(Below, the Kwan-Casugas, left, and the Casuga-Ocampos, right)
(Below, the Dy-Casugas and Lalonde-Casugas)
"How are you feeling today, Du du?"
That's St. Lucia Creole for darling. The French patois serves me well these mornings (coming back from the restful and pined-for-again-and-again break in that Caribbean Island) -- it brings a smile on the love-goddess's lips and a crack of laughter worth a million these days. After that last-minute frenzied shopping yesterday for the traditional stocking-stuffers (from THE GRAMPS), she would not, could not be in the best of humour. Two days left.
But there it is: "Good morning to you, Du du. I trust your aches and pains have not come back yet?" What a come back.
If there was anything I came back with worth all that touristic expense, it should be this word: Du du.
No! Not that kind of American doo-doo from man's best beast-friend, poochie, biggie, chi-hua-hua or whathaveyou. That's how Spencer, our private tour guide, hastened to allay our scatological fears should we choose to include that in our now almost-cosmopolitan vocabulary.
No, not merde, nor mierda, nor dog pooh, he said, facile in the languages left as colonial residue in St. Lucia (found by storm-aided accident by Spanish galleon traders, coveted and wrested away by French tripolantes, and finally annexed by the British armada for the Queen of the Empire that knew no sunset, until the modern St. Lucian politicians declared independence in 1979, and offered this sunset to the British colonial rule.).
"Mon Dieu, it means darling, honey, lovebird, sweetheart, whathaveyou," he said.
"It sounds like the French slang Do-do" ( that we use to put our Francophone nieto y nieta to their noon-time, after-lunch nap. ) French siesta.
"That, too. Do-do (pronounced doh-doh) now, dearest Du du!" Spencer chuckled with his now, in-hindsight, reverberating Will-Smith cackle.
Then he guided us through Soufriere, a rainforest country town about a 20-minute roller-coaster ride from our Coconut Bay Resort and Spa (former Club Med, which was bought by an undisclosed Jamaican tai pan (Chinese for rich man). Yes, that kind of cosmopolitan, I warned you.
He brought us to the place where that rotten-egg smell was coming from.
"Mon Dieu, signeur, I did not blow wind, I promise you," he protested in the Lexus he drove us in. This in response to a farting -- Philippine-Commonwealth-President-Manuel-Quezonian pointing-of-finger-escape-and-save-the-president-from-eternal-shame-gambit at his secretary -- "Punieta, Nieto (Primary Secretary Manuel Nieto)"-- query ("What is THAT smell, Spencer?")
That was the sulphur-steam emitting volcano crater which is why the place is called Soufriere (creole for sulphur here -- "sulfur ici").
"How on earth can that St. Lucian rich man with a mansion astride the crater ridges stand this," I asked Spencer incredulously.
"He is an absentee landowner-cum-homeowner. A foreigner. American probably. Or a celebrity like Ophra Winfrey who built her mansion between the twin peaks Gross Piton and Petite Piton (Big bear and small bear), and proclaimed Saint Lucia and the Piton peaks and its Atlantic-gulf beaches as the "best place out of the ten best places on earth."
Spencer is the epitome of the enterprising Saint Lucian who chuckles through most of his colonial-laden past, preferring to speak creole patois when confronted by a Brit with a stentorian demand for directions or a French-nasal twang or German-guttural grunt for Piton beer from a roadhouse along the way (Spencer said, there is a bar in every house along the way to the tourist areas; secondary income, eh wot? -- besides, while he understands their street-speak, they in turn will always think his creole patois is "interestingly exotic" even when he is calling them names or just "jerking" them around. Classic defence mechanism and vengeful tomfoolery for the freed colonial, for you.)
In that half-day tour, our St. Lucian 25-mile-an-hour driver-guide has pointed to flora and fauna that is so redolent of the disappearing tropical rainforests of the old country. Instead of goats grazing on the turf, though, there were lambs ready for the cauldron baa-baaing their last gasps away from underneath the concrete-stilted roadside bungalows that hid backyard stilts supporting them from unforgiving ravines that could crumble during any old landslide (except that would not happen here, because there are stones buttressing clay ravines, stone quarries, and all types of bamboo trees, mango trees, sturdy brambles, buenavista plants, bandera Espanola flowering shrubs, coffee trees, cinnamon trees, cacao trees, fire trees (the arbol de fuego -- fire trees along Roxas boulevard in the Old Manila), O, God's orchard really, where any type of plant or weed could grow quickly because of the nourishing early morning and late-evening rains, and astoundingly-bright sunshine through out the day.
Spencer was not afraid to ask us "if we knew how to pray" when he negotiated the mountain-side alleys up to Jade Mountain (a fantasy resort-spa where clients are ferried from the sea and up by helicopter to sanctuaries (not suites, please) that sported their own pools that flowed out into an infinite vista of the sea, and a stellar view of the skies at night where "one can almost touch God, or at least his outstretched fingers" while meditating and lazing about serenely because there are no televisions here, no internet connections, no computers, nothing to suggest there is a job to go back to after this week or at least a $1700-a-night stay, with all the amenities of a 5-star hotel.)
Nor was this young father of two -- who did not look like his 30-years -- afraid to bring us to a roadhouse where one could order barbecued chicken or pork-to-end all barbeques and munch on them by the marina (my Du-du thought the food on this roadside honky-tonk was a lot better than the all-inclusive resort we were quartered in -- same food day-in-day-out, even in the reserve-only Italian and Asian restaurants they maintained -- nothing adventurous in cuisine. Or they may be afraid of sushi or sashimi -- this island of teeming sea life, because raw fish may not settle well with those American clientele. Or you could take that hour-ride to Rodney Bay up north to eat in those Japanese-theme restaurants which do not employ Nippon chefs.
St. Lucia as a tourist haven is still a colony of the French, British, and Spanish. Sorry, their Prime Minister, a namesake of the horror-novel author Stephen King (PM Stepehnson King, esq.) could not imagine a horror-filled tourist industry that will not be supported by its former colonizers. Pity.
Come Christmas eve, we can gorge ourselves with our traditional family feasts; we did not see any poor or malnourished children or homeless citizens in St. Lucia. No guilty conscience. I pray.
While I brought home our treasured "Du-du" term of endearment, I must have left my sangfroid in that sunshine place of the deities, because now I am grumpy and feeling all the aches and pains of an ageing senior citizen, where I did not have a single headache, backache, or heartache in St. Lucia (or as the French colonizers still call her: La Belle Helene).
You know, like the Quebeckers still call their Quebec "La Belle Provence". Well, Ontario is still the province of the Hog Town called Toronto, and French-manque City of Ottawa, seats of provincial and federal Parliaments respectively. A tale of two colonizers struggling to exist in multicultural, diverse Canada.
We are back, indeed. But I left my sangfroid in Saint Lucia. Above the blue...and endless skies...
Oh shut up, Du-du; you don't want it to rain, do you? {:)]
(St. Lucia sunset is a staple at Jade Mountain [a sanctuary resort], where serene lazing could be interrupted by an arresting bravura of colours rivalled only by a sunset in Manila Bay, the Philippines.)
My Du du is now looking at a Cruise on the Oasis (the largest cruise ship in the world, complete with its sand beaches, pools, spas, casinos, restaurants galore. The only damper is that the next openings will probably be in late 2010 or mid 2011.)
Happy Christmas, Du-du.
Muchisimas gracias. Hasta la vacacion grande que viene.
* * *
(Now to the real issues of Human Rights and Christmas, Poverty and Christmas, New Traditions for Christmas. Bah, Humbug!)
1. Growing Old Together
LOVE IN THE BUTTERFLY GARDEN (2009)
--- The female carries the male butterfly on her back while they reproduce, and then the female eats the male while waiting for the pupa to become another butterfly, and then she dies shortly after. --- Bohol Butterfly Farm Guide Felix.
1.
How a butterfly farm can turn
an upside down imitation of life,
haunts me still this side of art as life
or life as art as transfixed visions
of what we must be now:
like the gravid mariposa luring its mate
in a flight of duty -– she must bear
the male of her specie on her back
while they consummate a dance on air
not unlike our act of mating ---
she enamouring her mate
with scents purloined from blossoms
as, conjoined, they flit from flower to leaf
tumbling on air in ecstasy
not unknown to us when wild and young
and brave with joie de vivre,
for they must breed their kind
in a chrysalis of quiescence hurriedly,
urgently, before an inexorable end
where the male must be consumed
as her victual while clinging
to bramble branches bearing her pupa
seen to us now, voyeurs of unfolding
beauty and arresting splendour,
as the preening papillon bestirring
the dry air into a flutter of magic
sprung from throes of death and dying,
for she, too, must soon perish
after this function of issuing
a magnificence that for us can only be
borne of love and loving, yes,
perhaps also onto death and dying.
2.
The poet’s refrain, “how do I love thee”,
is supercilious here, cher ami,
it cannot match the male butterfly’s sacrifice,
nor this mariposa’s dying
to bear life, beauty, and splendour.
Alas, beauty is an omen here.
2. Coming Full Circle
A RIVER'S RUSH (1985)
--On a cruise along Lachine, Quebec
It is the river as mother to the sea
Entraps us into this womblike feeling of ease;
It is the river draws us to this discovery
Of need, our quiet helplessness.
We are the river ran its course
Into an engulfment of restless sea.
How far have we gone from our rivered Nara?
Or how long have we gone astray?
Does the river current come full circle
From the breaking waves of sea?
Do we meet each other, dreamlike,
In the endless stream of the world’s Lachines?
When do we come back as rivulets
In some hidden rock spring?
The river runs full circle, and we discover
We have not even halfway met.
When will my currents break into your rocks,
You distant sea, you entrapment of need
And engulfment of ease?
When will the sea create the river?
When will the river create the sea?
Where they meet in the trickle of a little garden,
Who laves the riverstones?
Who laps the greening shores?
The river’s rush is also our question.
3. The Dreaded Maelstrom
DIES IRAE (1970)
1.
Halfway, between this river stone and many rocks after,
Nara shall have gone from our echoes-call.
We have wandered into a sunken mangrove and wonder:
Is it as silent there? Are there crabs there?
What quiet mood is pinching bloodless our spleens?
This is another pool –-- navel upon the earth.
Always, always, we cannot be grown men here.
After the white rocks, after the riverbend,
Nara becomes the dreaded dream.
We have put off many plans of soulful revisiting ---
We will go on re-stepping beyond the white stones,
Each step becoming the startled rising
Into a darkened city farther downstream
Where we once resolved never to die in.
2.
Do we wake up then afraid of Nara?
But rising here is the nightmare come so soon,
Treason in the daytime, maelstrom at night:
The nightmare was of cackling frogs
And serpents rending skulls and cerebrae
Of kitemakers who sing while termite logs
Burn and children, chanting the Dies Irae,
Mush brainmatter, pulling out allegory
Like unwanted white hair, stuffing black grass
Where brain was, casting tired similes
Into dirty tin cans where earthworm wastage was:
River swells drown us where, surfacing,
We wake up knowing our days have become
Termite nights and decaying metaphors.
4. Kite Seasons We Remember
REED LAUGHTER* (1962)
(For Lourdes Veronica Lim, University of Santo Tomas, Manila, 1962)
1.
There is an old haunt, Im-nas,
Where I am singer and kite-maker emeritus
Trumpeting reed laughter after the wind
On the rib of delivered rice:
It is the kite season in Narra, remember?
Time for the kite-song, remember?
Blow, Apo Angin, blow,
We whistle for the wind.
For us, sky-struck or one with this bird
Loving mate and leaving earth on the wind,
Winged: ravishing the sun, unblinded,
We wingless and simple wait for the wind.
We while kiting comatose away lifting crags
That room the secrecies of mating frogs.
They hop with surprised grace angered by
Blushing by.
2.
Veronica, you and I, child and kite,
We shall wait for the wind:
If I were the kite, fly me to the sky,
To the bird on wing.
Should I, descending, rip my fibre
On the thorns of a fig tree
Or the curse of its flower,
Do not abduct me: I perish there.
Thinking of you: Veronica-Im-nas,
And I am kite now, inured and waiting
For the wind to ravish me free.
It is the kite season in Narra. Remember?
--- ALBERT B. CASUGA
Mississauga, 2009
*(From "Narra Quartet", Narra Poems and Others, 1968)
Im-nas is Ilocano for Beloved
Apo Angin is Ilocano for O Wind
