Just Before Summer

by Roger B Rueda

The 2nd Ritz Literary and Journalism Colloquiums is very successful indeed. Two schools took part: the Balasan National High School and the Iloilo King of Glory Christian Academy. Well along the Northern Iloilo State University at Estancia sent their two publication editors to attend my newswriting and editorial writing and as well as my poetry writing and short story writing. GMA 6 in Iloilo City graced the Colloquiums: sent Ms Fabienne Paderes to speak about newscasting for TV. The Colloquiums was shown on Ratsada, a local TV news programme of GMA 6.

The Balasan National High School and the Iloilo King of Glory Christian Academy are the two famous schools in Northern Iloilo in terms of writing and literary activities.  A lot of their students are talented and have won awards regionally and nationally. Some of their teachers were also present.

Mr Jimmy Garcia Bedano, a well-known host is now with Ritz English Institute after his talk and workshop on effective emceeing. He has an exciting voice. He has taught ESL in Malaysia.

Many thanks to Mr Rosie Garcia, my friend who is very good at emceeing and dramatics. He talked about declamation and oration at the Colloquiums. I know how busy he is as he has obligations in Iloilo City and the Office of the Congressman.

Ms Ruth Tuvilleja, an ex-DJ of StarFM, was also there: had won the regional extemporaneous speech of the DepEd. Her expertise is beyond compare.

Mr Angelo Tejada and Mr Raymund Cabrera were also speakers at the Colloquiums. They are both famous ESL teachers in Iloilo City. Angelo discussed some topics on intermediate grammar; Raymund, advanced grammar. Raymund used to teach ESL in Malaysia.

Mr Rene Sausa and his family are the reason why the Colloquiums is possible, and will be. I'm happy that there is this family who thinks of service first more than business. So despite the impracticality and hassle, the Sausas support all my proposals and projects. Mr Sausa is a visionary and I thank him for not giving up on me and the Ritz English Institute.

All the logistics and everything - from sending of the communication to the cars used to bring me to different schools in north Iloilo and Capiz to the food of the participants - were possible because of the Sausas and their hands, who are kind and cooperative despite their mechanical peculiarity.  The two secretaries are very nice and talented. They are very serene and hardworking.

Ms Edsel Salarda was also there despite her busy schedule. Her expertise in giving ice-breakers is very noteworthy. Mr Tim Lynes, too, our British teacher and now our marketing head, was very helpful, having noticed how difficult it was to accommodate participants while the other staff were doing something like fixing the speakers and projector.

So after the six day Colloquiums, Mr Jimmy Garcia Bedano and I are ready to fire up the summer programmes, which start on the 31st of March.

Stupidity

an essay by Roger B Rueda

Stupidity means lack of intelligence or rashness or thoughtlessness. The most dangerous thing about it is that it ramifies. It comes to blows with our reality – and worse, with our wealth, which we’ve got from our fraudulence. It is like a virus: It withstands even the idea of someone we think of as the sharpest one, so it can’t be fixed no matter how moneyed we are. The most painful is it is the idea of the most disloyal and dissembling, as one day we wake up and everything is not in favour of us. It flaunts our despondency. Funny: whatever route we are going to take leads us to our catastrophe – stupidity breeds stupidity.

Once a stupid idea, always a stupid idea. That is what I’ve learned of late. A stupid idea coated with pride is the most dangerous. It is like a cockroach approaching unnoticed and to your annoyance you pour a pool of petrol on it. So what will happen? Of course, conflagration. Then sometimes we can croak: can be horrified by our own doing. It is stupidity at its best.

Stupidity, however, can be expedient. With this, I love the word ‘bond.’ It comes with an appeal. An honest lawyer will always tell honesty; the deceitful one, deceit. And there my chuckles come in. A very obvious case is always an obvious case: it’ll always be straight, winning. It can never be politicised. That means it can be foretold. Problem here is the earnings of the lawyer. The more the case is delayed, the better for the lawyer. Logical: Well, sometimes, the lawyer’s shrewdness can be favourable to the plaintiffs. At least, there is no way to struggle to search out what the erring stupid person has. And the good thing about it is that dishonour can be eluded. This way at least money can spare an erring stupid person from mortification and outrage. Or else the whole city can see how his/her whole house is turned inside out. In plain sight, it will chop up his/her pride. Psychologically, even if that person’s major is psychology, it’ll be harrowing to him/her. For one thing, all that is judged against him/her is true, so it is guilt that cuts up his/her scruples.

I got one friend who was fired because of someone’s stupidity coated with pride and racism. All she thought everything would be OK because all she had done injustice with were domestic helps and nannies. So she thought she could do the same thing to anyone then. She fired my friend who happened to be smart and educated. She got married to her ex-student. The stupid employer said it was so unethical because to her, ‘student’ means ‘ex-student’ and ‘current student.’ (I hope she doesn’t include ‘future student’ or else I will be astounded by her stupidity.) So her stupidity went off: ramified. My friend was given a push. Her friends who supported her were harassed in the workplace: were thrown out, too. Stupid lies came out conflictingly, which only a stupid judge can believe. No fictionist can fix it, even Stephen King or Joseph Heller, the author of Catch-22.

Now I can say that stupidity is like a spade. It can dig secrets of illegalities kept for years out of the hole, the hole of ruses, lies, and devilishness – all of which can smell reeks of wickedness. Funny: Stupidity reveals everything of the erring person’s artificiality and fraud. It transforms everything to sludge – all the good impressions about the person are scoffed at and mocked in everyone’s mind. Worse:  His/Her university where he/she graduated will know how wicked he/she is even how much defence is done by his/her arselicker. Worst: Christianity and Christ are sullied by all his/her hypocrisy as he/she claims to be a Christian. I hope Christianity and Christ won’t despise him/her – or else she’ll be shied at the perdition: will see Satan smile at him/her and his/her family and adore his/her stupidity.

Stupidity means wielding power at justice despite the recognisable truth that what one has done is truly an injustice and it is so wrong and anti-workers. Unbelievable: Stupidity is used to threaten people smarter than you as if they were uneducated and unthinking – and tax evasion is the best case for your employees who complain against your illegalities. Yes, it is reverse psychology, but dear, sorry, that is old music. Admit it: You are smart stupid. That’s the job of the BIR or else Kim Henares will resign because you are taking the place of her.

Stupidity is saying that criminals are OK so long as they help boost the tourism industry. Shockingly stupid. Tell it to the idiots, please. The UN can’t agree with you. Watch your word, stupid.

Edsa

an essay by Roger B Rueda

Edsa belongs to the people, the people who had faith in a very simple optimism. That is unseating the Marcoses was all the way out. Yes, Edsa successfully got rid of the dictator, but it was only short-term. It had no intellectual complexity. It was a chance move: brought the whole country to fumble – as some carpetbaggers made use of Edsa to retrieve what they had lost or to achieve what they failed to realise. For one, it is easy to bamboozle millions of people than just a group of people especially when these people do not have clear goals but only to end something in this country.

Yes, Edsa destroyed dictatorship, yet it has re-energised the system of oligarchy. It brought back media hegemony and everything that the dictator tried to abolish. It helped the oligarchs to breathe new life into the new government – the government that can be duplicitous and treacherous: it seems to solicit votes from the people, yet it doesn’t really mean to serve the interest of the majority. It wants to privatise everything that it has from universities to hospitals. In short, Edsa has paved the way to our hardship and poverty because during the Marcos regime, only they played on our resources but after the Edsa, more voracious and venal politicians came to make the most of our wealth and possessions for their advantage.

It was a revolution without direction because what it did was to pass on the country to several scoundrels, who seem to be good at play-acting. Thus, this country if you have noticed has the majority of the people who have become more hard-up and just a few have become extremely wealthy. Edsa has made some royalties: made millions flunkies and drudges.

Edsa is a big solecism. It was a consequence of antagonising the Marcoses for a mercenary intention by some people. It was a way of disregarding obedience because these people did not like equality amongst all Filipinos. Thus now many government offices do not have their own buildings but lease buildings from oligarchs. Ludicrous: it affronts the candour and resourcefulness of the government. It is an oligarch-serving action.

The thoughtless revolution made corruption pervasive. It was a knife-key tackle: dispatched the dictatorship and undid the door of untruthfulness and manipulation. It has made a government unresponsive to the poor as later government corporations were sold to rich people. Millions of Filipinos have been economic exiles, though political exiles came home.

So now Edsa means utopia for the oligarchs: averts inequality and gradually carves up the government to be privatised and denationalised – and, alas, corporatised at some point.

This country will celebrate Edsa so long as the power is not truly passed on to the people. So long as the people of this country do not understand what Edsa is. So long as the people have not realised the perfidy of antagonising the Marcoses and intention not to unshackle the country from despotism and poverty, Edsa will be called to mind and exaggerated.

Luis G Dato’s ‘Day on the Farm’

an essay by Roger B Rueda

Last night a friend of mine from Ateneo asked me to interpret the poem ‘Day on the Farm.’ Tired from a Roxas City trip, I slept early, disremembering to ascribe meaning to the poem.

When I opened my Facebook, I felt so guilty, having not made any analysis of the poem, so I explained it in a few lines. Then I sent it through the chatbox.  I promised him I would make a longer analysis the next day. So here is it.

***

Let’s establish who the speaker is first. He must be a husband, who loves his wife a lot, so he offers her everything he finds. All he wants perhaps is to make his wife pleased. So he is very happy to announce that he has found the fruits of sweetest taste.

The most amazing part of the poem is the word ‘duhat.’ It means a round or oval smooth-skinned fruit, usually red or purple, tasting pungent. The speaker here is a Filipino I think because he knows what a duhat is. One can’t tell what that fruit is the first time he sees it when he is not a Filipino. Thus, for me, the husband in the poem is not a universal husband. For one, someone who is not a Filipino will call it a plum, not a duhat. The wife I don't know has asked him to look for her a duhat – because, perhaps, she is becoming pregnant. By tradition, the husband has to follow what his wife asks for. Otherwise it is believed she would have a miscarriage. That’s why he has gone to a hill just to look for a duhat his wife craves for.

On the other hand, if one binds someone with something, it is bringing her under control. It means she is struggling or fighting back. It means she wants to get away as it the place she is not comfortable to stay at. She must be a city woman. The husband here sounds ironic: he seems to satisfy what his wife wants but the crying is the indication the wife here is not happy, not content. Her crying can mean her demonstration, her grievance, her resentment. The rare wildflowers can mean something of great value but the wife is not happy having with because all she wants is a different one – something that emancipates her from the shadow of men, something that attaches importance to her being a woman, something that bares her talents and abilities, something that shows her beauty on view, something that doesn’t confine her self to one perspective but regards her as someone endowed with lively intellect and ingenuity.

The husband here is someone who gives his wife something she doesn’t ask for. The wife is someone who cannot appreciate what her husband gives her. With what is happening, the husband convinces his wife to follow him instead of him following her. He tells her that she should not cry because she is no longer young to cry; only the young and the weak cry. But to her, crying is not being weak. It is her way of doing battle with the fallacies of being a woman and how women should be treated. That is crying their displeasure instead of keeping it in secret. It is stirring up the compassion of men and bumping off their triviality and callousness.

When the bells ring, something has to happen. It means they both need to be ready for something. When the rain falls in drop, they need to leave and take refuge. It is telling her to stop sulking. It is telling her to stop huffing and puffing. It is also assuaging her. His hearing of drops of rain is his telling her to stop crying and get up on feet and follow him because of the impending threat or predicament. There seems to have a masculine vanity that is involved here. On the other hand, he must just be so concerned with her.

In a relationship, however, a couple should know what one wants and what makes one happy. In the poem, both the husband and the wife do not know how their differences can become a foil for each other’s happiness and satisfaction. They both get the wrong end of the stick. Because of this, their relationship is so uneven. It becomes a misfortune that will miff them both repeatedly until they realise all their failings and shortfalls in each other.

The poem is full of paradox: he’s caught her in his arms an hour and taught her love’s secret where the mountain spirits meet, yet he doesn’t know what love is: he is so distant from her thoughts and longings, from her dreams and joy, from her contentment and interest; if he knows love’s secret, unbound, his wife will love him, smiling. And such an unusual reality becomes as mundane to the couple as indicated by the poem’s title, which tells where and when the poem happens.

The poem reminds me of an Iloilo woman who got married to a Korean farmer. She was a clerk at a copy centre. When he came to the Philippines, he introduced himself to the woman as a businessman. The woman fell in love with him and they got married after a few months. Later the man went back to Korea with her. Then she realised she got married to a farmer. All she wanted were given by her husband except that she was not allowed to go back to the Philippines. That time she felt so unhappy despite all the things her husband gave her. Their house was on a far-flung farm in rural South Korea, where they had no neighbours. With no one to talk to, she felt so lonely and downhearted. Every day she would cry and cry. It took years for her to go back to Iloilo. When I met her at a mall, she told me that she had to follow her husband or else she couldn’t see her children anymore forever. All her children then were left to her in-laws in Korea, so she couldn’t decide to leave him and stay in Iloilo for good.

Anyway, the husband in the poem doesn’t know what a woman is. He knows of her as someone who should follow him without considering what she thinks of. He is very old-fashioned and intolerant. He thinks of a woman as someone inferior to him, yet in many aspects the woman is intellectually superior to him. And that seems to be what he has failed to realise.

He wants to fill his wife with wonder, but he can’t do it to her. He fails to understand that women are not all the same. An oversimplified conception is very dangerous I think. He should know that individuality is much more in the cards than what he thinks of women or individuals. That being a husband is not something that gives him all the power to be in control. Marriage is not all about men who is in control – it is teamwork:  love cannot go on with modern women when men do not treat women as their equals. For love to work, both should realise their imperfection and inadequacy.

Here is the poem ‘Day on the Farm.’

I’ve found you fruits of sweetest taste and found you
Bunches of duhat growing by the hill,
I’ve bound your arms and hair with vine and bound you
With rare wildflowers but you are crying still.

I’ve brought you all the forest ferns and brought you
Wrapped in green leaves cicadas singing sweet,
I’ve caught you in my arms an hour and taught you
Love’s secret where the mountain spirits meet.

Your smiles have died and there is no replying
To all endearment and my gifts are vain;
Come with me, love, you are too old for crying,
The church bells ring and I hear drops of rain.

—Luis G Dato

Payslips

an essay by Roger B Rueda

The payslip is something that gives a proof that a company has paid an employee. It is signed by the company’s in charge and the employee herself/himself upon getting her/his money due to be paid on payday, of course aside from the payroll which the employee writes her/his signature on.

When a company refuses to let its employees have the payslip, that’s alarming. That is something the DOLE has to know. The employee’s assertiveness has to stir up the company’s deep-seated sense of dishonesties and disregard of her/his right. But this piece of paper is passed over. A shrewd boss especially some Korean bosses cannot issue payslips to their workers. These bosses are motivated not by a desire to practise the fair labour standards, but by fear of being sued someday: they are ready to break the law by dodging tax, by eluding the welfares of workers.

The payslip is like a dagger to them: impales them to be fined – or worse, their companies could be closed down. So one Korean woman I know has cut and run to save herself and her face – and her family who seemed to have adjusted in the Philippines. She was the one who would pay out workers every salary day.

Of late, the BIR has been asking a friend for some payslips: is very willing to sue the company, whose lawyer wanted to accuse its employees of tax evasion. Funny: it could have been the first ever case perhaps –  the one which BIR has not filed; a case initiated out of ignorance or exaggeration or intimidation. He should have advised his client to issue payslips, instead. At least this one has sense. And is legal. That one is so embarrassing: mocks his intelligence, I mean his inanity as a lawyer. He thought he was speaking to mindless people, the ones that pee on edge.

A company which doesn’t issue payslips is so despicable. Cheap: I want to shake my head, frowning. I want to wrinkle my brow inquisitively. Imagine it creates some kind of incongruity to those who have worked in a decent company. For one thing, they don’t issue payslips, yet they have two payrolls – for the BIR, SSS, Pag-ibig, and Philhealth and for the company. And then a mayor is OK with it. Gossiped: I hope not. Anyway no mayor would dare OK it when she/he is an honest one. BS: for tourism. What? Rubbishy mind.

I want to suggest to the DOLE and BIR that payslips have to be signed by their representative – for daang matuwid’s sake. And to avoid dishonesties as well. Copies of payslips, too, have to be given in to the DOLE and BIR every month. But who will when these dishonesties are protected and encouraged subtly and for other reasons not so clear to non-businesspeople. You know I can’t still understand why the DOLE doesn’t want to intervene in the paying out of money the company has failed to pay then. What if these workers were threatened to be sacked if they got their back pays? It’s up to them, makes me upset – an answer of shadiness and unconcern.

The payslip must be filed away, in any case. And the DOLE is just a phone away in case the company cannot make out what it is. I’m sure a dole official can pop up in your workplace and jog their memory. You need to have a forceful request of your payslips. If you are a bit weak and infirm then ask help from the DOLE and have just your identity withheld. There is one officer in there whose job is to sit at table and monitor the logbook aside from a security guard.  I’m sure your problem will be solved almost immediately.

An Observation About a DOLE Policy

an essay by Roger B Rueda

What I have observed with this policy the DOLE has in terms of how an employee is paid out of the money that accumulated for years for a company’s violations of some labour standards discovered by a DOLE inspector is that the company is allowed to pay an abused/cheated employee in secret, with no one else – and not at the DOLE, either. Yes, any employee is old enough to come to a decision for herself/himself. OK, that is given and expected. However, I just have one disagreement with this. Something that can be manipulated by a fraudulent company. For one, if they weren’t fraudulent, violations on labour standards could have been avoided earlier. And that should be the main consideration why all their actions should be scrutinised and arbitrated by the DOLE.

Some workers, undeniably, are not vocal and assertive: all these violations can be ignored by them so long as they have a job. For one, an assertion of all these monetary discrepancy can lead their employers to sack them. So, they would rather not assert anything just for them to stay. A job is more important to them rather than any payment of monetary discrepancy they’ve been deprived of by the company. I think millions are experiencing this practice, yet they all keep mum. And the drama continues every day: they are constrained to tell lies against themselves and their rights. No one notices this either. Or, perhaps, most of them have become oblivious or contentedly immersed in the concept of inequity and injustice.

For me such a process isn’t good. There seems a possibility that an employee can be blackmailed or threatened no matter how educated she/he is, so in the end an employee will just say a lie: will go to the labour office and say she/he has been paid despite disapproval in her/his mind, despite helplessness, for what she/he will do against her/his employer is like crawling up precarious ladders. See, this is obviously my point. Millions of employees in this country are not empowered to be vocal and assertive as they can be sacked straightaway for telling the truth, for not following what their employers have dictated them to do. Thus, I believe that the assertion of payment should not come from an employee herself/himself but from the DOLE itself. Yes, I know it is legal to do this. And understand DOLE lawyers for this. That is why I am appealing to our senators to make a more effective scheme on how workers whose rights are violated are going to be paid out in all conscience, and not mendaciously continually, without any threat of being sacked or beleaguered in the workplace.

A lot of workers in this country are vulnerable. They cannot make a stand against companies with Machiavellian legal representatives. And this is the truth that our legislators should ponder as well. If laws cannot be honestly followed, they need to be altered. Otherwise they become ostentatious laws. Something that exists in our illusion and frustration. If laws are not followed, then they become completely unreasonable: show contempt for our intelligence as a country.

It is high time that such a policy was changed. I hope a senator of this country can notice this problem. Yes, for me it is a problem, a big problem. It is a subtle human right violation, which our government ignores to notice to assume that an employee is old enough to decide for herself/himself. But in all honesty, I’m afraid that this policy causes unfair consequence. It offends the true purpose of an inspection. It indirectly disparages the power of an inspection and the DOLE itself. It isn’t deep. It is so procedural yet so insincere in a way. It can also be sidestepped, deceptively – who knows? Thus, the perfect solution is that payment should be done with a DOLE lawyer and key officials and militant groups from communities or universities like UP if possible. Then the pressure doesn’t come from a worker, which is what most workers avoid doing. What if the company hadn’t paid the worker the exact amount set by the DOLE? What if the company hadn’t paid the worker at all? These possibilities are theoretically capable of happening or existing, and likely in practice as well.

Changing this policy is a signal that the DOLE is sincere in helping workers whose rights are infringed. It also signals whether the government really means parity or whether there truly exists a political will to begin change for better and fairer labour standards and practices.

On Anti-gay Laws

an essay by Roger B Rueda

Anti-gay laws are extremely cruel. They are irrational. They reflect the bitterness and viciousness of a country. They manifest the lack of intelligence and sensitivity of a country. They are very distressing. They are doggedly unrelenting. They are made of doctrinaires and bigots and intellectual sloths. They are made by one-dimensional people.

Humane societies encourage people to act in a kind and sympathetic way towards others, even towards people they do not agree with or like. And those countries which have anti-gay laws are so unfeeling. I think these people have been very selfish. They've been mainly concerned with themselves. And I’m happy that the Philippines is a country whose leaders are non-judgemental and humanitarian.

As it happens, a lot of gays are more productive than non-gays. They send their siblings to school. They provide their family with money and food. They work hard. They share their life and talents with non-gays. They have respect and regard for others’ feelings. They cry when they are sad. They laugh when something is amusing. They take care of their family when they are sick or when they are old. They feel or show pity, sympathy, and understanding for people who are suffering. All these are normal attributes of being a human.

I know that culture and tradition have prejudiced many anti-gay advocates. They put the blame squarely on the Westerners for the existence of gays in their countries. But without the Westerners though, these countries would be so uncivilised and ignorant as yet. The Westerners could only expect ingratitude from these countries. I think they are rather churlish and unappreciative. Perhaps, their countries would still be populated by primordial forests; their people, destitute.

One African told me that gays are subhuman. For me, such a comment is openly contemptuous. If criminals like murderers, rapists, thieves, terrorists, and otherwise are considered as human how come he considers gays as subhuman. I think such a comment is crazy and illogical. His fear of gays and gayness is tenuous and pointless. I think he is a bigot.

If for no reason at all, the US declared that all Africans should be made as pets because they look like a monkey or gorilla and they don’t look like a normal human being, would that person feel good. Wouldn’t he raise objections or disapproval? Would he have power to change himself into a Caucasian so that he wouldn’t be made as a pet or a working animal?Does he think everything is just easy to transform himself to fall in what the influential power is imposing on him?

If Africans don’t like all the philosophies of the Westerners, why don’t they go back to their own ways? Why don’t they take off their clothes and live like those barbaric people hundreds of years ago? Why do they follow Western cultures when those destroy their custom and distinctiveness as Africans?

I think bigotry comes from the people who are particularly liable to discrimination. Their skin colour should remind them of who they are. Their being an African should remind them that the world respects them despite their undesirable/objectionable look. Openly telling me that gays are subhuman is impudent and insulting. If I told him I hate him because he is an African and he looks like an ape, would he feel pleased?Would he be happy that I don’t care if he is kind or educated or talented or productive because I hate him for being an African, for looking horrible despite the diamonds he is wearing?

Does being gay affect everyone’s life like how murder, rape, terrorism, or robbery does? It is insulting that gayness is equated with all these crimes. To murder someone means to commit the crime of killing him/her deliberately.If someone is raped, he/she is forced to have sex, usually by violence or threats of violence.Terrorism is the use of violence in order to achieve political aims or to force a government to do something.Robbery is the crime of stealing money or property from a bank, shop, or vehicle, often by using force or threats. These crimes hurt or kill someone. Has gayness hurt or killed someone? I think saying this is not based on logical reasons or clear thinking. It is denouncing before thinking. It is intellectual sloth.

I think societies like ours are getting sensible. In this country, everything is based on equity in the face of gender and sexual orientation. I’m happy that there is no anti-gay law in this country. Filipinos cannot allow dogmatism to stand in the way of progress.

I’m happy to hear comments from friends who are very bright and intelligent. I’m happy to know that they are non-discriminatory and compassionate and in the know of gays and their frame of mind and the issues they are facing in the present day.

Gays could be our parents, siblings, cousins, nieces, nephews, friends, neighbours, professors, soldiers, police officers, doctors, workfellows, countrymen.

So, for me anti-gay laws suck. They are inciting social hatred and they are completely one-sided. They do gays and people who respect and love gays an injustice. They frighten gays into law-abiding subjection. They are a form of persecution.

The Passers-by

a poem by Roger B Rueda

She came growling and wagging her tail.

I thought she was a sweet young woman.

She was a freak, lunging at every life,

grabbingcoconut palms, bananas,

mangoes, acacias, and houses fiercely.

She was with the famished death,

their scythe seawater,by magic,

drowning out every life they passed by.

Unsurfaced roads churned into mud

byher invisible feet and her breath blew

offgables of nipa and cogon and tin.

No matter what theysaw to eat

they polished anyone off in an instant –

a baby, an old woman, a mother,

a husband, a wife, a professor,

a call centre agent, a gay, a beautician,

a soldier, a politician, a journalist,

a nurse, a doctor, a kitten, a mouse,

a goldfish, an iguana, a gecko.

They took a bite of every dream,

of every love, of every joy, chewed

and swallowed in hanging fire.

They cast out the beliefand disbelief,

the celebration and silence,

the memory and vacuity,

the way of life and rituals,

even the abhorrence and self-indulgence,

the positivity and pessimism,

leaving a cry of anguish bursting

from the lips of the victim survivors

shakingwith terror and with rage

as the passers-by hastened with quicksilver

steps towards other islands whose

victimhood was foreseen and reviled.

All over were remnants of mortal frailties.

Infection

fiction by Roger B Rueda

He felt a sharp pain in his stomach. He sat up and tried to know what was wrong with it. All of forty-nine, never did he experience such a curious pain that was as if gnawing his insides.

A doctor himself, Edgar observed the pain and he knew it was not a usual pain because it seemed the pain was so fresh.

He didn’t sleep anymore. He took the novel he was reading and began to bury himself in it. His wife was by him, sleeping deeply. He looked at her and covered her up with a blanket.

After an hour, Edgar began to vomit up blood. He was on the toilet when his wife got up.

‘Honey, what’s wrong with you?’ Venus asked, trying to get some sort of answer.

‘I must have eaten something,’ he said, he wanted to hide his situation at first, for he didn’t want her to worry. ‘Please hand me my antacid.’

***

Edgar didn’t pursue his plan to move to the US, though, of course, everything was ready and there was a job waiting for him there. He decided to stay in the Philippines and tried to know what was wrong with him, because his laboratory results showed nothing and there was nothing wrong with his body. However, the pain he could feel was undeniable. He carried out some fascinating research into that pain. There was no known cure for his disease, so since then he had given himself over to his infection.

Following a routine checkup, Edgar was discovered to have an unknown disease. That shockedhis friend into helping him to find a cure for his disease. There was a little birdlike organism with a pointed beak and darting eyes inside his abdomen. It would scratch about searching with its beak for fresh blood. It would ruffle its feathers and he was really quite uncomfortable. He would drink fresh human blood to stop all the pain he would feel, but it was eating into his savings, so it started to worry him.

One evening, he walked home from the hospital where he was working. He fainted dead away when he was at the village green, but it took him a short while to recover. He crawled across the street and in the woods.The thought of fresh blood made him salivate. When he saw a man, he ran to him, grabbed a hold of his legs and held on so he could not get away, and bit into his neck. The helpless man was shouting his head off. He then stabbed at the chest with a stick and scooped out his liver. The next morning the news that a manwas killed by a supernatural being took everyone by surprise.

Edgar got really angry with himself while he was eating breakfast in front of the TV. He attempted suicide, but he was so weak to pluck up the courage to do it. He had a fear of death. Besides, he was a Christian. He had faith in modern medicine, so he hoped and prayed that the research would go well.

His wife had got plenty of jobs to keep her busy. Her work involved a lot of travelling, so they would meet for lunch once or twice a month.

His sons were both reading medicine abroad.

He had been keeping a diary for twelve years now and one by one he would narrate the sequence of events which led up to the disaster.Strangely, no one would believe him when he would tell them he had been infected by a strange disease, so he wanted to manage to keep his illness secret from his family until he was well.

The birdlike organism in his abdomen grew large branching horns called antlers. When it was wild with hunger, it would flap its wings furiously and fly upwards to his throat. He had to endure the pain. He would close his eyes and lie in his bed screaming in agony. Sometimes, he would cry himself to sleep.

***

Edgar and Venus got married twenty five years ago. They were childhood playmates. He went to Iloilo, in a hick town, on holiday and stayed in a manor house his maternal grandparents owned. There he met Venus, a daughter of a market gardener. They and the other children spent the afternoon playing on the farm.

He hadn't seen her since that memorable evening of Dinagyang whenhe left Iloilo until he bumped into her tray, knocking the food onto her lap, at the university cafeteria. In those early months, there was a very close bond between them.They courted for five years before getting married.

***

Edgar, a month before his illness, went to Iloilo for their summer holiday. Venus went with him but returned to Manila after three days. Edgar stayed at the manor house with his in-laws, who are both centenarian. They gently tended him. They seemed a lot happier since they met him. They cooked himspecial meals. One of Venus’s cousins brought them a pig. The couple, on that day, tied the pig's leg across its chest and lugged it along, keeping it off balance. The old couplestruggled to attach a second cord and pulled its legs back to expose its throat.One puncture began an inexorable flood of blood, and death came after a minute of unanswered trumpeting calls for help.

The pig almost broke free of its bonds, giving everyone a fright, and granting the couple a higher feeling of accomplishment when it was dead.

The couple cleaned the hair off the pig. Edgar couldn’t believe his eyes how they had been working energetically all morning. He was not allowed to help kill the pig nor cook the meals. So, he with his nephew exercised in the garden.

They served him a bowl of blood stew and barbecued liver at lunch.

After lunch, he took a little nap. Several poor children and their parents were waiting for him in the yard to consult with him, but he felt slightly dizzy and disoriented, so he excused himself and went inside his room. He vomited up all he had just eaten. His saliva seemed like letting it fall on the string. He was genuinely surprised at what happened to him.

In the night, the couple cooked him valenciana, sisig, and menudo. He buried himself in a novel.

***

Their neighbour died an agonising death. So now his funeral wake was in progress. When he went there, the family shooed him out of the house. They were glaring at him and muttering something. Most people hated his in-laws, but they didn't dare to say so. Edgar would nod as though he understood the people he would meet.

***

Edgar recalled that he first vomited up during his latest vacation in Iloilo. He could vividly remember the feeling of pain and horror.  It seemed that he had profound amnesia and now he was beginning to recover from it. It suddenly occurred in his mind that it must have been the food he ate that had caused his illness.

His skin turned so brownish and black. Minutes later some feathers grew and his hands became his wings. He couldn’t stop himself. He went out of the house and flapped his wings noisily. He then emerged to the roof of the house. He couldn’t believe that situation, but he seemed like dreaming. He perched on the mango tree to try how good he was at flying. He was so brisk and he flew and flew, soaring thousands of feet high in the sky. He could feel, too, how his eyesight had become sharp and he could see even the smallest creature on land. He was beginning to like his situation. But he was worried that his friends might disdain him or might condemn him whenever they’d discover he was so mystical.

***

Edgar's tinted glasses are perched precariously on the bridge of his nose. Without them, a loud reddish glow lit his eyes. People in front of him cast their shadows over his eyes, in reverse, however, so he could not look anyone in the eye. He was wild with pain whenever someone saw an image on his eyes.

Edgar went everywhere for treatment, tried all sorts of quacks, until he met a witch-doctor. He has to learn the most ancient, and holiest aswang rituals, so he has to spend his time in prayer. For one, the bird inside him started to moult at around sixty weeks of age. He’d got a healthy appetite for blood and liver.

He put a poultice over his stomach. The witch-doctor raisedhis tutelary ghost, thathe might get well, and he did.

‘You need strength of mind to stand up for yourself.’ The witch-doctor was deep, mystical woman. Her voice was warm with friendship and respect.

She raised the stone by magic. She lifted her glass of blood and took a quick swallow. Edgar’s eyes seemed slightly dilated, he nearly jumped out of his skin when he saw it. He was too weak to move or think or speak, however.

She plucked the black chickens’ feathers on their throats and then slit them, one by one. She dressed them.

The witch-doctor decided on roast black chicken and vegetables, with alopí, a rice-cake made of rice-flour mixed with sugar and coconut-meat, wrapped up in banana-leaves and boiled, to follow.

The witch-doctor’s family feasted well into the afternoon on black chicken, some bizarre vegetables, and alopí. Edgar stuck hisgreenish tongue out. It looked very long and sticky. His eyes seemed to bulge like those of a toad. He metamorphosed to a dog and emerged onto the living room. His ears stood erect. The witch-doctor and her helps dragged him back to the room. One helper burned incense. It then started to perfume the air. The witch-doctor tried an herbal remedy to calm him down.

A swarm of his hinúptanan composed of animals and birds encircled the house of the witch-doctor.Some blackbird flew down and perched on the parapet outside his window. Some dogs were waiting for him under the house, as the flooring was made of bamboo. In the last five hours he’d undergone a physical transformation. He became a terrifying half-human, half creature with long fingernails, long snakelike hair, fiery eyes, black teeth, and the tusk of a wild boar. Edgar had to adopt so many disguises his prey wouldn't recognise him. In a month he needed to eat man beef at least five times, according to the witch-doctor.
‘Being an aswang is just a matter of practice.’ She rubbed the back of his neck and smiled ruefully at him. She handed him a cruet after she smeared him with oil from it.

Edgar flapped his wings keenly and flew away.With no idea of what to do for his next move, hehovered over a small village. Later, he salivated over something delicious, so he followed his nose. By instinct, he took the soft pith of a banana plant and licked it with relish. Then, he attacked a pregnant woman, strangling her with his tongue that hung down at great lengths, and the unborn child, and pulling out their livers. The woman seemed to have died a natural death, as the pith became the woman’s dead avatar.

Before dawn, he went home lugging a sow behind. He tied it to one of the trees in front of their house and ran in a rush inside the house to get his iPhone, as he wanted to take some photographs of the sow. He then uploaded them to his Tumblr.

Since then, he’d never been sick anymore, and he became a fully-fledged aswang. He became evasive, to the point of secretiveness.

The Death of Professor Wendam

fiction by Roger B Rueda

Myra Wendam, a professor, was killed in a head-on collision between a bus and a taxi outside the university.

Lots of students had a terror of her and her two gay colleagues, Ricky and Aba. They three had a heart of stone. They felt very bitter about their childhood and all that was denied them. They were subtle psychos. With the existence of the three at the college, all students were between the devil and the deep blue sea. So, some students wept for joy when they were told that their professor died.

A lot of students would get short shrift from them even if they fell sick while they were stressed out by being under a lot of pressure and, of course, by their waspish tongues which could hurt. The students found them arrogant and rude. Nobody could believe their pretentiousness but their innocent students, who thought that a diploma in communication arts was gold bullion. The three seemed to show signs of genius. They taught a lot of things, which they themselves didn’t know what these really were. Myra taught advertising, but never had she produced at least one half-decent advertisement. But they kept on believing that their MA’s (or EdD in the case of Aba) were credible evidence for convicting people around them.

***

Two years ago, both Ricky and Aba, who had been extorting money from their students for years, were found slain in an alley a block from a cinema where a lot of gays, who had promiscuous lifestyles, would go. Since then, the place was said to be haunted by the ghosts of the two gay professors.
There seemed no justice in the world as they were slain like that, but justice remained elusive for them and their family. Life just redressed the balance, perhaps.

***

Myra's cremation was a sad affair. Few mourners attended the funeral. All were her family. No students were there to symphatise. Only Ricky's family and his sister, who the rest of the class were sick of watching brown-nose, and Aba's cousin, who would dance attendance on all her professors. They all spent the entire afternoon schmoozing with Myra's family.

***

The death of Myra fuelled speculation that she had, indeed, struck terror into her students and that someone still must have held a grudge against her for doing all the bad things to him, or perhaps, her. The fault lay with her, whose manners were as worse as Ricky’s. But, of course, Ricky was a subtle evil genius.

No one, at first, knew what made the bus and the taxi collide at the crossroads, but after months of investigation the police suspected foul play. They investigated how a crime like that could have occurred. The killer or the mastermind must have borne any grudge against her. Myra died in mysterious circumstances, and there was a possibility that it was murder. For one thing, when the bus driver was in collision with a taxi, one passenger heard the noise of a gun firing at the helm.

The next scene was all a bit sudden. The one killed was not the real driver. The real driver had escaped, and her wife was on TV, weeping buckets and appealing to her husband to show up. After an autopsy was carried out, a week after, the police and the media concluded from the evidence that Myra was murdered.

A year ago, Myra kept herself aloof from what was happening around her. Her insensitivity towards the feelings of her colleagues, who would have a foul day with her at work, was remarkable. But one of her colleagues noticed that she'd been seeing someone on the quiet. The woman looked strangely familiar, though her colleague knew she'd never met her before.  When the woman and Myra saw her, they gave her a black look, and, as she left the secluded restaurant, she was confronted by the angry women, Myra and her companion, who tried to block her way. They threatened to kill her unless she did as they asked.  In order to escape threat, she resigned from her job unexpectedly and fled somewhere very far.  Since then, she seemed to have sunk without trace.

Myra’s family were surprised to see her pray. Praying became part of her morning and evening ritual. She was an atheist and what she was doing seemed paradoxical to them. She erected a statue to her god and decided to devote herself to him.  How she became like what she was remained a mystery until her death when, in the fading light, people saw bats flitting about on the street where the bus and the taxi ran into. Then police discovered a bundle of black books whose writings were difficult to decipher and small plastic discs whose information was fully encrypted and couldn’t be accessed. Myra's full name was carved into them. So, the police turned  them over to her family. A week after, her family got a going-over and all the books and discs were stolen. The family questioned the motives, but it remained wrapped in mystery save Myra's only daughter, Alexandria.

Some of her students recalled how Myra had paraded up Commonwealth Avenue, past Tandang Sora Flyover. She looked like some mad old woman in her wide-brimmed buri hat while she was dragging a cart with a statue of her god down to the street, her shoes and socks taken off, she walking barefoot. But when they remembered how she would start to swear at them in class, they would swear like a trooper, too. They loathed having known her in their life. What was very clear in their stories, which they were spreading, was their passionate hatred of her.

Everyone rejoiced at the news of her death. Her colleagues cried as if it was not for joy when they heard the accident. She was believed to have died not in the accident but in revenge for what she had done bad in the past.

The news of her death was around for a week, then slid into oblivion.

Dinagyangman

fiction by Roger B Rueda

Crowds of people poured into the streets of Iloilo City Centre. I pushed my way through them.It was hot and getting hotter.There was a great crash and then a long roll of drums.The first tribe to perform was something to get excited about. My camera started clicking as soon as the tribe stepped in the performing area. I didn’t bring anything except my Galaxy S3 – I was well aware of pickpockets.

I entered into the spirit of the occasion and stood beside a man who was beside himself with excitement. He turned to look at me. I smiled at him. His eyes smiled up at me.

I was all alone in the middle of the crowds, enjoying my life as throughout the street, the views were a constant source of surprise and delight, vibrant rhythms all over.

‘Excuse me,’ the crowd were enormously enthusiastic, so it was not easy to get through.The heat and the noise made me sleepy. I began to get dizzy spells.I looked at him again; his neck had henna tattoo. He winked at me, as if he knew I was thinking the same thing that he was.

I took a step away from him, but his face lingered on in my mind.I walked away, eyes shut, body tense.I began to perspire heavily.  My skin was tanned and glowing from my day at the Dinagyang.

I edged a little closer to some buildings. I trudged wearily down Mapa Street. After quenching my thirst with a long drink of cold water, I needed to snack on some sandwich and tea. All the shops were congested with spectators.

I went in a small café in a lobby of a small hotel. I sat in the corner and browsed through the pages of a magazine, some newspapers lying on a nearby couch. I had been to the café several times, so it was such a comfortable haunt to me already.The server appeared. ‘Do you have Darjeeling?’ He nodded and smiled.

After a few minutes of sipping at my tea, fresh groups of guest arrived. Suddenly, the lobby got crowded and noisy. Judging from their looks, it seemed they were all worn-out. After drinking cans of juice, they noisily slipped away. One guy came and sat down on the couch. His breath came in short pants. He turned his head left to right. Out of the corner of his eye he saw that I was looking at him. I was painfully shy of him – he was the guy I had seen in the crowd. The tea gave me a choking fit.

I turned my chair to face the door and continued with my reading.

‘I’m Ralph,’ he tapped me on the shoulder.He had a big smile on his face. I gave him a hearty handshake. He stood still for longer than a few minutes – it was quite a shock to meet a handsome man with a beautiful voice.Then, I had thought someone came to me, but it had just been a dream.Now, it was real.

‘Please take a seat.’ I smiled warmly so he wouldn't see my nervousness.We exchanged addresses and numbers. He ordered a beer and a sandwich.

We chatted about many things. He was quite an interesting man. We eyed each other thoughtfully.

‘Where are you from?’ I asked.  I was intensely curious about the world he came from.

‘I am from San Miguel.’ I didn’t know much of San Miguel. I only knew one there – Rowena, my co-worker.

‘How about you?’He lifted the beer can to his lips and sipped.

‘I’m from Mandurriao.’ I bit into my sandwich.

‘So how’s the Dinagyang?’ he asked. ‘I like the Panayanon,’ he added.

‘Romel Flogen choreographs the tribe,’ I told him.

‘Really, I thought he choreographs the tribe from Fort Sant Pedro.’

‘Yes, that was last year. See, now, that tribe isn’t joining. That’s why he accepted the job.’

‘I’m really amazed by their performance. I thought the Panayanon is from Fort San Pedro.’

‘Hahaha, it’s of the Iloilo City National High School.’

‘I need to go,’ his mobile phone was ringing off. He said a hurried goodbye and walked out of the café.

‘I’ll be at the ASAP 18 later, in the sports complex. I think after I’ve eaten lunch,’ I shouted as he was heading the main entrance of the hotel.

***

While I was lying in bed, my phone tweeted. ‘i’lb in smallville. jst mssge me wn ur hr. c u.’I didn’t go to the sports complex. I was getting bored, thinking how crowded it was – it was like spending an hour or two in torment.

I had a shower and went out early – I needed to be there earlier than him. I fell under his spell, perhaps. There was something about him that mesmerised me, I thought.

It took a long time to wash the dirt out of my hair and my whole body. I wore my cleanest pants, a clean shirt and a navy blazer.

***

As one might expect, Smallvillewas full of partyers.The cars choked the roads. As the taxi drew off in front of CoffeeBreak, I got off. I felt a little nervous. I was in a state of great excitement.

‘Vir,’ someone called out my name. Ralph was sitting all alone at a table outside the coffee shop. He waved at me as if we were so familiar – as if we had met and known each other since long time ago.

‘Who’s with you?’ I greeted him with a smile.

‘No one.’ He looked at me openly.

I pulled a chair and sat facing him. ‘Wait a minute,’ I told him. ‘Do you want something?’

‘Just buy prune juice,’ he replied as I was meaning to stand.

I went in the coffee shop and ordered some tuna casserole and black coffee – a bottle of prune juice. Ralph was busy browsing through his iPhone.

I went back too soon – the server was the one to bring all my orders.

‘Do you have a boyfriend?’ he asked as I was trying to transfer some of my things to the other chair.

‘I had two – but now I don’t have. It has been years.’ I looked at him with all honesty.

‘Me, too,’ he mumbled as the server was placing the order on the table.

We nattered into the night. A spot of rain fell on his hand.

‘Let’s go,’ he suggested.

***

His car was parked up across the street. ‘Let’s go to my car,’ he told me pointing his lips at the white car.

I was confused to where we were heading. But I just entrusted myself to him as sort of instinct. I didn’t know why I believed a stranger I’d never met for my whole life.

Photograph by Greg Delos Reyes

Fatherhood 2.0

fiction by Roger B Rueda

Near the gate of Chung Shan Public Elementary School, some rare birds flew down on a bough and began preening themselves. The pupils were walking into the entrance or went out into some shops. But Peregrino’s eyes were holding a look of envy with children positively revelling under the sun, and then the birds.

Yes, Peregrino envied the birds as they were perching on the boughs, soothingly, the tree flowers scenting the air. The perfect spot for an afternoon nap. He wished he could do the same - join the birds on the boughs and magically stay there as he closed his eyes and fell asleep.

His head was bobbing, his eyelids drooping. He didn’t sleep the other night. His shoulders ached from sitting hunched over the steering wheel of a taxi for close to 15 hours a day. And his hands had developed hard skin at the lines on his fingers that divided them into three neat segments.

The only place he could nap at the moment was the lawn that lay sprawling endlessly in front of him. Why not, he thought. But his only concern was he might start drooling as he often did when he slept, mouth wide open. Sometimes, he would somnambulate.

Peregrino’sflat in Wulai seemed so far-off to him now. An entire 60-minute train ride away. Even if he was to be sent to it without delay, he was sure that his insomnia would recur as soon as his jagged bed was within his grasp. So, he just sat on the bench looking on to the trees, holding his very old mobile and an airmail envelope in which the letter of her family was. It was in Tuwa's hand.

The paper smelt like Burayoc, their barangay. Even after all these weeks of being kept in his coat pocket, if he closed his eyes and took a scent of that paper, he could remember what his girls and their house smelt like, the way dust rose when a tricycle drove past, the way it settled in edgings of dresses and resided inside noses.

The handwritten letter in Panda pen ink was beginning to fade away. Some of it had gone in places. But he had read the text enough times to recite it in his slumber. The missing ink hadn’t bothered him before, but for the past few days it seemed to bear a growing space between the sender and him.

Peregrino’s daughter Tuwa, who was all of twenty, was getting married in three weeks. Three months ago, she had sent her father a letter asking him to come home to talk to the man’s family and make the troth official. But Peregrino had been unable to make it home early enough so his brothers-in-law, his wife’s brothers, had gone in place of him.

Tuwa hadn’t spoken to her fatherfor days for fear that he might be disappointed, she was with child for five months. But she was confident that everything would come out OK in time.Her boyfriend was a very responsible sort of person and had finished his university already, andthree months after she would graduate from university, too, so nothing to worry much, she thought.It was love at first sight, and he proposed to her six weeks later. Their love for each other had been increased by what they’d been through together.

Now all that was left to do was for Peregrino to fly back to Ilocos and attend the wedding ceremonyas if he wasa guest. Never did he feel angry with Tuwa. He was rather happy.

‘I’ve sent the money already,’ Peregreno reminded his daughter. ‘I’ve bought you a new phone. I’ll bring it when I get home.’ Every week, Peregrinowould look forward to talking to her daughter by phone, though sometimes he spent more than he would send home. After trying to make his wife realise that there was nothing to get so concerned about anything, he just stayed silent as he pinned his ears back to her unrelenting chatter on the other end.

He always found himself smiling when she talked because although most people would call it irritable, he was really paying attention to her voice. No different voice that he had fallen in love with when he heard it across a high wall for the first time. ‘Oh, Calliope, I love you.’

The girl with that voice at the time had come to visit his aunt and was calling to her seated on a jute makeshift bed nearby, cooling herself with a hand fan, asking whether she needed to debone the bangos. His aunt was a fisheries professor at the IlocosNorte Regional School of Fisheries.

All of twenty three, Peregrino had come out in the backyard just then to fetch his father’s snacks when his ears perked up at the sound of the voice, which he couldn’t define in any other way but like heavenly music, coming from the other side of the walls. He couldn’t see the person, but her voice to him was angelic. That afternoon, he teasingly asked his mother to examine who the young guest was around the corner.

‘Mother, Aunt Xenia has a visitor? Is she her student? Can you know her name for me? Peregrino’s mother was woozily happy to know who that girl was. Neighbours gossiped, shy eyes met and a couple months later, Calliope and Peregrino became man and wife under the shade of a mango large tree as the rest of the barangay celebrated around the love-struck couple. Twocarabaos and five pigs were butchered. The governor of IlocosNorte and the mayor of Pagudpudwere present, and they had sixty primary sponsors. That was 32 years ago. That was the time when Peregrino’s family had a farm to cultivate. They sold it for his father’s frequent hospitalisation.

On top of the three short years soon after their happy day that Peregrino and Calliope had shared a bed, a home, a life, time had gone by in the midst of them, with only these weekly phone calls holding them as one. That, and the three lovely children they had managed to produce in interjected moments spent together. If not Peregrino had lived on his own in a tiny flat in Wulai since 1997, when he had left Pagudpud for Taiwan.

He left his job as a security guard of a milk company in Pasong Tamo in Makati and decided to stay in Laaog for good, but employments were difficult to come by then in Laoag. And opportunities were not favourable. It means it was a dull life, nothing exciting to look forward to, nothing worth reflecting on. Peregrino, then in his mid-twenties, had a young wife and a sister in-law to support. After a dialogue with Calliope that stretched through the night until dawn, he decided to look for work in Taiwan. He had known Taiwan then when his two schoolmates had got married to a Taiwanese. Every year the families would visit Pagupud. And he had hear their companies continued to thrive. Their parents had moved to big houses.

He got to Taipei. He got a cheap ticket on-board a Chunghsing bus from the airport to the house of his friend to begin work for the agency that had hired him as a taxi driver.

Day after day, Peregrino’s day began at 5 AM, with Sundays and holidays. He could never sleep in an extra hour or stay underneath the over-blankets, however cold it was outside. And it was often cold outside in this city. He would slog himself out of bed, get dressed, and drive into the Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport.

There, he would turn into the next side street and park his taxi and wait for a harrowed traveller to come into view from the building’s sliding doors. If he desired a change of sight, now and then he would drive to the more placid Tianjin Street and wait there instead, but carrying outjustno different duty.

It would be unfair not to acknowledge the enthusiasm that his customers brought to the job. There were mothers rushing to kindergarten to drop off their children before work during mean phone calls from their boss because they were late just as the sitter said she couldn’t take the children this afternoon. There was always a drunken passenger on the weekend.  The kind who was so inebriated that they forgot where they lived. This was commonly a student from one of the many schools, or it was that young couple who kissed and cuddled in the back seat for heat and other reasons. But he was just another taxi driver in this city of two-and-a-half million and Peregrino longed to be back in a place where he was recognised as more than that.

What had he got in all these years that he had lived away from his family? True, he earned more than he ever would have if he stayed in Ilocos. It was enough to send home and live contentedly. But he had lost out on time rocking his child to sleep, falling asleep next to Calliope as he stroked her hair. He had missed special Sunday breakfasts of sinanglaw and watching boxing matches on television with the neighbourhood.

He was still treated as something like a god each time he returned, which wasn’t frequently. If the captivation didn’t stem from the fact that people were seeing him after so long, it was mostly because he was still amongst the handful of people in his family who had it, made it in a foreign country and coped to stay, as against those who ran back ina couple months, intenselybothered by what it meant to live outside IlocosNorte.

And many of them, at least of the younger generation, were waiting for their pair of rubber shoes or a new watch or a packet of cigarettes, which meant Peregrino’s coming meant more to them than anything. But now he desired to be home to be the father of his children. How he desired, not in Wulai, but in Burayoc, where he could participate in the pre-wedding madness that is a staple feature of a Filipino home. But because he was so distant, these choices were restricted to Tuwa’s uncles and male cousins.

So he just waited for the day that he would fly home. It was for keeps this time. He had turned in his papers a few days and said goodbye to fellow taxi drivers who were the closest he had to family. He had packed his valises with 15 years of musings and things, which remarkably didn’t go in for much space.

The last time Peregrino had been home was when his father had been diagnosed as having cancerten years ago. The old man was helpless and his dying wish was to see the son that he adored one more time before he close his eyes on the world for the last time.

This time, Peregrino was going back, not only for one or two weeks, but forever. He was bidding goodbye to the only life he had known for what had seemed like never-ending. He looked at his TransAsiaticket in disbelief, shaking his head. It almost didn’t seem real.

Peregrino set off for TaiwanTaoyuan International Airport in a taxi whichhe didn’t drive himselffor the first time,on the day of his travel. He got out, got his luggage, and generously tipped the driver $10. Making his way inside the airport, he checked in his luggage, took his boarding card, and headed for security.

During the checking procedures, he was called aside and given something the once-over. His things were opened and repacked. After an abrupt smile from the officer in charge, he was allowed to go on to the departure lounge while the authorities continued to shoot sly doubtful looks over their shoulders.

The plane ride seemed interminable. There wasn’t enough leg room and the meals seemed too small. Peregrino was sitting next to a larger toff who occupied most of the space available. That he was seated close to the washroom did not help his wish to get some sleep during the trip. Even the on-board entertainment couldn’t addle him.

Hours later, the plane landed on solid ground. After a brief period in transit, the plane landed on the Ninoy Aquino International Airport. He was relieved to be back to his country. He spent the next hour thinking of his family, of Burayoc.

The next time when the plane landed, it was in Laoag.

As subtly as possible, Peregrino tried to take in the air while still inside the aeroplane to check whether he could smell the familiar smell of Ilocos, of home. Nothing yet. His family would be coming up outside. He tried to be as good-mannered as possible to the other passengers as he quickly grabbed his cabin luggage from the overhead compartment and made a beeline for luggage claim.

He was cleared quickly. Stacking his belongings on to a nearby trolley, he was just aboutto run outside. And as he rushed through the sliding doors,a lot of things had changed.Laoag was no longer the city he used to know. The new Laoag was buzzing with so much energy.

A wave of Ilocos gentle wind greeted him.

The smell of the familiar, the smell of family. There she was, more lovely than he recalled - dark brown eyes, thick brown hair that peeked out throughout,and herangelic smile. She was a vision of loveliness.

‘Papa, Papa,’ called out Tuwa as he was coming near.Her voice was girlish and eager.

There were tears, embraces, and joy-filled cries. But the details are indistinct. After a two-hour taxi ride that had no space for silence, Peregrino was finally home in Burayoc, Pagudpud. He felt like he knew his future son-in-law more than he would have if he had spent three months with him. Tuwa’s animated chatter made it seem like she planned to tell her father five years of stories in one afternoon.

Peregrino got out of the taxi and stood in front of his parent’s house, the old home where he had grown from a boy to a man. His parents had left this world some time ago. His father left first and then his mother years ago. He had happy and sad memories of their house.

He opened the rusty gate that led to a front yard, which smelled still of rain. The sight of the gate was inexpressibly poignant to him. A small dog barked at him.  Yayay, their neighbour, who had been with the family since before Peregrino was born, came hobbling out, using a wooden stick for support. She wore a blouse and an abel as her skirt. She was a sensitive, lovable woman. She was weeping with tears of joy.

‘You look rather frail,’ she said, touching his face.

Peregrino’smoustache was as coarse as her palm, the result of more than 40 years of untiringly performing domestic activities. Peregrino just smiled and kissed Yayay on the temple.He laid his bag on the floor and opened it to get a watch for her.

Once the jet lag wore off, Peregrino was able to meet the guests who had started pouring in long before he was up. Some for the wedding, some for him, some for what he had brought with him. They shouted, pulled at his cheeks and asked him questions.

Fresh groups of guests arrived. After a while the room was filled with cases of liquor. They boozed all night. Calliope was sitting beside her husband, a little aloof and detached. He seemed not tired and exhausted.

***

One afternoon,Peregrino’s brothers-in-law introduced the two outside a coffee shop in a public market. He was a shrinking boy whose eyes appeared to say that he loved Tuwa perhaps as much as he loved his Calliope. That was good enough for him. All he wanted was a man who would love his daughter like the way he loved Calliope.

On the morning of the day before the wedding, the decorators had a spot in the garden wreathed so quickly. The florists transformed the front yard where the wedding would be held in a few days. They made an awning made of bamboo. They prepared everything in front of the house. The monobloc plastic chairs were arranged carefully at every table on which there were three plastic roses in every vase. With its simple decoration, the yard was a peaceful haven. Every neighbour then knew that Tuwas was getting married. Having a wedding reception at home was no longer popular in Burayoc, but Calliope liked it.

The caterers talked over particulars of the menu. Calliopeand Tuwahad several menus to choose from: goat caldereta, ox-tongue, lechon, carne frita, nilaga, estufado, and valenciana. The sweet sellers - leche flan, sorbete, buco-pandan salad - did the same. Peregrino was slightly astounded by all the bustles, a marked difference from his more than quiet life in Wulai. Being back after so long, he kept thinking that he could hear the bells of the train outside his window. He seemed of Wulai, and it followed him even in sleep.

He kept waking at 5 AM, getting rattled that he had slept late and remembering that he could sleep in as long as he liked. It felt wonderful to be back with Calliope again, falling asleep in her arms, his head against her chest that rose and fell with each breath that she took.

He tickled the hairs on the back of her neck. He was gently stroking her black hair. It felt so wonderful to be with a woman after so long. But they had so little to talk about. Tuwa wanted to move away to another city with her husband who had found work there, but Calliope didn’t like the idea. Peregrino promised to babysit his forthcoming grandchild, his first grandchild. So there was no reason for the couple to move away. He suggested that Tuwa’shuband-to-be could commute to his workplace every day.

In 15 years that he spent as an OFW, Peregrino had never felt completely accustomed to there. He couldn’t believe how he had coped with working abroad. And now that he was back, how could he feel so incongruous? He was surrounded by people he loved, by his neighbours, by his relatives. How come he felt so alone? In a bustling home preparing for the first wedding in years, why did he feel like he was crying, yet nobody heard him? Why did he feel he was living with strangers? Why did he sadly miss something he couldn’t recognise?

He would have to give off Taiwan to start out on Burayoc again. He would have to connect up with a wife who had turned into a stranger. He would have to find the familiar in what he always thought of as familiar. In the face of travelling so many miles, Peregrino’s journey was beginning with the fatherhood he had never experienced as his children were growing up, his eyes filled with tears, with pang of conscience and validation, with sorrow and contentment.

Now he was looking forward to having a grandchild soon as time was sitting in his hair.

Politics

a poem by Roger B Rueda

is a beast, its size and shape too small to see,
yet it is as colossal as our imagination.
It is calm but when it tousles its wool,
no one can hold sway over it –
politicians have tried out many things:
They lined up loads of rues
to break in the indefinable beast;
all didn’t come up to scratch.
They thought badly of each other,
calling upon that someone mounting
on it alight and leave off.
They came together at Edsa,
Dragooning the frontrunner into leaving.
A woman,whose husband was slain on the tarmac,
came from evasion and mounted the beast.
It jolted into motion and ran more wildly,
shaking its head confusedly.
A lot closed their eyes and heaved a sigh.
Some squaddies made a grab for a rope
And tried to usurp control of the beast.
They all bit the dust.
Another frontrunner came.
The beast quietened down a little.
His challenger provoked him into a boxing match,
accusing him of cheating, a cynical ploy.
Then another frontrunner came.
Clinging to the withers,
he was dragged off from the beast’s back
at Edsa again and sent down.
Everyone conspired so that he would turn
a somersault down the feet of the beast
and be trampled underfoot.
Another woman mounted the beast.
Her nemeses flung many expletives at her
as she seemed to have no plan of alighting.
Their swear words are soaking into her fame
now as she is kneading her aching neck,
her pride and honour hemmed in by rigid laws.
Her 25th December is not a red letter day.
The son of a previous frontrunner
has mounted the beast, gnashing his teeth.
He wants to turn round the straight way.
He has chucked the crown of a justice
in the dustbin and dismissed it with ignominy.
He has smashed the pork barrel
into the face of his cohorts, feeding them
another unknown nourishment
like a mysterious fruit in a covert.
Bearers of the cross hardly dare open their mouths.
Will the beast put its feet up and become
visible and  untroublesome and gentle?
A hush has fallen over the crowd, its drift pendent.

Beauty

by Roger B Rueda

Most Filipinos esteem beauty as it makes life more charming and fair and diverting. We are in awe of beauty in whatever we do and see. Our mind's eye is keen on beauty as perhaps it is highly enchanting and eye-catching. We are intensely eager, indeed avid, for beauty. Unmistakeably, we have generated beauty pageant machinery as every culture upholds beauty. Miss Dinagyang or Miss Sinulog or Masscara Queen or our Miss Barangay stands an example for this. Hence, this year Miss World and Miss International have been won by the Philippines. Our country has become a marque of beauty all throughout beauty pageants in the world. It’d be incongruous for the Philippines not to be on the top 10 list as Filipino beauty queens are distinctively graceful and jauntily confident and know their own mind.

The beauty pageant has become a way of life to many of us as we weave it into our life as we celebrate the beauty of life in the midst of our struggles. It gives our people individuality and style, helping them boost their morale and their true selves and implicitly raise the value of life in every way we think to be beautiful.

As a country of cataclysms and misfortunes, the Philippines has to be irrepressible and dynamic, making beauty as a means to deflect itself from the ordeal and pessimism and defeatism. It has to use beauty to overcome the dreariness of life and the desolation of its people. It has to exploit beauty to keep its difficulties and predicaments forestalled.

I watched the Miss Universe 2013 twice over. I stayed up late for Miss World 2013. For Miss International 2013, I just saw some posts of my friends on Facebook. Quite frankly, I didn’t expect that Bea Rose Santiago would make it, so I didn’t bother to keep tabs on her. I was in a state of great excitement when I read her name entered on the shortlist of 10 and 5.

I really expected much of Ariela Arida, but her gown was a jinx, a hoodoo. She had a very good answer during the Q & A, but her tawdry gown made of some cheap material withheld her of the Miss Universe crown. She looked then like a fake Barbie doll, two a penny at Jaro plaza. It was really naff. Had she been given the best gown, she could have been adjudged Miss Universe 2013. It was a wasted opportunity.

What I like of Ariela is her piercing black eyes. She looks slender-waisted, resilient, and very beautiful. Her waist-length hair lustrously cascades as she does her catwalks. She appears poised and calm.

Before the Miss World competition, I happened to see Megan Young on GGV. I had a gut feeling that she would make it. Megan Young has a captivating allure. She’s got a nice smile especially because she has very pretty straight teeth. She has a gorgeously warm speaking voice. She is a confident woman who is certain of her views. Her mouth is seductively fat and full. I love her interview on my favourite BBC. She is the embodiment of a perfect Miss World. Proud to be a Filipino, she thanked her countrymen. Then, a great cheer went up from the Filipino crowd carrying Philippine flags. It was spine-tingling. A cry of pride and happiness broke from me.

Bea Rose Santiago is dazzlingly beautiful. Her skin is clear and smooth. She also has a milky-white innocent visage. Her smile is captivating; her looks, alluring. I love seeing her wear the mikimoto crown and a woollen cape. She is more modest and shy, yet she tends to have an inner force.

I reviewed the video of Bea’s speech before the announcement of Miss International posted on Facebook. Yes, it was beautiful. It is particularly impressive. Her answer goes beyond being a beauty queen but as being a vehicle for her humanitarian intents.

Indeed, I can say that the Philippines is a beautiful country – a queendom for beauty queens.  It is a place where beauty is prestige and treasure and as a symbol of resilience and transformation to combat poverty, inequity, and conflicts. It holds women dear and as they are received with adulation and value. Giving women the opportunity to flash about their beauty is a sign that we as a country are progressive and more caring and genial.

Beauty then proves to be a catalyst for change as it uplifts the mind and the spirit, so it has to be celebrated as it buoys our optimism and compassion. It speaks of our amazement and greatest admiration. It is paying homage to God for giving us all the beauty life can bring. It is what we yearn for as a human being as no one likes to be ugly and unlikeable. It is our muse that fuels our inspiration to live life with hopefulness and contentment. It lightens our discomfort and grief. It shields us against our horror and inexorable confusion.

A Read Before You Get Soaked Standing Out in the Rain

by Roger B Rueda

‘A Rain Scene’ is another poem by Alain Russ Dimzon which I like very much. The poem won First Place in the Home Life Poetry Contest in 1999. That year my fellow Generoso Opulencia at the 41st UP National Writer Workshop got the Second Place for his poem ‘Regarding Flowers from La Trinidad.’ ‘Paper Boat’ by Ulysses Aparece got the Third Place,’ so ‘A Rain Scene’ had to face stiff competition for the First Place as the shortlisted poems that year were very agreeable and illuminating, making poetry a vicarious form of social life and human predicament and delectation. I am sure it was difficult for the judges to vacillate on them. If I had been one of the judges then, my preference and taste would have been ‘A Rain Scene,’ too.

Dimzon’s poem is striking with slim splits and text cataloguing. It is artfully light, yet it is very deep – it is not easy to get to the bottom of it in the beginning. It seems it is saying no more than the literal truth, for it had, as if it was a taxi, a thick perspex partition between the passenger (the reader) and the driver (the poet). The reader has to go over the simplicity of the poem, then he/she can start taking wing to the world of feminism and womanhood or impoverishment or social inequality or whatsoever.

There seems a contradiction between its form and connotations. It is his way, inventive and cognisant as he is, of compressing a weighty and thoughtful material into a compact poem. His style is slick and visually artless, moving me, so my great idea starts with it as it simplifies the complex.

It gives an admirably succinct account of a woman fish peddler, a mother who will do everything for her children and a widow/a single mother who has to take care of her children by herself despite her implicit feebleness and lack of education. She is left with trials and tribulations of everyday life, taken unawares when her husband died. It shows how Filipino women in the countryside or coastal areas need empowerment to be able to be more spirited and prolific, in control and clever, fearless and impervious when their husbands die or leave them for whatever reason.

It signals the need of the government to pass laws that safeguard widows and give them resources to support their families. It points out how single mothers in the Philippines are ignored because how treacherous the weather is, they have to work to feed their children, for even the basics of support cannot be given by the government, so poor widows need to go from house to house to sell their fish/vegetables/wares by nightfall. They need to bear their poverty and inattention by authorities, in solitude, though we’ve known now how the pork barrel of some legislators has been plundered by depraved government people. Was the government money used as it should be and in all conscience, no Filipino would suffer from extreme poverty, no Filipino would become down-and-out.

The widow persona in the poem is a very strong and brave woman. She ignores the blast of the roofs though it drowns her voice as she yells out. Perhaps, she chooses not to beg because she doesn’t want to be an object of pity amongst other people and her neighbours. Perhaps, she wants to meet their needs indefinitely without degrading her pride and self-respect. Perhaps, she wants to put her foot down despite bad nature and adversity, for her love for all her children is unconditional. And perhaps to her, the only all-enduring and selfless love is that of a mother for her children. The reader can only speculate the consciousness of the widow fish peddler because the poet presents the poem like a painting or a photograph – everything can be worked out through a scene, graphic and peripheral, physical and definite, cynical and plain. The effect of the poem is purely analytical and then that is the time when emotion comes in.

The woman is ‘isang-kahig-isang-tuka’ (one scratch of foot in the ground, one peck at a grain) as she hurries, tracing the neighbourhood alleys. Thus, she needs to work even if she doesn’t feel well or even if the rain is about to bucket down. When a strong typhoon like Yolanda comes, her family can be trapped by hunger for days or weeks. This is the consequence, too, of having a lot of children and when a husband dies, no one but the wife will have to shoulder all the responsibility of the deceased husband. Worst, the husband has not taken out insurance on his life, covering payment for his children’s food and education. It shows the plight of Filipino families struggling for survival because the government is unresponsive and inattentive. It doesn’t give communities means of support.

The poem works like fireworks to me. It burns attractively to the different levels of my imaginings, revealing different designs and shades of colours and delight in the obscurity of my intelligence and common sense. Its simplicity is illusory because it lights in my mind with varied insights and social and non-physical involvement or connexion.

I told you then when I reviewed Dimzon’s ‘Breakfast’ that he is a feminist, because of the number of poems he has written on women. The focal point for him is the women who are under social circumstances and how they delimit themselves mechanically (like the carabao in my poem ‘Carabaohood’) or imperceptibly or unthinkingly and how they give away/fight out for their rights.

Its word-based arrangement is very accurate, forming enigmatic formulary for such a thought and awareness, so it is inspiring and perceptible to me who loves poems similar to those published in The New Yorker. Dimzon is one of the rare poets in this country whose philosophy is very forward-thinking and artistically new.

Anyway, here is ‘A Rain Scene’:

A Rain Scene
by Alain Russ Dimzon

Under a sky
That is ripped
By lightning
And is about
To cry,
The woman
Fish peddler
Mounts a basket
On her head.
On her head
She bears
The fish
And the tonnage
Of a lost husband
And the lives
Of her children.
Yelling
With a voice
Drowned
By the blast
Of the roofs,
She hurries,
Tracing
The neighbourhood alleys.