hankering for greasy galunggong, I went to this pinoy deli whose shopkeeper also moonlights as a livery cab driver and filipino cable tv installer. while restraining myself from chucking the consumptive looking fish for this immoral crispy pata, someone tapped my shoulder from behind. it was this guy who I ran into quite frequently in manila's civil society circle.
he was this bayan organizer and he had this command of street rhetoric that soared gloriously higher than most of what the so called university poets inflicted on us in those insufferable poetry readings.
I remembered him as decidedly gaunt but now he lugged a few more pounds. oh, he's married now to this nurse manager and they have this house in a good neighborhood uptown and they now have these three kids, one of whom is a star pupil in this magnet catholic parish school. I lost him somewhere around the talk of his kids.
my attention was only riveted back when I noticed that he was returning a vhs copy of nora aunor's classic minsan may isang gamu-gamu (once, a firefly). not that I am a nora fan, but that was it for me. I did not even remember bidding him goodbye. all I knew was I went home with this certainly pirated vhs copy, dismally labelled, and I'm not sure either whether I had the pedestrian fish or the more glorious pork with me.
one of the gems from the so-called golden age of philippine cinema (was there ever?), minsan (1977 famas best picture) featured nora as a nurse who had this dream of working in the US (how cliched) only to chuck it after her brother (played by La Aunor's real life younger brother) was shot by an american serviceman (this was when the american bases were still there. like they ever left. whatever.) who mistook him for a wild boar.
"my brother is not a pig." this is the classic la aunor retort (oft parodied in manila gay cabarets) to the us servicemen who came to her brother's wake and offered the official but obviously insincere condolences.
this movie was a miracle. it was staunchly anti-US bases and yet it squeaked through the censors, then a major apparatchik in the marcos-military superstructure.
defying logic, nora's character (corazon) then embarked on a hopeless course of action. hopeless in that the wimpy philippine government had no jurisidiction over the more supreme white race.
in the court, a fellow filipino, the lawyer of the accused american sergeant, offered corazon an envelope stuffed with green bucks. corazon asked him the current exchange rate then searingly socked the clincher to him. "how much is a man per kilo?"
in arthur miller's (the great american playwright died just last week.) play death of a salesman, willy loman bellowed after realizing that he, the hotshot salesman that he is, or so he thought, was now being fired. "you can't eat the orange and throw the peel away. a man is not a piece of fruit."
later in the play, berating her indifferent kids, willy's careworn wife spoke for the heroism of her husband's seemingly pedestrian life. "attention must be paid." this must be one of the most stirring refutations in literature of the cruelties of america's capitalist culture.
early this morning while doing rounds in my ward, I still could not shake off the curve ball question nora's grandfather threw her way.
it was from this scene. corazon's family members, all looking glum, gathered around dinner, ignoring the live tv broadcast of the landmark apollo mission to the moon. the camera panned to an empty seat, that of corazon's murdered brother.
then corazon's lolo (grandfather), who apparently was transfixed by the telecast, called out: "corazon, kanila na rin ba ang buwan?" (corazon, do they now own the moon, as well.)
unlike corazon, I made it here without so much a tragedy. but not quite. not quite.