WHAT IS EMOTION?

BY:

TITA LACAMBRA AYALA

                Tita Lacambra-Ayala is an acclaimed writer, poet and painter. Born in Sarrat, Ilocos Norte, Tita studied at the University of the Philippines, and after a fruitful stint as freelance writer for various major magazines and as  press officer of the UP Los Baños College of Agriculture Extension Office, she eventually settled in Mindanao with her husband painter Jose V. Ayala, Jr. (deceased). She has published four books of poems: Sunflower Poems (Filipino Signatures, Manila, 1960), Orginary Poems (Erehwon Publishing, Manila, 1969), Adventures of a Professional Amateur (prose) (UP Press, 1999), and Friends and Camels in a Time of Olives (UP Press, 1999.) She co-edited the visual and literary arts journal Davao Harvest with Alfredo Salanga, Gimba Magazine, and Etno-Culture. She produced and edited the 30-year-old Road Map Series, a folio of Mindanao artistic works and literary writings.

             She won the Palanca in the English Short Story Category “Everything” (Third Prize, 1967), and for Poetry in English “A Filigree of Seasons” (Second Prize). She also garnered the following awards and citations: Gawad Balagtas Awardee for Poetry in English (1991), Manila Critics Circle Special Citation for Road Map Series (1989), Philippine Free Press Awardee for Short Story (1970, Third Prize), Focus Philippines Poetry Awardee, Gawad Pambansang Alagad ni Balagtas UMPIL Achievement Award (1991), and National Fellow for Poetry, UP Creative Writing Center (1994-95).

Lacambra-Ayala is a founding member of the Davao Writers Guild, and is the mother of famous songwriter-musicians Joey Ayala and Cynthia Alexander and poet Fernando (Pido) Ayala.

What Is Emotion? 

It  restricts 

or expands the capacity 

to  flowering,  or  to illusion: 

vertebrafly  or wide 

depending on  the guide: 

If  eagle-- 

swooping fiercely,  eyed 

and eyeing for involvement 

deep by,  upon  each  peak 

each mountainside,  each  bed 

of  river dammed  to full 

or dry to bone 

carrion  by  the sun. 

Tektie  

a  calculated  cold  impassive arc 

of  light  bearing no grudge 

nor  brunt 

nor  wily  disinterestedness: 

a scalpel, cutting  edge of  bright 

probes and then proves the element 

of  darkness 

with  such precision it involves 

no flight 

but  a possession  of  lunar  places. 

What  is  emotion? 

Both these 

the knit  capacity to endure and  give 

what  there is  to endure 

what  there is  to give

INTERPRETATION:

       Emotion?

• Emotion is the state of which people express their innate feelings. Such feelings are temporary -UPLB Students.
• Feelings toward something- ENGLISH PROF.
• The effective aspect of consciousness or a conscious mental reaction(as anger or fear) Subjectively experienced as strong feeling usually directed toward a specific object and typically accompanied by physiological and behavioral changes is the body. - Mirriam Webster

                   

                   But Tita Ayala's poem basically saying that emotion is the ability to feel things, She compares emotion to an eagle flying over a stream bed. The eagle sees pebbles(tektie) glint in the stream.For some reason the glinting  pebbles are like emotion. Or perhaps the eagle's flight is like emotion. 

 There is a lot of meaning of emotion. It is up to the person how he/she will define it base on their experiences but Tita express it or define it through poems.