Celebration: An Anthology to Commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the Silliman University National Writers Workshop Sands and Coral, 2011-2013
Silliman University, 2013
I was watching Manolo Quezon in The Explainer a while ago in ANC. He had Grace Nono on, and they were talking about how to exactly promote the traditional oral literature we have in the country. I tuned in because I teach this as part of my extensive Philippine literature course. One of my problems in class has always been how to motivate -- naah, make would be the word -- my students do the reading. (Most don't read anymore, or can't be bothered, which is sad.) Manolo, however, made one observation that made me think: how ours is basically a "kuwento" culture -- so why not adapt our stories into audio books?
The tenth issue of High Chair’s online journal is now available. Edited by Kristine Domingo and EJ Galang, the new issue includes poetry by Jose Perez Beduya, Miguel Paolo Celestial, Dan Chiasson, Mikael de Lara Co, Henri Cole, Marc Gaba, Luisa A. Igloria, Thomas James, Oliver Ortega, Allan Popa, Joselito Delos Reyes, and Rosanna Warren. It also features essays and reviews written by Mesandel Arguelles, Conchitina Cruz, Adam David, Mabi David, Oliver Ortega, and Joseph de Luna Saguid.
12:05 AM |
Elizabeth Susan Vista-Suarez and Jose Mari Jonathan Antonio Exhibit This Week in Dumaguete
People in Silliman University and Dumaguete City know them as capable administrators and academics, but Elizabeth Susan Vista-Suarez of the College of Performing Arts and Jose Mari Jonathan Antonio of the Students Organization and Activities Division share a private passion for painting and drawing. In Dr. Suarez's works in sinamay, she examines art as a kind of therapy. "My paintings are representations of what I consider to be beauty and triumph," she says. "They are an outcome of my truth with an acceptance that what is seen as a total picture includes also what is not seen, like ugliness, pain and frustration." For Mr. Antonio, his ink portraits of Silliman landscapes is a study of "contrasts and contradictions." Flowers and Ink is the first joint exhibition of their works.
The exhibit opens on Friday, 5:30 PM, January 30, at the Robert and Metta Silliman Library Main Exhibition Hall. It will run until February 13. It is open to the public on regular viewing hours.
I realize that I am blissfully unaffected by so many things now -- especially venality from some who have no idea about things (or people) they only see online. (I mean, seriously? You think those are real? Bwahahaha! They have noooooo idea what they're talking about. I'm going to let this rest with a snicker.)
I Facebooked last night that perhaps I've been partied out. Perhaps it was the rain, and I was tired. But I've been partying almost every single night since the beginning of December, not that I actively seek out these things. I don't. But there seems to be no stopping this barrage of invitations and happenings. I go because I just feel I need to live in the moment. I'm letting my Id take over things for a while now, after years of crippling reign by Ego. (I had to -- or else suffer the wraths.) I find that there is always a well-spring of inner energy that surprises even me. Last night, Razcel's pizza party turned into a mini-rave. Guess what time I came home. Tonight, I just came from another party, at Betty's. This one of a grown-up, sit-down sort, al fresco, in Betty's magnificent courtyard. Totally different. I was talking history and writing books with a fellow guest (a former professor of mine) seated at the same table as me. Kaiba naman. Pang-intellectual. And then tomorrow night, there's Belle's movie party at Gabby's. Am I really partied out? 'Di pa dagway. As long as there's good music and great company, this boy will fly.
Those early January days were the height of the beautiful madness. (It continues still, but the sheer heedlessness of those days have no parallel.) Day after night after day of song, wine, dance, laughter, friends, pasta. Everything on the lark, it was as if the universe itself was catering to the delight and momentum of old friends meeting, after years of ... nothing. (Only now are the pictures surfacing...) This was taken during Patrick's Instant Pool Party. They -- Quddus, Douglas, Joey, Gerard, Jasper, Claro, and Patrick -- were all inside getting ready for the wet night ahead.
Clee took me outside for some test shots...
... and wine in hand, the cold January air remarkably energizing...
... I pondered, and posed, and thought about how days and nights can change in an instant, sometimes without our complete understanding...
... and there's nothing left to do except enjoy the sacred moment.
Days later, I would understand more clearly why some things must be. It's just the universe taking care of us. It trusts us that sooner or later, we, too, would see the bigger picture.
Perhaps it pays to take a second look at one of the most divisive films to premiere at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival...
Brillante Mendoza's Serbis gets profiled in The New York Times by Dennis Lim. Excerpt from the article:
While Western audiences have generally not been scandalized by “Serbis,” some have been flustered by its sensory assault. This is a film in which the ambient sounds of traffic and peripheral conversations are not just ever present but almost distractingly loud.
“The sound designer kept saying it was too noisy and we had to turn it down, but I said no,” Mr. Mendoza said, adding that he made no effort to call for quiet on the set. “When journalists from Europe or the States ask me about it, I ask if they’ve ever been to those parts of Asia. That’s what it’s like, and you have to shout, because you can’t hear people. It’s life sound.”
[... Love must be such a big deal. Because when you lose it, or when you see it transformed to a kind of loathing, the inevitable journey you undertake for yourself -- whether you acknowledge it or not -- is the search for an authentic Sensation. Something that throbs, something so full, so blissful, so colorful, so manic, so as to approximate the comforts and warmth of a lost embrace. The journey can drive you insane, if you're not careful. It can also drive you, if you let it, to a greater and nobler sense of how life must be lived ...]
There is no better way to go about life except to embrace the unexpected, to learn to fly without wings, and to strive to love despite the dangers of pain. [Photo by Gideon Caballes. Taken somewhere in the beautiful, unexplored regions of Boston Cafe Gallery, 3 January 2009.]
The beautiful weekend is over. These are my anthems for the possible Monday blues....
Trust me. It's paradise. This is where the hungry come to feed. For mine is a generation that circles the globe, in search of something we haven't tried before. So never refuse an invitation. Never resist the unfamiliar. Never fail to be polite. And never outstay your welcome
Just keep your mind open and suck in the experience. And if it hurts, you know what? It's probably worth it
You hope, and you dream. But you never believe that something is going to happen for you. Not like it does in the movies. And when it actually does, you expect it to feel different. More visceral. More real.
I was waiting for it to hit me.
Hit me.
I still believe in paradise. But now at least I know it's not some place you can look for. 'Cause it's not where you go. It's how you feel for a moment in your life. If you find that moment, it lasts forever.
8:59 PM |
Five Absolutely New Things About Me That Surprise Even Me
[1] I can't stand television anymore. The endless banality of it all. I'd rather be listening to music. My TV set these days is mostly off. [2] I'm actually enjoying my classes these days... [3] I have two other mottos now that work for me: "Fuck it." And "Dance all problems away." Put these two up there with "Carpe diem," and you've got a truly lived life. [4] I am loving the fact that, little by little, I can now wear clothes I haven't worn in a long, long time. [5] I am fascinated by the way I smile too much these days. It's all-so-strange. But I'm not complaining.
Sunday afternoons are my times of greatest comfort. The hours are particularly slow, and the kind of sunshine that abounds is the type that I find bearable. There is a softness to it that tells you everything is all right, even when the world threatens to consume you with all its rabid drama. Sundays have a way of banishing demons, and I am grateful for that. Most Sunday afternoons, I try to find a nook in the city quiet enough for me to be able to commune with my thoughts -- usually that is one corner of Don Atilano's while I drink a cup or two of what The New York Times has called the best coffee this side of the Philippines (this claim is very much open to your disagreement, of course). Most of the time, I catch up with my reading backlog while feeling the caffeine coursing through my veins. Sometimes though, I just listen to music, and think about what has happened in the past week, and what I must expect in the coming days. It's comfortably cleansing. I used to do this a lot a long time ago, and life was great then. Today, I think about last night's party in El Camino. How fun it was, and how packed with people -- mostly students who called me "sir" all night, although that did not stop me from enjoying myself and letting go. (I'm sure they must be surprised by all these -- good for them -- but I also know that when Monday comes, I'll be the same exacting professor once more, hehehe.)When I think about it, I have been partying too much the last month or so. Which makes me pause: Am I doing this to fill up a "hole" in my life, to make myself think that I am all right despite everything? I ask this because I know for a fact that all of us are capable of living out necessary delusions just to cope with the undercurrent of madness that typify our lives. Am I truly happy? Because I certainly feel so. Yet at the same time, I can't help but try to see whether aspects of this confession is just a lie to comfort myself.
Banda Manga was playing -- and so the collective unconscious of the rest of Dumaguete's party crowd settled on El Camino Blanco last night. The place was packed. Never got to hear much of Banda Manga, but the party stretched on till the wee hours. It totally made up for the lame night last Friday. I needed the rest of Sunday morning to recover. It was so worth it.
Channel-surfing.... Accidentally pushes one button too long on my remote, to settle on the local music channel... Watching MYX is like feeling my brain implode, and then having what remains curdled and then shat on. The new veejays are oh-so-cute (that seems to be the only requirement to be a MYX veejay) -- they're all definitely eye candy for boring Saturdays where the only thing to do is become a couch potato -- but listening to Chino and Monica and Robi and Bianca making banter between videos is to witness the height of idiocy. It's all pa-cute, and nothing else. I just feel the urge to spank them.
Oh, God, Tesch was right. I am becoming bitchy these days. Bwahahaha!
It gives new definition to that ultimate social-networking status, It's Complicated.
Tell me your Facebook relationship dilemmas, guys. Comment away!
[update]
The Pope weighs in on Facebook, welcomes it, but warns that "obsessive virtual socializing can isolate people from real interaction." Does he know what the heck he is talking about? I have never ever been this close to many of my friends, and it's all because of Facebook. The online interaction does extend to offline camaraderie, as a recent Time Magazine article pointed out.
I have discovered dancing again. For me, dancing signifies a concrete promise of freedom: permitting your body to sway and follow the rhythm, the flow of music -- this takes a kind of flight from our inhibitions, and one can never really dance well when all we think about are the people we imagine scrutinizing our moves. Dancing is a kind of meditation, really: a pulsating concentration that allows you to fly and to stay grounded at the same time. I like the way the music washes over me as I dance these days, whether in the dance floor of a bar, or alone in my room or in the company of friends: most of the time, I close my eyes, and just let my body do what it thinks it can do. The other day, and last night, it was Safri Duo that I was dancing to -- and when the "Adagio" track filled the room, I found that it somehow "completed" the way I am now. The track spoke to me more than bromides about love and living would or could. It has since become the soundtrack of my days, and I dance to it like a lover both bereft and hopeful. It is freedom to acknowledge that. The iconic image of my head of this very freedom comes from the film Playing By Heart, where Ryan Philippe's character dances in the middle of a crowded floor, alone, his eyes closed, his body lost in a trance. It makes me believe some more this old, overused quote from William Purkey: "Love like you've never been hurt, and dance like no one's watching." I believe it, because it is so fucking true.
How can the Academy not nominate The Dark Knight for Best Picture, and Kate Winslet for Revolutionary Road? (Well, she was nominated for Lead Actress in The Reader, but...) And how did Angelina Jolie in Changeling get in instead of Kristin Scott Thomas in I've Loved You So Long? (Don't talk to me about poor Sally Hawkins in Happy-Go-Lucky. I wanted to kill Poppy in that movie.) And where's James Franco for either Milk or Pineapple Express? Or Wall-E for Best Picture? Or Leonardo DiCaprio for Revolutionary Road? Or Dev Patel for Slumdog Millionaire? Or Michael Sheen for Frost/Nixon? Or Rebecca DeWitt for Rachel Getting Married? And Taraji Henson for The Curious Case for Benjamin Button? That character was such a one-note caricature! And did Brad Pitt do some acting ba in that movie?
Why does the Academy hate Christian Bale so much? First, there was the snub for his monstrous turn in American Psycho. Next, there was the snub for his eye-popping transformation in The Machinist. And now, a lock out of The Dark Knight from the top prize? Bollocks.
But I am happy for Michael Shannon getting the nod for Best Supporting Actor in Revolutionary Road. He was an electrifying presence there. And Viola Davis for Doubt, especially after getting snubbed for her work in Far Away From Heaven and Solaris. And I'm happy for the Clint Eastwood snub in Gran Torino. About time.
My fearless forecast: Slumdog Millionaire for Best Picture. Gus Van Sant in Milk for Best Director. Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler for Best Actor. Kate Winslet in The Reader for Best Actress. Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight for Best Supporting Actor. And Penelope Cruz in Vicky Cristina Barcelona for Best Supporting Actress.
I don't know why this suddenly came to me: a fragment of memory. High school. It must have been 1992. We were all members of the grammar police in my section. And we had one teacher -- a hapless young substitute teacher -- who kept pronouncing "stir" as "steer." It was grating in our ears. Late one afternoon, we all gathered together to make a plan. We were going to teach our substitute teacher a lesson. Every time she would say "steer," we would all say, together, "stir."
The next day:
Substitute Teacher: "Now, class this is how you 'steer' in the egg yolk..."
Us:(altogether) "Stir."
(Substitute Teacher suddenly has a confused look on her face.)
Substitute Teacher: "Umm. So now, do you know how to 'steer' in the ingredients?"
Us:(altogether) "Stir."
Substitute Teacher:(suddenly red-faced) "Eh. Umm. Do ... you ... now ... know how to ... 'stir' ... in ... the ingredients?"
People have been asking me lately why is it that I look like I'm walking on air ("there's a load off your shoulder," they all say), but still I go about with this bright glimmer of determination in my eyes. Like there's something brewing in my head, and I can't wait to pounce on it. When I think about what possible answer to give, I can't help but feel for real that steely determination. Sometimes it even takes the form of me becoming too hard on myself. I push myself now like I've never pushed myself -- there's a righteous anger to the things I do these days, and while I have made myself so open to all the pleasures of life these days, I still go home each night knowing what I have done for the day is not enough. I keep telling myself, with a hard edge to my thoughts: Do this now, do this now, do this now... It is exhilarating, the way fresh air must be to a long-time captive of a dank prison. Once, last week, I looked up from writing my column for Visayan Daily Star in the comfortable hub of Cafe Noriter, and I saw this quote -- taken from the movie The Last I Saw Paris -- emblazoned on one wall of the cafe: "I want to enjoy things, have fun, live every day like it's the last day. Wouldn't that be nice, a lifetime full of last days?" And I feel that now, much more so when I was lost. I know I can't waste any more time: I've already given up the prime of my life for somebody not worth an iota of every sacrifice I've made. Sometimes I become angry when I think about what I had done to myself, in the name of waste. What the fuck was I thinking? So, yes: there is steely determination. Because once you've understood that life can easily be confined to a box, you really cannot wait to start living again. [Edited Feb. 8, 2009: Oh shut up, Ian. You know you're lying. He was worth it. - Ian]
Let's get this straight. Facebook is not baduy Friendster. So let's get rid of some pesky Friendsterisms, shall we? Those habits we've developed over the years while enslaved to that netherworld where the light does not shine?
You don't have to thank me for adding you as a friend.
And if I don't add you, that just means I have no idea who you are.
Please don't request for a "testimonial" on your Wall.
Don't fret about not being able to put up glittery, baduy wallpapers on your profile.
And for Mark Zuckerberg's sake, put your real full name up there in your profile. Not your nickname, or some other formulation that requires asterisks and what-not so that you will be the "first" in everyone's roster of friends. (You'll be in violation of your sign-up agreement with Facebook if you do, actually.)
Facebook is for adults, people. (Well, adults who "poke" you a lot and send you plants for your "lil green patch." But nevertheless...)
And lastly, don't invite those trolls remaining in Friendster either. Best to just leave them behind.
I look forward to that rush after ten minutes of running -- that rush that comes when your body is finally in sync with the physicality of the task, and your legs become so much eager to just go, go, go. The endorphins take you high, and everything is all right with the world. You are lost in your own little world, and you can't help but smile through the ache, the sweat, the glow. I can't wait for tomorrow.
The week isn't over yet, but I'm taking for granted that this may be the bestest thing that will ever happen this week. I'm battling -- unexpectedly -- the blues, now that the sun has come back and chased away my gentle clouds and the chill. (Everybody knows I'm no summer boy.) Anyway...Obama takes the White House, finally. And here's mooning goodbye and good riddance the unlamented frat boy.
I'm trying to write a new story today. I've titled it "Towards the End," and it is supposed to be my exorcism: fiction always does it for me, the way it was when I wrote "Pete Sampras' Neck" for Quddus many years ago. There's nothing like the formal device of storytelling to make sense of things, and at the same time, to consider things a little more objectively, because you are treating the familiar with a device that requires restraint to be effective. I'm not sure, though, if I am successful with that with my first line: "You realize it is a paramount struggle, every single fucking day, not to love him anymore." How's that for restraint?
And then, like on most Sunday mornings, I begin cleaning the pad. Again. This time more thoroughly. I am ripping things off their usual places -- all my clothes from their closet, all my footwear from their rack, all my sheets from the bed, all my books from their shelves. I proceed to attack the most minute of dust, thinking all along how life unguarded can gather so much ... waste. My laundry bag becomes full of clothes still unworn; I just want them smelling again of detergent wash. My shelves, now bare, awaits a new classification for my books and DVDs; they demand new order, new sequences. All along, I think about my story.
I compose another paragraph in my head while I attack the windows: "The randomness of things that are left for you to find. Those are the things that nobody thinks about after the bitter separation. How one common day can suddenly pause at any random instance at the sight of a pair of socks. Or a shirt that still smells of his musk. You don’t mean to, but here you are, pausing from your Sunday spring cleaning -- and you are holding the shirt to your face, smelling in every bit of what’s left -- the familiar but long-gone odor tantalizing you into small panic. And you think of your resolve, weeks ago, when your certainty was solid and angry. But a shirt. A stupid shirt makes you crawl once more back into the shadows of questions: did you do the right thing? how could you let him go? was it worth it? And then the one question that you refuse even to acknowledge: Is he thinking of me?"
There goes restraint.
Kuya Moe texts me in the middle of the afternoon. Arlene and Justine, too. They want to take me out for coffee. "But I swore to have no coffee today," I say. That answer does not stop them from trying some more. It must have been the vacancy in my voice. But I don't mind: I think I'll need company today. I promise to meet them later in the afternoon.
"Damon's here," Kuya Moe says.
"Damon?" I replied. "Damon Sattler?"
"Yup, our old friend. He's back in Dumaguete for a vacation. He's with a friend. We're meeting them in Cafe Noriter for coffee."
"Okay then."
I decide to kill two birds with one stone, and meet them all, in Noriter. I walk out into the Sunday, and I contemplate the suddenly shining sun. Where has it been? Not that I have been missing it. There are huge parts of me that still long for the wind and the clouds, and I know for sure that I miss, like a lover, the frank coldness of the past few days, when bundling up in warm clothes was close enough to intimacy I can get these days.
I step into the cafe a few minutes after 5 in the afternoon.
"This is Patrick," Kuya Moe introduces me to Damon's friend. "He's from Chicago."
"You look red," I say.
"I went diving the other day."
"But there was no sun."
"I'm Irish."
When the girls arrive, they take over everything with their laughter. In Noriter, things happen. Spontaneity, Arlene says, that's our motto these days. We don't plan. We just do. We all talk, all of us old friends. Some of us have green tea. Some have coffee. Some have some a fancy concoction that include a piece of graham cracker. I have the cappuccino, just because. There goes my "no coffee" for the day.
We all decide to have dinner at Gabby's Bistro. We have beer, we have the adobo, we have the mongolian beef, we have the chocoloco. Sinful chocoloco, the height of all pleasures. There is talk, and more talk, and meeting other old friends who are dropping by for dinner. The Bistro feels like home.
And then we all go home. And I'm here thinking about how days happen, just like that.
12:43 PM |
Television Shows Are Not Signs From Heaven
When I turned over to wake up today, I accidentally pressed the buttons of the TV remote, which took me straight to the local cable channel. And there, onscreen, was my ex, beautiful as usual, his haircut new. He was smiling, waving goodbye at the camera as the credits for his program rolled. It took me quite by surprise. I just froze. My old self would probably ask, Is this a sign? But I'm remembering what Wanggo told me last week: "Symbols are really [just] symbols and not our subconscious mind giving us excuses to go with what we really want." Which is true.
Let's get on with this suddenly sunny Sunday, shall we?
It takes an obsessive-compulsive like me to take in, truly, the guilty pleasures of unplanned things. I am not exactly a person designed for spontaneity (I get minor hives every time somebody suggests something I have not planned for at all), although I do have a so-so tolerance that permits me not to go completely insane. My in-built demand for order in my life can be quite dictatorial, and it has its manifestations in the list of things-to-do (plus the requisite erasures in red ink) in my planner, the library arranged by surnames of authors, and the spic-and-span quality of my own apartment. (When I was younger, I used to follow my visitors around with a portable broom-and-dustpan.) Lately though, I seemed to have developed a curious tendency for succumbing to the unplanned. Like last Friday night. A walk through the city with Moe Atega after Karl Aguila's exhibit opening led us to an ice cream shop in Portal West (where we had 12 oz. of yogurt each), which led to us being kidnapped by Wing del Prado, Arlene Delloso-Uypitching, and Justine Colburn to Gabby's Bistro, where we proceeded to spend the entire evening singing karaoke. And get this: I sang most of the time. If you know me at all, you will know that I never ever sing karaoke. Never. But I did. Last night. Without qualms, and with vocals I thought I had lost forever. I even exorcised the remaining demons surrounding Ariel Rivera's "Minsan Lang Kitang Iibigin" -- and survived. (Why that song? Wag na.) I don't know what this says about me in the New Year, but frankly, I like it.
7:07 PM |
Epiphany and the Mysterious Ways of the Universe
You have to trust the universe -- you can call it God, if you want -- and allow it to make sense of the broken or haphazard pieces of your life through its infuriatingly subtle process, even if at the very beginning, you really don't or can't see the big picture at all. There have been many instances in the past year when I had to ask myself, Why this? Why me? What am I doing? Where is this leading to? Do I really want this? Do I need to take this risk? Why did that blow up in my face? How could I let myself become so embarrassed? And so on and so forth... (But what is life except a series of events fulfilling our eternal questions?)
Suddenly, one day, everything will just make sense. And you are all the better for it.
I had that epiphany today. It came at the tail-end of self-analysis that may still be in progress. But it took only one nudge from something to make the pieces start to fall into a certainty, a form I could grasp and understand. Finally, I could breathe easily.
Call it closure, if you will. I know it intimately as a sigh of relief.
One of my favorite stories is "The Way We Live Now" by Susan Sontag, which powerfully pieced together the zeitgeist of New York at the height of the AIDS scare. It chronicled the paranoia as well as the unexpected vibrancy of community over an unnamed friend living with an unmentioned condition (which is clearly HIV). The story has always left me wondering: when the same thing happens in the Philippines, what would people do?
Today, after much soul-searching (especially through popular culture with movies like Philadelphia and Long Time Companion, plays like Rent, and books like And the Band Played On...), America is living in a post-AIDS world, where reality involves AZT and cocktail therapy. The disease still has no cure, but it is no longer a death sentence for many. And for the most part, the prejudice has largely receded. But we're not there yet, here in the Philippines. We are still living in the paranoid and fearful 1980s when AIDS first truly broke out, and there was much ignorance and condemnation, especially from the Church and polite society.
I think it's time we need to take action. I already know one great friend who has HIV. And one has already passed away from complications. And today, I stumbled on this.
10:57 AM |
Kuwento
