- Hi! my name is Aiko. In this blog are poetry, and pastel, and pink cute things.
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Tuesday, December 17, 2019 | December 17, 2019 |
Lamay Ni Pining (Excerpt)
*Note: this is an excerpt from a screenplay I am in the process of writing. It is unfaithfully inspired by Finnegan's Wake. More details on this as I write more.
Title: LAMAY NI PINING
EXT. GARDEN. NIGHT.
A solitary figure of a man sits on a hammock, a cup of coffee on his left hand while in his right hand is a lit cigarette. He takes a puff from it, and the milky smoke dissipates around him under the light of the moon, clouding him in an aura of mystery.
Jake, having been shoo'd away by his dad because of his silly statements, approaches the man described. He turns out to be his uncle Steve.
JAKE
Uncle Steve, uncle Steve, bakit ang
daming umiiyak na babae sa loob? Di ko
naman sila kakilala ah?
STEVE
Ah Jake. Ganun talaga sa tradisyon nating
mga Chinese eh. Kailan may umiiyak sa lamay.
JAKE
Ganun po pala. Hmm, naalala niyo po ba
ang huli niyong pag-uusap ni Lola Pining?
Kasi ako tinanong ko siya sa ospital kung
mamamatay na siya sa araw na yun--
Uncle Steve chokes on the contents of his cup. Obviously he was shocked with what he just heard.
STEVE
Jake naman. Hindi lahat ng nasa isip mo,
kailangang mong isiwalat. Lalo na kung
napaka-sensitibo. Kailangan konting hinay
sa pananalita.
JAKE
Turo po sa akin ni Lola
bad maging sinungaling katulad niyo.
For the second time that night, uncle Steve's 3-in-1 coffee was snorted out through his nose.
STEVE
Ako? Sinungaling? Sabi ni Mama yun?
JAKE
(nodding his head a little too eagerly)
Opo, sabi ni lola bakla ka daw pero ayaw
mong aminin.
STEVE
(In a significantly high-pitched tone of voice)
Talaga lang ha? Bakit? Alam mo ba ang isig sabihin
ng salitang bakla? Batang ito.
JAKE
(Eyebrows furrowed in deep thought)
Actually po wala akong idea. Pero
sabi ni lola kung inamin mo lang sa kaniya
na bakla ka magpapa-party daw siya.
Silence permeated over them for a minute. Steve looked forlorn and nostalgic, a ghost of a smile haunting his lips. He turns to Jake.
STEVE
Sinabi sa iyo ni mama yun?
JAKE
Opo, uncle. Sabi ko nga sasabihin
ko rin kina papa na bakla ako para
magpa-party rin sila kaso tumawa
lang si lola. Bakit kaya?
STEVE
(Mildly chuckling, and ruffling Jake's hair)
Madami ka pang hindi alam sa buhay, Jake.
Ika-nga, marami ka pang bigas na kakainin.
JAKE
(Eyes wide and looking defiant)
Ay hindi po, lahat ng dapat kong malaman
sa buhay sinabi na po sa akin ni lola.
STEVE
(Raises an eyebrow)
Hmm? Tulad ng ano?
JAKE
Ang pinaka-importanteng natutunan ko
po sa kaniya ay ang ultimate secret niya.
Jake leans in toward Steve, and in a conspiratorial voice,
whispers:
JAKE
Pag namatay daw si lola sasanib siya
sa katawan ni Maine Mendoza. Kaya yang
Maine Mendoza na napapanood mo sa TV,
hindi na siya yun, si lola na yun.
Steve looks like he’s not sure whether to laugh or cry. Jake and his mother were as close as can be, but he didn't expect that his mother, Jake's lola Pining, would tell these outrageous tales to a young innocent boy.
STEVE
(In an exasperated tone of voice and gesture)
Ganito yun ha, Jake, yung mga kwento ni Lola
Pining mo, para lang aliwin ka. Huwag mong
masyadong seryosohin yun. Love na love ka
niya kaya gusto siya na-aaliw ka sa mga
sinasabi niya.
JAKE
Pero uncle Steve, may pruweba po ako.
Ayun oh--
Suddenly, excited shrieks came out from inside the chapel as if a celebrity were in the area. And true enough, when Steve turned his head toward the direction Jake was pointing at, he saw Maine Mendoza struggling to walk with a walker towards them.
JAKE
(Running excitedly)
Lola Pining!
MAINE
Jake, I missed you my apo!
With this scene before him, Steve was quite sure that the world would end any minute now. Was it too much nicotine? Too much caffeine?
STEVE
posible bang malasing sa kape?
kasi ang lakas ng amats ko eh.
And all around him, darkness, as he fainted to the floor.
Labels: 2019, aiko lactaotao, asian writers, christmas, filipino women writers, screenplay, script, writers
Monday, February 25, 2019 | February 25, 2019 |
Vectors
Posting this for backup.
Labels: 2019, backup, images, random
Monday, February 18, 2019 | February 18, 2019 |
Wax Philosophical (A Poem)
Ah Caprice, the mother of Spontaneity
your daughters are weeping
at the foot of History
all your whims led to Revolutions
the Synthesis of which
earned dissatisfaction
Technology is but a postmodern thirst--
for Immortality
a postmodern twist
to a thousand year old plot
of Man daring to become what he is:
educated and godless,
invention is his Vice,
devoted to his Objects, he becomes one:
a means, not an end.
NOTES:
I remember writing this poem after I read GWF Hegel's "The Philosophy of History." I was heavily fascinated with world history during that time and was invested in thinking about the future of Mankind. Admittedly, I am more mature now and have realized my smallness in the totality of the universe, that I decided not to be too affected by things I could not control (such as the "unknowability" of the future) and just live my life in the best possible way I could. That way, if I couldn't change the world for the better, at least I could do it for myself.
One less noise in a cacophony full of voices demanding to be heard doesn't remove the headache, but on the bright side, it at least lessens its intensity.
Labels: 2019, aiko lactaotao, aiko-lactaotao, aikolactaotao.com, amwriting, asian poets, creative writing, female asian poets, filipino poets, filipino women writers, philosophical, philosophy, poem, poetry, writing blog
| February 18, 2019 |
Darling
The late afternoon sun-- glaring like a petulant lover in need of appraisal, shone down directly upon darling's slightly hunched back as she struggled with maximum effort to open the gates to our house which was locked with chains. Equally, the late afternoon breeze, lulled down to a zephyr, made its scarce presence known through the lightly swaying leaves, and overhead on the telephone lines, birds are perched like a flock of tourists waiting to have their picture taken. Making a motion to genuflect by the gate (the pain visible on her face as she did so), darling rattled the stubborn chains and mouthed wondering why the damned thing won't open. Her sad form, a back fallen victim to osteoporosis, papery-thin, wrinkly hands barely trembling and arthritic, and her head--crowned with a mop of frizz, and tied in a neat ponytail accentuating the grizzle of the hair-- a melon-sized world of enigma.
What goes on in darling's head counts as a mystery albeit her habits consist of quotidian activities that a regular housewife does. Quiet as a brand new engine, she speeds through her daily chores like a well-oiled machine without so much as a complain that some people suspect that she may be incapable of showing emotions. But as the years passed, I began to see through this stoicism and am finally able to decipher darling in her old age.
Darling has always been old as long as I could remember. Her hair greying way before we became husband and wife, and her wisdom reminiscent of the days of yore, back when the world was younger, and life, simpler. There were siestas in the early stages of our marriage where we'd sit on chairs at the front porch, my eyes nodding off to sleep while darling talked about the adage that we always reap what we sow, citing examples that are now lost in the haze of memory. Her hands, until recently, were strong and sturdy; a picture of sangfroid realized each time I watch her do intricate needlework--a hobby that again, until recently, took up every afternoon of her long life.
The ravages of time however, are unforgiving. Chronos assigned to darling the deterioration of strength seen in all elderly people; the wheels of time runs at high speed, parallel to the slowing down of her reflexes, which fact made her clumsy and accident-prone. The once agile body that could drag a sack of rice from the front yard to the pantry turned out to be less than hale these days. Worst of all she begins to manifest bouts of forgetfulness--gaps in her memory paid at a high price. She would forget to lock doors at night, forget to turn off the gas in the kitchen, among many other things, including the one at the moment with the key to the gate's lock.
What darling forgets, I remember. I've unlocked the key to the mystery that is her. In her silence all she ever wanted was to be appreciated but all I reciprocated her with was an equal, deafening silence. In her refusal to show emotion was an invitation for affection, but on my part there is only indifference. And the heavy burden of everyday work she bore with dignity only to receive more silence from the other end. She has only herself to blame for this--it is she after all, who once told me that we reap what we sow.
I've been watching darling more often lately and I know she watches me back. Her maladroitness because of age is beginning to show. Her rusty knees are beginning to give way, same with her hands that could no longer hold a knife steady. She is also experiencing faecal and urinary incontinence which makes her smell absolutely repellent. Add in the above-mentioned fact of her forgetfulness, and you get the picture of an elderly person fribbling away at the twilight of her life with little else to do but wait for the sun to come down on her.
It is not a pretty picture.
I'm sorry darling that you're forgetting a lot things nowadays, the key to the gate's lock being the latest.
I'm sorry darling that as you lower yourself with both knees arthritic and in search of the spare key, I merely watch you with a bit of impatience because I'd like to lay on a comfortable bed already.
I'm sorry darling that I know where the spare key is (on the plant pot furthest to the right) but don't bother to tell you.
I'm sorry darling that you're useless now.
I'm sorry darling that you haven't figured that out yet.
I’m sorry darling that no one wants to have anything to do with you anymore except me.
When darling finally found the key and managed to open the gate, she turned to look at me, gesturing with her head that all is ready. She went up to the tricycle whence I am sitting, and the driver with a nonchalant look observes us: darling lowers herself once again with trembling difficulty and I latch on to her back. Darling carries me with what little strength she has left, kyphotic and struggling. I would have walked by myself but my legs are amputated due to complications from Diabetes. She may have complained out loud but there's no way I could hear her anymore. And even if she did I'll only respond with my silence. A dead weight, that's what I am, but darling is no more as useful.
Together, my darling and I, we'll watch the sunset. I'll no longer be on her back but beside her, holding her hand. We’ll reminisce about the old days in the comfort of our heads without a single word to be exchanged between us. My darling, she’s tired. I could see that but it really does not matter at this point, we both are.
Then when night comes, we'll patiently wait for each other to go to bed, both of us hoping and praying for the other to die in his or her sleep—basically the same thing we did last night, and the night before that, and the night before that, and the night before that.
Labels: 2019, aiko lactaotao, aiko-lactaotao, aikolactaotao.com, asian writers, filipino women writers, filipino writers, first drafts, flash fiction, literature, short story
Sunday, February 10, 2019 | February 10, 2019 |
#NotesOnThings1
To the spider on my shower curtain, peeping as I’m taking a bath: behold you my naked body. Judge it, despise it, or laugh at it as you recall seeing it to your fellow little spiders, but never, my eight-legged pal, deny me respect.
Let the hissing of the pipes seal this secret between the two of us— that is, of the many imperfections my mirror assigned to me, magnified in your numerous eyes.
The cascading waters from the shower head inundate the hairs on my head in a diluvial frisson of half-patronage and half-mockery, gliding from each strand down to the body I’m most ashamed of, wearying out its welcome by perambulating unchartered territory and having me marked with a conspiratorial nod as if saying: “we know.”
And you, in your little corner of the shower curtain, will you spin your web full of my tale? Is your cold-blooded heart keen on weaving in your tapestry my shame? Or are you an omen of peripety, the unexpected help to what is soon to be an anagnorisis?
If you could speak dear spider, it is not for someone like me to come begging for a diapason of praises, but instead shall brace myself for a cacophony of insults, but dare you not, I say, deny me respect.
The dignity I accorded you by not crushing you underfoot surely needs to be reciprocated; but as it is with my fate, like a fly stuck in your web, I am defeated and brought down by my own weakness: attracted to the gossamer-like promises of an intricately-spun lie, I lurched to my doom head-on, not even considering myself as a scoundrel, only less than that: a pathetic fly consumed by shame and self-hatred, an anomaly among the greatest of all creation, for whom it is not written, “man shall have dominion over beasts”, whom instead is possessed by the memories of original sin— that heirloom clothing my naked flesh with chthonic cognizance, and its perfidious perfidy.
Labels: 2019, creative writing, first drafts, notes on things
