A catalogue of misbehaving things

 

 

Originally self-published in 2014, Ang Kompedio ng mga Imposibleng Bagay (The Compendium of Impossible Objects) by Carlo Paulo Pacolor, was reprinted in an expanded edition by the indie publisher Everything's Fine in 2022. Soleil David, who is translating the collection, received the 2025 National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Translation Fellowship for the book.

 

Everything's Fine also produced a four-story translation sampler from the book. Presented side by side, the sampler itself was a work of art (check their IG post). I grabbed a copy of both the compendium and the four-some sampler during last year's Manila International Book Fair in SM Megamall.

   

Below is a catalogue of the impossible stories:

 

• From “Silid I” (Room I, translated by Soleil David):
  
  
  I need your most effective lock, so that even I couldn’t get out, and if I lost my keys there would be no way to get back in.
  
  
  Later:
  
  
  I can’t open it, I can’t.

•  In “Salita” (Speech), surreal imagery: the violin, like two cats exchanging opinions about the sharpness of their claws.

• “Dila”: Is it just me, or is this story a comment on capitalism and materialism?
  
  From “Tongue” (translated Soleil David):

Along with the vomitus was the bile from her guts, but also she threw up diamonds and pearls, their heft tinkling and pinging against the restaurant's tiled floor. ... and all around her the rush and stampede ... where it wasn't just her co-workers who dropped to their knees and scrambled.

• In “Aparador” (Cabinet): A third-person narrator meditates on the existence of a cabinet, among other objects: 

Is it enough to be a thing, to persist ... ? ... When the owner arrives, once the key opens the lock, all of these turn into fiction. 

 

The “Bagay” in the collection title could be translated as object or thing. “Object” is appropriate because the stories often deal with literal objects and the objectification of people and the anthropomorphism of objects. Not to mention the author's propensity for exploring the subject-object dichotomy in their other works. On the other hand, “thing” universalizes our shared thing-ness.

 

The story ended thus: Tony Perez, pagkayari. (Tony Perez, after the fact.). A nod to the urban legend quality of the preceding, and to Perez, the purveyor of horror stories.

• In “Bugtong” (Riddle): What riddle is it where the answer is the human heart?

Here is another surreal (love) story in this impossible compendium. The heart, after all, is the most impossible thing. Or object.

• “Pares-Pares” (Pairs) is told in brief snatches. The details create an adulterous atmosphere.  

• “Mandelbrot Set” tells the story of a woman encountering a stranger, a double or a “repetition” of her husband. Life, she finds, is not as tidy as the mathematically perfect pattern of embroidery on a tablecloth.

She had no need for happiness. ... Happiness – what would I even do with it, is it spare change I can put in my pockets, is it stain I can wipe off my face, is it a song I can hum? [trans. Soleil David].  

• “Seismometer” is surprisingly absent from the book's table of contents. But did I just read the story? Did we just have an earthquake? In 1999, we were all waiting intently for the apocalypse that we felt disappointed when it didn't arrive. The Big One is nowhere and all around us.

• “Silid II” (Room 2) is the sequel of “Silid I”. Understatement of the year.

• In “Tala” (Star): What happens when a fortune teller falls in love and, while searching for answers and the object of love, spontaneously combusts? 

• In “Pagkatapos Nito” (After This), we listen to “Cry Me a River” by Julie London. Elsewhere, we hear “Summertime” by Sarah Vaughan. The theme songs of the compendium are dope.

•  “Tungkol sa Nawawalang Isla ng Sangkabayagan” (About the Lost Island of Manosphere). Not sure how to translate that last word in the title. “Patriarchy”? “Manhood”? “World of Men”? “Men-kind”? It literally means “kingdom of testicles.”  

A group of military men defended a palace from egg-throwers. There’s a wordplay in the story about bayag (manhood) and bayan (nationhood). It's a fantastical and fabulous fable on toxic masculinity. The light touch was masterful and guffaw-inducing, making it the standout story in the collection. 

• “Extant” was the final and longest story in the compendium. A character played a video game called Calvary X, which opened doors into the unknown. “Extant” was a Borgesian story of multiple doors and forking paths. The number of possible combinations of doors was 360 x 359 x 358. This impossibility blended the supernatural, obsession, and mystery. Its flavor of nightmare reminded me of the films of Kurosawa Kiyoshi. 

 

Pacolor's Ang Kompedio ng mga Imposibleng Bagay ventures into the mysterious, unknown, and perhaps unknowable territories of the body, heart, and mind. It creates skewed worlds and dark atmospheres that should hardly exist, yet do so within the logic of dreams and waking life.