Sometime with the Hoe
3:21 PM
The past and the present can hardly be reconciled but time can be a block away to reckon its tenses and for people to meet halfway in reference to a Hula-Hoop.
Thanks to my good professor, Madam Fe Reyes. It was kind of her to teach us the value of learning literature in a scholarly manner. My years in the master’s program at the national university were solidly hashed out. From her, I learned that understanding a literary piece is not the simple skin-deep text recognition but a burrowing into the cryptic design of each word.
Then, here's Monsieur Abe. He is my boss. He is a guy next door but he doesn't show off. He is even enigmatic about his life as a Yale University graduate in a bachelor and a master’s degree in business, and in engineering on the other. Whew! He is an heir, too, to a family business. He remains to be low profiled. He's teaching everybody the walk to simplicity behind life's grandeur and dexterity.
Both of them belong to different times – one is in her 60s while the other in his 20s. They are two people who hail from different horizons - one is a Filipino while the other a Saudi. Yes, they are two different individuals who have every difference, but there is one thing which time has afforded them to be the same; both of them have been learning and unlearning the wisdom behind the mystery of the hoe.
In another milestone, noted for his poetic prowess, I came to know Edwin Markham (b. 1852, Oregon) through his famous poem, The Man with the Hoe. In 1899, convinced by the genuine theme of Jean-Francois Millet’s painting, Man with a Hoe (1860-2), he wrote his poem. While Markham worked as an educationist, Millet (b. 1814) was a French Realist painter who came from a family of peasant farmers near Cherbourg. Millet, about his painting, wrote, "[A]s I have never seen anything but fields since I was born, I try to say as best I can what I saw and felt when I was at work." For Markham, "My poem is a poem of hope. It is a cry for justice and an appeal to the humanity of the "masters, lords and rulers" of the world. The Hoe-man is not every man with a hoe: he is the man under the hoofs of the labor world. He is the slave of drudgery because he is the victim of industrial oppression."
Just like Prof. Reyes and Monsieur Abe, Markham and Millet were never contemporaries. They live(d) different lives but were entangled into the same spirit of empowering social humanity through a strong and willful depiction of the subject to the hoe.
The good Professor decrypted the literary framework and figurative elements. Monsieur Abe has filled in the real meaning of the poem through a celebration of true friendship and brotherhood. If for Prof. Reyes, her teaching of the hoe was educational, to Monsieur Abe the hoe was a meaningful teaching of realizing personhood.
Plainly, hoeing is weeding. It is uprooting all weeds coming along one’s way and being spared from the many hands that may pull one off. Hoeing is digging up. It is awakening human consciousness and bringing to life the weakened self. Hoeing is cultivating. It is motivating another’s life and keeping the flame of personhood alive.
In an approach to digging the meaning of the hoe, only a few have stories to tell and each story may differ according to the perspective the persona wants to employ. Considerably, one may think that he is the hoe and the other may think he is the hoe-man. Whichever is thought, each has the role which brings impact to where he is and how he defines life. For Prof. Reyes, she is always the hoe-(wo)man who enlivens her world with that enormous fortune which is teaching. With every literary piece as her hoe, she teaches her students the most beautiful lessons the literary world has offered enriching their lives with the morals contained within. For Monsieur Abe, he is both the hoe and the hoe-man. He is the hoe for he is the tool used to cultivate every little thing without the clamor to do such hoe-man’s quest because he wants to define a new growth. He is the hoe-man for he is a cultivator who hardly tills his land with finesse.
Like any other human being, we, too, need a hoe-man to awaken ourselves and complete our basic needs. Monsieur Abe or Prof. Reyes, (s)he, too, needs constant hoeing. That hoeing comes from somebody who really understands us. Within our growth cycle, we look forward for anybody’s words of encouragement and support. In our day to day undertaking, we always have that introspection to make the best in ourselves but it can never be complete without others’ hands. Like a hoe-man, we need to find that great companionship with our hoe. It is in understanding our hoe that we will be able to use it with all comfort.
It is all what it takes. From a humble beginning of just a farmer’s tool, the hoe is indeed a meaningful tool that awakens a society and a person.
Sometime with the hoe you feel the burden and the shrugging off. It is indeed noteworthy that it is in simple things we get to understand the vagueness of life. It takes only a playful gesture sometime with the hoe to understand life and the people around you.
My time with the hoe is yet to begin. It will be a never-ending lesson to be learned along with the stories of these people whom I admired most and whom I call my hoe-men – Monsieur Abe and Prof. Reyes. #
To Monsieur Abe, who's celebrating his birthday on July 12, HAPPY BIRTHDAY! I hope the hoeing in time will come to fruition as every person you meet along the way be blessed and be inspired of your remarkable journey in life.
Thanks to my good professor, Madam Fe Reyes. It was kind of her to teach us the value of learning literature in a scholarly manner. My years in the master’s program at the national university were solidly hashed out. From her, I learned that understanding a literary piece is not the simple skin-deep text recognition but a burrowing into the cryptic design of each word.
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| The Man with the Hoe (Credit to the rightful owner of the photo) |
Both of them belong to different times – one is in her 60s while the other in his 20s. They are two people who hail from different horizons - one is a Filipino while the other a Saudi. Yes, they are two different individuals who have every difference, but there is one thing which time has afforded them to be the same; both of them have been learning and unlearning the wisdom behind the mystery of the hoe.
In another milestone, noted for his poetic prowess, I came to know Edwin Markham (b. 1852, Oregon) through his famous poem, The Man with the Hoe. In 1899, convinced by the genuine theme of Jean-Francois Millet’s painting, Man with a Hoe (1860-2), he wrote his poem. While Markham worked as an educationist, Millet (b. 1814) was a French Realist painter who came from a family of peasant farmers near Cherbourg. Millet, about his painting, wrote, "[A]s I have never seen anything but fields since I was born, I try to say as best I can what I saw and felt when I was at work." For Markham, "My poem is a poem of hope. It is a cry for justice and an appeal to the humanity of the "masters, lords and rulers" of the world. The Hoe-man is not every man with a hoe: he is the man under the hoofs of the labor world. He is the slave of drudgery because he is the victim of industrial oppression."
Just like Prof. Reyes and Monsieur Abe, Markham and Millet were never contemporaries. They live(d) different lives but were entangled into the same spirit of empowering social humanity through a strong and willful depiction of the subject to the hoe.
The good Professor decrypted the literary framework and figurative elements. Monsieur Abe has filled in the real meaning of the poem through a celebration of true friendship and brotherhood. If for Prof. Reyes, her teaching of the hoe was educational, to Monsieur Abe the hoe was a meaningful teaching of realizing personhood.
Plainly, hoeing is weeding. It is uprooting all weeds coming along one’s way and being spared from the many hands that may pull one off. Hoeing is digging up. It is awakening human consciousness and bringing to life the weakened self. Hoeing is cultivating. It is motivating another’s life and keeping the flame of personhood alive.
In an approach to digging the meaning of the hoe, only a few have stories to tell and each story may differ according to the perspective the persona wants to employ. Considerably, one may think that he is the hoe and the other may think he is the hoe-man. Whichever is thought, each has the role which brings impact to where he is and how he defines life. For Prof. Reyes, she is always the hoe-(wo)man who enlivens her world with that enormous fortune which is teaching. With every literary piece as her hoe, she teaches her students the most beautiful lessons the literary world has offered enriching their lives with the morals contained within. For Monsieur Abe, he is both the hoe and the hoe-man. He is the hoe for he is the tool used to cultivate every little thing without the clamor to do such hoe-man’s quest because he wants to define a new growth. He is the hoe-man for he is a cultivator who hardly tills his land with finesse.
Like any other human being, we, too, need a hoe-man to awaken ourselves and complete our basic needs. Monsieur Abe or Prof. Reyes, (s)he, too, needs constant hoeing. That hoeing comes from somebody who really understands us. Within our growth cycle, we look forward for anybody’s words of encouragement and support. In our day to day undertaking, we always have that introspection to make the best in ourselves but it can never be complete without others’ hands. Like a hoe-man, we need to find that great companionship with our hoe. It is in understanding our hoe that we will be able to use it with all comfort.
It is all what it takes. From a humble beginning of just a farmer’s tool, the hoe is indeed a meaningful tool that awakens a society and a person.
Sometime with the hoe you feel the burden and the shrugging off. It is indeed noteworthy that it is in simple things we get to understand the vagueness of life. It takes only a playful gesture sometime with the hoe to understand life and the people around you.
My time with the hoe is yet to begin. It will be a never-ending lesson to be learned along with the stories of these people whom I admired most and whom I call my hoe-men – Monsieur Abe and Prof. Reyes. #
To Monsieur Abe, who's celebrating his birthday on July 12, HAPPY BIRTHDAY! I hope the hoeing in time will come to fruition as every person you meet along the way be blessed and be inspired of your remarkable journey in life.
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