PAALAM. Sa uulitin.

Mahirap magsulat sa Tagalog. Mabuti na lang at hindi ko na ito uulitin.

Sa dalawang taon na pagsusulat at pamamahagi ng kaalaman sa sining ng pagsusulat bilang Punong Patnugot ng Benildean Press Corps (BPC), ito ang una at tanging pagkakataon na isusulat ko ang aking piyesa sa Tagalog—ang huli kong kontribusyon bago ko ipasa ang aking titulo sa isang bagong dugo.

Ang desisyong isulat ang huli kong piyesa sa Tagalog ay para sa alaala ng isa kong guro at tagapayo na si G. Sid Gomez Hildawa, isang arkitekto, alagad ng sining at makata. Siya rin ang dating direktor ng Visual Arts Department ng Sentro ng Kultura ng Pilipinas o Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP). Si G. Hildawa ay pumanaw sa edad na 45, umaga ng Marso 30 dahil sa Typhoid fever.

Si G. Hildawa ay ang aking gurong tagapayo para sa maikling pelikula na aking sinimulan bilang thesis. Sa lahat ng aming mga konsultasyon, walang tanong na hindi nasagot o problemang hindi sinubukang solusyonan. Noon, handa na akong kalimutan ang pelikula dahil sa kawalan ng pag-asa, pondo, oras at mga taong masasandalan. Pero, nagbago ang ihip ng hangin nang walang pag-aalinlangan na tinanggap ni G. Hildawa ang proyekto at nangako na gagabayan ako hanggang sa huli.

Sa isa naming pagkikita sa kanyang opisina sa CCP isang gabi ng Miyerkules, nagkaroon ako ng pagkakataong magmasid sa kanyang silid: Ang mga puting dingding ay pinuno ng maliliit na istante ng mga porselana. Sa isang sulok na nag-aagaw sa dilim at liwanag, sari-saring mga obra ng kulay at tinta ang nakasandal na tila naghihintay ng kanilang taga-hanga. Ilang librong literatura ang nakasalansan sa isang masinop na eskritoryo. Nakangiti akong sinalubong ni G. Hildawa at pinagsabihan akong umuwi na at matulog nang hangga’t gusto ko dahil mas mahusay pa sa kanyang inaasahan ang aming pelikula. Tinanong din niya kung marunong ba akong ngumiti.

Matapos ang pagkikitang iyon, hindi ko na muling nakita si G. Hildawa. Hindi ko na din siya naaabutang nakaupong naghihintay ng mga estudyante papayuhan sa opisina ng School of Design and Arts (SDA) tuwing alas-sais ng gabi. Pagpasok ng unang bahagi ng termino ng kasalukuyang school year, natigil na din ang kanyang pagsusulat sa kanyang online blog—ang huling tala ay nailathala Pebrero pa ng kasalukuyang taon kung saan isang litrato ni G. Hildawa kasama ang Pambansang Artista na si Bien Lumbera ang nakapaskil. Sa mukha na puno ng buhay at nakangiting si G. Hildawa ay ang pangako ng isa pang pagtatagpo sa hinaharap kasama ang dakilang artista.

Pero sino nga bang mapalad ang pwedeng maka-aninag sa totoong hinaharap? Maski na ang isang artistang nakakaintindi nang taos sa misteryo ng kung ano pa man ay walang kakayahan na sumilip sa tunay na mukha ng kanyang tadhana.

Isang Sabado—isang araw bago pumanaw si G. Hildawa—pinadalhan ako ni Bb. Lualhati Bautista—ang isa ko pang tagapayo—ng isang anunsyo mula sa CCP na nakikiusap para sa taimtim na panalangin para sa agarang paggaling ni G. Hildawa. Sinubukan kong tawagan ang telepono ni Sir Sid (kung saan siya mas kilala) pero nakapatay na ang kanyang telepono.

Alas-sais nang umaga ng Marso 31, ipinaalam sa akin ng isang kaibigan na pumanaw na si Sir Sid umaga ng Marso 30. Ayon sa isang kakilala, ang huli niyang tala sa kanyang talaarawan ay “I’ve tried to cross the river, but the current was too strong.” Tulala akong nanatili sa kama hanggang ala-una ng hapon.

Nais ni Sir Sid na mapanood ang aming pelikula kapag ganap nang tapos ito; pero ngayon, hindi ko na alam kung papaano pa. Habang isinusulat ko ang piyesang ito, ang mga abo ni si Sir Sid ay nakalagak sa kapilya ng Don Bosco—sa isang pagtitipon ng mga nakikiramay na puno ng bulaklak, tula, kalungkutan at ala-ala.

Ang aking maikling proyektong pelikula na Sapatos kasama si Ping Medina at ang huling piyesang ito para sa BPC ay taos-puso kong inaalay sa alaala ni Sir Sid.


On my fourth day in hospital
with dextrose feeding me twenty
drops a minute, I picture in my mind
a space I may have left behind,
not entirely empty, but of air
made thinner by my absence,
or of lighter tissue,
so that people pause, inquire,
and imagine what used to be there.

--“Sick Leave”, Sid Gomez Hildawa, 2007

***

Gusto kong ipahayag ang aking walang sawang pasasalamat at pagmamahal sa aking mga kapatid sa Benildean Press Corps (BPC). Ang tatlong taon kong ginugol sa apat na sulok ng BPC newsroom ay hindi matatawaran. Hiling ko ang patuloy ninyong dedikasyon sa pagiging mga taga-paghatid ng katotohonan at serbisyo sa komunidad ng De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde (DLS-CSB).

Maraming salamat kay G. Randy Torrecampo, ang aking kuya at tagapayo na walang sawang gumagabay sa akin hanggang sa huli. Ang hiling ko ay patuloy mo pa sanang magabayan ang pamilya ng BPC sa marami pang mga taon.

Maraming salamat kay Ate Riza (Manalili) sa pagiging kumare at matalik na kaibigan.

Maraming salamat sa BPC Editorial Board sa kanilang tiwala at respeto.

Sa La Salle Brothers lalo na kay Br. Armin Luistro FSC at Br. Victor Franco FSC, salamat sa inyo sa aral na inyong pinamalas tungkol sa kahalagahan ng katotohanan.

Salamat din kay G. Neil Barnachea ng DLS-CSB Center for Counseling Services para sa walang sawang pag-gabay.

Sa Alliance of Lasallian Campus Journalists, salamat sa pagpapatuloy ng tradisyong Lasalyano na sumasalamin sa katotohanan at pagiging maka-Diyos.

Sa College Editors Guild of the Philippines, salamat sa inyong walang sawang gawain tungo sa reporma at pagbabago.

Sa iyo-alam-mo-kung-sino-ka, pwede mo kaming diktahan pero hindi mo kami magagapi.

Sa Batch 104 ng Multimedia Arts Department, nasa inyo ang aking buong respeto sa pagkakaroon ng tatag ng loob sa kabila nang walang tigil na pang-gigipit ng mga nagmamarunong.

Sa lahat nang tumangkilik, ipagpapatuloy pa rin natin ang laban.

Ito ang inyong Editor-in-Chief, L'enfant terrible, nagpapaalam at sumasaludo sa kabataang Benildyano.

You might as well live

[Published in the February 2008 issue of The Benildean]

My uncle—a young architect—after spending his remaining days wasting away in a wicker bed positioned in his father’s kitchen, succumbed to cancer of the colon one Sunday evening.

The evening he passed on, the family drove two hours to his rural town in the heart of nowhere, the elders interacting through hushed conversations.

The evening of his death was a perfect stereotype of a melancholy circumstance: the heavens were a massive blue-black backdrop of gloom, the stars buried beneath the heavy assembly of sinister clouds. The fields of rice in the dark displayed no emeralds or bottle greens—like colors in the absence of light, they are black in black. The air reeked of animal dirt—the cold cutting through skin in knife-like touches.

My uncle, in our arrival, was stretched out like a willowy doll on his wicker bed.

Realizing the oddity and rarity of the situation, I examined the silent body resting on a white bedspread with a needlework of pink carnations.

The oil of the skin had dried out, leaving a rubbery appearance of synthetic leather with maps of blue surfacing on the abdomen and temples. The eyes were shut tight, sunken and miserable. His hair—the only article of his being that gave the impression of life—waved and fluttered in the evening draft.

A solitary fly settled on his shrunken cheek and leapt its little leaps. However, his facial muscles remained still. Thereafter, a reality had sunk in the four walls of my head: He really is dead; and with that relaxed stillness of a dead tree, my uncle couldn’t possibly be faking it.

It is likely that a rural family invites the local mortician over to prepare their dead for a five day funeral to be housed in their living room.

My uncle’s wife had a neighborhood mortician come after she and the rest of the family had spent a proper amount of time mourning in privacy.

Mugs of coffee were handed out in the kitchen where the embalming took place, with the entire family in observation.

I examined the entire process of embalming: the mortician appeared detached and unaffected —his blotted teeth biting on a half-smoked Marlboro, the cigarette ash peppering the carnation-decorated bedspread.

Plastic pails were carted in and out of the kitchen, mugs of unfinished coffee crowded the sink and small children were escorted to a neighbor’s faucet for water.

The dead’s hair was washed, with a small basin held underneath the neck and the limbs, sponge-bathed. Afterwards, a thick cake of make-up was smeared on the face, covering as much exposed skin as possible, focusing on the shadowed depressions around both eyes. A tint of rose-pink was brushed on the sewn lips and the hair was untangled and combed with a hairdresser’s hairbrush and a blob of pomade.

Soon enough, a freshly pressed suit was handed to the attending mortician and after enfolding the body with strip after strip of packing tape, the dead was clothed and made to appear like a spruced groom in willing anticipation of his bride.

My uncle appeared like a three-dimensional portrait of a slumbering man behind the glassed window of his auburn coffin. He seemed all right laying there, his sunken cheeks blushed with an artificial glow of pink powder, masking any hint of the disease that took his life at a time when he had so much to live for.

I questioned the impassivity of the mortician at handling the body and my mother responded: That body is now but an empty, hollow case. He is no longer there.

I thought about what my mother had said and imagined my uncle seated unseen on a kitchen stool, in observation of his body’s two-hour embalming. Then, he probably drifted off to somewhere, taking pleasure in his new being in an existence far from a corporeal existence. Where ever he drifted off to, I can only imagine. All I know was, right there, the only thing I could acknowledge in my heart was the overwhelming feeling of consolation at being alive.

Benildean Press Corps presents...

The after-death woe of Hemingway (and other tragedies)

[The Benildean December 2007 issue]

A paperback has always functioned as an article of comfort for me.

At age eight, an abridged copy of Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist bailed me out of the agonizing probability of being the hangdog in an afternoon of hopscotch with physically-able six graders in trainer bras.

At fourteen, to my parents’ happy consolation, I substituted booze and loco weed with Jane Eyre’s gothic-romantic melodramas.

Suicidal Sylvia Plath, paradoxically, resuscitated me from the black hole of college atrocities and slapped me back to a pink life of hope.

Not to mention that a paperback—especially that one about a wheat-haired prince with a rose-princess—has always been my favorite bedfellow.

One bookstore break, a sad panorama left me wishing for an immediate woe hero: A pile of paperbacks were thrown together in a sorry heap with a red ampersand looming over their paper-faces like a Maoist despot.

Ernest Hemingway was cheek to cheek with Geoffrey Chaucer and spawns of JD Salinger were crowding a Dim Sum How-To on the suicide-ledge of a bookshelf. Other literary paperbacks, with their creased leaves and waning colors, portrayed themselves to me as wretched casualties of a lost war—A sad portrait of the realism of literary regression.

The other books in discussion—the ones by Harriett Beecher Stowe, Virginia Woolf and even the Sweet Valley Twins included (Suck it up, literary snobs)—were on sale for a miserable
P 50.00.

With a gray, glum heart, I decided to deliver Hemingway and bagged two copies of Fiesta: The Sun Also Rises, which would have been appropriate if only my imaginary friend preferred Hemingway (apparently, he only fancies the closet at daytime and scaring the maid on a regular basis).

On a serious note, I could not stomach how bookstores could stomach retailing classics for a pathetic P 50.00 and more so, how people prefer brainless boob tube shows over a good read.

Bookstores hold thousands of classic titles which they dispose of in a year or two should the books in question flopped among the purported bookstore buffs (who, is safe to say, raid the shelves generally for gel pen purchases).

Each time I carry out my obligatory rounds at the literature sections of a bookstore, William Shakespeare would be bleeding in melancholy with his tragedies. Mute and uncomplaining at aisle H-I for Socrates knows how long, Thomas Hardy remains like his humble Jude: obscure.

Literary masterpieces like distinguished Science discoveries of then and beyond deserve high regard for the simple reason of brilliance.

And I shall ache and ache for my paperback loves.

***

Sen. Antonio Trillanes III is wretched with a delusion of grandeur.

Mr. Grandiose thought that the 11 million voters who sat him in senate shall string along when he promenaded the Makati avenue along with military men backers one dog day Thursday.

The high-flying lieutenant of cool spoke of his latest insubordination as a “moral obligation” in a half-baked mutiny plot staged at the posh Peninsula hotel where miserable guests were forced to the streets carting luggage and The Pen staff sobbing with agonizing disheartenment (redundancy, intentional).

When the grandiloquent big-talker resolved to yield to the authorities, he suddenly morphed into a bashful, clammed-up lamb.

Ha, ha!

The government, in the aftermath of the botched mutiny of the two-time mutineer, implemented a temporal curfew which miffed (and home-bounded) the booze-gulping nocturnals.

Ha!

***
The Metro Manila Development Authority (MMDA) knocked down fully developed trees along Quezon Avenue to give way to a proposed road widening development.

The doomed green beings crammed the concrete avenue sidewalks, reminiscent of a sad picture of a bloodbath.

Trees are kind.

So, why?

On turning ten

[October-November 2007 issue, The Benildean]


You always admire what you really don't understand.
--Blaise Pascal


The scholarly philosophers of who-could-care-less would reason that ignorance is the origin of fear; in actuality, a sincere stupidity masquerading, in a sheep’s clothing, as plain harmless innocence.

Still, I have faith in the philosophy that ignorance is bliss.

At age four, I thought that the Cheez Whiz fairy really lived beneath the Cheez Whiz pot label.

As a child, I hated the gloppy, sodium-laced pseudo cheese junk that is Cheez Whiz. Playacting as my yellow hell in a bottle, Cheez Whiz has ruined innumerable lunch hours and birthday blow-outs. It counted as one of my many childhood saboteurs of fun—alongside obnoxious cough syrups and playtime cornstarch powder—that aroused the tantrums I curb within the four walls of my four-year-old head.


However, I recall feeling especially high-strung whenever my mother brings home a bottle of Cheez Whiz for my unfortunate sandwich school lunches. The glee is rooted from the happy thought that I have yet another opportunity to take prisoner the Cheez Whiz fairy that lived beneath the Cheez Whiz pot label.

I'd rip the label off each time and think: She hides pretty well.

The urban legend of swallowed citrus seeds lodging their roots into the walls of your gut enthralled me more than the blah fairy-tales of Disney princesses clad in bed sheet-gowns. I imagined having an orange tree breed slowly beneath my skin, with its red-yellow fruits cheek to cheek with my otherwise maroon heart. The resentful nanny swore the branches would begin to crawl out of my ears before I am ten. Of course, I waited for that one momentous occasion in vain.


At age six, I thought that Batibot* was an actual place filled with peculiar looking humans with patchwork brains and prosthetic noses; some quiet little town that my mother just could not locate with her car, despite the fact that she had the brains, ability and gas money to locate all the godforsaken Shoe Marts mushrooming in the metropolis.

And then I grew up to be nine and began realizing that Kuya Bodgie* is too happy for a middle-aged man—his method of eternal kindliness was so original, I remember how no adult in my childhood existence was too willing to smile sympathetically whenever I skip my afternoon nap. Mostly any virtual thing made my middle-aged father yell. Kuya Bodgie, I thought, must be bluffing it too perfectly.

At ten, I unlearned, gradually, the lies of special effects and the many fish stories of television and bed time fairy-tales.

And I learned not to trust and to stop believing.

***

This is the beginning of sadness, I say to myself,
as I walk through the universe in my sneakers.
It is time to say good-bye to my imaginary friends,
time to turn the first big number.

It seems only yesterday I used to believe
there was nothing under my skin but light.
If you cut me I could shine.
But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life,
I skin my knees. I bleed.

--Billy Collins, On turning ten


*Batibot is the Philippines' equivalent to Sesame Street.
*Kuya Bodgie is Batibot's most famous host.

905, 657 reasons not to hang yourself tonight

[August 2007 issue of The Benildean]

According to the American College Health Association, about 44 percent of students were so depressed that it was difficult for them to function at some point in the 2006 school year. It also found that nearly 10 percent reported seriously considering suicide at least once last year.
Richard Kadison, chief of Harvard University's mental health services, said most students tackle the often overwhelming demands of student life such as developmental issues, parental and societal pressures, and economic hardships with "incredible strength and resilience." --CNN.com


Once and for all, with my rose-colored glasses on, allow me to step into the sugary cavities of optimism and pronounce that suicide is not the remedy to all your sorrows. Apart from resembling a chewed-up bologna concealed in a closed box, a suicide victim leaves behind emotional scars to his sorry relations and the stigmata of a perceived troubled psyche.

No matter how romantic happy pill-drugged poets portray suicide as (Darkling I listen; and for many a time I have been half in love with easeful Death—Keats) hanging yourself over a temporal personal crisis is self-righteous and screaming bloody egotistical (pun unintended).

With the pressure of brain-bleeding deadlines, vicious, children-wolfing professors and, may I add, leering discipline officers hounding you in the hallways, examining every article of your being which might (with their fingers crossed) qualify a trip to the “hell-hole”—one, sometimes, can not evade an un-Christian contemplation on suicide (Sister Something back in grade school insisted that thoughts of suicide, even minus the execution, are already qualified as a mortal sin—non-negotiable…not even with twelve rounds of the Joyful Mysteries and a cocktail of holy water and Mompo.)

I have had my share of emo-moments (complete with a noose and kohl eyeliner). But I discovered that bawling it all off until you pass out helps tremendously—you actually wake up the next morning smiling, beaming with sunshine like a tranquilized fool in a psycho ward.

Seriously now, I came to a realization that there is so much to live for—just by reading Time Magazine from cover to cover. As opposed to your shiny middle-class life, small children continue to starve to death in Africa—with desert vultures in celebration over a smorgasbord of their sad remains. In North Korea, people live under the venomous claws of communism with families subsisting daily on porridge and where school-aged children steal coal for alcohol. In the Middle East, people live with an invisible clock humming above their doomed selves—ticking second after second—as they lie in wait in a street corner, on a bus ride home, within the four walls of a school room. Then a bomb organized by some schizoid fundamentalist goes off, murdering someone’s mother, someone’s husband, someone’s friend, someone’s child whose sad story end up on some daily broadsheet which Mr. Self Righteous—as he sits happily on his lounge chair at his sunflowers-wallpapered home situated on the map of some democratic country—ends up reading on a supposedly glorious Monday morning where hours later he gets reprimanded at work for a deadline overlooked which will lead him to later fit a noose around his three meals a day-nourished neck and suffocate the life out of him.

This when he could have instead opted for a day-off spent pigging out on ice cream and purchasing a gift of a tie for his boss—something that matches the latter’s kitchen floral wallpaper (talk about true, cruel vengeance).

On nights when you just feel like romancing a ledge, maybe you should chew on what Ernest Hemingway once quoted, “The real reason for not committing suicide is because you always know how swell life gets again after the hell is over”. (Sure, hotshot.)

Or perhaps, you could just shrug it off and think: Life happens.

EDITORIAL: Juan and the beanstalk

[August 2007 issue]

In her thirteen-paged speech, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo outlined the billion peso infrastructure projects lined up for the future alongside the public-works projects that the administration has already completed. “The speech was like ‘the state of infrastructure report’,” stated Bayan Muna representative Teddy Casiño. Moreover, he remarked that the President’s address was three-fourths about infrastructure but stated nothing of definite plans to take in hand the issue of poverty and unemployment.

The President prides herself on a fiscal-development proposal supposedly attainable in 20 years. Investments in intellectual, physical, legal and business infrastructures have been created as a resolution to boost business confidence. With such reforms lined up to yield a so-called better Philippines inching alongside Asia’s economic Goliaths, the country—by 2010—can finally be regarded as nearly first world.

A preposterous pipe dream it is, if you may, setting aside optimism we tried so hard to hang on to for who-knows-how-many presidential SONAs. Economic development is an essential prerequisite for poverty reduction, but reality is, not all progress is pro-poverty. Sometimes, politicos should learn to shake off the all the highly-cerebral dialogues on political affairs and get down to the basics.

The very basic argument of bureaucracy—for instance—has a considerable effect on a country’s income growth. The government, handled by a battalion of civil servants is structurally incompetent with ineffectual agenda-setting, and policies, and a mounting corruption within the system triggered by wrong mindsets and attitudes. The country’s burdensome bureaucracy is plagued with gaps and overemphasis on policies and procedures minus the consideration for the accomplishment of intended outcomes and results.

Along with what was aforementioned, a country’s pathetic judiciary and security issues also play a fundamental role in the economic governance of a country.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, exhibit number one illustrates a government spiked with superficiality. Behind the gala of ornate gowns and a speech on the impossible carnival of billion-worth infrastructures is a mum society—corrupting in the venom of its own poison.