Eric himself seldom writes, except for the occasional e-mail forwarded by Krip Yuson, mostly about goings-on in the Big Apple, or perhaps about the latest fellowship he has garnered in an exotic writing colony. The Gamalinda house on Matimyas, as far as we know, still stands, somewhat refurbished and renovated, with his mom Doris Trinidad and some of his siblings, a few nephews and nieces residing there.
Recently Doris has sent by parcel mail to our address in Mandaluyong, outside not inside, a copy of her latest book, a slim collection of poetry entitled Now and Lifetimes Ago (Giraffe). Now we know where the genes of Eric and his late sister, Diana, came from.
The last time I saw Diana was in the summer of 1978, exactly 10 days before she drowned in Vigan. There are at least two poems in Now and Lifetimes Ago that deal with Diana, her death and its aftermath.
One of them is "Vigan: Images for Exorcising." It tells of how difficult it is to let go, but how this is a necessary part of the healing:
And we racing the night to reach her
where she lay not needing anyone to reach her.
It was a Saturday afternoon while listening to Bob Dylan’s "Desire," the song being Isis, when I came across the obit notice in the newspapers. My father drove me in the blue Beetle to Funeraria Paz along Araneta Ave., where she lay wearing a white gown, almost like a bride.
Eric was there, and Doris, inconsolable, and the rest of the family and some friends.
"If," a poem written by Doris while looking at photographs of Dang, as she was called, is a mother’s lament of what-could-have-beens, the missed chance, and the realization about life’s preciousness and fragility:
I would have read rightly
the distances in your eyes
the caught breath
and the waver
in your violin voice
Reading the poem now, more than 23 years after her drowning, almost makes one utter a personal lament at the one-that-got-away.
Who knows what else she might have written, had she eluded the deadly wave in that Vigan beach?
She might have outwritten us all, become a rock star, a jazz singer, perhaps a women’s activist or a filmmaker.
Another poem, "The Suitcase," deals with the Gamalinda patriarch and his final days wasting away in the house along Matimyas:
Near the end, now blind and hardly breathing
he startled the priest intoning the final rites
by asking, "Is the maleta still there, on the chair?"
The suitcase of the old man Gamalinda then becomes a symbol of his life’s lonesome journey, or are we reading too much autobiography into this?
Was it Eric being referred to in the poem, as the son who in an altercation with the father, hurled the suitcase down the stairs, its contents spilling like entrails? Is this art an imitation of life, or vice versa – a life curiously enslaved by art, a fine line if ever there was one?
"The Suitcase" is indeed quite a poem, and ends with the house’s inhabitants taking out the maleta at night to the sidewalk, and where in the morning, with a single bird singing, it is finally gone.
In the section "Lifetimes Ago," consisting of poems that appeared in pre-martial law publications, a number have to do with young motherhood and work in the newsroom.
"Celine Asleep" is about her infant daughter, who would years later become an artist. Of course, the poet did not know it at the time:
To what nameless reaches of light and music
have you wandered, frail inhabitant of earth
what otherworlds unfold beneath the eyelids’ veil
that lips should form this fleeting crescent
this almost smile?
In the old poems, the lines are usually short, compact, almost Emily Dickinson-like, in danger of sounding dated, but when read in conjunction with the newer poems in the section "The River Now," provide a frame of reference regarding the poet’s growth and maturity.
Who knows when was the last time I ventured near Matimyas, on that gently sloping road which the detouring taxi sometimes takes through Balic-balic?
Or if the house will still be recognizable, and if life had been kind to its inhabitants through the years, who knows?
There is the moon that can be seen across the way, through smog and foliage, and its reflection on the puddle of water on the road like a silent, holy night.