496 Gossip: popular Filipino pastime. (Estrella Espejo, ditto)
497 Ang kawawa kong himagsikan. Imagine the Tagalog is an irreparably more profound cry. (Estrella Espejo, ditto)
Entry #39
balimbing balanghoy baluno balete baloto balato bamboo banyan bangungot bathala bahala bahal bohol betel bigti bugtong bagting bagol bagaman bagacay balangay baluktot balintawak barumbado barasoain bungol buta bukaw buot buyog buyag bayag bulak bulaklak bulan bungaw bangaw bangin bingi banga bungo bulaga bulag498 499
Bugtong:500 what did the idiot call poems that repeat the sounds of initial consonants? Answer: Illiteration.501
Another bugtong: Into what language can you not translate a work translated from the Spanish? Answer: Spanish.
498 Raymundo’s manic mumbling stumps me here, so I kept the original intact, above. A charitable notion is that it’s another of his word puzzles. Some patterns one might note are: the vowel mutations [i, a, u, e, o] following the triad bal in the first five words; the multilingual triplet [buyog, buyag, bayag], in which a testy bug transforms in vowel increments into, well, a testicle; in short, one will find any number of patterns limited only by the reader’s cunning. It’s the interstitial connections—what connects one pattern to another—that baffles me. Most of all—why is he doing this when at that point history is in the middle of the Cry of Balintawak??! (Trans. Note)
499 In the middle is the Cry of Balintawak—between baluktot (crooked) and barumbado (troublemaker), toward Barasoain. In short, he traces in manic progress the wayward path to the First Philippine Constitutional Assembly in Barasoain Church, Bulacan, in 1898, which, as every scholar agrees, leads straight from the Cry of Balintawak, the opening shots of revolution: which thus set up the first Asian republic, however shortlived. El Grito de Caloocan: a.k.a. Cry of Balintawak, or Cry of Pugad Lawin (both Balintawak and Pugad Lawin are place-names in the city of Caloocan) is the first event of the revolution. The Philippine republic predates the Irish Uprising, the Bolshevik Rebellion, and inspired every volcanic event in the colonial reaches of Asia, so there. Exact location and time (and even weather) are still in dispute. Circa August 1896. Some people might simply prefer the more rebel-like Cry of Pugad Lawin (literally, Cry of the Hawk’s Nest) to the sissyish Cry of Balintawak (literally, Cry of the Lady’s Shoulder Vestment). However, whatever, the symbolism is clear. This is when Bonifacio’s revolutionaries begin the war, after the Katipunan’s premature discovery following a labor dispute in a printing press. Classic imagery has the cornered katipuneros gathering in a rice field and crying out against the dogs of Spain while they brandished bolos and tore up cédulas (residence certificates—similar in egregious function to identity cards required of blacks in apartheid South Africa or immigrants in modern America). In reality, some memoirists have pictured them soaking after swimming in swamps, no cédulas mentioned. Etc. etc.
As for the other busy b’s above: I have one word for you, puzzler—b--s--t [buwisit]. (Estrella Espejo, Quezon Institute and Sanatorium, Tacloban, Leyte)
500 Bugtong = riddle: a form of indigenous Filipino wit. (Trans. Note)
501 Bugtong sated a thirst for mystery, wordplay, and philosophy. But what’s a riddle doing in the middle of the revolution? (Estrella Espejo, ditto)
Entry #40
Even now when I recall my tossings and turnings that night, a fist of anxiety clenches in my chest and I feel winded. I left in the morning. Just to be safe, though I believed my name was not on their lists, I wound my way through Manila in the masque of a wandering laborer, carrying only a woven petate, papers stashed into it along with one pan de sal, and a pen. I wrapped [ ]502 in my rags as I imagined fleeing Romans wrapped their cursed crosses.
The minute light crept down the esteros, I crept along with the silent hue, my slight figure one with the sonar tune of lecheras and buyeras, whistling guides whose untroubled faith in their routines’ immortality gave off a creepy serenity to the morning. Happily, I followed the charms of one maiden, sleeve of her cotton camisa flopping over her merry pails, showing a tanned and lacquered arm, a burnished shoulder.
Sunlight warped her golden figure like a medieval mandorla about her dress and suggested, in its caress, the innocence of Filipino womanhood. Just kidding. That’s in the portrait book Tipos Filipinos, full of stereotypes. In truth, this lady had sores on her legs and shoulders and face, like the ravages of midnight sin—worse than a trail of mosquito bites, even from a distance.
“Leche!”503 she yelled at the morning.
How is it that one’s loins perk up at the most inconvenient times, even at the unlikeliest sights, shooting up like little muskets? Things fired up inconveniently at her hustling cackle, but I sensed she would have nothing to do with one who looked like an escapee from the polo, though she herself looked like a guest from the islas de convalescencias. Anyway, I couldn’t waste my money, not even for one nip of her creamy, I mean tip of her dreamy—oh, what the hell, she was gone before I could unscramble my cheek from my nasty tongue.
There is something about the empty roads of a bustling city that presents fake balm to troubled hearts. When I stepped into the café at the corner and saw him, I knew, however, that fate had a plan for me.
—Hijo, he said.
A dark scrawn, a bit humpbacked, or finned: in the shadows, a lone abalone drinking barako.
It was my old Latin teacher, Father Gaspar of the Ateneo Municipal.
He was, as I said, a sad ichthyological shamble, and I swear it was as if he had not moved from the suspicious shallows of our last meeting, when he had offered me the book.
What had happened to him since? I had heard rumors of him here and there, disparate conjectures of his allegiance depending on the politics of
