[Oe List ...] \Valentino beyond the frangipani

[Jaime R Vergara]

Happy Valentines to all!  In the Saipan Tribune.

The usual caveat: curious, welcome; not, see you at the bend!
 


Love the Ultimate Indulgence
 
It is perhaps one of the truisms of human existence that on the day we are born when we ascend into the journey of life, we simultaneously descend unto death.  Love as the surrender to the fullness of life and the finality of death becomes the hallmark of life’s full celebration and the final achievement into oblivion from whence we came.
 
Embodiment of life entails the achievement of death.  Viewed this way, this Love Day is a few meters broader than the mere sentiment of roses, the addictive flavor of chocolate, and the promise of magic in everything.
 
This day also conjures up pictures of Bacchanalian scenes in Caligula’s court, of red wine poured into flesh and lips salaciously lapping the juice of the vine from the surfaces it is strategically poured into, with lights dimmed on Valentino’s quarters.  Perhaps of less cinematic vividness are the normal plans on Valentine’s Day, still seen in this era of female emancipation as the male’s prerogative to tickle Valentina’s fancy and trickle down patriarchy’s dandy.
 
We will leave the raving hormones and the raging libidos to the graciously young but the gratuitously aging beg for a more balanced recollection of where one has been to the clarity of the destination where one is heading.  We wax philosophical when the day calls us to wallow in hip-deep romance!
 
They may have been a long way from Ireland’s Tipperary, but the British penchant for adventure, in geographical space and the typography of the mind, fuels the literary imagination of the English language now, invading the nooks and crannies of the global soul.  Chinese students read Americano Hemingway’s The Old man and the Sea.  (My name is spelled “Hemi” at SAU, and my students quickly dubbed me Hemingwei.)
 
The image of the old man and the sea caught our fancy, not only because Saipan has an Old Man by the Sea island, but because in the story plot, an old Cuban named Santiago (“St. James” in English, also Jaime in Basque Spanish), catchless for 85 days, finally hooks a marlin that will test his will and map a weeklong journey home amidst sharks, scavengers and the old man’s immense journey into his own soul!
 
The number 85 also marks the termination of our intentionally phased journey on increments of 17 years each (17 times 5 = 85), though we have given the sweet mystery of life an extra year to ice the cake.  Our email address jrvergarajr2031 at aol.com heralds the year 2031 as our terminus when we shall be 86, and between then and now lies our own remaining journey, this old man and his sea!
 
Better at capturing the novel’s plot, we borrow another writer’s description:  “Unable to tie the line fast to the boat for fear the fish would snap a taut line, the old man bears the strain of the line with his shoulders, back, and hands, ready to give slack should the marlin make a run.”  Imitation is indeed the best form of flattery.  
 
“The fish pulls the boat all through the day, through the night, through another day, and through another night. It swims steadily northwest until at last it tires and swims east with the current. The entire time, Santiago endures constant pain from the fishing line. Whenever the fish lunges, leaps, or makes a dash for freedom, the cord cuts Santiago badly. Although wounded and weary, the old man feels a deep empathy and admiration for the marlin, his brother in suffering, strength, and resolve.”  Angst carries the day.
 
It is not our journey that is the object of this reflection, nor that of Hemingway’s novel.  It is the facticity of life’s journey and its terminal achievement that fills our muse of life’s supreme virtue, love.  Of reality, of the authority of authenticity, of each one’s own flesh-and-blood life, we live, we love, we die!
 
Beyond the Hollywood drum roll, and HANMI’s awkward promotion to Nippon couples of romance with a pastoral chapel, the lady’s laced floor length virginal gowns and a royal black tux for the latent samurai gent, abetted by a stretched Humbee ride, the Love day in Garapan is about embracing the total reality of life as it is given (warts, woof and all), even in light of Elena Romero’s abduction and homicide, injecting our passion to current contemporary demands, and pouring the compassionate strain of our selfhood into its waiting arms; we create ex nihilo, the mystery and wonder of existence and reformulate its essence in a world like Saipan rapidly expending its energy sans hope.
 
Our poetry escapes many.  That’s why we need a Valentine’s Day to show this side of our nature and choice.  Economics devoid of poetry only crunches numbers and reduces humanum into statistics; politics without compassion bares nepotistic patronage to a science.  This day is not an escape into Lala-land.  It is rather an invitation for the internal core of our lives to precede our reaching out for the spade and shovel to form and shape the logistical expressions of our dreams and aspirations.
 
Love day is molding flesh to spirit, the sensualization of the life force, and deciding to devour every morsel of it.  Y’all have a loving feast on life today!  


 Jaime R Vergara 


All of yesterday, thanks; all of tomorrow, yes; all of today, let it be!




 Jaime R Vergara 


All of yesterday, thanks; all of tomorrow, yes; all of today, let it be!


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