birthdays are (not) surprising

Rarely does it matter to me, my birthday. If gifts are present (yes, pun intended), I’d gladly receive them. Gifts or no gifts, life moves on, and I just let the great aging world spin on its tired old orbit.

But yesterday unfolded and fulfilled some of my wishes. Whether it was caused by some cosmic malfunction or that the fates were playing tricks on me, all I can say right now is that it is the greatest malfunction or the most arresting trick I have ever experienced or witnessed. Plus after another plus. And days before the birthday, there are some interesting instances too.

Seriously, it was all unbelievable.

Perhaps this is a long overdue reward, a compensation for whatever good I’ve done? Nah, can’t even recall a single case, so let’s scrap that out. (Or cleaning my bedroom windows last weekend counts?). Anyway, I was thankful, because being thankful is better than questioning a blessing. And three of the most cherished gifts I received yesterday (and the days before that) were:

1) Greetings from people that matter to me and those who try to be. It was a given that my parents’ call and messages were important and the top of them all, but there was one thing that stuck out in a positive way: a handwritten letter sent to me through courier. That was quaint and touching.

2) “Weights,” my first ever poem that is not critiqued by a professor or a patient reader, is published in the Philippines Free Press (March 26 issue).

3) “Morning Prayer,” my short fiction attempt at trying to be sacrilegious, of which I eventually change everything save for the first paragraph, is published in the Philippines Graphic (April 2 issue). It just affirms that I should do without blasphemy.

our names and history must be dear to us

Purchased because, aside from the quaint cover that looks really good with the rest of its kin (there is Woolf’s or Foer’s or Orwell’s to buy next), Jhumpa Lahiri had been racking up my system every time I passed by a bookstore, which was every day. The first part of the two-in-one book is the anthology, “Interpreter of Maladies.” Hands down. Let me just say that this is sitting now next to my favorite short story collections such as Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s “The Namesake” Rosario Cruz Lucero’s “Feast and Famine: Stories of Negros,” and Frederick Barthelme’s “The Law of Averages.” Clearly, the styles differ from each other—OK, maybe except for the first two which are almost alike, for the lack of better word—but it is in their deft handling of vivid descriptions, history, tradition laced with modern snippets of sentiments both happy and not, make their stories (now especially with Lahiri’s) a cut above the usual short fiction fare.

The stories I thoroughly enjoyed were When Mr. Pirzada Came To Dine, A Real Durwan, the book’s title story, and the last, The Third and Final Continent. The former articulates the history of India without burdening it with encyclopedic information, which is something very notable especially when each fact that is presented parallels to the emotions of the characters in the story. Then there’s Interpreter of Maladies, which deserves its right to be on the cover of the book. In such a compact structure, Lahiri manages to bring a story of growth and (should-be-disregarded) obsession that involves a photograph, a scrap of paper, and a whole lot of monkeys. A Real Durwan, on the other hand, is a story about a doorkeeper’s slow descent into madness. Everyone has read a story or two with that plot but it has been a very engaging read even though I find it the most depressing of the lot. That alone is a writer’s accomplishment. It highlights the soft spot in us for people who we always thought are the least of our concerns. The last one, The Third and Final Continent, magnifies how we see age in its supposedly linear movement—are we getting kinder, richer, happier, or is it all the other way around? Other stories are tasty too, but to divulge anything further might lose the potency of the author’s well-layered but accessible insights. It is no wonder the collection has won the Pulitzer Prize in 2000, and Amy Tan writing about Lahiri “as the kind of writer who makes you want to grab the next person you see and say, Read This!’”

Lahiri’s second work in this book is the novel, “The Namesake.” Ah, this is a tricky one. The whole plot involves a decision, an act done by our protagonist here, affecting one thing after the other—toppling dominoes style. Though the domino metaphor could immediately give the sense that it is all for the worst, I must say it is not entirely running headfirst to that. The novel shares some happy moments too: carefully rebooted clichés on being free, loved, and accepted; celebration of life; and the idea that names and words could change and save lives. And the last, I believe, is something worth remembering when closing this book. Now I am determined to read more Jhumpa Lahiri.

call for the applications to the 18th iligan national writers workshop

The Mindanao Creative Writers Group, Inc., and the Mindanao State University-Iligan Institute of Technology’s Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Extension (OVCRE) are accepting applications from writers to the 18th Iligan National Writers Workshop (INWW) to be held on May 23-27, 2011 in Iligan City.

Panelists this year are Erlinda Kintanar Alburo, Leoncio P. Deriada, Merlie M. Alunan, German V. Gervacio, Steven Patrick C. Fernandez, Antonio R. Enriquez, Ralph Semino Galan, Christine Godinez-Ortega and this year’s keynote speaker, Pearlsha B. Abubakar, 9th INWW Fellow (2002).

Fifteen (15) slots, five each from Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao and one (1) slot each for the Manuel T. Buenafe Writing Fellowship (MTBWF) and the Ricardo Jorge S. Caluen Bursary for Creative Writing or a total of 17 slots are available for writing fellowships to the 18th INWW.

Applicants are required to submit five poems, or, one short story, excerpt of a novel, or, a one-act play in Filipino, English or in Sebuano, Hiligaynon, Kinaray-a, Waray, Chabacano (with English or Filipino translations) along with the applicant’s biodata, two 2X2 photos and a certification that his/her work is original. For short stories, excerpts of novels or plays, please submit a hard copy and a CD with the manuscripts encoded in MS Word. Those submitting excerpts of novels or works on progress—please provide a one page summary of the novel. Unpublished works are preferred and applicants who have attended regional workshops are given priority.

Writing fellows will be given free board and lodging and a travel allowance. Applications must be postmarked on or before March 25, 2011. No applications or manuscripts will be accepted if sent by fax or e-mail. Applicants are also advised to keep copies of their manuscripts since these will not be returned. Announcements of this year’s writing fellows are released during the third week of April 2011.

Applicants to this year’s workshop may download application and other forms athttp://www.msuiit.edu.ph/ (under MSU-IIT OVCRE MMIDU).

Send all applications to the 18th INWW Director c/o OVCRE, MSU-IIT, Iligan City. For more information call Pat Cruz, Leda Gonzales or Ofelia Taneo at telefax (063) 2232343; or e-mail: inww_ovcremsuiit@yahoo.com

the trail to nagsasa cove

When you hear the name
Nagsasa, virgin trekker,

Take note of the beat:

Boom, bugah!

Boom boom, bugah bugah!

Let this be a promise
Of sand between your toes
Of an anthem for the sun
To light up Balingkilat, one
That will soon flank your tent
Like a mother nursing a child.
Think of this walk a tribute
To what you have missed
In cold cubicles in skyscrapers,
In jeepneys and buses beside
Monuments, and on long asphalt
Streets that bound rotundas.
If our forerunners are indeed
Born from the ground,
Then this path to Nagsasa
Is one of the many histories
Of our bloodline. You march

On the very womb of life.

Boom, bugah!

Boom boom, bugah bugah!

That is the drum of your heart now.
You are almost there.
Never mind the wind
That pulls and pushes you.
Cinco Pincos is no comic;
It calls out from the distance
To tell you your fall is necessary.
Remember, beginners
Walk on all fours. Listen closely,
Just listen to every sound
Your footstep makes,
And your path clears,
Your load eases,
Your climb less steep—

Allow the trail to carry you.

zambales express

From the take off in Caloocan with the infamous Victory Liner to reach Zambales at ten o’clock in the evening, we knew there was no turning back when we reached at the foot of the mountain range by four the following day.

My last climb happened years and years ago, and the thought of it alone was not comforting. Yes, one can say the trail to Nagsasa Cove is for beginners, but still it is a trail that requires climbing, grappling, sometimes hopping, walking long walks, and enduring a variety of changing landscapes—especially one that, with one wrong footing, will give you a one-way ticket to the bottom of Neverland.

There’s Mount Balingkilat, there’s Mount Cinco Pincos, there’s grass, there are herons, there are trees (not found in Ortigas!). Every element is overwhelming.

By the time we arrived in Nagsasa Cove, we immediately set camp on the long stretch of sand, a little far off from the beach. When light’s off came, the wind at night lashed our tents like crazy. But no huff and puff could awaken a man in Decolgen Forte and an adequate dose of liquid life (which, to the veterans, is spelled G-I-N-V-O-D-K…).

The following morning—as if yesterday’s revelry of swimming, playing Frisbee, prancing around the bonfire, singing and cheering (boom boogah!) happened a long long time ago—we woke up refreshed and energized (yes, energized, we Frisbee’d and jogged at seven!).

And just like any fateful gatherings that set off in a good start, there was the not-so-good end encroaching on our backs like goose bumps or hair standing on their ends. It was time to leave. After all had packed up and jumped for the mandatory jump shot(s), we hopped onto our respective boats by eleven and drifted to Pundaquit.

This is where we bid goodbye to Zambales to return to Manila in classic jeepney-bus-taxi routine. I arrived at home by nine in the evening. It was a long ride—and a very interesting one.

in her own words

"Pag nawala na yung pera, wala na yung kabaitan

[When the money’s gone, the kindness is gone].”

I did not know the entirety of the story but that statement from an old lady vendor—who I passed by in the waiting shed on my way to work yesterday—packed a lot of punch.

Whether its impact to me is based on first hand validation or a general understanding of man’s attitude towards money, I just find the declaration saddening.

Coming from a woman who sells cigarettes, candies, and homemade sandwiches early in the morning to bring home the bacon (no mocking pun intended) to her family, the words bear all the weight of a necessary means to accept things as they are. Maybe someone’s just in a tough episode in their lives, maybe I am just conjuring things up in my head.

But if what I thought is right, even if I do not like the sound of fatalism, no one’s to blame people feel that way. Look around, even those in the upper echelons of our country are stirring in a bag of controversy because of money—both in the presence and absence of it. There’s Ombudsman Merceditas Gutierrez, there’s the military send-off pabaons to retiring AFP chiefs, and I am sure there’s even more we do not know.

They say money is the root of all evil, but I think money is only evil in the wrong hands. And if that money is gone in those hands, you can say all hell will break loose. And subsequently, kindness will be hard to find.

Until all of this will come to a positive resolution, we will share the same sentiment with the old lady vendor.

deadline for submission of manuscripts to the 50th silliman national writers workshop extended

The Silliman University National Writers Workshop is now accepting applications for the 50th National Writers Workshop to be held on May 2-20, 2011 in the SU Rose Lamb Sobrepeña Writers Village.

This Writers Workshop is offering fifteen fellowships to promising young writers who would like a chance to hone their craft and refine their style. Fellows will be provided housing, a modest stipend, and a subsidy to partially defray costs of their transportation.

To be considered, applicants should submit manuscripts in English on or before March 5, 2011 (seven to ten poems; or three to five short stories; or three to five creative non-fiction essays). Manuscripts should be submitted in hard copy and as email attachment, preferably in MS Word 2003, to nwworkshop_su@yahoo.com, together with a résumé, a recommendation letter from a literature professor or a writer of national standing, a notarized certification that the works are original, and two 2X2 ID pictures.

Send all applications or requests for information to Department of English and Literature, attention Dr. Evelyn F. Mascuñana, Chair, Silliman University, 6200 Dumaguete City.

play catch up

I promised myself at the start of the year to pay attention to the books piling up in one corner of my room and keep up with my reading. January was good; I managed. But lately, this month of February, I couldn’t get pass through ten pages in one sitting. It is alarming. I wouldn’t blame the material. For all I know, my logo-hunger even covers reading can labels, road signs, and supermarket super sale posters.

It must be the weather. Yes, it must be it. If there’s nothing or no one else to point fingers to, I say it is due to the weather, erratic, always giving me the headache. So before the clouds would strike a bolt of lightning on me, here are the books I hope would be loved the way I have loved the books before them:

Ford County: Stories
John Grisham

Life Mask
Emma Donoghue

Wild Nights! Stories About the Last Days of Poe, Dickinson, Twain, James, and Hemingway
Joyce Carol Oates

The Cabal and Other Stories
Ellen Gilchrist

Midnight’s Children
Salman Rushdie

In my wish list, for now (while grappling with my maturing short-attention span):

The Elegance of the Hedgehog
Muriel Barbery

The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore
Benjamin Hale

Super Sad True Love Story
Gary Shteyngart

Freedom
Jonathan Franzen

battle hymn of the tiger mother by amy chua

Forget the increasing uncertainty of the Westerns’ decline from the top spot relating to all things that need ranking—economy, technology, happiness or whatever—as what many reports buzz in all forms of media right now, following the release of Amy Chua’s memoir “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother.” It has sparked a lot of debate but the author is only concerned with one thing: her kids’ future.

I have not read the book yet but the hullabaloo surrounding it is a giveaway of what the Tiger Mom is all about. To mention Chua’s treatment on raising her children with endless piano and violin practices, threat of stuffed toy burning, or zero sleepovers is not enough to raise anyone’s doubtful and appalled eyebrows. It is much more than those actually.

After reading this, this, and this, I know Chua has her reasons of what must be done to what, and we are just here bombarded with our own speculations if we are raised the right way or not. But when does it cross the line? Is there a line between “extreme” and “completely fine” at all? Did you just wish you had a tiger mom?

Child rearing is simply a tricky issue, and the more it becomes complicated the more it is brought up in every household. And Chua is just one of the millions.

room by emma donoghue

I always have little patience for precocious children in literature (which gave my children’s literature professor back in college some serious head-scratching), but Emma Donoghue’s novel “Room” is surprisingly worthy of enduring. It doesn’t feel like you have to endure at all, even if you are reading the words of a five-year-old from the very first page. It is not entirely new, the language and the technique (there is Mark Haddon’s novel “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time”, and there’s Marguerite Alcazaren De Leon’s short story “Yaya”), but what’s notable here is how everything moves logically and breathtakingly from Point A to Point B. To sum it all up, the title’s subject is (could be) much bigger than anything else you have read lately.

cat and bane

It is final. Anne Hathaway and Tom Hardy would put on the leather suits as Catwoman and Bane (yeah, he had pseudo-leather getup in the comic books), respectively, in “The Dark Knight Rises,” Christopher Nolan’s third take of the Batman films. I don’t know with these new recruits but I think Anne is just way too commercial for this upholstered franchise with an art-house feel. What do you think?

weights

I.
Water from the sea
Must be as heavy
As the name
Of the person
You love
Have loved
Or the absence of love
It is both possibility
And impossibility
Like how sea water
That is cupped in the hands
Creates a sea in the hands
Washed of all weight
But still a world of water
In its own right

II.
When Mother had me as a little lump of a girl she said I brought a burden that deserved all the trouble in the world. When I grew up and appeared in her doorstep one day, a duffel bag in one hand and a five-year old in the other, she said she does not deserve this. I do not deserve this. Hands wringing, she recited litanies and that my old room was heavy with cobwebs. What troubled me more was that she whispered something in her just dropped.

III.
What would happen
If Atlas did shrug
And drop to his knees
Will there be more tremors
In the earth
In our bodies
In our lives
Weight of palms
On my face
You shrugged
And left
I guess Atlas
Could only do so much
The shoulders give in
The world is not only his

IV.
I remember being in the backyard and picked two guavas from the ground, stared at them on my six-year old palms. Mother stopped sweeping and explained they fall off their branches when they are overripe. I brushed one on my skirt and took a bite, its sweetness overwhelming. On the brows of the hills, beyond our house, the sun was setting. I believed that every day the sun gets overripe and falls off the sky, its seed growing to full form in the morning. I felt smart.

V.
You offer a bouquet
Of yellow roses
So yellow the air
Around us ripen that
Borders on decay
It is my turn to shrug
A flower should be
Left alone
It has had enough
Heartache
To water a field
To create a sea
For today a dew
Is all it could take
To carry

career changes

I already find it numbing when a person says I look like someone they know or have seen somewhere. But recently, what’s giving me the electric shock deals something more than this exceptionally generic face of mine. It is other people’s assumption of what my profession really is based on this exceptionally generic face of mine. And here’s a bunch of jobs (as far as I can remember) that I have rounded up from the late 2010 to this date.

Writer
I always denied being one. I enjoy the act but I feel queasy toying with that identity. I know my flaws so I keep myself away from that word. But since I am working in a company where, well, I write (or connect words to form) newsletters—and I have a goatee, a mustache, long hair, and a pair of piercings—everyone says I am this, and there goes the logic of the title.

Fashion Designer
When the previous job title of mine (supposedly) has already been embedded in almost every head in the office (yeah, thanks to word of mouth), a woman about my age sits beside me one day and asserts “Mas mukha ka pang fashion designer.” There is no humor in her voice. That’s job number two.

Call Center Agent
All ready for my daily commute to work early in the morning, next-door lady neighbor chances upon me leaving the house and sweetly asks, “Saang agency ka nagtatrabaho?” But of course! Call center agents wear dark blue slacks, black leather shoes, and sky blue kusot mayaman barong in their offices, right? “No. I work in a food company,” I respond and leave her by the gates with a smile.

Musician
Since the neighborhood in the past few days has gotten a little bit chatty, I give in and mingle to one. Predictably, conversation falls into the work category and asks me what I do for a living. I fire out the usual one-two punch of my job description, feeling happy because she is smiling of the things that I do, when she laughs and says: “Akala ko musikero ka!” I stop my monologue. At least there’s talent in being one.

spaces by arkaye velasquez kierulf

1.

In this room I was born. And I knew I was in the wrong place: the world. I knew pain was to come. I knew it by the persistence of the blade that cut me out. I knew it as every baby born to the world knows it: I came here to die.

2.

Somewhere a beautiful woman in a story I do not understand is crying. If I strain hard enough I will hear a song in the background. She is holding a letter. She is in love with Peter. I am in love with her.

3.

Stand on the floor where it’s marked X. I am standing by your side where it’s marked Y. We are a shoulder’s length apart. I’m so close you can almost smell the perfume. If I step ten paces away from you, there could be a garden between us, or a table and some chairs. If I step another 20 paces there could be a house between us. If I continue to walk away from you in this way, tramping through walls and hovering above water, in 80,150,320 steps I will bump into you. I can never get away from you, and will you remember me? Distance brings us closer. There is no distance.

4.

In 1961 I was in Berlin. It was a dusty Sunday in August. In the radio news was out that Ulbricht had convinced Khrushchev to build a wall around West Berlin. I remember it precisely: By midnight East German troops had sealed off the zonal boundary with barbed wire. The streets along which the barrier ran had been torn up. I lived in that street. It was the day after my birthday. I remember the dust covering the sky. I remember being scared. Father had not returned from the other side. The Kampfgruppen der Arbeiterklasse had orders to shoot anyone who would attempt to defect. Father had not returned.

5.

Happiness is simple.

Sadness forks into many roads.

6.

Before the time of Christ, Aristotle believed that the earth was the center of the universe because he needed a stationary reference point against which to measure all other motions: a rock falling, a star reeling through the sky, his heart beating against his chest like a club. He needed to believe in certainty, in absolute space. Without it, the world would not be known absolutely. Without it, the world cannot be known.

Twenty centuries later Hendrik Lorentz needed to believe that every single molecule in the universe must move through a stationary material called the aether, as every human being in his various turnings must move through God. Scientists looked everywhere for proof of this aether. And everywhere they found nothing.

7.

I have sometimes been accused of being a bore. I beg to differ: people laugh at my jokes, and I’m handsome. I would like now to talk more about myself: I don’t like going to airports and hospitals. They make me uneasy. In both cases, somebody is always going to leave. I was born in 1983, and have never been to Berlin. But I have a memory of being in Berlin in 1961. I have a memory of something that never happened.

I would like to elaborate on myself, but you will understand if I talk instead about the sky in Berlin in 1961: it was covered with dust. There were no birds. There was no sky.

8.

Memory is brutal because precise.

9.

She said: give me more space. I said: don’t you love me anymore? She said: give me more space. I said: why? Did I do something wrong? Is there something wrong? Is there someone else? When did you stop loving me? In what precise moment? In what room? What city?

I held her tight as one who’s about to lose his own life holds on. Then she said: give me more space. I said: no.

10.

I have only one purpose: to live intensely.

11.

I wish I never met you

and I wish you never left.
You taste like a river in June.

12.

I’m going to say something important. Look at my face. Ignore my eyes. Just listen to me. But listen only to the timbre of my voice, not to what I am saying. They are different. They are two different rooms. The first is an exhibition of despair, the second only an explanation.

The first is all you have to listen to. So listen carefully because I cannot repeat myself:

“Everything/ one suspects to be true/ is true.”

13.

In 1879 a boy is born in Germany. At age five he’d throw a chair at his violin teacher and chase him out. In time he would develop the capacity to withdraw instantaneously from a crowd into loneliness. At twenty-six he would publish his theory of relativity in Annalen der Physik. He looks crazy, but he is certain: there is no aether, no absolute space.

14.

Sometimes they thought it was the words.

What they wanted to say could not be said.

They fixed the TV, vacuumed the rug,

dusted the furniture, looked out the window.

Sometimes she would purposefully lose hold of

a plate and it would smash to the floor.

Then they would have something to say,

only to begin to say it then stop.

15.

Look at this box. It is empty except for a diary, a book, and this picture in my hand. Now look at this picture. It weighs nothing and occupies almost zero space. I can slip it in anywhere and it will fit: inside the diary, under the box, through a crack on the wall. If I tear it several times, it will occupy a different volume, many and various. It mutates, you see. If I burn it, it will smoke into the air. It will take up a whole expanse.

16.

How many more times

are you going to let the world

hurt you?

17.

My father is an incorrigible storyteller. He would tell the same stories in different ways. I wouldn’t know which ones to believe. So I believed all of them. “There is no story that is not true,” said Uchendu.

Father would point at the TV. He would repeat lines, rehearse the beginnings and ends, explicate with his hands the elaborate twists and turns of every road.

He said: “I am dying.”

I said: “But aren’t all of us dying.”

18.

And I thought the world

was about this leaving,

not about anybody’s leaving

but about this leaving.

The next day it was the same.

19.

A beautiful woman walks into a room. The room is dark. There are no windows. There is one light bulb but any time now it will go off. I pretend not to notice and look away, my heart beating against my chest like a club. If I strain hard enough I will hear a song in the background. What other forms of happiness are there than this?

20.

In 1989 the Berlin wall falls down.

21.

I believe in love only when it rains.

22.

To appreciate the value of land, one need only look into a painting: so much beauty. Buying land means buying the layers of beauty directly above it. It means buying the sky above it. And the birds above it, the clouds, the gods.

In truth you are buying a corner of the universe. You are saying: this is my room. You are saying: I live here. Here I exist.

23.

Your sadness is immaterial. You did

not come into the world to be happy.

~

You came to suffer/survive.

24.

How many words have you spoken in your life?

How many did you mean?

How many did you understand?

25.

Somebody picks up a phone. He dials a number. His voice travels a thousand miles into another country. On the other end somebody picks up and hears the voice. Who is this?– This is me. The phone is hung up. The voice travels back a thousand miles.

Elsewhere somebody picks up a phone and before he could dial forgets the number.

26.

Sometimes wars are waged because there are too many people in too few rooms.

27.

Memory is incomplete–lost.

The world is incomplete–vanishing.

Nothing more happens. You open your eyes and it’s over.

Memory is brutal.

Memory is precise.

28.

In the next room people I do not know are talking with hushed voices. Their secret slips out the window like a cat. It is raining, and I press my ear to the wall. I imagine that one of them is smoking a cigarette. I imagine that one of them is covering his mouth in surprise.

29.

When my aunt died the doctors said the fat clogged her arteries. Every week she visited the hospital, and every week the vein on her wrist had to be ripped out so a catheter could be stuck into her body to suck out her blood. You could see the plasma pass through a filter and then back to the body. If you put your ear to her wrist you would hear her heart.

Before my uncle died the heart attacks were so excruciating he said he’d prefer to just die. They transported him to the hospital, and on the way to the emergency room his heart gave. Mother said my uncle ate too much pork and drank too much beer. She wonders if he’s going to be happy in heaven.

30.
In some house in some province in some country in some novel there is a story of a man a father a child a lover who dies because of too much sadness.

31.

Nobody thought that what was wrong was the love.

32.

She said: give me more space.

*

Arkaye V. Kierulf was a fellow for poetry in the 48th Silliman University National Writers Workshop.

call for submission of manuscripts to the 50th silliman university national writers workshop

The Silliman University National Writers Workshop is now accepting applications for the 50th National Writers Workshop to be held on May 2-20, 2011 in the SU Rose Lamb Sobrepeña Writers Village.

This Writers Workshop is offering fifteen fellowships to promising young writers who would like a chance to hone their craft and refine their style. Fellows will be provided housing, a modest stipend, and a subsidy to partially defray costs of their transportation.

To be considered, applicants should submit manuscripts in English on or before February 25, 2011 (seven to ten poems; or three to five short stories; or three to five creative non-fiction essays). Manuscripts should be submitted in hard copy and as email attachment, preferably in MS Word 2003, to nwworkshop_su@yahoo.com, together with a résumé, a recommendation letter from a literature professor or a writer of national standing, a notarized certification that the works are original, and two 2X2 ID pictures.

Send all applications or requests for information to Department of English and Literature, attention Dr. Evelyn F. Mascuñana, Chair, Silliman University, 6200 Dumaguete City.

longs shots or shooting the moon?

Yes, it is already the second week of the new year but it is never too late to extend my list of resolutions. Though sometimes better read than done, I think I have created to-do’s that I could pull off (hopefully). Besides, I managed to complete one resolution last year (which is the last bullet in this list) until I unknowingly took a cocktail drink with Sprite in the mix in the last few days of December. Forget it. Here’s to defying excuses for 2011!

#1
Completely finish reading a novel or anthology every month. I am a (very) slow reader but I will give this a shot. I’ve gotten numerous books last Christmas, and stacked in a corner of my room they just scream to be read. Not that I’m complaining. This is light-years better than a stack of journals.

#2
Write a new short story or poem or finish writing one in each month. I almost accomplished this last year but due to the irrepressible shifting of the cosmos I failed.

#3
Draft the freshman novel. I have to do this. I am almost in my mid-20’s! (Fitzgerald wrote “The Great Gatsby” at 28, Thomas Mann at 24 for his “The Buddenbrooks,” Kafka at 29 for “The Metamorphosis,” Hemingway at 27 for “The Sun Also Rises,” John Updike at 28 for “Rabbit, Run,” and Pynchon at 26 for “V.”). There’s no harm in being ambitious (I guess).

#4
Return to Tagbilaran this March for some breather and to Dumaguete this May and linger for a week (at the least).

#5
For something that does not deal with words, here’s one: never drink or sip even a drop of carbonated drink or soda (a continuation of last year’s resolution).

that city

Remembering Silliman University and its writers workshop that turns golden this May. (Dumaguete, 2009)

under the light of this year

The 2000’s is quite an interesting decade for me.

Imagine, in a span of ten years, you graduated in high school, felt the diversity of emotional pangs in college, fortunately graduating just in time even with the excess baggage, and plunged into the country’s workforce of which everything you had learned in the previous years were but a small fraction of the demands that was in store for you. Surprise, surprise.

Yes, I had my fair share of disappointments but it was pointless dwelling in them. Because nevertheless, as what a new acquaintance told me a few days ago, it is also a decade of achievements (I can’t enumerate those between 2000 and 2009 so I will settle with those in the latter part).

“Just small achievements,” I corrected her.
“They’re still achievements,” she corrected me back. I blushed.

Looking back, I cannot help but swell with pride even in that oftentimes shaky year that is 2010: there’s the fact that I endured one corporate year that I previously thought was very unlikely; the unforgettable trips to Camarines Sur, Bacolod, Dumaguete, Davao, and even to the undiscovered nooks and crannies of Bohol; the fiction fellowship in the 10th IYAS Creative Writing Workshop; the publication of short stories, poems, and opinion articles in Philippines Free Press, Philippines Graphic, Philippine Daily Inquirer, The Weekly Sillimanian (I just can’t leave this college paper) and Paper Monster Press, all of which I believe was a long shot; and the wish fulfillment of not getting a journal/diary for every Christmas party exchanging gift session I attended.

It was joyful, indeed.

Amidst all these celebrations, I faced the last page of a calendar and felt something drop inside of me: out of the seven siblings, only four including myself will be with my parents during the December gatherings. Christmas Eve (of which the 25th is my mother’s birthday), New Year’s Eve, and many more were almost always celebrated as a whole. But last month, two of my brothers and a sister, because of necessity, were out of the country, absent in countless photographs.

Before I could even focus my eyes on the void, waiting for clouds to grey and release a heavy downpour on me, synching to the tune of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, I thought everything will be just fine. And it did.

Distances test the strength of the ties that bind us.

I guess this is how nature works. No matter how far each other are, persistence and endurance will fill any gap. Like the sea turtles, it is strange but marvelous that when their eggs hatch in some distant shore, the little ones brave the currents and get back to their kin in the depths of the ocean. The sense of home is palpable.

Whether this new decade brings in more achievements or none at all, whether in forthcoming gatherings the family is complete or not, I just have to let the stars align and let them run in their own courses.

Yes, it is still too early to tell that everything will be just fine but whatever each morning brings, I will always try to meet its light and feel warmer, contented than the last.

bye waves

On the second day of the new year, I did the weirdest thing in my entire life. After rounding up my grocery items, I chanced upon a barbershop on my way out of the supermarket, and maybe due to the shaking of the cosmos, decided to get a trim. I was perfectly contented with my shoulder-length wavy locks, except for those stubborn strands that stick out in opposing angles. In fact, I am in the spectrums’ opposite end of the idea of getting or donning something new after 365 days, but I entered the shop anyway. Now sitting on a chair that I hadn’t sat on for a long time, I told the barber flatly: “Ikaw na ang ang bahala” (It’s up to you).

Surprisingly—and luckily—I was happy with the results. I have to use less shampoo this time (And by the way, if you're curious, it all looks like that thumbnail photo to your right, only shorter).

wind

11th iyas creative writing workshop call for submission of application

2010 philippines free press literary awards winners

It was not surprising at all. This year’s Philippines Free Press Literary Awards name Noelle Leslie Dela Cruz and Mo Francisco as first prize winner for poetry (“Discourse”) and second prize winner for short fiction (“Jimmie”), respectively.

(Les)

As for the other winners, Ma’am Marjorie Evasco won second prize for the poem “It Is Time to Come Home,” while nobody got the third slot. For fiction, the winners were Eliza Victoria for “Reunion” for first prize and Daryll Delgado for “In Remission” for third prize. To know more of the happenings of the awarding ceremony, click here.

(Me and Mo)

Now they are thousands of bucks richer. I know, I can’t ask “Magpainom naman kayo diyan” because they already had, and unfortunately I was not there. Anyway, I was just happy for the two of them. I’ve read their pieces in the Dumaguete workshop a few years ago and I can only say they deserve this.

Write on.

new

this way to disaster

By F. Jordan Carnice

The Weekly Sillimanian

November 17, 2010

(In light of a university’s approval of allowing a particular college to remove literature classes from its curriculum this semester).

Let’s get this straight and allow me to ask this question: where does literature stand today? That’s easy. It is on the library shelves, on the teacher’s desk, in the bottom of a stack of textbooks, at the end of our priorities. Literature, or the arts in general, has always been shrugged off by Filipinos it is expected that no matter how hard it makes its presence felt the more it becomes obscure. There is a wealth of material but sadly this is countered with a dearth of interest.

Someone I know says that literature loses its magic when it is imposed. True, force feeding is even bad for cows, but pushing it at the sides as if the littlest bit of relevance is stripped off it is another story. I guess this is the very reason why literature is always deemed elitist, alien, a mad professor’s tool for torturing students.

We make it look like hell.

I respect the fact that everyone knows what suits for him or her, freedom of choice for the goodness of mankind, like not eating too much candy to prevent our teeth from having cavities. But literature is not candy. It is food (as history is to pochero and physical education is to sinigang). And we just cannot turn our backs and deny food. Why? Because of a lot of things, and in my humble ways of advocating its significance for days on end, I could sum them up in four reasons:

1) Knowledge. This does not only cover the kind of knowledge gained from surprise quizzes and field trips but also that distinct awakening or realization that transcends the borders of the academe when reading a novel or a poem. It is called insight. Through this we pick up life lessons that could be far more important than what we have learned in a classroom. We know it too well, knowledge is power, but what use is power if we don’t know what to do with it. Literature sheds light on “how”.

2) Communication. Whether it is in writing or in speech, literature grants anyone of any race of any age to communicate efficiently. That is why it is obvious to say that, aside from being a universal recorder, literature brings eloquence, and eloquence brings permanence. To stress its necessity in this age of tweeting and defriending, it is curious only a handful knows what eloquence is. For a third world country whose people behave like Uncle Sam’s spoiled nephews and nieces, that is one awful portrait.

3) Imagination. There is nothing more interesting, more powerful, richer, and even sexier than a fertile mind. With the right materials, literature makes for well-rounded individuals. Literature may not get us the perfect boyfriend or the biggest paycheck, but an uninspired ice-breaker or boring project proposal won’t do either. Confidence is not enough. Imagination is a precursor to creation and possibilities, and without it life would be as dull as a blank sheet of paper.

4) Lastly, there’s Balance. That is what literature and the rest of the humanities are for. The very essence of literature does not only lie on the archiving of humanity’s development (or all of the above) but also in the making of its needed equilibrium to attain life that is both reasonable and bearable.

Try getting into the mind of a potter. He has the tools, knows the kind of clay, the exact amount of water, and just the right heat of his oven, but there’s one important thing he must never forget: his guts or feeling in order to craft the perfect shape of a jar. That feeling is literature, springs from literature.

We need concrete judgment and liquid insight to internalize what is holistic. If one is removed from this mutual relationship, a day will signal the coming of disaster. Harmony would all be gone.

We are not feeling the coming of disaster yet, not even a tremble in the air, but if nothing virtuous is done about this, it won’t be surprising that we find ourselves in the pages of history soon.

Unless, of course, a book is still existent at that time.

when celebs sacrifice art for trash

It turns out my little flash commentary on a TV show is happy to be in the pages of Philippine Daily Inquirer last Saturday (November 20, 2010).

alyza, read this

“Writing is a genuinely laborious and abstract process. When it is fun, the pleasure is wholly different from the pleasure of drawing. With drawing, I am acutely aware of creating something on a sheet of paper. It is a sensual act, which you cannot say about the act of writing. In fact, I often turn to drawing to recover from the writing.”

- Gunter Grass, 1991

first meeting

The first time the two boys have met.

(David Heyman, 2000)

just curious

What happened to him? And what's his name again?

paper monster press: isang timbulang maasahan para masagip ang nalulunod na sining ng pagtula?

It is a small step but nonetheless gratifying. My poem “To End a Wall” (written a long time ago) is published in the first issue of Paper Monster Press, entitled Pyrotechnic Poetry, which is edited by De La Salle instructor Ainne Frances de la Cruz.

I need this little push to continue writing verses. I’ve been too caught up with my fiction writing these days I rarely produce a sensible piece of heightened language, thus breaking my “one short story and one poem” per month promise. There’s no use lamenting on this, after all, I should have learned by now that promises are meant to be broken.

Anyway, here’s a review of the said publication. Listed below are my fellow contributors:

“Paper Cup” by Ryan Gabby Taborada
“For the storyteller” by Lawrence Bañas
“Frankjo” by Pache Paredes
“To End a Wall” by F. Jordan Carnice
“Lotus Eaters” by Noah Sonnenchein
“A Minute After Six” by J. Luna
“Cleaning Up” by Xenia Chloe-Villanueva
“Transit” by Karlo Jose R. Pineda
“Pre-Wendy” by Raydon L. Reyes
“at Tryst” by Eduardo Uy Jr.
“Gulugod” by Mykel Andrada
“Ang Lalaking Ipinaglihi sa Titi ng Kapwa niya Lalaki” by Noel de Leon
“Paghanap sa Bulag na Alitaptap” by Raul Funilas
“Sahid” by Louise Vincent B. Amante
“Paggalang sa Banal” by Dr. Jondy M. Arpilleda
“PNR” by James Tana
“Pito-pito” by Gigi Constantino
“Harlot [Ang Haliparot]” by Michael C. Alegre
“Sa Damuhan” by Mark Erron San Mateo

generic

There are plenty of things to compare in this world: this bag looks like that bag, her dress is a twin of your dress, or this notebook is a twin of a thousand notebooks.

But being a spitting image of another person? I am not sure if that’s a comforting thought.

I’ve received the comments “May kamukha ka!” and “Someone in here looks like you!” for the nth time (probably, 1,234,567,900th) as if this is a tag permanently clipped on my back. It is not entirely grating, like Justin Beiber’s voice, but I just hope people will keep the thought to themselves because I have my very own mental picture of what I look like, and if the so-called similarity they are talking about defies the illustration in my head, maybe the apocalypse is not that far from happening.

But if the resemblance is strikingly true, well then, I might settle in the shelves of a drugstore soon. It seems that I look exceptionally generic.

12th ateneo video open

Sillimanians should participate in this.

*

The Ateneo Video Open, now on its twelfth year, is an annual nationwide film competition open to collegiate-level filmmakers. It is organized by the Loyola Film Circle, the Ateneo de Manila University’s premiere film organization.

If you are a filmmaker and are interested, please visit this site for more information.

The Categories are:

a. Experimental

No more than 15 min in length

b. Music Video

For any original song by a local artist/band (with proper permission) of no more than 7 minutes

c. Documentary

Of any subject, no more than 25 min. in length

d. Short Narrative

Of any subject or theme (adaptations with proper permission is also accepted), no more than 25 min. in length.

we'll meet soon

The New York Times has revealed that “One Hundred Years of Solitude” and “Love in the Time of Cholera” writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez is currently finishing his new novel entitled “We’ll Meet in August.” I am feverish about this since his last work “Memories of My Melancholy Whores” in 2004 (his autobiography not included) is less astounding than I have expected. It was a lightweight compared to the grand heavyweight champs he previously produced. Even his short stories were better than that! Still, it was a Marquez, and its engaging and gorgeous lyricism made me forget a lot of the story’s fringes or lack of it. So, to Marquez who is already 83 years old, he better be releasing a tour de force that would lift us off the ground like Remedios the beauty (minus the bed sheets, of course).

unsafe

Last month, several members of APO were also tagged in the death of University of Makati student EJ Karl Intia, reportedly a neophyte who succumbed to severe body injuries during the fraternity’s hazing rites in Makati City.

Five APO members were arrested for Intia’s death, but they were later freed after the city prosecutor decided to drop the charges against them.

Interestingly, Makati City police chief Senior Superintendent Froilan Bonifacio is a member of APO. (Philippine Daily Inquirer, October 2010).

*

It is clear what brotherhood means to these people. It is unmistakable, with their hunger for attention and their well-greased machinery to bend and twist the rules that are laid in front of them, they do what they want to do for the sake of a mysterious union that is culled from pain. It is their baptism of fire after all.

After the bar exam explosion and the news above, what’s next?

observations

Two weeks ago, with the television turned on the usual primetime news channel circling on the latest crime reports and casualties of typhoon Juan (International Name: Megi), my seven-year-old nephew sat on the couch, eyes looking straight at the screen, and suddenly asked in a loud voice: “Why is there plenty of bad news on the news?” It sounded funny but the question’s thought caught me unprepared for an answer.

*

I went to Subic last weekend, the detoxification deemed extremely necessary. It was late in the afternoon when I arrived in this house to hear a lot of squawking noise in the backyard. I checked it, and to my surprise, there was a flock of green-yellow parrots crowding the branches of a duhat tree (Java Plum). I, of course, couldn’t believe it, but I knew what I saw. They were the same birds that I had once owned, just one though, teaching it how to whistle and say hello. I approached the tree, but with the littlest breaking sound of a twig under my heels, the birds flew, and I wished they stayed to greet my presence a sweet hello. Well, I thought, they are better out there in the sky than in a cage.


*

I was back in the office after a long weekend (but it was not long enough). I could not wait for lunch break so I went out earlier than the rest. I entered the lift with our purchasing department’s supplier at the same time, and noticing me, he cleared his throat and said, “Has someone already mistaken you as Arnel Pineda?” I responded, “You’re the first one!” I was not sure if that was a compliment but I still gave him a smile. It must be the hair. Finally, after countless occasions of being called “ma’am” in malls and restaurants and other public places, I can at least reassure my physiology as being the lead singer of Journey.

talk

History thrives in communication. After all, if not for oral tradition—passing words of information from one generation to the next, finding its way to the pages of leather-bound books until finally settling in the monitors of the digital age—we would not have the littlest bit of knowledge of the past today. Since we adequately have all the means to communicate by now, what matters most is how to improve it, adapt to the dynamics. When everything is as defined as cut crystal, the next obvious step is to communicate. Write, speak. History will move on its own course.

stubbles and all

They have grown. Sniff. I remember smelling the pages of the first book in the series back in elementary, grade four to be exact, proud to get hold of it after seeing its cover in the pages of a newspaper and telling my sister to purchase one for me as a birthday present. Though people always say (including me) the interpretation in our heads is way better than any director’s vision, the Harry Potter movies are always a marvel to look at (especially Alfonso Cuaron’s ingenious take). And now that the movie franchise is going to end soon, we can only sigh and wait for anticipation since no efforts of dividing the final book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, in two-part movies could deny the fact that the characters have grown up and so as the readers. It is time to move on.

shameless plug: the ball's inflated

People encouraged keeping the ball rolling. But someone interjected I have to make sure the ball is inflated first so rolling it won’t be a problem. I took it as a friendly reminder. Thankfully, I did.

“Loneness,” my latest short fiction—which was sadly refused by the editors of an upcoming anthology because, well, the project did not push through—has found its way to the pages instead of Philippines Graphic this week.

Looking back, I have now published two short stories in this reputable magazine in two consecutive months, and further back, another short story and a poem in Philippines Free Press. Indeed, the pains of writing are the least of your concerns when you see your works in print. For now, nothing could be more escalating than this thought.

Though sometimes I cannot deny the sad and grim postulations popping inside my head (like “Did they run out of contributors?”), I just take the initiative of creating better works if those aren’t good enough to counter my doubts. What matters is that I’m in it, and though little triumphs such as this makes my heart swell with pride, I will remain humble and thankful for the great cosmos’s shower of blessings.

And of course, I have to remember to keep the ball inflated.

nuts until 60

When it comes to comic strips, nothing translates melancholic human nuances into child humor like “Peanuts” by Charles Schulz. Now that the cartoon is in its 60th anniversary, I will purchase all those lovely coffee table books commemorating its staying power if my wallet permits me to. That’s how I love the gang of Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Lucy, Linus, Schroeder, Pig-Pen, etc. Good grief!

Way before I poured most of my time in literature, I drew and sketched regularly in the hopes of becoming a Schulz someday. Peanuts and the world-famous beagle were my objects of fascination then, the comic strip’s wit my holy grail of all speech and thought balloons (until I discovered Marvel). I may not be as passionate to paneled storytelling as before but my adoration for it, especially Schulz’s masterpiece, remains until now.

Sample comic strip taken from this link.