Celebration: An Anthology to Commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the Silliman University National Writers Workshop Sands and Coral, 2011-2013
Silliman University, 2013
8:00 AM |
You Are Invited to Watch Ampalaya the Musical at the Cultural Center Of The Philippines on July 15!
You are invited to watch a special presentation by the Silliman University Cultural Affairs Committee at the Cultural Center of the Philippines! The Dumaguete-based cultural institution is bringing to Manila Ampalaya the Musical, based on the popular children's book by Augie Rivera Jr. The musical, with music by legendary guitarist and composer Michael Dadap and with lyrics by Mr. Dadap and Patty Yusah, is directed by Dessa Quesada-Palm, with musical direction by Elizabeth Susan Vista-Suarez.
This rare Manila engagement by a team of Dumaguete theatrical talents also features choreography by Angelo Sayson, with production design by Lex Marcos, costume design by Carlo Villafuerte-Pagunaling, and technical direction by Loren Rivera.
15 JULY 2015
Wednesday
Matinee at 3:00 PM
Gala at 8:00 PM
Tanghalang Nicanor Abelardo
Cultural Center of the Philippines
Roxas Boulevard, Manila
Dumaguete City in Negros Oriental has long been known as the Cultural Center of Southern Philippines, and for the first time ever, the Silliman University Cultural Affairs Committee, the city’s unofficial cultural arm, brings to Manila audiences an original new musical that will delight and educate, with a performance on 15 July 2015 at the Tanghalang Nicanor Abelardo of the Cultural Center of the Philippines, which is part of Silliman University’s commitment as the official regional cultural hub of the CCP.
The musical began as a short play, which debuted in 2000 in Boston. The full-length version debuted on 19 September 2014 at the Claire Isabel McGill Luce Auditorium in Silliman University. It is presented by the Cultural Center of the Philippines, Dumaguete City Tourism Office, CocoGrande Hotel, Philippine Airlines, Lorenzo Shipping Corporation, Bayview Park Hotel Manila, and the National Commission for Culture and the Arts.
FOR MORE INFORMATION, contact us at (035) 422-4365 or 0917 323 5953. Or email us at cac@su.edu.ph or silliman.cac@gmail.com.
The inuman -- the informal social gathering of men (mostly men, anyway) outside of the house, in the open air, and usually near a very convenient sari-sari store, which is dedicated to occasional camaraderie, spirited conversation, and the imbibing of alcohol (traditionally the tubâ or palm wine) -- is a curious cultural thing. I passed by one last night on the way to dinner, and found myself shaking my head in disapproval, perhaps because it is such a macho tradition among Filipinos, and I admit to having an instinctive disapproval of anything that reeked of machismo.
But then again I can't really be sure about my attitude towards it because the inuman itself is a very rich cultural institution, one that has poetic roots. One of its components, the tagay or the measured drinking offered to each member of the inuman, has been argued by Merlie Alunan to be one of the roots of the Cebuano balak, or poetry. And now, going through the six volumes of Visayan folk songs collected by Priscilla Magdamo in the early 1950s, I've also found that the tagay was a favorite musical muse. So far, I've found four folk songs dedicated to the tagay -- and understandably so. (Because drunken singing is generally a by-product of such things.)
One folk song is titled "Uhaw Tagay," collected and transcribed by Ms. Magdamo from a recording made with folk singers Francisco and Severina Macahis, and it goes like this:
Ay Liding, Liding, Liding Ay Liding, Liding, Liding Uhaw tagay Uhaw tagay.
Kon walay sumsuman, Ihawon ang hinuktan. Uhaw tagay Uhaw tagay.
I'm not sure what the hinuktan (or the something that is tied up) here refers to. (A pig? A chicken?) But whatever it is, it will be delicious. Research is fun!
I'm doing a bit of research right now for a musical revue I'm writing, based on some of these songs, particularly the lullabies. What are in these books is a treasure trove of Visayan folk songs collected by the legendary musicologist and pioneer Priscilla Magdamo, who really should be proclaimed National Artist for Music. (Even Lucresia Kasilag believes so.)
For a long time I was afraid to be who I am because I was taught by my parents there’s something wrong with someone like me. Something offensive. Something you would avoid, maybe even pity. Something that you would never love. My mom -- she’s a fan of St. Thomas Aquinas. She calls pride a sin [and] St. Thomas saw pride as the queen of the seven deadlies. He saw it as the ultimate gateway sin that would turn you quickly into a sinaholic. But hating isn’t a sin on that list. Neither is shame. I was afraid of this [Pride] Parade because I wanted so badly to be a part of it. So today, I’m marching for that part of me that was much too afraid to march. And for all the people who can’t march. The people living lives like I did. Today, I march to remember that I’m not just a me. I’m also a we. We march with pride. So go [expletive] yourself, Aquinas.
~ Trans actor Jamie Clayton as Nomi Marks in Sense8
What a relief to read something like Nigerian writer Chigozie Obioma's "The Audacity of Prose" in The Millions, where he states his thesis about a predominant non-minimalist style of non-Western writings in English this way: "Writers should realize that the novels that are remembered, that become monuments, would in fact be those which err on the part of audacious prose, which occasionally allow excess rather than those which package a story -- no matter how affecting -- in inadequate prose."
Because I can be quite the maximalist -- although I admit that when I do write in a minimalist mode, the restraint feels rewarding. (Perhaps because we have been taught so well to strive for it?) And yet when I do, I also get the sense that it is a mode of writing that's not really me, especially when the subject of my writing -- the ornate, oriental gothic lives of people in Sugarlandia -- demands purple prose, albeit one that's carefully constructed.
Obioma writes:
But as Hallberg pointed out, context, not tradition, is what should decide or generate the style of any work of fiction. Paul West noted in his essay, "In Praise of Purple Prose," written around the heyday of minimalism in 1985, that the "minimalist vogue depends on the premise that only an almost invisible style can be sincere, honest, moving, sensitive and so forth, whereas prose that draws attention to itself by being revved up, ample, intense, incandescent or flamboyant turns its back on something almost holy — the human bond with ordinariness." This rationale, I dare say, misunderstands what art is and what art is meant to do. The essential work of art is to magnify the ordinary, to make that which is banal glorious through artistic exploration. Thus, fiction must be different from reportage; painting from photography. And this difference should be reflected in the language of the work — in its deliberate constructiveness, its measured adornment of thought, and in the arrangement of representative images, so that the fiction about a known world becomes an elevated vision of that world. That is, the language acts to give the "ordinary" the kind of artistic clarity that is the equivalence of special effects in film. While the special effect can be achieved by manipulating various aspects of the novel such as the structure, voice, setting, and others, the language is the most malleable of all of them. All these can hardly be achieved with sparse, strewn-down prose that mimics silence.
To work with Myrna Peña-Reyes is to invite an eye for sharpness and perfection. That was only to be expected.
And so when the esteemed Dumaguete poet approached us at the Edilberto and Edith Tiempo Creative Writing Center at Silliman University (for which she has served faithfully as Writing Associate) and asked us if we could help her throw together a small launch for newest poetry collection, her third, we had to say yes.
Why? Because she was a legendary poet. Because she embodied, more than most, the formal beauty of Sillimanian poetry. And because she had always been a good friend, not just to us in the Center, but also to countless people in Dumaguete, who considered her sharp opinions and withering regard for incompetence something of a standard to live up to.
We said yes, even when we knew that to work with her was to subject ourselves to careful scrutiny, with every last inch of our efforts more or less subjected to countless queries for updating, and massive detailing that had to resonate with her grand obsessive compulsion.
We said, “Challenge accepted.”
But we also thought: how else to subvert her carefully laid plans, just enough to give her a nice surprise?
She gave us a ready-made program to work with. Very typical of Ma’am Myrna. It already listed down a series of poems from her new book, Memory’s Mercy (University of the Philippines Press, 2015), which were to be read by her poet friends who just happened to be in town as panelists for the third week of the Silliman University National Writers Workshop. This consisted of the formidable bunch of Krip Yuson, Gemino Abad, Susan Lara, Marjorie Evasco, and Ricky de Ungria (who happened to be this year’s Director-in-Residence for the workshop).
She had the musical interludes already chosen—The Beatles’ “When I’m 64” and “There Are Places I Remember,” and John Denver’s “Today,” all three her personal favorites—and she had already made arrangements for these to be sung by the campus top baritone Rigel Suarez, accompanied on the piano by the indomitable Elizabeth Susan Vista-Suarez.
She had already provided the dots, so to speak. We were there to connect them. To all her directives, we said, “Yes, Ma’am Myrn. Yes, Ma’am Myrn.”
She didn’t account for our secrecy and our deviousness.
All along, we were conspiring how exactly to make the event more than just a book launch. We wanted something to be also a fitting tribute to her. She deserved it. She deserved to know how much she was loved, how much she was admired. And so we set out to make one program which was to her liking, and which she had already given her absolute approval—and this became the program we printed out for all the guests. But we also had another program we kept secret, complete with inserted tributes, all calculated to surprise her—but also to amuse her. That, if we were incapable of making her cry.
“Let’s make her cry,” I told everyone.
But she must have already sensed something was afoot when the day came, and I told her Ron Calumpang was hosting.
“Aren’t you hosting?” she told me, her eyebrows raised.
I merely took her hands, led her to the special chair we reserved for her at the event venue, the U University House in Silliman Campus, and said: “Ma’am Myrn, don’t worry about anything. Just relax and enjoy yourself.”
“Did you get the map I asked you to project for the poem Susan is reading?”
Ooops, I thought. How do I tell her Susan wasn’t reading that poem anymore?
“Just enjoy, Ma’am Myrn,” I merely repeated myself.
She raised her eyebrows once more when Ron began with this welcome: “We have reserved this to honor to one of the most beloved figures in Philippine poetry in English. This year, the University of the Philippines Press has come out with her third collection of poetry—and we are here not just to launch this much-awaited book, but also to give tribute to the writer behind it. It has to be said that Ma’am Myrna has toiled very hard—like the O.C. that she is—to make sure that our program this afternoon would be to her liking, making sure that the flow should be done in a certain way, making sure that some of her favorite songs will be sung. And since this is her afternoon, we have made sure that all her wishes will come true. And then some: because we have little surprises for her along the way, essentially tributes to this writer, and how she is as a mentor, as a writer, and as a friend.”
Creative Writing Center Secretariat Lady Flor Partosa gave the first surprise tribute, and began it with an apology: “I have to apologize, Ma’am Myrnz, if my speaking here appears out of order,” she said, “but rest assured it is all part of the whole grand scheme of things.” And she continued: “At best, I will offer a few words as tribute, and let me start by saying that if there is one word to describe Ma’am Myrna: I will say that she is a giver. She generously gives her words, thoughts, and time to the workshop, the Creative Writing Center, and even to me, when I have something to share to her. Ma’am Myrnz can be very candid and frank but you know that she always does so out of concern and care for your or for the work that you do—be it a workshop activity, a program, another poem or essay. And I would like to add, if only by way of connection to this magnanimous woman, that Ma’am Myrnz and I have been connected decades before when as young college students they would go to my grandparent’s place in Valencia. I remember Ma’am Myrna and I laughing and smiling at her stories of their time in my grandparents’ house, recalling, for instance how my grandmother made the best chicken gravy in town. Ma’am Myrnz, all I can say is thank you for sharing this moment with us, launching your new book of poems in the workshop. Thank you so much for your generosity!”
The poet Marjorie Evasco followed that with a reading of “Off Course,” and word wizard Cesar Ruiz Aquino followed with a reading of “The Making of Tales.”
Virginia Stack, the administrator of the Korean Gandhi School in Valencia town, and a fellow member of the Wednesday Group, gave the second tribute. “The first time I met Ma’am Myrna was when she came to our Wednesday Reading Group,” Tata said. “She was invited by Annabelle Lee-Adriano, and I liked her right away—because of her humility being a prolific poetess. She owns it with a lot of thoughtfulness.” She continued: “I got the privilege of receiving her first two books as a gift for my birthday two years ago. And I love her poems. Many of her poems speak volumes about the human condition, and quietly touch the soul, very deeply. One of the dearest connection that we shared as kindred spirits was our love for our pets. When Simon and I first came here in Dumaguete, we brought our cat, Sebastian, all the way from New York. At that time, the cat was already 19 years old. After a year and a half living here in Dumaguete, Sebastian died of old age. He was very old, very, very old... Ma’am Myrna, among one of our few dear friends, came to the memorial ceremony. After the ceremony for Sebastian, Ma’am Myrna shared her own grief over the death of her beloved dog, where she made a promise to herself that would never again take another pet because of the pain she had to endure. I knew exactly what Ma’am Myrna had gone through.” And then Tata quietly finished by reading “Dog Gone,” Ma’am Myrna’s old poem about the loss of her pet, a puppy dog named Bantay.
The poet and anthologist Gémino H. Abad followed that with a fiery recitation of “Thunderstorm Over Diliman,” and fictionist Susan S. Lara with a reading of “Commuters,” a poem dedicated to the late Ernesto Superal Yee.
The last tribute was given by businesswoman and literary aficionado Annabelle Lee-Adriano who gave a spontaneous speech about her admiration for the poet and friend: “I credit my husband Edo for having introduced me to this ‘institution’ and her equally formidable twin, Lorna Makil,” Annabelle remembered. “She has been my little stress ball, and I hers... She’s been a source of strength, and also so much laughter... To Madam Myrna la Douce, life has been so much sweeter since you’ve been in my life.”
This was followed by the last of the readings, with Alfred A. Yuson reciting “Who Mourns the Death of Ants?” and Ricardo M. de Ungria reading “A Momentry.” And to cap it, J Marie Maxino stood up to introduce a video she had been editing the past three days prior to the event: a compendium of talking heads—friends and colleagues of the poet—giving their testimony about how she had been to them as writer and as friend. The video ended with a raunchy, very spirited reading of “The Blue Girl in Geography Class” by the poet’s niece, the actress Frances Makil Ignacio.
“That’s the missing poem Susan was supposed to read!” Ma’am Myrna exclaimed.
“Now you know why I had to choose something else!” Susan laughed.
After the poet’s response, Department of English and Literature Chairperson Warlito Caturay Jr. gave the surprise closing remarks:
“Annie Dillard once wrote that ‘we need to rescue the beauty of experience from the destructiveness of change,’” Warlito began. “Of course, because of technology, it has become so easy to capture the moment. Do you want to immortalize your love affair with a slice of red velvet cake from your favorite bakeshop? Take a selfie and Instagram it. Do you need to capture the performance of your favorite boy band? Take a video of it and upload it on YouTube. These are instantaneous ways of ‘rescuing the beauty of experience.’”
He continued: “But if there’s one thing Ma’am Myrna has shown us through her body of work, it is that creativity and controlled language could as well preserve the beauty of experience. Perhaps, even more poignantly. Today’s launch of Ma’am Myrna’s book is a joyous occasion. We not only celebrate her work, but also Ma’am Myrna for being Ma’am Myrna, who has always been a staunch supporter of the Silliman University National Writers Workshop and who has always been a loyal Sillimanian—generous of her time, talent, and resources, especially when the Department of English and Literature needs her. In behalf of the Department and the Creative Writing Center, thank you very much for coming and showing your support to one woman we genuinely admire and respect.“
And the poet was happy. “You are all schemers!” she smiled to us in the end. We gave a sigh of huge relief.
I will be in Cebu City on June 20 to take part in the second Cebu LitFest, perhaps the most important literary festival of its kind in the region. The event is a joint venture of Little Boy Productions and the Cebuano Studies Center of the University of San Carlos, and -- according to its press release -- "it’s a full day of all things literary starting from 10 AM, with talks, moderated conversations, workshops, presentations, book launchings, readings and musical performances -- all for free." We need more literary events like this. Read more about it in the Philippine Daily Inquirerhere.
The full-day schedule is as follows:
10 AM
Lit Matters: A discussion on teaching literature in Philippine schools with Christine Godinez Ortega, Joseph Tan, and Nancy Toledo. Hope Sabanpan-Yu, moderator.
11 AM
Situation and Setting: A workshop for poetry and prose with Tim Tomlinson, president of New York Writers Workshop.
12 NN
Writing in Tongue: A panel on Bisaya literature with Merle Alunan, Insoy Ninal, and Bambi Beltran. Kristee Ann Delfin, moderator. Book launch.
1 PM
Home and Away: A panel discussion with Cebuano poets Larry Ypil, Nikay Paredes, and Jun Dumdum. Tim Tomlinson, moderator. Book launch.
2 PM
Coming Out: A panel on Philippine LGBT writing with Ian Rosales Casocot, Kristian Cordero, and John Iremil Teodoro. Niel Kintanar, moderator. Book launch.
3 PM
Anywhere But Here, Any Time But Now: A reading from a work in progress travel book by Jessica Zafra, followed by interview with Jude Bacalso. Book launch.
4 PM
The City as A Story: Carlos Celdran talks about his Intramuros and Imelda narratives, followed by interview with Isolde Amante.
5 PM
Mojaresil: Resil Mojares in conversation with Jessica Zafra. Book launch.
6 PM
Pechakucha x #cebuLitFest with Francis Sollano of Movement for a Livable Cebu, Grace Lopez of USC Film Department, Darwin Dexter Sy of Bomba Press, Boboi Costas of Aloguinsan River Eco-Cultural Tourism, Nancy Cudis of Cebu Book Club, and Mark Deutsch and the Happy Garaje team. Hosted by Maria Gigante.
7 PM
Folk Fiction x #cebuLitFest featuring Carissa Garcia Codilla, Jude Bacalso, Nikay Paredes, Lawrence Ypil, Ian Rosales Casocot, Michelle Varron, Carlo Villarica, Don Frasco, Darliza C. Dar Juan, Patrick Abing, Marc Abuan, Iris Jakosalem, David Cua, Johnn Mendoza, Mich Padayhag, Noel Villaflor, Ahmed Cuizon, Shane Carreon, Jona Bering, Manu Rodrigo, Myke Obenieta, Jeremiah Bondoc, Edwin Joseph Castaneda and Adonis Durado. Musical performances by Therese Villarante and Nar Cabico.
See you at the Cebu Literary Festival 2015 on Saturday, June 20, Ayala Center Cebu. Use the hashtag #cebuLitFest to join the fun! A full day of everything literary! Talks, moderated conversations, book fair, readings and musical performances all day! Best of all, its free! For more information call (0915) 445-3049.
An excerpt from the story commissioned by the Cebu LitFest 2015...
Manong Rocky was 28 years old when he found himself bound for Cebu City to seek his fortune. He was told this was the reason, and Mother had decided on this for him, and very quickly—Marcos had just fled to Hawaii a few days prior, there was remarkable jubilation in the air, and there were many yellow ribbons being hung from trees and everywhere else along Dumaguete’s streets.
“Do I have to go?” he asked Mother.
“You must,” she said. “This can’t happen again.”
He was quiet.
“There’s nothing here in Dumaguete for a man with an Agriculture degree, ‘noy,” she said.
Manong Rocky nodded.
He lived, for a while, in Visitacion Street, near Jones Avenue, in a compound a certain Mrs. Esperas ruled with the relentless solicitation of a dowager empress: her house, a white clapboard contraption with two floors, was embraced on all sides by smaller apartments she rented out to young professionals—doctors, teachers, lawyers, salesmen—all young men, all without families of their own. Mrs. Esperas saw my brother coming in with a For Rent flyer in his hand, just newly arrived in Cebu with one bulging suitcase, and she quickly sized him up. “There’s a room in the second floor of my house. It’s big enough for you. And lots of sunshine,” she said to my brother. “Is that okay for you?”
“Yes, ma’am,” my brother said.
“Good,” Mrs. Esperas replied, flashing him a quick smile, and went back to her mahjong, her daster with flower prints cascading around her generous body. “Jobie!” she called on the household help, “Show your Kuya Rocky the room upstairs, the one where your Kuya Manuel used to stay.”
“Kuya Manuel is not coming back, ma’am?” Jobie asked.
“Kung mubalik pa ‘to sya, patyon ‘to nako,” Mrs. Esperas said under her breath.
Manong Rocky soon found work as a sales rep for Zuellig Pharma, for which he was given a secondhand blue Ford Laser to drive around, which had the habit of breaking down on the road at the unlikeliest times. His job was booking products assigned to him by his company—mainly Nivea skincare products and Tang TruOrange—and taking orders and receiving collection in a regular routine that became the sum of his life as a young man in the big city. He knew he was not completely happy. The intriga at work got to him, and there were personal grudges from the other sales reps he couldn’t brush away with inattention.
Every day his route was a constant stream of pharmacies and little shops dotting the commercial enclaves of Gaisano Metro, Gaisano South, and Gaisano Main, all of them along Colon Street, in downtown Cebu, where business thrived in an electric pulse. It was near the end of 1986, and much of that pulse was the rugged optimism of a country suddenly freed from a dictator. My brother trudged along, making do with a job he scarcely cared for. For him, this was life in the big city: scores of deadening department stores in crowded downtown, as well as assorted boticas along Gullas, Magallanes, and Manalili Streets. Among them, Majestic Pharmacy was easily his favorite, because they bought a lot of Nivea—and because he liked how the salesgirls there flirted with him.
We would visit often, Mother and I—and when we first came in to visit Manong Rocky, in 1987, we regaled at the fact that my brother had a car, although he was careful not to mention its tendencies of breaking down once too often. The traffic startled my mother.
“This is Cebu, Ma,” he would say, explaining the crawl of cars, tight along city streets.
“Yes, it is,” Mother would reply, slowly, understanding that this was a strange new world, and it was best that she learned to embrace its progress.
I would sit at the backseat of the Ford Laser, all of the twelve-year-old in me in perfect awe of everything about Cebu City that loomed large, bigger than the biggest thing in Dumaguete, everything quite intricate and embracing in their big city intimidations.
“You want to listen to the radio?” my brother asked, swerving with such daring in and out of Colon traffic.
“As long as it’s not all talk shows,” Mother said. “I’ve had enough of radio mouths blabbing all day long.”
Manong Rocky made a ceremony of turning on his car radio—a car radio!—and then flicking through the dial to get to some FM station, and soon I’d hear the static easing out into melody. An unfamiliar song washed over me.
I … I was a game he would play He brought the clouds to my day… Then like a ray of light, You came my way one night. Just one look and I knew…
The song somehow reminded me of Stephanie, but I don’t tell Manong Rocky that. Invariably, it proved a serenade of lasting recall for me—and years later, all grown up to the worldly ways of adult life, I’d realize it is with this song I’d attach a perfect soundtrack to the sheer awe of being a little boy, recessed deep in the comfortable darkness of the interiors of my brother’s car, humming along to a catchy melody with a full view of passing neon signs and bright lights and city streets teeming with a sophistication I found alluring and frightening. It would become a song I’d always associate Cebu City with—and haunting me still, because in the many years to come, I’d find myself in the metropolis in some taxi bound for Ayala Center or elsewhere, and the taxi driver would turn on the car radio, and out would always come “You Got It All” by The Jets.
You would make everything clear, Make all the clouds disappear. Put all your fears to rest, Who do I love the best? Don’t you know, don’t you know… You got it all over him, You got me over him. Honey it’s true, There’s just you. You must have been heaven sent, Hearing me call you went Out on a limb. And you’re all that he’s not, Just look what I got. ‘Cause you got it all Over him…
When would I get over him? I thought, the movies flickering in my mind.
I’d soon find that Manong Rocky’s haunt after each work day was Ding Hao along Colon St., at the back of Manalili, where he bought pork steamed rice, siomai, and lumpia for our dinner. Ding Hao would become the place I’d ask to go to in future visits—its dim sum an immediate bridge to memory.
Sometimes, when he was feeling adventurous, Manong Rocky would take us to Sunburst Chicken near Mango Avenue, in an area people were beginning to call “uptown,” and here we would have our fill of fried chicken—which was quite a delicacy then, in the late 1980s, when fried chicken was perfectly only for those with upper middle class pretensions.
In other visits, I’d insist on spending a day in the air-conditioned comforts of Robinson’s near Jones, right across the park where people went roller-blading. And he’d insist on taking me to the highest point of the city, at night, where we could see the sprawl of the metropolis twinkling like a million promises.
“This is it,” he’d say.
“It’s not like Dumaguete at all,” I’d reply.
“Not at all.”
“’Nong, do you think you’d ever want to come back home again?”
He looked out into the beckoning meshes of light down below, and never answered my question.
I’d find out in later years that Manong Rocky had a very simple idea for a nightlife in Cebu, what a young man could find in 1987: Boulevard Resto was where he would go, again uptown, because it had a regular band playing. And sometimes, for variety, he would go to Food Street right across Boulevard Resto. The bars in these two places were the placed you’d go to be seen, he said. Of course, there was also Robinson’s and Rosita’s around the same area—but that was where you went for upscale shopping and for groceries, away from the grimy masses of Colon.
On each payday, he sent home to Mother half of what he made, promising more when he could.
And on weekends, he said, he would go to Lapu-Lapu for some beach time—where he’d remember Dumaguete like a slowly vanishing thought, and sometimes he wished he was back home again, with Efeb, with Mother, with Father and his crazy politics, in that strange little apartment in Tubod.
And sometimes, he didn’t know what else to wish for.
Once upon a time there was an empty house on a hill beside an old dalakit tree whipped by the winds, its branches gnarled and penitent under the fierce coldness of gray Zamboanguita skies, in the cold southern interiors of Negros nobody spoke about. Once upon a time there were rumors of a girl who lived there, on her own, and nobody knew where she came from, or who she was.
Those who had seen her, and there were plenty who did, swore that she was a mute vagabond, an orphaned child who found mere refuge in the old house—nothing more. Others claimed she was a ghost, a vengeful spirit, perhaps even a caretaker of sigbins. Most would agree, however, that the girl was young and small and would have been an inconspicuous thing if she were not constantly dressed in an old white shirt more than double her size. Manang Biday, whose own humble hut was closest to the empty old house, swore she had seen the girl countless of times, and that she was always wearing the same old thing, a man’s shirt, torn at the edges, and smudged everywhere with dirt and age.
Here we come to our brief story. If Alba, Manang Biday’s granddaughter, had looked away a moment sooner while she crossed the shallow creek, she would not have seen the girl dashing out, without so much as the feeblest noise, from the shadows of the house’s dilapidated back porch and into the waning light of the late afternoon.
It was growing to be a cold night, harbinger of the monsoon season. Alba had been on her way back to their house from an errand to buy lamp oil for that evening from the sari-sari store at the next bend of the creek. She was fiddling with her sweater, feeling the cold air snake into her and pouncing upon her skin. She wanted very much to banish it. But the sweater was too tight, and she could not adjust it. In her struggle, she felt a sudden whirling from behind her, and a change in the air that indicated someone else’s presence.
When she looked back, she saw the girl.
The girl had a look on her face that drew a frightening blankness. It betrayed nothing, just an ominousness that felt invasive. Even her eyes, half-hidden by stray locks of long black hair, were wells of utter emptiness, the blackness of her irises seeping in and absorbing the coldness of the gray late afternoon skies.
The girl had stopped a few feet away from Alba, the hem of the old shirt hugging her ankles and dragging into the mud and the wet grass. There she stood, a ravaging stillness, blank eyes staring straight into Alba’s own.
Alba, momentarily frozen, finally found her voice.
She leaned forward a little bit, and cleared her throat. “Where did you come from?” she asked. “Who are you?”
The girl would not say anything, but it moved back a few steps, slowly, and then stopped. It regarded Alba’s face with what could pass for cold curiosity.
“What are you doing here?” Alba stammered.
The girl still would not say anything.
When the girl moved again, it was to raise its right hand with a suddenness that startled Alba. It was clasping something, and when the child had her hand in midair, she opened it, palm up, and there it was. It was a small bird, a maya, and it was dead, its neck broken.
“Get away from me,” Alba said, and backed away.
She hurried down the narrow dirt road towards home, and when she turned around, the girl was still there, looking at her.
Alba stumbled to a run, but now she felt more clearly those blank eyes still staring at her, those blank eyes gazing at the nape of her neck, those eyes caressing it like one would a little feathery pet.
I was coming home from my secret writing nook near Tugas when I found myself walking by my old neighbourhood in Tubod -- Springville, its denizens call it. And because I am currently writing a short story about it, culled from my childhood growing up there, I decided to visit it after many, many years.
There's a small road behind Kurambos that begin right off the highway, and begins as a claustrophobic passageway that stretches on and on, bordered on both sides by concrete fences that scale towards the sky. There used to be a field right beside this stretch, adjacent to a spring -- where the name "Tubod" comes from -- where the neighbourhood's women would converge daily to do their laundry and gossip. It's all concrete walls now, and the effect on the passersby is a squeezing akin to panic.
When it finally opens up after a few meters, I see the old house where we used to live. It is even smaller and more decrepit than in my memory, and I quickly wonder how we managed to live there for many years. There is a slight stench to the air, a mix of dirt and kanin baboy. The A-framed bamboo house after it, painted a dark brown, was where a young Peace Corps volunteer once lived, her greatest drama then being spied on at night by a peeping tom who turned out to be a young man who lived right across us. This house looked the same, if looking muddied more than ever. And the yellow bungalow that occupied the very middle of this narrow stretch, which terminated in the Kingdom Hall of the Jehovah's Witnesses twenty meters away, is still bright yellow and is still a bungalow, with a towering structure in pink now behind it.
Kingdom Hall is no more, only a series of unremarkable flats crowded together, telling me that all I have left of this place is memory, and that the past is not a place to go home to, except in fiction.
6:48 PM |
Fellowships, Festivals, and Friendships in Literature
This is happening tomorrow! Catch fictionist Susan S. Lara and poet Marjorie Evasco in a talk titled "Fellowships, Festivals and Friendships in Literature," where they lead a conversation on building a community of writers and readers. It's at 10 AM at the University House in Silliman Campus. The event is open to the public for free!
SEAWRITE awardee for the Philippines and National Commission for Culture and Arts Ani ng Dangal awardee, MARJORIE EVASCO’S books have won the National Book Awards for poetry, oral history and art. Her work is published in the Norton 2010 anthology Language for a New Century: Poems from Asia, the Middle East and Beyond (Eds. Ravi Shankar, Tina Chang & Nathalie Handal) and in The World Record: International Voices from Southbank Centre’s Poetry Parnassus (Eds. Neil Astley and Anna Selby). An honorary writing fellow in the International Writing Program of the University of Iowa in 2002, she also received a writing residency in 1991 from the Hawthornden Castle International Writers’ Retreat in Midlothian, Scotland, and in 1992 from the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Studies and Conference Center in Italy. She has also received major prizes from the Philippines Free Press annual poetry awards and the Carlos Palanca Memorial awards for the essay, and was regional writing fellow for poetry of the University of the Philippines Likhaan Center for Creative Writing in 1985-86, the Gawad Alagad Balagtas for Poetry from the Unyon ng mga Manunulat ng Pilipinas in 2004, the Patnubay ng Sining at Kalinangan from the City of Manila in 2005, the Outstanding Silliman University alumna for creative writing in 2008, the Carlos P. Garcia award for literature education from the province of Bohol in 2011, and the Ulirang Mandaleño award for education from the City of Mandaluyong in 2012. In 2013 she received the Taboan Literature Festival award for her achievements as a writer, for promoting the literature of the Central Visayas region and mentoring young writers in various national and regional writers’ workshops. In October 2013 she served as visiting writer in the International Writers’ Program of the Hong Kong Baptist University, and was appointed in March 2015 as Visiting Literary Artist in the University of the Philippines Visayas, Iloilo City.
SUSAN S. LARA writes fiction and nonfiction. She has won the Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature and Focus Literary Awards for her short stories, and the National Book Award for her fiction collection Letting Go and Other Stories. She attended the International Writing Program of the University of Iowa, and the Seminar on Contemporary British Writing at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom as a British Council grantee. She held the Irwin Lee Professorial Chair in Creative Writing at the Ateneo de Manila University in 2011. She has served as panelist in various writers workshops, including the Silliman University National Writers Workshop, of which she was director-in-residence in 2013 and 2014. Currently she is a professional editorial consultant and writing coach, and facilitates writing seminars and workshops for corporate clients.
The first product from the white heat of writing I had a few weeks ago! (Actually, it's the second of four, but who's counting? This is the first one that got published.) Here's a short story titled "Letters From Everywhere Else," seeing print in the 25 May 2015 issue of Philippines Graphic Magazine. I intend for this to be the opening story of Where You Are is Not Here, the first of two collections I'm currently finishing right now. Thanks to Graphic editors Alma Anonas-Carpio and Joel Pablo Salud for making this happen. Here's an excerpt:
Where am I ?
Elan Frenkel began his first letter to him. Mateo looked at the handwriting, small and hurried and imprecise in its scrawl, which threatened to go over the edges of the blue stationery like a defiance of boundaries.
This is the simplest, most difficult question possible. Easily, I’m in Hong Kong. That’s geography. I haven’t written for a while—I felt incompetent to do so. I’m studying Judaism here, not nearly as often as I should have—but it is a must, if I want to stay here, for free, in this Jewish man’s far-flung hostel. I cannot believe any wandering Jew can get free food and shelter here, for just a bit of spirituality. I can do spirituality if I have to; a backpacker on a shoestring sometimes cannot have a choice. It was either prayers, or cleaning dishes in some Chinaman’s kitchen. And what will that get me? A fleabag tourist trap in the middle of nowhere, with rotten food. Better prayers and meditation instead of soap suds. It has been a long time since I prayed, not since I was a kid in Tel Aviv. During the Gulf War, Saddam’s bomb blew my friend’s face wide open, and for a while, I didn’t know if there really was a God. Judaism is a way of life, I suppose, and I’m so distracted by this world which perpetually feels to be on the fringe of my fingers, never actually touching, writing strokes in the air with a falling feather.
The Philippines seems like the best I’ve had so far. I should return, yet I’m still on my way to China, stalled. I could just go, by myself, across the border, but being a vagabond no longer appeals to me. I haven’t managed to settle the inner turmoil yet. Perhaps I can make you understand now that I was more than rambling when we had those nights in Dumaguete, drinking in the stars with cheap beer. Which reminds me, I left my Lonely Planet guidebook in your place; it is brown with use, but I thought you might want it. I could no longer carry it around; I began to see the world much too simply as neat categorizations of ‘places to go, places to stay.’ It was too easy; sometimes, the point of traveling is in getting lost. Maybe things are changing, possibly I can recognize that in hindsight. And I appreciate you writing, though it seems to me behind those sometimes extravagant vocabulary, something altogether simpler lies.
I’m ridiculously lonely at times, much more with this state of separation from the world. I am tempted to say that life does no good. Which is just so common: nebbish talk. I talk, eat, shit, wake up in the morning, and as part of the course, pray to God, thanking him for the miracle of my resurrection daily from the dead. Yet I feel no miracle, no God; my words disperse in a space of four walls.
Nevertheless the quest goes on, I’m planning to buy a handicam and shoot the upcoming seminary here in a couple weeks, also a salad of Israeli backpackers, orthodox and cabalistic Jews swarming the earth. It was Passover a few days ago—3,300 years since the exodus from Egypt. I have only a lifetime, and by mistake I want it now. The quest is life.
To marrows,
Elan
This came two weeks after Elan had left Dumaguete. Had left him, and Mateo had not really expected to hear from Elan all too soon after leaving, and so the letter—which looked like it had gone on a long and difficult journey, its edges tattered and crumpled—came as a complete surprise. Or at least he pretended it was: there was comfort in the denial of anticipation. Two weeks, he thought, and there was still enough of April yet to reconsider and be appropriately nostalgic of the madness of those very short three days near the end of last March.
He never wrote back. Not yet. Mateo didn’t know what to write Elan about. Certainly nothing about quests or unused guidebooks or the difficulties of being on the road to somewhere else and not here. But he kept reading it, and reading it—the letter itself folded snugly in the pages of his journal, where he kept it to remind him of certain beautiful things.
Grab your copy of the latest issue of Philippines Graphic now!
5:56 PM |
Launching Myrna Peña-Reyes' New Poetry Collection
Myrna Peña-Reyes' new poetry collection, Memory’s Mercy: New and Selected Poems (University of the Philippines Press, 2015), will be formally launched on Thursday, 28 May 2015, 4 PM at the University House (formerly President’s House) in Silliman Campus.
Memory’s Mercy is the third poetry collection of Dumaguete poet Myrna Peña-Reyes whose previous collections are The River Singing Stone (Anvil, 1994) and Almost Home: Poems (UP Press, 2004). This third collection contains new poems written after she retired here with her husband in her hometown of Dumaguete in 2005 after living abroad for thirty-four years. It includes selections from the out-of-print The River Singing Stone that was nominated for the National Book Award.
Born and raised in the Philippines of Ilocano stock but Visayan upbringing, Myrna Peña-Reyes was educated at Silliman University from elementary through college (BA English) and the University of Oregon (MFA in creative writing). While a resident of Eugene, Oregon where she lived with her husband, William T. Sweet, she was a winner of the Oregon Literary Fellowship grant for poetry (2002) from Literary Arts. Presently retired in her hometown of Dumaguete, she continues her volunteer affiliation with Silliman University’s literature and creative writing program.
The book launch is fittingly held during the closing week of the 54th Silliman University National Writers Workshop. Present at the first Silliman Writers Workshop in 1962, Myrna had helped its founders, Drs. Edilberto K. Tiempo and Edith L. Tiempo, run the Workshop during its early years in the ‘60s and early ‘70s.
While it is true that American comedy of recent years has lost its cinematic funny bone (as this video essay by Tony Zhou clearly demonstrates, which pays special attention to the cinema of Paul Feig), it is also undeniably true that sometimes funny is just funny. There is, after all, much to love in the hilarious inanity of Feig's James Bond spoof, Spy (2015), starring the irrepressible Melissa McCarthy. Ms. McCarthy, after breaking out (and getting Oscar-nominated) in Feig's Bridesmaids (2011), has clearly come far and made for herself a unique attraction in film comedy: she has created a persona we have all come to appreciate and love, something only the best physical comedians -- Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Bill Murray, Jim Carrey, among others -- have managed to concoct and sell to an appreciative audience. In Ms. McCarthy's case, it is the generously endowed woman with pretensions of meekness who suddenly discovers a predilection for being bad-ass and foul-mouthed. She makes it work.
She has brought that persona to the shells of various characters in her movies -- including a tomboyish bridesmaid, an angry police officer, and a happy-go-lucky identity thief -- and sometimes they work, and sometimes they fall to the abyss of the uninspired. This time around, as a CIA desk jockey who finds herself becoming an active agent, the persona is fully engaged, making the pratfalls and banter that follow something in the new movie to love. The film works as a project of great comic timing, and while you are aware that everything you see is just comedic fantasy, you find yourself becoming fully invested in the shenanigans that unfold. Perhaps that is because everyone seems heavily invested in making this film work -- Jude Law and Jason Statham, for example, seem to be in serious modes deconstructing with glee their respective screen personas as suave playboy and dynamite action figure. This in turn makes the film a whole bunch of fun I did not really expect. Hell, it's a movie where you come to love Rose Byrne's villain as well while you buy thoroughly her cold-bloodedness. If that doesn't say anything about this film's appeal, I don't know what will.
It is hard for me to engage in an unfavourable evaluation of Brad Bird's Tomorrowland (2015), knowing how much I love the filmography of the director. Here is a film so earnest in its message, so eager in the presentation of its set pieces, that to find ourselves walking out of the theatre thinking of it as something of a forgettable experience is to finally acknowledge that the film is ... a mess. It is, at best, a noble failure.
I wasn't put off by its exuberant didacticism. Bird's earlier films (the animated ones, especially) had didactic streaks, too: The Iron Giant is about tolerance and being anti-military; The Incredibles is about owning up to what makes you special; and Ratatouille is about being truthful to one's art and vocation, no matter how the world perceives you. His latest film is actually a distillation of all these messages, which in those films made us pause in contemplation and then invariably cry. But in Tomorrowland, they have the quality of emotional Teflon, no matter the extra measure of exuberance.
I suspect it's a matter of structure: the script by Damon Lindelof is torturous and unengaging, proving to us once more that post-Lost, Mr. Lindelof is a hack equipped with big ideas he cannot really handle, as also seen in the equal failure of his work on Ridley Scott's Prometheus (2012). Bird tries to handle the unwieldiness of the material with his natural feel for wonder and whimsy but the film implodes from its own sense of having absolutely no narrative direction. (Negative thinking as villain? Really? Manila Bulletin has this film's number.) The throwaway revelation in the end about the "reality" of the world we bought into in the film's trailers is also off-putting, and in deeper regard, actually strikes me as cynical -- but no spoilers here. It is still enjoyable in bits and pieces, but you're better off with a third viewing of Mad Max: Fury Road.
9:47 PM |
The Denial of Feminism is a Hideous Thing
“My response to the ‘I am not a feminist’ Internet phenomenon… First of all, it’s clear you don’t know what feminism is. But I’m not going to explain it to you. You can Google it. To quote an old friend, ‘I’m not the feminist babysitter.’ ¶ But here is what I think you should know. ¶ You’re insulting every woman who was forcibly restrained in a jail cell with a feeding tube down her throat for your right to vote, less than 100 years ago. ¶ You’re degrading every woman who has accessed a rape crisis center, which wouldn’t exist without the feminist movement. ¶ You’re undermining every woman who fought to make marital rape a crime. (It was legal until 1993). ¶ You’re spitting on the legacy of every woman who fought for women to be allowed to own property (1848). For the abolition of slavery and the rise of the labor union. ¶ For the right to divorce. ¶ For women to be allowed to have access to birth control (Comstock laws). ¶ For middle and upper class women to be allowed to work outside the home (poor women have always worked outside the home). ¶ To make domestic violence a crime in the U.S. (It is very much legal in many parts of the world). ¶ To make workplace sexual harassment a crime. ¶ In short, you know not what you speak of. You reap the rewards of these women’s sacrifices every day of your life. When you grin with your cutesy sign about how you’re not a feminist, you ignorantly spit on the sacred struggle of the past 200 years. You bite the hand that has fed you freedom, safety, and a voice. ¶ In short, kiss my ass, you ignorant little jerks.”
It was strange to see the national morale being punctured on the streets, on people's faces. The city looks and feels like it has been slapped, and its response is sluggishness. Deflation. I didn't realise what hold this thing had on the national psyche. All day long, people are talking like boxing analysts, with a tone that suggests a gaping wound.
What can I say about Depression Era cats meowing it out to the tune of jazz, gunfire, bootlegging, and speakeasies? Tracy J. Butler's Lackadaisy was a hoot of a read. This volume, which gathers together her initial work for an apparently very popular webcomic, is an immersive read into the sweet shenanigans of the 1920s, this time starring cats. I keep getting fascinated by this era's generosity with its capacity for being reread and reconstituted in pop culture. There's The Great Gatsby, of course, and countless movies. But it reminds me most of all of Alan Parker's Bugsy Malone -- essentially occupying the same thread as Butler's meowy narrative, but this time starring kids. Lackadaisy does not exactly end with a close-knit ending: it comes with a cliffhanger, touting a continuation -- and I wish it had been a standalone volume, promising only more standalone volumes still to come. But it's intriguing enough for a graphic novel, granted a language that may be a little bit too whimsical for comfort. The characters are drawn by Ms. Butler with an eye for clarity and fervent characterisation, and it is easy to fall in love with its hapless heroes, in particular the conflicted Freckles, who has some issues Bruce Banner and Dr. Jekyll can help him with. This book has been in my reading list for almost two years now, and I'm happy I've finally reached its last page. Given that slow-burning read, I wish it had closed with a more determined decisiveness. But, oh well, meow.
8:31 PM |
The Universe is Amply Supplied with Night
“There are things that upset us. That's not quite what we're talking about here, though. I'm thinking about those images or words or ideas that drop like trapdoors beneath us, throwing us out of our safe, sane world into a place much more dark and less welcoming. Our hearts skip a ratatat drumbeat in our chests, and we fight for breath. Blood retreats from our faces and our fingers, leaving us pale and gasping and shocked. ¶And what we learn about ourselves in those moments, where the trigger has been squeezed, is this: the past is not dead. There are things that wait for us, patiently, in the dark corridors of our lives. We think we have moved on, put them out of mind, left them to desiccate and shrivel and blow away; but we are wrong. They have been waiting there in the darkness, working out, practicing their most vicious blows, their sharp hard thoughtless punches into the gut, killing time until we came back that way. ¶The monsters in our cupboards and our minds are always there in the darkness, like mould beneath the floorboards and behind the wallpaper, and there is so much darkness, an inexhaustible supply of darkness. The universe is amply supplied with night.”
8:00 AM |
You Are Invited to Watch Ampalaya the Musical at the Cultural Center Of The Philippines on July 15!
“There are things that upset us. That's not quite what we're talking about here, though. I'm thinking about those images or words or ideas that drop like trapdoors beneath us, throwing us out of our safe, sane world into a place much more dark and less welcoming. Our hearts skip a ratatat drumbeat in our chests, and we fight for breath. Blood retreats from our faces and our fingers, leaving us pale and gasping and shocked. ¶ And what we learn about ourselves in those moments, where the trigger has been squeezed, is this: the past is not dead. There are things that wait for us, patiently, in the dark corridors of our lives. We think we have moved on, put them out of mind, left them to desiccate and shrivel and blow away; but we are wrong. They have been waiting there in the darkness, working out, practicing their most vicious blows, their sharp hard thoughtless punches into the gut, killing time until we came back that way. ¶ The monsters in our cupboards and our minds are always there in the darkness, like mould beneath the floorboards and behind the wallpaper, and there is so much darkness, an inexhaustible supply of darkness. The universe is amply supplied with night.”