Qwertyman for Monday, December 19, 2022
(Taking a break from politics, I wrote this Christmas story that might take a little effort to figure out, but which I hope will be worth your while. With apologies to my mom Emy for using her picture above.)
I’M NOT deaf, she wanted to shout, I can hear, I can understand what you’re saying—I’m not stupid, I’m just… lost. I don’t know who you are or what I’m doing here. You seem to be a nice man, and thank you for the chocolate and the barquillos—I don’t know how you knew I liked those—but I have to say that I don’t feel comfortable sitting here with you asking me how I am, asking all these questions about names and places I can’t recall. You’re very nice and very kind and speak to me like I know you, like I should know you, and it makes me feel very bad that I don’t have the answers you seem to be looking for. Like “the champaca near the fence of the house on Tagumpay Street.” Of course I know champaca and how nice it smells—but the house, a house, on Tagumpay Street? You say we lived there? When? Why should I have lived there, with you?
They laughed and Jovy shrugged and said, “She’s somewhere else—again.” Laura cast her a pitying glance and said, “I wonder if there’s something we can do or say to bring her back, even just for tonight. I mean, it’s Christmas, right? Surely God can work some miracle to allow Mama to enjoy her family? It would be such a gift to the kids. Where are they, anyway? It’s past nine.”
Jovy reached for a bottle of Macallan and poured himself a shot. “They’ll come if they will. I don’t remember them talking much to her when she was still okay. Don’t see why it should be any different this time.”
Laura stared out the window at all the Christmas lights that made their gated village look like a bed of stars. From the kitchen wafted the confused but beguiling hints of vinegar, red pepper, and other pungent flavorings.
Laura liked to think of herself as the family minder, the one whose job tonight was to make sure everyone had a filling noche buena and wished each other well, like a good Filipino family, albeit with one somewhat distracted member. With the pandemic still festering and the world they knew upended, a return to some sense of order and normalcy felt overdue. In Decembers past, she and Jovy would take the children, Toby and Rina, to chilly getaways in Baguio, with Mama maddeningly singing carols from the back of the van all the way up Kennon Road.
“I’m sure the kids will come,” Laura said, adjusting a bell on the Christmas tree. “I told them they were getting special gifts from us.”
“They are? “ Jovy said, surprised. “Like what gifts?”
“Papa’s Longines and Mama’s bridal necklace,” Laura replied under her breath, as if she expected Jovy to react badly. “It’s about time we passed them on.”
“Papa’s gone so I guess the watch is okay, but have you spoken to Mama about the necklace?”
“And tell her what? She won’t even know what she’s looking at.”
“Maybe we should wait for Rina’s wedding—“
“That girl’s not getting married for another ten years, if ever. I just want us to make something special happen tonight, like families do.”
“At least you could show it to Mama. Make it look like she’s the one giving it to Rina. As if Rina will even care. You know she hates old things. She’ll probably just sell it on eBay.”
“What she does with it is her business. What’s important is that we’ve discharged our generational responsibility.”
“If you insist—“
“Leave Mama to me.”
“IT’S A VERY small watch,” Toby said, unable to mask his disappointment. He was a stockbroker who lived in his own condo and came for dinner once or twice a month to brag about his new girlfriend, or his new bike.
“That’s what men wore back in the ‘50s. I guess you could give it to what’s-her-name, Nikka, now,” said Jovy.
“Nikka would like Mama’s necklace more, I think. Maybe Rina and I can do a trade.”
In her corner, Mama stared as Laura opened the blue velvet box that held her necklace of white gold and tiny emeralds, sold by a prominent Escolta jeweler before the war. Rina was on her phone near the door, mumbling an apology to someone. She wasn’t even vaguely interested in the necklace that Laura was bribing her with; she’d come home for a bunny costume she needed for a New Year party. She hated being asked about marriage, and the bridal jewelry was another not-too-subtle nudge.
“I wanted to show this to you, Mama, before we—before you—give it to Rina. You remember Rina, your granddaughter? She’s almost thirty, and should get married soon!”
I don’t know this Rina you’re talking about, Mama thought. And why do you always ask me to remember, why should I remember? Isn’t it enough that I eat my porridge and drink my tea?… But—this shiny thing in the box, I know it, for some reason…. It’s very pretty, so sparkly, those little green eyes…. I know I’ve seen it, in the mirror—around my neck! It was a happy day, I was happy all in white with these green sparkles, and I was all so white and so very happy.
“Do you want to be the one to give it to Rina?” Laura said, unsure of what was passing through Mama’s mind. She noticed some agitation, some flicker of anxiety, although Mama was smiling.
“Give it? Why?”
“Because it’s Christmas, Mama. Because it makes us happy to give gifts.”
“I thought this was my gift. It makes me happy.”
Laura tried not to sound exasperated. “You don’t need it anymore, Mama. It’s time it went to Rina.”
Mama now remembered: her wedding day, the carriage, the lilies along the aisle, the choir, and her groom Miling, so blindingly handsome in his white sharkskin suit.
She saw Rina, the girl they said was her granddaughter, still on her phone across the room. From that distance she looked virginal, almost angelic. Mama could imagine her in a white gown. Mama looked at Laura, who seemed distressed, waiting for an answer. Now that she had finally remembered something, they wanted to take it away.
She ran the necklace through her fingers. She recalled how the clasp had pricked her thumb that morning, but she was in such bliss she hardly felt the pain. She looked at Rina, and sensed the younger woman’s deep unhappiness. It seemed so unfair.
Mama shut her eyes and shut the box and turned her face away. “I don’t know what this is for,” she told Laura. “Give it to her.”
“Thank you, Mama,” Laura said, much relieved. “And Merry Christmas.”
Mama seemed more distant than ever, lost in her thoughts. “I don’t think she even knows what Christmas is, anymore,” Laura sighed.
Pinoy Penman 3.0 
We wish her well. She is God’s gift to freedom fighters like us. She will never be alone.
A warming Valentine in cold December. 𝘖𝘮𝘯𝘪𝘢 𝘷𝘪𝘯𝘤𝘪𝘵 𝘢𝘮𝘰𝘳. And Alzheimer’s just adds to the ardor. A clean-cut and clear literary Caravaggio by our Pinoy Penman!
There’s something in December that makes this Dalisay to do a dandy.
To Live Beyond Dying
(Is to Love)
To love is to give.
To love is to pursue life
In the open space
Of infinite Goal
Other, beyond dead end Goal
Self. To love’s to seek
The happiness of
Someone other than the Self.
And love conquers all–
Juliet and Romy,
Madonna and child, love at
First stranger sighting,
Nubile and senile,
Demented and no.
TF Badilla, 28 Dec 2022
Love at First Stranger Sighting
This must include that
moment when I first caught sight
of my first-born by
the glass-pane window
of the Perpetual Succor
Hospital nursery.
There must be telling
ways of artistry other
than the way of smoke
and mirrors.
Love at First Stranger Sighting
This must include that
moment when I first caught sight
of my first-born by
the glass-pane window
of the Perpetual Succor
Hospital nursery.
There must be telling
ways of artistry other
than the way of smoke
and mirrors. For there
walks Simplicity: Beauty
named and unadorned.
C-squared M is E.
Simple. Elegant.
_Isko Tabonon, 30 Dec 2022
Some people get moved close to tears by the elegance of some simple equation. (Simple does not necessarily mean easy. Like Einstein’s E=MCsquared.)
Even serenity can be pregnant with emotion.
Happiness, Also
(To Seek, to Find What I’ve Already Got)
Happiness looks to
the light: happiness finds the
bright side of matters.
Look at Elon Musk:
he lost two-hundred billion
US dollars and
he’s still doing fine!
Me? I can never lose two-
hundred billions of
those US dollars —
and so, I should be doing
just a tad better!
Happiness finds the
earth-side of the moon.
TF Badilla, 13 January 2023
Poetry
Poetry cannot
be limited to being
fiction; it cannot
be shackled by rules.
Else, it shrivels — wastes away
in hollow whimper.
Poetry is more
than Tom Eliot; it’s Shakespeare
and Aristotle
and Einstein packed in
one chessic combination.
It bares black holes — blue
butterfly finding
that one red, red rose!
TF Badilla, 15 January 2023
For so long as every human being is unique, the “objective” correlative will go subjective: the correlative will read ten different animals to ten different zoo visitors. As a consequence, there goes no right and wrong in one’s read of fiction. There only goes the congruence of the reader’s read to the writer’s write — and whether that be from the reader’s or writer’s point of view.
Therefore, fiction read is always easy — even when the fiction write isn’t.
What I find in “The Gift” as a piece of literary art is its being the show-don’t-tell tale that DOES leave its readers with its tell in the correlative. (No notes and grace notes given or required — it just might not be your walk in the park on the read-to-write congruence, so the author cautions the reader. Aha!) It’s artistic show-don’t-tell, as it actually shows the Penman’s literary tell when his fiction literarily bluffs. There goes the Penman tale that must be unraveled — in a sane and successful correlative that tells, even when it tries hard not to. And that is Penman substance that goes in Penman style!
Compare with 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘞𝘢𝘴𝘵𝘦 𝘓𝘢𝘯𝘥: the correlative there goes dizzyingly convoluted, such as to make the literary kiddie that I am to cry in exasperation, “But Emperor Eliot has nothing on!” (To me, 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘞𝘢𝘴𝘵𝘦 𝘓𝘢𝘯𝘥 goes the heavily made-up tale of some borrowed but hollow Hamlet-and-Ophelia (Tom-and-Viv) inspiration finding the Charlie Chaplin expression: all shush, no tell. Shhh, don’t tell!)
And the T.S. Eliot show-don’t-tell may not even be for the grizzled expert: there’s the famously (if not infamously) fervent Eliot disavowal of the I.A. Richards read of the 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘞𝘢𝘴𝘵𝘦 𝘓𝘢𝘯𝘥. (𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘞𝘢𝘴𝘵𝘦 𝘓𝘢𝘯𝘥, anyone? Please?)
And so, I don’t blame people who quit in mid-read (or quarter-read) of 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘞𝘢𝘴𝘵𝘦 𝘓𝘢𝘯𝘥 and other poetry in the T.S. Eliot style. I don’t blame them when they complain about this extreme visual bias in Eliot’s show-don’t-tell technique that is killing today’s poetry in obscurity and reader disconnect.
And neither would I get surprised when readers appreciate “The Gift.”
Poker is to show-don’t-tell fiction, as chess is to technical writing.
And the poker analogy holds — and offers — nothing derogatory there: show-don’t-tell fiction always “bluffs,” but only in the sense that the reader may read more than there goes in the writing hand. (Which was how the Richards read must have gone, in view of the coy but eruptive Eliot reaction.)
The show must eventually tell. For, if it never really does, then the correlative fails: to write is to endeavor to be read — and to read is to endeavor to find someone else’s telling light, whether such light be the same as or different from the reader’s own.
When a literary piece would just be and be (in show-and-show-that-never-ever-tells), then it should get its good chances for its light to fade unseen into the darkness — the whimper that no one ever heard, the wasted one-gallon chocolate ice cream slush in that darn 12-hour power-outage!
For one more time, many thanks to the Pinoy Penman for the liberal sky-and-sea-and-land that he has donated here in the Comments section! May many more tourists find this opinion paradise! (Which no ONE commenter should hog — that’s a tell!)
And may the Qwertyman qwerty on!
Poetry in the Eliot Style
The lines of long ago light up the mind:
“Beauty is truth; truth, beauty…” is elegance
In simplicity. It’s complexity
Laid bare — named and unadorned. “They also
Serve who only stand and wait” goes the less
Visually acrobatic, but it runs
With Miltonian eyes of inspiration.
Compare with present-day Eliot-inspired
Poetry: the dying are living with
Little libido. Or so they should go.
Contrived, hollowed-out, emasculated
Emotion. Cynical. A faked affect.
Clever caricature without the blue
Enlightenment. It’s more style than substance.
In the endeavor to present processed
And mastered emotion, the Eliot style
Comes off as being the clever cynic or
The cynical cleverness. Whichever.
And it plays a partiality for the
Pretty parody: the crooner comes coy
And croaking — with little perfect practice.
I will show you chicken: dressed, seasoned, and fried!
Isko Tabonon, 27 January 2023
The Eliot Effect
(Poetry Is Dead)
Emotion beats as
brave heart of poetry. Why
Eliotize it dry?
Poetry is when
the heart finds the head — the heart
is made sane and not
Eliot-sanitized.
𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘞𝘢𝘴𝘵𝘦 𝘓𝘢𝘯𝘥, by comparison with anything Penman’s, is letters in despicable disconnect.
The T.S. Eliot poetry goes more the lecture than open conversation. And it’s a lecture to no one — especially, not Richards. It plays coy in being shy to reader interest — but maybe only because it has got nothing to tell other than the author’s personal grumblings, which, in much likelihood, would be of no interest to the reader. The poetry of T.S. Eliot pays no interest to reader interest — it shuts the self in and others out — and becomes its own narrow academic (only) interest.
“The Gift” minds a masterpiece in miniature. (Yes, I keep going back to it.) Like the poetry of Shakespeare, Milton, Gray, Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley, among others, “The Gift” gets one’s vision vitalized.
On the other hand, the signature T.S. Eliot poetry offers neither vision nor vitality. (Or, at least, such vision and vitality as I can identify and identify with.) 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘞𝘢𝘴𝘵𝘦 𝘓𝘢𝘯𝘥 is love-less, listless, if not laborious, lament without the learning — it grasps at its straws of allusions in anemic abandon, before sinking into the depths of reading disdain as glorified garbage.
I’m a boomer and am retired. I’ve already done my share of writing — and I think I’m done with my writing. And so, may I leave our unsolicited live writing to Gen X, millennial, and iGen Pinays and Pinoys. And, yes, please write legibly: by that, I only mean that you (or, as you already may be doing) look into and search our collective heart for what and how to write — don’t leave matters to ChatGPT!
And my eternal gratitude to the Pinoy Penman on his liberal space for all my crooked and wicked lines!
May the Pinoy Penman (PenPinoys!) pen on!