Cien Sonetos de Amor: XVII (No te amo como si fueras rosa)

de Pablo Neruda

No te amo como si fueras rosa de sal, topacio
o flecha de claveles que propagan el fuego:
te amo como se aman ciertas cosas oscuras,
secretamente, entre la sombra y el alma.

Te amo como la planta que no florece y lleva
dentro de sí, escondida, la luz de aquellas flores,
y gracias a tu amor vive oscuro en mi cuerpo
el apretado aroma que ascendió de la tierra.

Te amo sin saber como, ni cuándo, ni de dónde,
Te amo directamente sin problemas ni orgullo:
así te amo porque no sé amar de otra manera,
sino así de este modo en que no soy ni eres,
tan cerca que tu mano sobre mi pecho es mía,
tan cerca que se cierran tus ojos con mi sueño. 

The Agony of Waiting

Written by my late mother, Imelda G. Nartea, October 3, 1993

Lorena was never so happy except on her wedding day.  It was a day of fun, love and enjoyment.  She did not realize that only one week after she shared bliss and happy moments with her husband, he would be called back to active duty south of the Philippines.

With tears in her eyes , Lorena said goodby to Roberto at the airport.  “Take care of yourself, I will always pray for your safe return”, was all that she could say.

“Don’t cry anymore, I’ll be careful and I will write as soon as I get to Cotabato,” Roberto countered. Then it was time for him to go and board his plane.

Lorena went home with a heavy heart.  She couldn’t understand why their happy days together could be over so soon.  She tried looking over the house which Roberto’s parents gave them as a wedding gift.  Everything was in order – she couldn’t ask for more.  She really married well.  

Weeks passed.  Roberto’s first letter caught her tending to her garden plants and flowers.  She wiped her hands and ran to the gate to receive the letter from the mailman.  

Reading his letter, Lorena couldn’t help but long for her husband.  She learned that they would be going on operations in the mountains of Cotabato.  Her heart started to beat faster.  She felt the same ache she first felt when Roberto took his leave for this new assignment.  She went to the window and sat forlornly – wishing her husband home, wanting him not to be a member of the PNP anymore.  Absentmindedly, she prayed, “Dear God, please let my loved one come home – keep him safe for me.

That night in her sleep, Lorena dreamt of war and she saw her husband shot.  She screamed and she woke up.

The following day, news broke in the radio that many PNP and AFP soldiers were wounded in some Cotabato encounters.  Lorena felt the same ache again.  She could not take it any longer.  She tried calling her parents and her parents-in-law.  They haven’t heard from Roberto either.  When the day was almost over and no word came from his headquarters, Lorena could no longer take the agony of waiting.  She finally decided to go to church at 5:00 p.m.

She prayed like she has never prayed in her entire life.  She implored the Lord to keep her husband safe and to let him return to her.  After over an hour in church, Lorena walked home.

All of a sudden, tears flowed from   her eyes.  She could not help but remember the happy times she had when Roberto was still courting her – the roses and love songs and chocolates, and ice cream.  She arrived home tired and feeling empty.  She barely touched the food which her househelp prepared for her that night.  

She went to bed still worried and afraid.  But this time she has found new strength in the Lord; she hopes her husband was safe and he’ll soon return.

Days passed and still no word came from Roberto’s headquarters – he had been one of those missing from the Cotabato encounters.  But Lorena felt deep in her heart that her husband was safe and soon she will be surprised of his return.

A month after the fateful day, the telephone in Lorena’s house started ringing and she rushed from her bedroom to the living room.

“Hello,” she said hesitantly, she felt her heart pounding.

“Lorena! This is Roberto,” came the sound from the telephone receiver.

“Oh, where are you? Are you okay?” she said, her tears racing through her cheeks.

“I’m at the airport and I’m on my way home.  I’ll tell you everything when I get there. I love you, sweetheart, don’t cry anymore.” Then Lorena barely hear his goodbye as she replaced the receiver.

Lorena felt like she was being married again.  She uttered a prayer of thanks and she tried to make herself beautiful for the arrival of her month-lost husband.

Remember, Remember, the 8th of November

This essay has been on my drafts since 2014. Ten years after Typhoon Haiyan, locally known as Supertyphoon Yolanda, struck. Here is our story.

Since the first time floodwaters entered our house in V and G subdivision, our uncle’s house in Manlurip, San Jose has been our go-to place for safety.  Our humble abode is located at Phase 4 Extension, comically nicknamed “fish port”, and ever since that critical day in 2006, our house had oftentimes fallen victim to flood knocking uninvitedly on our doorstep. When news of typhoons broke out, my mother would hurriedly bring us to San Jose a few days before the typhoon hits us to save us from imminent flood and wading through dirty water at home.  Sometimes, she stayed as an evacuee too but more often, she decides to stay at home.  

For days, sometimes weeks until floodwaters at home have cleared, we would comfortably be with our uncle and his family.  After all, we always had fun being with our cousins.  Time and time again, this has been our routine.  Typhoon after typhoon, floodwaters on the streets of our neighborhood and inside our house rose by inches.  I even kept track of the height of flood inside our house.  Every time we went home, a wooden wall in one of the bedrooms would have clear impressions of the flood.  I would get a permanent marker, draw a line and scribble the date of when the flood came in.  Typhoon after typhoon, we would go to San Jose for shelter.       

When news of Supertyphoon Yolanda came, we knew at once that we were bound to evacuate to our uncle’s residence.  If weaker typhoons can bring floodwaters in our house, all the more must a supertyphoon.  That was the most reasonable thing to do, so we thought.  Following our routine, we were already staying with our relatives two days before that fateful Friday of November 2013.  Everything in life happens for a reason.  My elder brother with exceptionalities, my nephew (son of our eldest) and I were at San Jose on November 8, 2013 because we had to be there.

Early morning, my mother called me up (she stayed in V and G with two of my male cousins) to wake me.  The night person that I am, I should have been cranky being awoken like that but I was not.  I hurriedly rolled the mat and went outside the bedroom to help out with the preparations for breakfast.  We were supposed to have arroz caldo, the dish requested by my cousin the night before that her husband cook that morning.  But we never got a chance because the storm surges ate them all up and many things in their house as well as lives of people in their neighborhood.

Before the waves came in, fourteen of us were all cramped up in the first floor bathroom.  Our uncle said it was the safest place to stay in because glass windows were exploding and all of the roofing have been carried away by the strong winds.  Suddenly, my uncle went out of the bathroom, telling us he just needed to check outside. He went back shouting “the water is rising” and yelling at us to go upstairs.  Then we saw it, black, murky water. Calf-high.  Like an organized line of ants, we were able to go up without panicking.  When all of us were safely standing on the stairs (since there were still shrapnel flying around), the water rose quickly.  Three waves.  The water was rippling.  We all had the same thing in mind.  We should have died if uncle did not stubbornly go out of the bathroom.  We were spared from the storm surge and we are very thankful for our second lives.  We show our gratefulness by showing compassion and kindness to others.                

What of the No Child Left Behind Policy

February of this year (after substitute teaching in another high school – the high school I graduated from way, way back), I got hired as a permanent public junior high school teacher. From a university instructor teaching languages, literature, and research, I am now an English and Filipino teacher in Grade 9 and Grade 8, respectively. What at first was a search for stability in my career since I was just a part time teacher at the university with a competitive scene to get a permanent position, has now become an advocacy, that every one of my students learn how to read.

Yes, you read that right, I have students who have somehow been left behind by the educational system’s no child left behind policy. At a supposed 9th grade level, majority of my students after being assessed in their reading ability and comprehension have a below level reading score. Most are not fluent readers, in that they cannot read with accuracy, speed, and with proper expression, and moreso, they cannot answer comprehension questions of the text they just read during the assessment.

Now, here comes the ranting part. Why is it that the literacy levels of these students from the schools they come from in primary school say that there are no non-readers graduating from their school when in fact, there are? During the enrollment period, we had to assess students who were going to be admitted in seventh grade, we have assessed many of these incoming students as non-readers or struggling readers. We have to put emphasis on literacy teaching because when a kid cannot read, he or she will not be successful in all other subject areas because surprise, they have to read in all other subjects too. Don’t let me start with the importance of numeracy. That’s a blog post, perhaps for another day.

A primary school graduate who cannot easily read sight words at a third-grade level is a kid left behind by the system. Reading interventions were supposed to be given to these struggling readers upon assessment as they went through the stages of primary education. We have to admit that something had gone wrong. These thoughts have been brewing in my head these past weeks as I, together with the language teachers in my school, had to come up with a reading intervention action plan in all levels for our students.

I am a big nerd for reading as it has been part of my life since I started learning to read at three years old. I hope that the action plan we have come up with will be beneficial for our students. This is a call to action to all teachers too, every teacher, whatever your subject area is, is a literacy teacher. I hope that you give reading activities and reading interventions too by using text or themes in your subject area so as to really ensure that no child is left behind by teaching them how to read.

Oda a la Edad (Ode to Age)

This is me reading Oda a la Edad by Pablo Neruda
featuring photos that I took of Toledo, Spain.

Ode To Age

I don’t believe in age.
All old people
carry
in their eyes,
a child,
and children,
at times
observe us with the
eyes of wise ancients.
Shall we measure
life
in meters or kilometers
or months?
How far since you were born?
How long
must you wander
until
like all men
instead of walking on its surface
we rest below the earth?
To the man, to the woman
who utilized their
energies, goodness, strength,
anger, love, tenderness,
to those who truly
alive
flowered,
and in their sensuality matured,
let us not apply
the measure
of a time
that may be
something else, a mineral
mantle, a solar
bird, a flower,
something, maybe,
but not a measure.
Time, metal
or bird, long
petiolate flower,
stretch
through
man’s life,
shower him
with blossoms
and with
bright
water
or with hidden sun.
I proclaim you
road,
not shroud,
a pristine
ladder
with treads
of air,
a suit lovingly
renewed
through springtimes
around the world.
Now,
time, I roll you up,
I deposit you in my
bait box
and I am off to fish
with your long line
the fishes of the dawn!

translated from the Spanish by Margaret Sayers Peden

Quoted from…

When I Die
Rumi

When I die
when my coffin
is being taken out
you must never think
i am missing this world

don’t shed any tears
don’t lament or
feel sorry
i’m not falling
into a monster’s abyss

when you see
my corpse is being carried
don’t cry for my leaving
i’m not leaving
i’m arriving at eternal love

when you leave me
in the grave
don’t say goodbye
remember a grave is
only a curtain
for the paradise behind

you’ll only see me
descending into a grave
now watch me rise
how can there be an end
when the sun sets or
the moon goes down

it looks like the end
it seems like a sunset
but in reality it is a dawn
when the grave locks you up
that is when your soul is freed

have you ever seen
a seed fallen to earth
not rise with a new life
why should you doubt the rise
of a seed named human

have you ever seen
a bucket lowered into a well
coming back empty
why lament for a soul
when it can come back
like Joseph from the well

when for the last time
you close your mouth
your words and soul
will belong to the world of
no place no time

Life

This is a poem written by my late mother when she was in her twenties. I wanted to share this here because the paper she’d typewritten it on is already fading.

Life
by Imelda G. Nartea
Jan. 10, 1976

Why do I always grope in the dark recesses
of my innermost feelings?

what am I searching for beneath the deepening
shadows of my mind __

why do I sometimes blunder and get nowhere
at life’s mysterious biddings,

what do I hunger and thirst for in this valley,
but still fail to find

the essence of my quest and the satisfaction of
my longings?

ah, life – what art thou that I fail to grasp thee

why art thou evasive at my desire to clutch thee;

do I always have to chase you

do I always have to catch you

yet, fail, even to touch at the threshold of
the answer to your mystery,

even to shove the perplexing webs of your
metaphysical essence.

When can I meet your familiar yet elusive face,

when can I understand you, life, and embrace ___

whatever blows and hails you give?

Quoted from…

LEAVES OF GRASS
Come, said my soul,
Such verses for my Body let us write, (for we are one,)
That should I after return,
Or, long, long hence, in other spheres,
There to some group of mates the chants resuming,
(Tallying Earth’s soil, trees, winds, tumultuous waves,)
Ever with pleas’d smile I may keep on,
Ever and ever yet the verses owning—as, first, I here and now
Signing for Soul and Body, set to them my name,

Walt Whitman

Papa’s Half

My father was a judo and aikido practitioner in his youth. I acknowledged this side of me, his side of me, more when I started doing martial arts, August of last year. I have been wanting to do jiu jitsu for years now but life always had its reasons for me not to. In other words, I always had excuses not to.

Nine months in since I first stepped on the mats, I am leaner (I weighed at 59 to 62 kg before I started training and now, I weigh 55 kg to 57 kg), I am stronger (I can throw a person thrice my weight), I have more endurance (from running out of breath, nearly blacking out in one 5-minute sparring round to still having energy after four 5-minute sparring rounds), I am kinder (I can kick your ass but choose to understand), and I am healthier (body, mind, and soul), and more balanced.

My martial arts journey is solely mine and will be different from my father’s but by getting into martial arts, I have gotten to know more about him, in his death, more than I have when he was still alive. We may not have met each other after he left the Philippines when I was four years old but I have met him again in my adulthood when I first stepped on the mats, first did my bow, and first entered in a jiu jitsu competition.

Though he may be gone, I embody his courage every time I train in jiu jitsu. I can even hear him cheer me on and coach me on the sidelines when I spar or compete. Here’s to you Papa, I finally did what you always wished I did when I was younger, to try martial arts out. Happy Father’s Day!

Papa is the first on the left at the back line. He was 17 when this picture was taken.

That’s me in my jiu jitsu gi.

That’s me winning a match via the bow and arrow choke in my first ever jiu jitsu competition.

Other Me

When will my reflection show who I am inside?
(Photo is mine)

I see visions
in my mind’s eye of what
could have been’s, other me’s,
and alternate realities.

I smile and I’m happy because
in those me’s, I see…
True happiness, and she’s free.

No, really.