INTERSECTION: NARRATIVE OF LOVE, SOCIAL DISCOURSE, AND ILOKANO LITERARY
HISTORY
Aurelio Solver
Agcaoili
University of Hawaii
In my research on Ilokano literary history, there are only a
few writings handed down to us, documents that have a vision that covers half a
century of looking at the future of a birth-land and country with critical
eyes.
Lorenzo Garcia Tabin and Sinamar Robianes Tabin’s “Woven Strands of Roses” is one of these.
It has been forty-eight years since the first of all the
love letters was written.
If we measure this length of time in the finitude of human
time—in that time that is intertwined with the mortality of human life—it has
not been easy doing this stringing of the years, this safekeeping of these
letters of love, and the safeguarding with the most tender care of these
letters so these would not rendered extinct by the quick way by which a moment
comes to pass.
For a witness of this kind of narrative like me, there is that
emotion that overpowers the knotted feelings we see ingrained in these letters,
an emotion that seeks the meaning of one’s own life, an emotion that fathoms
the root-and-stem of the dreams that one day this love would come to a
realization, that it would bear fruit, that it would blossom.
Did the author of life provide this extraordinary opportunity
so that these letters would be collected into a book?
There are those letters that were lost, that found their way
to other places—but the more important thing at this time is that most of these
have been preserved so that they could give us a way through which the primeval
aims could be reflected, primeval aims that spring from the feeling of
coming-of-age, of coming into adulthood so that in the end one would be ready
to face the challenges without no name in the name of love that is pure,
caring, and transcendent.
The important thing right now is that there is this
substantive revelation so we can see—we can come to witness properly—the events
from 1966 to 1968.
In this book, there are more than two years of documentation
and witnessing of the intersection of the personal and the public narrative,
the private and the national history, and the one’s own sense of heart, and the
one’s own heart dedicated to another.
The personal is public—and the public is person as well.
One of the blessings—or occasion for benediction and grace
that we see with clarity in this book—is the encounter of al these things so
that these many forms of the desiderata of love will bring us to a more sublime
level.
It is a level that is elevated, transcendental, and filled
with hope despite the many reasons that should have made us embrace
disenchantment and cynicism.
But this book shows us the seed of redemption.
This positivity is clearly seen towards the end of the
preface to the book—a preface that sums up the whole narrative, a narrative
that we can subtitle as ‘love in the time of chaos.’
They say: “It is done! This love woven of words (and
language) has borne fruit; now it has given out offspring. Now we could freely
breathe because in the end, here is something that has collected—and
gathered—the leaves of love. Even when we as a couple are, this book will be
left behind to remind others that there was a Lorenzo and a Sinamar that had
woven words (and language) that inextricably roped their hearts.”
This is a heritage—a heritage without restraint, knot,
condition, and restraining thread.
And because it is unconditional, we are free to receive it
as public text, a public text that maps out the texture of love in the time of
many and seemingly endless problems in our everyday life in the context of the
personal and the public.
The intimacy is particular, but the temperament of this
intimacy is the very seed of its being
public.
Because it is familiar.
Because we are implicated.
Because the words of this intimacy are also our very own
words.
Words that are not alien, strange, visiting.
Manang Sinamar said in her annotation of her letter to
Manong Lorenzo: “I am
bored, really bored, waiting for the next letter of my husband to arrive, but
all these doubts are now gone because of his unexpected visit.”
In the
other part of this narrative, Manong Lorenzo wrote to Manang Sinamar this way: “...I
do not get tired reading your letter. As if I get to hear each of your
word—words where your love is interwoven. Yes, they dispel even the most minute
of my doubt that comes to roost some of the time. I hear you and I feel the
love your words express, words that redeem me from the bog of missing you. To
be away from each other is most difficult. If only I can, at this time should
be on each other’s side, not only because of our earthly need because that is
just coming in only secondarily, but because of the love that springs from the
fathomless love for each other, a love that can only be express when the sweet
moments between us come to home to nest and to take refuge. Yes, I want to feel
to the full the feeling of being loved, by your love only, and I want I also
want my love to feel all the love I have for her. As if I can no longer wait,
as if the days are too long, and the empty moments that come to me given me
nothing but pain! What the heck!”
In my close reading—I read the manuscript twice! —of this
exchange of letters, this extraordinary feeling, a feeling of being blessed,
came to me with this opportunity given to my by Manong Lorenzo and Manang
Sinamar, an opportunity that dates back to our first meeting (in Honolulu) at
the first international conference on Amianan and Ilokano Languages and
Literatures (International Conference on Ilokano and Amianan Languages and
Literatures 2007) in Honolulu when they told me about their plan of putting
together a gift of a book for the Ilokano people and for Ilokano Literature.
My having become a witness to the literary lives of these
two pillars of Ilokano Literature is a singular honor.
Because these writers are those I have read when I was very
young.
Because these writes are the same ones who awakened me so I
could dream, so I could take part in that struggle with words, words that give
reason so I could dream, so I could become a writer like them.
Because these writers are inextricably part of a period of
Ilokano Literature, of a period in Ilokano Literary History.
If there is an intellectualized way of mapping out Ilokano
literary history, it is a must and it is just proper that we include as a
chapter the Coromina episode where we see the many names that filled the first
period of the change of the orthography of the Ilokano language, a change from
its form in the 40s.
To those who study the diachrony of the Ilokano language,
this is a landmark in the change of the aesthetic sensibility of the Ilokano, a
sensibility that accounts the mixture of the change in the orthography, the
meditative direction the way of writing of the writers and in their artistic
vision, and the welcoming attitude in including the philosophical perspective
of the idea and the ideal in the name of the good life, a just society, and a
love that is free.
Manong Lorenzo says: “I miss the happenings in those days
because of the gradual coming to an end of our brotherhood in Coromina. That separation
gave rise to the pursuit of our dream, or the dream that our goal in life would
be fulfilled. We had to search for the light that would lead us to our future.
There is that deep feeling of missing each other because of our camaraderie and
I doubt if there will ever be a group like ours that come out, a group as
tightly knit as ours. That thought came true because there has never a group
like ours that has bee formed. Now, we seldom come across each other since we
parted ways.”
And with this Coromina episode, we come to know these
pillars of Ilokano Literature: Teresito Gabriel Tugade, Peter La. Julian,
Constante Domingo, Ben Chua, Prescillano Bermudez, ken Lorenzo Garcia Tabin. Of
these six, four of them did not turn their back to the call and the invitation
of literature, and each of them has left behind a body of work, each work a
product of their individual imagination.
There is enchantment in the everyday life in Coromina, like
the half-naked, bare-chested Terry Tugade while trying to form in his head
freezing cold of Anchorage, the setting of his novel, “White Gold.”
I remember this novel so well, a copy of which I bought from
saving up my money reserved for snacks.
Manong Lorenzo writes of this everyday life: “At this time
around, Pres (read: Prescillano Bermudez) is ironing his clothes. Ben (read:
Ben Chua) is preparing our midday meal—today is Sunday and it is his turn to be
our houseboy. Tante (read: Constante Domingo) is embracing firmly his pillow
even as he dreams of a nurse. Peter (read: Peter La. Julian) and Tito (read:
Terry Tugade) are not around—they might have gone on a date. Did I tell you
that there are days assigned to each one to serve as houseboy? Whoever is his
turn, he must go to the market, cook, wash the dishes, and clean up the mess of
the room!”
And many more, like the hegemonic dominance of Bannawag on
those who wish to write outside the authority, stranglehold, power, and
blessing of this magazine, the reason why the writers must hide under a
pseudonym when they write for other publications, like what happened to Manang
Sinamar who has to assume four pseudonyms.
There is something tragic in this phenomenon, and this is a
symptom of reading through which we the next generation of critics could begin
to unravel this Ilokano literary experience.
In this “love in the time of chaos,” there are many questions.
These questions are fixed firmly in the confusing event of
society, of the everyday event of the absence of justice in our collective
life, and in the blatant display of lordism in the birthplace and homeland of
kings whose throne is the result of an illusion of democracy and freedom.
Manang Sinamar says: “What is my worth to you, Lore?
Sometimes, I imagine you have another woman in your life in Manila, that you
pretend you have fallen in love with me, and at times, I could not help but
tear up, and then tell myself at the same time: that in case Lore thinks this
way, for as long as he is happy, I will also be happy for him and will promise
to the Creator as well that I will never trust anyone who will offer his love
to me.’
In criticizing textually, there is in this episode an
inherited solution of an Ilokano woman to all the love woes, a solution
ingrained in martyrdom and in becoming a martyr as a defense mechanism of a
woman in the face of a rotten society that produces rotten men.
That is the same defense mechanism that is inherent in the
aesthetics of Leona Florentino in the face of the machismo of her husband, the
father of Isabelo delos Reyes.
But Manang Sinamar is not—never—a Leona Florentino. Instead,
she overcome the century of Leona, and trained her sight on that direction of
love that is requited by a love that immaculate, the love of Manong
Lorenzo.
But there is context to these doubts—and this context is
complicated and complex—and we include here the observation of Manong Lorenzo
on the country, and this pertains to the bigger social reality, of the nation: “If
this continues to go and one (the election in the Philippines), the government
becomes murky and the people lose their trust in the political leaders. Another
thing, the performance of the politician is no longer the measure the electorate
uses, that performance that serves the many, and will last to benefit the
people. If there is something gleaming shown them, the people open their mouth
right away, the people open their palms right off—and many just try figuring
out who serves the next meal so they could go there. They say that the
politician with the thickest pocket line is where the electorate goes. In other
words, many of the electorate is now blind. I think now of what is the best way
to put an end to these things that happen to the politician. Is this now the
real picture of the Philippines? What tough luck! Whoever has the boldness to
stand up to right these wrong things, they are snuffed out. If only I have the
power, I would file my candidacy and I will pull out the horn of the godlings!”
This is not a flimsy idea that gets to reside in the mind,
thought, and consciousness of a writer, and wit the passing of time, we see in
the writings of Manong Lorenzo and Manang Sinamar these same ideas of refusal,
of resistance, of rising up so that the younger writers that come after them
would be educated of what is happening to the country.
Because there is a role of the wise writer and his
wisdom-filled work: the education of the reader, the need to leave behind a way
to awaken the citizens, and the need to insist that it is just right and fair
that an element of criticism must be in place in one’s work even as the reader
enjoys the sweetness of what he reads.
This is the virtue that this book leaves behind.
And this virtue is what is being passed on by the love of
Lorenzo Garcia Tabin and Sinamar Robianes Tabin, a love that is borne of the intersection
of a society going through a lot of difficulties, of the life in the everyday marked
by innumerable questions, and the vision that there is goodness in the days ahead.
In the end, we say: Tempus fugit, ars longa—Time flies so fast
but art remains with us forever.
The art in this book will remain with us forever.
No comments:
Post a Comment