Entry #13
May 16, 1884
Noli me tangere: caseated organ of a purple hue. Six inches and counting, enflorescing. Explosive pulp, a bit cheesy. Nigh: left femoral stigmata; tender to touch. Necrosis in croce—doctor says to rest it in peace. But oooooooh. The Lollipolypalooza. It won’t stop its dance! Bless me father for I have sinned may I do it again?164 165 166
164 The shifts in tone keep surprising me: from the stiff, public diction of the school essays to these private sheaves of purplish waste, this time spattered with medical lingo. Raymundo uses his Latin resourcefully. In any case, I’m just the translator. I only play with the dice I’m given. P.S. “Lollipolypalooza” contains the extravaganza of dialects he indulges in here; I refuse to repeat the mess of his pungent phrases. (Trans. Note)
165 The second journal to which Raymundo attaches a date: this time, it is the year Rizal began writing the Noli. Of course, Raymundo in Latinidad de Jose Basa has no clue what Rizal, six years his senior, was scribbling in Europe (though they seem to be reading the same books). Even a few of Rizal’s friends thought he was writing a medical treatise—and were annoyed to learn it was just a romance. “Noli me tangere” also referred to a doctor’s caveat for dying sufferers full of contagion—“don’t touch [this patient].” The line originates from the Catholic-Vulgate gospel of John. Rizal used it as a beautiful metaphor for the canker of colonization. Raymundo’s kinship with his hero is explicit in this section’s fine allusion to Rizal’s historic novel. (Estrella Espejo, Quezon Institute and Sanatorium, Tacloban, Leyte)
166 Onanism nurtures obfuscation. In this case, the clues are obvious. “Six inches . . . a bit cheesy” and the final apostrophe to the Divine: this is a young boy discovering the pleasures of jacking off. Catholic ritual, of course, lends this otherwise dull routine its meaning. Masturbation occurs not in the action itself but in the act of confession. The power of Catholic taboo lies in its use of words. The solitary act has no reader, thus no point: the “masturbator” has yet to exist. He comes into being, authorial and anxious, when he (voluptuously) speaks to the Father, a.k.a. The Other, a.k.a. The Big Other (not to be confused with the little other, a distant cousin somewhat removed). This is how “language . . . constitutes the self into the symbolic order” (Mürk, Epithets LII). However, I do not recommend it to everyone. (Dr. Diwata Drake, Kalamazoo, Michigan)