ORAGONX: THE NEW BIKOL REPUBLIK

SA CITY ISLANDS, 2 ALDAW PAKATAPOS KAN SAKONG COMPLEANO
(para ki Gani asin Robie)

Iyo, iba man nanggad
digdi an mga aniit asin kasag
malaman, dasok sa memorya nin dagat
yaon sa tahaw nin samong pagkarayoan.
Alagad, ano daw
ta hinihidaw ko ngonian
an suka, sili asin tinadtad na bawang
minapanagom kan dara niyang
mainiton na pangudtuhan:
dinoradong patos sa dahon
nin batag na linubluban,
sararadit na mga ugama
nadakop kasuodmang aga
asin tubig sa pigingodngoran na daud.
Ay, pakatapos nin saiyang pagkarigos
an parong kan kadlom asin puga
hali sa saiyang buhok
minasuklob sa laog kan samong payag-payag
sa tahaw nin nagdidiklom na kaomahan
asin muraway na boot,
igwa pa akong natatadang kusog
nganing mag-arado bago kami magkaturog.

01-13-07, N.J.

VIAJE

Lunad nin Greyhound
haling Norfolk pasiring New York
ini an biyaheng daing gusot,
garo sarong pagturog
sa inarkilang kuartong malipot,
an kama, malumhok,
an saiyang hinangos, mahamot.

Sa saimong pagmata
garo baga dai sana,
mayong paaraman,
mayong ni ho, ni ha.

Duman sa ginikanan kong banwaan,
an pagpa-Iriga haling Manila
garo pakikipagdurog
sa babaying haralaba an kuko.
Pagpukaw saimo pagka-aga
pano-pano ka nin kamros
sa saimong abaga asin likod,
an lawas mo abaang kukulog.

Alagad sa pagsuruhayan
igwa pang pababay-babay
asin hapot asin agdang:
“promise, ha?”

- 01-14-07, N.J.

PAGHIDAW SAIMO

Afuera sa kolor asin pagnamit,
magin sa tono nin boses,
saro pa ining minapasaluib
kan sakong pagigin estranyo
sa malipot na ciudad na iniho:
ining mahibog na jacket na anit,
sarong subling termino asin terno
pansagang sa niyebe para sa sakong kublit
tood sa tropikong malanit na init.

Ay, kuta ika an sakong kabit-kabit digdi
sa paglalakaw-lakaw sa maambon na kalye!

- 01-15-07, N.J.

PAGHAHANAP KAN NIYEBE

Pauling San Jose haling New Jersey
iniisip ko kun hihidawon ko an niyebe
na iyong rason kaya ako nagdigdi
sa parteng ini kan Amerika
hali sa masaldang na California.
Dapat talaga taglipot na
alagad, abot na ako maghali
dai ko man lang ini namati.

Haros kabangang sanggatos na taon
akong nabuhay na garong palmera
sa sakong tropikong isla
mayo man garong pagkakaiba
kun dai ako makakapot nin malipot na bola nin isnow.
Alagad, sigurado ako na an mga pino
maninibago siring sa mga layas na ganso
asin pato na kasubago pagtangad ko
pa-uli na an layog haling habagat,
Ribong na soboot an panahon,
sabi kan CNN, asin tama si Al Gore.
Magin man an naghapot
kun paano matatapos
an kinaban, kun sa kalayo o sa lipot?
Dai naman sako mahalaga
kun arin sa duwa.
basta para sa sako, kun magabot ini,
dapat madali asin mayong pinipili.

01-17-07 Virginia Beach

In saying that his culture and language have the right to exist and that no one has the

right to take them away, James Kelman was not only declaring the Scottish peoples’

human right to exist in this planet, but he was also asserting the place for his own

kind of writing. The kind of resistance to his writing, described as a “disgrace” by one

of the juries in the Booker Prize which he won in 1994; shows the snobbery and

disdain towards Scottish culture in England, where, as Kelman himself said in an

interview, they had existed as some kind of a colony for hundreds of years. It bares

cracks and props the existence of several Englishes in the (otherwise) hegemonic

empire called English literature. It also establishes Kelman’s unique and

unmistakable voice and style of writing.

I will not discuss here the marginalization of the Scottish people in England, nor of the

debate on the empire writing back; but on the distinctive marks of Kelman’s writing and

his place in the larger literary realm. A common complaint, echoed by one of the

participants in the recent reading Kelman did at the Martin Luther King Library,

concerns his language, particularly, his generous use of the “fuck” word. In the same

reading, Kelman explained that his use of the word doesn’t have the “sexual”

connotation most readers think of. He uses it for emphasis, he stressed. In this

incident, we can see an underlying and unexpressed expectation among readers, of

what or in what kind of language literature should be written. They expect that it should

be in the “polite English accent” of one of his inveterate gambling characters in his

short story collection, Busted Scotch, who goes by the non-de-plume Cute Chick!

Kelman subverts this, as in this self-same terse story where the exclamation mark

appended in the Cute Chick’s name perhaps graphically summarizes his mockery and

satire of the English woman gambler. In most of his works, though, Kelman’s

subversion of the prevailing linguistic preference is through his use of the Scottish

language, an inferior, if measured in the snobbish English literati. No wonder, the

same Booker judge dismissed How Late It Was, How Late, as the work of a drunkard.

Nevertheless, it is precisely through his use of his native Glaswegian tongue that gives

Kelman’s ouvres their identity. In a BBC interview, Kelman, aside from his own

personal politics, hinted the reason for this choice. He sees the kind of English

literature being taught in the academe as a continuing imperialism and control of

England and the upper class, a view he shares with critic Terry Eagleton who studied

the employment of literature in England’s colonial project. Kelman also rejects the

idea of a Great Literary Tradition and said that writers should be concerned with

immediate issues like everyday speech and politics.

Reading How Late It Was, How Late and Busted Scotch, I saw the logic of this choice.

The dialect gives Kelman that affinity and familiarity with his characters and their

stories; and in the process, give them authenticity and sincerity. I saw this in Kelman’s

reading where I heard his quaint diction and suspected the underlying oral tradition in

his writing. Kelman’s language also give him the facility to write about his own kind of

politics, that of the lives of the lower class, the wretched of the earth, so to speak. I am

not sure what gives rise to what, that is, whether it is his language or his politics and

vice versa; but what is important is that he is effective in both. I can say they become

complimentary, each one strengthening the other. Because of his working class

background (Kelman worked once as a bus driver), he can powerfully write about a

father ducking his son in a vat of acid, in some sort of euthanasia; in “Acid”, which is

perhaps a condemnation of the working conditions in industrializing England. In “Not

not while the giro”, he talks about a Walter Mitty kind of character who is in the

government’s welfare. In “How Late it was, How late”, he writes about Sammy, whose

name is an obvious cut-out from Kafka’s George Samsa, whose transformation into an

insect is echoed in Sammy’s waking up blind one day. His liminal stories and

characters, and their language, give Kelman’s writing its distinctive identity.

Another mark of Kelman’s writing is his narrative technique. It flows from his language

and his existential view of life. Under this view, what matters is the present; devoid or

divorced from rational explanation. It is because of this thinking that Kelman’s

characters are thrown in so real and present quandary, where they struggle much like

George Samsa when he woke up one day an insect. The struggle takes the form of

introspection and self-interrogation and thus, their thoughts vacillate from firmness and

indecision, from certainty to doubt. The narrative also becomes so focused on that

present struggle. In “How Late it was, How late”, for instance, much of the earlier part

of the story is focused on Sammy’s walking out of the police station and his effort to find

his way back home. A reader gets in much of Sammy’s difficulty as he literally gropes

his way, inch by inch, block by block in the street, holding on to walls, lampposts or

people’s bodies he occasionally bump into. The secret is in the narrative technique,

which perhaps is much like a frame-by-frame shot of a character. Kelman explained

that by shifting the narrative point of view and the tense of the action, the reader gets to

have multiple views of the character, including his internal ruminations.

An effect of this technique is on the sense of time. Readers who had been used to the

fast-paced narrative of film will perhaps find Kelman’s writing dragging. Yet, precisely,

it is the existentialist technique for the reader to be riveted on the drama-of-the-

moment as it is enacted by a character. In Kelman’s case, the existentialism of his

characters do not have the pessimism of Camus’ characters. Instead, like Sammy,

they are hopeful, struggling and exercising their human capacity of choice. It is no

surprise that while Sammy is blinded at the start of the story, he vanished at the end of

the story, metaphorically to quote the novel, out of sight. It is an end absurd and ironic,

but triumphant. This, along Kelman’s distinctive language and politics, give his work

its sense of triumph even amidst the metaphorical blindness to them.