Gods Among Mortals

While typing this, I am drunk. Just to be clear, it is an excuse. I feel like a newborn each time I get to talk with them, like the weeks that went before. They, Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards winners, make it look and sound so easy. I have had several encounters, some brief more than others, with writers who have had the rare chance to be etched on the planks of Philippine literature, immortalized in no small way by their accolades and by pages read before people who seem mesmerized just by the utterance of the names of these literary heroes. If a scribe's prowess can be measured by trophies and medallions, I have more than a hundred miles to go. My depth is immeasurable simply because there is none to measure.

In their presence, I feel like a passing asteroid, or an obloquy. They are the nebulae that spawn genius that will last, perhaps, infinity or a lifetime. Before them, I am a dot yearning for a sentence to punctuate just to be of any use. I cannot fathom how much air I have to inhale so as to float and be one with these angels in the sky, or gods walking amongst, and drinking with, mortals.

I have read most of their writings. Each time I scour tomes for their short stories and essays and poems, I feel bemused. Their words make the reader think beyond what is necessary. After all, a carefully crafted literary piece can punch holes through any mind pretentious of being one within the same league as Milan Kundera, or Nick Joaquin, or Salvatore Quasimodo. I was taught that one of the greatest errors of any individual is to treat the self as a force larger than all living creatures combined. It is a fatal mistake that carries the penalty of the premature death of a dream.

They choose their metaphors with precision, never bloating a sentence with more figures of speech than what is needed, and yet never appearing too pale or anemic. In an effort to be gauged by some people as minimal but poignant, others decide to nip the flowers in their prose so that their words become sensible, all the while forgetting that literature is never spoon feeding. Some others, still, in an effort to be labeled by readers as deep, choose to build a garden on a pot, never realizing that words can only signify so much in so limited a space. It does not end there. Others, too, feel as though they have been born and raised as literary critics, blessed by some literary deity with the power of criticism that never bends, or is never crippled by a disease called self-restraint. They are willing to butcher a writer even before the first word is written.

I digress. A scrutiny of the paragraphs of the learned writers will yield no less than a blueprint that outlines in full detail what should be expressly stated and what should be left out for the reader's imagination to ponder upon. Ample room is given for the reader to flex her or his thoughts without necessarily obliterating the very raison d'etre of the piece. Their method is perfectly brilliant it scares the living daylights out of me. As it has been said countless times before, theirs is one that bears madness in method and method in madness. It cuts both ways, and that I have continuously failed to do.

I have always desired to be a published writer. It is bad enough to be a writer without having been published ever since. Worse, it seems unforgivable to be a writer with no reader to begin with. Perhaps, there is truth to the idea that, being a writer, you only need to have at least one reader—yourself. But it does not satiate the thirst in any conceivable way. It is as if you feed yourself but you remain hungry. You want to be nurtured by the hands of another, in some cases more literal than any given time. Maybe they are correct. Once you see yourself as a writer, it is inevitable that you will start to let the world know, as if your life depends on an umbilical cord that spreads out to every human being.

I feel too small, too small in fact that I cannot even see my self. The literary titans do not even dare lift their own seats. Perhaps, they let others do it for them, like a ritual tempered with habituation through time. I, a willing servant, have done so many instances before if only to let them be aware that their labor has never gone to naught. Somewhere, an apologetic apprentice is always prepared to stand at the swivel of the master, turning the wheel just to have a sense of direction. To learn is to swallow pride, allowing what little personal worth there is to be ingested by one's own intestines if only to be nourished. It is a humbling experience that carries more lessons than any manual for grammar and composition can offer.

Maybe this is what it feels like to be a mere mortal before the presence of gods, like an apostle—no, not even an apostle but a bystander—before a table surrounded by messiahs.