For Joel Toledo who said the last time I read, “CNF na parang poem” and as of last Monday, “Naku, si Mia noon kinakausap lang niyan bokalista namin!”
For Easy Fagela who said last Happy Monday, “If all texts are CNF then there are no texts. On with your criticism Boss!”
For Carljoe Javier and writing his theory on the writing-brain: There’s a certain enzyme called serotonin that’s supposed to make people happy. Suicides have less of this. Synesthesia means you have more of this. To simulate: take Effexor thrice a day for 30 days. Good luck to your not-so-fresh-students-who-can’t-spell: vedio gems keld d redyu star, rak un Los Chupa, Ser.
For Mr. Kevin Lee (who has returned to writing after running away for two years): on techniques. Don’t make me read a block. By the fourth Tuesday, break the form you’ve been writing. And what kind of tone have you been writing? Thank you for returning an atomic-bomb-memory. Here’s a gift: From Goethe’s “Maxims and Reflections” You do not possess what you don’t understand. And why do I say a lie is a lie? Theodor Adorno “Ideology is untruth---- false consciousness, a lie”. As for this one, hail Eric Gamalinda “In the beginning there was the Word. The rest is noise.” and “The sex of sex!” Cirilo Bautista.
There (Is she drunk enough? he asked him.)
Him (said, Yep, men, you suck) said to her, Yo Yam he has tell you something.
She said, What is it? What the hell is it that you have to get me this drunk?
He said, I got her pregnant.
She hit him, Not drunk enough not to do that.
Him moved towards her and to Him she said, almost crying, Don’t you dare fucking move or I’ll drop you. You fucking set me up! Why the fuck didn’t you tell me when you called me this morning?
Him pleaded, It was his to tell, not mine, I’m not the one who got someone pregnant!
She thought, Why the hell did I choose to stop taking the fucking tranqs. Oh, right, so that I can hit.
She hit him again, I’m still holding back, asshole, this is your merry fucking to me?
He said, That mouth. Stop cursing so much.
She screamed, Haven’t I fucking told you so many times to use a fucking condom?
She kept on hitting him.
She said, You’re going to break your Ma’s heart with this.
He said, I’m going to marry her.
She laughed, Your Ma will not like that.
She laughed again, You and your honor. You don’t have to marry her.
He said, I have to.
She asked, You love her?
He didn’t answer.
She said, You’re too fucking young! You haven’t even graduated from college! If you marry her I will---
disappeared for three or four years, here,
enough time for a marriage to exist
when they had just turned 21
before that Christmas, there was summer
when she was unhappy and he gave her a book “Being Happy”
and happily they would drink and drive around on a red Volkswagen
as he told her stories about his brothers
and one who would ask him, “Why aren’t you with her?”
he told her, “If I’m with you, you will not fly, stop trying to kill yourself, your being unwell: that’s only for the rich”
she didn’t know that he was telling her he loved her,
before that unhappy summer, a summer when they were still twelve,
he was walking towards her like a monkey
and apologized for his brother calling her “my girlfriend”
she laughed because she was just another boy like him
and asked him, “Show me the scar”
the same little one she had on her belly
and they talked under that tree---
she couldn’t remember about what, before,
nobody asked, except now: she does,
he said, “I felt like I was raped when the doctor stuck his finger up my ass”
she laughed, “I thought you would die”
and quietly they swore to be always friends
then, that unhappy summer
she returned the book “Being Happy”:
it was only lent, he said, reluctant, “I like your boyfriend” whom he finally met
Here---returned
They said, Come back, Welcome back, The Prodigal has returned, You have changed.
She laughed, Yeah, I’ve gotten taller and I still can only reach your shoulders you tall motherfuckers and you are all still lousy drunks. Who’s in deep shit now?
(He pointed to drunk Him who puked on the floor.)
He put Him on the sofa and muttered, Men, you suck, as he cleaned up the muck.
She asked, Does he still paint? Want me to take care of Him now?
He said, He wouldn’t want that. Besides, can you carry his drunken 6’1” ass? No.
She and he were the only ones left still sober.
She asked, So are you happy?
He said, My daughter makes me happy.
She sighed, Yeah, but make her happy, too.
He said, I can’t seem to. She wants so many things, too much.
She said, You love her.
He sighed, I don’t know…I don’t know.
She said, You love her.
Drunk, he said, I love…I love…I love…you
She said, sober, No, you lousy drunk.
Later, again drunk, he said, If it were you I would be content.
She said, Go home, Fix your marriage, It’s not just your daughter, You love her, I will---
disappeared for two or three years
just after another summer or before another Christmas,
and on their second year in high school
she started becoming a girl to him, to his best friend, to them
who were all in a private school for boys only for private school girls
where only some knew that they were friends since they were twelve
and he taught her how to set the table the way they do in
with table napkins and the spoon and fork off the plate, with a table knife
and then once while they were all in his room
listening to Pink Floyd, talking about Kurt Cobain, reading magazines:
the others were on the floor and he was beside her on his bed
suddenly asking (while she read), “How are twins formed?”
she said, “Really, you’re asking?”
they never talk about anything academic,
afraid of how smart she was, of feeling stupid,
he had a beautiful brain which he hid because brawn is more
respected in the
“Yeah,” he said, “I don’t read our biology book”
and she told him about mitosis and meiosis,
that her teacher pronounced gametes as ga-mee-tes
he asked “What is that you’re reading?”
she said, “Structural formulas of all kinds of sugar like maltose”
(a year later discussed in Biochemistry while she was almost failing Chemistry)
later another kind of sugar on her lips which he kissed
and they were supposed to talk “What is this?”
cut off because his best friend had kissed her
while they were waiting for him to come,
thought he jilted her,
he was late: 30 minutes then an hour, said, “Ma was---”
saw her lips, saw that his best friend loved her,
just hormones,
“---well, he’s smarter,” he said to her and had girlfriends
and would push her never to love him or any of them,
others he would never know about,
others who were saved from maybe beatings
because “I don’t like your boyfriends”
There, returned---
and saw him one night with his wife, pregnant,
she asked, Your second?
he laughed, No, no, the third
the second child has saved the marriage,
the third has loved it,
I’d like you to see the children, he said
she smiled to his wife, Is that all right?
(she didn’t answer)
and she was supposed to tell him that she was getting married,
after Christmas and before the New year she did tell him,
chaperoned by Him, always, who said, You look nice
and Nice shoes, Him who would always say something “nice” to her,
the three of them drinking
she said, I’m getting married
he asked, How long have you been together?
she answered, seven years, do I have your permission?
(he didn’t answer)
he said wagging his finger, You think I didn’t know about that bad boyfriend?
she said, And you think I didn’t know that you know? A lot of shit you didn’t know
later, when she was picked up by her boyfriend to be taken to the church to hear mass,
he said to her as he hugged her goodbye, Don’t if you’re not sure. Don’t.
he said, Even if you and I are almost 28. Don’t.
he said, Stop fucking around with your boyfriend’s head,
to whom he said, “Yo, Yeoj” and would smilingly shake his hand
(about whom Him had said, Duh, the conversation ball was passed to him but he still doesn’t talk)
but never really talked to him
To here, she disappeared---
And returned there----
that summer, she left her life to come home,
left angry at her whole damned world,
angry at work,
at that her Ma’am Pacita died that Christmas,
at that she was too busy being in prison,
fucking around in her head with all seven approaches to Comparative Literature, with Lyric Poetry all required to be seen from Marxist-Socialist-Eyes (pick a framework while you’re at the latter, was the instruction, received as create your own framework), to creating a theory that says “Philippine Literature in English Subscribing to Non-Western Literary Theory & Criticism” and no, she was not going Native but turning her Psychoanalytic/Structuralist/Post-Structuralist head to Post-Colonial— (because Post-Modernism is bullshit) to make the impossible possible, to write out a theory, theory that was stopping her from writing----too busy that she didn’t keep an appointment with her Ma’am Pacita to talk about why life was NOT beautiful (because she got a stick for a grade in Aesthetics so really allergic to conversations about what is Art because she laughs her ass off) and why she had to kill God, they said Ma’am was happy, the next
Ma’am Pacita’s dead, her grandmother,
and she couldn’t go the wake, to the grave,
just kisses her fingertips to place them on her picture
and then another girl died just before that summer,
just that she couldn’t go the wake, to the cremation,
and she wrote on April 16 2006 at 7:05 pm:
Today I read about Erika, I couldn’t stop---grief
weeping for a girl, I wept for a life cut short, wept for the loss of Idealism---
it was killed by gunshots,
I feel as if the belief that the world will become a better place was killed
last March 29. I feel as if hope died.
Why kill that girl? Why did that belief die? Did she die in vain?
Is someone who lives the way she lived doomed to die?
I still cannot find words to voice this grief.
I still do not understand why I weep for her.
She was so young and she believed.
Why did she have to die?
I’m afraid that she’ll be just another dead body,
a memory, among the ranks of an ideal.
She never faltered, they said.
She’s dead.
Will she be forgotten?
This country needed her and this country’s soldiers shot her.
Who was the true soldier of this country?
They both were.
They both were fighting for the same freedom so why did they shoot each other:
Why keep on killing each other?
I do not understand, do not understand, not understand, under a stand, under one stand
angry at her friend—
who felt betrayed on the night of her last day of teaching, April 7, and shouted “I’m your friend. Why are you with her?”
and she shouted back, crying “Don’t shout at me! I care for you! I don’t deserve to be shouted at! You know that!”
her friend sighed, “I’m sorry. Don’t cry.”
wondering what hell “time out” means
that had broken the heart of a beautiful girl
who wrote one day, a June 15, ten minutes after noon “how I want to cut myself open,
take my heart, and squeeze out every trace of feeling for him,
so there will be room for the next”
who one day two years later on a March 29 would exhibit
second hand: a paperweight,
a black heart, called “Pabigat”
that made her laugh
---angry at her boyfriend,
who had looked at her (ex-boyfriend’s ex-girl)friend’s ass;
who had said, what you saw was a lie
angry at love, she thought she was apologizing for her absence
(unlover’s quarrel, she added) to a Baby Joe
later found that it was actually to a Matting: she came home,
and Him had cared for her,
taking her to he, the way they were when they were still twelve,
now drinking, just talking, this time there was no more best friend,
this time they saw how much she was different,
he asked, When the hell did you get that tattoo?
she answered, I decided on your birthday last year
(to remember that you will always be four days older)
after eight years of skin being courted by Jonee Lao:
on her skin the Angel of Paradox,
touch bone and she undulates,
touch flesh and she hisses,
Him said, Leave her alone, I think it’s nice.
she smiled at Him, Thank you, listen, if you and I are not married to anyone
when we’re 40, let’s just marry each other, what do you think?
Him laughed, Sure, sure, just let me get a job first, for our future
she laughed, And definitely you won’t have to stop fucking around with those dancers
he asked, So what’s with the marriage?
she answered, What about it? We’ve been together eight years now.
he said, You can’t marry anyone unless it’s Yeoj! We’ll fucking kill the bastard!
Him answered back, Ano ba talagang pakialam mo ha?! Bat ka nagdidikta sa kanya?!
she had never heard Him answer that way, these motherfucking lousy drunks,
and he finally said to her that he had loved her ever since they were twelve,
she had answered, I am not twelve
and she asks you now, because she does not lie, which was the lie
returned---here---today
(she had not slept or eaten since March 11, everyone says she looks too thin but good, different at 48 kilos, except her family and her Nanay who said “You’re too thin, I don’t like it” and to a sweet stick who said, “ Mia, r u really dying? Hindi ko kaya… I perfectly understand. But I do not want 2 believe you…Ang sakit mia…I reflected last night abt d things u said, & cried. U know, ppol dnt know dat im stil capable of crying: u give me something 2 cry abt. Miss u. )
before she slept at 4:44 am she said “I miss you” to silence
she told her boyfriend, “I miss you beh.
I feel as if the whole world lied to me.”
1 comment:
Mia,
It was nice to meet you (again). I linked your blog to mine already. See you soon.
-Jason
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