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This is the blog of Ian Rosales Casocot. Filipino writer. Sometime academic. Former backpacker. Twink bait. Hamster lover.

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Tuesday, July 26, 2005

entry arrow8:06 AM | Anthology

I am editing this anthology of young Filipino fictionists with the beautiful and immensely talented Kit Kwe, and I am flooded with so many beautiful stories that strike me between my eyes; stories like Pearlsha Abubakar's, or Luis Joaquin Katigbak's, or Sarge Lacuesta's, or Janet Villa's, or Dean Alfar's, whose forays into magic realism has the truest tone from that attempted by any Filipino writer. I am always breathless finishing one story after another; it hurts, almost, to begin comprehending all these beauty. Reading the last lines from Dinah Baseleres's "How to Write 30," for example, I am dumbfounded:

The more you think, the lonelier you get. And writers are the deepest thinkers of them all. They grieve more, love more, make infinitely more mistakes simply because they invest everything they can in things they expect too much from. You never win with your heart on the chopping block like that. You learn to stop writing by learning to gloss over what you remember; memory is tricky, always painting bright the off-color, until you no longer can tell biography from fiction.

Everyday you believe more and more that everything else besides writing is not rocket science. Take the easy route. The sooner you write 30, the longer you have to live.

I would like to put to death all those who constantly announce the death of Philippine literature in English. You, sirs, have no salt; you do not know what you are talking about. So shut up, and just read.

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