Cats & Books

Cats & Books

By Leena Calso Chua

The picture shows cats playing atop some books -- cats on books, literally speaking.

But that's not what I mean. This is about cats and the books they like. It's common knowledge among dynamic pet breeders that cats adore books and start to read as early as two weeks old, when they open their eyes. In their kittengarten stage they start with kiddie fare like Dr. Seuss's A Cat in the Hat, then move on to Saki's Tobermory, though not one of them likes what happened to the only member of their species that had gained the ability to talk.

It is not unusual to find some of the more sedate kitties preferring T.S. Eliot's juvenile Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, from which the smash Broadway play, Cats, was adapted. I have even seen kittens, in private moments, humming the theme song, Memory. One of them even extended his reading to Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. This poem has nothing to do with anything feline, but cats do like the somber sway and tenor of the poem.

What student of Literature doesn't know Gray's Elegy? But cats sneer at the student's ignorance of Gray's lament over his beloved Selina, Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat, Drowned in a Tub of Gold Fishes. Anyway, that's ok, since kittens realize early in life that the luminosity of the human mind is uncannily equivalent to that of a dim bulb.

Kittens have a deep fondness for specialized magazines about them: Cat's World, Kittens, Cat Fancy, and occasional articles in National Geographic about their favorite country in this planet, Egypt. They venerate their ancient ancestors who lived in luxurious palaces with pharaohs who really knew how to give cats their rightful place -- way up in the pantheon of nobility.

Mau's baby Persians may root for Batman, but they purr at the Dark Knight's romantic link with their green-eyed heroine, Selina Kyle, a.k.a. Catwoman. They also lapped up Vonnegut's Cat Cradle, but were miffed after they found out the novel is not even remotely about cats at all. Rightly, they settled for Golden Age copies of Felix the Cat.

One of Hemingway's early short story, Cat in the Rain, is a kitty favorite. Another oldie-but-goldie is Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's, where, in the film version, an orange tabby plays a crucial role (also in the rain) to bring the angst-ridden Audrey Hepburn to the arms of budding-writer-cat-sympathizer George Peppard. Yes, cats swing to the slow tune of Moonriver.

Would you believe songs by Cat Stevens are still extremely disliked by erudite and musical cats? They hiss at Morning Has Broken, yowls greet Wild World, tuffs of fur are tossed against the composer of Father and Son. Kittens and old cats have on record the sin of the erstwhile-adored Cat Stevens, talented singer turned idiotic Islamic convert, who with great cacophony supported the crazy Ayatollah Khomeini's fatwa against prolific writer Salman Rushdie. For writing The Satanic Verses, Rushdie had been sentenced to death by whatever means in the hands of any Muslim who succeeds in making Rushdie shake hands with his creator, asap.

Of course, they dote on the late James Herriot series of books about his growth and fame as a veterinarian who loved, saved and took care of big farm animals and the smaller pets like dogs and -- ahem! -- cute kittens. The title of four of Herriot's books were the first stanza of Hymns For Little Children, an 1848 poem by Cecil F. Alexander: All Things Bright and Beautiful, All Creatures Great and Small, All Things Wise and Wonderful, The Lord God Made Them All.

Cats read for leisure, not for career: they'd rather take catnaps, sniff catnips, and stay cute all their life. After all, that's what pets are for.

Miriam

Galit sa mundo?

In the late 1980s up to June 15, 1991, there were about five bookstalls at the Dau Supermart, which was known among shoppers from Manila for its PX goods. The supermart still stands; it was rebuilt after heavy ashes from the Mt. Pinatubo eruption crumpled the structure, but the bookstores did not return, their existence swept out with the fine ashes from Pinatubo. One of them, mine, holds a memory of Miriam, through his young son, who will remain young forever.

Before the volcano went ballistic, Miriam was a suki of Dau, going there about every weekend. She even had her hair cut in a small saloon owned by Linda. Back then, hair was still an option with me, so I also went to Linda, who extolled the virtue of her famous client, how Miriam went about just with her husband, her son and the yaya, and no bodyguards! While Miriam was having her hair trimmed and groomed, her son, who was about 10 years old then, strolled around the corridors with his yaya.

I can recall the last time Miriam's youngest son went to my bookstall, a prototype of Book Sale, which sold used and new pocketbooks, magazines, and comics. The comics were placed in a box, and the boy rummaged there. "O ano, gusto mo iyan?" the yaya asked the boy, who had chosen just one. "Pumili ka pa," she said. This woman apparently loved her young ward, who I noticed was painfully shy.


The boy approached my desk and asked, "Magkano po?" In my store, books and comics are not moneymakers like the magazines, so I tended to sell such slow stuff at cost. "P10 na lang," I said. "P8?" he offered. I liked the boy, unspoiled by the power, popularity and wealth of his mother, and I was tempted to sell the comics at a loss, but at P10 it was a bargain. "Mura na iyan," I told him, expecting concurrence. To my surprise the boy turned his back and returned the comics to the box. Then he went to his yaya, who was standing beside my desk, and looked up at her. "Ba't di mo pa bilhin?" she asked the boy. "Di ba gusto mo yun?" He just shook his head and walked out, the yaya following him, shaking her head.

***

In 2003 I was assistant editor at People's Tonight, having left Pampanga and the book business after Pinatubo restructured my life. On November 20 a report reached my desk: Miriam's son, 22, had shot himself in the head that afternoon. I asked the reporter to get more details. The boy had been under a lot of pressure, the reporter told me later, he was reportedly depressed about not being admitted at the UP College of Law after failing in Constitutional Law, a subject on which his mother is renowned as an expert.

At her son's funeral mass three days later, Miriam recounted: "[He] graduated Bachelor of Arts in Political Science, and decided to go into Law. He passed the written admission tests for both UP and Ateneo. Ominously, the faculty panel in UP that conducted what should have been routine interview cut him to the quick. Questions like: 'What is your reaction to the charge that your mother is insane?' and 'How much does your father bet in cockfights.?' He answered politely that it is in the nature of Philippine Politics today to deliberately inflict falsehood; and that he never knew how much his father bet, becasue as a stress- reducing hobby, it is not considered important enough for discussion in our family."

In an interview with media people during the wake, Miriam would recall the happy days with his son. He and I would hold hands, even in public, she said. "He was never embarrassed. People at the market or the mall envied us. We were like a love team, they teased us, because I would hug and kiss him in front of many people."

Reading the news reports, my mind reached back to Dau. Was the dead son the young boy in my store 13 years ago? I did some mental calculation, and the years seemed to add up to the young man's age when he committed suicide. It could not have been his brother Archie, who was 10 years older.

At the time of the tragedy, Miriam had been out of the limelight for some years, having left politics after being discredited for her staunch support of President Estrada during his impeachment trial. She, along with Enrile, Tito Sotto and other Erap allies, kept her silence after People Power II erupted in 2001. Later that year her term as Senator ended. She ran for reelection and lost. She spent the last two and a half years with her family.

In 2004 she decided to run for senator again, setting aside her promise to her deceased son not to enter politics again. Her son, she explained, did not like politics because it made thingd difficult and it changed her. "He believed people should see the real me, my natural personality -- my Ilongga side which is malambing."

Miriam won. In late 2006, according to Wikipedia, a group of young lawyers nominated her for Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. But she reportedly gave way to the senior associate justice, saying that she was too young for the post. In 2010 she was reelected, and now she is in the heat of another impeachment trial. When I saw her on TV a few days ago, haranguing the prosecutors, even quarreling with one of the lawyers, I wondered if the inner burden of a dead child in her heart weighed so heavily that she would let her temper erupt so violently, like the volcano that transformed me from a bookseller to a newsman.

***

Note: I've extracted some information from the following article, which I reprint in full so readers will get a fuller idea of what Miriam had gone through:

Ex-senator Miriam Santiago: 
I'm done with politics

Posted:0:14 AM (Manila Time) | Nov. 23, 2003
By Tina Santos and Juliet L. Javellana
Inquirer News Service

"I AM removing myself from politics to fulfill my promise to him."

Former senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago told reporters Friday night that this was the wish of her son Alexander Robert.

Speaking at "AR's" wake at the Christ the King chapel in Greenmeadows subdivision, Quezon City, Santiago said her "baby" had consistently objected to her political career because it gave people "the impression that I'm bad, since I'm always indulging my sense of humor."

At around 8 p.m. on Thursday, AR, who turned 22 on Oct. 2, was found with a gunshot wound in the head inside his room at the family's new home in the posh La Vista subdivision in Quezon City.

Family and friends have flocked to the wake since Friday. And though not exactly AR's favorite people, politicians have come, too, among the first being President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and Quezon City Mayor Feliciano Belmonte.

AR didn't like the way politics made things "difficult" and constantly "changed" her, Santiago said. "He believed people should see the real me, my natural personality -- my Ilongga side which is malambing (affectionate)."

The last two and a half years that she'd been out of the public eye -- after her Senate term ended in 2001 and she lost a reelection bid -- brought her closer to her family, especially AR, Santiago said, and for this she was "very grateful."

It has also made it easier for her to accept AR's suicide, she said.

AR is the younger of the ex-senator's two sons by husband Narciso Santiago Jr., former interior undersecretary.

Archie, who is older than AR by 10 years, has been devastated by the incident, according to their mother. "They were very close," she said.

At the wake, Santiago also talked with AR's classmates at the Ateneo de Manila University, where he was a law freshman, describing him as "a perfect son any mother would wish to have."

AR was an "illimitable source of comfort" especially when she underwent "the usual grind of black propaganda and name-calling," she said. "If I were asked to manufacture a child according to my specifications, the result would have been AR. We were really joined at the hip."

'Hot Babe'

She had only happy times with AR, she said, up till the end: "Every night when he came home from school, he would enter my room, and give me a snappy greeting like, 'Yo, woman!' or 'How's my hot babe?' We would talk about his day in school, his classmates ... he would kiss and hug me, he was so malambing."

Even in public, she said, they would hold hands. "He was never embarrassed. People at the market or the mall envied us. We were like a love team, they teased us, because I would hug and kiss him in front of many people."

Like any young man, AR dated, his mother recalled. He once consulted her about making a choice between a girl who lived nearby and another whom he had to make a long detour to fetch.

"I told him it depends, if her value exceeds the amount of gasoline," she laughed.

Santiago was sure he had placed her "above everything else." He would drop everything when she needed company, even to go shopping, Miriam said.

Best of all, she said, they talked. "Oh, how he loved discussion. So he was a child after my own heart. Not everyone wants to discuss philosophy, or Marx versus Hagel ... but he enjoyed that kind of thing. My husband would sometimes complain at the dinner table, saying, 'Go ahead, just talk between the two of you since you ... don't care whether other people understand you or not."'

Among her last discussions with AR, Santiago said, was about turning over her law firm to him when she retired.

Goodbye, mom

The grief that the feisty lawyer and former public official almost succeeded in hiding surfaced when she recounted AR's last few days and their last encounter.

The night before her son took his own life, she recalled, he came into her room looking as if he wanted to say something.

"He did not say it, but I could see it in his eyes," she said. "I saw that he was very tired and I tried to raise his spirits. Instead of kissing me goodnight, he asked me to sit up. I did, and he gave me a very, very tight hug and then said, 'Goodbye mom.' I let that slip ... and that's the last I saw of him."

The following morning, there wasn't the usual sign on his door asking her to wake him up. "He would stick it up on his door with a piece of gum," she recalled, unable to resist a chuckle. And then in the afternoon, at 4 o'clock apparently, he got his father's gun and shot himself in the head."

Because workers had been drilling iron bars onto her windows, she said, the maids did not hear the gunshot. "My husband and I came home after five. We assumed our son was in school and the maids did not tell us (that he never left the house). At 7 p.m., the maids went to call him to dinner. That's when they found him."

Hope never dies

When her husband insisted that she "stay away," Santiago said, she knew it was bad. So she forced herself through AR's door. "He was lying face down in a pool of his own blood and his face was gray. I knew my son was dead, but still I hoped ... hope never dies in a mother's breast."

Archie carried his brother while their father took the wheel and sped off to the East Avenue Medical Center. Santiago was left at home. When her husband called later, he instructed her to "fortify" herself.

In denial

She recounted: "I asked, 'Is AR dead?' He said, 'We'll continue to try to revive him.' But I knew it was more of a wish. The whole night I couldn't cry at all. I was in denial, I couldn't accept that he was dead. In the morning, that was when I started to cry." When she finally saw AR inside a coffin on Friday morning, she broke down altogether.

Santiago was certain that AR killed himself because he had received a failing mark in constitutional law. "He took it hard because of me," she said, eyes misting over. She is an acknowledged expert on the subject.

But the young man's anxiety could also have built up from the time that he was denied admission to the University of the Philippines College of Law prior to his enrollment in Ateneo, his mother said.

AR had passed the UP entrance test but failed the oral exam, during which Santiago said her son was asked "cruel" questions.

"He was asked what he thought about the charge of her mother's insanity and how much his father bet on cockfights," she said, shaking her head. "Apparently they (panel interviewers) were no fans of mine."

AR lost confidence in himself and the system as a result, Santiago said. "He had that in his heart, like a big heavy rock."

In his first semester at Ateneo, AR failed the subject of persons and family relations. Santiago said they protested this, but "did not even get the courtesy of a reply." Soon after, he told her he was worried about his grade in constitutional law. "He was afraid that if he had two flunking grades, he might be kicked out. Dean (Joaquin) Bernas (said that) was not the case. But for a person who had been on the dean's list and passed two written exams, I think AR found it unacceptable to flunk twice in a row."

Layers of humiliation

She learned later from AR's classmates that the grades were released in the afternoon of that day she last saw him. They also told her that among those who failed, he took it the hardest. "It was actually layer upon layer of frustration and humiliation that reached an inevitable peak," she said of her son's extreme reaction.

The Santiagos also have adopted twin daughters, Megan and Molly. Without AR, whom she had also called "Toto" or "Hunk," the ex-senator said, the family will never be the same, and the coming holidays "would definitely be a lot different."

She did not feel guilty about AR's suicide, Santiago said. "But for a moment, I had a very strong sense of self-hate. I have an accomplished student record, and maybe my children (thought) they were expected to match this -- if not by me, then by society. Sometimes I also look at my professional career as a curse on my children."

Right now, she said, she was thankful to God for having brought her "so much love" through AR: "There will be a lot of pain because it will take maybe 10, 20 years before I see my son again. But at his level of existence, there is a certain philosophical view that he will not suffer even if we are separated because at that level, time moves at a different pace and his expectation will be that I will be there in a minute, I'm just turning the corner."

Until then, she will take it slow. "I used to have fire in my belly," she sighed. "But now I am numb."

Angeles HD

Angeles City, October 1964

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.

--   The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam, translated by Edward Fitzgerald, 1859 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I saw this photo posted by Taga Angeles Ku on Facebook, and memories beyond the scope of this two-dimensional digital image rushed in. 


Back in the '60s, the Esso gas station sign was one of the first things I saw from my window in my waking hours. My room is on the second floor of a house just about across that gas station. Early at night I heard the occasional jeeps passing by; there were not many then, so the calesas, pulled by skinny horses, were not obstructions at all. Even in the mornings and afternoons of those quiet years, traffic was always light and, as can be seen in the picture, the view was not obscured by pollution.

At ground level of the house we rented was the junk shop my father managed. I was in grade school then, taking up English courses from 7 a.m. to 12 noon, and a Chinese course from 1-5 p.m. I made good grades, but, thinking about that now, I realize I was kind of dumb then. For example, I was not aware that my family lacked in many aspects, such as a house of our own, not exposed to the hustles of Henson Street. Maybe it's because Grade School leveled our status -- poor and lower middle-class kids mixed with rich kids whose family owned a hotel near Crossing, a big grocery store downtown, or a drug store just beyond that Esso sign.

So up and down the junk shop my family thrived. On weekends I was asked to stay at the shop: that meant help my father while he weighed the corrugated boards, sheets of folded tins, rusty iron metals and nuts and bolts, and stacks of old newspapers. In mid-afternoon, as the sun highlighted the road outside the store, I would sift through the bundle of newspapers, separating all the cartoon pages, especially from the Stars & Stripes. Sometimes I got lucky and found a portion of a Peanuts book or -- heaven on Earth! -- an entire comic book, or a letter envelope with a stamp still stuck on it. At night I would pore through my finds, not knowing that the black-and-white strips, the Batman adventures, and my growing stamp collection were influences that would stick for life.

I don't remember the year we moved to Henson St., but the junk shop with second-floor living space was certainly many notch above the rectangular one-room tenement we had left behind in an alley leading to the Apo Church. That church is located in Lourdes Sur East, where, my mother told me, I was born around noon of a Wednesday in 1955. "Yes," my grandmother would add later on, "there was an eclipse, the sky turned dark in the middle of the afternoon, the dogs howled, and all the chickens, after cackling their protest, went to sleep."

Google spat out the only significant event that occurred the day I was born: Ngo Din Diem declared South Vietnam a republic and became its first president. He would be assassinated in early 1963. A few days later, 1963 Nov. 22, President John F. Kennedy would be assassinated too. I remember my mother waking me very early on the morning of November 23 -- it's still dark outside -- and showing me the front page of a special edition of the Manila Times. The front-page photo showed a dotted line starting from a top window of a building, leading to a spot in a car below -- the trajectory of the bullet that blew open a side of Kennedy's head. "The president of America was killed," my mother said. "Uh-huh," I said, my mind more on the unusual fact that someone in our house had bought a new newspaper, not a used one to be priced by weight. Strange day. The smell of fresh ink on clean paper would stay with me forevermore, when I buy a new book, when I add a new Batman comics to my collection, when I get fresh bills from the bank. A month and a year later after the Kennedy assassination, the picture above of Henson Street would be taken.

We slept early at night on Henson Street, unlike those crazy chickens in Lourdes Sur East. I remember the fading roar of cars leaving the city, the clop-clops of the hooves of a horse pulling its load to home and a well-deserved rest. I see through my window the high structure across the street and I wonder what kind of people live in such a place, so big and not made of wood. Sometimes I hear a jukebox somewhere, making the night soft with guitar music: Faithful Love, I Miss You So, Sleepwalk. The titles of those songs I would learn when I grew up. Through the years, in High School, in College, I would try to perform the tunes on a succession of guitars bought and broken, with no success. And one song by the Beatles remains magical in my memory because it was played one night when no other sounds obtruded: Ask Me Why. Haunting.

And so they remain, the old songs, the Peanuts strips on half-a-book without cover, Henry, Nancy, Dagwood, Dick Tracy, Casper, Wendy, Richie Rich. The years would pile new memories on top of old, and although the structures of lives and buildings have been so drastically altered now, just an old picture in Facebook can bring the past to life. That version of the past will live, as long as the old cells in my faltering mind sustain the existence of my Angeles, in high definition.

Brown Sugar

Evolution of the Philippine Flag

EIGHTEEN YEARS AGO the world was younger and so was I. I was more innocent, less experienced; so was the world.

Angeles City, too, where I walked on one of her unpaved streets, under a sheet of rain, tiny fingerlings probing me for spots left unwet.

I laughed. I was sopping wet but I laughed with my newfound freedom to get wet with impunity. Drops and drops of waterpins dripped from my hair; there were a lot of drops because I had more hair then.

Suddenly a runt of a jeep – there were very few full-length Saraos then – splashed by, carrying a bunch of palengkera in its belly.

One of them cried out to me: “Oy, boy! (I was that young. At least I looked that young.) Queni, sake na ca; bayaran que’ng pamasahi mu.” She was a stout motherly woman, her heart as stout and soft as she.

The jeep waddled to a stop, but with a friendly wave I let it go, the woman still protesting, “Boooyyy…”

It was fun while it lasted. Of course I paid for it the next day with a raging fever. A few weeks later the big flood came and washed away the bridge near Tibagin. A few months later bombs exploded and Marcos declared martial law.

But it would take more than exploding bombs and martial law, in fact it would take more than a few years, before I realized that stouthearted fishwives – especially those on their way to Pampang Market to haggle and fight over a few centavo difference in their galunggong – do not instinctively succor a boy in the rain.

But in 1972, 18 years ago, there were still a lot of them.

At that time, old-age pension was unheard of because in the provinces old people were cared for. Orphanages were not built because no child was ever without a home. Mental hospitals were few because Filipino life did not provoke nervous breakdowns.

And poverty was not a shame then because no Filipino would see his brother starve. Besides:
EDJOP was still alive.
Eman still wrote his poems.
Cory visited Ninoy in his cell.

And through all my doubts, I admired people I would later hate.

But that was a long time ago, when beggars were not syndicated, when coup d’etat was only an exotic French phrase, when we had to look up a dictionary to know what pedophile meant.

That was when Snoopy ruled the Earth. Garfield did not exist, Calvin and Hobbes still a universe away. The seed of Pugad Baboy was not even planted yet.

Those were salad days even if Nixon was president of the United States, Marcos the dictator of the Philippines; even if we didn't care as much about the US bases and we didn’t ask why we sent our soldiers to fight in Vietnam. We coasted along.

So it was almost too late when we realized that the old-age pension was missing because they closed down the Veteran’s Bank, that orphanages were not filled because the children were sold to foreigners. And the reason why mental hospitals were still few was that most of those who should have been committed there were occupying Cabinet positions instead.

We became sophisticated. We learned to bury some of our dead under film centers. For a papal visit, we whitewashed poverty out of existence by erecting walls around the squatters.

Ninoy fasted and almost starved to death, in a country so richly endowed by nature that it was almost impossible to go hungry.

What happened? There was a time when Rafael Zulueta da Costa, a poet as fine as this country could produce, compared the Filipino to the molave – brown, sturdy and resilient.

Or perhaps my friends Ody, Abner and Joven will agree if I use another definition -- that the Filipino is Brown Sugar: coarse, unrefined, undiluted by foreign and false flavors, yet offering the same sweetness; more natural, therefore more honest.

And brown. As brown as the skin of the fat, gentle fishwife who with instincts as old as the islands, gives sanctuary to any boy running from the rain.

But the boy, sometimes he is not as young as he looks; the rain is not always wet, not when it is made of lead.

***

I’ve got brown sugar in my veins. My veins are as taut as the strings of a guitar strumming the song of a struggle far more destructive than the RAM-SFP coup stuff, much more insidious than the AFP vs NPA war. I am fighting for the Filipino mind.


You see, out there in the streets walks a treacherous woman with more money than brain, more pesos than sense, who would have us believe that white sugar is infinitely better than brown sugar.

She hires hacks with saccharine and nutrasweet in their veins, with molasses as their brains, who churn out tripes in their constant attempt to convince us of the superiority of their pale patrons and the inferiority of our race.


Your culture, they hint, is damaged.

Compare: you have no temple, no Angkor Wat, no grand mausoleum like the Taj Mahal, no Great Wall, no Hanging Garden, not even a Stonehenge, or Easter Island heads. Even poor Peru has Machu Picchu, but you, the only pyramids you have are the ones Johnny Midnight sells.

The Rice Terraces – What of it? It’s only a food-oriented monument to the first brown sugars who molded and cultivated it.

Come to think of it, even the names of your tribes are food oriented. Tagalog, Cebuano, Pampango, Ilongo, Bicolano, Ilocano – translated, don’t they all mean the same thing? A body of people who lives near a body of water, where they pluck the fishes for their food, which make their hair kinky and their noses flat.

Why, even your first freedom fighter was named after a big fish. He made chop-chop out of that grand culture bearer, Magellan, in Mactan.

Wasdimater with you little brown brothers, don’t you like culture? Don’t you like the Aspirin Age?

Ish depengs, I say.

***

Eighteen years later, the big flood returned and the body of water turned bigger than the body of people living near its edge and washed them away.

On that Saturday morning, while houses in Dolores, Abacan and Sapangbato disappeared, my jeep was stuck in the middle of a bridge in Mabiga.

Blankets of rain poured on me, but there were fewer drops that dripped from my hair.

Cultured men in their cultured cars beep-beeped and whizzed by, followed by full-length Saraos – there’s a lot of them now. One even tried to scrape the backside of my runt of a jeep. Then a garbage truck rumbled behind, and the driver, a thin man with a straw hat, jumped down and we pushed the runt to the shoulder of the road.

When we couldn’t figure out what was wrong, he returned to his truck and drove off – he still had garbage to collect, even in that rain – but not before dropping off one of his men to stay with me.

“He’s our mechanic,” the driver said. The man, shirtless, wet and shivering, looked under the hood.

“I can’t fix this,” he said. “I’ll get my son.”

“Where’s your son?”

“In San Joaquin.”

Thirty minutes later, the man, his son and me – three wet miserable creatures -- worked under the hood until the faithless runt throbbed to life again.

I paid the son for fixing the jeep. For getting out of the warm comfort of his house and coming into the rain to help his shivering father and me, he was not paid. Filipino culture has not yet decreed a price for that sort of thing.

The father did not ask and I didn’t offer any payment. I am much older and more experienced now to know that to do so would be an offense. The truck driver was his compadre.

“Salamat,” I said. It was the only acceptable mode of payment.

Then the truck rumbled into view from the opposite direction, its belly already full of the cultured garbage of cultured people. The driver, his straw hat dripping, waved me away with a smile as his shirtless compadre hopped into the truck.

“Salamat, salamat…”

Later on, I figured out that the truck driver, the father and the son, and that fat woman 18 years ago, were the same products of this unfortunate land -- uneducated but gentle, less cultured but lacking the great unkindness of sophisticated races.

I’ll stay with them, maybe only for a short time -- because my life is short. I’ll fight the good fight with them, as long as the treacherous woman leads the good life by throwing brown sugar down the river.

***

This first appeared in The Angeles Sun in September 1990, then in Midweek magazine in November 1991. Maybe it's not surprising that this article has maintained its relevance after more than 20 years.

Tulang pinulot sa aking email c'',)

U R

You are the...

Apple of my eye

Mango of my pie

Palaman of my tinapay

Niyog on my kalamay .

You are the...

Ipin of my suklay

Ring on my kamay

Blood of my atay

Bubbles of my laway.

 You are the ...

 Roof of my bahay

 Strength of my tulay

 Joy of my tagumpay

 Dream of my nanay.

 You are the...

Ube in my monay

Patis in my gulay

Toyo in my siomai

Calcium in my kalansay.

You are the...

Buhol of my tie

Bituin of my sky

Beauty of my Tagaytay

Ketchup on my french fry.

You are the....

Wings when I fly

Wind when I paypay

Sipit for my sampay

Tungkod when I am pilay.

You are the...

Shoulder when I cry

Cure to my "aray"

Answer as to "why"

I am nangingisay.

You are the

only Love until I die

In short, you are

The Center of My Buhay.

Pinoy love lines

Sinimulan ito nina Julius Babao at Niña Corpuz kaninang umaga; sumali pa si Vic Lima. Pinoy love lines: 
(1) Para kang Google, kasi nasa iyo ang lahat ng hanap ko. 
(2) Hindi ka pa ba napapagod, lagi kang tumatakbo sa isip ko. 
(3) Para kang Pasko, lagi kitang hinihintay. 
(4) Nasaan ka kagabi, wala ka sa panaginip ko. 
(5) Ang pag-ibig parang catsup, matamis pero maraming nakikisawsaw.

At marami pa sa kantang ito:

Jim Lee's Art

Superman #204

Umaga na naman,

Wala na ang buwan.

"Oy, Bongee, saan mo dinala?"

"Aba, Pogi, di ko kinuha."

Ayan, ginawa kong vehicle itong drawing na Superman ni Jim Lee (tingala, please) para sa Gud Morning poem ko kay Bong Raya Leuterio, alias Bongee. Nung 1970s binulabog ang mga comics geek ng matinding presentation ni Neal Adams kay Batman, yung may light and deep shadows. Ito marahil ang simula ng image ni Batman as the kick-ass Dark Knight. Por eksampol, tingnan mo ang Adams cover sa ibaba:

Tapos dumating itong American-Korean artist na si Jim Lee at sinimulan and 12-issue series na Hush mula Batman #608. Siyempre kinomplete ko ang buong series.

Batman #608

At dahil magpapasyal pa ako sa sa eBay, ihahagis ko na lang itong natitirang artwork ni Lee. Sangkatutak pa ang makikita nyo sa http://comicartcommunity.com/gallery/categories.php?cat_id=52 c'',)

Puwedeng gawing wallpaper sa iPad mo, dba?

Meron akong malaking poster nito sa Stamp Room ko.

You're welcome.

Lakbay-Diwa

Batman #608

Minsan... hindeeeh, madalas! -- bigla akong magigising bago bumuka si Liwayway, ika nga, dahil siniko na naman ang naghihilik kong imahinasyon ng mga basurang diwa na nawaglit kong itapon nung gising pa ako. Kaya ayan, alas tres ng saksakang dilim pang umaga eh kinakalabit ako, at di ako patutulugin muli hanggang di ko sinakyan itong bagong topak ng utak. Pipitik ako ng ilang letra at magsisimula ang biyahe. Kung saan-saan sesemplang ang diwang kadalasa'y di rin alam kung saan lalagapak. Eto ang resulta:

Pinasyalan ko nung Linggo si Mang Andy, o Congressman Ferdinand "Andy" Moño. (Siya ang nagturo sa akin na miyembro siya ng "hinayupaks" na House of Representathieves.) Dinatnan ko siyang hawak ang Batman comics, at tila malalim ang iniisip.


"Wow, Ninong, variant cover ng Hush #1 yan ah. Was di problem?"

"Ala lang, napakagara nireng pagka-drawing ni Jim Lee kay Batman -- nasa lugar lahat ang muscle, matipuno siya, tila intelihente pa. Di ko pa rin mawari bakit nasa labas ang brief niya."

"Hebigat nga ng problema mo, 'Nong. Tingnan mo, nakasinturon pa, para di malaglag ang brief. Suspension of the brief, nyehehe.."

"Diyan nakasalampak ang isip ko ngayon, iho, sa dyaskeng suspension of disbelief na iyan. Bakit tila ang buong Pilipinas ay nagbubulag-bulagan."

"I know what you mean, Ninong, ako rin na-shock sa desisyon ng mga judges-- "

"Mga hinayupak na hunghang, mga kusinerong tigaluto ng mapaklang desisyon, manghahabi ng buhanging nakakaduling, mga kilabot sa kotong, mga..."

"Easy, Ninong, easy. At least obvious pa rin, kahit binigay nila ang points kay Pacman, bumaba ang ranking niya ngayon, second to Mayweather na lang ngayon, according to Sports Illustrated. Pero sa Ring magazine..."

"Dyaske! Ala akong pakialam sa Pacman-Pacman na iyan, laging absent sa session, lagi kong nakikita sa sabungan, pumusta pa laban sa Texas ko, grrr... Tapos itong diyosa niyang si Gloria, at ang mga huwes na nasa bulsa ng tiniris na tiyanak, akala mo talagang kagalang-galang na di bulag sa taginting ng malaking lagay, akala mo birhen ang Constitution na ilang beses na nilang ginahasa..."

"Dami ngang pang-utong sound bites no, Ninong? Rule of Law. Nation of law, not of men. Extend due respect to a former president of the land. First Gentleman..."

"Pweh! Pweh! Pwehpwepwepwepwe! Dinuduraan ko ang duwendeng masiba sa pesos at poder, pati na ang asawa niyang mataba, isama mo na ang sagradong Constitution na ginagamit pala makatakas ang kutong-lupa at tulisang kamag-anak, para magmistulang tama ang mali. Kung paluluhurin ako ng ganitong batas para igalang ang mag-asawang mandarambong at bayaring appointees nila sa hukuman, susunugin ko sa harap nila ang nilapirot na Constitution. Ba't takot silang ma-contempt of court?! Malalim ang contempt ko sa tarandadong Supreme Court na yan. If this be contempt, make the most of it! Pweh! Pwepwepwepweh!..."

At diyan ko iiwan itong latest escapade ng imsoniac kong utak. PwepwepwePwehehe... Wish me sleep, fans.

The thing about kittens

Three cuties, Jobs, and me

Tabby gave birth to three cuties more than two months ago. Now one of them is trying to snatch the cursor on the screen as I type this.

At birth, Ragdolls are white, thin-furred kitties who suckle and sleep all day, not very different from us at all. After two weeks their eyes open, and a few days more they crawl about, their lifelong curiosity in bloom. A few more weeks they jump on the bed, chewing the tissue papers and book pages, making scratch post of my arms and legs to sharpen their growing nails, or claws.

Now, about those nails: at certain length they curl at the end, obviously to hook into my moving toes and my other body parts that move. As Leena says, "If it moves, it's prey." I know that too, after bottles of betadine through the years. It is not unusual to find repaired patches on my arms and legs when kittens come. I have grown used to surreptitious glances at my scratches -- and Mickey Mouse band-aids -- from salesladies in mall shops and bookstores.

However, there are times when the sudden although playful digs of claws into my flesh make me curl up and shout for Melay to take away the particular "gremlin" preying in my bed. Last week, all three siblings climbed aboard and wrestled, chewed, clawed -- bits of tissues, some of paper and some from my flesh, were torn. To save what's left of my body -- I always save some parts for the next generations of kittens to come -- I moved to the other room to continue my reading or my Angry Birds game.

Being human more or less -- less, I think -- sometimes I get irritated, even mad (in all sense of the word), when claws suddenly dig  deeply into my leg. One such time,  I threw a pillow at one of the kits in startled reaction to a bite on my toe (it moved).  Fortunately no harm was done. That's my first and last pillow-throw. I don't want to experience again the great alarm and anxiety I felt as the pillow winged its way toward its target.

Tuesday this week, October 25, one of the kittens got sick. Early in the morning Melay noticed the kit became sluggish, had stopped eating, and went frequently to the litter box to relieve herself. Diarrhea can be fatal to kittens if the resulting dehydration is not cured in time. The kitten was forced to ingest water mixed with brown sugar every 30 minutes to give her energy -- and the much needed time to survive until the vet arrived.

It was touch and go for the kitten that day. The vet observed severe dehydration and injected electrolytes into the weak kitten. It was a painful process, for the kitten, whose piteous meows made Tabby jump onto the table to see what was happening. And no less for me as the inserted needle sent the kitten, although weak, struggling and emitting purrs of pain. Cold hands clutched my heart, already full of fear, and of thoughts that if I could only bear the pain and danger for the kitten, I would.

I cannot fathom the depth of despair when a kitten is lost to us. Too many, loving and loved, are already interred around the mango tree in our garden. Time numbs the pain, distress, and helplessness against the crazy ways of the world, but a kitten in danger refreshes the feelings, and fear is never diminished.

Melay, who feeds and play with Tabby's brood, yesterday noticed the kitten playing with its siblings, running, jumping, climbing, eating -- mundane activities in normal times, but not in my home, not in my person, made coward by the loss of little heartbeats. 

Yesterday Leena gave me a new book -- "Steve Jobs" by Walter Isaacson. And the kitten played on. My silent joy is equivalent to a prayer. Happy birthday, indeed.

Julius

This is one of two photos we have of orange Julius -- to remember him by. He quietly passed away in the early morning of 2011 March 30, Wednesday. He did not even get to feel the warmth of another sunrise. He was buried near the mango tree, joining other kittens that also were not given the chance to grow and frolic in our hearts. He was with us for a measly two weeks, yet his death stings like hell. It almost makes me believe in souls and heaven, so he will have a place to go, where no ill star can touch him anymore.

We don't know why he died. One day he is calling for his adoptive mother, Tabby, for milk, for warmth, for licks of affection, playing with Tabby's five kids, his squeaky delight filling the house; then on Wednesday he is gone. Just like that, he's gone. For ever.

At my age I have gone through a lot, but I am still bewildered by the death of the innocents. I understand how powerless we are against the force of nature. No amount of petition or prayers can stay the execution of fate, no tears of pity or shouts of rage are considered. Such is our world.

Let me put on record Julius' existence: On 2011 March 17, before noon, Julius, thin, dirty and hungry, was seen crawling near the street where Leena was waiting for a ride to work. So Leena phones home and Joy went to get Julius home, where he was given a bath in warm water. Two other mother cats were approached to see if they will give Julius their life-saving milk. No. We understand the No of nature. So, it's obviously Tabby again, who we were trying to spare from feeding another kitten with her present brood of five. Any kitten is Tabby's kitten, and acceptance was immediate and unquestioned.

 

For the next few days I would be startled from my reading by a sharp squeals from Julius. Joy said Tabby's kids were wrestling again, including Julius in their play. 

"So why the loud meows?" I asked.

"Jinujudo siya ng mga anak ni Tabby, gustong-gusto naman."

Squeals, thuds, crashes (sometimes resulting in broken glass and vases) and noises caused by pets you love do not distract me (whom slight rustles are irritants) from reading or writing. Even old age accepts new facts of life. I can easily accept death now, after so many colleagues and a few friends have preceded me. What I cannot learn to accept is the death of young kittens.

I quote from Leena's blog -- Tears for a kitten, http://www.catlovertalaga.com/2010/08/sometimes-i-wanna-get-my-hand-on-god.html -- "Sometimes what tears our hearts is not the terrible thing that happens to us, but to the ones we deeply care for."

Our Tabby

Tabby accommodates Julius while one of her kittens looks on.

Ragdolls are invariably white-furred, blue-eyed amiable cats -- like Tabby in the photo above. An orange stray is suckling hungrily, minutes after the kitten was picked up in a street corner. Tabby is the only mother cat of any breed in our home who is willing to succor any kitten in distress. And this is not the first time she has saved a kitten thrown to die, either by hunger, exposure to the elements, or to be squashed under the wheel of a passing car. People can be cruel if they are ignorant. I like animals more than people.

Back to Tabby and the new foundling, which, due to his orange color, has been named Julius. Tabby -- named after Stephen King's wife, Tabitha -- has given birth to five kittens almost two months ago, but that doesn't matter -- any kitten of any breed, color or origin is welcome to join her brood anytime. In the photo, one of her kids is looking on as Julius clings to his adoptive mother.

Julius' hunger is not limited to milk; he also needs the comfort and warmth of a mother's presence. A squeaky meow indicates that Tabby is away from his side. So, sometimes Julius, eyes still unopened, will crawl until he finds a warm body to cling on. Tabby's kids, who turn two-month-old today (2011 March 20), have acquired the amiability and gentleness inherent to Ragdolls; they let Julius cuddle them.

Julius climbs on his new "brother" for warmth.

This is not the first time Tabby has succored and saved other cat's child. I remember April 2009, when Eric, a friend, brought a baby Ragdoll to us because the kit's mother could not produce milk. Eric came to us, hoping to find a way to save the feeble kitten, which was already weak from starvation.

Here is Leena's account of the incident:

"I hoped that our Tabby, who recently gave birth to three healthy kittens, will succor a fourth. If not, it’s just a matter of a few hours before the weak Ragdoll dies. Hoping fervently, I placed the scrawny kitten’s fate before Tabby.

Without hesitation, Tabby nipped the kitty’s nape and added it among her brood. The small one, eyes still closed, instinctively found a teat and sucked weakly as we watched. A few minutes later we relaxed a bit when the baby continued feeding. At least a spark was kindled.

A few days later, our tiny refugee was crawling about the room. We gained something precious – this world, so sordid, could not be so intolerable if from time to time it allows a spluttering life to go on.

Then the allotted weeks passed, and the kitten opened an eye. We waited for the other eye to open, but it remained shut. When Eric visited his kitten, he was elated to see the improvement. When he saw the closed/open eyes, he said the lovely rascal looked like a bandit." (So the survivor's name became Bandit -- a cute bandit who stole our heart.)

[ http://www.catlovertalaga.com/2009/03/bandit.html ]

Then in October 2009, Ondoy devastated Metro Manila, including our neighborhood. Two days after the super-typhoon, Leena found three newborn kittens thrown in front of a pastor's house. Naturally the three became a part of our household. And Tabby, who had just given birth to six kittens a few days earlier, tried to bring one of them to add to her brood. But that is another story.

In the eyes of a child

Cute boy and painting by child prodigy Hamzah Marbella

In the eyes of a child
the world is young, where play
and slumber have no hurried pace.
The child, like the world, is rich beyond measure
because time has no meaning,
truth is not burdened by falsehood,
a marble is gem enough, bugs and dragonflies
fill the days: happiness abounds.
Age, casually tossed into eternity's heap,
cannot exist
in the eyes of the child.
--William the Henry