Found on Journals and Notebooks

A gift for Love, for my Heart, for Friendship, for the Moon, for Dr. Edith Tiempo’s Life

April 22 2008 9:30 pm – April 23 2008 1:30 am

As I was going through the notes I wrote last night on the Happy (Mag:netic) Monday Poetry Reading in one of Joey’s earliest story-ideas-notebook (while he was engrossed in editing what I had just finished writing), I was

----- still applauding like when Pocholo Goitia read David Groff’s The Peril of the Poetry Reading: The Page versus the Performance---- “Too often we are mistaking the poetry reading for the reading of poetry...A recited poem vanishes faster than a vapor trail...Certainly, some kinds of poems are more effective than others when read aloud...How many times have you wanted a poet to decelerate or reread a poem?... All of us know poets whose performance persona—whether theatrical, political, erudite, or ostentatiously intimate--- belies the banality of their poetry... Yet public readings can also serve as a poet’s bullshit detector... Whenever a poet announces that he’s testing out brand new and unfinished work, that’s a good time to go to the bathroom or refill your glass of Chardonnay...” (Oh do stop cursing me and saying “ouch”; laugh and say “Ha-ha-ha!” and “Thank you Papa Pocholo!”)

---- still laughing as I read my notes like:

Jonar’s (the Ateneo-Heights-fellow-guitarist-of-Colorum) “alcohol poems on a tissue paper” is an indication that the poems-written-on-tissue-paper-movement is again on the move...

Keith Cortez presented his version of Imelda Papin’s “Isang Linggong Pag-ibig” in English...

Then the animal-kingdom-poems from Keith Cortez, Pancho Villanueva, and Lawrence-the-new-fellow-to-be-slaughtered-for-his-poetry-in-Dumaguete were everywhere, going forth to multiply...

I just experienced Khavn’s performance...

I couldn’t hear Joel Toledo’s poem (except “none of the _____ of grace”) because one of his students/guests was just too fucking noisy so I sprayed spittle with SSSSSSHHH...

To which Sasha Martinez had placed a hand on my back with “Oh ang ponytail mo!” to whom by the way if I may suggest to read Kerima Polotan’s Stories and create a subversive context on “the lies that build a marriage” in the work-in-progress-story) ...

And the numbers-performances from Gabe Mercado and the Jello-vs-Cos-duo were really for numerologists or mathematicians or grade school math students on crack.

(Did I miss anyone’s performance? This is poetry and literature we’re talking about: I am never nice when it comes to that. I would also like to thank Pancho for telling me that tangkay in “babaeng may tangkay” means pototoy.)

-----still seeing in my mind John Torres’s meta-short-film and hearing his voice as he read Mark Strand’s The Story Of Our Lives--- absence...he does not change his mind...I imagine my life without you...imagine moving on... I want his voice someday to read or perform one of my works someday.

---- still feeling the pain from seeing and hearing the grief in Ramil Gulle as he said---- Let us not forget Sid Hildawa...who kept on writing for ten years before winning the Palanca... Or in Ramil’s essay “Art of Space, Heart of Presence: Godspeed, Sid Gomez Hildawa (1962-2008)”: You didn’t want those prizes out of ambition or to seek fame. Those prizes represented for you a validation that you had finally achieved poetry, that you—the ever-hungering, ever-seeking artist that you are--- had reached a kind of summit.

----still lingering over Kael Co’s last lines in his poem Bulan--- I can even keep silent if I want to / even if I bleed.

Then I discovered on the last page of the notebook that Joey wrote the lyrics of the song “I can’t make you love me”. Just like that I began singing the lyrics to him--- and he paused and listened to me--- the first time I sing to him.

Singing is one of the many things I lost through the years.

Then I discovered a poem he wrote on pages opposite each other.

I asked him, “Was this for me?”

He came to where I was sitting, looked at it and said, “Yes.”

Words

I wrap myself in them

cocooned

in their simple

faith

of black, white

and grey

such that their

ambiguity

is clear to grasp

even

to fools.

But

you did not believe.

“I love you”

and “I’m sorry”

held no sway

in the fever’d kingdom

of your

mind:

Truth

beheld

in vain.

In my mind I was whispering understanding precedes belief. I do not simply believe when I am told “I love you” or “I’m sorry”: they have to be so empirical that they become entities, that the words become unnecessary. And so when uttered, I know they mean it because they then know what healing “I love you” brings and what wounds “I’m sorry” brought. I no longer just believe you and your words: I have faith.

I quietly asked him, “How come you don’t write poems anymore?”

He shrugged then added, “Depends on what I’m reading.”

In my mind I was screaming...remembering how I threw his poems away to the sea, threw away love for love...remembering that he remembered because I wrote of it, knew it finally, knew what happened to his poems.

I remember now.

I remember that he wrote a poem on September 4 2002.

I remember because he wrote it on a page of my journal and I wrote of it on the page after:

A man was sitting before me, patiently waiting

for me to see him. Wordlessly I pushed this

blank page towards him.

“Write...Write what’s in my mind,” I whispered, without looking.

(Did he hear the bitterness in my voice?)

I saw him as he took the page and wrote:

Ahab’s Wife

I have never known the depths of your mind.

As you sit in study

an icon of contemplation

in yellow lines and faded words

I swim your seas of idle thought

lost in the vast surmise of the unknown

and the dark brooding Leviathan

that lurks in its deeps

moves

sending me into paroxysms of awe and fear

threatening to drown me.

I see a hint of your mystery:

a giant eye, unimaginable ripples

and like the blind man and the elephant

I am a fool to even guess

what majesty haunts my days.

Yes, like the damned sailor Ahab

I know you and not.

Sailing the seas of your mind

‘midst your storm-fraught oceans

I have never known the depths of your mind.

This is what he wrote. He’s named me Ahab’s Wife...

I read it and afterwards, I smiled.

He knows.

And I love him.

He is not a man.

The darkness that plagued me receded.

It is a game I play: who’s ignorant, who’s arrogant

as only a man can be with an “I know you” or “I know why you are like that”

to me, a man’s silly contest

of wills played with me, willing me to submit.

I may submit my heart and my body---to be broken---

but never my will.

I remember now that Monday night, my third night back from Kuala Lumpur: CharleSATan had asked for a meeting with me through Joey days before, then later on through calls to my mobile that went unanswered, which I finally answered after he sent a message: Can I call you? I want to ask you something.

He, Joey and I met and were talking about the Best of Philippine Speculative Fiction website that night.

I did not understand why Charles was offering the editorship to me and had asked, “Why not get Joey? He knows more than I do about speculative fiction and all.”

Charles said, “I want your sensibility.”

Joey and I laughed. I had agreed because I liked Charles’ sensibility: he is offering a venue for the Filipino Speculative Talent so that our writers can be read by the international audience, increasing the chances of being published by the international publishing houses. And he’s doing that with his own money, therefore for free.

Then Charles asked, “Does Joey get to read your journals?”

Joey was shaking his head, the way you shake your head when you know that something is a foolish notion.

I laughed, “Of course not! I know that even when I’m away and he sees my journals that he would never read them. He knows that he would never even get to read them when I’m dead. There’s already a list of who will get which journal. Most of them will go to one friend.”

That is Ayn and I had sworn the journals to her in blood nine years ago.

When someone asks me to read something, especially a page or more from a journal--- the way Ayn, Selena, Katitang, Stefania and even Ma’am Marj had done--- I almost weep with gratitude for their trust and love. I trust and love them in return.

But nobody has read any of my journals from the first page to the last.

There was once, not a long time ago (though it seems another lifetime), I had lent that journal-- where Joey named me Ahab’s Wife-- to someone.

This is one of the holiest gifts I could give to anyone: an act of faith.

I had said, “Read it. Read me.” Know me. This isn’t even the beginning nor will be the end of what you want to know. I love you and I trust you. I want to know if I can trust and love you.

“Yes.”

But the holiest of gifts, like love, like trust, like faith, like poems are often thrown away.

Lost to the sea, lost to time.

But sometimes what was lost can be returned again, too.

Feel it: that’s hope.