Charity: Clothes and Shoes

an essay by Roger B Rueda

Of late, Roh Eunhye, a Korean ESL student in Iloilo City, handed out pre-used clothes to some indigents in Lapuz District. 

All of nineteen and from Sangju, Roh Eunhye is very energetic, and her motives are entirely altruistic. Giving (time, money, and energy) to her is a central way that she strives to find meaning. She feels a closeness to other people, and generally appreciates life, when she shares.

She says she feels good to give and finds it fulfilling. 

The locals were hospitable and welcoming to her. When we arrived at the place, some jumped for joy when Roh Eunhye announced to them that she was going to give them some pre-used clothes and shoes. They were happy and posed for photographs, with their donator. They thankfully helped the Korean woman bring her luggage towards the street. 

This week she is planning to hand out food in the inner-city slums. The rewards of helping a community through charity last longer than money, she believes, for one thing. Roh Eunhye has already decided to work for charity to keep her eyes open wide to the vast genuine needs of the poor in the community where she lives.

For me, this young woman is a source of inspirations for the community as we must realise that charity works also give us an understanding that there is something larger than ourselves. 

A Read for Breakfast

an essay by Roger B Rueda

‘Breakfast’ is a poem, which has in a way enkindled me to write more poems, something that is tangible and lifelike but whose effect is analytical and unbounded. I happened to read the poem in Philippine Panorama and later in Mantala, an anthology of Philippine Literature edited by Dr Leoncio Deriada, where my two poems appear, too. It is by the Ilonggo poet Alain Russ Dimzon, a friend of mine since 1997 when I was a sophomore mass comm student. His brand of writing is one of the best so far amongst the Filipino poets I’ve ever read.  An influence to me, he leaves the door open to secretive experiences of a mystical, existential nature. The characters he creates sometimes enter imaginary worlds of equal importance to the real world. He combines ingenuousness and sharp intellect with great understanding of the importance of the imaginings. And I think ‘Breakfast’ is one – a fiction poem.

Dimzon is a realist, and perhaps a feminist. His poems are in the vein of the poems published in The New Yorker.  They are integrational, wisdom-oriented, and improvisational beyond concepts of settlements in ever-changing situational simulacrum. (The other poems of Dimzon, which I like, are ‘The Timekeeper’ and ‘A Rain Scene,’ which won him First Prize in a Home Life Poetry Contest.)

‘Breakfast’ is so simple, but its effects are very multifaceted to a mind – to my mind then, even till now, I’ve realised. The utterance is easy, so lucid at first.  It is a subtle poem, yet it contains an elusive level of contradiction. It is the compression of intensely felt experience into the sound waves of poetry and the decompression of intense experience through the catharsis of poetry by a son who grew up deprived of a father and still longing perhaps to be with his father.

Breakfast here is very figurative, as it is eaten in the early part of the day.  It offers a timeline, an inception. It is like his childhood, untimely and wet behind the ears. I think the reading of this poem is inexpressibly poignant. A cry inside me broke from me, as the poem starts soft and melancholy.

There is an intellectual energy and daring in this work, as the faint misery of his mother is the main point of the poem. Her virtue confined to her being a Christian, perhaps, and a natural monogamous, is hidden starting from that very first breakfast and at every breakfast that comes next.

His telling the father that he still owns the seat at the table tells of his and his mother’s deep sense of humility – a signal to the father to forget about his pride and shame.

The grandson in the crib lets slip how so kind a son he is. Being a good son to his mother is his first priority, as he is still hoping to keep the family his mother has set her heart on.  It is saving the matrimony and the family both his mother and he himself are keen on to hold their fire. Thus, perhaps, he can’t leave his mother though he has a younger brother to take care of her.  And it shows how everlasting fatherhood is.

The poem is given space to take breaths, and the small details – the tiny symbols, the deft word choices, and the slenderness of the lines – give the poem a quality of care and taste that is enviable. Its narrow lines, too, are enough to make the reading discoveries fresh as readers plough through the entire poem.

Anyway, here is the poem:

Breakfast

for Father

One morning

when the family

ate breakfast

you were not there

on your seat

at the table

The night before

through my blanket

I saw you

slap Mother

She was sobbing now

as she drank

her glass of milk

and bottlefed

my youngest brother

I hurried

on my boiled egg

to be in time

for my Grade Two Class

(The years

doused our anger

in the pool

of our tears)

You may come

and eat breakfast

with us again

You still own

your seat

at the table

You can sip

your black coffee

and read

your newspaper

while my son

your first grandchild

is babbling

in his crib

Barotac Nuevo

an essay by Roger B Rueda

In Barotac Nuevo, football is a religion to a lot of people. It is so profoundly, so fervently entwined into the fabric of Barotacnon culture that the two entities are intricately linked – they define each other and share an intrinsic uniqueness, an instantly recognisable image. Being the Football Capital of the Philippines, Barotac Nuevo has transformed football an expressionistic art form and an effective tool for social cohesion. It has hordes of incredibly gifted players who have made their way to the national shores over the last few decades. Amongst them are Ian Araneta, Yanti Barsales, and Chieffy Caligdong –

all are on the Philippine ‘Azkals,’ our national football team.

Barotacnon youngsters play football on the streets, on waste ground, concrete; any available surface. Most of the teenagers have no boots, so they play unshod, further promoting an ability to strike the ball properly. They love dancing and partying aside from playing football. They also work hard and are very creative. They use their mornings to help their families in household errands and use their afternoons to play football. The beautiful game keeps them exultant even though their families couldn't meet the expense of sending them to school. In a word, Barotacnon children always treasure each moment whenever they play football.

Barotacnons are gentle, kind, and fascinating. They are friendly and talkative people. They are law-abiding, fond of food, concerned with their religion, familiar with agriculture, and expert at fishing.

Barotac Nuevo is seat of the Iloilo State College of Fisheries (ISCOF), the Western Visayas College of Science and Technology (WVCST), and St Paul’s School.  Thus, they earn it the title as the Educational Centre of the Fourth District of Iloilo. (The institutions have created and expanded the town's elite.) Further, it has a hospital run by Western Visayas Medical Centre and a radio station in ISCOF at Tiwi. 

Sandwiched between Dumangas and Pototan, the town has developed a unique version of Hiligaynon with some hint of Kinaray-a. It can be called perhaps as Hiniray-a. It is spoken by about 51,867 locals.

It’s famous for baye-baye, sweet delicacy made from coconut water, grated scraped young coconut meat, sugar, and toasted pinipig (crushed rice grains). It is believed that the first  baye-baye was made of ground roasted corn and was cooked by a farmer's wife in Sohoton. It’s sold at bus stops or on a bus itself as some hawkers climb on it.

History

Capitan Simon Protacio, the recognised head (chair) and the wealthiest denizen of the place, established the town of Malutac in 1811 in the Spanish time. The town was renamed Barotac Nuevo in March 1812. The name Barotac is a portmanteau of the Spanish word baro which means mud, and the Hiligaynon word malutac, which means muddy; (for one, the ground here smells of rain in June and people muddy their feet or slippers when they walk. The soil here is smooth to the touch. When moistened, it’s soapy slick. When you roll it between your fingers, dirt is left on your skin.) Nuevo, which means new, was added to classify it from the town 19 miles up north named Barotac, which was later called Barotac Viejo, to distinguish the two Barotacs from each other, perhaps to make it clearer.

On the word of the traditional stories narrated by tradition-bearers, Barotac Nuevo in the 1600's was legendary far afield with its purebred horse ranches, and Tamasac, a tireless white mount was the strongest, fastest, and finest in the neighbourhood. It was quick thinking, agile, and sure footed. The horse was meant to be Barotac Nuevo’s emblem - of strength and courage, and perhaps uniqueness of its own experience: then, someone bestowed a good-looking horse from India on the Governor-General Manuel Gonzalez de Aguilar (4 March 1810 - 4 September 1813), but they couldn't find any horse in Manila, which they could use as a pair of the horse to draw the Governor-General’s carromata, a light, two-wheeled, boxlike vehicle. De Aguilar’s servants rambled through the islands in search of another horse until they got to the town of Dumangas in Iloilo. Malutac then was only a ward (a barangay) of Dumangas. They spotted Tamasac, a lovely slender looking horse that had great endurance qualities and was very spirited, as he whinnied. They hankered after the horse at a price the rancher wanted, but Capitan Protacio would not sell it even though he was agreeable to give it without charge on condition that Malutac should be made a pueblo, a Spanish settlement. (By the way, tamasac means splash, the sound made when something hits water or falls into it.)

The men hurried back to Manila and passed on the Governor-General what Capitan Protacio wanted in exchange for his horse. In all seriousness, the Governor-General didn't turn him down. He rather wrote a letter to the Gobernadorcillo of Iloilo to grant Malutac autonomy from the town of Dumangas and declare its township as soon as possible. Thus now, Capitan Simon Protacio and Tamasac loom in the plaza of Barotac Nuevo, after the late mayor Bernardo Siaotong put up the statue as a symbol of gratitude of the Barotacnons and commemorated the two icons by inscribing their names on the headstone, in 1926.

The country had been at war for years, so the latter long part of the life of Barotacnons was spent in obscurity and terror, and those years were a nightmare to some.

On 13 June 1944, a Tuesday, Barotac Nuevo celebrated its first fiesta since the beginning of the the Second World War, to honour the death of St Anthony of Padua, the patron saint of lost and stolen articles. 

Since then, the town of Barotac Nuevo, appropriately bustling and energised, has been considered a flourishing rural town in Iloilo with countryside that offers a more peaceful and less congested living environment. Its growth is ascribed to its abundant natural resources – agriculturally and aquaculturally. 

Griffins in Tiwi

a poem by Roger B Rueda

We took a stroll round Tiwi. The night was

pure with cold air and lit with stars.

The boys were nattering away
towards the street –

they had been boozing all night.

We lurked in the dark.

We lay on our back at the stand,

listening to the sound of the wind

sighing in the trees.

We looked like griffins.

No, we were griffins –

we beguiled them

into choosing to linger;

we sank our venomous fangs

into their necks.

When they let out a sigh of relief,

it was over.

We leaned up and kissed them

on the cheek.

We began a slow saunter

towards the waiting shed.

Our joints ached,

and the memory shattered our pain.

Cat

a poem by Roger B Rueda

You don’t have a long tail and sharp claws –
I don’t know how come you are called Cat.
For me, you are frightening –
a kentauride on my mind
as you scowl there on the sly.
Your subtlety is so plain –
don’t ever say anything now,
I’m not thick like your flunkeys.
Don’t touch the Bible.
Don’t pray.
You’re Beelzebub.
Now I understand –
you are Cat.
In turn, as I strip off your flesh,
I can see how sable your heart is –
self-seeking, avaricious, rancorous,
green, cross, virulent.
Your actions resound
with your horseplay.
Halt – we are not chickens,
in the lurch, thoughtless, chickens.
We are not crabs, either –
we don’t move sideways,
we don’t leave one up the creek.
Yes, you are Cat – we know you, well.
You shrink from tigers, lions, leopards,
cheetahs – you are an ailurophobe,
the lady of the flies, benevolent, devout.

Fire

a poem by Roger B Rueda

I saw a big flash and a huge ball
of fire reaching hundreds
of feet into the sky.
You brought home
the huge ball glowing
with heat.
You kicked it hard –
a fire burned the drape
out of control.
Then the ceiling,
the lizard got a jump
on the blaze on tenterhooks.
The flies buzzed
gallingly.
There was a moment
of panic –
some were shivering with fear.
You gave a wry smile.
The fire swept
across portions
of the house.
Tempers flared
and harsh words were exchanged.
You glared at us
as if we were torchers,
as if we vented our anger
by carrying out arson attacks.
Were you oblivious?
You should have felt
a flicker of regret.
Pray that our landlord
would judge you with compassion.
There was a terrible smell of burning.

Panay

a poem by Roger B Rueda

The wind whispers by like someone’s trying
to tell you a secret.
The clouds in the western sky
are lit brightly on their undersides
like the yellowy-silver bellies of fish,
and overhead some stars are out.
A small breeze seems to come right up
of the ground, stirring the tree branches
in every direction.
Bananas, mangoes, coconuts, & leads,
grow left and right like a could forest,
hiking to find your way out.
Along the road the cornfields lie newly
flayed, mile after mile, their green skin
pulled back to reveal Iloilo’s flesh
of orange velvet dirt.
Cicadas scream brightly from the thorn scrub.
Mayas working like crazy building
their nest for their young.
Some children pick up a rock and throw
it through the centre of a tree, raising
a small commotion of brown feathers.
They immediately settle again.
Seeing ants, quails, tiwis, cranes,
gathering food for the rainy days.
Having the time of your life playing
in the Magapa and Suague rivers.
Boats in Boracay shoot by
like a singgálong chasing its prey.
Skiing down the bumpy rough slopes
of Iday, Salihid, and Napulak.
Seeing the wonderful sights of Panay.