of all the days to fix our sidewalk, the aldermen of the city of gotham has decided to repave our block--from the sicilian cuisine restaurant to the mexican produce store in this neck of the bronx woods i live in--in the very week we are expecting the first snow of the season. as people would say here (i know this is one of those trite New Yorkese you always expect to hear in any movie ostensibly shot in the Big Apple) "well, whatcha gonna do, huh?"(complete with the requisite shoulder shrug and the double open palm air throw). gotham operates by its own labyrinthine logic. and one's mental hygiene is well served if one doesn't attempt to pull a Theseus.
and in the true ethos of inner city existence, it did not even take half an hour after the contractors left the scene when the still wet cement was already claimed by the neighborhood scractchitti artists as their constitutionally afforded canvas.
from among the doodles, there's the usual juvenile shout outs and chest thumping. para mi gente, dedicates one boricua (i.e. puerto rican) scratchitti artist but whatever he was offering to his peoples totally escapes me. the requisite dick drawings (uncut, of course, but definitely tumescent) make unabashed appearances. and this being the bronx, various attempts at drawing high powered guns (most of them of the 9mm mold) blast through the gaggle of pavement scratchings loud and clear (or should i say loudly and clearly for syntax purists out there).
but what literally stopped me cold was a plaintive sign that was clearly doodled on the run on the soon-to-be hard grey taffy. the script looked like it was written by someone from my mother's generation, you know, someone who was schooled by the first wave of the Thomasites (it's a joke, mom, okey?) where penmanship was taught almost as the fourth R in the curriculum. (the three others being reading, 'riting and 'rithmetic). the sign sighed "mahal kita, Rodel."
well, it's not exactly e.e. cummings but you could not even begin to realize how mythical the moment was when i first read this line. as Emerson would have it "the true poem is the poet’s mind."
the poet gemino abad (of the university of the philippines) titled the collection of philippine poetry in english he anthologized years ago as a native clearing. this of course in a not so subtle allusion to the way pioneering farmers during the homestead era (just right after the second world war) slashed and burnt a piece of the jungle to transform it to what they believed was their god given lot to cultivate.
in his/her monumental way, this love sick pinoy scratchitti artist has made his/her own kaigin here in the new york concrete jungle using but the flimsiest but highly incendiary kindling of heartfelt emotion.
now he's started one conflagration of emotions, at least within me, all right. now i can't stop playing this mental game of matching who, among the very sparse Pinoy barangay in central bronx, may have written it.
it could not be this flaming queen who works as an ER nurse because he hardly gets out of his leased BMW top of the line sedan. the more that it could not be this portly manang who i always see every morning in the local diner eating two eggs sunny side up, double toast, double bacon with an ample mound of potato fries on the side. she hardly talks to anybody. but then again, one never knows.
two, maybe three days from now, the first snow of winter will powder over the fallow fields of the bronx. but no amount of frost or sleet or snow can pave over that blazing spot where that sign was etched. easily, the still scorching emotion of that pinoy street poet thaws whatever crippling cold this foreign clime smothers its tropical guests.