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She was always ready


From ‘Jungle Jologz’ to the jungles of Negros, a friend recalls the odyssey of martyred revolutionary poet and writer Kerima Lorena Tariman.

By Rey Liwanag

Sa luma naming apartment sa Maalalahanin, may maliit na painting si Kerima. Painted in red, ang sabi nito: Nasaan ka na kaya ngayon?

Nu’ng unang nag-integration si Kerima sa mga magsasaka sa Isabela, lagi kong tinititigan sa dingding ang obra niya, thinking the exact same thing. I told her as much in one of the letters I sent her. Nu’ng mahuli siya ng mga militar noong integration niya,sinabi niya sa akin na ang mga sulat ko raw ang nakita ng mga militar sa gamit n’ya. Ba’t naman kako di mo sinunog? “Di ko masunog eh, maganda sulat mo.” It wasn’t that I was the most special of all her friends, just that she couldn’t burn good writing. She had me preening despite worrying that the enemy read my letters to her.

We met as activists during the 1990s, I was at the League of Filipino Students ang she was in Alay Sining. We weren’t friends and I don’t remember ever talking to her or greeting her at Vinzons. Kerima has this quietly ferocious aura that keeps people away. Back then, she wasn’t someone you approached unless you absolutely had to. But at some point we ended up becoming housemates in Maalalahanin St, sa Teacher’s Village. Another activist friend was looking for replacements because Buddy Zabala of Eraserheads were leaving. It was a great apartment but we needed a bunch of people to fill slots so we can afford it together. The haphazard group of people cobbled together so we could live in Maalalahanin would become the activist gang called Jungle Jologz. Yes, we were silly and called ourselves that. As with a lot of the slang of our time, it was Kerima who coined the name.

I don’t know how we became friends. But I had this feeling that, like a snooty cat, Kerima chose you to be her friend. You can’t just decide to be friends with her. She rarely initiated interactions and can be very blunt. Back then it was nearly impossible to make small talk with Kerima and I’ve been witness to painful attempts by various individuals who tried.

But I remember one weekend lying down on our mattress in the apartment and bonding over books and writers, demolishing mga nagfi-feeling writers in our midst and talking about favorites we read. She was, after all, an established writer when we met and I was a snobbish Comparative Lit major with too much time and a lot of opinions in my hands.

We bonded over music. She had a penchant for women artists – Aimee Mann, Fiona Apple, Ani Di Franco, Cynthia Alexander, Suzanne Vega…and you always found her playing these women’s songs on guitar. But her musical taste ran the gamut from alternative rock to ’80s punk to classical music. She was just as comfortable playing Frederic Chopin on a quiet morning at home or blasting the Wuds at full volume while doing her laundry.

We liked eating and cooking pasta (pasta lang, ’yun lang kaya naming lutuin noon). It was always a thing, to find the best new place to eat around QC. Mga lugar ito na hindi sikat or mga karinderyang masarap ang chibog tapos sikreto lang kasi kapag sumikat na mahirap na kumain doon.

We had great big dinner parties called carbonara night (Kerima’s carbonara recipe was tacked to the kitchen cabinet and reads like this: paghalu-haluin lahat yan hanggang sa lumapot ampotah), where carbonara was the only dish cooked and there was never enough for everybody but there was always enough cigarettes and booze so it was fine.

She loved going to gigs. ’70s Bistro, Inka Cafe, Risiris, Brother’s Mustache, saan pa ba? Well kung saan man ’yan, napuntahan na ’yan ni Kelot. Laging nawawaldas ang allowance kasi lagi kami nasa 70s Bistro. There was one time, I think a famous rock star had a crush on her and a friend, and he tried to take us home or escort us home or take us to his home – I am too old now and back then was too drunk to properly remember which is which – and I was the antibiotic prudish friend who said NO! We-are-going-home-to-our-house-thank-you-very-much. And while arguing thus, Kerima promptly puked on the said rocker’s Pajero and he was disgusted enough to let us go, I guess. The next morning they weren’t sure if they were going to hug me or strangle me for meddling. But we still laugh about her puking on the precious Pajero.

Alay Sining, circa 2000. Jam Jacob

She loved playing with words. Malikot nga kasi ang utak, kung anu-anong laro sa mga salita at mga kataga ang naiimbento. Most of them scathingly funny. She once made nicknames for us that was a play on the menu of Bulilit Burger. Only instead of burger we were called pookeh. There was a Bulilit Pookeh (P5.00 lang!) and Buy One,Take One Pookeh, among others.

She drew well, but it wasn’t something she focused on. She had old paintings of hers lying about the apartment and sketches she made on notebooks everywhere. Looking back, I wish she drew more. It would have been one more thing she’d have left for us who loved her dearly.

She had a great collection of books and was a voracious Booksale hoarder. She would always be looking for Kurt Vonnegut in Booksale so she owned most of the Vonneguts in the house. All the Margaret Atwood books in the house were hers as well and she had a good collection of Japanese fiction, some of which are still with me. She loved Jack Kerouac and I remember bonding over Dharma Bums with her. I always thought she was a lot like Japhy Ryder in that book. Someone so uncompromising and free.

Movies were another bisyo we had together, always sneaking off to a showing at the UP Film Center or meeting up at the Shangri-la Mall for Cine Europa when it still wasn’t a big deal. She always got passes to big Filipino movies because her father is one of the culturati who wrote for the Inquirer and was friends with celebrities. And she’d bring home big-ass movie posters we stuck to our walls.

That group of friends, mga Jungle Jologz, na kapitbahay ni Ely Buendia (one of us, ’yung pinakahaliparot siyempre, would pretend to borrow all sorts of household tools from Ely and then come back to the house squealing “Mga madz! Nahiram ko liyabe tubo ni Ely!”) was the best barkada one would wish to have during their college years. We would subsist on pancit canton and Coke and cigarettes instead of food and everybody always forgot to wash the dishes (which once prompted Kerima to scream at us: Mga leche kayo, may human rights na mga hugasin dito!!!) and we spent nights arguing over music and movies and theories and the revolution. It was shitloads of fun, and not all of it legal or healthy but we were young and felt like we would live forever. We grew up together and did all the notorious things teenagers are supposed to do together. But all that fun was bound to end at some point, ano?

So yeah, we grew up and Kerima was one of the first to leave. She decided that taking a basic masses integration in the countryside would help her find the practice behind the theory, that being among the poorest of the poor would help her remold from being a bourgeois artist to a real revolutionary that genuinely served the people.

There were many ups and downs in Kerima’s journey as an activist (and later full-time revolutionary) but when she left our apartment to go to Isabela in 2000, she never looked back, it was always onwards toward the revolution for her. Back when we were still trying to figure out our lives, Kelot already knew what she wanted to do. It was always clear to her and she never wavered.

I saw her change throughout the years. She became more approachable and talkative, mostly because she recognized that her silent and suplada aura intimidated the people in the areas she integrated in. She used to be a strict vegetarian (back when being a vegetarian wasn’t yet prevalent or uso) but learned to adjust her palate because she worked in many different places that did not always have vegetarian fare available. In many ways she became much more of a leader, quiet but commanding.

She is perhaps the bravest person I know. And I don’t say that lightly as a former activist. I know many people who have dealt with danger and death and have borne the trauma of these experiences. PTSD is par for the course amongst activists and former activists. I don’t know how she did it, but I never saw it in Kerima. She told me how when she was caught by the military in Isabela in 2000, when she stood up to surrender, she didn’t remember being scared, she said she realized she was about to die and decided there and then that she was ready. She told me about one harrowing experience of being left behind after a military encounter. How she stayed alone in that kubo all night, waiting to see if the enemy would return. The next day she moved forward and wandered alone for three days until she found her unit. I could not imagine the strength it took to be calm and clear-minded in a situation like that. But she told that story like it was just an interesting thing that happened to her, no big deal.

Kerima, as a godmother to the author’s son.

I saw Kerima as a young mother. I remember coming to visit her in Albay all those years ago when she just gave birth to her son and when I asked her how was the labor, Kerima being Kerima, she told me in her blasé way: Hindi nako matatakot matorture kasi pihado mas masakit manganak, next time sa bahay na lang ako manganganak.

Oh how she loved being a mother. Her joys became simpler in that time, she would write to me about how she enjoyed the quietude of life in the province. The sun and the sky and the great beautiful Mayon. It was a big treat for her to go to town and eat pancit in the palengke. She doted on Emman as he was such a beautiful baby. When she held her baby, she had this look in her eyes, as if asking herself: I made this human being? Really? I enjoyed seeing her live in domestic bliss, if only fleetingly. I remember her husband would invent pasta dishes during that visit, one of which they called pumpkin mermaid sauce. A fancy way of naming tomato sauce with kalabasa.

When the time came for her to leave her baby, to go back to her full-time revolutionary work in the countryside, I witnessed how Kerima struggled with this sacrifice. I saw how this was the most painful thing she ever had to do for the movement. Many people are sharing her poetry nowadays but her poem“Kuliglig” about her son (who she fondly called “Emani Cricket”) is perhaps my favorite one.

Madami na sa henerasyon namin ang tumigil sa pagkilos, nag-iba ng landas o larangan ng pagkilos. Kerima and her husband never wavered. They were consistent and determined. When the going got tough, they kept on. How can you not be in awe of these people? How are they able to take the road less travelled and embrace the sacrifices needed with such grace? Marami ang nagtatanong, may mga bayani pa ba ngayon? Mayroon. Mga matatalino at mga natatanging nilalang na inialay ang buong buhay para sa bayan. Para paglingkuran ang mga inaapi sa ating lipunan. Ikinagagalak ko na nagkaroon ako ng pribilehiyo na makilala ang mga bayani na tulad ni Kerima.

I met Kerima Lorena Tariman as an irreverent and fun-loving teenager but I saw her become a mother, a fierce warrior and now a revolutionary hero.

I am sure that later generations of scholars will recognize and canonize her as one of the greatest Filipino poets of our time, and she will live on in the history of the national-democratic movement, of the Filipino people’s struggle for liberation, as one of its best and brightest.

They sent me a picture of her, one of the first pictures from the encounter, I assume. She was looking to the side, her gaze strong with a hint of a frown on her brow. It must have been the last moment of her life before they finished her off. She looked brave and ready.

She was always ready.