Touchdown

She asked her Papa what touchdown meant. Touchdown is a term of American football. Touchdown is when your team breaches the opposing team’s line of defense and one of you manages to bring the ball to the other end of the field. Touchdown is when you get a single opportunity to score. But is has other meanings as well.

Touchdown is when you manage to land your flying vehicle safely to the ground. As when you land your Lunar Module safely on the moon’s surface in  which case you earn for your crew the opportunity to say: The Eagle has landed. And then later on: One small step for man, a giant leap for Mankind. If it really happened at all.

Closer to home: Touchdown is when the person you love, tells you, I love you. Touchdown is when he or she says, Yes!, to some proposal or other. Touchdown!

Or if that’s too mushy, touchdown is when you find you can buy your vintage motorcycle’s gas tank for only P3,500  even if the other store tried to sell it to you for P16,500. Touchdown is finding out there is a cheaper version of Nuttela. Touchdown is a Nutella sandwich in the middle of the day right before lunch and you’re very very hungry. Touchdown is the smell and taste and joy of victory.

Everybody requires a few touchdowns in the course of life. The main indicator is how humans manage so many devices to translate it in metaphor. Such as when the late great master painter Martino Abellana likens the act of painting to a boxing match.

Abellana prescribed that the painter should begin first by painting the largest spaces of the painting. “Paint the backgrounds first!” he commanded. Then go for the medium sized spaces before you paint in the smaller spaces, the details. This way the painting forms slowly in the mind of the painter even as it takes shape little by little on the canvas. And you might see here why artists think of the painting or the sculpture as an idea slowly a-forming, or a complex set of ideas joining into a concept.

Not at all dissimilar from a lawyer’s brief that is prepared carefully and well long before the lawyer ever comes to court. Not dissimilar as well to a proposal or a presentation a business person might prepare for his or her clients. And still not dissimilar to a homily prepared with much forethought by a priest, a pastor or a rabbi before it is delivered finally to the faithful.

Abellana always delivered this lecture with a demonstration. He would be painting ostensibly a small rose shaping it until it became recognizable even with a few broad impressionistic strokes. He was to his students an actor who in due course suspends in his audience all capacity for disbelief transporting them into the world onstage.

And then he likened all these to a boxing match where the protagonist first delivers feints and jabs to become more familiar with the opponent. “Weaken the opponent first!” And then he would accompany this with a few more strokes on the painting to give his rose more volume.

At this point in the lecture one might realize that the painting is also a metaphor to the essay, both the reading and writing of it. The writer forms the idea not just on paper but finally in the mind of the reader. But it is not the reader which is his canvas. In the course of all these the mind will ask itself: What are these words about? What are they saying? What do they mean? And why are they important or if not that then at least beautiful?

And then it might be interesting to point out at this instance that it is not just the writer but also the reader who gives the words their final shape. Just as in the act of watching a painting, the act of reading also requires skill and its proper supply of understanding. They require a sufficient width and breadth of vocabulary. And if the essay ever achieves its desired final end, this would because of the reader as much as because of the writer. The reader is not the painter’s canvas. The canvas is finally that domain in the mind where all ideas come together into intelligible form somewhat invisible unless watched with the mind’s eye.

Abellana’s lecture demonstration of painting always ended with an elegant flourish. He would mix on his pallet board the brightest mix of white and yellows. And then he would pick this up with the point of a fine brush and then say: “Wear the opponent out. Wait for him to make a mistake or give you an opening for the knockout punch. Be patient. And then…”

And then with a flick of the wrist he applies his final strokes. They are highlight strokes. The brightest areas of the painting which reflects the light source itself. They complete his rose to perfection. He steps back, turns around and then says: Knockout! Which means to us exactly: Touchdown!