Thursday, May 22, 2008

Las Puertas Azules de la Calle de San Lazaro

Las puertas azules de la calle de San Lazaro
sonríen a menudo en mí siempre que pase cerca.
Pienso que detrás de esas puertas del azul de cielo,
las vidas festivas son llevadas por la gente arriba.
La enfermedad y la muerte nunca son agradables en el umbral.
Todos se beben con la alegría y prodigan
con sus alabanzas sobre las vidas gloriosas que llevan.

Ocultan detrás de las máscaras de la marfil,
incapaces de recordar cómo él es sentir humano,
para sentir el rubor rojo de sus mejillas,
y el calor blando de rasgones y la sangría
de los corazones que queman con amor.

El dolor nunca ha sido su sino en este curso de la vida;
comerán y beberán su terraplén detrás
de las puertas cerradas del azul de cielo.
Quizás, morirán solamente en todas sus galas,
no querido y desgraciado.
Pero, continuaré caminando mi manera,
entre las trayectorias para los ricos y los pobres.
Nunca yo se preocupan de donde mi cosecha vendrá,
porque sé que llegará.


The blue doors of San Lazaro Street
often smile at me whenever I pass by.
I think that behind those sky blue doors,
festive lives are led by the people upstairs.
Sickness and death are never welcome on the threshold.
All are drunk with merriment
And lavish with their praises about the glorious lives they lead.

They hide behind masks of ivory,
unable to remember how it is to feel human,
to feel the red flush of their cheeks,
and the tender warmth of tears
and the bleeding of hearts burning with love.

Sorrow has never been their fate in this lifetime;
they shall eat and drink their fill behind the closed sky blue doors.
Perhaps, they shall die alone in all their finery, unloved and miserable.
But, I shall continue to walk my way,
between paths for the rich and poor.
Never will I worry where my harvest will come from, for I know it will arrive.
Fragment

Quizá el gusto o la vista de él es de ninguna importancia en absoluto.
¿Estas muestras cambiarían la dirección o las trayectorias que tomo?
Tropiezo si me cierro los ojos a sus verdades de neón del color.
Era probablemente un tonto a comenzar con--
ninguna espina dorsal para desafiar qué fue presentada antes de mí.

Seguramente, era temeroso de intentos fallidos.
¿Por qué me atrevería contradigo que el plan los cielos quisiera que siguiera? No todo es una libertad absoluta--o aún una necesidad;
la rebelión es la más lejana de mi mente.
Soy seguro en mi jerarquía,
feliz de bañarse la cara en el sol,
nunca en todo asustado de la bifurcación
o de la guadaña de aventamiento cortarme
abajo en mi prima.

Maybe the taste or sight of it is of no importance at all. Would these signs change the direction or the paths I take? Would I stumble if I close my eyes to its neon color truths? Probably I was a fool to start out with--no backbone to challenge what was laid out before me.

Surely, I was fearful of false starts.
Why would I dare contradict that Plan the heavens wanted me to follow?
Not everything is an absolute freedom--or even a necessity;
rebellion is the farthest from my mind.
I am secure in my nest,
happy to bathe my face in the sun,
never at all afraid of the winnowing fork or scythe
to cut me down in my prime.

Monday, May 19, 2008

Poema

De alguna manera, deseé nunca verdad de mirar
las trayectorias adonde caminé,
Aunque puedo tropezar, caminé penosamente
encendido con mi cabeza llevé a cabo colmo,
y casi revestido en duro con la cólera
escrita sobre cada grieta y vena.

Quizás amé mirar los árboles,
con las ramas que adoraban el cielo
para su belleza celestial extensa,
y odié las hojas, secadas y el chisporroteo
bajo mis pies pesados.
Quise ser solo, buscar ese silencio que existe verdad,
no que el ruido efímero que se fuerza en mis oídos.

Debe ser maravilloso funcionar,
descalzo en la arena,
sintiendo cada grano el empujar en mis dedos del pie.
Es repentinamente libertad,
acometiendo como olores dulces en mi nariz,
del amor que podría probablemente estar,
floreciendo como las camelias blancas en un pote del jardín.

Pero el sol brilla demasiado,
y las plantas verdes marchitan
como el amor abrumado por demasiada
emoción y sentimentalismo.
Quizás es mejor que nos vayamos,
con todo nunca cerramos la puerta,
que sabe lo que pudo traer el futuro—
un amor perdido largo que volvía
apartar las cortinas y dejó el resorte venir adentro otra vez.


Somehow, I never truly desired to look at the paths where I walked,
Though I may stumble,
I trudged on with my head held high,
and almost hard-faced with anger written over every crevice and vein.

Perhaps I loved to look at the trees,
with branches that worshipped the sky for its vast celestial beauty,
and hated the leaves, dried up and crackling under my heavy feet.
I wanted to be alone, to seek that silence which truly exists,
not that ephemeral noise which forces itself in my ears.

It must be wonderful to run,
barefooted in the sand, feeling every grain pushing into my toes.
Suddenly it is freedom, rushing like sweet smells into my nose,
of love that could probably be,
flowering like white camellias in a garden pot.

But the sun does shine too much,
and the green plants do wither
like love overwhelmed by too much emotion and sentimentality.
Perhaps it is better for us to leave,
yet never closing the door,
who knows what the future might bring—
a long lost love coming back
to draw away the curtains and let the spring come in again.

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Poema V

Recuerdo caminar abajo de los pasillos largos,
donde el abatimiento reinó en perpetuidad.
Aunque nunca era asustado,
porque yo sentía seguro en la suavidad
aterciopelada de la obscuridad.
Silbaría, oyendo su eco el perforar del espacio,
imaginándose que era un corte agudo
de la lanza con el humor melancólico.

Monday, May 12, 2008

Poema
Crea cuando le digo que usted no sea nada más que un mito.
Usted es Nephele, la mujer de la nube,
nada más que una sustancia vaporosa
que fascine y engañe a hombres a la locura
Seguramente, como Clytemnestra,
usted pulsa abajo de un hombre indefenso,
porque nada es sagrado a usted, amor no uniforme.
Para la lujuria traiciona la naturaleza verdadera de su corazón.
Una bestia salvaje que espera en las sombras,
el quemarse, quemándose, nunca en apagado todo.


Believe when I tell you that you are nothing more than a myth.
You are Nephele, the cloud woman,
nothing more than a vaporous substance
that allures and misleads men to madness
Surely, like Clytemnestra, you strike down a defenseless man,
for nothing is sacred to you, not even love.
For lust betrays the true nature of your heart.
A wild beast waiting in the shadows,
burning, burning, never at all quenched.

Thursday, May 08, 2008

I am in love with a new book. You may call me crazy but that's how enamored I am with the work of the Polish writer Bruno Schulz. He wrote only a few stories, but these narratives were miraculously and beautifully woven that they seem to haul me in to senseless enchantment. The first lines above my seascape were taken from his book Cinnamon Shops (retitled "The Street of Crocodiles" by Penguin Classics) I include in this entry a part of the story:

August 1
IN JULY, my father set off to take the waters, and he left me with Mother and my older brother, prey to the glowing white and stunning summer days. We browsed — stupefied by the light — through that great book of the holiday, in which every page was ablaze with splendour and had, deep down, a sweetly dripping pulp of golden pears. Adela returned on those luminous mornings, like Pomona out of the fire of the enkindled day, tipping the colourful beauty of the sun from her basket — glistening wild cherries, full of water under their transparent skin; mysterious black cherries, whose aroma surpassed what would be realised in their taste; and apricots, in whose golden pulp lay the core of the long afternoons — and alongside that pure poetry of fruits, she unloaded slices of meat, and a keyboard of calf ribs, swollen with strength and goodness, algae of vegetables, calling to mind slaughtered octopus and jellyfish — the raw material of dinner, its flavour still unformed and sterile — dinner’s vegetative and telluric ingredients with their wild and field aroma. Through a dark apartment on the first floor of a tenement on the market square, every day throughout the whole vast summer, there passed the silence of shimmering veins of air; squares of radiance dreaming their fervid dream on the floor; a barrel organ melody struck from the deepest golden vein of the day; and two or three measures of a refrain, played over and over again on a grand piano somewhere, swooning in the sunshine on the white pavements and lost in the fire of the deep day. Her housework done, Adela spread a shadow over the rooms, drawing closed the linen blinds. Then the colours sank an octave deeper; the sitting room filled up with darkness as if plunged into the luminosity of the deep sea, although even now it was dimly reflected in mirrors of green, while all the torrid heat of the day breathed on the blinds, gently swaying to the reveries of the midday hour. I would go out on Saturday afternoons for a stroll with Mother. From the duskiness of the hallway we stepped straight out into the sunbath of the day. Passers-by, wading in gold, squinted in the glare as if their eyes were glued with honey, while their drawn back upper lips bared their teeth and gums. And everyone wading through that golden day had the same sweltered grimace, as if the sun had bestowed the same mask upon all of its disciples — the golden mask of a solar cult; and everyone walking along the streets that day, who met or passed each other by — young or old, every man, woman and child — hailed each other with that mask as they went, with gold paint daubed thickly on their faces; they grinned to one another that bacchanalian grimace — that barbarian mask of pagan worship. The market square was empty and yellowed by the heat, swept clean by hot winds, like a biblical desert. Thorny acacias, sprung up from the emptiness of the yellow square, frothed above it with their shining foliage, their bouquets of graciously gesturing green filigrees, like trees on old tapestries. Those trees seemed to be affecting a gale, theatrically twirling their crowns in order to demonstrate by their pompous gesticulations the courtliness of the leafy fans of their silvered abdomens, like noblemen’s fox-fur pelts. The old houses, burnished by the winds of many days, were tinged with reflections of the vast atmosphere, echoes and reminiscences of hues diffused deep within the coloured weather. It seemed that whole generations of summer days (like patient stucco workers scrubbing the mouldy plaster from old façades) had worn away a fallacious varnish, eliciting more distinctly from day to day the true aspects of the houses, a physiognomy of the fortunes and life which formed them from within. Blinded by the radiance of the empty square, the windows now fell asleep; the balconies confessed their emptiness to the sky; the open hallways exuded a scent of coolness and wine. A few ragamuffins, sheltering in a corner of the market square from the fiery broom of the heat, were beleaguering a stretch of wall, testing it over and over again with throws of buttons and coins, as if the true mystery of the wall, inscribed with hieroglyphs of scratches and cracks, might be divined in the horoscope of those metal discs. Otherwise, the market square was empty. At any moment, the good Samaritan’s donkey might arrive, led on by the bridle in the shade of the swaying acacias, at a vaulted entrance with wine barrels before it, and two attendants would carefully lift a stricken man down from its burning saddle, to carry him gently inside and up the cool stairway, to the storey that exuded the aromas of a Sabbath meal. Mother and I strolled on, along the two sunlit edges of the market square, casting our broken shadows over all the houses as if along a keyboard. The paving stones fell steadily past under our weightless, flat footsteps, some of them pale pink like human skin, others golden or greenish-blue — all of them level, warm and velvety in the sunshine, like various kinds of sundial trodden underfoot beyond all recognition, to blessed nothingness. And finally, at the corner of ulica Stryjska, we stepped into the shadow of the chemist’s shop. An enormous jar of raspberry juice in the chemist’s spacious window symbolised the coolness of the balsams there, by which any suffering might be assuaged. And after a few houses more, the street could no longer uphold municipal decorum, like a peasant returning to his native village who casts off his stylish town attire on the road, slowly turning into a country vagabond again the nearer he approaches home. The suburban cottages were sinking, windows and all, subsided within the lush and tangled efflorescence of their little gardens. Overlooked by the magnificent day, all kinds of herb, flower and weed proliferated luxuriantly and quietly, delighting in that pause in which they could dream beyond the margin of time, on the outskirts of the unending day. The suburban cottages were sinking, windows and all, subsided within the lush and tangled efflorescence of their little gardens. Overlooked by the magnificent day, every kind of herb, flower and weed luxuriantly and quietly proliferated, delighting in that pause in which they could dream beyond the margin of time, on the outskirts of the unending day. An enormous sunflower, hoisted aloft on its huge stem and stricken with elephantiasis, stooping under the hypertrophy of its monstrous corpulence, awaited in yellow mourning its sad, final days of life. But the naïve suburban campanulas and unfastidious calico-print flowerlets stood helplessly by in their starched little pink and white camisoles, without sympathy for the sunflower’s great tragedy.

There are times I just wished that I took the road less traveled. Before I entered PHSA, I was actually contemplating taking holy orders and becoming a priest, or a Benedictine monk. In grade school, I spent a great deal of time in the Chapel of DLSZ; I remember kneeling in front of the altar, looking intently at the crucifix with the image of the resurrected Christ, imagining that it was beckoning me to lead a contemplative life, or maybe He was...I always felt secure and loved in that calm environment. I remember earnestly praying the rosary and looking at the stained glass windoes depicting St La Salle and the other La Sallite brothers. But then I also wanted to become an artist, and I got that government scholarship to PHSA.


Things happen for a purpose. I just miss my religious fervor and the faith I had as a child. I sometimes wished that I could somehow enter the Benedictine Monastery in Malaybalay, Bukidnon because of its peacefulness and pristine beauty. Only time will tell.


Monday, May 05, 2008

The Queer Tongue

A few years back, when my elder sister Aileen still resided in the Philippines, trying to make a name for herself in the fashion industry, she would often invite some of her queer friends to our house. Queers have a world of their own making, with colorful expressions and lingo that would make you burst out in laughter and fill any tete-a-tete with gaiety. With the queer's penchant for gossip, you cannot help but assimilate their language into everyday vocabulary, albeit the vulgarity in meaning:

QUEER TONGUE
1. 10,000—sobrang tagal, sobrang bagal (too slow)
2. anda/andalucia/anju/Anjo Yllaña— pera, datung (money/cash)
3. anik—ano (what, which)
4. balaj—balahura (shameless), dautero, bakla
5. Bitter Ocampo—malungkot (bitter, sad)
6. borlog—tulog (asleep)
7. carry, keri, cash & carry—sige (OK, alright)
8. Cathy Santillan/Kate Gomez/Cathy Mora—“makati” (frisky)
9. chaka (from Chaka Khan)—pangit (ugly), kasi parang concert nya rito 10.char/charot/charing/charbroiled— kabaligtaran ng keri (opposite of “keri”) 11.chova/chovaline kyle—chika lang (small talk)
12.Cookie Chua/Cookie Monster— magluto (cook, in the imperative form) 13.clasmarurut/klasmarurut—classmate
14.cornball/cornstarch—korni (tasteless)
15.Crayola Khomeni—iyak (cry)
16.Cynthia—hindi kilalang babae, pwede ring lalaki, as in “sino sha? (who is she/he?)
17.Dakota Harrison/Dakila—malaki (big in size, maybe from the visayan language “dako”)
18.daot—isang metapisikal na insekto, insulto (insult)
19.dugyot—yagit, madumi (dirty)
20.eksena/eksenadora—mahilig pumapel, mahilig sumabat (someone who always likes to figure in a scene)
21.emote—mag-inarte pa rin (one who is over-acting)
22.entourage—pasok (enter)
23.epal—pumapel kahit hindi welcome (one who forces herself/himself into the company of other people)
24.fatale—sobra, to the max (excessive)
25.feel/fillet o’ fish—type, gusto, natipuhan (to like something)
26.feelingero, feelingera—mahilig magmaganda (one who is always sympathetic)
27.fly—alis (go away)
28.forever—palagi, matagal, mabagal (always, slow)
29.freestyle—slow makagets (slow in understanding something) 30.ganitriz/ganitrik—ganito (this way)
31.girlash—babe
32.hums—hundred
33.imbey/im—imbyerna, irita, inis, banas, asar (irritation)
34.itriz/itrik—ito (this)
35.jologs/dyologs—basura (trash), iskwaking, iskwakwa (squatter) 36.jowa/jowabelles/jowabella— kare¬lasyon, boyprend o gerlpren
37.jubis, juba—taba (fat)
38.jutay—maliit (small, from the Visayan, “dyutay”)
39.kangkang—niig, talik (sex)
40.kape/capuccino/Coffeemate— magising ka sa katotohanan, excuse me (wake up to the truth, please)
41.karir/career—lumandi, kumiri (coquettish)
42.kiao—thousand
43.lafung/lafang/lafesh/lafs/lafez— kain, lamon
44.lapel—masyadong malakas ang boses, parang naka-lapel mic (someone with a loud voice, as if one was wearing a lapel microphone)
45.Liberty/Statue of Liberty/Liberty Condensada—libre (free)
46.Luz Valdez/Lucila Lalu/Luz Clarita—talo (loser)
47.Moody Diaz (RIP)—moody
48.nenok—nakawin (steal)
49.okray—paninirang puri (criticize, mud-sling)
50.pantot/pantotero—mahilig umeksena