miyako73
08-16-2010, 11:59 AM
“You’re a chair. Tell us about your past. Share your story.” The same Theater Arts professor, Dr. Protacio de Magiba we endearingly called Sir Prot, pointed his hardbound book about senses and memory towards my direction. The book was so thick that I could not exactly tell whom he was pointing. I could never forget that one mid-afternoon. The season of storm and rain just ended, and the buds opened to embrace the breeze and the warmth of glee before wilting and bowing to the sun. A bouquet of pastel-colored flowers and branches of needle leaves that looked like evergreens rested on his classroom table. That day was his birthday. No wonder our exercise and discussion revolved around our past lives.
To make sure if it was me whom he wanted to stand and speak up, since the book was too thick to pinpoint an exact direction, I turned my back to check if someone was behind me. I saw nobody. I started to sweat and panic. I was not ready to dig my history that was still unclear to me then. My grandparents, who had brought me up since birth, had many chairs—carved out stools, armed ones with backrests, cushioned settees, wooden benches— but I had no idea what to make of them. I knew who made them: my grandfather, so they were his stories not mine. The dormitory where I stayed also had study chairs, lounge sofas, and worn leather couches that had graffiti on them from old students who were already married or dead. One in black said, “My girl sat here on 02-14-65.” How could I relate that to myself?
I needed extra time to think. I resorted to drama he had been teaching us, praying it would work on the most dramatic of us all. I scratched my head and asked, “Sir, were you pointing at me?”
“Do you think this book will point at you by itself?” His witty sarcasm, the way he said it, resonated like a dialogue in an existentialist play. “Entre en soi.” Very Jean-Paul Sartre.
Even when the good professor sneezed, it was theatrical and not always funny. Everything about him seemed a metered performance. He could be too abstract and puzzlingly profound at times. More than a legendary sage who always had something to say about anything, he never failed to remind us that life should be lived as a drama, a scripted combination of comedy and tragedy, and that we could predict our fate if we followed our script. “Stick to the script” was one of his parting lines at every end of his class, almost similar to “The Book” of Paul Erdos, the mathematician I wished I could meet.
I so wanted to reply with a question too, but I forced myself not to utter a word or express a more philosophical comeback. It was very tempting, but I knew an unjustified retort could set him off. A stout, short gay man— in a tight-fitting t-shirt, orange cargo shorts, and Jesus Christ sandals— screaming, kicking, and throwing a tantrum in front of his students would not make a good scene. Sir Prot once pulled a critic’s hair in a seminar for calling him a postmodernist. He found it to be dismissive and insulting. To him, it meant he was nothing, a nonexistent nonentity. He was known to have asked, “Does postmodernism really exist?” and “Can you deconstruct me?” his most preferred repartee he said in jest.
Although the air conditioner was all the way to coolest, I could feel the warm grains of sweat sliding from the back of my ears down to my nape. My hands trembled, and I could hear my heart’s fast palpitation, as I felt my entire body pulsating. I was embarrassed and feverish. The eerie ambience in the studio did not conceal my fright. The sharp ray of the late afternoon sun, the sole source of light that entered through the glass window, lit half of my face. In the midst of silence that filled the studio and had all our ears, I became a study of shadow and contrast.
I stood up and walked towards the center where he put the armless chair. My classmates surrounding me and observing every move I made, I probed every inch of it. I spotted shallow scratches and fading ink marks, but I had no idea what to do with them. I sat on the chair and felt its varnished wood. My fingers slid on its wood grains back and forth without friction. It was shiny and smooth even to my sweaty palms. My hands all over, I measured its lines, holes, corners, and contours. I grasped nothing unusual. I rocked it side-to-side to find out if there were loose nails waiting to let go. I did not hear any creaking or breaking sound. The chair, fairly new and sturdy, did not conjure something personally emotional in me. No matter how I scratched my head, my memory was still blank. I froze.
“Sir, I need more time,” I said. He did not answer. His silence meant I could go ahead and have more time to collect my thoughts.
I knew he gave me enough time to think, and I heard no cackles and whispers that pressured and could surely make me develop a lump in my throat. Everyone in the class waited. I had to deliver, but I could not. “I’ve never experienced how to be a chair,” I said, “nor have I ever felt like one.” My voice cracked with a tinge of hesitation. I coughed and swallowed air. My tongue was dry.
“Drama exists because of memory, how one remembers and forgets,” Sir Prot explained, “and everyone also survives because of it.”
Although I did not agree with him, I slowly nodded as I plodded towards my seat. It was not memory but pain, I thought. As I walked away, my sheepish gait, the humble stride I inherited from my mother that seemed to solicit pity, must have touched him. He suddenly became soft and sympathetic. His congenial stare understood where I was coming from. He must have wondered why my steps were heavy and why I dragged my legs as if I trudged a deserted road aimlessly.
The studio was small, but it seemed a world to him. He was good in dramatics, and could find a poetic meaning, which always made sense at least to me, even in the habitual scratching of head or the nervous rubbing of skin that was neither itchy nor painful. The esteemed professor could read my mind, my thoughtless brain tired of thinking. “Don’t you have a childhood?” he asked without making me feel like a mute too disabled to talk or a speechless idiot too shy to argue.
I could have made up stories about a chair, a bench, or even a couch, but I just could not compromise my idea of authenticity and truth in storytelling. One classmate, a single mother, expressed how her lap was a therapeutic chair to her asthmatic baby. Another doting one narrated how his four-year old brother sat on his back to play horsey. I wished I had the same stories to tell as interesting as what I had heard, but I did never have a childhood. I was born an orphan, although my parents were still alive. I grew up too soon. I labored so early. I did not quit.
After the class, I approached him. “Sir, can I just write a paper about my memory of being someone or something else besides being a chair?” I did not really care about the points I would get. I just wanted to show him that I was not dumb, but I was just being real.
“How about you as a table?” he suggested. “You can explore your body as a Gregorian feast.” He naughtily laughed without knowing I was still a virgin— yes, never been touched.
I thought it was a good idea—combining physiology and gastronomy. I could write how I used to bake a lemon-ginger cupcake for my grandmother and make my grandfather a cup of coffee when I needed something or had a favor to ask, but I did not want to superfluously bring up my maternal grandparents’ names in class. I was very sensitive and protective when it concerned them; they raised and loved me as their own. Besides, I might choke up if Sir Prot would require me to read what I would write. One drama queen in front of us was enough. “If it’s alright, I can write about someone or something living,” I said. “A piece of furniture is just too lifeless for my volatile personality.” I made him think for awhile.
He looked funny when he slouched, crossed his arms, and tilted his neck, his way of saying that he was listening and that I should better make sense. Like a sergeant with rapid successive orders, he said “Okay. Ten sentences. Your memory as a fetus. Twelve noon tomorrow.” All fragments in that order. After expressing my gratitude, which he always loved to hear, he hurriedly left.
This was my story:
“On my sixth month in my mother’s womb, I completely developed and began to use all my senses including memory. I could smell wine when my father kissed my mother, and it smelled like the alcohol my mother diluted and used as vaginal wash that nearly burned my skin. I could feel my father’s touch when he whispered a wish on my mother’s bulging belly, but he always said he wanted a son, and I had no idea then what I was and what I had between my groins. I could see the flickering of the candle on my mother’s altar, as I wondered who those winged children and haloed men and women were. When she knelt down and rotated and fondled a string of beads, I could also hear her daily prayers, which were long, monotonous, tedious, and boring. During mass, she always swallowed something bland, which I thought was a tiny piece of white bread from the priest who said it was someone’s body and very holy, and I could not really say if I liked it. I could not wait to be born in a world where I could breathe air on my own and bathe under the yellows of the sun. I had been alone far too long in the womb, in the sea of blood, in the dark universe where tubes of flesh coiled and choked. When I was born a month later, they said I did not cry, so the local midwife had to slap my bottom. Why would I cry when the stars looked like millions of distant fireflies and the hammock moon did not have to sing me a lullaby? How could I cry when I was alone in the bare bamboo crib that cut my toes, my feet, my fingers, my hands, and nobody around could hear me asking why, why, why?”
Later, I got my paper back. No grade. My professor scribbled red in the margin, “I prefer shorter sentences, but I think you should write.” I did listen to him that I should not be wasting my angst and pain. I shifted to creative writing, wishing someday I could share my longing, my entire story.
To make sure if it was me whom he wanted to stand and speak up, since the book was too thick to pinpoint an exact direction, I turned my back to check if someone was behind me. I saw nobody. I started to sweat and panic. I was not ready to dig my history that was still unclear to me then. My grandparents, who had brought me up since birth, had many chairs—carved out stools, armed ones with backrests, cushioned settees, wooden benches— but I had no idea what to make of them. I knew who made them: my grandfather, so they were his stories not mine. The dormitory where I stayed also had study chairs, lounge sofas, and worn leather couches that had graffiti on them from old students who were already married or dead. One in black said, “My girl sat here on 02-14-65.” How could I relate that to myself?
I needed extra time to think. I resorted to drama he had been teaching us, praying it would work on the most dramatic of us all. I scratched my head and asked, “Sir, were you pointing at me?”
“Do you think this book will point at you by itself?” His witty sarcasm, the way he said it, resonated like a dialogue in an existentialist play. “Entre en soi.” Very Jean-Paul Sartre.
Even when the good professor sneezed, it was theatrical and not always funny. Everything about him seemed a metered performance. He could be too abstract and puzzlingly profound at times. More than a legendary sage who always had something to say about anything, he never failed to remind us that life should be lived as a drama, a scripted combination of comedy and tragedy, and that we could predict our fate if we followed our script. “Stick to the script” was one of his parting lines at every end of his class, almost similar to “The Book” of Paul Erdos, the mathematician I wished I could meet.
I so wanted to reply with a question too, but I forced myself not to utter a word or express a more philosophical comeback. It was very tempting, but I knew an unjustified retort could set him off. A stout, short gay man— in a tight-fitting t-shirt, orange cargo shorts, and Jesus Christ sandals— screaming, kicking, and throwing a tantrum in front of his students would not make a good scene. Sir Prot once pulled a critic’s hair in a seminar for calling him a postmodernist. He found it to be dismissive and insulting. To him, it meant he was nothing, a nonexistent nonentity. He was known to have asked, “Does postmodernism really exist?” and “Can you deconstruct me?” his most preferred repartee he said in jest.
Although the air conditioner was all the way to coolest, I could feel the warm grains of sweat sliding from the back of my ears down to my nape. My hands trembled, and I could hear my heart’s fast palpitation, as I felt my entire body pulsating. I was embarrassed and feverish. The eerie ambience in the studio did not conceal my fright. The sharp ray of the late afternoon sun, the sole source of light that entered through the glass window, lit half of my face. In the midst of silence that filled the studio and had all our ears, I became a study of shadow and contrast.
I stood up and walked towards the center where he put the armless chair. My classmates surrounding me and observing every move I made, I probed every inch of it. I spotted shallow scratches and fading ink marks, but I had no idea what to do with them. I sat on the chair and felt its varnished wood. My fingers slid on its wood grains back and forth without friction. It was shiny and smooth even to my sweaty palms. My hands all over, I measured its lines, holes, corners, and contours. I grasped nothing unusual. I rocked it side-to-side to find out if there were loose nails waiting to let go. I did not hear any creaking or breaking sound. The chair, fairly new and sturdy, did not conjure something personally emotional in me. No matter how I scratched my head, my memory was still blank. I froze.
“Sir, I need more time,” I said. He did not answer. His silence meant I could go ahead and have more time to collect my thoughts.
I knew he gave me enough time to think, and I heard no cackles and whispers that pressured and could surely make me develop a lump in my throat. Everyone in the class waited. I had to deliver, but I could not. “I’ve never experienced how to be a chair,” I said, “nor have I ever felt like one.” My voice cracked with a tinge of hesitation. I coughed and swallowed air. My tongue was dry.
“Drama exists because of memory, how one remembers and forgets,” Sir Prot explained, “and everyone also survives because of it.”
Although I did not agree with him, I slowly nodded as I plodded towards my seat. It was not memory but pain, I thought. As I walked away, my sheepish gait, the humble stride I inherited from my mother that seemed to solicit pity, must have touched him. He suddenly became soft and sympathetic. His congenial stare understood where I was coming from. He must have wondered why my steps were heavy and why I dragged my legs as if I trudged a deserted road aimlessly.
The studio was small, but it seemed a world to him. He was good in dramatics, and could find a poetic meaning, which always made sense at least to me, even in the habitual scratching of head or the nervous rubbing of skin that was neither itchy nor painful. The esteemed professor could read my mind, my thoughtless brain tired of thinking. “Don’t you have a childhood?” he asked without making me feel like a mute too disabled to talk or a speechless idiot too shy to argue.
I could have made up stories about a chair, a bench, or even a couch, but I just could not compromise my idea of authenticity and truth in storytelling. One classmate, a single mother, expressed how her lap was a therapeutic chair to her asthmatic baby. Another doting one narrated how his four-year old brother sat on his back to play horsey. I wished I had the same stories to tell as interesting as what I had heard, but I did never have a childhood. I was born an orphan, although my parents were still alive. I grew up too soon. I labored so early. I did not quit.
After the class, I approached him. “Sir, can I just write a paper about my memory of being someone or something else besides being a chair?” I did not really care about the points I would get. I just wanted to show him that I was not dumb, but I was just being real.
“How about you as a table?” he suggested. “You can explore your body as a Gregorian feast.” He naughtily laughed without knowing I was still a virgin— yes, never been touched.
I thought it was a good idea—combining physiology and gastronomy. I could write how I used to bake a lemon-ginger cupcake for my grandmother and make my grandfather a cup of coffee when I needed something or had a favor to ask, but I did not want to superfluously bring up my maternal grandparents’ names in class. I was very sensitive and protective when it concerned them; they raised and loved me as their own. Besides, I might choke up if Sir Prot would require me to read what I would write. One drama queen in front of us was enough. “If it’s alright, I can write about someone or something living,” I said. “A piece of furniture is just too lifeless for my volatile personality.” I made him think for awhile.
He looked funny when he slouched, crossed his arms, and tilted his neck, his way of saying that he was listening and that I should better make sense. Like a sergeant with rapid successive orders, he said “Okay. Ten sentences. Your memory as a fetus. Twelve noon tomorrow.” All fragments in that order. After expressing my gratitude, which he always loved to hear, he hurriedly left.
This was my story:
“On my sixth month in my mother’s womb, I completely developed and began to use all my senses including memory. I could smell wine when my father kissed my mother, and it smelled like the alcohol my mother diluted and used as vaginal wash that nearly burned my skin. I could feel my father’s touch when he whispered a wish on my mother’s bulging belly, but he always said he wanted a son, and I had no idea then what I was and what I had between my groins. I could see the flickering of the candle on my mother’s altar, as I wondered who those winged children and haloed men and women were. When she knelt down and rotated and fondled a string of beads, I could also hear her daily prayers, which were long, monotonous, tedious, and boring. During mass, she always swallowed something bland, which I thought was a tiny piece of white bread from the priest who said it was someone’s body and very holy, and I could not really say if I liked it. I could not wait to be born in a world where I could breathe air on my own and bathe under the yellows of the sun. I had been alone far too long in the womb, in the sea of blood, in the dark universe where tubes of flesh coiled and choked. When I was born a month later, they said I did not cry, so the local midwife had to slap my bottom. Why would I cry when the stars looked like millions of distant fireflies and the hammock moon did not have to sing me a lullaby? How could I cry when I was alone in the bare bamboo crib that cut my toes, my feet, my fingers, my hands, and nobody around could hear me asking why, why, why?”
Later, I got my paper back. No grade. My professor scribbled red in the margin, “I prefer shorter sentences, but I think you should write.” I did listen to him that I should not be wasting my angst and pain. I shifted to creative writing, wishing someday I could share my longing, my entire story.