For the Women Who Started and Kept the Flame Burning

The media and people in the world of Philippine Literature mourn the death of Ma'am Ophie. (Ophelia Alcantara-Dimalanta). In this article from Philippine Daily Inquirer, it is written:

"THE DEATH of Ophelia Alcantara-Dimalanta, poetess extraordinaire, writer-in-residence and former dean of the Faculty of Arts and Letters of the University of Santo Tomas, and supreme doyenne of at least two generations of poets, writers and literature educators in the country, has touched off a wave of grief in the media and literary world."

I am not close to Ma'am Ophie. But I call her that way as I did during college days; she was so gracious on devoting a little of her time to the Commerce Journal, the student publication I was once a member of. I was so glad that I became part of her small talks and seminars; listening to her was an ecstasy to a struggling writer like me, much more being told this:

Tim,

Be a poetic accountant.

-O.A. Dimalanta.

It was her autograph on my, guess what, accounting book in Third Year college (this is my only hard-bound book). I can still recall the slight confusion on her reaction which eventually turned to an obvious delight when I asked her to autograph my huge book which had nothing but Financial Accounting theories, cases, and problems in it. Frankly, at that time, I just don't have the money to buy her books - even my Literature book in Pre-Commerce was just photo-copied. But she was one of the inspirations I had that enabled me to snorkel over the deep water of worksheets, bonds, derivatives, and cash flows. She inspired me to breathe in the air of letters, fascination, metaphor, and realism as I find my place in this profession, which at that time was very, very unaccommodating to me. 

Three years passed and I became a Certified Public Accountant. I would have remained in the elite group of auditors in our country, would have stayed in Metrobank  or would have started a career in the Commission on Audit, but I guess, I took the challenge elsewhere - still with worksheets, profits, audits, and graphs, but with a huge twist; an industry that is filled with soil, cast in cement, and built from blueprints. I would never have prepared myself for such an endeavor, such a career, were it not for the open-mindedness, creativity, and the malleability of my preconceived synopsis of the changing environment that literature had cast on me. Somehow, I think that, it is the reason why adapt to changes so quickly, because I was trained to make room for expanding the concepts I had in my brain, a space where I can bend and twist rules, pattern them after what I imagined them to be, and ultimately leave what others would call "comfort zone" but which, I would rather name as my "reality".

I have a secret to tell. I hated my parents when they coerced me take Accountancy in college and not Journalism. But now I am thankful that they did because, in a way, everything that I learned in college, I use it now. My knowledge on almost everything that I do, from juggling numbers and costs as an accountant to putting my hard hat on as a pseudo-engineer was rooted on the discipline and adeptness for details that I learned from tirelessly solving finance and accounting problems while working at night, editing news articles with a cup of coffee from the vendo-machine, and finding out a way to distract our college building’s elevator operator so she wouldn't notice that I have forgotten to wear my elevator pass. I hate taking the stairs!

On the other hand, a part of my education had propelled me through my journey in this so called “real world” with swift and empathy and through worlds beyond this four-cornered room-slash-office of mine. My knowledge on how to keep myself from drowning in this monotonous reality sparked from a very distinct one-hour class sometime in 2002, when Ms. Virginia Mata, our Literature professor (Lit 101 is a general education subject in our University), asked us to read and interpret the first poem that I ever thought was beautiful, and it really is. This poem, by Ophelia Dimalanta, reads like this:

A kind of burning

it is perhaps because 

one way or the other 

we keep this distance

closeness will tug as apart

in many directions

in absolute din

how we love the same

trivial pursuits and

insignificant gewgaws 

spoken or inert

claw at the same straws

pore over the same jigsaws

trying to make heads or tails 

you take the edges

i take the center 

keeping fancy guard

loving beyond what is there

you sling at the stars

i bedeck the weeds

straining in song or

profanities towards some

fabled meeting apart

from what dreams read 

and suns dismantle 

we have been all the hapless

lovers in this wayward world 

in almost all kinds of ways 

except we never really meet 

but for this kind of burning. 

The Philippine Daily Inquirer describes this poem as:

"But her most enduring verses will probably be those about love and its ineffability. One of her most famous poems is “A Kind of Burning,” about love that remains love because it is kept at a distance, unconsummated and unrealized, so that the burning seems to last forever. Its last lines are often quoted by her fans: “we have been all the hapless/ lovers in this wayward world/ in almost all kinds of ways/ except we never really meet/ but for this kind of burning.”"

I have never thought that there will be a time that I will, again, marvel on each word, each punctuation and metaphor of this poem, much more, indulge myself in the beauty of poetry. After hearing the sad news about Ma'am Ophie, the first thing I did is to search the internet for this poem and read it line by line, as if I was dissecting a newly discovered specie. Then I felt the passion that I thought will be gone forever after donning that hard hat hanging on my wall. I felt again the heat of that bashful excitement upon seeing my first crush that I thought was lost when I started a struggling business. Most of all, I had a splash of that romance and that irrationality when I first learned and practiced love, and that I thought was gone when I became more and more pragmatic as I start putting zeros into my bank account. They were there again.

I guess the romance, the passion, and the flame never left – they stayed silently, lurking in the depths of my reality.  –champ 11.12.10

P.S.

Ma'am Ophie, thank you for the gift of your poetry. You know, at present I have the same burning as your poem depicts. It's a kind of burning I found in UAE (of all places). But I will give your poem a different ending - I plan to keep this flame burning and until such time I see it,  I am letting it consume me. 

And when I see it, there won't be slinging at the stars and bedecking of the weeds. I will let it burn perpetually by fueling it with my heart, my soul, and my  entirety.

This kind of burning.

For

Ophie Dimalanta

"Let your glory perpetually shine upon her..."

Len

and

all the poetic accountants in the world.