IF CULTURE starts in any part of our body, it is none other than tongue. The tongue, a very small organ, indeed, is composed of millions of tiny flexible muscles that could be as strong as the sword -- or even sharper, in fact. Its cells become muscles, muscles become organ, and this organ, becomes part of our system.

We know that system as the digestive -- and we Kapampangans probably are experts on this.

We are not talking yet about food, of course!

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This August 28, the Aldo ning Amanung Siswan, has ingrained our schools already by their programs, almost replacing the “Linggo ng Wika” or even longer, the “Buwan ng Wika” that most poets and several NGOs would probably get defensive on its course.

This is the same issue that has focused the privileged talk of Renato Alzadon, the new Ari ning Parnaso, during his coronation at the capitol that morning.

In the same manner, Romeo Rodriguez, the dashing prince of Kapampangan literature laid his vernacular translation of Pablo Neruda’s poem, recited emotionally by Ching Pangilinan, history teacher of the City College and City Tourism Officer of San Fernando.

The point, according to Ms. Ching, is that we can easily absorb and therefore, feel the “oomph” of it if it’s in our own language.

A blast of three-day celebration of the Amanung Siswan was also sponsored and presented by the Provincial Government of Pampanga and the Provincial Language Council that included contest in polosa, creative story telling, and Kapampangan writing and a symposium on zarzuela, our tongue’s moving version in stage mode.

The zarzuela, along with its actors and actresses lost its heyday as young Kapampangans become addicted to reality shows of contests in making and building up a young actor, producing Tagalog-speaking adolescents who may or may not be ashamed of their own regional language or dialect, mostly with half-baked acting skill with snow white skin and aquiline nose.

Beautiful, talented, and glamorous veteran zarzuela actress Mam Ofring of San Luis, Pampanga, now aged 74 and unmarried, will be an indicator that zarzuela is becoming a lost art.

Are you alarmed? I am. We should be.

The easiest way, actually, is to build the system inside us until we live with it fully. This is to speak the language, at least. It’s not even embarrassing yet the embarrassing thing? How we Kapampangans let the recent float of our poet laureates form Capitol to City hall of San Fernando and back, with only a dozen of audience!

Yuzon, Gallardo, and Ocampo probably had a flock of thousand spectators during their times, making the poets dignified and indiscernible in their power equated to that of a priest and a politician or both.

To paraphrase Governor Eddie Panlilio in his speech during the coronation of the Ari and Prinsipi, “kalagu na ing Amanung Siswan!”

If politicians cannot unite with Among Ed, maybe we can as well agree with the sweet words of the controversial governor, who has been well participating in promoting our local roots, along with Mayor Oca Rodriguez.

Among Ed, who has spell-bounded the spectators during the coronation with his rhetorics talk -- not fiery but alluringly sweet, has given the coronation a heavenly flavor by his mass-like talk.

I woke up at four in the morning and went home by almost midnight, attending the whole day for the series of cultural celebrations. Going home that late evening, Ms. Ching, DENR’s Don De Dios, Mike Pangilinan, and the rest squeezed ourselves in one van, almost everyone would not want to go home yet and had conversations.

The topics? Kapampangan language and culture.

When I arrived home that exhausting but wonderful evening, I have thought of how proud I am, still the age of the youth, endeared the Amanung Siswan and dreamed, either awake or asleep, that someday, the youth that I see in the school, in the mall, everywhere, are sharing the same tongue.