To catch wings in commotion is impossible.63 64 Even as I watch, I change the facts of nature: there and not there, in that moment. I take down for my killing eye—the one that always sees—the half-moon-script of ladybugs. Their wings flap madly into odd stasis, into the optical fallacy of a lunar phase. Then, there’s the candor of dragonflies.65 Flimsy tracery of their wings, exposure of their slim volitions, pulse-maps available for all to see. I catch the radiances of flies. Bluebottle, greymottle, veinsottle—they have a filthy intimacy with the river’s shades of green. I snatch ants at their trade, watch spiders lay their traps. Ant equals bird plus pepper.66 67 Ant plus parrot equals penis. That is the declension of the word langgam. I hear mosquitoes speak bad things68 about me. ZZZ. ZZZ. Splat. That’s what they get. “Gossip sucks blood.” Note to killer’s eye:69 put that in your diary. Neat phrase. Thus, how do I? Maybe not Eden: but taking a shit is an education.70
What would King’s World do without shit? It is true that shit gives me power. Shit leads the world to me. Shit mesmerizes the Kingdom.71 72 73 74 But I’m modest enough to know that I am expendable. Shit is their cause. I mean, my rear is just means, no end. I am contingent. Shit is necessary.75 76 Philosophy hatches warmly in my bowels.
All this is cavil as you notice. I dilly and I dally. I zig and I zag. All prologue and introduction, tactical ploy, oiling up the barrels, testing the locks. There’s a rock stuck in my gullet like a bullet. There’s a load in my cannon like a toad. O jesusmaryjoseph mea culpa I disgraced your God, only two minutes ago. Mea culpa. O that those two minutes were back I intercede without blemish shame blame
oooh dammmmn. All-Powerful one, Friar Most Holy, Aggrieved and Aggravating. Salvame! 77 78 79 80
O Francisco Bulag-tas,81 salvame!
Sing, Raymundo, sing!
Inside and outside, my country in despair
Betrayals are reigning
Genius and goodness are thrown to the air
Sorrowful bowels irritating
Good deeds are hammered down
To the abyss of seas that moan
Talented faeces are off and blown
Buried without cornerstone
But the sly and bad of heart
’Neath a pure throne hides a fart
And to those with beastly art
Sweet incense is offered.
Sing, Raymundo, sing!
Omni—po—tent—ehem. Ehem. Ohoommmmmmm.
Raymundo:
Treason and evil take the lead
While goodness bends over
Bulag-tas:
Holy reason’s so hung over
Only tears are shed.82 83
43 This is, of course, the year of the Cavite Mutiny, vestigial phase of the revolution of 1896. The Calendar for Manileños corroborates the year. But the Calendar is unreliable (it has no bibliography); so I checked Agoncillo’s Revolt of the Masses. Hah! The exact date of the Mutiny. (Trans. Note)
44 On this date, fiesta fireworks went off near Manila, specifically Bilibid, a jail town visible at the time from Cavite (now obscured by miles of videoke bars and the diesel belch off Southern Luzon Expressway). Philippine-born soldiers (a.k.a. insulares) of the Spanish arsenal in Cavite mistook fiesta noise across Manila Bay as a signal for battle (but why?!), and so began a sorry motin. A bourgeois riot, similar to the Boston Tea Party instigated by American-born British merchants. Some historians call this “the first labor strike” in our history. I call it katangahan, yes, idiocy!—typical of the tragic absurdities that bedevil the province of Cavite. The mutiny ended up killing Gom-Bur-Za: three innocent priests of varying tendencies: Mariano Gomez, Jose Burgos, and Jacinto Zamora—their unmerited deaths are further proof of the errors of Cavite! (Estrella Espejo, Quezon Institute and Sanatorium, Leyte)
45 Clue: three-syllable dvandva used as Katipunan password. Answer: What is Gom-Bur-Za??? And why was it a revolutionary password? Because Gom-Bur-Za mattered! No one (except certain invalid scholars mired in primitive spleen) disputes the importance of the Cavite revolt (just as few would portray the Easter Rising of 1916 only as some drunken Irish mayhem—though some have tried). The rise of native clergy threatened the Spanish orders. Of course, while Filipinos hated the clergy, they also wanted to become priests. A common schizophrenic polarity. The real problem, Estrella, is that Filipinos revere GOMBURZA as if each priest-martyr were equally marvelous. Whereas the facts of the Cavite Mutiny are a glorious case of dysrecognition and mis(taken)identification. Every Filipino should take a stab at interpreting their mess(age). In “The Garrulous Garrote: What GOMBURZA Says,” I point out that the priest-triad Gomez-Burgos-Zamora is, yes, a pancit mix, a noodle combination that will never cohere. The triplet priests, each of whom has nothing to do with the others, are a symbolic knot. Sure, Padre Mariano Gomez, aged saintly reformist, was by then retired and unjustly arrested. And Padre Jacinto Zamora was just a jugador, an unlucky gambler innocently caught in the scene of the mutiny. No wonder he lost his mind at the scaffold: he thought all he’d been doing during the mess around him was losing at cards! But it was above all Padre Jose Burgos, the Philippine-born prodigy, radical heresiarch—he was the genius provocateur, prelude to the overbearing genius, Rizal. His talents as orator, philosopher, and elegant blasphemer—the panoply of his skills—give lie to the notion of equality among this Holy Trinity. Father Burgos is the center of tragedy in the Cavite Mutiny. Thus, GOMBURZA was no salutary unity and singular heroic entity but, yes, a split identity, a bad yoke: sad fate of the signifier. But that does not lessen its importance. (Dr. Diwata Drake, Clyde, Ohio)
46 Future Katipunan generals Miong, a.k.a. Emilio Aguinaldo, later first president of the Republic, and Idoy, a.k.a. Candido Tria Tirona, were the memoirist’s earliest pals. Idoy was Raymundo’s cousin who died a hero in the First Phase of the Revolution—the war against Spain. “The river” is most probably in Binakayan, the barangay near which stood
