WORDS have shadow and light. My mother taught me the alphabet even before I enrolled in kindergarten. She would sit beside me, guiding my hand to form the arcs, loops and crosses, the dips and turns of the letters: the alphabets in a whirl of a dance. I would copy to my lined paper the individual letters and then the words formed by joining one letter with the next, unlocking meanings, pulling them away from each other’s loneliness.
One word would join another, turning into a sentence, a whole train of them turning into paragraphs, pages and books!
On rainy mornings when I could not leave the house to play in the backyard, I would plump up my pillow and let it stand against the bed’s wooden headboard. Then I would pull the string of the lampshade and begin to read. When my book was new, I would open it slowly, slowly, in the middle, then I would bring it closer to my nose. I would inhale the smell of paper and ink, thread and glue, imagine I was inhaling the very fragrances of words. Then I would begin to read.
A world of words, a universe of sorrows and joys. Open sesame, and out tumbled the tales of Scheherazade told in a thousand and one nights (how deliciously frightening to have your life depend on a tale). Alice wandering into the labyrinths of wonder (how the jaw would drop at every episode, turning like the lobes of a seashell). And later, the stories of Bienvenido N. Santos (oh you lovely people, Filipinos in a foreign land, Asian-Hispanic-American, sassy, bright and noisy, the inner melancholy). The poems of Pablo Neruda (my heartbeats run to you like the sea to the shore).
A geography of feelings, then, from the hidden treasures of a cave to the sea shimmering like pearls.
***
I only have to see taro (“laing”) leaves simmered in coconut milk for me to remember vividly what my grandmother made. She comforted me with stories of herself when she was young, of the imported apples and oranges that were abundant in Masbate before the Second World War, when their town was a virtual gold mine.
She also cooked the most delicious taro leaves swimming in coconut milk. I would watch her cook, and I have committed to memory her recipe. Later, when I wandered far from home, I only had to cook taro leaves simmered in coconut milk, and I would be transported back home, to my country of poverty and beauty.
In a mortar and pestle, she would pound the garlic, onions and ginger. I would notice the flab on the underside of her arm flapping like small wings when she pounded the spices. Then she would set the spices aside. Next, she would heat the cooking oil in a pan, then sauté the pounded garlic, onions and ginger. The shrimps and the ground chicken or pork would follow.
She would cook all these for around five minutes until the shrimps have turned orange and the ground chicken or pork have turned whiter. She would then add the coconut milk, and season with salt, pepper and fish sauce. She would also add several pieces of “lada” (small red pepper) if you are so inclined to eat spicy food. Then, she would let it cook until the leaves are thoroughly done. But my grandmother did not touch the taro leaves. She just let them swim in the lovely lake of coconut milk, as turning them over and over would make the taro leaves bitter.
Whether we are talking about taro leaves or about life, it is sometimes better to just let things be.
***
Like somebody with a PhD, Papa was explaining to my grandmother and me how Apollo 11 would fly to the moon.
From blast-off at Cape Canaveral in Florida, the United States of America, to the rocket’s head splitting from its tail to the actual landing on the moon — he explained all this with verve. First, he slipped his right arm in his brown imitation-leather slippers, tracing a trajectory. Then, slipper and hand separated, like molting skin. Soon only one slipper was left, standing for the rocket landing on the cold, windless landscape of the moon.
That night, we watched Apollo 11 landing on our new TV. A blur of images. The Stars and Stripes. Then, the astronauts in their white, bloated uniforms, looking like aliens. The rocket blasting off, hurtling in space like a bright comet with a long tail, and then many hours later, there was finally the moon: full of craters deeper and wider than anything I had ever seen. After Apollo 11 had landed on the moon, the three astronauts free-floated in space (A small step for man, a giant leap for mankind).
“The men on the moon,” my father said, “the greatest country in the world staking its claim on a territory millions of miles away from home. One day, you will also study in that great country, my son.”
Years later, my grandmother would bring me to Manila on one of her summer vacations. Nora Aunor — the short, brown actress whose rise to fame defied the colonial notions of beauty in the country, she whose eyes spoke a language of their own — had a new film called “Minsa’y Isang Gamu-gamo Ang Lumaban sa Lawin” (Once A Moth Fought A Hawk).
While helping her set the table, our housemaid Ludy had told me that there was a naked man on the moon even before the men of Apollo 11 came. She said he looked like the man in the 5-centavo coin. So tonight, I took out the coin I had stolen from Papa’s trousers, and, in the light of the moon, I looked for the naked man in the coin. There he was: curly hair, a face well-chiseled, broad shoulders.
His buttocks were firm and his legs, long and powerful. He was bending down, his body frozen in an arc. On his right hand, he held a hammer, pounding something on the curved anvil in front of him. He was trying to make an object from ore, a shape from all that rawness. Like a god, he bent down patiently, hammering, waiting to be blasted by something like lightning or a flash of revelation.
I squinted at the night sky, as if I had Superman’s x-ray vision or the eyes of Lee Majors, in the “Six-Million Dollar Man” show on TV. But try as I might, beyond the acacia tree and the mountains, I saw no man on the moon. There was only a lighted disk suspended in the air many miles away, alone, beautiful and pure.
***
I will sign my books today at the Manila International Book Fair at 2 p.m., Penguin Booth, 02 28, SMX Mall of Asia. Tomorrow I will have a talk at 3 p.m., Meeting Rooms 4, second floor of SMX. Let us support Philippine writing.
