Pagtitingi’t paghingi ng kausap

WORDS are loose change plied out, piled up in talk—it’s often cheap and we deserve cheapskates who pepper chats with cheap shots, don’t we? Wheezed out of a week ending in a quaint Christmas I’d opt to call anytime as Pasko ng Pagkabuhay, (ang naririnig ko kasi, Happy Ouster!) the just past days of quiet left a feeling that words are sacraments. Made out as sacred testament or massacred most times. Made whole and holy by those who choose to do so out of chewing at the cud, nourished of indwelling word-flesh.

So that probably explains why I still stick it up with old-fashioned fully spelled out tidbits, spare parts, odds and ends biota of speech. Words can be clothed with flesh to dwell among us, why, they’d look like misshapen cretins and freaks if some parts, maybe a letter or two, or a tell-tale punctuation birth mark is willfully left out, lopped off, butchered away. Lintxt ka talaga, pati dilang nakalaan sa cunnilanguages, ba’t pinuputulan-tinatadtad-nilalaslas-tinatastas—nasaan na ang kalayaan ng xxxpression?

So we can speak from the bottom of the heart, trickle out something down to earth. Or speak from the bottom; blow ill wind, ah, farting is such sweet sorrow…

Nasulsulan pa mandin ng ilang tagpo mula wuxia na napanood sa GMA-7, “Hero” na nagtampok sa kakatwang pamamaraan ng pagsulat, ‘yung masuyong kaplugan-pagtatalik ng mga larawang-diwa o kanjin upang mailahad ang ubod at buod ng katagang “tabak.” Basta tabak ang mas marikit na salin sa sword, dahil namumukadkad ang bagwis sa igkas-lipad ng ibong tagak (heron is literally too close to hero) na katugma ng tabak—na iglap na iniigkas din mula pugad na kaluban.

The sword word had to be written out in swift brush strokes on a paper panel about eight feet high. The dexterity with wielding a writing implement would also reveal the writer’s deftness at swordsmanship while the spelled out pictogram would evoke visions of truth for the discerning. Ah, pictograms, hieroglyphs, and such painterly modes of transcribing ideas into tenable form would hardly acquiesce to emasculation or evisceration that’s done these days to thoughts ensconced, encoded—embodied maybe embedded-- in text format.

Huwag namang ipagduldulan sa mga natatanggap kong liham sa electronic mail ang emoticons… wala namang pagkakaiba ang mga isinusulat natin dito… pare-pareho, hindi na masisipat ni masusukat kung mayroon tayong nakatagong kakayahan sa pananandata mula sa ating mga sulat… wala tayong ibubunyag… graphologists or those folks who can make sense of a persona lurking beneath handwriting are a sorry lot, we don’t reveal our hands, keep them close to the chest… so unlike the divine hand that scrawled out a fully spelled out ominous writing on the wall, Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin… 2004 pa nang makatanggap ako ng kapirasong kalatas lang na nakasulat-kamay… nagmula sa isang Welsh na nagsadya sa pasulatan, nagkumpisal na masugid daw siyang sumusubaybay sa kahit ano lang na inilalahad na tila kamay sa pitak na ito… Welsh, Welsh, well wishes…wishing wells into which we toss coins as cheap bribes for granting wishes.

May hiling ang kaluluwa’t may halang ang kaluluwa kaya may kahirapan din itong pumili o kahit bumili ng mainam na kausap. Na makakasuklian ng sensilyo, maybe some sense, too, out of the loose change plied out, piled up in plain talk. Parang kalakalan. Magpapalitan ng halaga, kimpal ng kuwalta ang itatapat sa nais makamit na kalakal. Tatayain kung magkasukat sa timbang ang palitan. Palit-pera. Palit-puri.

And what did one Steve Talbott have to say? “We are continually assaulted by the mechanized word, but less and less aware of where the speaking comes from. We have less and less experience of the conscious acts giving rise to the words, and we ourselves are not really addressed by the words. It is ‘the System’ that speaks, but the System seems to be nothing more than the machine rendered vague and ubiquitous.”

Nang ako’y ungkatin ng anak sa tula
Kung dapat ba itong wakasan sa lagda
Ano ang nasabi, pray tell what did I say?
I let out an earful: these days rhyme doesn’t pay…