Buting On My Mind

.i. Portologo
Putting up an email group for our grade school class brings nostalgic streaks traveling down my old village, as digging up memories of old Buting outside the elementary school fence leads me away from Pupu, Babylin and Lani, the late Tipos Gunay and cousin Jun Ipe (they who taught me the abc's of smoking), and Bitoy Adriano, Boy Lequin and Jun Bakla, my nearest neighbors, my first playmates outside home.

Ironically, I entered first grade (with Lito Lagsob) not in Buting, but in the kabayanan of Pasig, in an all-boys catholic school popularly known as the "kumbento".

Was I to become a priest? I asked my grannie Inang Beatriz once in my pre-school years. She with the toothless grin, said yes, laughing. And it came to pass that my first day in school was kind of stressful, if not traumatic: I saluted my teacher, Miss Tuazon, when my name was called: Present!

The same stress, I figure, that gripped me everytime Inang Beatriz dragged me to her afternoon escapades with Ka Kontsing and Nana Liria and other grannies and manangs in Buting -- they made up a happy bunch of catholic mandarasal (prayer group), replete with their scapulars, medals and icons, and their ever-present pamaypay -- who would tirelessly recite the Litany in Latin, the Lord's Prayer and Hail Mary's in Tagalog, in choral blend of voices, sighs and sobs. That prayerful bunch who fondly and teasingly called me: Portologo.

And who was Portologo? It'd be past my teen years when I learned Portologo was a character in a Filipino komiks (or was it Liwayway?), and based on the verbal teasings of the mandarasals, this I could only wildly guess: Maybe Portologo was a creation of Francisco V. Coching, a pre-war komiks novelist/ illustrator and once a longtime Buting resident.

I could only imagine how this komiks character appeared in old storyboards: he was either a chubby toddler with tummy protruding out of his slightly raised striped t-shirt, nose a-running, tongue a-wagging, with dyolens in hand; or, he could have been a Kenkoy-like probinsyano, with loose trousers and long sleeve shirt, oversized shoes, and a mustache to boot.

Whatever! "Portologo" was fiction. Then I was a toddler. I was "Bugoy" to some, specifically to Nanang Tomasa, who said she picked up the monicker likening me to a would-be  gradeschool classmate, Bogie Ison, who, as a child was said to be equally chubby as this totoy.

But then, yes, I was also Portologo.

ii. Two Deaths
i.
Weakened by my own fears,
I heard the morning hysterics
of a girl bereaved,
outscreaming the banner news of the day:

Mother is dead.

My thoughts devoid of tears,
echoed against the mosquitero walls
humming lullabyes of one sunrise:
I, awake, cradled past in the bliss
of a dead womb, watched mysteries of orphaned
dawns unravel slowly to a twilight birth
of a frightened youth
creeping away to a dark
somewhere.

ii.
Unread in his eulogy for the dead
were prayers to bury his own guilt;
his eyes, evasive of glossy reflection
from a casket shooting at his face,
lost focus on one untriumphant difference
between his truth and a dead man's dreams.

He, curling up nouns, piecing up memories
only he can recall
now recites stories he should have written before,
unconsciously yet he begs for critiques
his audience prepares to write:
as gossip news,
as editorial pieces,
maybe as verses.

Maybe like this.

But none was ever transcribed,
no words in black duplicated voiceprints
of the rites of grief;
the curtains fell even before the clock ticked
to the mourning show
of strange characters lost in shuffled cards
and dripping beers.

In my father's wake, rituals got interred first.


iii. Knights of the Urbanized Ube

We were tambays on that spot we called Balisawsaw in Santos street . Facing the highly fenced Buting elementary school, we would idle away the latemorning hours with cigarrette smoke and ringing laughters while waiting for lunch. We would see our mothers picking up veggies from the big table at ka Luding's store, as we try to snoop at the big tsismis of the day from their whispered conversations. Day in and day out, we were the tambay ng balisawsaw.

Facing the school is actually facing the huge mango tree claimed by Ka Laloy, then a 70-ish retiree, father to the kapitan, lolo to Jun Tanangco. The late ka Laloy: published poet.

Ka Laloy's poems, also printed on whitewashed tin plates, published and hanged upon trees that adorned his yard -- a publication that extended to the Balisawaw tambayan. Some poetic lines I could now barely recall: "... huwag mong apihin at sugat-sugatan/ ang naritong mangga na mahal sa buhay."

The poet indeed bared his soul. Unfortunately, not only his poems encroached on our tambayan, his ube cassava plant did, too.

As Ka Laloy tirelessly nurtured it day in and day out, the cassava for sure have taken roots deep into the soil, as it was figuratively rooted deep into the old poet's soul. But the ruthless balisawsaw tambays were oblivious to any gardening endeavor, nor did they care if those nailed poems did mirror the old man's poetic suffering. What we knew then was: the withering leaves of the ube cassava announced a bulging meryenda a la halaya underneath!

Tambays then turned into black knights, raiders of a garden plot, when pitched darkness concealed even the September moon. It was quick. Dried leaves were left barely hanging on the vine, the burglars' prints thus erased.

It was a katuwaang-barkada so perfect that the old poet-gardener continued to nurture that small plot that encroached on the balisawsaw tambayan, day in and day out.

Until....