About this site

Tumbang Preso (meaning, knock down the jail) is a game of arrests and escapes where each player's life
chances depends on the toppling of a tin can watched by a tag who plays guard.

Saturday, December 12, 2009

Finding One's Way in Sydney

















Eleanor Trinchera


I have been on the road for several years now and courteous drivers are slowly becoming an extinct species. There would be days when I’d really get tempted to be rude and mean as other people could be, but then again and again, I would stop in my way. For it could mean the end of me.


I never liked driving to work, especially at the time when I was working in the Sydney Central Business District. The city has a lot of one-way streets mad with traffic during peak hours and I just hate navigating through those routes. I prefer to take public transport where I can just sit if I get an early train or stand if I get the peak-hour one. From my suburb to the city is a good 20- to 30-minute ride.

Then I changed jobs and ended working in Alexandria, a suburb not far from the CBD. But it is only accessible via the Airport Line, a private network, which means I have to pay more for my weekly tickets. When I was in the City, I only paid $32 a week. Now I had to fork out $46 a week and I had to change trains halfway through.

Then someone suggested driving to work. I said I couldn’t be stressed out driving daily when all I have to do is just sit or stand or read on the train. But then I kept on complaining that my colleague persisted, until I finally tried driving one day. The first time, I made a mistake. I took a wrong turn and ended up going to the City. I cursed myself, stopped, then took my map. I don’t have a GPS and I don’t intend to buy one ever. I found my way and soon I was heading off to my workplace. To cut the story short, I ended up driving every day.

Driving to work everyday gives me a glimpse of this society’s values. I get to know what kind of people I live with and navigate the road with, day after day. I like those I can be safe with: those who let you know what they’re up to, whether they’re changing lanes or making turns. When they actually make the move, I who follow right behind, get to react accordingly. I like that. You get the right cues and you feel there’s a friend out there.

So at turns, I’d return the favor and it felt nice if those I gave way to acknowledged or appreciated the gesture, especially so when I could see that they were in difficult situations like entering traffic or making a turn somewhere where the queue was really long. But there are those bastards, too, who just go on their merry way without even raising a hand in acknowledgment of your good deed! In such times, I’d end up muttering and cursing at people’s ungratefulness and feeling sorry I weren’t as rude and selfish as they are! And if I was really mad, I’d shout after them “Salamat”! But of course, they would be belches of smoke away to hear me and it was only my sorry self I shouted my thanks to!

On really bad days, I’d get drivers who couldn’t see I was right behind them until the last minute when they’d made those sudden turns. They’d indicate to me that they’re turning left when they’re already turning left! So I could never get a chance to change lanes, especially when drivers on the other lanes couldn’t also be bothered with giving way. These are the days when I really feel like screaming crisp expletives at them, in Tagalog at that, but then of course, I'd stop myself and remind myself that this is not my country, I might not get away that easy.

I have been on the road for several years now and courteous drivers are slowly becoming an extinct species. There would be days when I’d really get tempted to be rude and mean as other people could be, but then again and again, I would stop in my way. For it could mean the end of me. I know that there are drivers who can get really very aggressive. I have witnessed several altercations, drivers jumping off their cars and abusing other drivers. I just know that I can’t stand situations like those. The thing is, to take extra care, to make note which types of drivers to avoid.

If some members of society exhibit these attitudes on the road, when driving, it should not be surprising if in shopping malls people who bump into you would also not pause to apologize but would even look at you menacingly like they wished they could hit you, too. As though it was your fault. On buses and trains, there would even be non-paying children who would not even offer their seats to paying passengers. These same children would even shout at you for walking on the streets, calling you Asian or some other more specific racial address. All of these happen in a society famed for valuing equal opportunity and multiculturalism.

Makes me think what kind of a society is this that I live in? A friend said it: "It all boils down to the color of your skin.”

Could that be so?

A Conversation with My Dog (MD)

















Tumbang Preso: You were saying something like my story not story enough.

My Dog (MD): I said do away with the “I” narrative. It’s limiting. Use third-person POV.

TP: Which one.

MD: Notice the presence of milk?

TP: Yo. Harvey Milk?

MD: Milk, infant milk, not harvey milk. The presence of milk formulas in your office. Which figures how family, how domesticity erodes the revolutionary values your comrades were once fighting for.

TP: Oh. That.

MD: Shows how insidious the invasion of middle-class values is. It’s in your first sentence, you didn’t notice it? It says, we didn’t notice it right away but people suddenly just stopped clasping hands.

TP: My short takes on life go straight to the trash bin, anyway, or thereabouts. Is it awe or unspeakable contempt?

MD: You didn’t mention indifference. It’s not that people are afraid of you. They just don’t want you, they don’t care. It’s not awe, sorry. You’re nothing to them. Why do you write anyway? First, because you think it matters. The rest, having readers or publishers, you leave that to luck or to circumstances.

TP:
You a critic or a teach?

MD: If you think it is so easy to be a critic, so difficult to be a poet, may I suggest that you try both? You may discover why there are so few critics, so many poets. Pauline Kael.

TP: Have we met before?

MD:
She calls The Sound of Music the sound of money and got fired for it.

TP: Watched that in my late teens. Thought it was subversive. Nuns to the succor of runaways. Mother, I have sinned.

MD:
Would you feel insulted if you make someone read or watch something you feel so passionate about and he didn’t?

TP: Say McFadden?

MD: Who’s McFadden?

TP: Zambibian thug. Wrote Why Men Shouldn’t Be in Women’s Spaces. Stole Ford funds disguised as a scholar. Attacked Ford. Of course, I’d be furious. I shared that to a boyfriend who thought himself a gift to feminism, McFadden. The moron pissed on it. Picked at it like he was picking lice. Wished I didn’t have to show things I know to very competitive men like that. Lab mo Jane Fox?

MD: Who’s Jane Fox?

TP: Crouching Tiger.

MD:
The yaya! Yes!

TP: Where did you send manadik? It’s not in my eudora.

MD: Be reasonable: Demand the impossible. A slogan in the student protest movement in Paris in 1968.

TP:
You’re editing it. It’s Be realistic: Demand the impossible.

MD: Peacekeepers are far more harmful than really evil people. Comment.

TP: True. They’re the great muffler. And everyone including God and the state police is on their side. Can you trust people who have no enemies?

MD: I die everyday by the sheer lack of categorical imperatives of others. And their lack of taste. No. People who have no enemies are people with no convictions. Mga bagag nawong. Heartless. They will leave you to do the dirty work for them. Often obliterating all the work that you’ve done but partaking of your triumphs.

TP:
Are you still mad at me?

MD: I feel some. Sore.

MD: Can Archie slaughter lambs and roast them, too?

MD:
Archie is a survivalist. The jungle kind. Disguising as a pragmatist.

TP: Does Dennis have a disguise?

MD: Plays cute, plays sweet, to hide her fangs. Dennis is femininity as weapon of choice. Archie’s wit is crazier and more on-target. Ruel annoys his audience at times because you can sense that he’s begging for the applause.

TP:
Suppose there was only two choices left: to be loved or to be hated, which one would it be?

MD: To be hated.

TP:
No obligation?

MD: The level of mediocrity in these parts would make me choose unpopularity anyday. To be popular would mean being populist in these times. Why this probe?

TP: ‘Cuz I’m grounded on my feet, I have no one to meet. How do you fill your void?

MD:
Reading, drinking, watching films and observing people and feeling superior about them. Listening to others and thinking there goes another mediocre.

TP:
Rich sez her emotional companion has got to be an intellectual companion, too. Can’t love someone who can’t follow her drift. Is it anti-romance? Are you?

MD: I have this affinity with Woody: too old and too weary to be good at it. One second I see a lover, the next the devil.

TP: The difference between lovers and friends?

MD: Lovers entertain delusions about each other more than friends do with each other. But you watch out for friends who are your inferiors, what a vicious lot. Do not make me elaborate.

TP: And comrades entertain delusions about the world?

MD: Comrades? Alliances are so fragile. What with the next paradigm just around the corner. Example: feminisms. Also think of the CCP/NPA purging. Purging was a manifestation of extreme loyalty to a “delusion” threatened by the spectre of DPAs.

TP: Genderism is backlash, reaction, not feminism’s mutation.

MD: A school of thought this. In a very contentious university.

TP: Invented, cultured like kargasok tea, by those who think feminism will get in the way of their enjoying their shopping rights.

MD: Think of the purging. The road to hell paved with good intentions.

TP:
Not at all. Revolution can’t be road to hell. It’s not about choices. I believe Rosa. It’s a historical necessity, not about choosing good side and rejecting the bad. No such thing as post-feminism. That’s a lie posing as school of thought.

MD: War of wars. The discourse widening like Yeat’s gyre. We hope to see a larger context before realizing that we might be supporting the beast.

TP: Lab mo Yeats? He has a poem To a friend whose work has come to naught. Be secret about your defeat, exult. Something like that.

MD: Di ko Yeats expert but The Second Coming is prophetic. The good lack conviction while evil has passionate intensity.

TP: I don’t understand The Second Coming but my Greek professor who thinks me brilliant for a Filipino student was aghast at me for thinking Yeats is not a contemporary poet. He said no poet is more contemporary than Yeats. I got this notion that contemporary is my contemporary, you know, someone I see around making coffee or winking at me.

MD: Like who?

TP: I don’t know. Not Sawi. He would not wink at me. And he's John Keat's contemporary, I heard, or Cervantes'. Maybe Beowulf's. You don’t write poems. Momo is more of a catatonic than a poet.

MD:
Ian, then. His poems made it to the shortlist. That should make him a poet. And he's gay, too. Just like you!

TP: I think of Ian as a fashion model. Handsome boy in a most unremarkable way. Can’t associate him with Literature.

MD: How witty you are! Just like Ian!

TP: Thank you. I think he is more of a career diplomat. He should be speaking French and translating for the gawddamn UN. I wouldn’t be surprised if he and KC know each other.

BC: He probably knows Gabby, not KC.

TP: He doesn’t stink like you and I. Or like Viktor and Sawi. What I wouldn’t give to smell like him. I wish when you talk about false humility you will think of someone else, instead of me. It hurts, you know. I only try to humble myself when I needed to, say for a loaf of bread that will see me through the day. I think there’s no stealing someone else’s literary career.

BC: But the torture that comes with it. Your friends making caricatures out of you. Ako kay mura kog nahimong clown. Curiosity. Novelty. Is the crazy one writing? Nagasulat ang buang?

TP: They’re watching for your rise or fall?

BC: Rise or fall? Unsa ko, chart?

TP: Not a chart. A comet, Stupid. Just when you think you have fallen from grace, the worse is actually true. Remember that. Maningning Miclat. I think the way to win a Palanca is to follow the ben stiller box-office hit formula in doing comedies. You know that the audience will love it if it offends nobody.

BC: I still think your education is poor if you haven’t watched Funny Girl, All About Eve, Himala, For the Boys, Singing in the Rain.

TP: You can extend the list, actually. I watched Relasyon uy. Ug Boys Don’t Cry. Am taking an M.A. in Scavenging, minor in Prostitution. Not sorry I lost my way and got spayed in the Marxist academy. And who are you to determine what I lack oh you bourgeois swine? Movies so Hollywood, so middle-class, so upstate new york!

MD: I know whereof I speak, you discombobulated hag. If you think mainstream, that’s what film is: business. But the industry is also full of gritty warriors. Scarred and scared, but still shooting.

Friday, December 11, 2009

POETRY FROM MAGUINDANAO
















TIYAKAP-KALILINTAD
Daniel Ong



Nagkalat,
maayos na pagkakalat,
ang naglaglagang mga dahon ng talisay
sa bakuran nina Ustadz Utto
at Kumander Noran.

Kayumangi, pula, dilaw, rosas –
mga kulay na nagpapaalala sa akin
ng napipintong taglamig
at taglagas.

Subalit dito’y kasukdulan pa ng tag-init
at di lamang dahon
kundi buhay ang
napapatid
at nalalagas –
buhay ng ina, wata, ama, kaka;
buhay ng apo, bapa, babu;
buhay ng ng kalaba’t kaibigan:
buhay ng rebelde’t sundalo;
buhay ng balo at CAFGU;
buhay ng manok, kambing, kalabaw, aso.

Di namimili ng oras at lugar ang kamatayan;
Dumarating na lamang itong kusa,
di tulad ng bagyong mayroon pang babala;
di rin ito namimili ng biktima.

Kadalasan, nakasuot-patig ang biktima’t salarin.

Tiningala ko ang mga punongkahoy
at nakita ko ang mga munting bahay-ibon
na nagpugad sa malabay nilang mga sanga --
nandoon ang mga kalapati, para bang nakikinig
at matamang nakamasid
sa ating pag-uusap at mga kilos,
habang ang iila’y naglalambingan
o buong gilas na ipinapagaspas
sa ating pandilig ang kanilang mga pakpak:
mistulang mga palakpak sa pagitan ng mga halakhak.

May balahibong nalagas.
Sinundan ito ng aking paningin.
Subalit sa biglang hihip ng hangin
at natabunan ito ng mga dahon.

Di kalayuan sa ilog,
nakangiting pinagmamasdan ni Ustadz Utto
ang apo niyang nasa duyan
habang idinuduyan ng alon
ang bangka nating naghihintay sa pampang.

Bakat, Datu Saudi Ampatuan
Setyembre 11, 2006

Ang tiyakap ay salitang Maguindanao na ang ibig sabihin ay pangangalaga o pag-aruga samantalang ang kalilintad naman ay kapayapaan. Sa lalawigan ng Maguindanao, ang Tiyakap Kalilintad ay isang organisasyon ng ommunity peace volunteers na tumutulong sa pagsubaybay sa mga paglabag sa karapatang pantao, sa tigil-putukan, at sa pagpapalaganap ng mapayapang pagsasaayos ng mga gusot at hidwaan sa pamayanan.

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Poetry by Quennie Cabili











Binaril Mo Ako

Quennie Cabili


Dahil alam mo na mabubuhay ako,
Binaril mo ako.
Parang yung pusang itim
Na napagkatuwaang barilin
Ng tatay ng kaibigan ko.

Mangha-mangha pa siya
Nang ito’y bumulagta sa harap niya.
Sabi niya, “Akala ko, siyam ang buhay mo?”
Nagsisi pa siya. Sana raw padaplis lang niyang
Tinira. Kaya lang, asintadong-asintado na siya.

Nagpasiya siyang magsimba.
Ang kaso, isa uling itim na pusa
Ang tumawid sa kalsada.
Tinapakan niya ang preno
Pero huli na siya.

Sabi niya sa nakabulagta sa kalsada,
"Pucha, pangsiyam mo ring buhay ‘to, ano?"
Bumuntung-hininga siya, at saka nagsimba.
Para sa katiwasayan ng kaluluwa ng pusa
At para rin di na uli siya mamalasin pa.

Pagdating niya ng bahay, may maliit na
Itim na pusa na naghihintay sa kanya.
Sabi ng asawa niya, “Napulot ko sa kalsada,
Kawawa naman, puwede dito na siya?"
Di siya makapagsalita.

Pa’no niya masabi sa mahal na asawa na
Ayaw na niya, parang awa n’yo na,
Di na niya maatim pa na
May makitil pa uli
Isa na namang pusa na siyam ang buhay?


Isinalin mula sa orihinal na ingles)

Monday, December 7, 2009

BLOGSHOT Maguindanao Massacre: Can a bad thing turn good?


























I am not talking about putting Maguindanao Province under Martial Law, capitalizing once more on anti-Muslim sentiments; I am talking about the discussions it sparked. It feels like, What happened was so strong, now will people rethink it through?

Reading Pancho Lara’s article in PDI about what he calls new-type of political entrepreneurs in the Muslim Region, I was rather agitated. I know Pancho from way back, not personally, through my mentors in the mode of production of Mindanao research survey, and though it could have been the tailend of the intellectual ferment of the 1980s I was catching, they were those people you would feel good to be around with, in those times anyway, as they talked about surplus extraction and rentier capitalism and revolutionizing production and such political economy stuff I would otherwise not bother to intellectually access, if I didn’t have to.

The debate then, I remember, was whether Philippine economy was semi-feudal or semi-capitalist. If semi-feudal, then armed struggle, if going capitalist, the hell with Maoists let them rot. We in the surround-the-cities-from-the-countryside contingent had this 60- or 70-plus pages of questionnaire with which to interrogate witless the peasants in the islands and mountain parts of Mindanao to extract the information that will show us the way. Those we called the socdems or the yellows for their abhorrence of armed struggle were conducting their own mode of production study, too, and two of their researchers called by at our staffhouse bearing their own bundles of questionnaires. May F, my mentor in Class Analysis, had a look at their research design and I remember her gushing. “Their sets of questions are so biased! They lead to answers indicating that we’re semi-capitalist, not semi-feudal!,” she exclaimed. “But of course! Of course! They don’t want armed struggle, so, of course!” To which I could only dumbly or vigorously nod my head, because at the time I really had no idea that that or this proposition or particular reading of history and political economy called for an army to back it up.

Anyway, I recall those scenes now as I read Pancho’s paper and those others that say that there is nothing unique in Maguindanao or the ARMM politics for that matter. Warlordism is all over the country, and if you use your multiplication table or just add up those individual killings across a time frame, the net figure would be the same. The impact and the horror of the Maguindanao Massacre is so only because it happened in one day, 57 bodies in one fell swoop, thank you, warlord politics.

I don’t know, who cares.

I would rather still direct the discussions back to the mode of production and social formation in Maguindanao, as I am getting sick of all these anecdotal reporting that invariably end in platitudes for peace and sackbags being passed in Church and collection boxes installed in malls and dining places. I'm even sicker of all these radio commentators calling to arms rallying for the extermination of the Moro tribes. That’s the kind of solution you get to hear when you leave political analysis to priests and bishops and movie stars and politicians. If they’re Sean Penn, maybe I could depend on them for strategy, but by God, Robin Padilla, Sharon Cuneta, Kris Aquino, Korina Sanchez, and Boy Abunda? What do they know???

So I will say here that one good thing about the Maguindanao Massacre is the mode-of-production-and-strategy-of-struggle question that it raises and puts forth onfield. No. I will not even bother to plague you about your individual responsibility and culpability. So what if you have contributed to it. If you feel you are party to the crime, directly or indirectly, because you’ve got an office with a convoy of vans and the evacuees have got none, that’s your problem, I don’t care. If you’re a USAID agent peddling safe motherhood or an EU peace and development officer distributing livelihood and know by now that none of this your women empowerment and poverty alleviation racket worked or will ever work except in putting a lid on the men’s rebellion by looking after women when their men cannot anymore, then good for you.
In every moment in history we position ourselves either here or there, and when soldiers fire, we fall either that way or this, and nothing more is to be said. Who cares about wittingly or unwittingly. Did you watch Miss Saigon? Oh, not Lea Salonga, please. John there said: Oh Chris! It’s Christmastime! Chris said, Oh you, Idiot. It’s not you, but war that is true.

I said, The Maguindanao Massacre is an improvement on the last debate on the mode of production. Now we have to think, and think seriously, of the political economy of the Muslim regions, too. For aren't we political stakeholders, too, for whatever that takes shape and will take shape there? Like it or not, we have to deal with the Moro warlords and the agricultural companies that call on them; the Moro tenants, the small farmholders, and the banana workers, compete with us, for land or job or renumeration. The ustadjes and the alims even think of our Christian souls as occupation forces, too, just as new-type Lumad chiefains do, that’s why they hate feminists and properly teach their women to feel the same. The disemployed rebels and part-time security of this logging company or that contraband activity might just take a notion of shooting at us, if we made a wrong move or said the wrong word. The Moro professionals, the aid workers, the peace agents, the INGO collaborators that welcome us in their homes and offices and support our good governance agenda may be our friends, but they cannot always protect us from their kin, under certain circumstances, especially so when they themselves are perceived by their compatriots and brothers as young upstarts, or as betrayers to the race who chose to ally interests with the Bisayas and majority Christian and our foreign bosses.

We must stop thinking of the Muslim provinces as the lower regions we could seasonally descend to for news or cultural events. Mindanao is us, too, we live it, its history unraveling, its conflicts and violences, its dirty politics; we are not visitors or guests of honor here, regardless of what the MILF, the Lumad chieftains, and non-historians say. We have a claim to make, too, and Mike Mastura is right when he tells peace panelists and Moro right-to-self-determination advocates: If you don't support us, say it now, and why. That we may talk about it here, that we may not feel betrayed later.

And for God’s sake, Sisters, and dear Brothers, let’s stop behaving like Good Samaritans out to hand ancestral domains to the benighted tribes when they demand it just because we can go abroad anytime, they can have all the eroded hills they like; or just because we’ve got bigger stakes in other cities or continents where the fucking mode of production and social formation is way advanced than all this medieval politics we have to put up with here.

Sunday, December 6, 2009

Variations of a Meeting



I strode out of the mall taller than I ever was, looking like I owned half the stocks in there. I had vowed then to never waver on my feet again, to never doubt my sex again.




Sometimes I just want to sit still stand still work still like I do now. Enough that I see you, that you see me, that I hear you when you speak to the stranger, to your dog, to my cat, to the flowers you water and cut, to your mind’s other visitors. Enough that when I look, you look back up, catching what you misses, starting, at seeing me seeing you, in your many different lights, laughing at what went out and went away the moments seconds you weren't looking.

I’m thinking of all the years that I was away and did not know that you were there, the years you were away and did not know I was here. I see you young, pretty, proud of your looks, of what you’ve got – Addidas shoes, maybe, Crispa shirts, a bike, a tennis racket, the high school and college girls you walked the streets with --. Had we met then, you might have not liked me. Too timid awkward and stupid to be dated, too naïve for your smartass richie-kid hat. You might have run past me and not given me a second look, the way the boys on campus did not give me a second thought. I would have not wanted you to see me then, know me then, like I didn’t want the boys to go near me then.

The week I first met you in that artists' house, I was almost certain that you loved me. I could see you from under my lights, holding back, untrusting, because I was going over spilling things out, shoving my way in when you did not need anything from me. Oh danger is real in every step we make. Wounds over closed wounds, words over broken words. What did you fear? I did wonder. Marriages that wear away, love tiring and leaving the house. What to do with me, anyway, a madwoman wearing a pretty mask. Did you really think me vain? I know that was what you thought you saw when you first laid eyes on me. That is what people, poets always say of me. Beautiful eyes. So when I held out my hand to you, you held your hand down. Dear, was I dropped at first sight. For a few secs I thought it was hatred of women all over again. Slut bitch whore you are not beautiful just another cunt you. You must have felt the earth shake under my feet? You talked awhile to comfort, carted a few names, dates, places to help me by. Lost as I was, I promised to look them up.

The couch, fat and dour like a bored host, divided us. The pellets of words thrown around us and between us pulled us apart. The friend who dragged you to me dragged you away. Your own thoughts were calling you away. We were riverbanks away from each other as we looked each other up. What’s another name another face another handclasp in that crowded evening. You were shaking yourself loose even as you were throwing ropes to get us by. I felt like the evil weed that snares passersby, the catch your blind foot caught. You were breaking your toe loose off me. I thought you saw that I saw what you were doing. Saw that I was not totally bland as I was dumb, that I could hurt, human and ordinary and needing a little mercy. After all, I was there in that house, therefore I must be a guest, too, a poet, too, and must have a soul, too. So you chatted up a little, for wasn’t that what we all were there for, wasn’t that what you were there for, to chat up with the poets and the artists of the city you didn’t see for twenty years. I could see you didn’t care who I was, what my name was or ever will be. You were tired of names, smiles, people, you-know-this-you-know-that talk, all of those that kept on cropping up then going, gone, as soon as you turn your head to the wine on the table, to another face ribbing. All contact hurts. And you had been holding your own very beautifully. The moment I turned, you forgot I existed.

You must have been annoyed that someone should bring you to me when the others just came on and hang around for no one in particular. Or that she should bring my name up again, saying I will read like I will save the day if the rest of them did not. You looked agitated. You didn’t like another name, to remember or forget, didn’t like another poet. The city was full of poets and artists as it is and things and people, like poetry, are either good or bad and that’s all, nothing more is to be said. Twice you gestured for me to bring out my poems. Twice I didn’t heed you. I had a fear you wanted to hold them so that you can drop them. You stopped asking after I read. You must have understood that I didn’t want you to hold them under your lights? That I’m past needing friendship, mentorship? That I don’t look up to nobody, that I have no masters and whatever you say will not be of help to me. That I already have my weaponry stockpiled up in my head and won't tell you where I got them or how. Or maybe you too did not really care about my kind of writing. Down here nobody comes to me to say they love my poetry. They just watch, applaud, and wish me a nice day.

Later in the night you and an artist friend must have laughed about me. That girl, such industry. Jejune. Runaway writing. Or the word “compulsive writer” would have not jumped out of her mouth later over coffee. Lilia? She had to feel the need to write, then she had to write, she said of you. She is not a compulsive writer. What do I have to say to that? That I never felt the need to write, that I write as I cuss, that's why my works are without quality of light? Sure, I trawl my dark. Could you have said that of me? I always hear the worst said of me by the best in my head, jealous as I am of the critic friends that I cannot keep. And now I am jealous and envious that it was another poet-artist you would take in your confidence when you pry apart other people’s works. I think I would always feel the illegitimate child in your family of poets and artists. But that is not what I want to tell you.

All my life I had walked and walked. Cornfields, rice paddies, riverbeds, mountain slopes and funeral trails are cobbled in the soles of my feet. By the time I got to the city and started going up the library to find me some poetry, my feet, large and splayed in the toes to begin with, were swollen and rough and cannot be bound and tidied up again. Ladies’ shoes gave me blisters. The salesclerks always walked out on me fatigued after several changes as no shoe would fit me. One good look at my cleft toenail and the veins crawling out like roots and they would go over to the next girl in between the racks. I always went out of the shoe shop astounded. In high school I limped home every time I went to a dance even if all I did there was stand in a corner behind backs and gawk as the world rocked in high heels and pointy shoes. Until I stole some money and bought myself a good pair of Gibi’s. Without remorse, I discarded all the clothes that I struggled so hard to fit into.

The day I first walked into the men’s wares was the day I was born again. The boys were so polite as I fitted into every pair of Gibi’s I wanted. I strode out of the mall taller than I ever was, looking like I owned half the stocks in there. I had vowed then to never waver on my feet again, to never doubt my sex again. In the jeepneys, I would sit straight and spread my legs apart and nobody would dare step on my feet. Even the college girls who sat with their boyfriends’ arms slung around them looked awed. I did not mind that my arms were empty. I was too delighted with myself that all I could think of was that it’s the shoes that one wears that makes her a man.

By the time I was striding all over the city with my Gibi’s shoes, you were nowhere to be found. I caught your name every time poetry was served like good wine. I never cared who the hell you were. After all, there are so many poets and there are so many names. I did sense they talked about you as just you, like you were your own person, singular. No divorce, no dead spouse, no family or children in the US, like the others. There was always something that stood out that I could not make out. A sore little finger was all I could think of and it always made me wonder, chuckle.

Even after someone said she saw you in the US and that you broke up with a girlfriend of many years, I really did not give a shit. Ah so she’s lesbian. That’s nice to hear, I said to myself. It helped me understand better your poems, made me sorrier for the women there, but that was all. As far as my poetics was concerned, I was still stuck in the woods, gathering dry sticks to make fire out of. You can freeze in America if you like. Then when someone said you were home and will be seen, I thought it would be good to look you over.

The truth is, I felt let down that you didn’t look like Justine Frischmann or one of those Swiss dykes I knew from the net. I was even surprised that you didn’t look Chinese, female, like your name said. The thing is, I really had no idea how you looked or that you would do as you did that night. It was like, So it’s you, Goddess why, look at you. More than that, I didn’t know that you would speak like a chopboard to beautiful me!

I put away my Gibi’s shoes that night all for you. I wanted to be met as a girl by someone who lost a girlfriend in a little while. The idea was, don’t we all want a girl to comfort us rather than another dyke with a dyke’s sorry life? I put on white socks to hide my ugly feet. I slipped into a pair of leather sandals then already breaking in the middle and got into my stonewashed denim pants. I tore a black blouse out of an unclaimed baggage. Maybe I was thinking of your widow poem, 0tears seep out from the walls, that I chose that black blouse. It was tight on me I must have been twitching all night without meaning to. I took my place in the circle of women a decade older than me. I sat quiet. I wanted to make myself inert, like Sylvia Plath’s little ones under the potlid before the burners turn up. I can do no harm. I can do no harm to you, I wanted to say to you. I will not move about, I will not knock things over. Because you were eyeing disapprovingly at the handtowel which was spilling out of my bag. I could not even sling it across my shoulder or over my neck like I used to, all for you.

The truth is, I needed something to take my mind off the railway track hack that left me gutted and senseless. You were never there where I went, but we all go places and we can never be careful about these things. You are not the only who lost a love, you see. At least you had a love that loved you back. And she didn’t call you names after gutting you clean. I am not telling on the girls, Sir. But girls hurt girls, too. All I am saying is, don’t we all go to hell because we needed to or else nothing will ever be real? I needed to see you because I was looking for an accident that would out-accident the last I met on the railway tracks. Are you following?

I am sorry that I did not try hard enough to reach you before zero hour. But departure is just a word they hang a plenty on a string at the airport. It is not as though this will be our last gibbet. It’s the same sky all over, you just catch your plane, arrive where you’re bound. Oh I did try to make a call on you, but could not do much because always the hands that could have helped had so many things to hold, and the eyes kept on catching things it should not catch, and the feet not always as quick as the heartbeat.

All my life I picked and snatched things up from wherever I could find them. Often, things caught me before I could catch them. As you stood there, stung, I told myself that one cannot look at so many things and take them all home: gifts can overspill like waste baskets. So I left you there. There is no going back to that moment now. The door slams shut in the face as one moves, even if it were my hand that was on the knob. I think one loses the knack for things she was once good at. Like loving, like going to them rather than letting them come to you.

And then there was you full of you, glistening like a carbuncle. Why don’t you come with us, we are leaving just now, I can drop you, you said to me. How could I tell you to your face that I don’t like riding cars I cannot drive, that I don’t like being the first to be dropped, and that I could not take a short ride in an otherwise long night? How could I tell you that I don’t like being deposited among the heap of leavers and goers you shuffle in your car?

How can I tell you that even as you asked me where I was going, even as I asked you where you were going, what I wanted to do was shove your good head into the kitchen door and kiss you there? That even as my feet carried me to the door, my heart was there on the floor, holding on to your hundred-dollar shoe?

I had a good look at your ankles early that night that more than made up for the dagger in your eyes and the bruise in your mouth. The light I looked so hard to find in your eyes was down there bright white between your sleek black pants and your white cotton socks. I could not keep my mind on your poems while you read because the brightness of your ankles shot up a volt in my head that made me see white lights going up to your knees and up to your thighs.

But all night you left me to the furniture, to the wine, to the women I sat with. You gave me your back, your sides, your elbows in between the angles and interstices of women’s bodies, but never your eyes. I wanted to wring the towel I lay about on the couch’s back and do my washing right there. It had been hiding in my bag. I shoved it there among sharp objects as I was entering that house of poetry, begged it to keep quiet because I thought you might want a prim girl and not a rogue. But you hardly looked my way. So it jumped out and that was when you saw me wipe snot, food dribbling out of my mouth. You didn’t even laugh. Had you, I could have winked and told you I had my Warren brief on and that my breasts were just too insurgent to be flattened back with elastic straps.

Once, just once, you shot me a look, angry, as you were shoving your sheaf of poems into your folder. You took it back quick before we could lock eyes and I thought that in that split second of drawing back, I held a girl. I held the softest tenderest girl’s face it made me want to wail and cry. Yet when I talked, and when you talked, there was no tenderness. Words were fences we kept snagging on. How many times did you cut me that night? Better to go home and talk to my cat and to myself, I said to myself. So when you offered to drop me for you had a car and I didn't, I said No. At the door I picked my heart back up as I shouted my goodbye to no one in particular, and quietly said my goodbye to your shoes your ankles and you thighs as I pulled the knob and banged the screen door shut.

I could not remember how I caught you up again after that night. I remember running back to kiss you goodbye, telling you how happy I was to see you. I remember you reaching up for my hand, clasping it like you were sorry I was leaving you were sorry you have been dropping me for dead all night. I remember you babbling about driving home a friend like you wanted to drive me home after you bring her to her waiting husband and son. I remember thinking afterward, as I walked the short distance between that house and the jeepney stop, that you might want me to stay the longest after all.

I remember you looking so lost as you talked to me, like you were afraid you would lose me forever that night or that you lost me already even as we were talking so. I remember saying I would rather walk and don’t mind the slow rain, I have an umbrella, then someone saying very like me to always elect the way of pain to other choices I might have. I remember cutting the air with my hand: I am going this way, you are going that way, I cannot go with you. But that is not what I want to tell you.

What I want to tell you is that seeing you there alone in the middle of the room, shut tight amidst the laughter and the shuffle of women’s bodies, hurt the mind. That you would not even talk to me broke the heart. What I want to tell you is that I am so happy I was able to clasp your hand goodbye, even if all we said was hello and goodbye, or that even if we were better at goodbyes than at hellos.

And I want to tell you, too, that I was happy to know a thing or two about you and can live with that for the rest of my life. And that I don't give a fuck if you love me back or not; or if you know a thing or two about this side of life, or if I shan't meet you ever again, here or in the hereafter.