Povelicious.
My copy of Geraldine Kim’s Povel sits invitingly on the table. The reason for this said interpellation is the very fact that its cover has been gently caressed into a come-hither curl, the said curl aided by the lucky confluence of two forces: one, by the manual endeavors of human hands, i.e., mine, and two, by supernatural agency, i.e., the heat and humidity of the Philippine tropics, though the latter is more appropriately “natural,” but as E.E. Evans-Pritchard reminds us in his writings on the Azande which has graced many an introductory anthropology reading textbook, like the one I’ve been using for a few semesters now, the divide between natural and supernatural varies greatly from culture to culture. But allow me at least to discuss the reasons behind the curl in turn: my hands, first, which have only really opened the book to the very first page, that is, the first page of the “povel” proper, occasionally flipping to the back to consult the footnotes, and lingering on the mug shot of Nick Nolte, and reading Geraldine Kim’s biography, convinced, after repeated readings, that her past tenure as Governor of Texas was indeed within the realm of possibility, though not probability, but it is also likely that I am fudging the semantic / mathematical difference between the two words, that is, “possibility” and “probability,” since the lowest grade I ever received in college, as a Communication Arts major from my agricultural school at the foothills of a Philippine mountain, which by the way, is “bundok” in Tagalog, and is, if one remembers correctly, the only word of Philippine origin to insert itself into English without any specific Philippine denotation, that is, “boondocks,” was a crushing 2.5, which is the equivalent of a B-minus in American terms, for what was in fact the only mathematics-related class I took after high school, which was History of Mathematics, though I have no doubt that Geraldine Kim’s grades when she was at Yale were much lower, since it is common knowledge that she received a so-called “Gentleman’s C” average during her tenure at New Haven. In fact it took me two evenings alone to read the title of her book, staring at it glazed through jetlagged eyes, to which I gave the benefit of the doubt by actually reading it twice, since it was, after all, printed twice, and I am enjoying the book immensely, between bouts of grading and headache and the overall frenzied caloric consumption that characterizes the middle-class Philippine holiday season, though I am somewhat unsure what it is about, that is, the book, not the holiday season, even after closely reading Lyn Hejinian’s, or shall I say, “Lyn Hejinian’s,” explanatory introduction to her book, and I am in fact rather puzzled that Microsoft Word has gone and rudely placed a red squiggly line underneath “Povel” and “Azande” and “bundok” and “Hejinian,” especially since one wonders, shouldn’t “Hejinian” be a household name by now, up there with “Longoria” and “Aguilera,” neither of whom get squiggly lines? Let me discuss the second force behind the curl, that is, the supernatural force, shortly, but right now I am feeling dehydrated and should get up and drink a glass of water. I’ll be right back.
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