It didn’t seem like Christmas.  There weren’t too many lights or Christmas trees, and the lanterns looked dim and grim.  Children no longer pass by at night playing tambourines and drums, and singing Christmas carols.  It looks like one of those ordinary days.  The sadness and bleakness of it all, though, is only highlighted and underscored by the fact that it’s five days until Christmas.

I wonder if Christmas forgot about us this year.  Too many things have happened over the past few months that maybe we do not have enough to celebrate with, or there’s just no reason to celebrate at all.  “Pasko na naman” no longer heralds the coming of the season, but has become a sort of warning.  Christmas is that time of the year where we spend bonuses on bills.  It’s that time of the year where one’s 13th month pay goes to 13 inaanak‘s.  Worse, with all the tragedies and calamities that befell the nation, there is no stable beam on the roof to hang a parol on.

The Scrooge in me goes “Bah, humbug” on every Christmas party I have to attend, but the child in me wonders where Christmas went.

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(A very late response to “Reopening the question: Does poetry matter?” in Meat and Marginalia)

They say that poetry is a luxury.  In many ways, art is a passion and a vocation by those who can afford it.  It’s not only a matter of material wealth – the great bulk of our writers are people with modest means – but one’s wealth measured in time.  Poetry and literature are accomplished with painstaking and undivided attention and commitment not only to revision, but also inspiration.

The significance of poetry, for me, is not to be found on the artistic value of verses alone.  The significance of poetry can be found in creativity; the depth and wealth of which can help and teach us to find a way out of our impasse.  The method of the poem, in its own simple way, can be translated to the method of our emancipation.  While poems and verses can scarcely put food on the table for the lot of people (much less for underappreciated and underpaid writers), the creative mindset required to write a poem – and instilled by the poem itself – in its own simple way, can matter in the grand scheme of development and improvement.

Yet the value of poetry is not solely found in the rewards and awards bestowed upon a good poet.  Creativity – the backbone of all art – is what makes a poem a poem.  “The writer’s truth” is spoken of in reverence because it surpasses reality and comes closer to truth, the absolute essence of a topic (if it even exists).  Creativity goes beyond the tried-and-tested and an understanding of the real; it is the all-accommodating, all-encompassing kind and way of thinking that encourages people to express themselves, to think out of the box, and to surpass their limitations.

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A friend of mine from elementary school took a picture of the Fr. Ghisleen de Vos lobby of Saint Louis University Laboratory Elementary School. In a few weeks, we’ll be having our grand reunion, and I’m sure my batchmates have a good memory of this place. During recess time, my classmates sat by the corridors playing jacks. The floor of the lobby was a place for patintero, Touch-the-Body, and Cops and Robbers. For many of them, this was the place that elementary school memories are made of.

Save for Recognition Week, skits, First Friday Mass, and plays, I don’t have a fond memory of this place at all. I wasn’t allowed here. To go home or out to lunch, I had to take the other way out: down the stairwells at the far end, and into General Luna, hail the jeepney, and realize at a young age that I’m missing playtime and I’m not making friends. No, none at all; my best memories of this place is Mr. Kitma with his wooden meterstick, Mrs. Mendoza with her file folders, and a very vague memory of me playing a one-man version of “The Shoemaker and the Elves.”

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