Entry #39
balimbing balanghoy baluno balete baloto balato bamboo banyan bangungot bathala bahala bahal bohol betel bigti bugtong bagting bagol bagaman bagacay balangay baluktot balintawak barumbado barasoain bungol buta bukaw buot buyog buyag bayag bulak bulaklak bulan bungaw bangaw bangin bingi banga bungo bulaga bulag498 499
Bugtong:500 what did the idiot call poems that repeat the sounds of initial consonants? Answer: Illiteration.501
Another bugtong: Into what language can you not translate a work translated from the Spanish? Answer: Spanish.
498 Raymundo’s manic mumbling stumps me here, so I kept the original intact, above. A charitable notion is that it’s another of his word puzzles. Some patterns one might note are: the vowel mutations [i, a, u, e, o] following the triad bal in the first five words; the multilingual triplet [buyog, buyag, bayag], in which a testy bug transforms in vowel increments into, well, a testicle; in short, one will find any number of patterns limited only by the reader’s cunning. It’s the interstitial connections—what connects one pattern to another—that baffles me. Most of all—why is he doing this when at that point history is in the middle of the Cry of Balintawak??! (Trans. Note)
499 In the middle is the Cry of Balintawak—between baluktot (crooked) and barumbado (troublemaker), toward Barasoain. In short, he traces in manic progress the wayward path to the First Philippine Constitutional Assembly in Barasoain Church, Bulacan, in 1898, which, as every scholar agrees, leads straight from the Cry of Balintawak, the opening shots of revolution: which thus set up the first Asian republic, however shortlived. El Grito de Caloocan: a.k.a. Cry of Balintawak, or Cry of Pugad Lawin (both Balintawak and Pugad Lawin are place-names in the city of Caloocan) is the first event of the revolution. The Philippine republic predates the Irish Uprising, the Bolshevik Rebellion, and inspired every volcanic event in the colonial reaches of Asia, so there. Exact location and time (and even weather) are still in dispute. Circa August 1896. Some people might simply prefer the more rebel-like Cry of Pugad Lawin (literally, Cry of the Hawk’s Nest) to the sissyish Cry of Balintawak (literally, Cry of the Lady’s Shoulder Vestment). However, whatever, the symbolism is clear. This is when Bonifacio’s revolutionaries begin the war, after the Katipunan’s premature discovery following a labor dispute in a printing press. Classic imagery has the cornered katipuneros gathering in a rice field and crying out against the dogs of Spain while they brandished bolos and tore up cédulas (residence certificates—similar in egregious function to identity cards required of blacks in apartheid South Africa or immigrants in modern America). In reality, some memoirists have pictured them soaking after swimming in swamps, no cédulas mentioned. Etc. etc.
As for the other busy b’s above: I have one word for you, puzzler—b--s--t [buwisit]. (Estrella Espejo, Quezon Institute and Sanatorium, Tacloban, Leyte)
500 Bugtong = riddle: a form of indigenous Filipino wit. (Trans. Note)
501 Bugtong sated a thirst for mystery, wordplay, and philosophy. But what’s a riddle doing in the middle of the revolution? (Estrella Espejo, ditto)