Celebration: An Anthology to Commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the Silliman University National Writers Workshop Sands and Coral, 2011-2013
Silliman University, 2013
8:38 PM |
The Mysterious Case of the Perpetual Internet Layout
Here's a minor mystery. Why is it that when you go to the Sunday Inquirer Magazinewebsite, you still find the same cover picture of Nina gracing its pages? And still the same poem by Mikael? It's been months since this picture and this poem came out on print. May crush ba ang webmaster kay Nina, or kay Kael? Or natutulog lang? Or super-busy? Yun lang.* Now, I'm off to get a foot spa.
UPDATE:That wasn't a foot spa. That was a f-----g foot massage. I wanted my calluses gone. They're still there, only softer. Gad.
*Then again, whatever happened to the print SIM layout? The new style looks terribly tacky, don't know why. And a lot of other people say so as well. Maybe we can ask Alya.
Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart's classic "My Funny Valentine" has been covered by many artists (in the embedded recording above, it is Michael Feinstein) -- and most singers, including Linda Ronstadt, Carly Simon, Frank Sinatra, Elvis Costello, Michael Buble, Chet Baker, Harry Connick Jr., Matt Damon (yes), Billie Holiday, and Sinead O'Connor, have brought their own brand of lovely, funny sadness to the song. I like Ms. Ronstadt's rendition particularly: it starts with the opening verse, which not a lot of the versions play, and segues beautifully -- with such clarity and sadness -- into the meat of the song. Ms. O'Connor does that, too, and Mr. Feinstein. I don't know why I feel like posting this song today. It goes with my chosen lighthearted mode for my current days, I guess. See, I want to stop feeling perpetually defeated and gloomy and sad and unhappy. I want to be happy. This song makes me happy. And I hope it strikes a chord or two in you as well.
(What a sap. Ehe.)
But here's the lyrics anyway:
My funny valentine Sweet comic valentine You make me smile with my heart Your looks are laughable, unphotographable Yet you're my favorite work of art
Is your figure less than greek Is your mouth a little bit weak When you open it to speak, are you smart
Don't, baby don't Don't change you hair for me Not if you care for me Stay little valentine stay Each day is valentine's Each day is valentine's day
Stay little valentine stay, stay, stay Each day is valentine's Each day is valentine's day Valentine's day
The things I loved growing up seem to be disappearing one by one. Early this week, it was Tower Records going down bankruptcy road. Now, Premiere Magazine will release its last print issue this April, and will migrate to the Internet as an online magazine. (It's not exactly dead then, but still...) I remember picking up my first Premiere copy in high school. I was in the line with my mother to pay for groceries in FortuneMart, this ancient grocery store in Dumaguete. A magazine with Sean Connery and Wesley Snipes on the cover somehow caught my attention, and I was hooked. I loved its huge size, to approximate "the size of a cinema screen" supposedly. Then it shrinked to regular size for the company to save money, but I kept buying. I was a budding cinephile, and this was my bible. I would go to Cebu every other month to get my copies, with savings I culled from my weekly allowance. I used to clip the glossy movie ads from its pages and paste them in my "poster scrapbook." (Yes, I was a movie nerd. Still am.) Then there was Libby Gelman-Wexler. The screenwriter Paul Rudnick (Addams Family Values, In & Out, The Stepford Wives, and Jeffrey) in real life, "she" was a Jewish princess socialite whose famous and award-winning film criticism in Premiere was biting, always funny, and tipped with Manolo Blahniks. Perfect.
There are things in my life right now undergoing such silent but overwhelming changes. If I talk about them, I'll only take away their magic. I don't want that to happen. Let's just say they have given me new life. A new way of looking at and coping with things. A new chance to evaluate myself, and to move to higher ground. It begins with a twinkling, and ends with quiet amusement. It makes me finally know what I want, and by God I will get it.
When you're a rabid cineast who has the gift of knowing the title of any movie from watching just one brief shot (even of movies I have not watched before), not being able to remember the title of a film you once watched (and still remembered) when you were a kid is the equivalent of a memory rash. My brother Rocky and his then college girlfriend (now wife) Efeb used to take me with them every time they watched a movie. I'm not sure why (because if I were part of a dating couple, I'd never bring my bratty baby brother with me -- I want romantic aloneness with my significant other no!). But they did take me out a lot, and we watched so many things. This one movie I remembered intensely because it was very colorful, very zany, and I remembered a lot of little people (dwarves) in it.
For years, I could not remember the title. It ate at me.
This is the movie of my childhood. That it is considered one of the worst movies ever made gives me a chuckle, because I remember really liking this movie. It stuck to my memories like a barnacle. I remember scenes from this movie the way I don't with real life.
This just goes to show that something does get lost in our evolution from carefree child to demanding adult critic. I've learned two things: (1) that it takes childlike abandon to appreciate some things, which can never happen when one is constricted by too much adult jadedness and formalism; and (2) many people today like bad movies or books (e.g., Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code) and stay away from good ones (Half Nelson) because their level of comprehension is stuck at that of a six-year-old. Take your pick.
When I was in college, I was rake-thin, and had a waistline of 23 inches. I was always thin my whole life before that. I was too thin in fact that when the wind blew, I'd actually get blown away. I decided to eat a lot of bread to gain what I thought was much-needed weight. Here was my daily regimen: every five o'clock after school, I'd go to the nearest bakery, in this case Gold Label Bakeshoppe, and buy three to six cheese de sal, which was then my favorite. I devoured them. Several weeks later, I ballooned. People would stop me and say, "Hey, you look good." Honestly, I did look good: I was in that magical state when you are young, and is neither too big nor too small. (I was also a gym bunny by then. I was the original metrosexual in those days, and was known around campus as "the guy with the great butt.") When I went to Tokyo in 1997, I lost the weight I gained because: (1) everything was too expensive, and (2) that's what you get for eating mostly protein (chicken and sushi) the whole year. Didn't quite notice that though, because everybody else in Tokyo was as rake-thin as me, especially the boys. (And long-haired as well: in my case, however, I only got two haircuts that year, because it was just goddamn expensive.) You never see fat people in Japan. When I came back to Dumaguete, the first things people said were: "You need a haircut" and "You're too refugee-thin." Ouch.
I've eaten a lot since then.
Regrettably.
I want to be thin again. Sex is absolutely better when you don't have a gut. Ehehe. I'll be turning 32 this August. I want to lose 32 pounds by then. Here's wishing me luck.
It's been a while since I've gone to Frank Warren's PostSecret -- one of my favorite websites in the world. Most of the time, I choose not to visit because: (1) I know I'll spend hours on end contemplating each submission, and who has the time these days anymore? (2) the postcards make me alternately sad, suicidal, and amused, and who can handle that kind of mood changes these days? On those many occasions, I'd just tell myself: I think I'd rather buy the book. (I never do.)
PostSecret is a powerful avenue for our current confessional culture. While we browse through a sludge of so much despair, fear, madness, and sadness (but also a lot of unrequited happiness), the whole project somehow gives off a very positive vibe, because it makes you think: Whoa. I am not alone in this. It makes us realize our shared humanity.
The first time I heard or read about the whole nursing board exam fiasco, I felt angry. I thought it had greater moral imperatives not a lot of the people involved could see, blinded as they were by their particular circumstances. The only way out of that mess, I thought, was a retake. But of course the nursing graduates themselves and their parents (and no less than the PRC itself) howled in protest upon that recommendation, citing among other things, the finances involved in retaking the exam. The whole tone of their argument then was this grating consideration that these graduates had plans to go abroad already. (If you don't believe me, read my old post for the actual quote.) The government did not help by flipflopping too much on the issue. And now, we have this. Makaulaw to the max, given that nang-hangyo jud ta kaayo given the shady aspects of the whole controversy. But really, who cares anymore about people who does not see the merit of embarking on a way to redeem themselves? I say let them go to Ethiopia. There is no CGFNS there.
This one's from Kitty Litter. About more momsters in school -- or in this case, fatherkensteins: an Italian family mauled a school principal for a child's low grades. Says Kitty Litter: "As an ex-teacher, I can understand why you were unable to answer the plagiarist's 'momster'. But don't take it personally, because these people are lashing out in hopes of covering for their own inadequacies. Deep in their horrible hearts they know they're wrong and can't accept it. Promise, tutoo yan." Thanks, Kitty Litter!
I've actually incorporated this old nightmare into my class policies. If you enroll into any of my classes now, your course outline will include this provision: "Your records are open for you to examine. If you have any questions regarding your final grade, please write your teacher a polite query letter to be given through the Department secretary. Give your instructor at most one (1) week to formulate a reply. Bringing irate parents to the Department to question matters of grades, etc. is a sign of gross immaturity. Please remember that this is no longer grade school."
I don't think anybody noticed (well, I didn't until I saw the picture above), but exactly ten years after Titanic won the Oscar for Best Picture, and only Rose "made" it (in the story, as well as in Oscar nominations), both her and Jack -- Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio in real life -- finally gets reunited as Oscar nominees this year. Sweet.
Wait a minute. Titanic won the Oscar ten years ago? Oh God. Oh God.
I don't know exactly why, but Time Magazine has a feature listing the Top 25 Crimes of the Century, from the kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh baby to the theft of The Scream. What must have grabbed my attention was the Lindbergh lead story, given that last Sunday night, I watched Sidney Lumet's adaptation of Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express, a novel which was a derivative of the Lindbergh case. Back to the Time list. Most -- especially the Richard Speck murder spree that included two Filipina student nurses in Chicago in 1966 -- left me nauseous and bewildered over these grand displays of evil. These are the rot of humanity. And yet, I couldn't look away. I read, and read and read ... and felt more nauseous and lightheaded. A small headache started throbbing at the back of my head. Still I read. It could be the morbid fascination of watching a train wreck. I read on, and I sensed something slowly die in me, to be replaced by a shifting dread. I remember this dread. Many months ago, I watched Eli Roth's Hostel and was horrified by its pornography of carnage. I swore I will never watch any movie like that again. Never.
And yes, that's our logo above. Soon, we will have LitCritters t-shirts and LitCritters bookmarks (and maybe even LitCritters mugs!) -- that's how excitable my bunch has become. We also have a new member, Fredjordan Carnice, a creative writing major in Silliman University who will be replacing Marianne Tapales who's off to Tokyo, Japan next week for a scholarship. Have fun in Mitaka, Marianne!
Next week:
The God Equation by Michael Co The Dead by James Joyce The Flyers of Gy by Ursula K. Le Guin Lucky Ducks by Lorrie Moore
This week:
Stella for Star by Yvette Natalie Tan The Music Child by Alfred Yuson The Rememberer by Aimee Bender The Brief History of the Dead by Kevin Brockmeier
Last week:
The Axolotl Colony by Jaime An Lim Higher Orders by John Bengan Faith, Love, Time, and Dr. Lazaro by Gregorio Brillantes What I Love, or Will Remember Most About High School by Vicente Groyon III
Fifth week:
The Necklace by Guy de Maupassant L'Aquilone du Estrellas by Dean Francis Alfar Good Country People by Flannery O'Connor The Beginnings of Grief by Adam Haslett
Fourth week:
LitCritters Originals
Third week:
How Rosang Taba Won a Race by Dean Francis Alfar Xilef by Augie Rivera Menggay's Magical Chicken by Nikki Go-Alfar Am I Blue? by Bruce Coville The Dancers of Malumbay by Raissa Claire Rivera The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein
Second week:
The Girls in Their Summer Dresses by Irwin Shaw The Secret Life of Walter Mitty by James Thurber The Lottery by Shirley Jackson Manananggal by Irene Sarmiento
First week:
The Book of Sand by Jorge Luis Borges We Won't Cry Over This by Socorro Villanueva A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner
Remember the mother I wrote about in last Thursday's post? She and her husband want to meet with me and my choreographer friend, together with my editor Irma Pal, today at 4 p.m. "No confrontation," says Irma, "they just want to air their side."
Coolness.
I can't wait for this to happen. Abangan ang susunod na kabanata! This is Dumaguete's equivalent of a scandal, mind you. Which makes me wonder: why am I in the middle of this? Oh yes: because I'm a drama queen. Hehehe. Not really. But I did write about it. And I was really the person she was looking for in the first place.
When I was living in Tokyo, the best bookstore in the world, it seemed to me, was the fourth floor of Tower Records in Shibuya. They had absolutely everything. I'd go every weekend and sprawl across any of its red-carpeted aisles and read books, and then come home to Mushashi-sakai having spent another small fortune in yen on books. (I never saved enough money when I came back home.) Now, the 60-year Tower Records has declared bankruptcy in the age of online downloads, shameless piracy, and too-many choices, and is closing its doors everywhere in the world. It's sad. It making me rethink my Limewire habit.
An excerpt from one of His divine posts, on things you may not know about Him:
Everyone knows I am the Alpha and the Omega, but you might not realize that I am also the Kappa, the Sigma, and the Tau. My good friend Allah is the Epsilon ... lucky bastard.
When I was 14 I created a practice universe in My parents’ basement. I mixed the epoxy wrong and it dried too soon, so Earth came out looking kind of like an acorn. I kept a few of My early attempts at people just for old time’s sake, so if you’ve ever wondered why Rush Limbaugh and Carrot Top seem like they’re from a different universe, now you know.
One of my Siberian hamsters is dying before my eyes...
Its front is all coated by some kind of wetness, and the poor pet is sluggish but still struggles to go around its cage, or trying to get water from the dripper. It's heartbreaking. I am crying right now, because God knows how much I love this guy. I don't know what's wrong with it. Is it wet-tail? Is it some other kind of bacterial infection? What do I do? And how do you stop crying?
UPDATE:
Sush died tonight, sometime around midnight. He was the sweetest baby. Mark and I will miss him terribly.
A new exhibit called "And I Still See Their Faces: The Vanished World of Polish Jews"t at the Yeshiva University Museum's Center for Jewish History gives us insight about inconvenient truths. The exhibit -- a massive display of ordinary photographs of Jews in Poland before World War II broke out, and with it the horror of the Holocaust -- tells us that sometimes a coming horror is too unbelievable to consider that we can even refuse to believe it, until the full weight of its reality bares its fangs upon us. The New York Times reports:
What can sometimes startle viewers about the banal photographs is the text from an accompanying letter. A photograph of 30 schoolchildren, two of the girls in sailor blouses, with their teachers in Kozowo in June 1939 looks like any posed classroom eager for the coming vacation. But the caption about the class's young Jews says that sometime after the war began that September, "They took them out of town to the quarries and shot them to death."
Indeed, these pictures of ordinary people going about their ordinary lives is all the more horrific given what we know now of what will happen to them in the next few years. Their denial finally becomes deadly in the long run.
Sometimes that's what I feel about those who deny global warming, too.
12:01 AM |
Call for Manuscripts to the 46th Dumaguete National Writers Workshop
National Artist for Literature Edith L. Tiempo has announced a March 31 deadline for applications for fellowships to the 46th National Writers Workshop to be held in Dumaguete City from May 7 to 25.
Panelists this year are Gemino Abad, Alfred Yuson, Susan Lara, Anthony Tan, DM Reyes, Marjorie Evasco, and others. They will compose the revolving panel of writers together with National Artist for Literature Edith Lopez Tiempo, and resident panelists César Ruìz Aquino, Bobby Flores Villasis, and Ernesto Superal Yee.
Fifteen (15) fellowships are open for young writers all over the country.
The first screening panel, composed of the workshop’s resident writers, selects the writing fellows for the summer based on the manuscripts submitted by the applicants. These selected manuscripts are forwarded to the Director of the Workshop, who does the final screening and formally approves the final lineup of writing fellows.
The writing fellowship covers (1) lodging for the full 22 days of the duration of the entire workshop, (2) a modest stipend, (3) one-way fare reimbursement, and (4) workshop manuscripts and reading materials.
The applicant must submit the following requirements:
1. Original manuscripts consisting of at least three to five short (3-5) stories, or three to five (3-5) essays/creative non-fiction, or two (2) one-act plays, or seven to ten (7-10) poems. Stories, poems, plays, and essays in English are preferred. Only unpublished manuscripts are accepted. Works which have previously won in literary contests will not be accepted. 2. An application letter addressed to Workshop Director Dr. Edith Tiempo 3. A diskette or CD containing the various submitted literary works encoded in Microsoft Word Version 6.0 4. A recommendation letter from a renowned writer or literature teacher 5. Two 2x2 pictures 6. A brief biodata or résumé
These must be sent before the 31 March 2007 deadline to:
Dr. Edith Lopez Tiempo National Writers Workshop c/o College Assurance Plan 2nd Floor, CAP Building Rizal Boulevard 6200 Dumaguete City
Accepted fellows are usually notified by postal mail, or email, or by phone call, although the announcement is usually published by major Philippine dailies.
Interested parties may also apply for sit-in or auditing privileges.
The National Writers Workshop was established by Edith and Edilberto Tiempo in 1962, making it the longest-running creative writing workshop in Asia. The 2007 edition is sponsored by the National Commission for Culture and the Arts, Silliman University, and College Assurance Plan, in coordination with the Creative Writing Foundation Inc. and the Dumaguete Literary Arts Service Group, Inc. (DüLA). Donors to the fellowship program include Senators Edgardo J. Angara and Mar Roxas as well as former NCCA Chairman Jaime Laya and Ms. Erlinda Panlilio.
If you have taken to teaching some time in your life, one of the horrors you must have encountered—beside the atrocity some students call their command of the English language—is the fact of overbearing parents. The really bad ones I always call “monsters.” I don’t know what makes some parents completely transform into rabid creatures in the strangest circumstances. Maybe it is a form of a well-meaning regard for their children’s fair chances in the academe, but sometimes this is taken to the extreme that defies the graceful limits of humanity.
Consider what happened a few days ago. I shall not name the particulars of the incident because it would only add to the monstrosity of the situation. Let’s just say there was a dance class for very young children, and it was giving a recital of sorts, which was included as a kind of pre-show to a bigger show. Normally, this would be the very picture of “cute.” Nothing “cute” happened an hour before the show.
One of the mothers of these kids confronted the choreographer and initiated what instantly looked like trouble. According to witnesses, she was seething. “Who made this program?” the mother asked no one in particular backstage.
Somebody must have pointed to the choreographer because the seething mother went up to him, and began shouting at him in front of everybody. “Stop it now,” the choreographer said, getting embarrassed. But she instead rolled a copy of the night’s program in her hands, and began to repeatedly slap the choreographer’s hands and arms with it—“one hit per accusing phrase,” according to one witness.
Let’s just say this must be how the mother berated the poor man: “How dare you!...” (slap, slap) ... “omit my child’s name!...” (slap, slap) ... “from the program’s!...” (slap, slap) ... “list of dancers!” She was livid. “I am not...” (slap, slap) ... “going to enroll my child...” (slap, slap) ... “in this stupid ballet school...” (slap, slap) ... “ever again!”
The shocked man could not do anything except take the sudden abuse, but promptly went home from sheer embarassment and shame. He never did see his troupe dance that night.
Here’s the deal: It was I who made the program.
When I went home after the show to re-check the list of dancers given me while I was making the program, I could not find the child’s name at all -- thus inadvertently excluding her from the roster.
What happened? One of the dance teachers later told me that during rehearsals, she had told the kids, their yayas and parents to put down their children’s names in the list, which would be used to monitor the costumes for the show, as well as to provide the names for the night’s program. All of the kids with their yayas and parents did so—except for that one kid and her mother. Thing was, she probably was not listening when the announcement was made.
I could understand that she had the right to be angry that her kid was not listed in the program. But could she have willed herself to be diplomatic in finding out what exactly led to the unfortunate circumstance? Did she have to be so...dramatic? Did she stop to think that maybe it was her fault in the first place? And who has the right to berate and slap around another human being like that, and in public, too?
This makes me so mad, given that that poor man is a friend. And given that it was I who made the program in the first place. In a sense, that would have been me being slapped around if I had gone to the Luce Auditorium a little earlier.
Monsters.
It makes me so mad because I had an encounter like this once, when I had failed a student for plagiarizing a term paper. Soon her mother came up to me, accusing me of the vilest things. Most of all, I remember her giving this statement, in public: “Students fail because of bad teachers.”
That accusation pierced through my heart so deeply that it affected me for more than a year, and almost made me give up on teaching altogether. The incident deflated what joy I found in the profession. I have always tried giving my best in teaching, even if I falter at times. But to have that accusation hurled at me to save a child’s academic stake was just a little too much.
When the mother hurled that sentence at me, I could not say anything back. Perhaps I was in shock. But that night, I broke down—and I’ve been broken ever since. I am Humpty-Dumpty, really: I’m still full of unhealed cracks, and the whole incident still gives me nightmares, even until now. There was a time I thought I had moved on from this, but I saw the woman once and not too long ago. She was right near me during an event; I knew it was her; my heart started palpitating, and I had to move away, confused and bewildered over why I still felt this way after all this time. That was when I knew I’d been scarred for life.
Sometimes it pains me to realize that there is a certain lack of spark when I teach now; I used to be so animated and so in-love with teaching. The spark returns once in a while, but mostly it has become a dull throbbing.
Only much later was I ever able to formulate a good rebuttal to that mother’s unfair accusation. I could have said, with such bitchiness: “Well, ma’am, the parent is every student’s first teacher. Your child probably first learned to cheat and to be palengkera under your very influence at home.”
But I never did say anything. Mark, who saw everything, finally told me, “Sometimes you’re just too nice.” And yes, I often am. That is my tragedy.
8:38 PM |
The Mysterious Case of the Perpetual Internet Layout
