Marlon’s World

Salin at interpretasyon ng tulang La poesía es un arma cargada de futuro (1955) ng makatang Kastilang si Gabriel Celaya.

Para sa mga manggagawa. Para sa biktima ng rape sa Subic. Para sa mga nagsipagtapos na hindi natakot magsalita. Sapagkat ang dangal ay higit sa anumang alinlangan…

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Kapag wala nang hinahangad na pansariling kagalingan,
Bagkus ay tumitibok at bumabaloy ang diwa,
Nag-aalab ang pag-iral, buong-buo ang pasya,
Tulad ng pulsong bumabasag sa dilim.

Kung masumpungan nang sa harapa’y nakatitig
Ang nakagigimbal at nanlilisik na mata ng kamatayan,
Kagyat mawiwika ang mga katotohanan:
Mga kasakitang makahayup, mapaniil, masintahin.

Sinasabing ang tula raw na
Pumupukaw sa dibdib ng mga nasasakal
Ay humihingi ng kaakuhan, humihingi ng indayog,
Humihingi ng katwiran sa lahat na may labis.

Ang tula para sa maralita ay kinakailangan
Tulad ng kanilang kakanin sa araw-araw,
Tulad ng hanging hinihinga nating labintatlong ulit sa bawat saglit,
Upang mabuhay, tumugon ng oo at lumuwalhati.

Sapagkat nabubuhay tayo sa panganib, sapagkat hindi sila pumapayag
Na maipahayag kung sino tayo,
Di maaaring maging palamuti ang ating mga dalit nang hindi nagkakasala.
Narating na natin ang sukdulan.

Inaalipusta ko ang tulang naisulat bilang luho
Likhang-sining lamang ng mga walang pinapanigan na naghuhugas-kamay, lumalayo at umiiwas.
Inaalipusta ko ang tula ng sinumang hindi ibig marungisan.

Inaangkin ko ang mali.

Nararamdaman ko ang pagdurusa ng marami
At dumadalit ako’t humahangos.
Dumadalit ako, dumadalit ako, at sa pagdadalit ko ng higit sa
pansariling kakapusan, dumaramay ako sa iba.

Gusto kong bigyan kayo ng buhay, himukin ang bagong pagkilos,
At isinasapi ko rito ang paraang nalalaman ko.
Sa tingin ko’y manlilikha ako ng saknong at manggagawa
Na nagpapagal kasama ng iba sa mga pagawaan ng (Filipinas).

Ganito ang aking tula: tula-kasangkapan
Kasabay ng pintig ng nagkakaisa at natatago.
Gayon nga ito, sandatang lipos ng maalwang bukas
Na itinututok ko sa iyong dibdib.

Hindi ito tulang nabuo paunti-unti.
Hindi ito gawang kaibig-ibig. Hindi ito bungang sakdal.
Ito ay tulad ng hanging ating hinihinga
At ito ang dalit na nakapupuspos kapag isinaisip.

Mga salita itong inuulit natin at inaangkin   
Bilang atin, at sila’y lumilipad. Higit sila sa bungang-isip.
Ang higit na kinakailangan ay yaong hindi mapangangalan.
Alingawngaw sila sa langit at sa lupa sila’y pagkilos.

My first cousin, Annaliza Sangalang Aquino, will marry her boyfriend Sid Malabanan in June. I pray for their happiness and success. I personally can say how Ate Liza has been a great cousin, confidante, adviser, daughter, sister and aunt, and this marriage is something she truly and richly deserves.

As a fitting tribute, I am posting this song by the choir group Hangad. Its title is Pananatili, inspired by the verses in the Book of Ruth. I hope Ate Liza chooses this as a — if not the – wedding march since it captures that essence of matrimony. 

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Huwag mong naising lisanin kita;
Wala ‘kong hangaring ika’y mag-isa.
Sa’n man magtungo, ako’y sasabay,
Magkabalikat sa paglalakbay.

Dahil pag-ibig ang alay sa ‘yo, mananatili ako.
H’wag nang naising tayo’y mawalay,
H’wag nang isiping
Magwawakas ang paglalakbay.

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Don’t ask me to leave you;
I have no intention of letting you go.
Wherever you go, I will go.
Hand in hand shall we be in our journey.

Because it is love that I offer you, I shall always be here.
Do not ever wish that we part ways,
Do not ever think 
That this journey would someday end.

CONGRATULATIONS AND BEST WISHES!

Obviously, the irate people in this graduation ceremony have not attended any at the University of the Philippines…

Speaking of graduations, I take this opportunity to greet my brother Francis on the occasion of his own commencement. He graduates today with a BS in Materials Engineering from UP Diliman. Congratulations and all the best, bro!

In less than a month, the movie version of Dan Brown’s detective/historical/religious/adventure novel The Da Vinci Code (DVC) will hit the cinemas. Tom Hanks stars as Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon and French actress Audrey Tatou plays the cryptographer Sophie Neveau.

If book sales were any indication, the movie is bound to skyrocket the minute the cinemas open up. I, for one, enjoyed DVC and Brown’s follow-up novel Angels and Demons immensely, and would be ready to queue to see the movie ASAP. I read them during the time when there wasn’t any furor over the novels and when there were only a few of us who named them as two of our favorite books.

Now, years after, almost anyone who dares to be cultured is expected to include DVC as the reading material of choice. And, almost anyone who dares to ride on the DVC mania is bound to either hate the book or write a ripoff.

More than its controversial take on Jesus and his persona, it is DVC’s capacity to attract so much attention that surprises me. And not just from readers. Authors upon authors have devoted precious ink and paper to the Shroud of Turin, the Crown of Thorns, the Tomb of the Wise Men, the True Cross and the relics of the entire Christendom and the primordial, fictitious and/or stupid conspiracy plot linked to them, which almost always involves the Catholic Church.

And the works of art likewise have their share of mysteries. I wouldn’t be surprised if one day, Juan Luna’s Spoliarium or Guillermo Tolentino’s Bonifacio Monument would reveal an artistic inclination toward freemasonry.

As expected, Catholic experts have unleashed a barrage of homiletics, essays, studies and researches to counter the allegations of Brown et.al. I am under the impression, too, that the Church authorities are ready to demand the censorship of the film when the time comes for its showing. 

All this brouhaha reflects a sad part of Catholicism. For many people from both ends of the spectrum, Catholicism is one big mystery, a clandestine secret kept for the benefit of a few and an establishment whose foundations must be protected at all costs.

To many, DVC is a scandal sheet that problematizes the life of the person who changed civilization as we know it. It is only the response that bifurcates: to put it bluntly, those who love a good gossip advocate for DVC and those who protect the image of the Church oppose it.   

But we seem to miss out on some important issues: hasn’t DVC raised our collective consciousness of Jesus? Hasn’t DVC moved us to read more and reexamine our belief? Hasn’t DVC helped us realize that a million lifetimes have preceded ours and that we are not here without any antecedents?

When you think about it, no one would be interested in DVC (or in any poplit book nowadays with a similar theme) if it were on just any other person. DVC is popular because it talks about Jesus. It sources its fame on the simple premise that Jesus remains our Great Unknown, and that many are still searching to find out who He is in their lives.

DVC woke up a whole generation lured by the images of media and the comforts of passivity and gave it a common ground to start discussing faith. Be they Catholic or non-Catholic, the people who say they have found DVC interesting are now aware that everybody needs to sort out his beliefs and stand face to face with the polemic figure of Christ. People may come out renewed or doubting, but what is important is that DVC challenges us to experience the Divine and to experience it not blindly but with an open heart and mind.

Reading DVC does not end when we close the flaps of the book. Instead, the novel requires us to say for certain how it affected us.

For those who advocate it, it is never enough to just include it in the list of books worth reading. One has to scrutinize it, look for the facts in the prose and decide whether Brown has written more than just a work of fiction.

For those who oppose it, it is fundamental to reintroduce Jesus and the Church to a curious world minus the mysticism, the evasiveness and the ostentation that have shrouded truths of our Universal Faith.   

It is only then that DVC graduates into a more meritorious depiction of the person whom many wish to know but whom no one seems to understand.         

"Si linguis hominum loquar et angelorum, caritatem au tem non habeam, factus sum velut aes sonans aut cymbalum tinniens. Et si habuero prophetiam et noverim mysteria omnia et omnem scientiam, et si habuero omnem fidem, ita ut montes transferam, caritatem autem non habuero, nihil sum. Et si distribuero in cibos omnes facultates meas et si tradidero corpus meum, ut glorier, caritatem autem non habuero, nihil mihi prodest.

Caritas patiens est, benigna est caritas, non aemulatur, non agit superbe, non inflatur, non est ambitiosa, non quaerit, quae sua sunt, non irritatur, non cogitat malum, non gaudet super iniquitatem, congaudet autem veritati; omnia suffert, omnia credit, omnia sperat, omnia sustinet.

Caritas numquam excidit. Sive prophetiae, evacuabuntur; sive linguae, cessabunt; sive scientia, destruetur. Ex parte enim cognoscimus et ex parte prophetamus; cum autem venerit, quod perfectum est, evacuabitur, quod ex parte est.

Cum essem parvulus, loquebar ut parvulus, sapiebam ut parvulus, cogitabam ut parvulus; quando factus sum vir, evacuavi, quae erant parvuli. Videmus enim nunc per speculum in aenigmate, tunc autem facie ad faciem; nunc cognosco ex parte, tunc autem cognoscam, sicut et cognitus sum.

Nunc autem manet fides, spes, caritas, tria haec; maior autem ex his est caritas."

Ad Corinthios Epistola I Sancti Pauli Apostoli, Sacra Vulgata

I’m not that good in Latin either. You wanna know the meaning? Get your Bible or search the Internet for I Corinthians 13:1-3.

HAVE A BLESSED EASTER, EVERYONE!

Odd, I am writing this blog entry (after so many months of inactivity) at 10:30 PM despite the fact that I am so weary and should be sleeping right now. It has been a long, exhausting day for me. I woke up rather late because I arrived from Paris at 2:00 AM. (Never take Air Madrid for the love of all that is good and beautiful. It never leaves on time.) Then I had to attend a 2-hour class on historical linguistics in the afternoon. To top it all off, I still have some several chapters to read for my class on Spanish morphosyntax tomorrow.

Speaking of morphosyntax, I now remember a lesson about squinting modifiers in English. Squinting modifiers are those that ambiguously modify an element in a grammatical sequence. It’s like the title of this entry, Missing people. It can refer to (1) the act of feeling nostalgia for those that are not here, or simply (2) the people not present.

It can refer to the fact that for the past months, I have been connected to a good part of my circle only through the Internet. It’s so artificial and no amount of equipment can substitute for the presence of friends and loved ones. Then you hear of news on family members graduating, on friends getting married, on acquaintances dying… things that every now and then jolt me out of stupor that this utopian lifestyle brings. And it grounds me to reality, too: Within a short period of time, I’ll have to come home and find myself back to where I started out in the first place. No allowance, no trips abroad, no facilities, no avenues for self-improvement. It’s sad to realize that while we starve to death in the country, the rest of the world does not stop to evolve.

Missing people also refers to those that are not with us today. The recent demonstrations in Paris made me remember that news about a student-leader in Bicol who was murdered by suspected members of the Armed Forces. The person, according to the motley of information I gathered, has been very vocal against this administration. Then you hear of newsmen being gunned down, of academics being detained, of media programs being censored.

This is a very scary scenario for us, if indeed the reports were true. We now live in a country where the price of telling what you feel equals your very life. Call me a romantic and an idealist, but I still maintain that the best way to prove somebody wrong is to show that you’re the opposite of what that somebody has said. If the media bitch against this administration, this administration should prove that media reports are false by showing indubitable evidence that belie all the accusations hurled against the persons involved and not by silencing dissent. No college degree is needed to understand this: even children playing along the streets know that the one who refuses to talk about farting is the one who farted in the first place.      

I so miss people. ‘Nuff said.