Celebration: An Anthology to Commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the Silliman University National Writers Workshop Sands and Coral, 2011-2013
Silliman University, 2013
I just stumbled on one more random thing about myself, and I will borrow freely from a Nora Ephron line from When Harry Meets Sally... in considering it: I always read magazines from back to front covers. That, my dear, is a dark side.
Six Degrees of Separation is one of my favorite movies, directed with intelligent finesse by Fred Schepisi from the acclaimed play by John Guare who wrote the screenplay. The story centers around Paul (played by Will Smith), a young black man who has conned his way into the East Side New York apartment of Ouisa and Flan Ketteridge (Stockard Channing, who is brilliant, and Donald Sutherland), who are art dealers for the rich. They are guilty liberals who gets taken in by a charming con man who has them convinced that he is the son of Sidney Poitier, that he is a friend of their children, that he has graduated from Harvard, and that he can offer them roles as extras in the film adaptation of Cats. In this scene, Paul gets into their apartment by feigning a mugging attack, and when he dazzles them with his wit and intelligence, they -- together with guest Geoffrey (Ian McKellen) -- inquire about his thesis on J.D. Salinger's The Catcher on the Rye (stolen by the muggers). What follows may be Mr. Smith's greatest monologue, ever. (No scene in I, Robot even comes close.)
Paul: Well ... a substitute teacher out on Long Island was dropped from his job for fighting with a student. A few weeks later, the teacher returned to the classroom, shot the student unsuccessfully, held the class hostage and then shot himself. Successfully. This fact caught my eye: last sentence. Times. A neighbor described him as a nice boy. Always reading Catcher in the Rye. The nitwit -- Chapman -- who shot John Lennon said he did it because he wanted to draw the attention of the world to The Catcher in the Rye and the reading of the book would be his defense. And young Hinckley, the whiz kid who shot Reagan and his press secretary, said if you want my defense all you have to do is read Catcher in the Rye.
Ouisa laughs.
Flan: I haven't read it in years. (Ouisa shushes him.)
Paul: I borrowed a copy from a young friend of mine because I wanted to see what she had underlined and I read this book to find out why this touching, beautiful, sensitive story published in July 1951 had turned into this manifesto of hate. I started reading. It's exactly as I remembered. Everybody's a phony. Page two: "My brother's in Hollywood being a prostitute." Page three: "What a phony slob his father was." Page nine: "People never notice anything." Then on page 22 my hair stood up. Remember Holden Caulfield -- the definitive sensitive youth -- wearing his red hunter's cap. "A deer hunter hat? Like hell it is. I sort of closed one eye like I was taking aim at it. This is a people-shooting hat. I shoot people in this hat." This book is preparing people for bigger moments in their lives than I ever dreamed of. Then on page 89: "I'd rather push a guy out the window or chop his head off with an ax than sock him in the jaw ... I hate fist fights ... what scares me most is the other guy's face..." I finished the book. It's a touching story, comic because the boy wants to do so much and can't do anything. Hates all phoniness and only lies to others. Wants everyone to like him, is only hateful, and he is completely self-involved. In other words, a pretty accurate picture of a male adolescent. And what alarms me about the book -- not the book so much as the aura about it -- is this: the book is primarily about paralysis. The boy can't function. And at the end, before he can run away and start a new life, it starts to rain and he folds. Now there's nothing wrong in writing about emotional and intellectual paralysis. It may indeed, thanks to Chekhov and Samuel Beckett, be the great modern theme. The extraordinary last lines of Waiting For Godot -- "Let's go." "Yes, let's go." Stage directions: they do not move. But the aura around this book of Salinger's -- which perhaps should be read by everyone but young men -- is this: it mirrors like a fun house mirror and amplifies like a distorted speaker one of the great tragedies of our times -- the death of the imagination. Because what else is paralysis? The imagination has been so debased that imagination -- being imaginative -- rather than being the lynchpin of our existence now stands as a synonym for something outside ourselves like science fiction or some new use for tangerine slices on raw pork chops -- what an imaginative summer recipe -- and Star Wars! So imaginative! And Star Trek -- so imaginative! And Lord of the Rings -- all those dwarves -- so imaginative. The imagination has moved out of the realm of being our link, our most personal link, with our inner lives and the world outside that world -- this world we share. What is schizophrenia but a horrifying state where what's in here doesn't match up with what's out there? Why has imagination become a synonym for style? I believe that the imagination is the passport that we create to take us into the real world. I believe the imagination is merely another phrase for what is most uniquely us. Jung says the greatest sin is to be unconscious. Our boy Holden says, "What scares me most is the other guy's face -- it wouldn't be so bad if you could both be blindfolded -- most of the time the faces that we face are not the other guys' but our own faces. And it's the worst kind of yellowness to be so scared of yourself you put blindfolds on rather than deal with yourself..." To face ourselves. That's the hard thing. The imagination. That's God's gift to make the act of self-examination bearable.
Ouisa: Indeed.
Flan:(Teary-eyed) I hope your muggers read every word.
People always email me this question: "Where can we read the Palanca-winning pieces?" In Literatura, I tell them. It's an online literary magazine I started a few years back (when I had so much more free time than I have right now), which had regularly featured many of the winning pieces, particularly from the past three years. I've been remiss trying to come up with monthly issues as I had promised before, but the annual Palanca Issue is always one that I don't miss out on. (Last year, when I almost didn't plan to come up with one, the writer Ed Maranan nevertheless sent me his winning essay and maikling kuwento, which spurred me to ask the rest to send in their own. That became Issue No. 12.)
So watch for the thirteenth issue of the long dormant (Literatura Online, with the winners of the 2007 Don Carlos Palanca Awards, including Dean Francis Alfar, Wilfredo Pascual, Douglas Candano, Aurelio Agcaoili, Crystal Koo, Apol Lejano-Massebieau, Rody Vera, and many others. Coming very soon...
I was tagged by Kokak, who demands immediate answer, so here goes eight (plus one) random things about me... 1.
I hate to email. Or write letters in general. Writing one takes so much out of me, because a simple letter often becomes an epic missive I never get to finish at all. Somebody once said, "Keep it simple." God, I do try. But I never seem to get anywhere. I always feel guilty when I dash off something like, "Hey, thanks for the email. I'm great! Ikaw? Musta?" Yay of all yays. But for the most part, I think my resistance to emailing has something to do with the fact that I write to make stories -- and so when I write anything else, I fear that I am wasting words on something other than fiction.
2.
I am the worst hypochondriac I know. And nobody actually knows this. Right now, I'm scared I'm dying of cancer. I've been through a whole gamut of diseases, and this is the disease du jour. What's worse? I'm scared of hospitals.
3.
I believe I am the laziest person in the whole wide world. Some people say, "But you're such a workaholic." Trust me, it's to compensate for the guilt, which may or may not be imagined. I think I've been compensating since that day in grade school, a long time ago, when I felt too sick to scrub the floor with your standard issue coconut husk -- and one of my classmates started taunting me with "Si Ian, tapulan... Si Ian, tapulan..." I still remembering the embarrassment I felt.
4.
I eat in a certain fashion that borders the eccentric. I don't mix food, the way Mark does. I eat various dishes in an orderly manner, never mixing sequences, never experimenting. (Appetizer, soup, first course, second course, dessert... And never in any other order.) I do not like sauces and condiments. I want my food ... virginal.
5.
I drink three cups of coffee before I go to sleep.
6.
I become relaxed in two ways: (a) a good massage, and (b) a day in a bookstore. The smell of new books is orgasmic.
7.
I loathe Friendster accounts that automatically play emo music. Or whatever music, even. The loud ones usually scare the hell out of me. Jeez, it may be your personal page, but God, don't you know that that kind of madness always drives people away from viewing your page? But what's worse: Friendster accounts that play two or three different tunes all at the same time.
8.
I finish most things in the nick of time -- but I always deliver quality. I think.
9.
I hate memes. So I'm tagging nobody. And everybody.
This just in. Malu Fernandez finally resigns. Her statement:
I am humbled by the vehement and heated response provoked by my article entitled "From Boracay to Greece!" which came out in the June 2007 issue of People Asia. To say that this article was not meant to malign, hurt or express prejudice against the OFWs now sounds hollow after reading through all the blogs from Filipinos all over the world. I am deeply apologetic for my insensitivity and the offensive manner in which this article was written, I hear you all and I am properly rebuked. It was truly not my intention to malign hurt or express prejudice against OFWs.
As the recent recipient and target of death threats, hate blogs, and deeply personal insults, I now truly understand the insidiousness of discrimination and prejudice disguised as humor. Our society is bound together by human chains of kindness and decency. I have failed to observe this and I am now reaping the consequences of my actions. It is my fervent hope that the lessons that Ive learned are not lost on all those who through anonymous blogs, engaged in bigotry, discrimination, and hatred (against overweight individuals, for example).
I take full responsibility for my actions and my friends and family have nothing to do with this. To date I have submitted my resignation letters to both the Manila Standard and People Asia, on that note may this matter be laid to rest.
The statement came through a simple Geocities page -- which merits so much doubt, considering its medium. But my friend Eric texted me that the news came out tonight in ABS-CBN's TV Patrol. And now I'm thinking: It's amazing how powerful bloggers have become in the world of new media. So, to Tingog.com who first sounded that call against Ms. Fernandez, congratulations.
One last note, however: I was one of those who did mention her weight in my calculated attack against her article. I was, of course, mindful of the political incorrectness of the charge, but I felt I had to demonstrate to Ms. Fernandez how words -- chosen without sensitivity -- can be a repository of so much hate and discrimination, whether intended or not. She had to have her cake, and eat it, too. So now, I'd like to apologize to all horizontally-challenged people out there. As Oprah continually reminds us: "You are beautiful."
The Garden of Forking Paths by Jorge Luis Borges Stories by Cesar Ruiz Aquino The Elephant Vanishes by Haruki Murakami The Two Hundred Fifty-Seventh Page by Nicolas Lacson The Second Bakery Attack by Haruki Murakami
Next Tuesday
Silliman University Founders Day Break
Last Tuesday
Character Encoding by Baryon Tensor Posadas Cathedral by Raymond Carver Door 59 by F.H. Batacan
Last, last Tuesday
The Whore of Mensa by Woody Allen My Brother's Peculiar Chicken by Alejandro Roces The Royals of Hegn by Ursula K. Le Guin Rude Kate by July Lewis
Last, last, last Tuesday
The Book of Things Which Must Not Be Remembered by C. Scavella Burnell The Hours Before Sunrise by William Congreve The First Dream by Robert Jed Malayang The Dead Girl's Wedding March by Cat Rambo
The LitCritters is a reading and writing group based in Manila (moderated by Dean Francis Alfar) and Dumaguete. Every week, we read and discuss several pieces of short fiction from various genres from different writers with the goal of expanding our reading horizons, improving our ability to critique, and learning how to write from the good texts. In addition to speculative fiction, we read Philippine literature in English, as well as world literature.
The Dumaguete Group meets every Tuesday at 8 p.m. in Cafe Antonio in The Spanish Heritage along Avenida Sta. Catalina.
I know I've been remiss in my blogging (and bloghopping) when I seem to have missed out on the many raging controversies in "Philippine blogosphere" -- God, how I hate that term. It must be the strange weather we're having lately, but everybody seems particularly irritated. And some for good reason. There's, of course, Gibbs ranting about the growing cliques and their sense of entitlement in the local blogging world (which made me think: I've been blogging since 2003, and I kinda miss the innocence of those days. Today, it's all about Awards this, and GoogleAds that, it all makes your head spin.) But there's something else I have missed out on...
This is vile Malu Fernandez and her matapobre mouth, probably the most hated woman in Philippine blogging today. (In her Friendster account, she describes herself as a "super bitch but with a heart of gold .... hahaha sometimes i'm not what I seem to be oooh thats a double edged sword...") She writes a social column in People Asia Magazine, and thinks she has the wit of Libby Gelman-Wexler when in all actuality she has the talent and the dimness of a Paris Hilton on a bad day. And she looks like a runaway lechon dressed up in fake designer clothes to boot. What she has done is approach Tim Yap notoriety of pa-sosyal viciousness without even the whiff of flair Tim has. See the offending instance via Tingog.com here and here, and see the debate in Manolo's blog here, and countless other blogs too many to even begin to consider and link. Better yet, I'm posting the pages of the notorious article below (click to enlarge):
Read her article and feel your blood pressure rise. But what really riled me up -- and prompted me to post this -- is her devil-may-care response to the blogging barrage:
As I type this, I’d like you to know that it’s not about whining, complaining and bitching but just stating the facts. Just recently, I wrote a funny article in my magazine column and my friends thought it was hilarious. It was humorous and quite tongue-in-cheek, or at least I thought so, until the magazine got a few e-mails from people who didn’t get the meaning of my acerbic wit. The bottom line was just that I had offended the reader’s socioeconomic background. If any of these people actually read anything thicker then a magazine they would find it very funny. Most people don’t get the fact that they need bitches like me to shake up their world, otherwise their lives would be boring and mediocre. I obviously write for the a certain target audience and if what I write offends you, just stop reading.
Well, dear, I've read books thicker than triple your waistline, and I know what is satiric and what is ironic and what is acerbic and what is tongue-in-cheek. You're neither all of these. Your silly article is still nothing more to most cultured people than a moronic attempt at column-writing by a bored social climber who is trying to assuage her insecurity because no amount of reading French Women Don't Get Fat can ever get her to lose the love handles on her face.
I say Cat is right: fire her. She is a waste of ink and paper.
What a pot roast.
[Note: The viciousness above should be taken as something like giving her a dose of her own medicine. She needs it, man.]
Here's a series of papers written supposedly by a Peter Nguyen for school. They will delight you with either their horrifying stupidity (or perverted genius). Frankly, I would love to get a Peter Nguyen paper in my class any time over another lame-ass composition. They would have brightened my days (and nights) checking those piles of paper more...
12:34 PM |
A Tribute to Ceferina Malasarte Rosales Casocot on Her 75th Birthday
This is the video tribute I made for my mother last Friday, for her grand 75th birthday party (and my own, umm, 28th ... yes, we share the same birthday).
All those photos I scanned reminded me that my family has gone through a lot of things -- so many challenges and heartaches -- and yet, I am proud of the fact that today, we all still stand strong together, no matter what. I guess it's a testament to my mother's strength and ability to bind us into resolute family loyalty. We may get into each other's hair once in a while, but by God, there's love there in between the lines, and even beyond that.
In an interview once with The New York Times, Danny Boyle, one of my favorite film directors (he did Shallow Grave, Trainspotting, 28 Days Later, The Beach, Millions, and Sunshine) remarked about life after having scaled the first pinnacle of success: "Everything after the first one is business. There's something about that innocence and joy when you just don't quite know what you're doing." I feel that way somehow about winning my first Palanca, albeit a Second Place finish for the short story in English, in 2002. It brought me what may be the greatest burst of joy in my entire life: I had never jumped so high, smiled so much, or wahooed in an endless orgy of abandon. I felt that I had won the entire universe in the biggest lottery there was. But after that first win, everything else -- even the subsequent winnings -- becomes an exercise in proving the first one was never a fluke to begin with. You still laugh out loud and jump for joy, but they all seem to pale to that first time.
And having said all that, yes, I won my third Palanca Award this year. Third prize, short story for children in English, for "The Last Days of Magic." Yey! (That story will be part of the new PEN Anthology edited by Vicente Garcia Groyon III, coming out soon.)
[Dean is running a list of the new Palanca winners this year. Dean, by the way, won Second Prize for the same category I have. Go, LitCritters!]
The first old picture shows me with most of my brothers. There are six of us in the family, all boys -- and that's Edwin, Rey, and Dennis in the foreground, with brother Alvin holding me up. I was two? three? And why are we smiling so brightly at the camera? Why does Edwin have a jump rope slung across his shoulders? Sometimes I wish we could all remember everything when we were children. I must have been four or three years old in the second picture, but I certainly already looked like my father. That's my eldest brother Rocky holding me, and my brother Rey -- how little he looks -- at the right side, and we're all posing in front of our almighty yellow Sakbayan (the vehicle of choice then). We're in Bayawan in southern Negros in the late 1970s, during the Gilded Age of Sugar. It's my birthday today, and also my mother's 75th birthday (yes, we share the same birthday), and I'm scanning all old photos now for my tribute to her later this evening. All of these is taking me back...
Character Encoding by Baryon Tensor Posadas Cathedral by Raymond Carver Door 59 by F.H. Batacan
Last Tuesday
The Whore of Mensa by Woody Allen My Brother's Peculiar Chicken by Alejandro Roces The Royals of Hegn by Ursula K. Le Guin Rude Kate by July Lewis
Last, last Tuesday
The Book of Things Which Must Not Be Remembered by C. Scavella Burnell The Hours Before Sunrise by William Congreve The First Dream by Robert Jed Malayang The Dead Girl's Wedding March by Cat Rambo
The LitCritters is a reading and writing group based in Manila (moderated by Dean Francis Alfar) and Dumaguete. Every week, we read and discuss several pieces of short fiction from various genres from different writers with the goal of expanding our reading horizons, improving our ability to critique, and learning how to write from the good texts. In addition to speculative fiction, we read Philippine literature in English, as well as world literature.
The Dumaguete Group meets every Tuesday at 8 p.m. in Cafe Antonio in The Spanish Heritage along Avenida Sta. Catalina.
I wanted to post about this some time ago, but I didn't have an image of the book cover to accompany it with. But finally, I stumbled on one. Do get a copy of Sawi: Funny Essays, Stories and Poems on All Kinds of Heartbreaks, edited by Ada J. Loredo, BJ A. Patiño, and Rica Bolipata-Santos, out now from Milflores. I have an old short short story included in this anthology, something titled "How Sarah Broke Up With Me." The book description from National Bookstore goes: "Heartbreaks, especially the romantic kind, are inevitable in life. Imagination, however, can convert them into the fascinating stuff of lighthearted, even uproariously hilarious literature. This bilingual collection of essays, poems and stories was written by top writers -- most of them young in the country’s best universities like U.P., Ateneo, De La Salle, and Silliman."
Juaniyo Arcellana reviews for the Philippine STAR two recent Philippine novels by authors I know and admire. One I've already read last summer during a much-delayed flight from Manila to Dumaguete, and one I'm eager to get my hands on: there's Katrina Tuvera's Martial Law domestic drama, The Jupiter Effect, and Charlson Ong's sweeping epic through Filipino Chinese history, Banyaga: A Song of War -- both published by Anvil. In a literary landscape where everybody knows everybody and serious reviewing often takes a backseat for friendship's sake, I get amazed by how Juaniyo gets away with steadfast (fearless?) opining.
Director Yam Laranasblogs about the making of The Echo, the Hollywood remake of Sigaw, which will be produced by the makers of The Grudge and The Departed. The film also stars Jesse Bradford, who was steamy in Swimfan. He starts principal photography tomorrow in Toronto and later in New York, with Iza Calzado as one of the leads. We should all be excited about Laranas: this, I think, marks the first time a Filipino movie gets remade by Hollywood. Who says the national cinemas of Korea, Hong Kong, Thailand, and Japan are the only ones worth emulating? We too can tell a cinematic story when we really want to. (Now that dinosaurs like Joel Lamangan are being pushed to the sidelines by more imaginative indie directors, there's finally hope for Philippine cinema, as evidence by the latest Cinemalaya.) I liked Sigaw when it first came out. It was genuinely scary, and the look was consistent and artful. Heck, I love the work of Laranas, especially Radyo and Hibla. Balahibong Pusa was a gorgeous disaster, but gorgeous nonetheless. If there's anything about Laranas that assures me, it's his ability to visually tell a story, even when the story itself suffers sometimes. So here's to Laranas and The Echo. And here's to the future of Philippine cinema.
The thing is, without LitCritters, I may as well be one of those living dead that I see walking around me, people whose lives have lost the color of art, of spontaneity, of the occasional abandon of one who has a pure zest for existence. The toil of the regular days—when work and other seemingly urgent responsibilities take too much out of life, and yet soon reveal themselves to be mere emptiness—has a way of getting into our adult lives, and when we’re not too careful, we become like zombies. Paranoid ones, jaded and bitter.
I know of one beloved mid-level administrator who came to S------ a few years ago, right about the time I got out of college and was experimenting with my days as a new graduate. She hired me and some of my friends to do a video for the first big event she was supposed to handle as the new director of her office. She was full of life, and full of ideas—and any creative idea we threw at her she accepted as a kind of dare, willing to propel the event from the timid ho-humness that it was getting to be. We soon finished the video—a very good one at that—and presented it at the Big Event, which many people liked, but which also created for her some new enemies, those pond scums who are quick to snipe at innovative up-and-comers. Flash forward seven years. That zesty administrator has become a shade of a nervous wreck, has become too careful for comfort, has grown exceedingly old from dealing with internal politics and such. She is still lovely, and caring—but I miss that old spark. Sometimes, I’m afraid to become like that.
Which is why I love LitCritters. Every Tuesday night, we—that is, me and eight young college students who are among the brightest in the University—meet and discuss stories and the craft of fiction, and every four weeks, we try our hand in creating our own. Without fail, Tuesday nights revive me, and I always go home feeling fulfilled, feeling vindicated, feeling that I do have the choice to not become one among the walking dead.
So thanks, Michelle, Dirgy, RJ, Lyde, Marianne, Jordan, Odie, and Justine. And thanks, Dean, for the wonderful idea of having LitCritters in the first place. (And happy birthday to Manila LitCritters Andrew and Alex!)
Some artsy-fartsy stuff for the weekend. The first photo is my most favorite recent photograph I took of Mark. Smoldering look, anyone? And the second one is a very recent photo of moi that the artist Sharon Dadang-Rafols took of me during a dinner at her house last Thursday, which kinda became an instant photo session... And yes, that's some kind of fruit in my hand. How telling.
Springfield's Marge, Homer, Lisa, Bart, Patty, and Selma cavort in Paris with Linda Evangelista and a few designers, courtesy of artist Julius Preite. All from Harper's Bazaar.
12:43 AM |
How I Read Magazines
In an interview once with The New York Times, Danny Boyle, one of my favorite film directors (he did Shallow Grave, Trainspotting, 28 Days Later, The Beach, Millions, and Sunshine) remarked about life after having scaled the first pinnacle of success: "Everything after the first one is business. There's something about that innocence and joy when you just don't quite know what you're doing." I feel that way somehow about winning my first Palanca, albeit a Second Place finish for the short story in English, in 2002. It brought me what may be the greatest burst of joy in my entire life: I had never jumped so high, smiled so much, or wahooed in an endless orgy of abandon. I felt that I had won the entire universe in the biggest lottery there was. But after that first win, everything else -- even the subsequent winnings -- becomes an exercise in proving the first one was never a fluke to begin with. You still laugh out loud and jump for joy, but they all seem to pale to that first time.
Director Yam Laranas blogs about the making of The Echo, the Hollywood remake of Sigaw, which will be produced by the makers of The Grudge and The Departed. The film also stars Jesse Bradford, who was steamy in Swimfan. He starts principal photography tomorrow in Toronto and later in New York, with Iza Calzado as one of the leads. We should all be excited about Laranas: this, I think, marks the first time a Filipino movie gets remade by Hollywood. Who says the national cinemas of Korea, Hong Kong, Thailand, and Japan are the only ones worth emulating? We too can tell a cinematic story when we really want to. (Now that dinosaurs like Joel Lamangan are being pushed to the sidelines by more imaginative indie directors, there's finally hope for Philippine cinema, as evidence by the latest Cinemalaya.) I liked Sigaw when it first came out. It was genuinely scary, and the look was consistent and artful. Heck, I love the work of Laranas, especially Radyo and Hibla. Balahibong Pusa was a gorgeous disaster, but gorgeous nonetheless. If there's anything about Laranas that assures me, it's his ability to visually tell a story, even when the story itself suffers sometimes. So here's to Laranas and The Echo. And here's to the future of Philippine cinema.
