Lexical Affair with CdQ

"...it is the poet more than any other human being on Earth who strains himself to break any fetter to human expression, be it physical or verbal, be it the barbed wire or the barbed tongue. Tyranny spawns a literature of protest as naturally as dark clouds spawn rain, and more than the armies that are raised in the hills to fight oppression, it is the fashioning, forging, or fomenting of righteous anger that ends it."

The pen is (still) mightier than the sword
by Conrado de Quiros
Philippine Daily Inquirer
28 August 2007

Before getting to the gist of her lesson, my sophomore Social Studies teacher would read snippets of Conrado de Quiros' (CdQ) column in PDI (Philippine Daily Inquirer). It was from her that I learned to appreciate and have grown to love CdQ. It is not just the sheer audacity and acerbity of his words that roused my daily perusal liaison with CdQ. My fixation is more on how he strings his thoughts into words creating lexical fireworks. The kind that gives you an orgasmic (read that as literary) high. The kind that makes you grab a pen and write feverishly until words unmask your soul.

At times, reading CdQ can be like wading in murky waters especially if at one point in time you have wiped drool off your face after a brief sopor in your Philippine History class. Reading him makes you flip through the yellowed pages of your history book or scour for remnants of history underneath your wig.

Being in awe isn't tantamount to absolute agreement. From time to time, my thoughts on certain issues differ from his views but after every CdQ fix, I find myself struggling not to waver to his stance.