№ 337. Love in November, in the Time of Diarrhea or After Ragnarok

"Para kay B is the first novel of scriptwriter par excellence Ricky Lee, published by the Writers’ Studio and launched in a grand bash last December. Subtitled “O kung paano dinevastate ng pag-ibig ang 4 out of 5 sa atin,” the novel deals with love and its wreckages. True to form, Lee conveys his insights in a manner that shatters the usual realistic narrative mode of Philippine literature in Filipino. For in the end, he lets the author of the novel within the novel question not just the nature of love, but the nature of narrative itself. Who, in the end, gives meaning to a story? It also mirrors the novel’s central point: who, in the end, benefits from love? And if love is so melodramatic and so sad, why do we even need it?"

I read Para kay B after Ondoy. It was one of the promised dry lands after that flood of end-of-the-world proportions. That--- meaning the flood, I swear, is not an exaggeration. It was Biblical. Or to borrow from another mythology: Ragnarok.

After Ondoy, the wreckage and the materials recovery, came the forced perspective of fragility and a whole lot of Beta --- that's uncertainty in finance.


Love, surely a cliche to many, is as uncertain as the monsoons. It leaves no doubt that it's a variable that's harder to decode than a engineered blockchain. It's a gamble. It's a ruse. Or a rose....

No one can deny that love presents many with an alphabet soup of realities and their colored metaphors: seething with cuteness; glowing in the dark; weepy; winsome; sore; livid with lust or happiness; vexed in contradictions; giddy; giddyap; tingly; annoyed, slightly exasperated yet starved for more; cut-up and scotch-taped in one piece with slivers of hope; determined and unashamed; saccharin and cancerous with affliction; fulfilled; on cloud nine; or, under a cloud of thunderstorms, and, so the list goes on and on and on. Ad infinitum. Ad nauseam.

There's actually a play about love, yes really, which I watched almost a decade ago. It was staged by the Repertory Philippines. I think it was among the last of Zenaida Amador's performances. After the soaring music, lyrics and vocals, "Aspects of Love" came to the same very expected, poetic and confounding conclusion about that dirty word which we shall no longer name. It's filthy with use, misuse and abuse.

The banner song sounded to me like an anthem. The rhythmic four-quarter time signature segued and marched towards a stirring but fated resignation. It was a salute to that mysterious pull and inevitable force to match the of gravity of the sun.

Some say it's the singularity that sucks the light out of your eyes. Forever. Or at least, or perhaps even sooner than, when its next iteration zaps by. Others say its an itchy supernova exploding into your uncharted nether regions. Antihistamines can help. Yup, it depends on the experience at any given moment because it's as fickle as cupid's neutrino, err, arrow.





Andrew Lloyd-Weber's song goes:

"Love, love changes everything
Hands and faces, earth and sky
Love, love changes everything
How you live and how you die
Love, can make the summer fly
Or a night seem like a lifetime
Yes love, love changes everything
Now I tremble at your name
Nothing in the world will ever be the same

Love, love changes everything
Days are longer, words mean more
Love, love changes everything
Pain is deeper than before
Love will turn your world around
And that world will last forever
Yes love, love changes everything
Brings you glory, brings you shame
Nothing in the world will ever be the same

Off into the world we go
Planning futures, shaping years
Love bursts in and suddenly all our wisdom disappears
Love makes fools of everyone
All the rules we made are broken
Yes love, love changes everyone
Live or perish in its flame
Love will never never let you be the same
Love will never never let you be the same"