Alphabet Abuse: Just Wordplay

"I think it’s impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves. And then, in that very moment when I love them.... I destroy them." —Ender Wiggin, Ender's Game (Orson Scott Card, 1985)

Let me warn you against me.

If I speak your mind, know your voice, manage your fears, disclose your truths—be wary of me.

Because your image, likeness, voice, self to me are syntax, conventions, grammar, text. And to me your hope is lexicon, your vanity a turn of phrase, your ambition a charming slip of tongue.

Your words are tools of my trade.

I wear your secrets on my sleeve.

So keep me loving you while it's impossible for us not to be what we pretend to be, and my pretense is thus your truth. Keep me from unmaking the metaphors of your hurts and dreams. Keep me repairing the broken cadence of your uncertainties. Keep my words where they hold your ghosts at bay.

I hope someday we’ll have the strength to cry about all of this.

Am I the only one trying daily to mark memories to feel tomorrow? Hoarding unfelt moment after unfelt moment in little notes on stray pieces of paper, shopping receipts, “watched” lists, archived posts? Crossing my fingers I can come back to them someday, in some luxury of a pause? (When the day comes, would I remember to?)

I am supposed to speak on behalf of UP Diliman, but it’s extremely difficult not to make this personal as well. Doc Bien’s contributions as professor and professor emeritus of UP are of course very well-documented. No less than his well-deserved National Artist Award for Literature speaks of his unparalleled scholarship and love of the nation. 

And I can go on and on with the superlatives when it comes to Doc Bien. But to me he was more than National Artist, Prolific Writer, and Professor Emeritus. 

I had the honor to work with Doc Bien as part of the Concerned Artists of the Philippines where he was a board member, also as Deputy Director of the UP Institute of Creative Writing where he served as an adviser; I produced a short documentary on his life as a teacher during his 80th birthday; I was his colleague and junior in CAL, where in the middle of the fight to strengthen UP’s GE program years ago, he got so upset to learn that government leaders were questioning the relevance of nationalism vis-a-vis internationalism, he demanded to know, “Sino’ng hudyo ang nagsabi niyan?” 

He was one of the editors of my first publication. He sat across me during monthly meetings in the CAL library. He would sit right next to Dr. Amelia Lapeña-Bonifacio, where they shared notes on when the next writers’ workshops named for them would be.

In all the ways I had the deep honor to work with Doc Bien, his constancy always awed and moved me. In every one of the roles he took on, even in his late age, to everything he committed himself, he always gave himself wholly. He was never just a figurehead. He attended meetings, spoke in workshops, joined debates, prepared for talks, attended rallies when he was still able, read and evaluated manuscripts—he always showed up; he always did the work.

And he never, ever got tired of reminding colleagues, with such earnest sincerity and deep humility every time, to serve the nation, to write for the people. This is why the whole community of UP feels his absence keenly.

New, more fashionable critics have called him outdated; but knowing the ways that he has always remained grounded and rooted in the people’s movement, we recognize Doc Bien’s deep love of nation not as quaint old-fashionedness but as revolutionary optimism—conviction and faith in the ways that history will see the people cleave together and rise up against tyranny, against oppression, to seek their own emancipation.

The world seldom sees such a pure and constant flame. Doc Bien’s heart and faith in the people is a gift—immaculate and bright. It has led many an artist home—to nourishing their craft in humility and compassion for others. Even going forward, I am certain this brightness remains, true and good and undiminishable.

This is why when I think of Doc Bien, I imagine there must not have been a moment in his life that he did not put in the service of others. His immeasurable legacy is meager testament to his endless courage and tireless love for the nation; for all its flaws and struggles, he loved it without relent.

Doc Bien, our grief can understand only how to remember you and to never forget. And so to end, as my own words fall short—because times like this, don’t they always—I would like to offer the words of a song, ang “Awit Para sa Bayani,” para kay Doc Bien:

Nilisan mo man itong daigdig

Tinig mo’y patuloy na maririnig

Lulan ng mga himig mong alay

Na lipos ng pag-ibig

Pag-ibig sa bayang sayo’y nagluwal

At sa manggagawang labis mong minahal

Tulad mo ay di malilimot

Habang kami ay narito

Marami pang dapat imulat, Ka Bien,

Lipuna’y puno ng problema

Sa paghinto ng tibok ng puso mo

Kami ang magpapatuloy.

It is best this way: to find the quiet corners to sob. To force pauses in between meals, served to strangers and strangers, to put heads to hands and heave in grief. The contradiction chrysalises an exquisite truth: that the bingo games and bad wagers and drunken men breaking into senseless song make us insist all the more that we do not and will not forget.

In the aftermath, we mourn the broken familiarity. More than loss, death feels like a betrayal of trust: before this, we had known where and how things were placed in the world. And then suddenly, our lives are not ours but part-history, part-legacy, and we are reaching inside ourselves, uncertain how the new absence recasts us. The way the entire ocean is displaced to fill a hole a child has dug in the sand.

Who do we become in another’s absence?

I love words for the ways they are able to mean beyond themselves, for the ways — stitch by stitch, word by word — they make trappings for our ghosts, our struggles, our inarticulate dreams; and for how, on hard days when the world suddenly feels a little dimmer, even the ways they fall short give tribute to the vastness of great lives, and bolster our promises of becoming better, fighting harder, loving stronger and, living every day less and less for only ourselves — for having received so much, for being the ones left behind.

And yet, also, the most beautiful words are those we can’t help but hate, for the way they must outlive the lives that made them: for how, having turned quiet conversations into legacy, they leave us with nothing more but also everything else that needs to be done and still spoken of.

I once believed love lasts only because of trust. 

But a friend told me he had since learned, love lasts only through forgiveness. Because, he said, in the worst of times, love will outlast the unforgivable only through forgiveness.

It will be completely illogical.

But it will be the only way.

The word echoes now, in the aftermath of a hard night - possibly the hardest we’ve had - as I watch my hurt and my pain stain your every act of penitent grace. They bleed onto the threads you try to stitch to close the wounds you had made, and stain your hands - quietly, relentlessly mending the fabric of us even as my doubts and fears gnaw at the seams. My rage is thick and red, and the needle grows slippery between your drenched fingers.

To forgive, I suppose, is to dam the tide, because if the needle falls and slips between the cracks, I know these wounds will gape open until I am empty.

My heart is pillowed in your warmth

The sheets are tangled with our songs

But you are adrift in your sleep

And our breaths are out of sync

In your dreams, the sirens are singing

And I am quiet —

There’s a mango seed stuck in my dog’s belly. She loves mangoes. In previous occasions, I had given her the fleshy seeds to gnaw on before retrieving them once she had chewed off the fruity bits. This time, when she took the seed from my hand, without even picking out the best parts, she simply swallowed it whole and ran off happily.

My lower spine is straightening abnormally from muscle spasms. I swam in and out of sleep for a week drinking muscle relaxants and anti-inflammatory medicines three times a day, useless and lethargic. Now I am not sure if I can still feel, or if I am just being haunted by, the sciatic tingling radiating from my back down to my leg. I ignore it and think idly of scheduling an acupuncture session.

To move to upward-facing dog, I push up rather than push back. The legs have to be engaged, but the buttocks relaxed. I open my chest but do not arch my back. Moving into downward-facing dog, I roll over my shoulders and push back with my arms. I avoid hinging on my lower back. My core works. After the first session, my upper back spasms.

It has been a month since I finished the video I was commissioned to edit. I’ve had to do a few small revisions in between. I was told I would soon be paid, but every notice was succeeded with apologies for unprecedented delays. On another morning, I check my balance and statement of account and send a careful message probing after the compensation that has yet to arrive. I am sent a quick apology for the delayed update. Then I am told that I have, in fact, already been paid. Smiley face.

There is a sense of being in a race I don’t intend to win but would be embarrassed to lose. Bureaucracy evaluates my pursuits and interests in the written feedback of an adviser, a reader, a critic, a representative of the dean. I am unsure how filled-out application forms and multiple signatures in provided blanks affirm my revelry in the monochromatic revelations of past ages speaking across decades in the dim light of basement laboratories and the vinegar scent of microfilm reels. 

1. better sleep (aka study leave)

2. supta kurmasana (transitions, transitions, feet together in crow)

3. clutch, shift, brake (and the rest of driving to go)

4. three funerals (a gasp in the night, an endless sleep, a quiet morning)

5. unity and struggle (a hint of peace, blood running in the streets, a slice of buko pie)

6. dislocation and displacement

7. the crumbling of idols (like yellowed pages cracking and flaking at the edges, like static breaking up aged songs)

8. departures and arrivals (in freeze frames: sea turtles and busted batteries, marang and mathematics, an endless freeway and a sweet, spice-laced smoke by the river, puppies on the water and starfish on a quiet shore, exercise-as-theater and elephant embroideries, silhouettes in motion and the singing of pebbles)

9. de espectáculos en los documentos (¿todavía entiendo español?)

1. Unable to find one’s way; not knowing one’s whereabouts

There is little consolation in knowing at least you live, even if a part of you has died – that at least the ship sails even without anchor, not knowing when it can find shore again or even how it can dock.

2. That has been taken away or cannot be recovered 

I begin to feel in my heart the stirrings of a new fear and a new hope. They coexist in an exquisite ebb-and-flow. My heart threatens to burst at the seams in terrified anticipation.