Notes from "The Making of Bones"

From Where Did It Come From?

Though I am not writing as much as I would like to, I can still tell myself that I am “in the process”: for though I may not be staining pure clean white paper, I am nevertheless making the drafts inside my head, refining them, akin to grape juice are kept in barrels, until it is time.

And while I am doing this, it happens that I once again ask myself, from where did it come from? By “it”, I refer to poetry. So if you would allow me to rephrase the question, “From where did my Poetry come from?”

This is not the first time that I asked this of myself, though when I did question myself about this, the questions where in fragments, until later on they became as concrete and complete as it is now. But then, I did find out that having the full question doesn’t guarantee a person that he would have a full answer. The work does not, and will never work to the designs of our desires anyway.

And yet, the question remains.

And though I have been delving into the backdoors of my memory, remembering those that I could and I want to, I have found this question again. Or perhaps it found me again. Nevertheless, it is here.

Try as I might, I could not really tell nor say where it really came from. There are a couple of moments that are possible candidates, moments that might be responsible. And yet like the winds, my opinion of my own opinion does shift.

A little bit of groundwork: I am trying to find out from where it came from because I believe that it has connection to where all of my efforts and attempts would lead to. Cliché I know, but as I was once informed, cliché only become cliché because they hold a modicum of truth in them. and no matter how small, like seeds, the truth may one day become a tree.

The question is there, but not the answer.

Yet I always come back to a certain memory I spent with my mom. In the old days, Public utility jeepneys would stop plying their routes after 7 pm. I had an aunt that lived 2 kilometers nearer to the city proper than we did, and so I was usually there, waiting for my mom to get home from work. I am still trying to unearth the memory of how I usually got to be there on my aunt’s house, but for the moment it would suffice that I am there, and that this is not just a figment of my imagination.

Soon, mom would arrive and we would go home together. I was 6 or 7 years old then.

We would walk the remaining 2 kilometers on foot. As I have said, there are no more vehicles that we could ride home.

2 kilometers may seem a very long distance for a kid whose step would not even span more than a foot at a time. And yet I never remember being tired from all of the walks that mom and I had. They were actually happy moments.

The night sky then is not as it is now. the horizon would not be bleeding from the glow of city lights; hence the night sky was black. And because it was black, the stars would be rendered in full force, and on nights when the night was full, it was surreal in some way.

It was during these walks that my mom talked to me about poetry and stuff, as a way of spending our time on the road. My mind, fragile and small as it was, was very much hungry, a devourer for new ideas and words. And what line mom would recite twice I would try to memorize.

It was during these walks that I learned the work entitled “All things Bright and Beautiful”, “O My Captain! My Captain”, “Invictus” and H.W. Longfellow’s “A Psalm of Life” (which was actually my favorite. My mom also recited to me the masterpiece of Rizal, though I believe I only got to the 4^th stanza.

I remember these poems, and the moments that came, no, the moments that gave birth to these poems of my childhood. Of course, I am not implying that they are the answers to my questions. As I have mentioned in an earlier entry, memories are indeed playful, sometimes bashful, yet for the most part, they are playful.

Who knows, I would know the answer to my question, and to all the other questions still left unanswered, while I am working, while I am still “in process”.

- d. steine

Notes on working on the chapter “The Making of Bones”

From the still untitled autobiography book project