Currently selling well is the anthology Sawi: Funny Essays, Stories and Poems on All Kinds of Heartbreak. Published by Milflores, the book is edited by Ada J. Loredo, B.J. A. Patino, and Rica Bolipata Santos — a triumvirate of English professors at the Ateneo de Manila University. I guess the book’s brisk sales prove that the Milflores strategy of publishing short, accessible and elegant work is correct. Plus the fact that, really, all of us have suffered heartbreak at one point in our lives. Or caused other hearts to break as well.
In her clear-eyed introduction, Loredo recounts the days of pain she experienced when she was found to have a congenital heart defect that needed surgery. Then she asks: “But what if it’s the kind of pain that a scalpel can’t reach? What if the heart is whole and healthy but is hurting just the same? Called kasawian, it is the debilitating condition whose seismic center is the breast, but whose effects infect the entire body, from pallor of skin to loss of appetite. But beyond the physical symptoms, it is the emotional and psychological wrenching that makes heartache the more terrible human disease. For no diagnosis clarifies it, no cure conveniently comes in a bottle, and no recuperation is guaranteed.”
Such a state of being, or non-being, is captured gracefully in the works contained in this book. In my early middle age, my favorites now lean toward writing that surprises with as few words as possible, and writing that sees things from a new angle of vision.
One such work is “Pag-aalala,” a poem by Christine Bellen, winner of a Catholic Mass Media award for her children’s TV show, “Mga Kuwento ni Lola Basyang.” The poem is a lamentation on loss.
“Nakita ko ang buwan/ kagabi/ at naaalala kita./ Kapirasong lampara ito/ na aandap-andap/ ang liwanag/ sa malawak na dagat./ Kapiraso rin ang gunitang/ kumukurot sa aking uniberso/ ngunit nililigalig nito/ ang kabuuan ng gabi/ at isa-isang/ inihuhulog sa palad ko/ ang mga bituing/ abo na lamang/ sa sandaling dumantay sa akin.”
Cesar Aquino, or Sawi, is a professor and writer at Silliman University who has been with the writers’ workshop as long as God can remember. I recall the two times I had gone to the workshop, and Sawi regaled us with descriptions of woman. One time he called a female friend of mine, a poet, “ripe and ready for the picking.” To which the poet answered quickly: “I’d rather be green and unpicked.”
It seems that Sawi has, uh, channeled his energies into the writing of sexy and seductive lines. His contribution here is a piece of fiction whose main character sounds like him: a loner in a boarding school in the city, who has the hots for a female co-boarder. The main character and the object of his affection talk just once, but the deep impress of those words have been with the main character forever.
“She was pretty. Sometimes the clothes she wore revealed a surprising voluptuousness that was in contrast to her girlish smallness. She was a freshman at MLQU. Once, coming from a bath, she passed by very near where I was sitting. A drop of water fell on my arm. I did not wipe the drop of water off, letting it stay on my skin like it was something I had, unknown to her, appropriated from her body. It was as if she had touched me, as if I were carrying her absence. I put my tongue to it in the end but all I tasted was the sourness of my own skin.” See? If I were you, freshies, I would steer clear of old and lonely poets staying in decrepit boarding houses.
Becky Bravo, who has written the National Book Award winning children’s book, The Cat Painter, also regales with a concise piece called “Once is Quite Enough.” The title is a send-up of Jacqueline Susann’s somewhat trashy novel, Once is Enough.
The main character here is a furious and feisty female dumped by a man who has not one, but two other girl friends. For three years, he treated her like a doormat, but she stayed, the poor girl. It must be love.
When she could take it no more, she dumps the son of his mother. Then she describes, in gory detail, how a heart breaks. But what made me smile is the character’s present state of lovelessnesss. How does she survive?
“I’ve gone on other dates since dumping the potato-nosed barracuda, but when you’ve been burned badly as I have, you want to make all the men jump through hoops before they get anywhere near the end of your finger. So here I am, give months shy of 33, and already contemplating my future as a spinster. I’ve learned to replace dating with HBO, and to supplant my need for romantic love with cheeseburgers and French fries. The man in my life has a hairy chest, beautiful blue eyes, purrs louder than the vacuum cleaner and coughs up hairballs four times a day. My friends say there’s a real man out there for me, and that he’s going to show up anytime soon. Come when you please. The door’s still open. And the hoops shall be waiting.”
I want to end with a poem by Luisa A. Igloria, “Venom.” Like many of the selections, this work conflates love with food, with eating, as if we could never completely devour the one we love. I think we should not, since the best love is one that just nibbles and licks and rarely eats. In short, give the one you love space, not distance. Your fingers around that neck, and your toxic words in his or her ears are the only things you need for a, yes, heartbreak.
As this brilliant poem, “Venom,” which is an ironic couplet, demonstrates.
“In every bottle of Caballeros/ triple-distilled mescal, a scorpion/ swims in a silo of liquid the color/ of caramel, of clarified dulce de leche,/ the hot milk of it pressed from a mulch/ of chopped blue agave hearts, maguey azul./ Darker than an olive dropped into a martini, it’s there as a memento of what follows/ after the flush of pleasure, after the heat/ that turns the knees into a mash like pulque/ because though she said she wouldn’t let it,/ she’s let her heart float to her mouth —/ it lies on its side like a fish in cold/stupor and her tongue has gone numb/ like a stone. All because she’s fallen/ for the one she can’t have, she tosses/ her head back and drains the little cups/ like they were poison, remembering/ the sting of lime on his tongue, the bite of salt/ in the crevice between his finger and thumb.”
My fearless New Year’s forecast is that more Filipino writers should have a heartbreak, so they would write as well as Luisa does.
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