2008 and Reverse
By : Iris P. Concepcion


I do not completely miss out the signs, the vertebrates and invertebrates needling my fictive conversation balloon (the robust and cloudy spaces where you pour the words in for your sketched creatures if you were a cartoonist) to check if it still puffs.

Yes, the cloud still gets filled by nouns, adjectives, verbs, commas, colons, the whole sentence family.

I have four entries which are not yet transferred to this page, not the least reason for the slack being : I could not find a user friendly plug to transmit them. They are replete with zany sentences, initiated with love and kindness. When I have this sort of concoction, I do not expect everything to be that easy.

Anyhow, would you mind if despite what you have heard and seen and touched and analyzed, I am able to tell my story as is, addressed to the unnamed minions (they'd know anyway : such a clever bunch: visitors of thy space) in an apparent, obvious, clear, smudge-free writing delivery? I know you won't.

So I see. I have been flipping again this particular magazine issue without the Ahem qualifier because my sentence is not a dress (Asleeve, Acollar, Abutton---you get the drift). I agree with you that I was off (I lke that capsulized assessment : a simple o followed by two ffs) but there was something you were not clued in yet. Everything around me was briskly ON in 2007. That is the whole point why the year was a splendid production for everyone. I am still not owned except for my heart. I still worked for nothing (but I got paid too and that was new: I loved what I did so money came as fringe benefit). I did not beat the pros at their own game. I enticed them to join mine : the domesticity, the quantum physics involved in boiling an egg. The pros complained. The pros yawned. The pros scorned at my sloth. The pros waited. The pros gnashed their teeth. The pros got rained out. The pros got teary-eyed. The pros almost gave up. The pros tried to leave.

And they still want to be in MY world. What is that? Chasing their own selves but of course. I am a piece of what they thought had already eluded them. With all the hurly burly whirl of planet spinning, they had ceased, perhaps because their names get plastered on websites, screens, walls, newsprints to believe in that one true spine tingling moment: they are Muses themselves but couldn't acknowledge that fact because the p.r. kits keep on getting the way. Also, all these multimedia images have this bitter after effect of blurring the essentials sometimes. They sort of mix the legs of X with the eyebrows of Y. Yet, I cut through that sledge genuinely, democratically and dug your brilliancy with the keenest sense you can ever imagine.

All the rambunctious activities, these creative bends you seek, everything happened in my mind and you surprise me still : you keep turning up situations that I read, hear and see with exquisite fondness.

A poet signified thus: (this is another character; I am dusting off the hemline writer for now)This is so and so and this is how I want her to look like : followed by a blank space.

Pigeoning me in a hole is difficult. I shirk back to the edges ( a recurring theme in my stories I just realized) to admire the immediate space where I came from. I am never a Muse. I am a......whip to get jobs done rightly. When I pay homage to someone or something, that is not a fluke. Your ribs rattle so. Your eyes shift so, Your lips quiver so. It is not because I am paid to expand your egos, make them the Falco of pride or something. It is that old-fashioned, home-sewn reverie (feel the quilt! feel the quilt!) artist's longing : respect and admiration, finally, without the murky red tape and dough. Admit it: it feels spectacular to be truly liked and in a liking manner that ONLY I, the cobless kernel can do. I cunningly reversed our roles. Now, you are idolizing the fan. Was that intentional? No. It attained a life of its own. Gladly, we all passed through the burner and came out better pals, chaps, folks, blokes, friends, lovers, craftsmen, people.

And there are lots of you out there who had experienced this kind of rib rattling, eye-shifting, lip-quivering phenomenon.

There in a nutshell (picture a seashell with a nut instead of a pearl) is 2007. It is about you, reader, becoming a constellation (if you are already a star), star (if you are a lizard or someone like me), a muse, a beacon, a light, a comet, a shooting carnival (wait, this is too much even for a gush) simply because I SAID and WROTE so.

What can I say except, thank you still. I utter these words because I still do not know of any other way through which I can express my respect and admiration for what you all inspiringly do.

P.S.

You know how they find words to include in the dictionary?

So anyway, one could not just eat balbacua now (beef innards in rich, thick soup) without the word "expander" spelled out in menus or hung on a cardboard. I asked, what is that, a meat extender? No, someone explained. It is a balbacua variation for the guys. Have their manhood expand by ten times the original size or so the legend goes. Of course it is a source of comic retorts (horizontally or vertically?). I thought whoever coined the word must have a genius eye for detail. Expander then is the word. Meaning, a funny looking edible thing purportedly enlarging what is otherwise...normal? abnormal? misaligned? And horrors, what if women eat them too? And these sheepish men who order the delicacy, they could not even utter the word, much less intone it without blushing. And you thought Viagra jokes are funny? In my country, at least, humor is originally localized and it is definitely tops.