No Meter, No Rhythm & Some Crimes

“Ernest Hemingway would scarcely be, nor would he covet being, a man of letters; one presumes that he has never tolerated the kind of education which would have made the meters resound in his consciousness. And we approve of that. We say to ourselves that this bare unrhythmed prose of his is the most transparent medium yet invented for the pure art of fiction.” – John Crowe Ransom, “The Art of Prose,” The New Republic, October 6, 1952

in the room to my right,
a thin wall dividing us,
i hear my daughter teach
basic english one on one
to japanese children & adults

it's her version of the daily grind
that she does online from home,
only that her hours are from
five thirty p.m. to midnight,
with quick peeing breaks

in the room where i sit
i tap out lifeless words
for a livelihood & survival piece
that with hope & faith
will ensure that by summer
there will be enough wherewithal
to fill up the coin purse that empties
contents in a continuous flow enough
to make standard & chartered blanch

whenever the tv news comes on
all i hear is of justice supreme
that will never happen

once public servants deny
having lined their & their missus's
pockets for private luxuries

without shame their ilk have helped
themselves to monies from taxpayers
that the daily grinders pay:
the cabbie who saw me safe to my door,
the sweaty cook who fans live coals to get
our order of chicken inasal ready,
the daughter who raises baby sitter's pay

even the taxes withheld from
this flailing citizen
who now understands why down south
without seeming provocation
some folks turn amok

--Babeth Lolarga

Aspiration: To Achieve Cat-like Insouciance

Victoria Rico Costina, my friend who has acquired the shibboleth of "Cat Woman of Baguio" and a literature professor at the UP Baguio, will launch her book Those Who Love Cats, essays, profiles, reviews and basic cat care tips for Filipino homes (she's too modest to claim it as her autobiography) on March 4 at the university's student alumni center on Gov. Pack Road. The slim volume (82 pages) will soon be available at Baguio book shops and at National Bookstore branches. Coinciding with her book launch, Vickie invited UP Diliman journalism alumna Angie Salanio to exhibit her watercolors of cats at the same venue.

Vickie asked me to introduce  her book with some urgency while I was holidaying with family in the US. I responded with equal urgency, but then she had some difficulty finding a welcoming publisher until she took matters into her own hands. Recently, she asked me to act as program emcee. I've begged off from that duty.  But I'm returning the honor by reproducing the intro as my contribution to the book's marketing.

I'm especially proud to be connected to the book. Firstly, it's a Baguio production through and through--from the writing to the illustrations (by my fine arts classmate Czarina Calinawagan and fellow visual artist Rishab) to the layout and design by Frederick Pedragosa to photography by Vickie's husband Ruel and printing. Secondly, like I wrote in the intro, this book may be some kind of first in Philippine publishing. Thirdly and more importantly, it marks Vickie's coming out as a writer. So enough of false modesty, Vickie. Please follow up this book with a second one. Congratulations and much affection!

_________________________________________

Do cats procrastinate and prevaricate? Put off things for later at the rate that I do and delude myself that nothing is as important as prioritizing de-stressing for health’s sake?

Author Victoria Rico Costina, in what must be the first book of its kind in the Philippines, described cats as pleasure-loving creatures. If I have a choice, I would like to be described that way—a pleasure-seeking adult who has never quite grown up. One time Vickie did call me a “lady of leisure,” but the image that entered my mind was of a matron with bejeweled fingers playing endless rounds of mahjongg with amigas.

I was raised with a killer combination of Catholic guilt and Protestant work ethic so I’m not quite there in the cat summit of perpetual pleasure seeking. I aspire to days of lazing on the bed, curled under a comforter on another foggy Baguio morning. I’d rise when I want to, comfort myself with a glass of milk, pad around softly in the house in my nightgown, go back to bed and siesta as much as I want. Then I’d stretch again, go down to the fridge, help myself to more cold milk, sniff around the bookshelf.

Come to think of it, I’ve been leading a cat’s life of some sort on the day I officially declared myself graduated from the workaday world. So much for guilt and working hard for the money.

I had a black and white cat in my youth. I called him Omar after the Egyptian actor. My kid sister Gigi never forgot how I got her to cradle him like a baby so I could take a picture of her in her sando and shorts. She never forgot the experience—she must have been less that six at that time. I was teaching myself to take a different kind of portrait with my new instamatic camera. I didn’t want anything posed so I instructed her to hold Omar the way a mother would. He would have none of it. For posterity, the photo captured Gigi flinching in pain as Omar clawed her. Perhaps this is why Gigi would rather care for mini pugs and pinschers and has had nothing to do with cats to this day.

Omar was admirably independent. I have no recollection of minding him, except for the time he came down with conjunctivitis. My cousin, a vet, advised me to put ointment on his eyes. By then I was working. From the office, I’d call home and instruct the helper in detail how to apply the ointment. My officemate overheard me and was smiling when I put down the phone. The smile read: “All that for a cat?”

Indeed, that can be said of Vickie’s book. I hope that it’ll be the first of many on singular loves.

To care this much for God’s small creatures, to allow them to take over her life almost to the exclusion of everyone else, affirms her humanity. She reminds me of another cat lover, Nieves Benito Epistola, also a professor of English and literature who reserved her gentlest cooing when she was caressing the head of one of dozens of cats that had the run of her house and garden.

Like Vickie, Nieves always used her cats for a reason for declining an invitation, even if it was a year in Greece with Anton Juan.

The Garcellanos of Kamuning, Quezon City, are in Vickie’s league. They count Kayenne as a family member. Whenever I drop by their place, I try to remember the “catiquette” observed there, one of which is not to talk about the cat when he is present in the room. Kayenne senses when he is the subject of the conversation. Kayenne and his deceased brother Bugsy are immortalized in Edel Garcellano’s poetry in the same way F. Puss the cat “nanny” is in Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast.

“The cat world has a lot to teach us,” Nieves once said in a professorial tone.

I wonder sometimes if the cats in Vickie’s life observe her as keenly as she does them. Like F. Puss, they may be her sitters and she the baby they protect.

Nov. 15, 2009
Torrance City, California

 Cover of book reproduced from philstar.net