A Few Words

by R. Zamora Linmark

The most important thing to remember
when entering the Postmodern Islands
of Beyond Repair is that “to salvage” means
to exterminate someone, ice their heart
and kidneys for transplant-trafficking, then
dump the body in the tallest man-made
mountain of garbage, or sell the corpse
to the media, as in: “69 journalists salvaged
since ’86; president vows to salvage salvagers.”

A now-defunct word among Americans,
but alive and making lots of money
in the spa and skin-whitening enterprise,
is “avail,” usually tagged to “promo”
and “special,” as in: “Sir, have you availed
already of the 2-4-1 skin-bleaching promo
special?” Last night, inside the arctic
dome of Starbucks, while waiting for
my espresso and blood pressure pills
to kick in after a run-in with a meteor-sized
hole on the sidewalk, I heard a blonde-
dyed Filipina use “avail” in the same breath
as the 16th-century Latin word ocularis.
“Ay, Mare,” she addressed her girlfriends,
“I think we should meet with tomorrow
at the Eat Me Eatery right next to Sine
Qua Non convenient store to discuss
the fate of the ‘Sayonara Never: Phil-
Jap Relations 60 Years after the War’
forum; the acting manager-in-relief gave
me an ocular inspection of the eatery
and the prices were really not that bad
and not that good.”

One popular interjection used by everyone,
from politicians to stand-up comics
to social-climbers to my aunt is “in fairness,”
as in: “This country might be the second
most corrupt in the world, but, in fairness,
we are number one in text messaging.”
It’s true. But, as my Filipino fatalist economist
friend once told me, “What this country needs
is a new country. But, in fairness, there
is no fairness.” When I came out to my
aunt, so as to finally put a stop to her round-
the-clock questions regarding my single
status, she matter-of-factly said, “Hijo,
your closet might be open, but, in fairness,
your skin is still fair.”

In a Pasay City bathhouse, the Sodom
and Gomorrah of the Pacific, among bisexual
grammarians and unsafe-sex practitioners,
a sentence that gets passed around
more often than baby oil and genital warts
is: “Use ‘me’ in a sentence;” among sugar
daddies, it’s: “Use ‘my dick’ in a paragraph.
And then I’ll pay you.”

The vocabulary list goes on and on
and it will never end, until Filipinos stop
recharging dead words, redecorating English,
and rewriting Shakespeare’s soliloquys.
But for now, it’s best to conclude this survival
kit with a quote from a vigilante-turned-actor-
playing-vigilante-lead-roles-turned-House Speaker
Joselito Jose who gave the concluding
remarks at the centennial commemoration
of the American teacher’s arrival in
the ‘archipelago’—a dead word by now
if not for the poets writing in Filipino-
English, or Filinglish. Before the president,
educators, U.S. Embassy officials, and
“solons”—a 559 B.C. Athenian word Filipino
legislators have embraced to convince
the masses they are in favor of economic,
political, and legal reforms until the next
revolution comes along—Representative
Joselito Jose said, and I quote verbatim:
“To be what it takes to be. Only then
we shall be so be it because it is. To
do or not to be is never in the what now
what else or what for, but is always
in the for which without. Thank you.”

R. Zamora Linmark (ZYZZYVA 58, 68) lives sometimes in Honolulu, sometimes in San Francisco. His most recent book is Prime Time Apparitions (Hanging Loose Press, NYC). E-mail: rzlinmark at hotmail dot com