Thursday, January 14, 2021
9:00 AM |
The Tightrope of Writing About Art
There is a profound little moment somewhere near the end of Greta Gerwig’s 2019 film of Louisa May Alcott’s
Little Women—an adaptation that reconfigures its protagonist’s main “romance” as primarily being between her and her creative vocation—where the filmmaker lays her thesis about the importance of writing as an instrument of record and highlight. We start with Jo March confessing to her sisters Amy and Meg that she’s been trying to write a novel, something “about our little life.”
“[But] who will be interested in a story of domestic struggles and joys? It doesn’t have any real importance,” she says, immediately dismissive of her subject.
“Maybe we don’t see those things as important because people don’t write about them,” Amy counters.
“No, writing doesn’t confer importance, it reflects it,” Jo says.
“I’m not sure,” Amy says, wise beyond expectations. “Perhaps writing will make them more important.”
I find Amy’s conclusion quite remarkable because it makes me think deep about what I do, which is write, and why I do it. The commonplace responses to that question of “why” are almost always in the vein of self-expression [which is not untrue], or of conveying a message [didactic or otherwise, which can happen]. Often the most pleasurable answer is that of doing a deep dive into a topic that’s unknown to you, with the act of writing itself becoming a venture of exploration and finding out how you feel or opine about that something just as you’re setting down the words and often becoming surprised by how it all comes to in the end. This compass-less navigation is the very heart and origin of the word “essay,” which is derived from the French infinitive “essayer,” which means “to try” or “to attempt.” We often write not because we know, but because we
want to know.
But Amy is right: most writers do not settle on a subject because it shines with undeniable importance, compelling us to record it in words. [Although that happens often. Think of war correspondents embedded in battle. Think of reporters on a sports beat. Think of the journalist trailing a VIP for a profile.] But most of us, on good days, come upon topics that are often mundane—but something beneath their ordinariness can feel compelling, and in wrestling with their signification in words, writers inevitably shine a light on them—and the best of us are able to strip away their ordinariness to present them in scintillating light. Nora Ephron famously wrote about the sagging skin on her neck. Joan Didion wrote about the need to say goodbye to New York. David Shields wrote about tattoos. Jamaica Kincaid wrote about a dress she saw in an old photograph. What they’ve written are some of the vanguards of creative nonfiction, with topics no one would consider earth-shattering in importance.
Part of the arsenal of writing is evaluation, when we have to consider the relative aesthetic value of something and render a particular judgment. We call these “reviews”—and most of us traffic in them to manage our consumption of the popular culture that surrounds us. What movies to see? What exhibits or concerts to go to? What books to read? What play to watch? What album to listen to? What television to binge? What restaurants to patronize? In the endless choices that we often face, sometimes a persuasively written article can be the best nudge towards something that suits our taste best—or challenge it, if we are so inclined.
The best critics I know do no just judge in the strict formal givens of their subject. They bring peculiar subjectivities to the table, making their take interesting and unique. Film critic Roger Ebert, for example, evaluated movies as personal experience, while his contemporary Pauline Kael often judged them in the various ways they struck some carnal chord in her [or not]. Food critic Jonathan Gold brought a sense of place and culture to his understanding of the dishes he’d eaten. Dance critic George Beiswanger was all about translating signs and symbols into images and feeling. The book critic Michiko Kakutani shied away from the first person [“I”] as a critical device, which made possible the sharpness of her famous lacerations.
But always, like in Amy’s profundity, they certainly used writing to put spotlight on their “ordinary” subject—a film, a book, an album, a dance, a play, a dish—lifting them to careful scrutiny and regard, for the best of it [and sometimes for the worse]. I propose a higher calling for art criticism. To quote writer Taylor Murrow: “Art is a window for all of us to view and discern and question the surrounding world. Art uncovers what has been buried by societies before us. It retaliates against oppressors. Art provides a path forward. Art is a window for all of us to view and discern and question the surrounding world. Art uncovers what has been buried by societies before us. It retaliates against oppressors. Art provides a path forward. And art criticism can help us find that path.”
I’ve done my fair share of reviews and of cultural reportage, beginning with a column in the college organ. My first national gig was in the late 1990s for
Sunday Inquirer Magazine, where I wrote about the Silliman University Campus Choristers, which was about to go on a goodwill tour of the U.S. Since then, I’ve written for major dailies such as the
Philippine Daily Inquirer and
Philippine Star, and for magazines such as
Graphic, Rogue, Smile, and
Esquire—although these days, the online platforms have become the vanguard, so I’ve come to write for
Spot.ph, Rappler, and
CNN Philippines. I’m mostly known for my film and book reviews, but I’d occasionally dive into reviewing theatre, food, photography, and art exhibits—always with the intent of bringing Oriental Negrense art and culture into the mix that’s decidedly Manila-centric. This very column for the MetroPost also began as a food column in 2004—until restaurants began offering me free meals, and I felt compelled to shift gears or lose my dignity.
What compels me to do culture reportage? Well, the simplest answer is that I like art, have always been comfortable in the company of artists—with myself occasionally dipping my toes into art-making of various sorts. But what I discovered a long time ago is that, as a creative writer who also happened to have been trained as a journalist, I had the perfect opportunity to chronicle, to evaluate, and to highlight other people’s art-making in Dumaguete and Negros Oriental—
especially when no one else seemed to be doing so. Flip the pages of our local weeklies, and you will barely get any article about local culture and the arts with some consistency, except for Moses Atega and me.
But for the longest time, I chose not to write about art in Dumaguete. Attentive readers would note I ceased writing this column for close to three years. Truth to tell, I was miffed.
I had written a review of a small exhibit by Hersley Casero and Anna Kousmann, where I had expressed some reservations about some of the works—and I was promptly attacked online by someone new then in the local arts community. She denigrated what I’d written as the misinformed missive of someone who was “just a wide reader,” and because I had no training in art or art criticism, I was not worthy to write about Mr. Casero or Ms. Kousmann.
It took me a while to process that, especially the vehemence of its language. I thought: my major concentration on art history at the International Christian University in Tokyo apparently meant nothing. I thought: my years as a practicing visual artist in high school [I was Class Artist four years running] who decided to shift to creative writing in college meant nothing. I thought: my years of curating art exhibits for the Luce Foyer Gallery meant nothing. I thought: my years of writing art criticism for various publications nationwide [including catalogues for national exhibitions] meant nothing. Because I was not a trained artist, “just a wide reader.”
Which confused me. Did Roger Ebert or Pauline Kael have to be trained filmmakers in order to critique film? Is theatre critic Gibbs Cadiz a theatre artist? Was food critic Doreen Fernandez a chef? And isn’t “reading widely” a prerequisite to give depth and texture to the piece you’re reviewing?
I also thought: the Pulitzer Prize-winning art critic Jerry Saltz famously worked as a truck driver first when the art world beckoned.
So I abandoned writing about the local art scene.
Until now.
I’ve realized I do love the local art scene too much to allow its many worthy efforts to remain unchronicled, just because of ungracious asides. It would be shame to not talk about the bold palettes of Kitty Taniguchi or Iris Armogenia, the cinematic idiosyncrasies of Stanley Alcala or Andrew Alvarez, the poetic succinctness of Myrna Peña-Reyes or Cesar Aquino, the smoldering theatricality of Hope Tinambacan or Onna Quizo, the swift grace of Cheenee Limuaco or Janus Cedrick Grapa, the precise compositions of Urich Calumpang or Charlie Sindiong, the musical emotionality of Katrina Saga or Lorie Jayne Soriano. What new things they do for their art, they deserve witness in words.
If Amy March is right and writing does convey importance to what it covers—else it falls into the shadows of the obscure and unheralded—then the task is set before me. It is time to say “no” to being waylaid.
ART: David Shrigley, Untitled (Hands Writing), 2008. Woodcut Print. Collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York.Labels: art and culture, dumaguete, writing
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Wednesday, January 13, 2021
10:00 AM |
Poetry Wednesday, No. 55.
Labels: philippine literature, poetry
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Tuesday, January 12, 2021
7:40 PM |
Rock as Metaphor
The point of art, so it is sometimes said, is to render the mundane into the level of the extraordinary and consequently lift it to higher, perhaps loftier, consideration. There, wrung out of its usual ordinariness, an object can often be used as vessel for self-expression, or as statement, or as reflection of some profound “truths” about life, about existence, about meaning.
The formalists call this process “estrangement.” In literature, where it is often used, scenes of ordinary reality is depicted, through words, in a stylistic manner that gives the reader an extra layer of interpretation that goes beyond the literal and into the metaphorical. At the ending of James Joyce’s iconic short story “The Dead,” the husband listens to his wife’s tearful, memory-filled descent into slumber while he looks out the window of their room, seeing snow falling everywhere—yet this is no ordinary sight of snow: in Joyce’s pen, it is a distillation of anguished knowing that we cannot really know the deepest truths about the people we love.
Then there’s Marcel Duchamp who, in 1917, presented for exhibition an ordinary urinal, and titled it “Fountain”—igniting controversy, and sparking an ongoing debate about what makes art. The artist Beatrice Wood, perhaps recognizing the innovative, inventive, and disruptive power of the work, wrote in the aftermath of the exhibition: “He took an ordinary article of life, placed it so that its useful significance disappeared under the new title and point of view—[and] created a new thought for that object.”
This, for me, has always been part of what interests me about art—to see the artists’ subjects in the canvas or lens or mold of their subjectivities, and inquire of myself what provokes me of their specific ways of seeing, what reaches of metaphor [or, in Wood’s formulation, “new thought”] they are trying to go for.
The subject of Hersley Casero’s
Organic Magic, an exhibit currently running at the new Dakong Balay Gallery along the Rizal Boulevard, certainly invites this kind of scrutiny. It is, after all, concerned with various depictions of one of the commonest things we have in this world: the rock—which is ubiquitous, and does not readily demand from us closer scrutiny, much less as agent of artistic expression.
(And yet this view might be one of contemporary failing. Because art history would tell us that rocks [and surfaces of rocks] have been there since prehistory, with early men shedding light on the daily life in the distant past through pictographs, petroglyphs, engravings, petroforms [rocks laid out in patterns], and geoglyphs [or ground drawings]. Today, there’s also land art occasionally using stones and rocks to render landscapes in new light.)
The seed of Casero’s exhibit sprang from his recent art residency at Warnecke Ranch and Vineyards on Chalk Hill in Healdsburg, California—a property in the Alexander Valley that hosts, partly, the Russian River. The meandering flow of the river leaves in its path what locals call “wishing rocks,” which are rocks with a single perfectly unbroken strip of quartz all the way around the circumference—with no splits, no out-runners, no faint second lines on them, to make them “true” wishing rocks. According to Jim Brace-Thompson of
Rock and Gem, lore has it that “if you trace your finger around the line while closing your eyes and making a wish, and then throw the stone into the sea as far as you can [or, barring that, give it to another person], your wish will come true.”
This link with magic, wishing or otherwise, is the key to Mr. Casero’s immediate inspiration for the exhibit, based on what I have come to understand about his art. [
Full disclosure: I curated his first solo exhibit,
Uncommon Ordinary Magic, in 2011.] He has always been keen—because of very interesting family history that stretches back to magic-filled Camiguin past—on rocks and stones imbued with the supernatural. The title of the current exhibit alone cues us in.
Returning to the Philippines from that California sojourn, he began to seek out local rocks and minerals, now more attuned to their allure and to their magical promise. What resulted from this is a collection splintered into three modes of expression—ceramics, graphite on paper and canvas, and oil on canvas—that hint of the artist finding ways to express the rock in his specific metaphor for the world we live in.
The works in graphite on acid-free paper—collectively known as the “On the Rocks” series—feel like the artist in the initial phase of this “rocky” exploration. They have Casero deep in what you might call “rock portraiture,” delving into the very literal. The framed works, painstaking renderings of individual rocks in glorious black etchings, have their subjects seemingly afloat in the midst of negative white space, giving them personality, their realistic representational nature obliquely giving them a sense of the magical: they’re almost like icons behind the glass, demanding scrutiny, even worship.
In his sculptural, ceramic works, Casero goes into simile: most of the pieces are untitled, but you cannot mistake their identification—they’re shaped like ordinary rocks, like corals, like stones, but in sometimes giving them color, Casero also insists on other similes: “This one is not just like a rock, it is also like a sea cucumber or like a pigeon.”
And finally, in his works on canvas, Casero takes the rock, or the organic, into deep metaphor. The most commanding work in the space—simply for its size and for how its mounted—is his work in oil on canvas titled “Heart of Gold.” What’s portrayed is the bare human heart in all its muscular texture, floating above a somber sea—but a closer look gives us a human being embedded in its design, and an even closer look—this time in the context of the overall exhibit, is that the heart, by shape, also looks like a rock. Here, and following the rest, Casero limns on the magical connectivity of all these things in our natural world, asking us to pay closer attention to the organic connection we all share, which is the biggest magic of all.
The exhibit subscribes to that ecological reading. Its statement ends with this: “For thousands of years we worshipped, respected, and revered the natural world. But our modern, technological lifestyles have created a false sense of dominion over the Earth we inhabit. We endeavor to control and construct our surroundings in order to meet our desires, when in fact it is our environment, which weathers, carves, and polishes our hearts… All organic matter that exists on Earth today is made of ancient stardust and contains the whole universe within it. Us, the Earth, even the little rocks we tread into the ground beneath our feet. Ultimately, we are all made up of nothing short of ‘organic magic.’”
The exhibit statement also calls to mind how 2020 should make “rethink what is really important to us, and to rekindle a sense of awe and gratitude for the little mundane things we are already abundant in, in their many forms and facets.” Which brings me to my favorite piece in the exhibition:
In “It’s Been a Hard Year, But We Made It...,” a work in acrylic and graphite on canvas, Casero gives us a 2020 calendar, spaces marked out for all the months in Binisaya—but instead of dates in grids, we get pictures of rocks, their texture rendering literal hardness and metaphorical hardship. But they are also symbols of resoluteness, and gateways to wishes and magic—enough comfort for our hard times.
The exhibit is presented by Pinspired.ph and Dakong Balay, and runs until the end of January, 2021.
Labels: art and culture, dumaguete, painting, sculpture
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Sunday, January 10, 2021
5:14 PM |
Michael Apted, 1941-2021
Unfinished business is my one constant haunting spectre, and there's no denying its place as motivation in ghost stories. When I heard of the death of director Michael Apted [1941-2021] today, the immediate thought that came to me was: "What happens now to the
Up documentary series?" And a genuine restless concern stirred me to a molehill of anxiety. Apted has made some outstanding films -- notably
Agatha [1979],
Coal Miner's Daughter [1980],
Gorillas in the Mist [1988],
Class Action [1991],
Thunderheart [1992],
Moving the Mountain [1994],
Nell [1994], and
The World is Not Enough [1999] -- but his reputation as filmmaker lies in one of the grandest [and until now, continuous] undertaking in cinema: the 'Up' documentary series, which film critic Roger Ebert once called the "noblest project in cinema history." Ebert wrote: "Every seven years, the British director Michael Apted revisits a group of people whose lives he has been chronicling since they were children. As he chats with them about how things are going, his films penetrate to the central mystery of life, asking the same questions that Wim Wenders poses in
Wings of Desire: Why am I me and why not you? Why am I here and why not there? / They also strike me as an inspired, even noble, use of the film medium. No other art form can capture so well the look in an eye, the feeling in an expression, the thoughts that go unspoken between the words. To look at these films, as I have every seven years, is to meditate on the astonishing fact that man is the only animal that knows it lives in time." What's astonishing was that it wasn't even Apted's project to begin with.
Seven Up, the first film of the series, was released on Granada Television in 1964, and was directed by Paul Almond, with Apted serving as researcher. When the second installation,
7 Plus Seven, came seven years later, Apted was at the helm, and he'd been following most of them ever since.
63 Up, the latest film in the series, was only released in 2019, and I ranked it tenth in my Top 60 Films of that year. There will be no
70 Up, which is sad. With our loss of Apted is our equal loss in cinema culture.
Further tributes:
The New York Times: Michael Apted, Versatile Director Known for ‘Up’ Series, Dies at 79.
The Guardian: Michael Apted, 1941-2021: tributes paid to ‘visionary’ director of Up series.
Variety: Michael Apted, Director of ‘Coal Miner’s Daughter’ and ‘Up’ Series of Documentaries, Dies at 79.
The Hollywood Reporter: Michael Apted, 'Coal Miner's Daughter' Director and 'Seven Up' Documentarian, Dies at 79.
Rolling Stone: Michael Apted, ‘Coal Miner’s Daughter’ and ‘Up’ Series Director, Dead at 79.
Labels: documentaries, film, obituary, people
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3:01 PM |
Nights By the Sea
This is what I love to do: occasionally go out at night to Piapi Beach, to stare out into the dark sea from the sea wall, the high tide at my feet.
Labels: dumaguete, life
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Saturday, January 09, 2021
12:12 AM |
Contemplating a New Year
I once read somewhere that the song we most associate with the New Year—“
Auld Lang Syne,” a poem penned by Robert Burns in 1788 and set to the tune of a Scottish traditional folk song—is not really about the year that’s still to come: it is a dirge for the one that’s about to pass.
The song is a nostalgic exercise in looking back, a trip through memory with old friends. In the standard longer version of six stanzas (including the chorus), it recalls various kinds of frolic with dear friends, and talks about days spent with them running about the hills, picking fine daisies, paddling in streams all day, drinking pints of beer—but their flimsy anchor is in ephemeral time (the past is always an unreachable country), which confesses an acknowledgment that what’s in store could be forgetting, or even separation (“but seas between us broad have roared since auld lang syne”). Hence, a “dirge,” a funeral lament for untwining connections disguised as a merry anthem for New Year time.
It’s a sad song.
I think we mostly sing it now with some awareness of its subtly mournful nature—
you feel it, too, right? those lilts in the song that maps a subterfuge of sorrow?—but we have now embraced the “goodbye” in “Auld Lang Syne” no longer as a marker for forgetting ties, but as a marker for bidding farewell to the old year, which we have personified into some curmudgeonly phantom figure with four digits for a name, all pockmarked and crippled by the unfortunate events, misfortunes, and bad decisions we’ve met and wrestled with in the grind and heels of the immediate 365 days. This personification is a specter of our bundled up disappointments and recriminations, which then we are all so eager to scrap and to banish away, in the faith of wiping our slate clean.
It’s almost amusing to consider how human beings have developed this uncanny ability to draw a definite line to boundary time, and to attach psychic importance to their significations—that’s the “old year” [regrets and sorrows], this is the “new year” [hope, starting anew, the resolutions of becoming our better selves]. And we do believe in it, this psychic demarcation in time, even the most pessimistic of us. Culture and human psychology have thoroughly embedded these expectation in us, it’s practically part of our DNA. To be human after all is to know yearning—and January 1st has become a culturally established celebration of this. If you could bottle that collective yearning that bursts in the 24-hour cycle of New Year’s Day, it could power industries. I like to think of the fireworks we launch as kindling to that fuel, not just driving away old demons with noise and light but also as a glimpse into our collective yearning for better possibilities.
It’s amusing because we know, deep down, that life does not really work this way. There are no driving away demons, there are no clean slates—all continue as they are, both the good and the bad, a flow of things that know no invisible demarcations in time.
But you know what? There’s no denying the spring to our steps, energized by hope, as we scurry about in the first hours of the first day of January. There’s no denying the psychic lift. There’s no denying the eager want for the better, and our entry into still young possibilities. We will never begrudge ourselves this, even if we know it’s a crutch. Whatever works.
I am reminded of
this recent wonderful cartoon the artist Christopher Grady did for his Lunarbaboon strip just around New Year time. In it, we find a man in conversation with Year 2020, a gentle hulk of a creature rendered in blue. They’re both sitting on a curb, pensive in dialogue.
“You were awful to us,” the man tells Year 2020.
“That’s not fair,” Year 2020 replies, and then continues: “Stupid human decisions and bad luck caused your pain, not me… If you don’t take responsibility for some of your misery, 2021 will be no different.”
The man turns to him with pleading eyes, and says, “Listen… I’m exhausted... I’m angry... I’m sad… I just want something to blame.” A beat. “Can you just keep being a jerk?”
Year 2020 sigh deeply. “Fine.”
And then suddenly sporting an awful, villainous expression, Year 2020 blurts out: “I took Alex Trebek!”
Dramatically covering his mouth in horror, the man responds: “You monster!”
I love this installment of Lunarbaboon because it hilariously dramatizes our plight—but also goes for the jugular with various realizations succinctly illustrated. First, that time [i.e., years] is a neutral entity, which can be defined only by human decisions and luck. 2020 was not, per se, a bad year—it became a “bad year” primarily because a pandemic was unleashed, most likely because of factors figuring in climate change, exacerbated by a dictatorial menace of a country which values silence and strong man rule over transparency, and then compounded by bad governance everywhere else, complete with people ignoring good science to embrace denial [“COVID is a hoax!”] and misinformation [“Hydroxychloroquine is the cure!”]. For the Philippines and for the U.S., we are also reaping the political decisions we made in 2016, inheriting current leadership ineptness for the false rapture of populism.
Second, that if we not acknowledge our own culpability and learn from these mistakes, we’d only be dancing the old cha-cha of the old year.
And third, that sometimes we just want to vent and unleash our frustrations on something. The Year 2020 has become a totem for that, a ready scapegoat for our own shortcomings. It is our ready-made monster to be tarred and banished in the yearning for better things. So be it. In Lunarbaboon, at least Year 2020 is graceful enough to agree to play demon in our theatre of starting over.
I still like to think of 2020 as a necessary corrective to our complacencies. We needed the old world—which was hurtling so precariously into yet-unseen but most likely hellish repercussions of our unbridled greed—to stop in its tracks, and take stock. Stopping would have been impossible in the old normal. It took a rampaging virus to empty our airports, highways, and factories, and to force us into a prolonged communion with self in the lockdown. What have we learned about ourselves and our place in the world since? Did we even learn anything, or are we rearing to go back to the grind of the old, with lessons unlearned?
I’m still learning my lessons, comprehending—little by little—my life and my world in the light of necessary upheaval. I know 2021 is not just a “new” year; deep down, I’m gingerly embracing a new world, maybe a new life.
All that hopeful inchoateness I tried to distill to a kind of a ritual last New Year’s Day: I went to sleep at the stroke of midnight, having spent the eve on my own, by choice. I woke up early, after a good sleep, and then I went to see the first sunrise of the year off Piapi Beach. I knew I have not done such a thing since the year 2000—but what compelled me was the urgency of its symbolism: to embrace the new that’s to come after a hellish, albeit corrective, year.
I wanted to start the year walking, and the sunrise would be a good rest stop. On the Flores Avenue seawall, waiting for the sky to brighten in the horizon, I meditated, I prayed. And then when things were sunny enough around 6 AM, I stood up and continued on my regular walking route—and followed my feet to my mother’s house in Bantayan, utterly surprising her with my visit. We prayed for the new year, and then we had breakfast. As simple as that—but the reverberations of personal meaning from all these was resounding for me, and hopefully enough to light the path of the next twelve months.
We need our symbols, our songs, our singularly optimistic resolutions now, more than ever.
Happy New Year, everyone!
[Photo by Justine Megan Yu]
Labels: coronavirus, life, new year
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Wednesday, January 06, 2021
10:00 AM |
Poetry Wednesday, No. 54.
Something for the New Year...
Labels: poetry
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Tuesday, January 05, 2021
8:04 PM |
A Covid Scare, Part 3
There is cold brutality in numbers. As of this writing, Negros Oriental has recorded 47 new cases, and also 19 new recoveries, bringing the total number of local active cases to 174. Dumaguete currently has 104 active cases and remains as the province’s COVID-19 epicenter. “This is also the first time that any city or town in the province recorded more than 100 active cases in its area alone since the pandemic began,” the news report I’m reading goes.
Tanjay comes with the second highest count with 16 active cases, followed by Sibulan with 13, and Siaton with 10. Valencia has six active cases, Zamboanguita has five, Amlan has four, while Bayawan and Guihulngan have three each. Bacong and San Jose have two cases, while Bais, Mabinay, Manjuyod, Bindoy, Ayungon, and Dauin each have one active case. The total case count for Negros Oriental as of this writing is at 984—with 782 recoveries,
but also 28 deaths.
Twenty-eight deaths—anonymous, for the most part—in one province is one too many, as far as we should be concerned. Taking into account the worldwide scope, the number is even grimmer:
1.85 million dead. There is no processing that number, especially for an illness that began early last year being downplayed by many as “just another flu.”
That indifference is hard to break.
We are told, for example, that numbers do not lie—but alas, they also have a flattening effect on most people. People are made curiously apathetic by numbers, a psychological phenomenon known as “psychic numbing,” which causes us to feel indifferent to the suffering of large numbers of people. It is the same curious indifference we feel when we regard the body count of a distant plane crash, the casualties of a faraway war, the victims in the thousands of a so-called “drug war.” It is the same curious indifference that makes some people deny the Holocaust. It is the same curious indifference that made Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin say, “One death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.”
It is the same curious indifference that makes so many of us in Dumaguete complacent in the midst of a pandemic. There are too many people no longer wearing masks, too many people no longer physically distancing, too many people partying in numbers beyond the new accepted limits. The community transmission has been underway since October when bureaucratic indifference became our weak link, and the infamous “APOR” became the target of our outrage—and yet many of us still go about as if normalcy is still the norm.
It’s easy to see where this indifference spring from. Fear subsides, and we learn to believe ourselves to be Teflon to danger. The threat is also invisible—hence our guard is mostly down, our enemy a phantom we cannot even begin to comprehend. The lockdown has also been taxing in its boredom—hence our search for connection, for defiance against what we are told not to do. The hard information about the disease comes to us in trickles, and must swim and compete in an ocean filled with fake news—hence our propensity to believe in ardent conspiracy theorists.
In my case, the diligence of the early months soon gave way, slowly, to a wanting for old normalcy. By November, I was again meeting friends, having dinners, reconnecting with the old life—all with a nod towards protocol [masks and social distancing] and the assorted theatre of safety we’ve come to ritualize [temperature guns and registration books and disinfectant mats], but minus the urgency that once characterized our lives in the pandemic.
And then the fever came, and with it the realization that the time to let our guard down is never now.
On Day 6, I was finally able to call the Dumaguete COVID hotline. I knew the seventh day was crucial: this was how long it took, on average, for some patients in Wuhan, China to be admitted to the hospital after their symptoms started, many developing shortness of breath on this day.
But by then my fever was gone, although my loss of taste persisted in an ugly way and my body felt ravaged still, like a rag doll violated by the most fearsome of child’s play. Still, no cough!—its absence felt like a kind of hope.
The hotline consists of three numbers, each one attended to by a name. I chose Hannah at 0935-272-2440, who listened to me—and then referred me to Gem from Lo-oc Health Center, to be nearest my local health monitor. Gem was a patient and calm voice at the other end of the line, careful and sufficient in her questioning. She recommended that I self-isolate for the next seven days; my symptoms were not harrowing enough, perhaps, to require going to the hospital. But I was required to monitor my temperature on a daily basis.
“Would you like for us to come to your house to monitor your symptoms? Or would you prefer you monitoring for us and reporting by phone?” Gem asked.
“What’s with these options?”
Apparently, they have developed this protocol to shield people from stray eyes and busy tongues in the neighborhood—the presence of health workers in the vicinity causes unease. I chose the option to phone in.
But I also wanted a test. I wanted the sureness of definitely knowing. I was told that, following local protocol, I was not in immediate need for a swab test—but a “rapid test” [the antigen test which detects protein fragments specific to the coronavirus, which has a rapid turnaround time for results] could be arranged at the end of my fourteenth day in quarantine.
In the meantime, I was to rest, nurse myself, and mark time.
Quarantine was slow and horrible, an elastic time that barely wobbled, finding the hours turning on themselves in a Dali landscape. Solitary confinement, coupled with slow convalescence, does things to your mind that blur the boundaries between night and day, sleeping and waking, consciousness and the realm of nightmares.
“Is this how I’m spending Christmas?” I thought and wept. I prayed once—fervently, for the world to heal, and for some deal made with God that if ever I became better, I would fearlessly seize all the rest of the days in my life. And then, having written so many obituaries of other people this year, I also wrote my own—and sent text and pubmat to the boyfriend, with instructions to post when the time comes.
I stuck to the routine: sleep, wake, urinate, drink the coldest of water, shower, monitor temperature, report. [Some days I was not able to report, stuck in overwhelming sleep that knew no hours.] These days in the doldrums required angels: my caregiver was my boyfriend, who brought me food, medicine, drinks [the Gatorade was most helpful], and whatever I needed to survive—all the while keeping his distance, his face masked up and shielded.
Slowly, I got better. The crippling fever was gone, the diarrhea subsided, and my sense of taste slowly returned by the end of the second week, the end of quarantine.
Going to the City Health Office was my first brush with the outside world: blue skies, fresh breeze, the bustle of downtown—each sensation was alien and frightening, yet also exhilarating. I went to get my promised antigen test, which Gem helpfully facilitated over the phone, endorsing me to the clinic.
The laboratory I was told to go to was curiously deserted, no amount of “ayo” could conjure attendance by someone. I waited, and then walked around to inquire about getting a “rapid test,” only to be told to wait at the same spot in the laboratory. Someone appeared—and when I inquired about my appointment, she turned out to be a condescending woman [who will remain unnamed] who gave me some run-around about stuff, putting me in my place about how busy she was, and told me to wait.
I waited, while also texting Gem my confusion.
Salvation came in the form of City Health’s Loryly Palubio-Ignacio—a gracious woman whose quiet demeanor belied a weariness you could almost touch. Why this was so, I would later on learn—after she sat me on my examining stool, after she asked me further questions in protocol, and after she took a syringe of my blood for antigen testing. I asked her questions—mostly about how the city was faring in the pandemic.
I learned then what exactly was COVID capacity for each hospital. [Turns out, not a lot.] I learned about why I was not given the proper PCR test, and almost was not even given an antigen test. [Turns out, both tests are in increasing short supply locally, and they had to revise protocols accordingly.] I learned about how City Health personnel have been driven to the brink almost every day, most of them out on the field monitoring cases and administering tests for hours on end. [Hence, Ma’am Loryly’s weary look.] I asked her whether there’s cause to worry about community transmission, and Ma’am Loryly shrugged and said, “We’re overwhelmed.”
The next day, I received my test result from Gem. “Good afternoon, sir,” she texted. “Negative
ra imo RDT.”
It felt like exultation, a relief—but at the back of my head, caution whispered:
An antigen test is not a PCR test.
A test is not immunity.
My city is still this province’s pandemic epicenter.
Was what I had COVID-19? I hope not, but we will never know for sure. Still, what I had—ugly manifestations of symptoms and the confining reality of quarantine—was certainly a taste of it, and I knew—and still do—that I never wanted to go through that again.
Labels: coronavirus, life
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Friday, January 01, 2021
8:14 AM |
New Year Morn, New Year Mom
Woke up early today, after good sleep, to see the first sunrise of the year off Piapi Beach. I have not done this since the year 2000, but what compelled me was the urgency of its symbolism: to embrace the new that's to come after a hellish year. Besides I wanted to start the year walking; the sunrise would be a good rest stop. Waiting for the sky to brighten in the horizon, I meditated, I prayed. And then when things were bright enough around 6 AM, I continued on my regular route, and followed my feet to mother's house in Bantayan, surprising her with my visit. We prayed for the New Year, and then we had breakfast, where I made her do this pose:
Happy New Year, everyone!
Labels: family, life, new year
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Thursday, December 31, 2020
8:52 AM |
My Top 20 Films of 2020 [Thus Far...]
It has been a strange film year because of the pandemic, but also peculiarly abundant because most films that dared some kind of release despite theater closures mostly did so via online platforms, hence accessible. In light of this day being the last day of the year, I thought of sharing my TOP 20 list THUS FAR -- which could change pending late releases I have yet to see [like
Minari or
Gunda or
One Night in Miami or
Fan Girl]...
1.
Nomadland (Chloé Zhao,
United States)
2.
Another Round (Thomas Vinterberg,
Denmark)
3.
Soul (Pete Docter,
United States)
4.
The Painted Bird (Václav Marhoul,
Czech Republic)
5.
First Cow (Kelly Reichardt,
United States)
6.
Ammonite (Francis Lee,
United Kingdom)
7.
Colectiv [
Collective] (Alexander Nanau,
Romania)
8.
The Audition [
Das Vorspiel] (Ina Weisse,
Germany)
9.
The Vast of Night (Andrew Patterson,
United States)
10.
About Endlessness (Roy Andersson,
Sweden)
11.
Wolfwalkers (Tomm Moore and Ross Stewart,
Ireland)
12.
What the Constitution Means to Me (Marielle Heller,
United States)
13.
Slay the Dragon (Barak Goodman and Chris Durrance,
United States)
14.
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (George C. Wolfe,
United States)
15.
Diana Kennedy: Nothing Fancy (Elizabeth Carroll,
United States)
16.
Mangrove (Steve McQueen,
United Kingdom)
17.
The Trial of the Chicago 7 (Aaron Sorkin,
United States)
18.
Never, Rarely, Sometimes, Always (Eliza Hittman,
United States)
19.
Greenland (Ric Roman Waugh,
United States)
20.
Your Name Engraved Herein (Liu Kuang-Hui,
Taiwan)
The complete list soon...
Labels: film
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In the interest of historical accuracy, this is
not a photo of Jose Rizal. A popular Dumaguete FB news page posted it for Rizal Day yesterday [and got 245 shares!], but I knew from reading about it before that this is not a photo of the national hero. Nevertheless, I wanted to consult a Rizal expert, and historian Ambeth Ocampo confirmed it. See his post on the matter
here.
Labels: fake news, history, philippine history
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Wednesday, December 30, 2020
10:00 AM |
Poetry Wednesday, No. 53.
Something for the New Year...
Labels: philippine literature, poetry
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Friday, December 25, 2020
12:00 PM |
Two Unplanned Noche Buenas
I had no plans to do
noche buena for Christmas this year. This pandemic year has upended all expected things—and while I have not seen my family in months, I also had no wish to be in close range with them, indoors, and trust in fate to keep us safe and in check, health-wise. My mother was nearing 90, a demographic of some concern, and I felt keenly for her well-being—and so when my brother Dennis texted me the details of our Christmas dinner—"Be here by 5:45 PM"—I was ready to ignore the invitation, and keep to an inchoate wish to stay in the confines of my little apartment, eat what I could find in my refrigerator, and do some lonesome chilling with Netflix.
But the s.o. dropped by around 5 PM, full of cheer and love, and wanted to know what I was doing Christmas Eve. "I don't want you to be alone," he said.
Something in his voice, in his genuine care for my welfare, touched me profoundly, and I found myself asking for a lift to my brother's house in Pulantubig, as well as a promise he'd pick me up at 8 PM so I could join his own family for their midnight Christmas
salubong feast.
So I had my family, and my s.o.'s family, for Christmas company—a bittersweet turn of events that makes me think deep about the depths of love, the frailties of life, and the chance we give ourselves for slivers of happiness.
Labels: christmas, family, holidays, life, love
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Thursday, December 24, 2020
12:00 PM |
Ranking the Queer Holiday Romance Movies of 2020
If there was one thing that's most curious about popular entertainment in our unprecedented pandemic year, it is the plethora of gay holiday movies that has suddenly come out, most particularly from platforms that have for so long embraced heteronormativity as a given. I'm talking primarily about Lifetime and Hallmark Channel, both of which grind out these holiday romances every year, unapologetic for their formula and for their sheer quantity—and more so for hewing close to an idea of love as strictly being heterosexual. Gay men and women hardly appear in these confections, and if they do, they play support: the best friend, the quirky boss, perhaps the florist.
But something happened late last year that would alter the landscape of Christmas romance movies this year. Patrick Serrano, writing for
The Oprah Magazine,
identifies the turning point: "Then came 2019, when the LGBTQ+ representation in the TV movie sphere shifted completely, thanks to two forces. First, Lifetime’s
Twinkle All the Way featured a quick gay kiss between two C-plot characters played by Brian Sills and the ever-so-handsome, Mark Ghanimé. Around the same time as this landmark, if unceremoniously unrolled, depiction of gay affection, the Hallmark Channel pulled a Zola ad featuring a same-sex wedding and kiss because it was deemed 'controversial.'"
The pulling of that Zola ad, which was the Hallmark Channel's response to ultra-conservative forces decrying the "desecration" of one remaining stronghold of heteronormativity in the name of "family values," gave rise to LGBTQ voices protesting the decision—which, in turn, put under the spotlight, the very notion of representation in these movies.
Why indeed have these movies resisted for so long gay love? After the public outcry, the network eventually reinstated the commercials.
The clapback must have been swift and brutal because only a year later, we have notably these: Hulu with
Happiest Season, Paramount Network with
Dashing in December, Lifetime with
The Christmas Setup, and Hallmark itself with
The Christmas House.
I had no plans to watch any of these. I've seen two or three of these Christmas romance movies before, and they've always struck me as pantomimes of holiday cheer and romantic love, the snow obviously fake, the screenplay an odious amalgam of retold stories [usually involving disputed real estate in some winsome rural setting, where the city rat learns to relax and give in to love, but not before a confrontation about lies and the secrets people keep], the cinematography a flatness of landscape that has no idea of depth or texture, and the characters overwhelmingly white in skin color and privilege. [In other words, I hate Christmas romance movies.]
But the curiosity eventually kicked in:
what is a gay Christmas romance movie? I wanted to see how this panned out—and now that I have, here is my ranking of all four films [plus a series], from embarrassing inanity to giddy holiday joy...
5.
The Christmas House (Michael Grossman,
The Hallmark Channel)
Hallmark, the most conservative platform of the lot, steps ever so gingerly into diversity—by giving us a love story between a man and a woman, except that the man has a gay brother who is happily married to another man. Well, it's a start. Small steps, you could say. But it's not helped by the blandest of execution—a movie that sleepwalks its way through slapdash Christmas romance movie conflict and resolution. Brothers Mike (Robert Buckley), a TV actor, and Brandon (Jonathan Bennett), a baker, come home to revive an old family tradition—helping their parents Phylis (Sharon Lawrence) and Bill (Treat Williams) decorate full blast their house in Christmas lights and ornaments one last time, with the effusive help of Brandon's husband Jake (Brad Harder), before putting the house on the market. [Real estate!] Then Mike reconnects with high school friend and former neighbor Andi (Ana Ayora)—and a change of heart is in order, making theirs the central romance of the film, thrusting the gay couple into the sidelines, a diversity figurehead for the most part. It wouldn't have been so bad were it not for the fact they're in a film so bland nothing in it is believable.
4.
Happiest Season (Clea Duvall,
Hulu)
From first hearing about it, I was happy enough to dive into this lesbian Christmas romance movie, which felt very much like a corrective. But everything in Clea Duvall's film rubbed me the wrong way, from characters who are all extremely unlikable you could not find anyone to properly root for, to underlying thematic implications—gaslighting and emotional abuse in relationships, among other things—that gnaw at you, and continues at it post-screening that I had to ask myself if the film really made those choices, and what for. The story is simple and unproblematic enough: Harper (Mackenzie Davis) is taking her girlfriend Abby (Kristen Stewart) home for the holidays for the first time—but soon admits she has yet to come out to the family, thus necessitating a ruse that leads to shenanigans of all sorts. Duvall stages these "shenanigans" in strange comic sequences—a misunderstanding at the mall, for example, leads to cameos by comedians Timothy Simons and Lauren Lapkus as mall security too eager to delve deep into an accusation of shoplifting—which I take as Duvall making light of her material, but they stick out so much as sore thumbs they feel like standup comedy that has totally bombed it leaves the audience with plastered fake smiles as they try to make sense of a terrible punch line that doesn't land. This film is a joke that never lands.
3.
Dashing in December (Jake Helgren,
Paramount Network)
From Paramount Network comes a film that hews the closest to a typical Christmas romance movie: finance whiz Wyatt (Peter Porte) finally comes home, after five long years, to the family ranch in Colorado, ran by his widowed mother Deb (Andie MacDowell). But he has other things beside reunion in mind: he wants to convince his mother to sell the ranch [real estate!], which has long been a money pit he's been unwillingly bankrolling for years. Somewhat tense holiday dinners ensue—and it is up to ranch hand Heath (Juan Pablo Di Pace) to convince Wyatt to give the farm another go. Wyatt remains resolute, until he finds himself falling for Heath's rugged charm. It's all cute and comfortable, driven mostly by the believability of the characters and a focused sense of place.
2.
Dash and Lily (Joe Tracz,
Netflix)
Netflix's
Dash and Lily is not a movie but a web series, but it feels like a worthy addition to this list because of one thing: the joyful pairing of Langston (Troy Iwata) and Benny (Diego Guevara) as a newly-hitched gay couple who do not just provide bland support to the titular leads, but actually provide the conceit [clues and dares in a red notebook!] that drive the story, and gets their own arc as well. The main love story, based on the YA novel by David Levithan and Rachel Cohn, is winsome enough to follow: Christmas grinch Dash (Austin Abrams) and Christmas lover Lily (Midori Francis) find themselves falling in love, sight unseen, over the course of the holiday season as they exchange heartfelt correspondence [and dares] in a notebook, making full use of New York as a veritable Christmas wonderland. And then there's Langston and Benny who are unapologetic for their sheer horniness, they feel totally deserving of a spin-off.
1.
The Christmas Setup (Pat Mills,
Lifetime)
Lifetime's effort, like
Dashing in December, also feels very close to the tropes we demand of a Christmas romance movie, including real estate as the B-plot, but I am utterly gobsmacked by how it transcends the formula without losing a single iota of its charm. This film is utterly delightful, and earns every ounce of sweetness it concocts—and while it is derivative and predictable [it is, after all, a Christmas romance movie], its characters feel grounded enough by winning performances they actually do the same to the material. Hugo (Ben Lewis) is a somewhat uptight, if ambitious, New York attorney who decides to come home to visit his mother Kate (Fran Drescher) for Christmas together with his best friend Madelyn (Ellen Wong), and soon also his brother Aiden (Chad Connell). Kate is an indefatigable community organizer who feels compelled to lead the way in bringing holiday cheer, complete with time-honored traditions, to the neighborhood and enlists her family and friends in the selfless service to this relentless march in the name of the Christmas spirit. But it also soon becomes apparent that Kate is capable of more than just community organizing. She is also perfectly capable of setting up her sons, in conniving and subtle ways, for romances they don't think about as even plausible. This includes Hugo being forced to consider what he really wants in life, especially when "circumstances" have him reconnecting with his high school crush Patrick (Blake Lee) just as he is being offered a promotion to his firm's office in London. Plus there's the B-plot of the town's train station—traditionally the site of a particularly beloved community Christmas tradition—which is being demolished for future development by the uncaring town aldermen, until Hugo digs deep into its history and not only finds legal real estate loophole, but also a symbolic full-circle of local queer history. The movie does so much, and does it all with infectious lightness of being.
For further reading:
The New York Times: Same-Sex Kisses Under the Mistletoe: Holiday Movies Rethink a Formula
Cinemablend: 9 Christmas Movies Featuring LGBTQ+ Stories
The Washington Post: TV’s Gay Christmas Movies are as Benign, Charming and Cliche as We Always Hoped They’d Be
Esquire: In the Queer Christmas Movie Arena, Predictability Still Outshines Realness
Decider: The Gayest Christmas Ever: Inside 2020’s Big, Queer Holiday Explosion
Advocate: 21 Movies That Queered Christmas
Good Housekeeping: 15 Most Festive LGBTQ Christmas Movies
NPR: Holiday Rom-Coms Go Beyond Diversity To Center New Christmas Stars
The Oprah Magazine: Lifetime's The Christmas Setup Is the LGBTQ Holiday Movie I Never Thought I'd Get to See
CNN: It's a Record Year for LGBTQ Representation in Holiday Movies
Salon: TV's First Crop of Queer Christmas Movies Range From Saccharine Fun to Superficial Flops
Film School Reject: Make the Yuletide Gay: Why We Need More Queer Christmas Movies
Labels: christmas, film, holidays, television
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Wednesday, December 23, 2020
10:00 AM |
Poetry Wednesday, No. 52.
[Something for Christmas...]
Labels: christmas, holidays, poetry
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Wednesday, December 16, 2020
10:00 AM |
Poetry Wednesday, No. 51.
[Something for Christmas...]
Labels: philippine literature, poetry
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Wednesday, December 09, 2020
7:27 PM |
Poetry Wednesday, No. 50.
Labels: poetry
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Tuesday, December 08, 2020
7:33 PM |
A Covid Scare, Part 2
The taste of cinders in the mouth. That should have been a sign—and the jar of Nutella was still there in the pantry, eager for a taste test and lonely for bread in equal measure. We used to make jokes in the ensuing months of the pandemic that the reason why we were gaining weight, aside from the issue of a prolonged and mandatory sedentary existence, is that we were eating as barometer of health. “I can taste this fried chicken! Thank God.” “I can taste this lechon! Thank God.” “I can taste this green pro-biotic shake! Thank God.” There's some truth to that. In the absence of mass testing, we provide our own road map to uncharted 2020 terrors.
It was easy to ignore the semblance of ash in my mouth. Fevers bring that on. On the third day, finally remembering to eat—part of the pleasures of living on your own—I opened the box of Tuscan chicken, a favorite meal, and stared in feverish delirium at the crispy brown tenderness of the meat glistening in oil and herbs. I dug in. One bite, two bites.
Have you tried eating wet cartolina? Eating the Tuscan chicken was akin to the experience. It was so unappetising that by the fourth bite, hunger felt like the better option. I gave the Tuscan chicken to the cat, and Mouschi felt like he was king of the world.
It was time to retake the Nutella test. I gingerly spooned in, and took it. It was squishy mud on my tongue, absent of all its sweet hazelnut chocolate come-on. That full stop was sadness. I went back to sleep, like I lost a battle, but telling myself I was content on four bites of cartolina chicken and some spoonfuls of cartolina rice. I stuck to fulfilment of my routine: sleep, wake, urinate, drink the coldest of water, shower.
Routine is good but you could not ignore a growling stomach. And I stumbled on another converse mystery: hunger pangs and loss of appetite can in fact occur at the same time.
The next day, I had another favorite meal: the chicken inato, the pecho cut, from Jo's. It tasted like four-day old thick-crust pizza with no toppings left out in the sun for far too long. I chose hunger, and gave the remainder to the cat. But I knew I was playing a dangerous game: I had to put in something in me besides all the water I was taking. So I had some longganisa and scrambled eggs, a meal that came with a preamble: “Swallow, no matter what, and hold it in.” I lasted five swallows, not without effort, but it was my body regurgitating the blank vileness of what I was eating, threatening to push the last bite up my throat, while I desperately willed myself to hold it down. I considered five swallows a success, and the cat licked its whiskers, Mouschi's green eyes conniving and superior.
Taste is a peculiar thing, and like all things most vital in our lives, we take it for granted, its absence a gaping void we are surprised could thoroughly misorder our world. I didn't appreciate that taste is very much our gateway to sustenance, which without, makes hunger like Piolo Pascual. I ticked one more symptom down, this one which had been my secret indicator. And then the loose, watery stools also began. So I ticked another symptom down.
I was still trying to self-monitor, like how we are all advised, harboring the vaguest of hopes that it could be just something else. My friend Malcolm Hiponia, after all, had this to say: “I had all the symptoms. Tested negative twice. Went to urgent care on the second week. The doctor said I had bronchitis, and prescribed antibiotics. I got well two days later.”
You never know, really, until you get tested. I texted Jacqueline Antonio at the City Tourism Office, and she gave me the hotline to call. I was apprehensive. It was, I knew, my Day 4. And I also knew that by Day 5, the notorious breathing difficulties, on the average, could appear. Breathing is important, and I'm not sure even the cat could be of much help in that regard.
TO BE CONTINUED...
Labels: coronavirus, life
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Monday, December 07, 2020
7:29 PM |
A Covid Scare, Part 1
The first thing I noticed about the strangeness of COVID-19 [if indeed this is COVID] is the converse manifestations of the sensations of its emerging symptoms. The body ache that comes with that thunderclap arrival of fever—it was so sudden I felt like a hapless marathoner dropped into a race that had already began—was to get to know your bones. There is no English word for the sensation. In Binisaya, we call it “ngilo,” a phantom discomfort that goes deep under the skin. It was that, but also more: I felt my “ngilo” bones mashed up inside as if they didn't fit, sockets and ligaments mere suggestions. So I lied in bed hoping for the body to find truce for respite. The sleep I got those first three days was reprieve, but when waking came, I was at it again, making desperate sense of the misalignments of my bones, but knowing full well it's just in my head. How could bones feel this way?
I found a quick routine: sleep, wake, urinate, drink the coldest of water, shower, and take Bioflu at safe intervals. I needed to combat the fever, and it felt good to go to bed with the glorious sting of cold water on my skin. It was devilish quick comfort, like the invention of Coke Sakto, but it was enough to remind me there was still humanity in my fever-drenched body, which I found hurtling around my small apartment in delirium. I forgot to eat, too tired to think of food.
I began noting the symptoms I had—all culled from Google which distributed the manifestations on a day-to-day scale, a helpful map in a pandemic world swirling with disinformation. I knew I had hypochondriac powers to manifest symptoms in my body for assorted diseases I didn't actually have. For Day 1 to 3: I had fever,
check. I had body aches,
check. But I didn't have dry cough! It felt like a beacon of hope, that perhaps this was just the flu, which I doubted because I got vaccinated only last September, or what my brother hopefully diagnosed as dehydration, which was sweet.
Denial will always be a necessary defense, especially absent testing. I messaged my classes, citing my dilemma, and making hard choices regarding requirements with the term about to end. I messaged my friends with whom I had previous plans to have Friday dinner at a new restaurant that offered alfresco dining, and canceled my participation. I messaged my boyfriend to update him about the slow ravages to my body. All these while swimming in delirium. No one said it was COVID-19, always something else—plus I was not coughing! I said I'll monitor things, self-isolate, and hope for the best.
My boyfriend messaged back: "Can you still taste things?" I got up, and looked for the best, strongest flavour on my pantry.
I eagerly messaged back: "I can still taste Nutella!" That exclamation mark was happiness.
TO BE CONTINUED...
Labels: coronavirus, life
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Wednesday, December 02, 2020
10:00 AM |
Poetry Wednesday, No. 49.
Labels: philippine literature, poetry
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
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