Sunday, April 20, 2025
9:00 AM |
A Note on Resurrection
What defines my life—and perhaps everyone else’s, in a frenetic world—is busy chaos. But finally, I have found some time for myself, after endless skirmishing with a flirt of schedule, to fit in a moment like this: it is a perfect sunny Wednesday morning in the middle of Semana Santa, with hardly any traffic snarling outside. It is unusually quiet for a Dumaguete day, the silence broken only by the occasional whirr of tricycles, and the soft music that blares from my Spotify.
I am on an 80s mode. First, there was El Debarge (remember them?) singing “Who’s Holding Donna Now,” and now I have Madonna singing like her old self. All those classics from my growing-up years, from “Like a Virgin” straight to “This Used to Be My Playground.” And somehow I begin to feel so much at ease in my skin. I have not even taken a shower yet, glorifying in the snugness of last night’s clothes, and going about the room thinking of everything and nothing, a cup of brewed coffee in hand.
Deep inside, I wish life was always like this—something suspended in uncomprehended, quiet joy, with the soundtrack of your life swirling around you, an orchestra of utter contentment.
It is very much a breath of fresh air.
Maybe it is the prospect of not having to go to a classroom tomorrow to teach. Can you imagine that? Tomorrow’s a Thursday without its prerequisite pressures: there is none of the rituals of having to wake up early, like an automaton, and be the paragon of collegiate springboard of pre-packaged knowledge. I like teaching, but the damn thing can take its toll on one’s nerves.
Maybe it is the kiss of a beginning summer, although I abhor the fact that they have changed the school calendar and I still find myself teaching during a sweltering summer day. I’ve always believed that Dumaguete is always more beautiful in the summer, which is the only time I really love the sun. The humidity is just so, and for the most part, what envelops is a dry heat. That, coupled with the blue of Tañon Strait and the sky, and that general sweet lethargy in the air … what’s not to love?
But maybe it is also the fact I feel that everything around me is clean. Spic-and-span. Smelling softly of rose, citrus, and Lysol. I went to sleep in the early morning today, around five o’clock, after I finished cleaning the whole afternoon, from top to bottom. I had to. The pad had been showing signs of housekeeping neglect of late, due for the most part to the realities of April for a college instructor. There had been an abundance of dust, even those little pests we call agay-ay. After a while, my body and my senses begged for something, anything, to happen.
Last night, the trigger was washing dishes. Which led me to clean the counter top, which led me to the windows, then the chairs, then the floor, the whole enchilada. It takes me about six hours to finish everything. It is not because I am a slow-poke when it comes to cleaning. (Cleaning is my genes; Ma is a virtual obsessive-compulsive when it comes to that, it had to rub off on me.) I like taking my time, mindful of the fact that I do not just consider cleaning house a chore; it is necessarily a kind of therapy, even a meditation. Sometimes I see the world so much better with a mop on one hand, a broom in the other. Can you imagine that? While you’re struggling with the stain on your countertop, you think of this dilemma and that vexation, and you think of the various solutions as well. (Sometimes, the action of scrubbing jogs your brain to come up with creative solutions.) The stain also becomes the metaphor for the problem in your head and in your life, and your rubbing with damp cloth and alcohol becomes the symbolic remedy you know is forthcoming.
I love cleaning the house. At night. It is not at all unusual that my cleaning habits take me to nighttime, almost always around midnight. There is something comfortable about cleaning the house when the rest of the world is asleep. The action of sweeping, dusting, and scrubbing the floors under the shadow of night takes on, for me, a symbolic meaning. It reminds me of a favorite tigmu—or bugtong for Tagalogs and “riddle” for the rest of the English-speaking world:
After a sleepless night covered with a blanket,
It rears up laughing.
This is an ancient Philippine gnomic verse, whose answer is “flower,” although many of my former students in Philippine Literature class would also venture the “butterfly,” even “a chick coming out of its egg shell.” All true, of course, but I like the idea of a flower better. Granted, one can readily see the literal meaning of that riddle: that under the cover of night, a flower blooms.
But it is its metaphorical and metaphysical levels of that tigmu which fascinate me. Why? Because the small verse paints perfectly the underlying process of nature, and to a considerable extent, the process of much of our lives.
Consider the flower. In the evening, it is an inconsequential bud, all closed up, its final beauty lost to us in its being hidden. During the night, botany tells us that the flower virtually “sleeps”—but such sleep is one that is actually full of silent processes, all of its biology working to produce the bloom by early morning’s light.
Or consider the butterfly: it starts out as an ugly, wriggly caterpillar, which must soon go to “sleep” encased in a cocoon, and triggers a process that would soon produce one of Nature’s greatest metamorphoses.
The riddle thus tells us that everything evolves (or revolves) under a process of dark quiet; that when the proper time comes, we can then burst out into the world, laughing.
Isn’t that such a hopeful thought? And so appropriate for Easter, too!
But how is this even related to house-cleaning?
I like the process of preparing for another day, and another week, sweeping everything clean. Clutter and dust diffuse the possibility for change, or for welcoming the new.
When this column comes out, it will be a Sunday, on a note of Resurrection.
It is so much easier to face that, all clean, all ready.
But, of course, I will take whatever it is that makes me smile today: genuine, unforced smiling—something that keeps from within—is something rare, and it is very much welcome. Then again, I have always liked the symbolic significance of holidays and red-letter days—Christmas, New Year’s, Valentines, or Easter in particular, or even The First Day of School. They give a kind of emotional deadline to finishing things. And I have so many things to finish: for the first time in so many weeks, these responsibilities have now acquired a patina of possibility.
Labels: life, philippine literature, poetry
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Wednesday, April 16, 2025
7:00 AM |
Poetry Wednesday, No. 235.
Labels: philippine literature, poetry
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Sunday, April 13, 2025
9:00 AM |
Four Days of Stories, Four Days of Literary Fellowship—A Litany of Thanks
As of this writing, it has been eight days since we started the 2nd Dumaguete Literary Festival, and five days since we saw it come to a very satisfying end. We’ve had some rest, and we’re still basking from the plethora of thanks we’ve been getting from our guests and from our attendees. The most satifying one has to come from the novelist Jose Y. Dalisay Jr., who sent this missive post-festival: “Mabuhay at salamt! One of the best literary festivals I’ve been to (and I’ve been to a lot!) Simple lang, pero masaya!”
We were gunning for that, truth to tell—the simplicity of it all, but one with an ambitious programming—so that remark from Sir Butch felt like a validation. Ever since we attempted to mount the first one last 2024, we wanted to have a literary festival that celebrated books and writers, but also favored extensive discourse. And we also wanted to do it the Dumaguete way: chill lang. No mall to host us because that feels so capitalistic—so we invite you to a heritage house. No formal clothes kay init kaayo—so please come in shorts and tsinelas. And to take our guests around, we have the tricycle. [But vans are also available, of course.] I think it was that vibe that made the literary festival such a huge success.
From an organizer’s point of view, this was a lot of sweat and hard work and sleepless nights. [But no tears! Because the team behind this—Gayle Acar, Ernest Acar, Tara de Leon, Renz Torres, Kaycee Melon, and I, which we call The Circle—somehow worked at all these via our twice-monthly meetings over pizza and pasta and liempo and sushi and laughter at the Acars’—which was our constant headquarters. Our synergy was synergizing well!] The six of us represented Buglas Writers Guild, Libraria Books, Backpack Solutions, Arts and Design Collective Dumaguete, DumAlt.Press, and the Edilberto and Edith Tiempo Creative Writing Center of Silliman University, all of them the presenting organizations of the literary festival. But we also got tremendous help from the Belltower Project and Indievided. [Hello, Jan V. Barga! He was really the seventh member of The Circle].
Our gratitude to our partners, DTI Negros Oriental [especially Nimfa Virtucio and Anton Gabila], the Dumaguete City Tourism Office [especially Katherine Aguilar], Cebu Pacific Air [especially Michelle Eve De Guzman], UNWND Boutique Hotel Dumaguete [especially Marla De Asis Fresnido], CHADAA [especially Louise Remata Villanueva], and Buglas Isla Cafe [especially Carmen Teves-Lhuillier], all without whom this would have been impossible to organize. Our presenting partners also included Inspiro-Dumaguete [especially Suzanne Lu-Bascara], Florentina Homes [especially Gabby Del Prado], Pinspired Art Souvenirs [especially Jane Spiridinova], Talecraft [especially Ria Lu and Maita Lu], Asia Brewery [thank you for the Tanduay!], the Film Development Council of the Philippines, and the National Commission for Culture and the Arts [the National Artist Office].
But without the writers who came, there would have been no literary festival. So thank you to the writers of Negros Oriental, Negros Occidental, and Siquijor for coming and participating [as panelists, moderators, and presenters] and for making the Duma LitFest your home. And thank you to all our other literary guests from all over the Philippines [Manila, Cagayan de Oro, Iloilo, Zamboanga City, Cebu City, Davao City, etc.] for accepting our invitation to be part of this festival, especially National Artist for Literature Resil Mojares, public historian Ambeth R. Ocampo, and novelist Jose Dalisay Jr. Even food writer Ige Ramos joined us and celebrated his birthday here! Thank you as well to our lone come-backing panelist Mina V. Esguerra, whose RomanceClass will always have a table at Duma LitFest.
We also ate beautifully this year, courtesy of Adamo [thank you, Edison Monte de Ramos Manuel!], Beans and Barrels [thank you, Pam and Ed Celesios!], The Dining Room [courtesy of Leon Gallery — thank you Jaime Ponce de Leon and Nadia Teves!], and the Dumaguete City LGU [thank you, Mayor Ipe Remollo!]. Busog kayo mi!
Thank you to our benefactors—regular Dumaguete people who believed in our vision and who chipped in—from Golda Benjamin to Gideon Caballes, from Jenny Lind Dales-Elmaco to Eugene and Niña Kho, from Arlene Delloso to Luis Sinco, from Pristine Raymond to Virginia Stack, from Zara Dy to Beryl Delicana, from Sally Maghanoy to Honeylet Tuanda. Daghan pa kayo. I am touched when friends unexpectedly pitch in to help in significant ways, just seeing how their contribution can actually make things better. On the eve of the LitFest, Marikit Armogenia saw our white monobloc chairs, and she was like, “That won’t do. Use the chairs from my catering.” Thank you, Kit! Then there was also another friend, Renaldo Norman, who saw our brownout problem last Sunday, and provided an extra generator for us. There are many others in the community who have pitched in like this, unbidden—and we are so grateful. This kind of generosity feels very Dumaguete.
Lastly, thank you to Cil Flores whose art beautifully captured the essence of our theme this year. What also made this year’s edition special was the painstaking effort made by Ernest Acar [of Just Guhit ], Kiko Miranda [of KikoMonster], and Elbert Or [of Pushpin] who listened to all the literary panels, and produced graphic recordings of everyone’s thoughts at the end of every panel. Truly amazing.
It truly took a community to present this undertaking, to make true the vision of Dumaguete as a City of Stories. Salamat sa tanan. Padayon sa 3rd Dumaguete Literary Festival on April 2026!
Labels: dumaguete, dumalitfest, literature, philippine literature
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Wednesday, April 09, 2025
7:00 AM |
Poetry Wednesday, No. 234.
Labels: philippine literature, poetry
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Sunday, April 06, 2025
9:00 AM |
Realizing a Dream of Books and Writers
Like many things in my life, a literary festival set in the veritable literary cocoon that is Dumaguete was always a pipe dream—something you loudly wish you could make happen, but is always something elusive, and largely undone. I hate pipe dreams.
Dumaguete has always been a city of letters. Writers have long walked its streets like saints in a procession over many decades, their words carried by the sea breeze, mingling with the scent of tempurahan smoke and the occasional whiff of nostalgia. It is a place that cradles literature, a city where books and poetry and fiction feel as necessary as the salt in the air. And yet, for all its storied past—its heritage as the birthplace of great Filipino letters, its reputation as a refuge for writers in search of clarity—there has always been something missing. A literary festival, a true convergence of minds and voices, a space where writers and readers could gather, not just to commemorate history, but to create new legacies. This always felt like a dream, distant, unreal.
Last year, we made the first edition of the Dumaguete Literary Festival happen, but that one felt like a crazy dream. Did we really do it? And if we did, can we ever do it again? The new pipe dream is making this literary festival stick, and be sustainable.
But pipe dreams do not become real unless you have significant support from institutions, like the Department of Trade and Industry-Negros Oriental and the Dumaguete City Tourism Office, willing to have a stake in what you envision. Without them, we would not be able to do the things we do. And I’m glad we have added other institutions to the mix, like Cebu Pacific.
That is the truth of any grand endeavor. Vision is one thing, but execution demands resources, logistics, structure. And yet, in this city, sometimes bureaucracy or complacency is more labyrinth than lifeline. How does one convince a city office that literature is an economic asset; that a poetry reading can bring in just as much as a cultural show; that writers, too, are cultural ambassadors? The miracle, perhaps, is that sometimes you do not have to. Sometimes, someone on the other end of a desk understands, someone who loves words as much as you do, someone who has been waiting for a project like this to say yes to. And when that happens, the door inches open.
Pipe dreams do not become real unless you have friends who tell you they are there to help you realize them for real, like Ernest, like Gayle, like Tara, like Renz, like Kaycee.
No festival is built alone. And this, more than anything, is the soul of literature in Dumaguete: community. It is the quiet power of an offer, a “How can I help?” that turns an idea into a movement. It is Ernest Acar of Backpack Solutions managing logistics with the ease of a conductor leading an orchestra. It is Gayle Acar of Libraria Books drawing up schedules with military precision, and finding ways to bring in people that I often cannot. It is Tara de Leon of Dum.Alt.Press securing venues and volunteers and musicians with her signature dispassionate charm. It is Renz Torres, also of Dum.Alt.Press, tirelessly rallying various kinds of people to chip in and help [and also comforting me in my cycles of stress]. It is Kaycee Melon of the Edilberto and Edith Tiempo Creative Writing Center finding ways to bring in new voices, finding out-of-the-box means to solve a quagmire. It is everyone saying, “We can do this,” even when it feels impossible. Because literature—the writing of it—may be a solo act, but the cultural work of literature has always been a communal one. One person writes, another reads, another is moved, and a chain begins. This festival is no different.
Pipe dreams do not become real unless they reflect a real need—and Dumaguete needs this literary festival.
For all its prestige, for all its literary history, the city has long needed a space for literary celebration. There is the annual Silliman University National Writers Workshop, the oldest creative writing workshop in Asia, but is it enough? We have long needed a space that is not just an academic exercise, or an homage to the past but a declaration of what is happening now. There are young writers here, voices sharpened by the waves crashing against Rizal Boulevard, by the drone of motorbikes on Hibbard Avenue, by heartbreaks unfolding in the nooks of Daddy Don’s or El Amigo. They need to know that their words matter. That there is an audience waiting. That they are part of something larger than themselves. And the older ones—those who have shaped this city’s literary landscape—need to see that the work continues, that the words they have planted are growing, thriving.
Pipe dreams do not become real unless you are willing to take the risk of failing.
Because what if no one shows up? What if the funding falls through? What if, despite everything, the dream collapses? These are the fears that accompany every grand idea. But fear is not an argument for inaction. Literature, after all, has always been about taking risks. Every poem is a risk. Every novel, every story, every essay—each one is an offering to an uncertain audience, an act of faith that someone will read, someone will care. And that is what this festival is, in the end. An act of faith. In the city, in the writers, in the people who believe in the power of words.
And so, the dream begins, again.
Labels: books, city of literature, dumaguete, dumalitfest, life, literature, writers
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Wednesday, April 02, 2025
7:00 AM |
Poetry Wednesday, No. 233.
Labels: philippine literature, poetry
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Sunday, March 30, 2025
9:00 AM |
Recapping a Life
Lately—for the past few years, to be honest—I have sensed a pattern to my TV watching, and it always goes like this: the first season of a show invariably gets me hooked. Maybe it’s the premise that I find intriguing—a man gets into a game of life and death to win a bonanza; a young man finds he has superpowers, and finds himself fighting his father to save the world; a bunch of rich white folk check into an exotic resort not knowing that death for one of them is part of the immersion. Maybe it’s the crispness of the storytelling [hello, Severance or Game of Thrones or Dark], or the world-building is so intricate [hello, The Lord of the Things: The Rings of Power or The Wheel of Time or Dune: Prophecy], or the intrigue of the format is so addicting [hello, RuPaul’s Drag Race or The Traitors US or Survivor] that there’s no way I cannot make myself watch. Maybe it’s the way the characters feel fresh, as though their existence has been meticulously sketched just for me [hello, Dash and Lily]. I can be enthralled by what I find on Netflix, on Disney+, on HBO Max. And I am also a completist, so I consume every episode with the kind of manic energy that can only come from needing—aching—to know what happens next. I can be obsessed with a TV show.
And then the second season rolls around.
Somewhere in the tangle of new characters, shifting allegiances, and increasingly convoluted plot lines, my ADHD-riddled brain begins to short-circuit. Who is this new character again? Why are they suddenly in Westeros? Was this the guy from three episodes ago or someone entirely new? I watch, but I also… don’t. I invariably forget things. I rewind scenes but still miss crucial details. The sharpness of my understanding blurs into the background noise of a world expanding too fast for my neurons to keep up.
So what do I do?
I read recaps. Religiously. I scroll through Vulture like it’s my salvation. I let YouTube videos made by pop culture aficionados to spoon-feed me the details I failed to retain [hello, New Rockstars!]. “Oh, so that’s why Kendall Roy did that,” I mutter to myself. “Oh, so the goats in Yellowjackets are a metaphor.” I have made my peace with this process. It’s a life.
Maybe it’s not just about TV shows. Maybe it’s about how my brain functions in general. The way I navigate the world, consuming fragments of knowledge in non-linear ways, always needing a narrative scaffolding to piece it all together. It’s like being an architect of my own understanding, building with borrowed bricks. But maybe this tendency to need a secondhand interpretation of things I love isn’t about laziness or even incompetence. Maybe it’s something deeper.
Maybe my adult ADHD is a rebellion against a world that refuses to accommodate minds that think in spirals rather than straight lines? Maybe all this neurodivergence is not a curse but a call—to live a creative life, an expressive one. To reject the dull machinations of an artless existence. To understand the world not through memorized facts and formulas, but through emotion, intuition, and an ability to see beauty where others see only the mundane. The inability to sit still or to execute a task so readily, to follow a linear narrative, to adhere to prescribed norms—I don’t think this is a failing. I think it is a refusal to conform to systems that were never designed for people like us in the first place.
My ADHD says: stop stuffing me with useless information. It says: let me live; let me carve out a life that is rich in meaning, in joy, in discovery; let me exist in a way that is fully, beautifully my own.
And maybe that is why I have always clung to art—to film, to books, to music, to TV shows, even with my kind of attention span—because I also like stories that sprawl beyond the confines of syllabi, that resist easy categorization. And yes, maybe I need a roadmap sometimes—a recap, a review, a trusted voice to remind me where we are in the plot—but does that make the journey any less valuable? Or does it simply make it my own?
Perhaps this is why I find comfort in my kind of creative chaos. I do not need to follow a narrative from point A to point B to understand its value. I do not need a perfectly structured essay to tell me that meaning is there, waiting to be unearthed. I am at home in the whirlwind of half-formed thoughts, unfinished projects, and sudden bursts of inspiration that sometimes fade as quickly as they arrive. And that is okay.
Maybe ADHD isn’t a disorder at all. Maybe it’s just an unwillingness to care for the crumbling order of an information age given to fake news and AI-regurgitated narratives. Maybe it’s a refusal to be herded like cattle, an insistence on taking responsibility for the shape of our own lives. Maybe it’s a radical rejection of limitation, of senseless rules. Maybe it is the quiet revolution of those who refuse to be boxed in. Maybe it’s an embrace of something better, something bigger. Maybe it is a way of being that is fluid, dynamic, deeply personal. Maybe it is a different kind of intelligence that does not bow to the rigidity of the world but instead reshapes the world to fit its own rhythms.
Maybe?
Maybe.
Labels: adhd, life, memory, mental health, pop culture, television
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Wednesday, March 26, 2025
7:00 AM |
Poetry Wednesday, No. 232.
Labels: philippine literature, poetry
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Sunday, March 23, 2025
9:00 AM |
Remembering the Writers of Iowa, Circa 2010
Last March 6, I read the terrible news I knew was coming. The Trump administration was cutting off its annual funding of the International Writing Program [IWP] of the University of Iowa, of which I am an alumnus, having been an honorary fellow of its prestigious fall residency in 2010, representing the Philippines together with novelist Edgar Calabia Samar.
From the IWP’s Facebook page we read: “On Wednesday, February 26, the IWP learned that its grants with the U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, were being terminated. This notification explained that the IWP’s awards ‘no longer effectuate agency priorities,’ nor align ‘with agency priorities and national interest.’ The immediate result was the cancellation of Between the Lines [the IWP’s summer youth program], and the dissolution of Lines and Spaces Exchanges, Distance Learning courses, and Emerging Voices programs. The overall Fall Residency cohort will be reduced by around half due to the loss of federally funded participants; the IWP’s other long-time funding partners, including a combination of donors, grants, foreign ministries of culture, and NGOs, will continue to support writers. We are devastated by the abrupt end of this 58-year partnership...”
I am equally devastated because this program was instrumental in shaping much of what I consider the “mature” phase of my writing. After 2010, I came home to the Philippines, and by 2011, I produced my first two books collecting my short fiction—a book compiling my domestic realism in Beautiful Accidents [published by the University of the Philippines Press], and another one compiling my speculative fiction in Heartbreak and Magic [published by Anvil]. By 2012, I earned my MA in Creative Writing and became the founding coordinator of the Edilberto and Edith Tiempo Creative Writing Center. Did IWP help jumpstart my literary milestones? You bet it did, as it has done for many other writers from all over the world since its founding in 1967. Thus I am devastated that stupid developments in the political status quo would cut short one of the best literary programs in the world.
It made me go back to how I chronicled those three months in Iowa [elsewhere in the U.S.] in 2010. Here are excerpts of some essays I wrote of that time.
* * *
From 17 October 2010:
People have asked me a lot, “Why are you in Iowa? What are you doing there? Isn’t Iowa just one huge field of corn?” And sometimes people back home don’t even bother to listen, and attempt hello with “So how’s Ohio?”
Iowa, not Ohio. They’re two different states, I want to correct them. Most of the time, I don’t even bother. I suspect sometimes that most Filipinos find it easier to pronounce or remember Ow-hay-yow than the airy two-syllable conundrum of Ay-wah.
So yes, there’s a lot of corn here. Red barns and silos, too. The whole shebang. When I arrived here in late August, someone native made a jokey reference to the whole area—from Des Moines to Denver—as “fly-over country.” Which meant that this was Nowhere Land for most people in Continental United States, so much so that commercial airliners just “fly over” it.
But what’s in Iowa City? The Filipino writer Edilberto Tiempo asked the same bewildered question when he was sent as a Fulbright scholar in the 1930s to America, and was promptly instructed to get to this heart of the Midwest, four hours west of Chicago. In explanation, he was told something that remains true until today. In Iowa City, you have the best and most influential creative writing workshop in the world. In Iowa City, the world of literature converges to make it the hometown of writers from all over—and that if you are a writer of some note, you must make at least one pilgrimage to Iowa City. In 2008, UNESCO solidified Iowa City’s reputation as a literary capital by designating it a City of Literature, alongside Edinburgh in Scotland, Melbourne in Australia, and now Dublin in Ireland.
The University of Iowa’s Writers’ Workshop, founded in 1936, remains the finest program for creative writing there is, made world-renowned by the poet Paul Engle. (Today, its director is the writer Samantha Chang.) The Workshop has also set the template for how creative writing workshops the world over are structured and ran. In 1961, returning to the Philippines after their graduate stint in Iowa, Dr. Tiempo and his wife the National Artist for Literature Edith Lopez Tiempo set up what is now known as the Silliman University National Writers Workshop, patterned of course on the one in cornfield country. In its early years, Mr. Engle visited the workshop in Dumaguete—and then invited the Filipino fictionist Wilfrido Nolledo and the Korean poet Ko Won, both fellows at the Silliman workshop, to come back with him to Iowa City. Both writers formed the core that would soon become the International Writing Program, a residency founded in 1967 aimed at bringing international writers to the Iowa campus where they could participate in the community’s literary life and devote three months to their own writing projects. (Today, the IWP director is the poet Christopher Merrill.) I am part of that program this year, together with Ateneo poet Edgar Calabia Samar. It is a privilege that has included such Filipino writers as Susan Lara, Charlson Ong, Marjorie Evasco, Rofel Brion, Sarge Lacuesta, Teng Mangansakan, and Vicente Garcia Groyon III. The IWP’s grandest alumnus so far, among so many luminaries, is the Nobel Prize winner for literature from Turkey Orhan Pamuk.
And so, when people ask me what I am doing in Iowa, I just tell them that as a writer, I am merely going back to the mothership.
Iowa City is easy to get used to, at least for me. Not once did it make me feel homesick, and every single day since my arrival has since become an exercise in trepidation of not wanting to go “home,” because this city already feels so much like home. You see, Iowa City has the same feel as my hometown of Dumaguete City—both are university towns, both are small but sophisticated, both are culturally active in ways that compete with cities bigger than them. In Dumaguete City, we wear porontongs and tsinelas and white shirts like a uniform. In Iowa City, the girls wear daisy dukes and the guys wear flannel and jersey shorts.
“It is my blonde Dumaguete,” the writer Rowena Tiempo Torrevillas—who is both Dumagueteña and Iowan, and so she knows what she is talking about—once said. I agree with her.
The only thing different here is the weather. One day many weeks ago, for example, they said it was the last day of summer in Iowa City. I had supposed they were right about that—but to me they have completely different conception of sun and summer here. The slightest instance of blue and the tenderest warmth here is considered summertime. Once, on a walk across campus on a slightly cloudy, slightly chilly afternoon, I chanced upon a pasty-white college boy who had taken the liberty of taking off his shirt to lie on the grass in front of the Old Senate with its shining golden dome. He was sunbathing. I looked up and there were indeed slivers of sunshine peering from behind the clouds. I found it amusing—the way they may find it amusing that I get so cold at 15ºC. It’s a coat for me at that drop of temperature. “You only need a sweater, or a cardigan!” I can hear them thinking. But my body knows only the vocabulary of humidity—not this dry, crisp chill in the air. Not the shivers that come with the wind.
In my three weeks in the Midwest—a span of time that had been spent in an endless cycle of all sorts of acquaintance and adaptation—my body was particularly slow in its attempt to settle down with this change of climate and circadian rhythm, to the point that I had actually taken to bed, sick with both jet lag and coughing. But I took it as an ironic announcement by my biology that I was—am—alive, that I am responding to strange, but ultimately sweet, stimuli. I knew I was flying into an adventure, and I was determined to wring out the best that I could from it before I would fly back into the familiar humidity of back home.
Still, I must admit that settling down in a new place also requires a certain kind of diligence to get out of an instant habit of cocooning. It is entirely understandable and entirely human, of course, this instinct to carve out a space of warmth and the relatively familiar amidst strangeness. A new place, after all, assaults you with volleys of newness—and the details are sharp: people talk differently here; they do things differently here; they move differently here. The smells and the sounds are new; the texture of things are different; the vistas may be familiar from the movies you have seen, but they suddenly come barging at you with the intimidating shock of proximity. This new place is suddenly your context, your present—and you have not prepared well for that change. Your only resort is to slip out, sink in to that cocoon of your making.
In my case, the cocoon was my hotel room. It is a rectangle of generic space, the type that lends itself well as a canvass for your projections of what makes for home far away from home. There is the one grand window that overlooks the Iowa River, there is the bed with its blankets and pillows and comforter, there is the writing desk, there is the tiny refrigerator that soon gets stocked up with food the texture of which brings back a sense of home, there is the bathroom, there is the closet, there is the television. I stayed in this room for days, barely venturing out.
But when I was finally ready to do battle with all these unfamiliarity, I began to sniff out for that one inviting day that was agreeable. I ventured slowly out into the unknown world that was Iowa City, and then I began to conquer it bit by bit, each step a discovery, each decision an adventure into turning the strange into the familiar.
And so it has. Prairie Lights Bookstore. Linn, Dubuque, Clinton, and all the other streets. The Mill. Bread Garden Market. The Englert. The Java House. A Taste of China. T-spoon. Studio 13. George’s. They have become home, have become part of what is familiar to me. I thought this when I ventured out of my hotel room this morning, after freshening up from a good session at the Fitness East gym: you’ve finally really settled down when you don’t even notice anymore you are surrounded by blonde and blue-eyed people everywhere you go.
* * *
From 27 October 2010:
It is a late Tuesday in the waning days of October, and I am hating the chatter of this couple on a study date in this crowded café. They are on the next table behind me, and try as I might, I become an unwilling eavesdropper into their conversation—something the music piped right into my ears with my earphones cannot even remedy. Sigur Ros, James Morrison, the Hans Zimmer soundtrack from Inception are powerless. The girl is Asian and seems inappropriately giggly; the guy is blonde and strikes a macho pose in his probing questions and corny jokes. The guy says something bland or inane, and the girl giggles and provides chatty fodder for their conversation’s twists and turns, including strange detours into Oedipus Complex and living in Canada. They have gone on with this getting-to-know-you game for a while now, and I am on my second cup of café latte. I am hungry and loaded with caffeine, and I cannot write the story I have sworn to finish today, or else. I can feel a headache coming. It is 7.27 in the evening in The Java House along East Washington Street, a football pigskin’s throw from the pedestrian mall in the center of town. I think about the grocery I have to buy in Bread Garden Market after I finish this cup of coffee. The café’s wifi is down, and I miss the occasional Facebook breaks I take from my writing, where the “occasional” is considerably longer than the actual work at hand. The couple behind me now talks about the “rules” of friending people in Facebook, and I roll my eyes. I think hazily about procrastination, and decide to do something about this habit later. I think about missing gym for four days now. I think about the stories and articles I have yet to finish. I think about the books I have to read, and the films I have to screen. I think about my remaining days in America. I think about time slipping fast.
I think about time a lot these days.
I think about the past weekend in Chicago, and think about how I had spent Monday in a pursuit of cocooning rest. This meant movies and books and general avoidance of the outside world. Outside, Iowa City is getting cold. The cold snap of autumn has gone towards its most extreme. The TV news tells me there is a storm brewing all over the Midwest. There are tornado warnings from the Mississippi to Wisconsin. I find myself dressing in a flannel shirt and a sweatshirt and a coat and a pair of canvas skate shoes. I look at myself in the mirror and think about how, in such a simple sartorial act, I have gone suddenly native.
This is not a usual day for me here in Iowa City. Often, each day is sunny and free of irritating moments—when it does become chilly, the beauty of trees turning gold in the fall offsets it. This is why I am recounting all this in detail, because it is unusual. My stay here has been beautiful, and all that is coming to an end soon, in a few weeks. I think about time a lot these days. And how it slips away so fast.
Here’s what is a part of my normal day here. There’s waking up late in the morning, then gym at the nearby Fitness First, then lunch at A Taste of China along Linn Street (or some other place when rice does not do it for you anymore), then coffee-aided writing at The Java House or T-Spoon, then the library till midnight, then home. On weekends, there’s music at The Mill or beer at Fox Head or Donnelly’s. The bibliophiles among us, who are most of us, go to Prairie Lights or The Haunted Bookstore or Murphy-Brookfield for a relief of their book addiction. We are kept busy some days attending to lectures and readings and film screenings and parties and excursions, most of which are optional. We are told that our primary duty in this writing residency is to write. And so we do. I sleep late at night to catch up on work and reading, aided for the most part by Red Bull in cans, something that is treated almost like water here. I have learned to hate the television a month before; the remote control is hidden behind the set, in an attempt to make turning the TV on a little harder, a mile shy of temptation.
In the rooms around mine in The Iowa House Hotel where we are billeted, the writers are battling with words and turns of phrases—and so must I. It is the best kind of writerly pressure. Compatriot Edgar Calabia Samar is finishing the introduction to his dissertation, an anti-detective novel in Filipino. Hong Kong’s Lai Chu Hon is finished with her novella about girls jumping off buildings, and Russia’s Alan Cherchesov is finished with his novel as well. Indonesia’s bestselling author Andrea Hirata began his fifth novel in the beginning of the residency, and is now finished with it. Singapore’s Thiam Chin O has finished four chapters of his first novel about two couples in an unnamed Asian island after the tsunami. Egypt’s Ghada Abdel Aal is biding her time, having decided not to write at all (except her columns back home!), occupied as she is with pressing interviews and readings and classroom visits. She has so far appeared in The Washington Post, which has done a feature on her as the author of a widely popular television show back in Cairo based on her book I Want to Get Married! She tells me that as a Muslim woman, “sometimes I am treated here more as a symbol than as a person.” Argentina’s lovely (and uncomplicated! she would love that word) Pola Oloixarac, one of Granta’s choices for best young Spanish novelists, makes the conference circuit in Spanish language literature from Boston to Barcelona. India’s Chandrahas Choudhury gives readings of his first novel everywhere. Others are finishing screenplays and poetry collections. We—all 38 of us from far-flung places in the world—are all busy writing, when we are not partying or doing readings or visiting places or meeting authors like James Tate, Samantha Chang, Marilynne Robinson, Mona Simpson, Bo Caldwell, Yiyun Li, Jane Smiley, Xu Xi, among others. We get to travel, too, to get the breadth of America, which is part of the pursuits of this program. So far, there has been San Francisco for me (and Cody in Wyoming, Portland, and New Orleans for the others), as well as Chicago, and soon Washington, D.C. and New York. In those places, the touristy stuff prevail: in Chicago, there’re the architectural boat tour, the art overload in the Institute of Art, the plays in the theater district, the dancing in Boystown, the restaurant-hopping in Wicker Park, the skyline from Museum Campus, the view of the world from atop Willis Tower, the shopping along Michigan Avenue, among others; in San Francisco, there’re Alcatraz and Fisherman’s Wharf and the Golden Gate Bridge, the winding descent of Lombard Street, the bohemian air of Haight-Ashbury and The Mission, the nightlife in the Castro and Valencia Drive; in Washington, D.C. and New York, there will be more of the same. The goal is immersion in the culture, as well as to write. I came here to write my second novel, but somehow ended up writing short stories instead. I am almost halfway finished with that new collection Where You Are is Not Here, all set in places not in the Philippines. When IWP writers greet each other in the morning, our hellos are often followed by this phrase: “How’s your word count?”
You can say that Iowa City is a writer’s dream. When Teng Mangansakan III, who was a fellow two years ago, told me earlier that this experience would be life-altering, I didn’t know if I could believe him, but now I know for sure. Remember those fantasies you keep about spending your days not preoccupied with such trifling concerns like work, spending only time chasing words and inspiration? The residency in the International Writing Program is the fulfillment of that fantasy—but after its expiration date comes the thought about having to go back to the ordinary world, where you have to take in again all those nagging everyday concerns, which compete with the fact of being a writer. Alas.
But nevertheless. To get a taste of this life, to be given this opportunity, that is enough.
* * *
From 1 November 2010:
It’s the first Monday of November. I have been feeling rather down today—perhaps I am just tired from the previous night’s frenzied partying—that not even a splendid hay ride in a beautiful Iowan farmhouse can mitigate it, and everything now to me seems to run with forbidding shadows. Some things are even hateful in varying degrees. The full capacity of this cafe, for example, when on ordinary days I delight in seeing the constant traffic of interesting faces. Or the fact that it’s cold outside. There’s also my use of the word “mitigate,” which I find utterly pretentious, and I hate it. So is my use of the word “utterly.” It seems that in this down time, I have learned how to perfectly cannibalize myself with little irritations.
I use a lot of excuses, don’t I.
The real reason is the fact that there is something inevitable that stares me at me now: going home. How do you go home after Iowa? After the International Writing Program? But I am, all of us are. We are leaving in barely three weeks, and I don’t think I’m ready to go back to my old life just yet. And yet, there are already missives from and of home that are reminders of this inevitability: emails from family and friends, announcements from work, and the constant moans by O Thiam Chin every single day that this is his “last Friday in Iowa City,” his ”last Saturday in Iowa City,” his ”last Sunday in Iowa City.” I keep mum, always in that posture of denial, but in my head I tell him: “I am counting out my last days, too, and I am sad.”
You can see how sad most of us are. We try to hide this silly sentimentality, of course, with smiles and small talk and good cheer and drunken parties—and sometimes, for some of our men here in the IWP, with a slinky black dress or women’s lingerie for a Halloween night’s excuse to let our hair down. Last night, at the ghoulish gathering at the Merinos’, you could feel that pull for camaraderie among many of the writers in the IWP. There was an acknowledgment in the air that we were indeed counting out our days, that we were saying our drawn out goodbyes in whatever form we want them to take, that we were probably not going to see each other again but that we were glad that, for more than two months, we were blessed with their friendships, their capacity for taking us into their lives and making us part of them.
I will miss Egypt’s Ghada Abdel Aal’s smile, for example, and her constant protests about her cheerfulness. I will miss Argentina’s Pola Oloixarac’s wildfire presence, the way she comes into every room and commands everybody’s attention. I will miss Israel’s Touche Gafla’s playful gravity, and his conviction that he is always the most beautiful person in the room. I will miss Indonesia’s Andrea Hirata’s sudden bouts of laughter, and his mission to photograph himself in every single spot in the United States. I will miss South Korea’s Kim Sa-in’s quiet and calming presence—and his totally terrifying Jigsaw Halloween mask. I will miss my compatriot Edgar Samar and the way he walks around with the security blanket that is his bag. I will miss Hong Kong’s Hon Coco’s quiet air, the way she talks to you like you are the only person in the room. I will miss Iceland’s Sölvi Björn Sigurðsson’s tallness—and his wig and lingerie. I will miss Germany’s Christopher Kloeble’s anecdotes, and the animated way he tells them. I will miss India’s Chandrahas Choudhury’ impeccable sartorial sense and his capacity for elegantly working the room. I will miss Poland’s Milosz Biedrzycki’s secret rock star wish and his electric guitar. I will miss being a visitor in Belarus’ Maryia Martysevich’s universe, and the way she can belt out every single song in The Rocky Horror Picture Show. I will miss the United Kingdom’s Laura Fish’s delightful accent, and her Gabriel. I will miss Kenya’s Billy Kahora’s hand gestures when he talks passionately about something. I will miss Kyrgystan’s Turusbek Madilbay’s dancing, and his booming voice. I will miss Mauritius’ Farhad Khoyratty’s Cambridge accent, and the whiplashing wit he carries around with him like a weapon of mass distraction. I will miss Ireland’s Michael McKimm’s giggles and his mission to see birds, of all sorts. I will miss Singapore’s O Thiam Chin’s hyper nature and his pickiness. I will miss Taiwan’s Ying Phoenix’s gushing about film. I will miss Pakistan’s H.M. Naqvi’s swagger, and his allergy to the afternoon sun. (Or just the sun, period.) I will miss Brazil’s Amilcar Bettega’s silence, the way his smile seems to just say everything. I will miss New Zealand’s Hinemoana Baker’s quirkiness and deep soul and Halloweena costume. I will certainly not miss Nigeria’s Ismail Bala’s milkshake addiction, and his obsessive fascination for Twinkies and bookstores. I will miss The Netherland’s Albana Shala’s groundedness, the way she makes you feel at ease around her instantly. I will miss everything about Hinemoana’s fellow Kiwi, David Hill, that darling man.
There are the other writers, of course, all thirty-eight of us, each with a piece of memory of each other. Truth to tell, we only have these scant impressions of each other to work with, because two and a half months are never really enough to know anybody. But it is enough to say that given the little time that we’ve had, we gave the world to each other—and made Iowa City in the beautiful autumn of 2010 an impossible place and time to forget in all our lifetimes.
Labels: iowa international writers program, life, politics, writers, writing
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Saturday, March 22, 2025
This always happens to me with subsequent seasons of a TV show I like after the first one gets me hooked [e.g., Game of Thrones, Severance, etc.]. As I watch the rest of the next seasons, my ADHD brain can no longer quite follow the twists and turns, and the myriad new characters. So what do I do? I read recaps of each episode [usually in Vulture] to have them explain to me what exactly is going on. I’ve made my peace with this. It’s a life.Labels: adhd, culture, life, mental health, television
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Wednesday, March 19, 2025
7:00 AM |
Poetry Wednesday, No. 231.
Labels: poetry
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Tuesday, March 18, 2025
4:33 PM |
Portrait by Viviana Riccelli
The Siquijor-based Italian visual artist Viviana Riccelli told me a few years ago that she actually did a portrait of me based on a photo before she met me, and was actually surprised to eventually meet me in person. It took me a while to seek out that portrait, but this is it! You can view more of her art in her
website.
Labels: art, life, painting
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
4:29 PM |
Sleep-Deprived, from a Brownout
I used to be able to function well coming off only a few hours of sleep at night, but sometime ago, I became one of those people who only have energy for the day coming off at least eight hours of sleep. So, yeah, I'm miffed at NORECO's sudden prolonged brownout last night, from 2 AM till the wee hours of morning.
Labels: dumaguete, life
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
3:47 PM |
Workshop Mode
I’ve been in workshop mode for two [maybe three?] weeks now, and it has been exhausting, sometimes exhilarating. [I’m energized when a particular manuscript is unexpectedly well-wrought.] But there are deadlines and expectations to meet and this has to be done. Padayon.Labels: life, school, teaching, writing
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Sunday, March 16, 2025
9:00 AM |
A Personal Journey to City of Literature
A pipe dream is comfortable. Indulging in pipe dreams is safe, because there are really no risks involved, only pronouncements.
You can just say, “I’ve always wanted to write a novel”—and some sort of satisfaction gets sated in the recesses of your ambitions, the pronouncement given, and that’s it. But there is no novel.
You can just say, “I’ve always wanted to travel around Europe”—and it will feel as if with these words you’ve done a little bit of “getting up” from your life as armchair traveler. But there is really no travel done.
You can also look at someone else’s painting in a gallery, and say, “I can do better than that.” But you didn’t. There will be no paintings done by you. But the pronouncement is there, hanging in the air—and somehow that is enough.
But it really isn’t.
The best fulfilment of dreams is in the tangible, not in their pronouncements and not in wishful thinking. And there lies the rub: because most of the pursuit of our dreams actually involve risking it all—carving time out of our busy lives to fill out a fragile schedule of creation, despite the demands on our lives from other things we have also made commitments to—like work, like family, like friends; committing to accomplish the dirty work of untangling seemingly insurmountable paper work or bureaucracy, generally sweating out the small stuff; and developing fortitude of spirit, because you will meet constant disappointments, as well as the firewall of unhelpful individuals who do not understand what you want to accomplish. The road to dreams fulfilled is never smooth, never easy.
Pipe dreams, on the other hand, are easy.
One pipe dream I had indulged on for so long was Dumaguete City becoming UNESCO Creative City of Literature. As a writer born and raised in Dumaguete, I know—perhaps in the most personal sense—how this city has carved a place for itself as an unlikely capital of the literary arts in the Philippines, helped for the most part by writers from Silliman University, like the Tiempos, who chose to stay in Dumaguete [despite the tangible promises of more fulfilled careers outside of it] and have made it the home for which they could steward, not just their own literary creations, but also foundational institutions that would turn out to be great contributions to the national literature.
In 2010, I was one of two Philippine delegates [the other one being the SEAWrite awardee and novelist Edgar Calabia Samar] chosen as honorary fellows to the International Writing Program [IWP] in Iowa City, which just became a UNESCO City of Literature in 2008. When I was in Iowa for this very prestigious fellowship—for me perhaps the most fitting “reward” an international writer can have in their writing life—it dawned on me that this distinction was also fitting for Dumaguete. Iowa City is small, like Dumaguete. It only has one major bookstore; same as Dumaguete. It regularly hosts international writers and literary conferences; same as Dumaguete. And it has the same vibes as Dumaguete—replace Iowa’s corn fields with the sea, and you will get Dumaguete, with blonde people. In fact, Dumaguete writer Rowena Tiempo Torrevillas, who is a resident of Iowa City, calls that Midwestern city as her “blonde Dumaguete.”
Iowa City is also a place whose writing culture is driven by the University of Iowa, the biggest university in town—essentially its own Silliman University. [The writer Robin Hemley, who ran the creative nonfiction program at the University of Iowa for many years, is actually married to a Filipina—from Siquijor.] The famous Iowa Writers Workshop—the grandfather of all writing workshops in America—was the model for the Silliman University National Writers Workshop [SUNWW]; in fact, both Edilberto Tiempo and Edith Tiempo were products of the Iowa Writers Workshop—graduating in the 1950s—Edilberto for fiction and Edith for poetry. And when Paul Engle, the longtime director of the Iowa Writers Workshop, visited Dumaguete in the 1960s to be part of the SUNWW, the idea of establishing the International Writing Program came to him—and he, in fact, invited some of the early alumni of SUNWW to be part of the early batches of the IWP’s famous fall residency. All these literary crosscurrents were already in place when I went to Iowa in 2010 to be part of that fall residency—which is probably why I felt so much at home there.
Since I came back from the U.S., I’d been advocating for the idea of Dumaguete as UNESCO City of Literature every chance I got, including at several editions of the 6200 PopUp, sponsored by the Department of Trade and Industry [DTI]—Negros Oriental, as well as in all my lectures about Dumaguete literature in various seminars and fora, including one on the creative economy at Silliman University, sponsored by the National Commission for Culture and the Arts. In 2014, in my capacity as the founding coordinator of the Edilberto and Edith Tiempo Creative Writing Center, I even curated an exhibit at Silliman Library titled Cities of Literature, which traced the link between Dumaguete and Iowa [already mentioned previously], with the blessings of the IWP’s Christopher Merrill.
In 2018, prodded by former Dumaguete City Tourism Officer Jacqueline Veloso-Antonio, I prepared a white paper for Mayor Ipe Remollo to determine whether we should apply for City of Music or City of Literature. [You see, only the LGU can apply for UNESCO Creative City.] Naturally, as a writer, my bias was clear. The pandemic put these plans on hold.
But when I gave a talk about this very same thing at the first edition of Dumaguete LitFest in April 2024, that propelled DTI Negros Oriental to take the first steps and got me involved in the official application to UNESCO, with the blessings of Mayor Remollo. That’s the story.
We submitted our application on the deadline: March 3.
Now that I’m somewhat rested and have gotten my post-application massage [a combo of body and foot], and now that I’m about to eat my first real [and intentional!] meal in days, I think I can pahungaw a bit: truth to tell, this UNESCO application, which lasted from December to March, took such a toll on my mental and physical health, and by February, I actually found myself getting sick a lot. I tried to persevere [I made sure this did not affect my academic and tourism work], but the anxiety was sometimes just too much to bear. There were promises I made I couldn’t quite keep because of sheer exhaustion, although I still intend to fulfill my obligations now that the big dragon has been tamed.
Was it the sheer ambition of the end-goal, the “internationality” of it all? I guess so. I was so exhausted and anxious I couldn’t even entertain some of the minor blowbacks to the effort from people you would think would be the most supportive. [Some people actually think we are applying for grant money? Where will the money go daw? Like, no, that’s not it. We tried to reach out to the most representative stakeholders that we could contact, and explain what this effort all means. In the end, you really cannot control divisiveness, or miscommunication, or benign disinterest. But most people have been so kind and supportive, even with last-minute asks.]
In my darkest moments, I actually felt I was so alone. That’s not true, of course. In the end, it was a coterie of friends and associates who pulled me out of darkness and together we made it to the deadline. If there is one person to thank, it would be DTI’s Anton Gabila, who was the steadfast keeper of our light, the rock to all our efforts, never mind the mixed metaphors. There’s also the indefatigable efforts of City Tourism Officer Katherine Aguilar, who provided the grease to get the LGU involved in the entire process.
Again, I will take the road of gratefulness.
Thank you, my friends. You know who you are. You have been my light in an anxious world. I have always believed in the magic of trying instead of wishful thinking and pipe dreams; this is our attempt to make things tangible. Here’s wishing all of us luck on October.
Presenting the Dumaguete's bid for UNESCO City of Literature to Dumaguete Mayor Ipe Remollo, with [from left] Anton Gabila of DTI, Ian Rosales Casocot of Buglas Writers Guild, and Katherine Aguilar of the Dumaguete City Tourism Office.
Labels: art and culture, city of literature, dumaguete, philippine literature, UNESCO, writers, writing
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Friday, March 14, 2025
11:00 PM |
The Way of the Wakwak
It is understandable why the color red suffuses much of the atmosphere—and the metaphors—of Pulang Langob, the restaging of the two-act musical play in Binisaya written by Hope Tinambacan and directed by Dessa Quesada-Palm for the 62nd cultural season of the Silliman University Culture and Arts Council. A blood red moon—projected on the Claire Isabel McGill Luce Auditorium stage—is a steady motif in the play’s unfolding, and crimson is the shade with which the play’s lighting design chooses to bathe many of its scenes. Then there’s the title itself, which is “Red Cave” in translation. Red is everywhere.
I get it. Red is such a rich metaphor, since it is on one hand, the color of foreboding and danger—of betrayals, of incursions, and of one specific sense of “blood,” which is deadly. On the other hand, red is also the color of life, of pulsating love, and, once again, of blood, but in another specific sense, which is familial kinship. It doesn’t matter. All of these somehow come into play in this story about a teenager’s quest for identity and purpose, set in a mystical place called Isla Tawak.
The island is populated by various creatures gleaned from Philippine lower mythology, including the kaskas, the sigbin, the kapre, the tikbalang, the duende, the mambabarang, and the manananggal. [Collectively, they are known as “wakwaks.”] It is the setting with which a young man named Lukas [alternately played by Dasig Nalam and Cristopher Anasario, the latter of whom essayed the role on opening night] must come to face his destiny, with a two-fold purpose that begins his journey: first, to escape the clutches of heinous men who apparently want him for a genetic gift he is largely ignorant of; and second, to find his long-lost mother, a denizen of Isla Tawak named Kasing [played by the luminous Anna del Prado], who might be hiding in the island. That purpose, of course, ultimately changes when Lukas comes to know the island and its people—and the dangers they face involving the encroachment of human beings, settlers who hail from another island called Owat. [Hahaha, this is a clever pun. “Owat” means “trickery” in Binisaya, of course—but reverse the word, and the letters say, “tawo,” the word for “human.” Ikaw jud, Hope.]
Lukas arrives in Tawak in the company of his father Jong [played by Mark Peter Lacson], who acts as his guide, and as his conduit to both the island’s native creatures and encroachers—both camps to which Jong, a human, has strong ties with. Upon his arrival and his subsequent meeting with the wakwaks, Lukas spends all of the first act being privy to a series of flashbacks—how the island itself is abundant with natural resources [all of it somehow connected to the santilmo, a rich and mystical source of power hidden and protected in the titular place]; how human beings—led by researchers Jong, Belma, and Magal—came to the island to find a cure for a plague that’s ravaging humanity; how these researchers later on paved the way for other human beings to settle in the island, ultimately convincing some of the wakwak to embrace their ways and values, forsaking their own [Junsly Kitay’s Mamumulong is especially heinous as a Bible-bearing con man]; how Jong and Kasing fell in love—a pairing that eventually came to bear Lukas; and how the suddenly villainous Belma and Magal seek ways to control the island by looking for the Santilmo, which is protected by Kasing, the only one who holds the secret in opening the red cave.
Truth to tell, the story can be a bit convoluted—but it’s somehow easier to understand Pulang Langob as an amalgam of other stories: there’s definitely Avatar and FernGully: The Last Rainforest and Pocahontas in the mix here, with a little bit of The Lion King thrown in, and also a smidgen of Avatar: The Last Airbender, especially in how it ends—but I will not spoil that crucial development in this space. Stories about pillaging colonizers and the native communities they affect are old as history, and there is really no getting away from the usual arcs of this narrative if this is the story that has to be told. They are like the oral epics of pre-history, whose stories sung by succeeding generations of bards are familiar to every listener—but each one appreciated only by one measure: the richness and uniqueness of the telling.
In that regard then, Pulang Langob is a winner in the telling. Ms. Quesada-Palm, the founder of Dumaguete’s foremost community theatre group Youth Advocates Through Theatre Arts [or YATTA], knows why she wants to tell this story: “[The play] explores mythical creatures—often culturally regarded as evil and as troublemakers—and portray them as indigenous guardians of this reservoir of life confronted with difficult choices as they interact with ‘outsiders,’ the humans. They bear local wisdom that has sustained them for generations because of their ethics of care for each other and the natural world. But their values are tested because of contesting ideas, interests, and possibility.” This goes to show the many layers Pulang Langob offers as a story, and it is quite providential that Ms. Quesada-Palm is the one to take the lead in realizing it for the Luce stage. She is very much a sensitive helmer of this story, and she gives it the necessary textures to make the play more meaningful, and impactful in all the necessary places. Judging from the audience reaction on opening night to specific scenes and to specific dialogues, that impact is assured. [She also appears in a brief role at the play’s prologue.]
But singular props—all the flowers in the world!—must be accorded the teller of the tale, both as composer and as librettist. Everyone knows Hope Tinambacan as a musician, him being the lead singer of HOPIA and the founder of the Belltower Project. He is also known for his zany TikToks and social media presence, where he nurtures a persistent—and politically discerning—liberal voice that is, for the most part, unafraid. His work as a literary artist [he writes balak] and as a theatre artist [he is a director and an actor and a playwright and the founder of D’Salag Collective] are not as well known, but this is where I actually find him to be in his most well-rounded artistic mode, where he takes the rhythms of his musicality and the convictions of his social media postings and the expressive forms of his literary leanings, and distills them all in the form of a play. He has done as much for earlier plays he has written, like Wanted: Boarders and Alkansing Alkansiya, but in Pulang Langob he has taken greater artistic risks to tell this story about destiny and purpose and environmentalism and folk mythology and inhumanity and greed.
It took Mr. Tinambacan fifteen years to write this story, which was first drafted under the working title of Isla Tawak. The painstaking writing of it was guided through the years by many mentors, including Neomi Gonzales and Jeff Hernandez in the beginning, and later shaped by extensive workshops at PETA with Vince De Jesus, Upeng Galang Fernandez, the late Jojo Atienza, and Meann Espinosa. It finally made its premiere last year at the Luce, and by popular demand, is now back for a restaging, complete with new songs, all of them arranged by his brother, Juni Jay Tinambacan.
What also makes this production special is the way it connects various theatre artists from across the Visayas and Mindanao, truly making Pulang Langob a veritable Southern Philippine theatrical project. The choreography is by Nikki Cimafranca of Dumaguete; the set design is by Ted Nudgent Tac-an of Ozamiz City, executed by Aziza Daksla; the lighting design is by Anj Enriquez of Iloilo, executed by Keith Marvin Delgado; and the costume design is by Marvin Ablao of Bohol, executed by the cast. The excellence in the various crafts has to be noted, because—the play being the product of community theatre—it is the embodiment of YATTA’s testament: “Community theatre is excellent theatre.”
Still there are things I wish were better in this production: I wish the sound design was better executed—sometimes the mics fail, and the actors’ voices are not loud enough to be served well by the Luce’s otherwise excellent acoustics; I wish the set design—here made very impressive by the central presence of a gigantic balete tree that is also a cave—was movable enough to make way for other visual elements required by specific scenes [like the awkward insertion of a sala scene, when Belma confronts Jong and asks him to take a side]; and I wish there was more economy of characters—Vanessa Santuryo as Cousin Hannah is gone too soon and never returns for the remainder of the play, and I seriously do not get where Mateo comes from, even though he is played by one of my favorite young actors, Sean Montebon. This is nitpicking, however, and does not really distract from the beauty of the play’s unfolding.
One strength that Pulang Langob has is in its ability to evoke emotion. There are moments of laughter, where the audience finds joy in the characters’ playful banter, and moments of palpable tension, where the weight of impending conflict hangs heavy in the air. But perhaps most striking are the moments of collective silence, where the shared experience of the narrative creates a bond between the performers and the audience, a testament to the play’s profound impact.
In the end, I must say that it is the songs that reverberate. The ballads truly break our hearts, from Jong’s plaintive “Liwat Ka sa Imong Mama” from the beginning of the story, to the three duets in the second act: “Ang Kasingkasing Mobalik” with Jong and Kasing, “Nahadlok Ko” with Tang Tasoy and Lukas, and “Sa Damgo Mo” with Kasing and Lukas, which also becomes the play’s musical motif, appearing here and there to underline the emotional gravity of certain scenes.
Then there is the scary undercurrents of Act II’s opening crowd song, “Adlwang Domingo,” which gathers in one space both wakwak and tawo, the latter incisive in their corruption of the former. And finally there is the martial beats of the two villains—Belma and Magal—singing “Bahala Na!,” which is the very embodiment of greed and evil in a song.
In the end, when Lukas realizes what he must do in light of a certain sacrifice, he sings “Lisod Huna-hunaon, Sayon Sabton,” a beautiful song that is both about bewilderment and understanding:
Lisod hunahunaon, apan sayon sabton
Unsa ang buhaton?
Ako bang matuman gibiling katungdanan
Sayon sabton, apan lisod hunahunaon
Unta naa ka sa akong kiliran
Unta naa ka aron ako magiyahan
Lisod hunahaon… apan sayon sabton.
Pulang Langob is the second musical spectacular produced by YATTA, following the success of Scharon Mani, which took Dumaguete by storm in 2016. Both musicals are astounding testaments of YATTA’s growth, with this year being the celebration of the 20th anniversary of its founding. Both are also testaments to Dumaguete’s nascent claim as a City of Stories. The plays say, we are capable of excellent theatre; they say, we have a community of artists whose talents are worldclass; they say, we celebrate this rich tradition of storytelling we have in Dumaguete. Padayon.
The play runs until 16 March 2025. For tickets and more information, go to the Silliman University Culture and Arts Council website.
Labels: art and culture, cultural affairs committee, dumaguete, philippine literature, silliman, theatre, writers
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Wednesday, March 12, 2025
7:00 AM |
Poetry Wednesday, No. 230.
Labels: philippine literature, poetry
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Wednesday, March 05, 2025
10:00 PM |
An 11-Year Belated Inuman
Eleven years ago, before Bing Vee and Karl Villarmea became parents, we had our usual get-together at Hayahay, to do our usual pahungaw about life and work, but we could not finish this flat of Tanduay when it was time to go home. [It was an extra bottle that Karl brought.] We promised each other we would finish it soon. That never happened. What happened was life itself. And kids. These two had kids. And so I kept this Tanduay in my refrigerator for all those eleven years, waiting for our next inuman to happen. [So yes, this Tanduay is older than their children!] That inuman finally happened tonight. I was reeling from the gravity of the UNESCO application, and I said: “I need my old friends with me, I need to drink!” Maygani these two made time, kay busy baya mi. Og kay tigulang na pud mi, we scheduled our Tandy inuman in the late afternoon [5 PM!] at the posh Esturya. And I am so proud nga nahurot namong tulo ang usa ka flat! Hahaha.Labels: friends, life
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
7:00 AM |
Poetry Wednesday, No. 229.
Labels: poetry
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Monday, March 03, 2025
8:55 PM |
Nahuman Ra Jud
Now that I’m somewhat rested and have gotten my post-application massage [a combo of body and foot], and now that I’m about to eat my first real [and intentional!] meal in days, I think I can pahungaw a bit: truth to tell, this UNESCO application, which lasted from December to now, took such a toll on my mental and physical health, and by February, I found myself getting sick a lot. I tried to persevere [I made sure this did not affect my academic and tourism work], but the anxiety was sometimes just too much to bear. There were promises I made I couldn’t quite keep because of sheer exhaustion, although I still intend to fulfill my obligations now that the big dragon has been tamed. Was it the sheer ambition of the end-goal, the “internationality” of it all? I guess so. I was so exhausted and anxious I couldn’t even entertain some of the minor blowbacks to the effort from people you would think would be the most supportive. [Some people actually think we are applying for grant money? Where will the money go daw? Like, no, that’s not it. We tried to reach out to the most representative stakeholders that we could contact, and explain what this effort all means. In the end, you really cannot control divisiveness, or miscommunication, or benign disinterest. But most people have been so kind and supportive, even with last-minute asks.] In my darkest moments, I actually felt I was so alone. That’s not true, of course. In the end, it was a coterie of friends and associates who pulled me out of darkness and together we made it to the deadline. If there is one person to thank, it would be DTI’s Anton Gabila, who was the steadfast keeper of our light, the rock to all our efforts, never mind the mixed metaphors. Again, I will take the road of gratefulness. Thank you, my friends. You know who you are. You are my light in an anxious world. I have always believed in the primacy of trying instead of wishful thinking; this is our attempt. Here’s wishing all of us luck on October.Labels: city of literature, dumaguete, life, literature, UNESCO
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
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