SALMAGUNDI 3: ON NICK JOAQUIN, POETS,
POETRY, SIMPLE LANGUAGE, COMPLEX IDEAS,
BOOKS, FRIENDS, AND OTHER HEROES

+ If women were won through words alone, Chilean poet Vicente Huidobro and his Spanish counterpart Luis Cernuda must have been picking apples in their lifetime. Women, listen to Huidobro and swoon:

the world gains in majesty everytime you pass; as well when he says,
nothing compares with the legend of seeds left by your presence.

Cernuda was not one to mince poetic words for the beautiful gender either, here's proof:

You justify my existence - if I don't get to know you, I have not lived; if I die without knowing you, I do not die because I have not lived.

Asus!

+ Mark Strand and Czeslaw Milosz have interesting words on time and space - simply provoking (and provokingly simple), coming from different perspectives. One speaks of emptiness, the other of fullness, one brings himself down, the other lifts himself up. Strand's take is this: Wherever I am, I am what is missing. Milosz, on the other hand, declares from the other end. To him, the most complete sentence where everything begins and ends is comprised of these three words: I am here.

+ Poetry knows no bounds, the art goes beyond paper. Some quaint shops sell sets of a hundred words, each word appearing in little magnetic squares that you jumble and post in your ref for some instant refrigerator poetry. If I were a kid owning a set with every word in it, our refrigerator could breathe my poetic mood one morning:

heaved heavy in syrup my three layered pancakes
a glassful of chocomilk, what heaven a day makes!
a tower of sherbet and topped with bear gummies
big breakfast beams big heart, none else but my mommy's

or if there were sets in Tagalog, I could be bata makata, sang perang muta -

ang sariwang gulay sa bundok ng kanin
manok at isda, sari-saring pagkain
kaya mga magulang, dapat lamang isipin
ang batang malusog ay yamang maituturing!

asus ulit!

+ There's ref, and then there's men's room. In my university back home, poetry abounds in the comfort of the comfort room. Making a leak in the urinal, some verse made me contemplatively ruminal -

Tucayan theory: no matter how much you squirm and squirt,
the last three drops will fall on your pants.

+ Poetry is essential despite words to the contrary. Like food and water or air pumped into a flat tire, the need for poetry is fundamental. Coming from work dead tired, a reading of William Blake's The Blossom will suffice to resurrect my bones and muscles. You tired too? Here's Bill, read him aloud, even with your dead voice, even in a place where there's no spring -

Merry Merry Sparrow
Under leaves so green
A happy blossom
Sees you swift as arrow
Seek your cradle narrow
Near my Bosom.

Pretty Pretty Robin
Under leaves so green
A happy Blossom
Hears you sobbing sobbing
Pretty Pretty Robin
Near my Bosom.

+ World Poetry: An Anthology of Verse From Antiquity to Our Time (1998, K. Washburn, JS Major, C. Fadiman, eds.) is the most definitive collection of world poetry I have ever encountered. Still and all, only two Filipinos made it to the selection: Jose Rizal and Jose Garcia Villa, although considerably reverential words were made to explain the non-inclusion of who could have been the third: Francisco Balagtas. According to the editors, the existing translations do not give justice to the greatness of Florante at Laura.

+ Rizal's poem Water and Fire is the one chosen by the eds. When I read it, aloud in a remote corner of the bookstore, my little Filipino heart beamed with pride. If you're feeling pat with me, you will, too, so I'll share -

Water are we, you say,
and yourselves fire,
so let us be what we are
and co-exist without ire,
and may no conflagration ever
bind us at war.

But, rather, fuse together
by cunning science
within the cauldrons of the
ardent breast,
Without rage, without defiance,
do we form steam, fifth element indeed:
progress, life, enlightenment,
and speed.

+ The poem, by the way, was translated from the Spanish by Lelong Nick Joaquin.

+++ And so to you, Sir Lelong Nick -

our water, our steam -
bathe us, refresh us, rise up in streams
see us, watch over us -
while your words emblazon us in dreams

we already miss you, Sir, to us whom you're so dear
rise up like steam, and pour us some cold, cold beer

Asus, asus talaga!

IN THE KINGDOM OF THE KING'S LANGUAGE

I do not think that anie language, be it whatsoever, is better able to utter all arguments, either with moore pith, or greater planesse, than our English tung is, if the English utterer be as skillful in the matter, which he is to utter: as the foren utterer is.
-Richard Mulcaster
The First Part of the Elementarie

English, n. A language so haughty and reserved that few writers succeed in getting on terms of familiarity with it.
- Ambroce Bierce
The Devil's Dictionary


Idiocy, like gravity, pulls in any venue, and in this kingdom the effect is twice as magnetic. Imagine this cocktails scenario, between two English speakers, one average, the other above it:

Average English Speaker: What's up with you now?
Above-average English Speaker: I'm writing a book.
AES: Cool. What's it about?
AAES: It's an autobiography.
AES: Cool. So, who's it about?
AAES: Uhhh! me...duh.
AES: Cool. So when's it coming out in print?
AAES: I'll have it published posthumously.
AES: Cool. I wish to read it very soon.

The scenario is scary because it's real. In this era of the culturally disengaging textspeak, great Englishspeak is hard to come by even in a place where English is the primary language. The statistics not only inform, they also boggle: According to Richard Lederer in The Highly Selective Dictionary for the Extraordinary Literate, of the 616,500 entries in the Oxford English Dictionary the average English speaker possesses only about 10,000-20,000 in his vocabulary. I can add to the stat without being strictly empirical: Of the 20,000 as stock knowledge the AES has only a faint awareness of a good number. (I am the only subject of my study so I'll be the example. I know the word syzygy, from my Spelling Bee days, one of the few 6 letter-words or more that do not have a vowel. But I don't know what it means. I'm an idiot, with a capital I. Thus, from where I sit gravity pulls twice as much. Cool.)
------------

In the above scenario, the words 'autobiography' and 'posthumously' do not form part of the AES's vocabulary. Don't be surprised, I've known worse. Where I work, somebody who speaks only English argued there's no such word as 'withdrawal'. Withdrawal: as in, There is a massive withdrawal of words from his word inventory; or, He stopped reading a long time ago he is now suffering from knowledge- withdrawal symptom.

Back to Lederer, who seems to be overwhelmed by the fact that the English language is the most 'democratic language in history'. Democractic? In what sense? In the sense that it is way ahead of its nearest pursuers? German with 185,000 words? Russian with 130,000? French with 100,000? To respond, we may need to go back to Lederer's English and raise more issues: What is democratic, the freedom to appropriate other culture's language? (as in: Whoever said that English is the language of invasion?) Inasmuch as theft of words is not a punishable offense, we could possibly argue that English is way ahead of the language game because it knows how to appropriate.

Consider -

alchemy: from Arabic alkimia, or the art of transmitting base metals into gold;
luxury, from French luxuria, or excess;
gaze, from Swedish gasa, or to stare;
dispatch, from Spanish despachar, or expedite;
boondocks, from Tagalog bundok,or mountain; or
orchid, from Greek orchis, or testicle (because the tuberous roots of the orchid supposedly resemble testicles)...

Lederer again: the guy insists that you can one up your enemy with impunity by enriching your English vocabulary. He teaches you to attack the average English speaker, in lieu of the usual 'You rotten pig' which he may understand, with the following weapons, as 'You...

'venal pettifogger
'vituperative virago
'perfidious mountenbank
'renthentious blatherilite, or,
'splenentio termagant'

There is a moral to Lederer's. As he states in his book, here's an anecdote attributed to WL Phelps of Yale U about a student who wrote, by way of answer in his examination booklet, the following idiocy:

The girl tumbled down the stairs and lay prostitute at the bottom.

In response to which, the professor wrote in brilliance:

My dear sir, you must learn to distinguish between a fallen woman and one who has merrilly slipped.

English is cool, even if imperialist. Why? Do you know the word onomatopoeia? When a word sounds exactly what it is? Like,when I tell you: You are so boorish, you should know I meant you in the negative, boorish being so negative-sounding, dour and punitive. And when I say your heart is golden, you should know I meant your heart in the best of terms even if your English is insipid, golden being what it sounds, a gem, gleaming.

And here's the catch, again, by the percipient Lederer: the word 'quisling' is onomatopoeic. Even if it means bad while it sounds good, the meaning conciding with the sound. Quisling means a traitor, and thus the sound of the word hides its meaning, the sound being traitorious.

In the meantime, I'll coin these words with their meanings, in the hope that Oxford will take notice:

Jobertian: referring to somebody who is resourceful;
ArianneianAngelian: as one who cannot finish reading The Remains of the Day; or feels lazy to call her 2nd dad;
Belleian: poetic;
Ghostian: censorial;
Jetian: somebody whose stomach is je;
cbsian: somebody cool; an AES; or one who needs to go to the bathroom and will say...

...I have to check on the status of my orchids!

(Postscript: Hi, M! why are you such a snob?)

SALMAGUNDI
(a 2nd serving)

^..^ Groucho Marx, on the preciousness of books, is worth quoting: Outside a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside a dog, it is too dark to read.

^..^ On dogs: My 1st dog was named Titit. Yes, Titit's a he. Otherwise I would have called her Pipip. My 2nd dog was Tatum, from my huge crush Tatum O'Neal. Currently I don't own a dog; they're prohibited by management. On books: I don't remember my first book but I remember the 1st book I bought for myself. Beginner's Chess. The 1st book that blew my mind was The Sound and the Fury by Faulkner. The best book I've ever read is James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Not only did it blow my mind, it also tore my heart. And I am grateful because now I have many minds and many hearts.

^..^ I just finished Saramago's The Cave, and my current read is Coetzee's Age of Iron.
An ocean of difference, these two. The first kisses your forehead, the other kicks your balls.

^..^ Harold Bloom reveres Shakespeare so much he considers him the inventor of human. In a lesser degree I revere Joyce as the inventor of the modern writer. In every fiction I read I try to find a Joyceness in the writing, in the author. The greater the Joycean subtlety, the more compelling the challenge. Jose Saramago, Frank McCourt (but of course!), and John Updike, do not offer any challenge. Their Joyceness has the radiance of moon, splendour of fire, stability of earth, and firmness of rock - like the Deer's Cry of beloved St. Patrick.

^..^ James Joyce tells me, through his works, it is cool to quote. A Portrait is, in fact, a miniature Bartlett's, heavy on quotations - from children's songs to Roman senatorial decrees, from religious mottos to literary classics - you end up not just moved but also informed.

^..^ Finnegan's Wake, they say, contains phrases in as many as 60 languages. When I scanned it one time (scanned, not read, which I can't, not yet), I almost jumped as in really jumped with the discovery of a Tagalog phrase, written in hip fashion, and which could have spawned the idea for The Vagina Monologues. The phrase is this: Kekkek Kekkek Kekkek! Koax Koax Koax. To translate in English from hip Tagalog, this would be: Pussy Pussy Pussy! I am I am I am. Later I found the phrase to be another quote. From Aristophanes.

^..^ One writer (conspiracy theorist?) declares finding the formula for hydrogen bomb in Finnegan's. Aha! This book could serve as interesting board game for bored intellectuals doing a long drive.

^..^ When he was 20 Marcel Proust was asked what his occupation was. He answered, Loving. I would have believed it if he said, Suffering.

^..^ Suffering was actually the commonest experience by those who read In Search for Lost Time (Remembrance of Things Past), and loving, by those who truly know how to read. I am not one of those. Yet.

^..^ Critics claim that Iris Murdoch's classic Severed Head is an exagerration on human relationships, and that the book suggests that we often fall in love for reasons that have nothing to do with the other person, but everything to do with ourselves. Is that an exagerration? In reality, is the suggestion true?

^..^ I'll quote again. Saramago again. In The Stone Raft he says that all of life is a coincidence, that we are not just aware that somewhere in the world somebody is doing the exact same thing we are doing. In other words while I am typing this somebody somewhere is typing this, at the exact same moment, pace, font, and yes, while the left forefinger is busy digging deep inside the nose.

^..^ Why did I raise the issue of coincidence? I'll bring this only now. Last March 27th I made an entry whereby I quoted the philosopher Lao Tzu. It turned out that on that same day my friend Jet David did an entry and she too quoted the great Chinese. But what drove me nuts, koinkidink nuts to quote Jet this time, was that my original entry had something to do with suicide. I entitled the piece Exit Wounds and as teaser I used the corrupted lyrics of Suicide Is Painless which I wrote as follows: Suicide is painful/ It brings on many changeful/ and I can't keep it or change it if I freeze (cbs, with apologies to Mike Altman) While finishing the entry, however, I felt a certain numbness in my head that told me to stop. I deleted the entry altogether and wrote a new one, All The names, where i quoted Mr. Tzu. Days after, I visited Jet's hubby's blog and found this coincidence. On the same day that I intended to have the suicide entry, Jay blogged about Suicide Is Painless. (I tried to comment on that but his comment box rejected me.)

^..^ If that was coincidental, this one's heart tugging. Little Lulu Vizcarra's entry in the blog she shares with sister Gabbi broke my already broken heart. In Cinammon Puppy, she declares her hurt because Daddy did not name their blog as one of his favorites, and as I read the entry, I can imagine, nay, see and touch, Lulu's little face in an expression of innocent rant and suppressed pain, stating 'Lame', referring to the failure of Daddy to draw inspiration from the blogging gratitude of a good daughter. There's is a childish truth in all of truth, and a child speaking it props up its meaning. Being one of her Daddy's favorites, perjurious or not, I can only offer Lulu an explanation that may be neither lame nor upright, but just about right. Probably, Daddy only wanted a new blog name: Cinabon Si Papi.

SAILING AWAY WITH OCTAVIO PAZ

I look at the open space - big sky and endless sea - and it prompts me even more to make myself smaller than I am. The scattered islands and assembled yachts are a pleasant balance to the scope, but I'd rather attend to the gap-fillers of our perception: there's the white foam of the wave, the solitary pelican, the tiny crab in the sand rushing towards the safety of a shell. A method of conceit: Am I to them as they are to me?

Sailing is cool. Anything that harnesses the utility of nature without disruption is cool. Nature, at this moment, is the true wind harnessed by the rig that propels the hull which, together with the lateral resistance of keel, pushes the boat forward. The wind is a little strong, though, and the boat heels way too much for my comfort. The captain looks at me and laughs. He knows the color of fear as I cling to the railings and leave my fate to the lifevest. "We're not going to tilt over", he assures, reading my mind, knowing my issues. "This boat's pretty stable, with a very deep keel and a very low center of gravity." Hell we should not flip-over. Out here in the open sea, I won't swim good, even with floater.

The closer we get to the island, the lesser we have a need for the wind. Wherefore the masts are pulled down and the engine turned on, keeping the boat as settled as the sea. I breathe my usual breathe and the captain sees back the color of my courage. I go down one level from the deck and gush at the elegance compressed to the limit of smartness. How did they do this? Geometry? Philosophy? The bed is in the shape of a triangle, following the contours of the bow. The kitchen shelves are collapsible. The walls double as compartments. Wow. Down here, not only do the walls have ears, they have television sets and ironing boards, too.

We drop anchor and I think of poetry. I love poetry even if I'm no poet, and poetic justice convicts me now, in this boat, in reclusion perpetua, and so I am honorably condemned to the loveliness in my hand, the words of my poetic hero, the jewel of Octavio Paz.

Paz's words. The words of Peace. Here's to irony, they revolt. They rise up in arms. They rebel. But sometimes, like the sea, like this boat when the masts are down, they settle down. They soothe, they charm. They are peaceful.

Octavio Paz's words have the sound and quality of the sea. They swoosh, they shoosh, they wash ashore, they wash our soul. His words could have made me cry but for the natural error of my gender. Boys don't cry.

I look around and see a gathering of boats, with a safety of distance that allows for some basking au naturelle. I have my binos in hand and could have snooped for action, for show, for invitation, for ridicule, Hey Tommy, Tommy, Tommmy, but my agenda is for little things like me, so I focus on the wave and see the foam like giant latte, the surface of ale, the crowning glory of bubble bath. Once more I think of Paz, I think of his words, his academia by the sea, his term la unibersidad de obiaje, the university of the waves.

Ahhh, academia. Paz's written words not only speak, they teach, too. They discuss and give exams and hold recitations. But they don't fail. They never do. For some poetic power they always succeed to connect to the heart of our studentry, the studentry of our hearts, as we listen to the wavelength up and down, from the tongue of his pen, the throat of his ink, the diaphragm of his paper, so let us now hush and listen to the serenity of his lecture:

Now I have all I have loved
within my little universe,
the starred order of waves,
the sudden disorder of stones.
Far off, a city in rags
calling me, poor siren,
so that the heart can never, no,
scorn its weight of obligation,
and I with sky and poems
in the light of all I love,
poised here, swithering,
raising the cup of my song.

(from Here, There, Everywhere)