling portrait of President Arroyo. Below the tarpaulin, the post is painted with circles and wavy squares in shades of brown. On the next concrete post supporting the train, the one on Legarda Street, the same shapes are painted, this time in shades of green. Both are signed “MMDA Art.”
All the activity on the ground however is offset by a dull and dreary background of buildings. Across the intersection, there is a five-story building. At the ground floor is a Tropical Hut store. Hopelessly entangled black electric cables almost obscure the store’s green and yellow sign. Near the top of the building there is a sign that reads, “For Rent. 3rd, 4th and 5th floor. Call 818-9684 / 818-9484. Look for Alice or Lita.”
More business establishments surround Tropical Hut. To the left are the large signs of Copytrade and BPI Savings Bank. To the right there’s Hot Pan de Sal and Mercury Drug.
The five-story building’s posts are painted white; the other parts of its facade an orangey-brown. But the white is more of a gray now.
The series of other buildings to the left of the five-story building compose a progression of decay. The next building, the one where the Copytrade branch is has walls painted pink but pollution grayed it horribly, the gray producing a more unsightly combination with pink than with the white of the earlier building. The layer of pink paint is peeled in places, showing irregular shapes of white, like wounds filled with pus.
The next building, a three-story, is painted white; yet again the city had painted it over with miserable gray through years of burned fuel smoke. On the second level of this building these words are painted on its facade: “East West Educational Specialist Co.” Below and above this banner, two rows of windows line the words with broken panes, like so much jagged and rotten teeth. Through the shattered windows, there’s only blackness.
The next building culminates the progression of decay. Its façade is bare concrete. As such, yes, it is gray. Unshapely blobs of black taint the chipped concrete. An electric post protrudes from the ground in front of the building, compounding the bleak façade with entangled thick black wires and a pair of transformers, like festering veins and malignant tumors. Two rows of broken and unhinged windows complete the dismal view.
Turning back to the streets below, more and more people cross the street in packs. Sometimes when they get caught by the green light, they stop together in the island. But they only look straight ahead or downward at their shoes or pants or skirts to check if they have got any kind of dirt or stain on it along the way. When they do look sideways, it is only to look at the oncoming vehicles. They do not regard each other. They are strangers; they stand so close yet stand so far apart. They stand solitary inside the shades of their dark glasses, the music of their MP3 players, or the privacy of their text messages.
They all walk under and stop by the monument of Don Chino Roces, frozen as he is in that haggard expression and defiant posture of his. In times past, crowds have stood on the very same spot the crowd today stands in, under the contrary atmosphere of united struggle. Today, Don Chino is surrounded by so much indifference, conformity, and mediocrity.
Honking horns, suddenly, can be heard in the distance, coming from the direction of Recto. Mixed with the chorus of horns, another chorus, this time of voices, is faintly carried through amid the busy activity in the intersection: a chorus repeating after a voice shouting on a megaphone, “Palayain!”
-30-
(written 6 Mar 2007)
Oh fuck, i wore my favorite blue shirt today.
It slipped my mind that today is election day in UP. Some of my orgmates texted me last night telling me to wear a red shirt in support of STAND-UP, the Left-leaning party. My org, the Union of Journalists of the Philippines, is affiliated with it so they expect me to vote straight for the party.
Well, i’m not going to.
Three reasons: one, i haven’t totally bought into their brand of classical Marxist-Maoist-Leninist mode; two, the so-called street parliamentary in general has lost touch with me; and three, i simply find something exasperating and aesthetically dreary in their slogans, battle cries, and room-to-room campaigns.
This doesn’t mean in the least that i do not sympathize with their struggles. Human rights, freedom of speech, land for the farmers, just compensation for the workers, anti American neocolonialism: i understand all these and identify with these. But they do no offer me much of a quality option of action with the form of their protest. So much destruction and negativity. i distrust their employment of the word “fascist” and “fascism.” Everything ends up being fascist with them.
My four years of misgivings mainly have to do with form. there has got to be some other way than going to the streets every other day.
But I’m going to vote for many of their candidates. i still believe in the abstracts and ideals that STAND-UP answers to. i had admired their consistency regarding issues, and i still do. A certain dose of them is healthy for the student councils. I’m not about to hand everything over to the conservatives, those with common-sensical, unsophisticated, and inarticulate politics, and to those who wear blue.
Perhaps my misgivings on STAND-UP and the Left ideology in general (it made so much more sense in class) are simply my petty bourgeois upbringing talking back, refusing to give up a young mind without a bitter fight, its deeply ingrained seeds coming to full bloom in a rush exactly at the moment of attack, at that moment it sensed danger of losing ground, ironically like the dispossessed farmers, who after toiling on the land with their sweat now bathe it with blood.
Actually, i was going to wear a pink shirt. But when i put it on, it was uncomfortably tight, tighter than the last time i wore it. it must have shrunk during laundry. So i took it off and got another shirt from the closet. The blue shirt was the first one i found that i knew fit well. it was getting late so my dad bid me to hurry. I forgot about the elections at school in the morning rush.
So everything told, it really is just the fit. My blue shirt fits me well. But how can i explain shirt fit to politics?
the xerox guy at casaa asked me if i could pick up my readings there later because he would probably take long with the one he was working on. i split up with Mer who headed the opposite direction BA. i turned and drifted over to AS.
it was a horribly humid afternoon. i needed to find a respite from the heat where i can wait for my readings without melting. my feet took me to the Third World library. only when i turned right from the AS walk near the library’s door did i realize that this was an illogical choice of a place to wait because the room wasn’t airconditioned. i proceeded anyway due to a lack of alternative. i didn’t want to walk anymore under the suffocating heat.
just as i was walking in, Angel suddenly emerged from the door. she exclaimed in delight, saying it had been too long since we last saw each other. we hugged. shejust stepped out to buy something. she left her blue bag inside. i needn’t ask where exactly her bag was; i knew that bag too well.
i found her spot inside the library. her blue bag was lying on top of an otherwise empty table. all the chairs surrounding the table were pulled out, as if it had just been used for a group conference. i sat on the chair opposite the one i assumed to be hers.
not a couple of minutes had passed when i felt a sudden urge to leave. why was i sitting there across her blue bag, for all intents and purposes waiting for her after everything that’s happened? i looked through the windows to see if she was already coming back. i waited a few moments more to be sure. then i arose and stormed out of the door and turned left towards the direction of casaa, away from the store to the right where i assumed she was buying some refreshments.
i reached the AS lobby. outside on the steps, students were making a loud ruckus, holding a demonstration to decry the proposed increased in tuition and the witholding of the school paper’s funds. most of students wore red. they walked out on their classes and went to the street to protest.
they, too, walked out in protest.
