Title: “LINES ON THE SOLE / GUHIT NG TALAMPAKAN”

Author: Khavn De La Cruz
84 Poems / Tula
Bilingual Edition (Tagalog & English)
Published by University of Santo Tomas Publishing, 2008
Price: P350

“Lines On The Sole” is not a book of poems by Khavn De La Cruz. Like Khavn’s music and cinema, these objets d’art and anti-poems are beyond categories, cutting-edge, and like nothing we’ve read before.
– JOSE F. LACABA

”Lines On The Sole” is the director of the outcome of Khavn as an eminent poet. Here, he feels the power to juxtapose unrelated objects. Here, he delights in his being metaphysical. Here he relishes his being a metapoet. There is a vastness in the destiny of Khavn.

– V. E. CARMELO D. NADERA, JR.

Translated to English from the original Tagalog by JIM PASCUAL AGUSTIN, CONCHITINA CRUZ, RICKY DE UNGRIA, RUEL S. DE VERA, ISRAFEL FAGELA, MARNE L. KILATES, HOMER NOVICIO, ALLAN PASTRANA, & L. LACAMBRA YPIL

BIO
Khavn De La Cruz has won for his poetry and fiction in the Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards, where he has also served in the jury. He has been selected twice in the UP National Writers Workshop as a Writing Fellow. Khavn has received the Dean’s Award for Literature from the Ateneo De Manila University, his alma mater, where he also has lectured.

www.khavndelacruz.com

www.kamiasroad.com

The 29th Manila International Book Fair (MIBF), the biggest and longest-running book fair in the Philippines, will be held from September 12 to 16, 2008 at the SMX Convention Center, the country’s newest and largest exhibition and convention center, located at Seashell Drive, MALL OF ASIA Complex, Pasay City.

For details, call 890-0661 or 896-0682, or e-mail bookfair@primetradeasia.com.

www.manilabookfair.com
www.panitikan.com.ph

THE HORIZON OF KHAVN’S SOLE

Benilda S. Santos

In an interview after receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2001, V.S. Naipaul explained how he lived in two worlds: a world hidden behind a high wall made of metal and steel in French-Caribbean style, and the world of his grandmother’s home in Trinidad, a small island in the West Indies colonized by Spain, France and England. The hard and harsh line of segregation and the ostracism created by the wall are what Naipaul construed as forces that pushed the natives to live like turtles, hiding themselves inside their houses, staying content, keeping silent, never asking questions, never leaving their houses to go beyond the line.

It was so until Naipaul studied at University College, Oxford; until he discovered that apart from what he had learned in his grandmother’s home, he hardly knew anything about his past, unlike a French child who is surrounded by stock knowledge just waiting for the right time to be recognized by him to make him aware of France and being French. What then is left to be done by one like Naipaul?

To become a writer and unearth the beginning and end of being exiled in two worlds. To revolt through one’s imagination against the apathy of old idioms and prove the need to oppose the belief in the age-old expression, lines on the palm (indicating that which is fated and cannot be changed as well as prescribing a docile acceptance of whatever comes as one’s destiny), and offer a new metaphor to replace it with—lines on the sole (referring to a kind of willful wandering or drifting that erases the received maps or directions in life as one trusts in a strong intuition that leads to the discovery of something new and true).

Naipaul’s experience sheds light on Khavn’s experience of being a writer who attempts to recover his forgotten past and history. Realizing that he stands in the midst of two worlds—of city and province, of the indigenous and the West, of book knowledge and experience, of reality and dream, of the search for stability when the social order is ruptured—Khavn seems to hope and find through the act of writing poetry and the creation of the persona in his poems, that which can quench his thirst for what he called the forsaken self in the poem, “Falls of Batad.”

Here, the reader is invited to join a group of friends from the city in an adventure that starts with a visit to the rice terraces in the hopes of beholding its unfading beauty and reaching the falls of Batad in the end. But they were without luck for what awaited these visitors was the sight of the eroded side of the mountain—

The slope’s grass-hair is falling off: the fingers

have nothing to hold on to but one’s own clothes.

There was also a child who offered to be a guide to the falls in exchange for a few coins; an old woman ready to light a bonfire asked the group for matches; and there was the “wide ravine to fall into.” No profound or meaningful connection could be observed between the group and the people of the mountain. In the face of danger before the gaping maw of the ravine, the persona understood the absurdity of turning back after an already long journey. In his mind’s eye, he saw the fragments of a self or consciousness that was—

hardened by sloth,

rotted off by conceit,

blinded by opulence, rendered deaf by praise,

preyed upon by the insatiable I.

Is this the forsaken self the author is in search of? Has it been completely mired in sloth, pride, luxury and praise? Are the wounds borne by the social classes in a country divided by the bitterness of colonialism still fresh? Do the people remain torn between two languages despite the existence of many more, polarized by two cultures despite the existence of many others, separated by two faiths despite the existence of other forms of worship?

The persona experienced bitterness in his search for the Falls of Batad but it was only temporary. At the end of the poem, he and his companions found the falls: nature and her vow to care for her prodigal children.

The falls! At our feet!

We raced towards it,

slipping, rising, swinging

our arms above the current that pushes

away and pulls us back: Come, my child,

heal thy forgotten self.

What suggestion does Khavn pose to us when confronting the postcolonial situation of the “two worlds”? Nothing less than a return to the poem where language is the attack, as well as that which is attacked to give way to a new space of meanings born out of different conflicts. Through usage language becomes the very site of the creation of meaning. This is a complex process: words that serve as receptacles or tunnels of meaning are no longer used in a naive way for they have become the meeting points of colliding discourses. The poet raises old and new meanings to a higher plane to make the overall impact of the poem apparently, or truly, new. Departing from the belief in the centrality of language (even as he uses it), the poet is likewise able to relegate it to the margins, thus enabling him to be freed from strict adherence to the rules of grammar and rhetoric, and to blur his compliance to literary conventions. In this way, he is able to dramatize in his poems the conflicts between oral and written traditions. In addition, he uses other strategies to decenter some uses of language to serve to us readers a new and sometimes experimental/avant-garde horizon of possibilities. For his part, the reader recognizes the importance of this continuing production of meaning.

In Lines on the Sole, the pun used to confront the traditional expression, lines on the palm, is the chief design of the entire collection and key to understanding as well as valuing it. The poet frankly suggests the creation of a metaphorical line on one’s own sole instead of quietly accepting received notions implied in the use of the phrase lines on the palm. In the poem, “Sumaguing (Big Cave),” the sole’s function and role are defined:

We slipped our slippers into one

of the thousand secret holes in the ground,

and our soles began to grope

which stone was made slippery or sticky

by the never-drying paint of water.

First, we can infer from the above lines the importance of a direct and literal contact of a person’s sole on the surface or skin of the earth while he strives to remain standing. This has a connection to the word talampak, or the direct and unequivocal recognition given to a thing-that-is-there, that which one can stand on while seeking to carry his weight and keep his balance. This is the alternative idiom the poet is giving us as a way of renewing the self in the effort to carve therein a new space that can serve as the dwelling of the “two worlds” of his experience while seeking to reveal that which has fallen into neglect—the world of the natives, life in secluded places near or far from the city, so that from that position, says Khavn in the poem, “The Living Cold,” the color brown or the brown race may be found:

How tempting to peel,

to pluck each brown leaf

and claim you.

Thus, it is important for the persona to remain standing erect, relying on his sole, looking straight at the surroundings without grasping at deep or strong metaphors except for those which are derived from the simple experiences of walking, traveling and visiting places from which he was distanced by his life in the city, by foreign knowledge, and by foreign tongues.

For the second point, let us turn to the first stanza of the poem, “Plunge (Into St. Jacob’s Well).”

We slide our bodies

like a long missive

into the thin hole

of dull stones

and sharp fingernails

until our soles feel

the cold steel stairs.

In comparing the body to a form of discourse (the letter) while reiterating the sole’s role to place the body in a situation that allows it to stand and walk erect, the poet defines as well the importance of locating the body in the midst of a situation and space where it can be marked by the discourse of the marginalized. The body is centered and pushed into the meaning-making ritual in Nambukayan, Sagada, Batad, Banahaw, Pulilan, and Sapa Dos—places in the interior of provinces that the persona visited.

What a beautiful and simple description of poetry’s significance! Likened to a letter (or poem) in the world, the body is given an identity by the soles’ act of grasping the earth, no matter how provisional this identity may be. This is why the most obvious expression of an identity’s formation can be achieved by journeying to different places, and by creating a space of its own meaning by “sliding” the body into (“room-ing” or clearing a space or room for the body to occupy) the present moment (the thin hole) which later turns into a moment of personal history that finally materializes in the form of a vehicle—the poem. It goes to show, then, how migrating, seeking out foreign places, moving from place to place, stowing away, and wandering, are the only terms for defining the self of the “navigator and bookkeeper,/ pilot, second pilot, catcher,/ machinist, netman, cook,/ waterbearer and bagger…” (from the poem, “Boatman”).

And why is Khavn’s persona loathe to leave the country? The simple answer is his need to be taught by his country, to learn from gallivanting that which cannot be found in books. Realizing that much can be savored and learned from the interior, he decides to be a migrant in his own country. He can no longer remain silent while living in the big city. He needs to speak, to live, so he exiles himself to the many hidden places of his land.

What did the persona find in the end? A complex life that shook him—a far cry from Amorsolo’s paintings or from poems and novels that depict the lyrical landscape of rural and country life. In the section entitled, “Labyrinth of Nambukayan,” a collection of prose poems belies the initial impression of a simple remembrance of the persona’s past journeys. Images of innocence and an idyllic life juxtaposed with images of cruelty and violence is unnerving. One appreciates an infant’s smile, children’s banter, maidens’ whispers to each other, dances accompanied by gangsa and gong, and a river so serene it appears to be a bed from a distance. But there are scenes of foreboding, too: the deadly sting of the banyagaw, the loaded gun, the secluded setting where dramas of torture are staged, the military tank ominously resting by the river, and the men in soldier’s garb.

In the cluster of poems in the section, “Sonnets On Sagada,” the poet returns to the traditional lines and stanzas to praise the “warrior of light in the unmoving darkness,” the “cold and scent of the Sagada wind,” the night’s stark darkness “awakening my solitude,” and sets all these beside the grave fate of the “Hanging Coffin,” the poem that ends the section. The coffin that holds the ancient bones of the Kan-kanaey is empty. What senseless assault to the land of a noble people! The persona laments the desecration of the remains of his brown brother.

It is good, then, to find the depressing tone in “Hanging Coffin” lifted to reverence in solemn prayer when we reach the section, “Rituals Of Banahaw,” where the metaphorical meaning of sole becomes luminous. In the poem, “Scrubbing (At Santa Lucia),” the reader understands why one cannot bathe properly beneath the two falls Water of The Father and Hair Of The Virgin unless he takes his shoes off. The people in Banahaw believe that travelers must allow the miraculous waters of the falls to wash away the dust of past journeys from their feet and be blessed. This is to impress upon them the knowledge that the land they are stepping on is no longer mere soil but land made pure by the prayers of the faithful, and transformed as the ground where folk prayers and practices embrace Catholic prayers and Biblical narratives brought by the Spaniards. Here is one place saved from the tight grip of colonialism by the animism kept alive in Catholic teachings, prayers and habits of the people living at the foot of Mt. Banahaw. With hardly any flat surface to walk on, many places in Banahaw remain without electricity. One has to plunge in its thick darkness, discover the territory without a map, before he understands that taking off his shoes and making his soles touch the earth, is letting oneself be caressed and possessed by the Motherland.

The remaining sections of poems in the collection are about the second world, the world where the persona was born and reared—the center of colonial practices. With Metro Manila as the point of reference, the sections are arranged according to the farthest from, and the nearest to, the city. The setting of the first poems is farthest from Metro Manila. Like kilometer posts by the roadside indicating one’s distance from the center, as one reads through the sections, he gets the impression that the number decreases, that is, the persona appears to be getting nearer and nearer to the place of his birth, Kamias Road in Quezon City.

In the section, “Frames Of Pulilan,” places not too far away from Manila are made to stand for a space of transition from far-off provinces coming down to the narrow and noisy city. The persona in these poems passes by an acacia tree, a patch of grass, or a rice field. Pets loiter in the streets. It seems life is generally peaceful. The poems are like snapshots, giving the impression that the persona is in a hurry to move on. He has no intention of staying long in Pulilan.

Coming to the next section, “Storm In Sapa Dos,” the reader notes how the quiet life in Pulilan is shattered by the noise of commerce in Sapa Dos. As the collective persona of fishermen puts it in the poem, “Pandawan Fishermen,” “…they treat us like cheap round-scud…/ rotting, wreathed in flies.” If it isn’t the cruelty of commerce, it is the storm’s fury that finishes off the fishermen.

The section, “Odes To CCP,” strikes the reader as a little oasis. Composed of five poems dedicated to artists, it is a welcome intermission or break in the narratives of wretchedness and woes in the previous sections. The poet appears to be offering the road to the creative life as a viable alternative the reader may choose to take. He can likewise discover the lines on his sole in this way.

Without a second’s hesitation, the persona in the poems towards the remaining sections of the book assumes a sad and bitter tone. In the section, “Woman Of Katipunan,” the poet bundled a bouquet of lyrical lines of love as intense as the scorching summer in Katipunan, and as troubled as a jeepney driver in Ateneo Gate 2 whose jeepney remains half-empty as day falls deep into night. One feels a slight irony here: the historical character of Katipunan Road is completely lost to the persona’s preoccupation with frustrated romantic love, oblivious as he is to the burden of fighting for the country’s freedom that marked the lives of many heroes who traversed the same path. Still, this section bears the most painful images, telling the reader that Katipunan is the road that scorched the persona’s sole.

The reader has the same impression of section, “Luster Of Aurora.” The only two poems that make up this section are unequivocal in their declaration, “gone are the doors.” A cul-de-sac without a detour.

Likewise, in the section, “Passing By Anonas,” the persona chances upon the homeless. All doors have been shut upon them. They are a grave challenge to the painter of even the most free form of surrealist art.

The poem, “Litany Of Sacred Heart,” sounds the curtain-call to the entire collection. At last, we readers are led to the persona’s innermost reflections, to the periphery of his horizon. We come face-to-face with a solipsism strongly resistant to interpretation. We humbly accept the poem as such, for it is a valuable documentation of a consciousness that exists in one particular moment of ambivalent history. The persona declares:

Tired am I, turtle under the heavy house.

Any road is quicksand to the feet.

Is this a threat? A prophecy of the emptiness that is the proper end of all? Or a simple reminder for us to take that back-pack out of the closet, fill it with the bare essentials needed for the journey, and start tracing a map that is without a north, south, east nor west, “in one road, as big, as small as the world.”

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 8th, 2009 at 9:31 am and is filed under WRITINGS. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.