Posted by Hello I.M. Lisa | Posted in | Posted on 4:58 PM
During the moments when I find myself lost in my own writing, unsure of what to say next, unable to translate the images in my head into words, utterly ineffectual, there are certain writers I turn to in order to help me find my way once again: Fanon, Cesaire, Said, Barrios, San Juan and many others. I dive in, melt into the words, float above or swim against them and I let them take me to the same familiar places only to find new gems to take back with me. After a while I come back and somehow, I am able to fight my way through the traps and pitfalls in my own head in order to write that sentence or paragraph, giving some shape to images that I wrestle with even in my sleep. Today, I am writing about the spectacle of suffering in Filipino film and I am disheartened by the ostentatious display of crying, dispossessed, displaced and abused bodies splayed on screen for our entertainment. I hate that suffering becomes posited as a condition of belonging and citizenship; that to be a "good" Filipino one must first suffer for family, homeland and God.
I suppose it's my own fault that I am, for lack of a better word, suffering through this. I did choose this topic. But it's one thing to endure writing a dissertation; in the grand scheme of things, this is by far a pretty innocuous endeavor. There are always scarier battles being fought, more dangerous places to be, pain more intensely felt, lives more profoundly disrupted by war, natural disasters, poverty and injustice. All of this, a dissertation can only talk about, try to make sense of, find moments of resistance to and even that is already beyond the scope of my body of knowledge.
So in this moment, I find refuge in Amado V. Hernandez, Filipino poet, guerrilla fighter, labor leader and all around bad ass. In 1951 he was arrested for his labor organizing and while in jail he wrote some of my favorite poems which is later published in the collection titled Isang Dipang Langit or A Stretch of Sky, after a poem he wrote while gazing at the small piece of sky visible from his jail cell window. "Kamay" or "Hands" is another favorite of mine from the collection and today as I find myself lost in my own writing and disheartened by what I have produced, I once again turn to this poem about the meaning of struggle, about our own potential to make and unmake the world around us through work, the power of one's hands to protect those who cannot protect themselves, to shape and mold and to quietly show love without demanding much else. I leave with a quote from this poem, which I love so, with words so beautiful that it hurts each time I read it, a pain that is most welcomed as I try to fight through my own thoughts and words. Salamat Ka Amado sa iyong pakikibaka.
"Ang mga kamay ko'y binihasang sadya
sa kakaharaping gawai't dalita;
pangit ang daliring humabi ng sutla,
tumuklas ng ginto'y kamay ng paggawa.
Habang ang kamay mo o aking Pagibig,
kambal na bulaklak---mabango, malinis;
kung may sakit ako or nasa panganib,
dantay ng kamay mo ay isa nang langit.
Nguni't tingnan yaong kamay ng Orasan,
may itinuturo't waring nagsasaysay;
'Tao, kayong lahat ay may katapusan
na itatadhana nitong aking kamay!'"
---from "Kamay" by Amado V. Hernandez, 1956.
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