Perhaps, nothing is so agreeable to the mind of an Igorot, lowlander – or wherever region you emanate – or so comical to the faculties of the brain, as when imagination with speed of thought, hovers over cloud-capped Cordillera in all the magnificence of its native originality.
Anyone, helped only by imagination, can travel to the remotest edge of Cordillera, and from there, wends his/her way around the bending arch of the region’s mind-boggling beauty, where human’s feeble eyes of mortality glance its beams of insatiable curiosity and where no human foot ever trod trackless depths of silent waters.
How astonishingly true, where imagination takes possession of the mind, no force can restrain it. And often, how reason staggers at an astonishing idea. It breaks forth like a vivid flash from a dark fog and illuminates the dark vapors gathering on the brow of a night.
Take the case of a friend of Daily Laborer, a lawyer from Region 01, who wrote last week saying, “Bony, sometimes it’s better to be judicious and not literally take the meaning of a word thrown at you, else one can be presumed being onion-skinned or balat sibuyas and can be troublesome.
Puzzled and surprised by the message of his lawyer-friend, the Daily laborer asked, “You got something in your mind?”
The Daily Laborer’s friend explained, “Well, last week, I discovered that my hat, which I usually hang on the hat rack in our office, had the word “rascal” boldly written on it.”
Hearing his friend, Daily Laborer conjured thoughts of his friend filing a case against the perpetrator, but to be sure, he asked, “So what did you do?”
The lawyer-friend explained: “Upon discovering it was a panyero, (lawyers call their co-lawyers panyero for building rapport) but not an office mate, who wrote the word rascal on my hat, I declared to my office mates and other co-brother lawyers that thereupon, I will not be erasing that word as a memento to that panyero who took my hat and then wrote his very own name, rascal, on it!”
And on second thought, the lawyer friend added, “There is a moral to what happened. For those feuding parties who can still settle their cases amicably, by all means, do it. It’s not a laughing matter to be attending court hearings and unsure if you are going to win the case. It’s always sensible to be sociable rascals, for in the good old days of our youth, we, too, were once rascals.”
So the “brother- lawyers” shook hands over the word rascal and, to the bottle they went, to drink like rascal-pirates. Just like what Daily Laborer says, whenever he and friends go to drinking taverns: “It’s where we, the youth, men – and even women – go, sit, and buy pure madness, by the bottle.”
Talking about drinking, Daily Laborer thinks there is this ladder of drinking stepping downward afflicting many Cordillerans and lowlanders alike, in varying degrees that when they complete the ladder going down, it is to the great amusement of many. This ladder is illustrated from top to bottom as: sober, comfortable, lively, fresh, very fresh, tipsy, very tipsy, drunk, very drunk, stupidly drunk and dead drunk.
In sober, the would-be- drinker, just having sat down before a tavern table, wrestling with himself by saying, “O’ wine, the truth serum so potent that all those who wish to live happy lives should abstain from drinking it entirely.” But the temptation to take just a few sips is too great to overcome and so, taking a few sips, the drinker becomes comfortable, with the tranquil luxury of feeling starting to settle.
Drinking more sips and the drinker steps down being lively. The drinker begins conversation, his/her remarks smart. Reasoning power gets elevated, aided withal by happy illustration, considered as mental dawning – like the sun of fancy about to rise from the Cordillera horizons.
Going down the step ladder of freshness, there’s more fire and color in the drinker’s idea, growing more eloquent, his/her perception still tolerably clear. Here the drinker becomes a genius, a brilliant luminary of wisdom, dazzling the eye of reasons of his/her drinking partners by flights on conversation of literature, science, arithmetic, politics, current events, etcetera and captivating judgment with voluptuous enjoyments; but it is to the imagination.
Stepping down further the very fresh step ladder, the drinker’s talk becomes colored; his/her eloquence impassioned, drowning the drinking companions with floods of talk. The drinker’s ideas are still quite coherent and language tolerably correct, if unfortunately laced with regional cursing, like “ukis ti kamatis,” or “o——– a” or “sanna—–ch” or “t——-o.”
Further down the tipsy step ladder, the drinker begins to grow giddy, gestures becoming very vehement and epithets much so exaggerated, argumentative and ideas not quite coherent but still rational.
Tip-toeing down the very tipsy step ladder, the drinker’s words are sometimes obscured and abridged. And suddenly finds himself/herself possessed of a fine voice for a music and starts belting out a song and regales drinking friends. And in singing, the lyrics are somehow lost in the blurred language of the very tipsy drinker.
Now, down, go we, to the drunk step ladder. For the drinker becomes perversely quarrelsome – but still stupidly good-natured. Feet unsteady and tongue stammering, the drinker always put out his/her hand to shake the hands of his/her co-drinkers.
Now, to the very drunk step ladder. The drinker’s balance is totally lost, his/her vocabulary reduced to few interjections and he/she sees double, although far from suffering cross-eyed. And often, the drinker states as a matter-of fact: “Relax kayo lang, my friends, saan kayo agdanag ta saanak pay nga nabartek!”
Comes now the stupidly drunk step ladder. The drinker’s head and stomach have interchanged. The stomach has somehow become a squatter where the head previously stays in residence while the head has preferred to bunk where the stomach originally resided. The drinker’s eyes are glaring and unfixed while consciousness is still trying to stay with the drinker’s senses.
In stupidly drunk, where are the drinker’s thoughts? Probably riding in the radiance of splendor upon the stormy swell of fancy and dashed by the torrent of drunkenness. This is the stage where what was ingested or drunk by the drinker wants to get out of the stomach and the drinker wants to throw up. Sabi sa Tagalog, “gusting sumuka.”
Dead drunk, the last step ladder. Here, a torpid sleep finally overcomes the poor drinker. Remaining consciousness has seeped away as the drinker snores like hell, his/her troubles away. And maybe in the dead drunk’s dream, he/she dreams closely clasping his/her sweetheart, only to wake up later to find out that he/she has a pillow in a warm embrace.
Thus, the unrestrained flight of the imagination enriches the mind with all that is sublime, grand and even fanciful. Here, allow Daily Laborer to prove this point as he went the rounds last week interviewing what wives think of their husbands.
The first wife (we hide the names of the wives as is their request) says of her husband: “He is barbarous, abhorrent, detestable, capricious, hard-hearted, envious, fastidious, illiberal, malevolent, loathsome, obstinate and nauseous.”
Asked if she loves her husband with all the traits she mentioned, she says,” He is the sunbeam of my life and my children and the reason why I always have rosy cheeks.”
A second wife says of her husband: “He is quarrelsome, raging, vexing, grating, disagreeable, vexatious, captious, execrable, terrible, malicious, gross, obstreperous, nefarious, hasty, growling, blustering, peevish and hateful. So, asked if she loves her husband, she replies, “He is a wonderful art of creation that I and my children will never exchange for other fools out there.”
A third wife says of her husband: “He is fretful, restless, a savage, a tart, unpleasant, violent, acrimonious, worrying, discontented, waspish, acrimonious, inattentive, malignant, odious, noisy, rigid and perverse. Asked if she loved her husband, she says, “Till death do us part.”
A fourth, says of her husband, “He is outrageous, overbearing, petulant, plaguy, rough, rugged, spiteful, splenetic, stern, stubborn, stupid and sulky.” Does she love her husband and she swears, “I would rather hear him snoring besides me at night than for him to be snoring in somebody’s bed.”
Now, to be fair, the Daily Laborer spent effort asking husbands (we hide their names too, for fairness sake) what they think of their wives. First husband says, “She is severe, teasing, unsuitable, always irate, boisterous, choleric, disgusting, gruff, hectoring, incorrigible, mischievous, roaring, offensive, pettish and negligent.”
Asked if he loved his wife, he says, “What inimitable elegance she pencils upon the tablet of lives of our children and I, the exquisite picture of light and shade in the midst of my stupidity.”
A second husband, says of his wife: “She is sharp, sluggish, snapping, snarling, sneaking, sour, testy, tiresome, tormenting, touchy, arrogant, awkward, boorish, brawling, brutal, bullying, churlish, clamorous and crabbed. Asked if he loves his wife, he says, “She is the gleam that lights the path’s darkness where our family tread. Of course I do.”
A third husband says of his wife: “She is cross, currish, dismal, dull, dry, drowsy, grumbling, horrid, huffish, injurious, insolent, intractable, irascible, ireful, a moose, murmuring, opinionate and oppressive. Asked if he loves his wife, he says poetically, “A black sky may wear for a year, but my wife’s face is sunny every day.”
A fourth says of his wife: “She is sullen, surly, suspicious, treacherous, troublesome, turbulent, tyrannical, virulent, wrangling and yelping,” but “she is the fine thread that keeps me from the pitfalls of insanity and the candle for our children.”
Aided by imagination, humans are enabled to roll back any dark curtain of futurity, laugh at their inconsistency and view the world with metaphor till time tumbles down the precipice. Whatever has a tendency to elevate mental faculties, refine manners and exalt the soul, are abundantly supplied by profuse prodigality of imagining the un-imagined.
