3 MIN READ

By IVAN EMIL LABAYNE
www.nordis.net

Right away, a semantic untangling, lest we think of equivalence, direct correspondence. Ang masa ang mesiyas, says one slogan, fruity inside one’s mouth, mapang-aliw with its alliteration. Not just one person, not just one God, not just one Dog, but: both a mass (a group, a congregation, a collective), and The Mass. Ang masa ang mesiyas.

More literally, “resurrect” has something to do with bringing one back to life. More figuratively, going up, ascending. Rising from the dead. Ginebra was down 16 with one minute and sixteen seconds to go until it rose from the dead, beating Mobiline with a Bal David miracle shot that started with a Caguiao-Helterbrand-Scottie helter-skelter, timeline-jumbling defensive stop. Jon Snow was the protagonist, the abovegod, not the underdog, so he rose from the dead to save the North because winter was coming.

In Glenn Diaz’s Yñiga, the titular character was with Lolo Ben, a 90-year-old interviewee of an Americana pursuing doctoral tenure (or a promotion?) and academic points by ~investigating~ the possible links between lighthouses and social movements (“sounds like a lot of hubbub for metaphor work,” Yñiga quipped). Lolo Ben claimed that his father and uncle have participated in the 1896 Revolution, and seemed to be familiar with Itos, Yniga’s father who also once supported the armed rebellion not only by handing out resources, but by being part of it himself.

Partly due to Lolo Ben’s presumed dementia and old age, and Diaz’s fictional deployment of techniques (should be: deployment of fictional techniques?), and my selectively redundant excerptions, you will be left with hazy associations…

 “That your nobyo, hija? Lolo Ben asked after Marco left. Good-looking guy. He looks familiar. Did he ever go up with Abril?

Go up? Yñiga asked, shielding her eyes from sunlight. Abril?

What’s he saying? Claire (the Americana doing an academic study on lighthouses) asked.

Up, he repeated. A hand impatiently thrown behind him, as if she ought to know what he meant” (see pp. 126-7).

…that will be of service to what I’m getting at with “going up,” pagsampa, resurrections. As if you know what I am getting at, what I mean.

In the parlance of the whirlwind of my youth, “pagsampa” had a related connotation. Going “up there,” to the mountains, to participate in a civil war obscured in a history drunk with noontime shows, Pacquiao fights, malls and the typical trapo amusement show. Half a century ago, this ongoing war was not just out-there, not even just an open secret, but a seemingly unshakable fact of life, encompassing in its pluralities. What was going on was not just a “war,” but wars, uprisings, rebellions: the Hukbalahap struggling against Japanese colonizers and peasant destitution; Muslim Mindanao fighting for their kind of independence; the Martial Law activists warding off the conjugal dictatorship.

From the Introduction to Voices of Sulu: A Collection of Tausug Oral Tales, compiled and edited by Gerard Rixhon: the murder of Sama and Tausug recruits—later to be called the Jabidah Massacre—who refused to be instrumentalized by the Philippine army in its planned attack on Sabah for the expansion of the “nation” (what, whose nation? Why expand this nation, who does this expansion benefit?).

From Yñiga, “And now we have another Ilocano in Malacañang. … Over the years the family sans Ramona would listen in horror to news of the president’s increasingly despotic ways: his Metrocom routinely beating up and even shooting at student protesters, his soldiers massacring the Muslim operatives of a botched secret plan to invade Sabah… (in page 9).

From Norman Wilwayco’s Gerilya, ilang araw naghintay sa safe house sila Ka Poli bago pumasok sa sona, naghihintay ng sundo nila. Sa wakas, after three days, dumating din ang kuryer, sinalba sila mula sa matinding pagkaburyong, pagkainip, at nagbabadyang pananaig ng kaba, hinatid sila somewhere sa Bulacan, “parang wala kami sa Pilipinas. Ibang-iba ang eksenang ito sa eksenang nakasanayan ko sa Maynila.” Naglakad na sila papasok, “habang daan, ninamnam ko ang bawat lubak, bawat lusong at ahon, habang naka-maximize ang mga butas ng ilong ko sa paglanghap ng malamig at mabangong hangin. Tapos iniisip ko, ito na iyon, ito na iyong matagal ko nang ipinaglalaban doon sa baba. Ito na iyong araw-araw naming nile-lecture sa mga tibak sa school” (nasa page 25).

“Doon sa baba,” may pinaglalaban silang malupit, masidhi, hindi matatawaran. Kulminasyon noon ang “pagsampa” nila, palabas ng Maynila, pakikilahok sa digma, digmang kinukubli ng mga maugong na naratibo tungkol sa “bansa.”

Sumampa na si Hesus, pabalik sa lupa kapiling ang mga api, ngayong Pasko ng Pagkabuhay. Oras na upang magdiwang. Sasampa na si Hesus tungong kanayunan, makikipamuhay sa mga lansangan, sa mga siyudad, pabrika at call center cubicles sa Ortigas, Gov. Pack at Loakan, buhol-buhol na metapora’t lunan. Walang mesiyas; tayo-tayo lang din ang magsasalba sa ating mga sarili. # nordis.net