Friday, October 31, 2025
9:00 PM |
Wake Me Because I Must Be Dreaming! Dumaguete is Now UNESCO City of Literature!
We got it. My hands are shaking.
I still remember that fraught week in August 2024 when I had to churn out the preliminary bid for Dumaguete City as UNESCO City of Literature – about six pages of questions that needed thorough answers, which resulted to almost 40 pages of the final bid. I was actually set to enjoy Founders Day in Silliman University when then DTI Negros Oriental Director Nimfa Marcos Virtucio and Anton Gabila invited me and Renz for "a cup of coffee" in Adorno Galeria y Cafe. Akala ko coffee lang, turned out they were keen on submitting Dumaguete for the distinction and was roping me in to help them. Of course I said yes. But I only had about one week to put together the pre-bid, because the deadline was on August 31! Oh, the pain! But that week also made me realize: Dumaguete actually could do this, we had everything [except, ehem, publishing houses and translation projects]. We were able to submit the pre-bid to UNACOM on time.
And then I forgot all about it, until UNACOM contacted us sometime in November 2024 to inform us that we were on their final list of recommendees to UNESCO, alongside Quezon City for Film! That galvanized us to do the final bid from December 2024 to March 2025, again fretting over the final questionnaire and other things to do. Together with then Dumaguete City Tourism Officer Katherine Aguilar, we formed a think tank of about 20 people, to make the bid truly community- and sector-driven. I sacrificed finishing several of my books slated for publication this year just to finish this bid. The sleepless nights were abominable. The anxiety was formidable, I went back to taking Ritalin after being off-meds for two years. We submitted before the midnight of March 1, the deadline. [We never were able to do the planned video documentary to supplement our bid. There was just no time.]
I always thought I could have done more, especially for our website – so I was just hoping the bid itself would suffice for the judges. But, truth to tell, I was prepared to receive bad news. I dreaded the coming of October 31. Please forgive me if I cried Friday night. It was my body heaving a sigh of relief.Labels: city of literature, dumaguete, dumaguete writers workshop, life, philippine literature, silliman, UNESCO, writers, writing
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Wednesday, October 29, 2025
2:38 PM |
The Frankfurter Buchmesse in Four Group Photos
From arrival to the handover ceremony, it was ten days of hard work representing Philippine literature and publishing. And with this last photo dump, I'm signing off while I process my liquidation...
The Qatar Airways group arriving at the Frankfurt Airport, October 12.
At the Messe Frankfurt on our second day, October 13.
After the kickoff brunch at Alex, October 13.
After the handover ceremony at Forum 1, October 19.
Labels: books, frankfurter buchmesse, life, philippine literature, writers, writing
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
7:00 AM |
Poetry Wednesday, No. 263.
Labels: philippine literature, poetry
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Tuesday, October 28, 2025
8:54 PM |
Reading 'Quezon' Between the Lines
Since Jerrold Tarog’s Quezon came to movie screens everywhere last October 15, the debates it has initiated have been fruitful, but also wild. Is the film respectful or disrespectful of its subject matter? Shouldn’t the family have been consulted? Where are the merits of Quezon’s presidency in the film? What’s history and what’s fabulation? Should heroes remain on pedestals, or should they be brought down to our level? The simmering discourse finally erupted when a Quezon descendant took the director and his actor, Jericho Rosales, to task during a recent post-screening Q&A, accused them of being reckless and unfair, and dropped his mic in a dramatic huff. No one has exactly the same take on the film, although everyone has suddenly become an armchair historian.
I do believe most of these questions could be answered if only people bothered to supplement their viewing with the book tie-in published by Anvil Publishing—Quezon: The Story Behind the Film. For example, for those who have penned defenses of Quezon by saying that the film used mostly American colonial sources, here’s a quote from screenwriter Rody Vera from the book: “We decided to use Carlos Quirino’s Quezon: Paladin of Philippine Freedom as our template, which was by far the least hagiographical of [all the books we’ve read for our research] and covers a lot more detail that probably even other books might have referenced.” That’s hardly an American colonial reference.
The book is a small tie-in volume to Tarog’s long-awaited conclusion to his “Bayaniverse” trilogy, but I think it is more than just a supplement; it can create real conversations. Because everything you want to know or have questions about the film—the intent, the quarrels, the historical liberties, the controversies brewing in the echo chambers of Facebook, X, and Reddit—are all here, in the quiet candor of words. Here you will find the story of the film laid bare, and its intentions illustrated—all our myths about heroes, all our compulsions, all our complicities.
The book has nine parts, including an introduction by the historian John Ray B. Ramos; a producer’s notes written by Daphne O. Chiu-Soon; a message from the director which he had sent to every preview screening in the country; a section on movie stills and photos; a timeline of Manuel Quezon’s life, career, and legacy; a list of key references for those who demand historiographical integrity; and a timeline references—all very helpful, of course. But reading the book, I was more drawn to two specific sections of the film’s making: Rody Vera’s screenwriter’s notes, and an extensive interview with Jerrold Tarog, where he lays bare his intentions in making the film, his struggles in crafting it, and his hopes over what audiences might finally get from the story.
Vera’s essay reads like a confession. “Adapting into film the life story of any historical figure requires focus,” he writes. “It’s like confronting a huge slab of stone, the stone being the whole life of the real person, and chiseling away what is irrelevant.” It’s the best image anyone has ever written about screenwriting. You cannot put everything about your subject matter in the film! And as metaphors go, you realize it’s also how nations are made—chiseled, curated, reduced to fit the narrative of convenience.
Quezon, in hindsight, is less the hagiography we were taught in history class [if at all] and more an excavation of the man who shaped the architecture of our political soul. The screenwriter recalls reading Recah Trinidad’s ominous line from Kasaysayan: The Story of the Filipino People: “Quezon laid the groundwork and the precedence for the declaration of Martial Law and the establishment of dictatorship by Ferdinand Marcos in 1972.” That realization, Vera says, became the film’s premise for him—and you can feel the pulse of that realization on every scene.
What the film does quite well, and so with this book, is restore nuance to a figure we have long turned into a statue. In Tarog’s story, Quezon is not just the dashing Commonwealth president of gargantuan monuments and of cities and provinces named after him—he is also the cunning tactician who invented our brand of politics: cronyism as governance, charm as statecraft, charisma as national hypnosis. “It was thrilling,” Vera admits in his essay, “to apprehend that while Filipinos were given the opportunity toward attaining self-rule in a colonial setup, socio-political criticism was never lagging behind.” That observation hums like both celebration and elegy.
Tarog’s own message reads like a director’s meditation on faith—faith in cinema, faith in conversation, faith in the possibility of understanding history through art. “The whole idea behind this trilogy,” he notes, “is the exploration of the concept of Bayani.” Then, in one perfect passage, he writes: “We are removing them from their statues, from the giant monuments erected for them, and we are bringing them down to our level as humans.”
It’s a mission statement that could also describe what this small book achieves. The pages strip Quezon, Luna, and Goyo of their mythic varnish and leave us with the humans underneath—flawed, luminous, sometimes monstrous, always Filipino. Tarog insists: “History is a series of events where good people do good things, good people do bad things, bad people do bad things, and bad people do good things.” That sentence, simple as it is, might be the most honest distillation of the Filipino condition.
And yet, the essays in the book are not content to stay in the archives of the past. They hold a mirror up to our present. “If you read books about Quezon,” Tarog tells Anvil in the interview that rounds off the collection, “it feels like you’re reading about what’s happening now.” It’s true. Every page feels like déjà vu—political strongmen, moral gymnastics, the endless pageant of power and spectacle. When Tarog says, “It’s only a democracy in name, not in practice,” you can almost hear the sigh of an entire country.
The brilliance of film [and book] is that it refuses to simplify. Vera’s notes brim with self-awareness: “Is Quezon’s story therefore an allegory? Allegory, I guess, in this case is pointless. I think the film is more of an ‘origin’ story, that helps us understand why we are what we are as a nation.” To read this is to realize that every nation is, in fact, a genre film—revised, reshot, rebooted by every generation, with the same plot: a people trying to become a people.
The book also delves into the struggles of the film’s making. In Tarog’s interview in the book, you can sense exhaustion in his answers, but also grace. He recalls how “it probably took me a year or more” to compile a timeline of Quezon, Osmeña, and Aguinaldo, threading through “more than fifty books.” He admits the film’s limitations: what had to be cut, what could never fit into two hours of cinema. “Honestly,” he says, “Quezon’s life is very complex to study. Every decade of his life has something interesting, something dramatic that could be turned into a film. So to do justice to Quezon’s story, it would have to be a miniseries.” That miniseries will probably never happen—but we can imagine one with the expanded universe of a national soul, a patient curation of thought and struggle, of humor and disillusionment.
Tarog’s honesty is disarming: “Maybe [Quezon] was the only guy we had back then, or maybe he was the only one who could win over everyone else.” That may also be the secret horror of Philippine history: that our heroes were often just the best players of terrible games.
For those still bracing for controversy—those who suspect Quezon will be accused, as Heneral Luna once was, of reflecting too much of the vagaries of our present politics—the answers are already here. “Viewers will always watch through their own lens,” Tarog reminds us. “Life is messy and complicated.” The film does not impose judgment, especially on its characters; the book reflects this. For Tarog, it simply presents, with startling clarity, the continuum of power we have chosen to inherit.
But what lingers most for me from the book are the quieter insights. Vera muses on the camera itself as a metaphor, since the beginnings of Philippine cinema is a vital touchpoint in Quezon: “[Cinema] is but merely a projection of how its producer wants to be perceived, how he wants the truth to be told.” The line could describe Quezon, or any politician, or any filmmaker, or all of us, caught between image and self. “Who was that Filipino politician,” he asks, “who once said: ‘Perception is real, the truth is not’?”
I like how the book serves as a good footnote to how we have viewed the film. It reminds us that the film is really about us—our appetites for heroes, our addictions to myths, our uneasy laughter in the face of impunity. Tarog writes, “Ideally, our action is in the real world, not in the comments section.” And maybe that’s the invitation the film, and its book, gives us: to step out of the comments section of our history, and into its pages.
Labels: film, heroes, history, philippine cinema, philippine history
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Sunday, October 26, 2025
9:00 AM |
I Like Serendipity
Alas, carefully laid plans had changed. I was no longer Baguio-bound after I touched down in Manila from Frankfurt, after attending the Frankfurter Buchmesse. The itinerary had been clear: no rest in the capital after arrival in NAIA, straight on to a bus station in Pasay to take me to the mountains for a book event—my first ever in the City of Pines in more than 15 years.
But, as life often reminds me, certainty is a fragile illusion. The event was canceled at the last minute, leaving me stranded in Manila for three days before my scheduled flight back home to Dumaguete. I could not change the booking, since it was the National Book Development Board who did that for me as part of my grant as a delegate to the Frankfurter Buchmesse. I was also left scrambling to find a hotel, which proved to be a futile exercise: nothing decent within my budget could be had in the days I was set to be in Manila. I was, of course, also disappointed over the fact that my dream of a return to Baguio was suddenly for naught—for I always felt like that city lived inside a poem, and I had been craving its air after the gray, efficient cold of Europe. I also missed writer friends who lived there, and I was eager to see them once more.
But I had also learned, with time and years, that derailment is not always a disaster. Sometimes, it can be the beginning of something else.
When I arrived in Manila on Tuesday, near midnight, “home” was a word that felt more like a placeholder than a destination. I got out of NAIA past midnight, bleary-eyed and body aching after the long anxietry-ridden wait at the luggage carousel. I had thanked the heavens that I had not yet booked a hotel in Baguio. Friends from high school came to the rescue, offering me their place in Bonifacio Global City. I remember standing under the shower, washing away the travel fatigue, feeling grateful to be grounded even in an unplanned stopover. There was some comfort in the unplanned, a quiet relief that the universe, despite its odd sense of humor, still managed to catch me when things fell apart. Plus: did I even think about what I would do lugging my heavy luggage around to Baguio?
So what do I do in this unexpected layover of four days?
The next day unfolded like a gentle surprise. I had been an Anvil Publishing author since 2012, with two books to my name that they have published—Heartbreak and Magic in 2012 and Don’t Tell Anyone in 2017—yet this was the first time I had ever stepped into their offices in Mandaluyong. Finally, I could put faces to the names that had lived for years in my inbox: managing editor R. Jordan P. Santos, marketing maven Page Jose, and senior editor Arianne Velasquez. Page, Arianne, and I had already spent a week together in Frankfurt—“bonded by trauma,” as we liked to joke—and now, back in Manila, we found comfort in the familiarity of shared exhaustion and laughter.
That evening, upon the invitation of Anvil publisher Xandra Ramos, I joined the Anvil team for a special screening of Jerold Tarog’s Quezon at the Metropolitan Theater. Jericho Rosales, with whom I exchanged some pleasantries and shook hands with, played the titular president, and I was struck by the film’s almost farcical tone—fitting, I thought, for a story about the roots of Philippine patronage politics. “We really had no choice to have the kind of government we have,” I told the interviewer who asked us about our reactions after the screening. “From the very beginning, we were already wading in the mud.” Afterward, our publisher treated all us to a late-night dinner at The Aristocrat, joined by fellow Anvil authors Yvette Tan and Danton Remoto. The conversations ran deep into the night—about Frankfurt, about writing, about life. It was one of those rare, luminous evenings when fatigue dissolved into fellowship, and I remembered why I chose this life of words in the first place.
The following day, October 23, should have found me already in Baguio, talking to readers in a book event, but instead I was in Quezon City, meeting with Vibal Publishing’s managing editor, Gelo Lopez, to discuss a book project that had been nearly a year in the making. The meeting brimmed with creative energy, filled with the kind of spirited exchange that made the long delays and rewrites worth it. Had the Baguio event not been canceled, I would have missed this moment of quiet progress—a reminder that detours could be productive, too.
I spent my last day in Manila mostly indoors, catching up on work and correspondence, the city humming faintly beyond the windows of my borrowed apartment. Looking back, I realized that the entire episode—the canceled trip, the scramble for lodging, the chance reunions—had unfolded like an orchestrated accident, each piece falling into place as if by divine mischief.
This year itself had been relentless—a wild pendulum of highs and lows, a roller coaster I could neither predict nor pause. But as I turned fifty last August, I have found myself embracing these unpredictable turns with something like grace. I wanted to be more fearless, more grateful, less anxious about the things beyond control. Serendipity, I realized, often arrived disguised as inconvenience.
What seemed at first like a disruption became an alignment: a canceled bus ride turned into reconnections with friends; a missed mountain event became a reunion with my publishers; an unexpected pause opened space for new beginnings. Perhaps that was the quiet lesson of the week—that the world had its own way of rearranging our plans toward small, necessary miracles. In the end, what I thought was lost time became found time, and the story I had meant to tell in Baguio began to write itself, instead, in Manila.
Labels: books, life, manila, travel
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Friday, October 24, 2025
5:21 PM |
Last Full Day in Manila
Last full day in Manila, and after being out to do some chores, I’m staying in to dive back to work after all those days in Frankfurt. I’m lucky to have this temporary home in BGC, owned by very good friends from high school, who answered my distress call after unsuccessfully trying to book a hotel in Manila for this lengthy [three days!] unexpected stay. I do think the whole thing proved to be serendipitous. All’s well that ends well.Labels: life, travel
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Thursday, October 23, 2025
11:00 PM |
Some Reckonings
What a year this has been, and there are two more months to go. The highs have been really high and the lows have been really low [and sometimes a weird mix of both], mura’g roller coaster ride. I like that it coincides with my 50th birthday, where I’ve resolved to be more fearless, and grateful. I’ve always been the busy sort, but this year takes the cake. I do wish I spent more time writing though. That’s my goal in November. More writing and reading, less event-making and doing and attending.Labels: life
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Wednesday, October 22, 2025
7:00 AM |
Poetry Wednesday, No. 262.
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Sunday, October 19, 2025
3:00 PM |
In Frankfurt
So this is Europe, Germany specifically. First off: it’s cold, but not too cold—it has been perfect autumn weather, requiring just a jacket, since we arrived. I have never been to Europe before. I’ve been to Malaysia, to India, to Singapore, and to Thailand for conferences or for pleasure. I’ve spent months in Iowa [and elsewhere] in the United States as the Philippine representative to the International Writing Program. I’ve lived and studied in Japan. But Europe for so long had always been a tantalizing dream, the kind that makes you go wistful and say, “Someday…,” ellipses included. So now I’m in Frankfurt, Germany—after 28 hours of travel, from Dumaguete to Manila to Doha to here, I’m loving the pleasurable peace and quiet of my nice hotel room.
This trip is not for pleasure—although pleasure can be had in visiting places, in meeting people, in the partaking of the culture. It’s for work. I’m one of the 500 or so delegates representing the Philippines, which is Guest of Honor this year at the Frankfurter Buchmesse [or the Frankfurt Book Fair]. I am tasked to be part of several panels to introduce the European public to specific things about the literary culture of the country. By the time this essay sees print, we would be at the tail-end of this international book fair, which began last October 15, and is slated to end, today, October 19. It has been a whirlwind trip, ending much too soon. [But that’s how life goes.] A short trip—but something from which I have learned a lot: lessons for my writing life and practice, and lessons for valuing the culture that we produce.
As of this writing, I have done some touristy stuff, and have gone around the Dom-Romer Quarter, the so-called “new old town” of the city—essentially a cluster of beautiful heritage buildings reconstructed only in the 1980s from the ruins of World War II. But I have yet to see the museums though. I’ve sampled the currywurst, apparently a must-have in Germany. Did this on our second day in Frankfurt, right after our kick-off brunch with all of the national delegates to the book fair.
On our third day, I got my wish: to visit Heidelberg for a day trip—a bucket list item checked with so much satisfaction. I was advised that if I could, I really should make a side trip to Heidelberg, an hour south of Frankfurt, and do a pilgrimage for Jose Rizal. This place was, after all, the setting of his poem, “To the Flowers of Heidelberg,” where he studied ophthalmology at the world-famous university, and where, in the nearby village of Wilhelmsfeld, he wrote the final chapters of Noli Me Tangere. There’s a monument in Wilhelmsfeld dedicated to him, and also the house where he lived, still perfectly preserved. I was apprehensive about taking this particular trip because it would take more than a half a day [and the official opening ceremony of the Frankfurter Buchmesse was scheduled at 5 PM the same day]. It was also of considerable expense [a one-way Uber ride is roughly a one-way plane ticket between Manila and Dumaguete]. Pero kebs. When will I ever be here again?
Truth to tell, this Heidelberg visit was mostly an impromptu, organic trip. I was down for breakfast at my hotel when someone whispered to me: “Jay Ignacio is organizing a trip to Heidelberg, and he’s in the lobby now to wait for an Uber!” I hurriedly consumed my breakfast, called Jay on Messenger, and did not even bother to take a shower. While we were hammering out the logistics at the lobby, the historian Ambeth Ocampo wandered into our midst, and started advising us where to go.
Jay said: “Sama ka na lang sa amin!”
And then Ambeth said, “Okay.”
What? To be toured around Heidelberg with our eminent Rizal historian?
Then Ige Ramos also wandered into our midst, and we told him what’s afoot.
“With Ambeth?” Ige said.
“Uh-huh,” we said.
“Let me just get a croissant and then wash my face,” he said.
And so off we all went, around eleven of us, to Heidelberg, where we also met other groups who had the same plans. I do like Frankfurt, but I was surprised to find it very quiet and with almost no bustle, the hum of the financial capital of Germany very sedate. [Maybe that’s the sound of money?] The buildings are also very modern. In Heidelberg, however, I finally got a sense of an old European city, and when I was walking down the narrow cobblestone streets surrounded by very old buildings, I couldn’t help but yelp: “Mao ni ang Europe sa akong imagination!” Compared to Frankfurt, Heidelberg was bustling, with the old feel of the architecture perfectly balanced by the youth that populate the city, since it is very much a university town, like Dumaguete—and looming over us like a charm, the beautiful Heidelberg Castle. I loved that Heidelberg the old town and Heidelberg the university felt like a seamless fit, classrooms and shops sharing space. And for all the Rizaliana that embraces this city for us Pinoys, I actually began wondering how come no Star Cinema romcom had ever been filmed here. Because it is so freakin’ beautiful and deserves a movie! [But maybe I should write that screenplay...]
We got back to Frankfurt that day, just in time to change into our Filipiniana for the opening ceremony—where the Philippine Madrigal Singers sang, where Senator Loren Legarda gave a fantastic speech, and where Dumaguete poets Merlie Alunan and Marjorie Evasco read excerpts from their poetry, together with Mookie Katigbak-Lacuesta. Truth to tell, nanimbarot akong balahibo to hear Binisaya in a poem uttered in that huge auditorium filled with book sellers from all over the world, in the heart of Europe. I resolved right then and there to enjoy my stay in Frankfurt—and most of all to meet people I would never otherwise meet in ordinary circumstances.
For example, upon entering the Philippine Pavilion after the opening ceremony, I bumped into indie filmmaker and National Artist for Cinema Kidlat Tahimik, wearing his signature wanoh [bahag]! When I was a college freshman back in the day, I chanced upon a VHS copy of Mababangong Bangungot [The Perfumed Nightmare], which he directed. I remember being floored by that film. It was a bootleg copy, but nevertheless I was hooked by this man’s spirit and philosophy captured meticulously and spritely on film. I’ve never met him before, so bumping into him, and chatting with him, was quite an experience. I wanted my Frankfurt experience to be a series of that kind of encounters.
Another example of that kind of meeting came a two days later. I sat down for breakfast at the hotel, and I found sitting in front of me this beautiful older woman with white hair—who turned out to be Noelle Sy-Quia, the great grandniece of Jose Rizal! She was part of the national delegation to represent the family of our national hero. Of course, I asked her about her lineage, and she readily whipped out this family tree, which she had prepared the day before to answer just the kind of question I was asking. She’s the descendant of Rizal’s sister Maria, via her son Morris, then his daughter Caridad, who is Noelle’s mother. She told me she’d been to Dumaguete before, and said she enjoyed the food immensely. She lives in Barcelona now, and I told her: “You’re living my dream life!” We talked about many other things as well—really just a nice chit chat over bacon and eggplants and scrambled eggs and cappuccino.
But there was also the work, of course. I was tasked to be part of four panels—one on “First Books, First Writing Workshop” [with Patricia May Jurilla, where I was tasked to talk about the Silliman University National Writers Workshop, the first writing workshop in Southeast Asia], another on “The Haunting of the Regions” [with Genevieve Asenjo and Darwin Absari, where I talked about uncovering the folk literature of Negros Oriental], another one on “Ladlad, The Optics of Gender” [with Danton Remoto, Blaise Gacoscos, and Chuckberry Pascual, where I talked about my work as a queer writer as something that embody the third wave of Philippine gay literature], and the last one on “Fictionalizing Time” [with Jose Dalisay and Robin Sebolino, where I talked about my work as something that explores both a sense of place and a sense of time]. I also read poetry with Nicolas Pichay and Ned Parfan for one segment of the “Poetry for Freedom, Justice, and Peace” series, where I read from my own poetry [in Binisaya], as well as the poetry of Dumaguete-based Pakistani writer Mohammad Malik, and, in tandem with Nick and Ned, a poem by Eric Gamalinda. All my panels were held at the cavernous Philippine Pavilion at Forum 1 of the gargantuan Frankfurt Messe, a dedicated exhibition space designed by Stanley Ruiz and curated by Patrick Flores.
The main action for us, however, is at Hall 5.1, where the Philippine National Stand is located—and here, surrounded by other international exhibitors at the Frankfurter Buchmesse, the Philippines and its book publishers have taken center stage, occupying a large area where the books of various publishers are exhibited—ready for rights to be sold. I am in Frankfurt as an author under Anvil Publishing, for my book Don’t Tell Anyone: Literary Smut. I am grateful to Anvil’s Xandra Ramos for including the title in its roster, although it was published long ago, in 2017—because the truth is, I never prepared any of my books for this book fair, nor asked any of my publishers to put them forward as part of the official catalogue. I honestly didn’t think I’d be here in Frankfurt, and had no plans to be here: I didn’t apply for my spot in the national delegation, because I’m not really a joiner—and I knew the paperwork would overwhelm me. My invitation from the National Book Development Board [NBDB] came late, only at the beginning of August. By then it was too late to have my recent books prepared for publication but Anvil nevertheless included my 2017 book in the display—so, yes, this is the book I have been representing in Frankfurt, and also actively talking about while I’m here.
This was my first time to see up close the business [capitalist?] side of book-making, and I have been quite the sponge: listening to pitches, observing how writers market themselves, detailing how publishers display their books, listening to talks about copyright, etc. I have been happily flailing around as a noob—but what I’ve learned thus far, a lesson that needs marinating in, is really how to put value into my work as a writer. One other thing I liked about being part of the national delegation: getting to know your own publishers up close! Now they know your faces! It really helps to have a personal connection.
The Frankfurter Buchmesse is huge, encompassing many halls, and I am grateful for having the foresight to come with sensible and comfortable walking shoes, gifted to me by Golda Benjamin, who told me: “Frankfurt is all cobble stones! And the venue of the book fair is big and punishing and you need good shoes!” So she bought me a pair of classic Stan Smiths from Adidas—perfect for traversing the long corridors separating the various venues—and I had all the intentions to visit every single hall. After my first panel on October 16 at the Philippine Pavilion, where I presented a brief on the Silliman University National Writers Workshop—which felt very appropriate for my first talk at the Frankfurter Buchmesse—the only plan I had for the rest of the afternoon was to do an interview with media, then attend one event, and then go to Hall 6.1. But I bumped into Apple, a cousin I had not seen in years.
I abandoned all my plans to that we could spend most of the afternoon talking about her life in Germany, over Vietnamese food we found in the grounds of the Frankfurt Messe. Afterwards, there was the reception at the Philippine National Stand back in Hall 5.1. Receptions are little parties every country stand is expected to throw. [On my first day, I had laksa courtesy of the Singapore National Stand, a stone’s throw away from the Philippines National Stand.] But the Philippines threw quite a party for its reception last October 16. The food and drinks overflowed. Pastil! Ube Yema! Tanduay! It was quite a reception. Doing the Frankfurter Buchmesse is kind of fun because of such things—but alas it’s also quite a relief to get back to our hotel at the end of the day.
The work we did here has been immense and, indeed, tiring—but for some reason, this German stay had been somewhat restful for me. I was very surprised that for someone like me who kept very nocturnal, very erratic hours back home—sleeping at 2 AM and waking at 10 AM on the regular—my sleep here had been deep and uninterrupted, usually 7-8 hours. I’d be sleepy by 9 PM and wake up at 5 AM. I mean, was my body keeping European time all along?
Labels: books, frankfurter buchmesse, life, philippine literature, publishing, writers, writing
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Wednesday, October 15, 2025
1:00 PM |
Poetry Wednesday, No. 261.
Labels: philippine literature, poetry
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
I'm very surprised that for someone like me who kept very nocturnal, very erratic hours back home, sleeping at 2 AM and waking at 10 AM, my sleep here has been deep and uninterrupted, usually 7-8 hours. I'd be sleepy by 9 PM and wake up at 5 AM. I mean, was my body keeping European time all along?
Labels: europe, germany, life, sleep
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Tuesday, October 14, 2025
2:46 AM |
A Kick-Off in Frankfurt
This was from early this morning, at the kick-off brunch for all the Philippine delegates to the
Frankfurter Buchmesse. I'm glad I met so many people from various corners of the Philippine literary world. Still keeping track of all the names and faces, which is quite overwhelming. All of us will be busy in the next few days for what essentially is a work week in behalf of Philippine literature.
For more updates, please go to the
The Philippines as Guest of Honour at the Frankfurt Book Fair 2025 website.
Labels: books, literature, philippine literature, writers
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Sunday, October 12, 2025
9:00 AM |
Leaving Enchantment
I’m not sure if this happens to everyone, but every time I am about to leave Dumaguete for an extended trip to somewhere else, my anxiety goes off like a fire alarm in a gigantic bonfire. Be it via a ferry, or a bus, or a plane. [But strangely not cars. I think this is because cars imply a simple day-trip—and hence an eventual return to Dumaguete without the trappings of travel.]
When I am about to leave Dumaguete, I feel my entire existence go on molasses mode—and there is a high percentage of my psyche going bonkers: it absolutely cannot fathom, cannot stomach, cannot execute the idea of leaving. I don’t try to analyze why: it is just a gut feeling that demands to be tolerated. You don’t want to leave, it taunts me. Why are you leaving?
I don’t really listen to it. It’s just a nagging voice at the back of my head, soft but cruel. Besides, I know most of my trips somewhere else are always essential and cannot be postponed, and I know that nagging voice will eventually fade once I really get on the business of traveling. But it is loudest as a trumpet announcing the Rapture while I am on transit to the airport, to the port, to the bus terminal.
Once, about a decade ago, I was invited to attend an important literary event in Manila, and the organizers were spending everything for me, including a hotel and plane ticket. So I packed my bags, and got ready to go. My anxiety cartwheeled as usual. When I got to the airport, I found out that the organizers made a huge mistake in booking my flight: my ticket indicated that I was to leave Manila for Dumaguete instead of vice versa, and I never really bothered checking because I assumed the organizers were good at this stuff.
So I couldn’t leave Dumaguete.
And you know what I felt right after realizing that? A huge sense of relief. True, I pretended to be disappointed and said so to the organizers over the phone—but in all honesty, I happily went back to my apartment, unpacked everything, and felt mightily spared from having to travel all the way to Manila. It was a relief—but it was not a proud moment. This memory has haunted me ever since.
And yet this is also true: the moment my bus speeds out of the city limit, the moment my boat starts churning the waters and leaves the port, the moment my plane hops from taxiing down the runway to actually flying in the sky—I feel all that anxiety leave my body like a mass of hot, heavy air. I’d find myself heaving a sigh of relief, of finding contentment that somehow I found myself out of the enchanted clutches of Dumaguete.
What’s going on?
I call this “enchantment,” because it feels like that. Like some voodoo of place that keeps me tied to Dumaguete like a clutch. And Dumaguete, being Dumaguete, plays this spell so well it almost feels sinister. Everyone who comes here—even the ones just stopping by on a backpacker’s whim or the ones arriving on academic assignments—find themselves tethered in ways they cannot explain. “There is something about Dumaguete,” they say, and it is not a marketing tagline; it is testimony. A poet once told me he had come here for a three-day visit and ended up staying for thirty years. A painter I know swore he would only last a semester teaching at Silliman, but the semester multiplied into decades, and now he is retired here, almost proudly unable to leave. This is the city’s enchantment: it lures you in with its easy pace, its acacia-lined boulevards, its sea that turns gold at sunset, and it whispers—why go elsewhere when everything you’ve been longing for is here?
The irony, of course, is that the very same enchantment is also what makes leaving so difficult. Dumaguete is both paradise and prison, but only because it is so good at being paradise. You leave reluctantly, and when you do, you spend much of your time away plotting a return, as if absence were a kind of punishment. I’ve seen this play out countless times: students who study abroad always circle back, retirees find their way home, even tourists become residents. It’s not Manila they pine for, nor Cebu, nor Davao. It’s this small coastal city that seems to live rent-free in everyone’s heart.
And so when I feel that crippling anxiety before leaving, I know it is not mere neurosis. It is the spell of Dumaguete tightening its grip, reminding me that departure is a betrayal, even a temporary one. But once I’m out there, on the road, in the air, at sea, the spell breaks. I begin to see myself again, stripped of the comfort Dumaguete provides, and in that distance, I also begin to appreciate it more.
That’s the other side of enchantment: it works even in absence. The city haunts you when you’re gone. The taste of tempura at the boulevard stalls. The echo of laughter in a silong filled with guitars. The salt of the wind carried inland by habagat breezes. Dumaguete travels with you even when you leave it, which is why perhaps the relief I feel after departure is not the relief of escape, but the comfort of knowing that the city will not leave me, even if I leave it.
Maybe the lesson is this: Dumaguete holds you in a paradox. You can’t bear to leave, but when you finally do, you realize you never really left. Its enchantment is not geographic. It is spiritual, psychological, emotional. It is the sense that this is the place that knows you best, and you will always belong to it, no matter how far you go.
Labels: dumaguete, life, superstition, travel
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Friday, October 10, 2025
11:30 PM |
I Guess I'm Packed?
I don’t really know what to expect. All I know is, I’ve prepared as much as I can, I’m packed, my travel papers are in place, and I’m just going with the flow. I know things won’t really come into focus for me until I’m on that plane.Labels: life, travel
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Wednesday, October 08, 2025
7:00 AM |
Poetry Wednesday, No. 260.
Labels: poetry
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Sunday, October 05, 2025
9:00 AM |
Generational Divides
Whenever I ask a much younger friend to take photos of me doing stuff, I get anxious when I get back from them an avalanche of said requested photos. I mean, thank you for the generous coverage, and from all possible angles—but I’m from a generation where we only got 12 or 24 or 36 shots per roll, and every shot was indeed judiciously considered.
There is a curious generational divide between photographers who grew up with manual cameras where we loaded finite rolls of film, and photographers with digital cameras with almost infinite takes. My boyfriend is amazed that when I take photos of things, I do only one to two shots, and I’m done.
But this is not just about photography, of course. I’m trying to make a point about life itself, and how it has evolved. We who grew up with rolls of film learned to live with limits, and so we carry those limits like invisible luggage even now: the careful budgeting of meals, the instinct to keep receipts, the guilt over leaving rice grains uneaten. Every decision bore consequence. Every shot mattered.
The younger ones, who live in a universe of “abundance”—unlimited data plans, streaming libraries, bottomless feeds—have their own instincts: swipe first, decide later; buy now, return tomorrow; photograph everything, delete nothing. I make this distinction that they are born of a world where there is always more, where mistakes vanish with a click, where permanence is not a value but an afterthought.
Sometimes I envy them. Imagine living without the ghost of scarcity. Imagine not hearing your mother’s voice in your head reminding you to turn off the lights, to reuse the plastic bag, to save the paper for notes. They live lighter, perhaps freer. But sometimes I also pity them, if that’s the proper word for it. Because in living with so much, perhaps they miss out on the savoring, the weight of meaning that comes only when things are few and finite.
Take music. My generation bought cassette tapes and then CDs, and played them until they warped from use. We memorized the track list, knew which song was third, which was seventh, which lyrics to skip when your mother entered the room. Music was our companion, a tactile object of devotion. Today, music is a stream. Songs arrive, songs vanish, playlists mutate like weather. The younger ones don’t hold music in their hands—they swim in it. They never have to rewind with a pencil. And they will never know the agony of a favorite tape eaten by the player, the ribbon torn like entrails.
Or take love. My generation wrote handwritten letters, long and awkward, with sentences that revealed too much. You kept them in shoeboxes under the bed, tied with ribbon, the handwriting trembling with sincerity. They were artifacts of feeling. Today, love lives in disappearing chats and emojis. Feelings are communicated in gifs, then forgotten in scrolls. Sometimes I think: what happens when you no longer have a letter to hold, a photograph to crease, a mixtape to rewind? What happens when memory itself becomes disposable?
But then again, who am I to judge? Perhaps the younger generation has merely adapted to the truth we’ve resisted: that everything is impermanent. They are not burdened by permanence because permanence is a lie. Perhaps the letter in the shoebox, the tape in the stereo, the photograph in the album were only illusions of forever. Maybe they are wiser for living in abundance, because they’ve learned early that nothing, really, can be held on to.
I straddle these worlds uneasily. I love Spotify, but I still keep my CDs. I use Google Docs [sparingly], but I still buy notebooks. I binge-watch, but I also linger on reruns like they’re relics. I like to think of myself as fluent in both languages: the language of scarcity and the language of excess. My boyfriend laughs when I count the shots I take, careful, deliberate. He floods his phone with images, careless, exuberant. Between us, there is sometimes tension—but more often there is balance.
Perhaps that is the secret to living with generational divides: not choosing sides, but learning dialects. Scarcity teaches us weight, abundance teaches us release. My parents taught me how to save and preserve; my younger friends teach me how to waste beautifully, how to throw things into the air and not mind if they’re lost. Both are needed. Both are ways of surviving.
Because in the end, whether you keep 36 shots or 3,600, the point is the same: you are trying to hold still the fleeting. You are trying to resist the blur of time. My generation grips hard, their generation lets go, but both are gestures against the inevitable.
And so I no longer sneer when I receive a hundred photos of myself from my younger friends—anxiety be damned. I scroll through them patiently, because somewhere in that excess lies a truth I might have missed with my careful two. Somewhere in the avalanche is an accident of beauty, a frame that catches me laughing in the middle of a word, or staring off into space unguarded. A photograph I could not have posed for, a memory I could not have planned.
Sometimes life rewards preparation, sometimes it rewards abandon. Sometimes you get by with 36, sometimes you need the flood of thousands. Generations may quarrel over the details, but really, we are all engaged in the same project: to make the fleeting matter. To take what little—or what plenty—we have, and pretend, for a heartbeat, that it can last. And in that, we are not so different at all.
Labels: life
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Friday, October 03, 2025
11:45 PM |
An Appreciation
I cannot write a review of course because the play was something that I wrote. So I’ll write a brief appreciation instead. We’re allowed to do that, right? Here's an appreciation because I know The Midsummer of Manuel Anguilla is a difficult piece to stage, with its bonkers requirements for shadow play, archival news soundtrack, filmed elements, and dialogues in English that’s not exactly simple, reflecting the ornate inflections of an Arguilla prose — all set in a Japanese prison cell during the war.
Set in the last hours before the real-life writer was executed by the Japanese near the tail-end of World War II, it is also a meditation on war, on torture, on death, on love, and most of all on writing — basically an exploration on why writers write. [According to Renz Torres: “Mao ni ang mga hinanakit ni Ian sa pagsulat.” Hahaha.]
This play underwent so many revisions over the years, but I felt it was finally "finished" when I brought back the character of Lydia Arguilla, who was only in the beginning of the story in earlier versions, to round off the end, set in the post-war, Manuel now dead, with Lydia talking to Leon [obviously Leon of “How My Brother Leon Brought Home a Wife”] and explaining the overlooked meaning of the short story, “Midsummer,” with Ading beside her underlining everything.
I have always always loved “Midsummer” by Manuel Arguilla, which strikes most people as a short story about “nothing”: just a girl and a boy and a carabao meeting in the countryside of Nagrebcan. But to me, it is perhaps the most erotic story ever written by a Filipino writer in English, and Ading the most complex heroine who knows what she wants and gets what she wants.
I’ve taught this short story forever when I used to teach Philippine Literature in college. With K-12 now in place, I was no longer teaching the course. So I said, “Sayang naman,” and decided to transform my entire lesson plan into a play! So, yes, it’s very academic in places, and is quite difficult to stage. Which is why I want to thank Rodolfo Vera so much because he believed in it, and pushed for it to win the Palanca in 2023.
When Teatro Sillimaniana Dos came around, Dessa Quesada-Palm and I included it among ten potential plays our senior theater students could direct for the season, but I also told them it was fine if they didn’t choose it. Again I told them it was a difficult play!
But Merliel Natad Putong didn’t listen, probably felt she could rise to the challenge to direct it. She chose it, much to my surprise.
Tonight, we premiered her production, and I was honestly riveted by how Merliel interpreted it. She took the difficult technical parts and made them seamless and simple, while still staying true to the story.
Also, I had no hand in the casting process, so how did she know these were some of my favorite local actors she had cast? Last time I saw him act, Iniaki Montenegro played a drunken Southern woman with a thick Texas accent. As Manuel, he hopped on a roller coaster ride between essaying a man in excruciating pain and a man telling a story. The range! Chandra Pepino-Joshua as Lydia had so much gravitas, and her breakdown in the end made me cry. That voice! That conviction! She was awesome. Aaron Lee as Leon was the perfect glue to the narrative, the angry sounding board to Manuel’s fantastical tirades. He has acting nuances you have to see to believe. The looks he gives Manuel sometimes offer tangents I am quite willing to follow, given the chance. Then there's Lady Lorraine Elmido as Ading, who was my perfect spider woman weaving her web of desire. This was my fist time to see Simon Lim in a play, but I like that he embodied fully how I saw Manong: a handsome “maamo” country lad who absolutely knows nothing about what exactly is going on.
Every time I finish a story or a play, I usually forget how I plotted it. So watching this play become embodied and made real by such capable people, it was like watching and knowing the story for the first time, eager for what comes next; hence I thoroughly enjoyed it.
But you know what? I think I’m going to write a comedy next time.
It’s the first play I’ve written that I’ve seen staged, and I am grateful this did not become a “drawer play,” like so many other plays, even those that have won the Palanca before. So thank you to Merliel and the cast and crew for making this occasional playwright happy. Break a leg for your last show tomorrow, October 4!
For friends in Dumaguete reading this, please do watch the second staging of the double bill of this play and Rolin Migyuel Cadallo Obina’s The Late Mister Real tomorrow night. Tickets are only P200 for both plays. [“Cheaper than a movie!” matud pa ni Frances Hope Yap, who took this picture, by the way.] The show starts at 7 PM at Woodward Little Theater. Again, this is not a review but an appreciation. Support local theatre and literature!
[This piece is dedicated to that local writer who thinks I am full of myself, hahaha.]
Labels: philippine literature, theatre, writing
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9:00 PM |
Dumaguete is Now UNESCO City of Literature!
We got it. My hands are shaking.
I still remember that fraught week in August 2024 when I had to churn out the preliminary bid for Dumaguete City as UNESCO City of Literature – about six pages of questions that needed thorough answers, which resulted to almost 40 pages of the final bid. I was actually set to enjoy Founders Day in Silliman University when then DTI Negros Oriental Director Nimfa Marcos Virtucio and Anton Gabila invited me and Renz for "a cup of coffee" in Adorno Galeria y Cafe. Akala ko coffee lang, turned out they were keen on submitting Dumaguete for the distinction and was roping me in to help them. Of course I said yes. But I only had about one week to put together the pre-bid, because the deadline was on August 31! Oh, the pain! But that week also made me realize: Dumaguete actually could do this, we had everything [except, ehem, publishing houses and translation projects]. We were able to submit the pre-bid to UNACOM on time.
And then I forgot all about it, until UNACOM contacted us sometime in November 2024 to inform us that we were on their final list of recommendees to UNESCO, alongside Quezon City for Film! That galvanized us to do the final bid from December 2024 to March 2025, again fretting over the final questionnaire and other things to do.
Together with then Dumaguete City Tourism Officer Katherine Aguilar, we formed a think tank of about 20 people, to make the bid truly community- and sector-driven. I sacrificed finishing several of my books slated for publication this year just to finish this bid. The sleepless nights were abominable. The anxiety was formidable, I went back to taking Ritalin after being off-meds for two years. We submitted before the midnight of March 1, the deadline. [We never were able to do the planned video documentary to supplement our bid. There was just no time.] I always thought I could have done more, especially for our website – so I was just hoping the bid itself would suffice for the judges.
But, truth to tell, I was prepared to receive bad news. I dreaded the coming of October 31. Please forgive me if I cried Friday night. It was my body heaving a sigh of relief.Labels: city of literature, dumaguete, dumaguete writers workshop, life, philippine literature, silliman, UNESCO, writers, writing
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Thursday, October 02, 2025
9:00 AM |
Tropical Comforts and Watercolor Serenity
I did not get to see Gretchen Villanueva-Heras’ new solo exhibition, Tropical State of Mind, when it opened at The Gallery by Pinspired at The Henry Resort last August 23—which feels like forever. The show has since been extended to October 14, which speaks volumes about its popularity. Indeed, when I finally made time to see the exhibition for myself, most of the works have been marked “reserved”—the good news of buyers waiting in the wings.
I liked it. I think the show showcases Gretchen’s delicate watercolor works with the unmistakable intimacy of someone who paints not to impress but to remember. [Point of disclosure: Gretchen is a former student.] Also known by her moniker “GretchensWater,” I know her to be a self-taught artist from Bais City whose previous works have seemed to me to be shaped by memory, place, and personal history. In this new collection, she definitely draws inspiration from her coastal hometown and the tropics that surround her. I like, above all their clarity, and simplicity: there is no grandstanding in this show, no forced irony, no attempts at avant-garde shock. Instead, what we have is a clearness of vision steeped in the ordinary, but translated into light, into color, and into tenderness.
In this sense, Gretchen’s work has to be read as something deeply personal. You can also sense in her brushstrokes the shadow of her artist father’s craftsmanship. You can also sense her nostalgia of growing up in a house where hands built things meant to last. You can sense that there is a deep affection for heritage and family woven into her compositions, which is why each painting feels like a page from a watercolor diary. Clearly influenced by her own fascination with the past, Gretchen’s works are not just depictions of flora and provincial landscapes but fragments of storytelling—they are memories folded into botanical patterns and sunlit textures.
There is a quiet lushness in these watercolors, a sense of calm that feels almost radical in an age addicted to speed and spectacle. The series—botanical vignettes, glimpses of familiar roads, curated moments of tropical life—wears its heart on its sleeve. They do not shout. They do not demand. They invite. And in that invitation, they allow us to remember what it means to breathe.
What strikes me first is the brushwork. Watercolor is a famously unforgiving medium; one careless stroke and the whole composition buckles into mud. Yet here we see restraint: the veins of banana leaves rendered with precision, the glisten of palm fronds caught mid-sway, the woven fibers of a solihiya chair articulated with tenderness. The artist gives us details that never overwhelm but always anchor, as if to say: the tropics are not chaos, they are order disguised as abundance.
The subject matter might tempt dismissal by some as “hotel art”—those safe, decorative canvases designed to be pleasant backdrops in lobbies and conference rooms, scrubbed clean of specificity. But to call these works as such would be to misread their intention. What we have here is not mere décor, but comfort art—and there is a difference. Hotel art is soulless, a manufactured neutrality. Comfort art, for me, is art that chooses warmth over confrontation, solace over provocation. It acknowledges the necessity of beauty in a world already heavy with fracture.
Consider the piece with the empty chair nestled among heliconias and monstera. It is not just a chair—it is a longing. Someone has just left, or someone is about to arrive. It suggests presence through absence, memory through arrangement. Or the piece of sugarcane trucks lined up on a highway beneath a row of palms: it’s not just a rural roadscape, but a meditation on rhythm and patience, on the pulse of provincial life. These are images that comfort not because they are shallow, but because they are deeply familiar.
There is also something quietly radical about insisting on tropical beauty as subject matter. For too long, the tropics have been exoticized from the outside, or dismissed from within as mere backdrop. Here, the artist reclaims it as central. The leaves, the plants, the cane fields—they are not supporting cast, but protagonists. In an art world that often insists on rupture and dissonance as markers of seriousness, it is refreshing to see someone insist that serenity is just as valid a pursuit.
And this is where Gretchen’s work finds its place within Dumaguete’s art scene. Dumaguete has long been a haven for artists, writers, and performers, but it often leans toward the cerebral and the literary, where provocation is prized and irony is the order of the day. In the visual arts, too, there has been a surge of experimental and conceptual work—installations, mixed media, even performance-based pieces—that speak to the intellectual ferment of the city. Against that backdrop, Gretchen’s watercolors—like that of her comrade in art, Kat Banay—may seem modest, but their modesty is precisely their power.
Her paintings remind us that Dumaguete’s art scene need not only be about breaking forms or pushing limits; it can also be about grounding ourselves in the pleasures of the familiar. In a city by the sea, lined with acacia trees and shadowed by mountains, Gretchen gives us a mirror of the place we already inhabit but often forget to see. Her art is both a celebration and a preservation of the tropical sensibility that marks life in Negros Oriental.
True, the paintings are not ironic. They are not self-consciously clever. But they are sincere, and that sincerity might be the boldest thing about them. They remind us that sometimes the truest art is not the art that unsettles, but the art that steadies. And in their tropical state of mind, these watercolors give us the most necessary of gifts: a space to sit, to look, and to feel at home.
Labels: art, art and culture, dumaguete, friends, negros, painting
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Wednesday, October 01, 2025
7:00 AM |
Poetry Wednesday, No. 259.
Labels: poetry
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
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