A glimpse of you

The motorcycle skidded, the driver said something; called out your name, asked me if I knew you, before I turned around, and very briefly, so briefly that it never even allowed my mind to register until long afterwards, flashed your image—your face, a little bit rounded now, your faded blue and gray collared shirt, your feet stretched out before the whole length of your body in perfect calmness, just the way I thought you used to do—as the motorcycle skidded past, so fast that I couldn’t even register in my mind the meaning of your sudden presence. As I turned around again you were gone. All I saw were trees, the coconut fronds, some weeds, the wall of some houses, the iron gate of Uncle’s house, and my heart sank.  What followed was the stillness that lay between us through the years; the long quiet that has forbidden me to speak your name. Can we ever cross that stillness? Will I ever hear your name again? When will I ever find the courage to ask: Where have you gone? Why did you leave?  What were you thinking when you used to sit on the porch of our old house? What did we use to talk about? Did we ever have anything to talk about? Or, did we just stare at each other as the seconds and the minutes ticked by; and eternity swirled in a moment of stillness? 

Hearing about you

On our way back to town the previous week, someone brought up your name to ask if I still remember you.

But how could I forget? Those nights you used to sit on the porch, which we’ve torn down long ago to give way to a ground floor terrace that remains unfinished until now. That porch remained in my memory, haunting me in my dreams. It had a rectangular trough, which used to hold Ma’s potted plants that included a palmera, and other ornamentals that made the pit of my stomach churn with longing every time I remember them now. 
Enclosing the trough was the open-air window whose frame was carved with wood of various geometric shapes. 
On the nights that you would come by for a visit—you’d sit on this porch, your back to the plants, your whole frame of a lovely body directly facing us. The porch gave the full view of the insides of the small house, the living room opening to an adjoining dining room, the edge of the dining table directly on the line of your sight. 
What were you thinking back then? I was thinking of hiding somewhere but the house offered no extra space to hide! We used to be taking dinner every time you drop by for a visit but no matter how we prodded you, you'd refuse to join us. Instead, you stayed there where I could not see you, eating me with your eyes, tearing away my soul from my body.  How did it feel back then, to be feasted on by your eyes in the dark, in full view of Mother and Father? It was something I could have enjoyed sumptuously in private, but right then and there, it was such a discomfort. 
Now that I'm hearing your name again, I remember those secret feasting we had, and wondered when our feasting ended, replaced by long years of your absence? 

Pa's Story

Over the weekend, I was lucky enough to bring Pa and Ma to the shrine of the Infant of Prague, which has always been my favorite place, an airy place full of greenery overlooking the city. The place has a personal significance to me because it was here where, when Sean was still a toddler, and I was oftentimes left without a house help at home, I would go up here with Sean to light candles. Candles, I know, have their religious significance--but for me, at that time, a candle was not only the light of my own darkness, it was also the balm to my frayed nerves. The simple act of lighting candles and watching them melt seemed to melt away all my troubles (until I go back to the house again)!
It was this secret pleasure that I wanted to share with Ma and Pa. We spent the Saturday afternoon strolling about, doing nothing, staring at the greenery. Pa, as usual, was his grumpy self. Shortly after we arrived, I asked if he was tired. "Ngano gina-treat ko nimo parang bata? Bag-o pa ko naabot diri (Why are you treating me like a child? I just arrived here)," he replied. We went to an adjoining property, where I pointed to him the coal dome of the coal-fired power plant near the sea. "That is Binugao, Pa," I said, because Binugao held a special place for my Pa. The place always figured in his stories about his arrival in Mindanao. But he said,  "Ambot, kung motuo ba ko nimo (I don't know if I should believe you)."
I told sister, who was left at home, we should just be patient with Pa because of what he endured since he was nine years old. Sister replied, "Kay imo jud diay nang gisukitsukit (So, you really dug it up?!)" and I felt I was stealing Pa's history, as if Pa's story is not my own story; and Pa's story is not our story. As if it was not a story about Mambusao, as if it was not a story about Capiz, as if it was not a story about Davao, as if it was not a story about Binugao, as if it was not a story about B'la, as if it was not a story about Upper B'la. As if it was not a story of our people, as if it was not a story of our country.

Cassandra

In our family, I am a Cassandra. I can “see” but no one believes me, so I ran the risk of suffering the fate of being slaughtered, as Cassandra did after the Fall of Troy when she—along with the rest of the family—was taken by the winning army of Agamemnon as part of the war booty. Cassandra was the distraught woman standing with Agamemnon at the foot of the stairs, before Agamemnon took the red carpet welcome prepared for him by Clytemnestra upon his arrival home. The red carpet led directly to his death in the poisoned tub.

Unlike Cassandra, I did not wait for the total devastation to come. I escaped to tell the story. My Pa arrived in Mindanao from Capiz as a nine year old boy after the war, when people in the villages of Tum’lalud and Sinunduhan (just across the river), in the town of Mambusao, were talking of migrating to Mindanao to look for better life, or perhaps, a better land. Pa told me this story, sitting on his hospital bed, the dextrose on his left arm, as he emerged seventy years later, trying to make sense of the pain.

He was still a boy when they arrived. What prompted Grandma to bring her children to Mindanao was not really the need to look for better land, but that row between her and Grandpa over the eldest daughter Maria, who ran away with a man not of their choice and went to live with him in Iligan. [[This story seems to be lost now, because Maria died years ago and the only cousin who I knew can link me to her also died the following years.]] But according to Pa, Manang Maria ran off with a man. She was the eldest daughter in the family—engaged to someone important back in Mambusao. As a result of her elopement Grandma and Grandpa had a row, which ended up with Pedro (the name of Grandpa), already drunk, chopping off the leg of their table, which like the house, was made of logs, a sturdy material. As a result of this quarrel, Grandma rushed to migrate to Mindanao, where everybody was heading.  She was a tough, strong-willed woman, and as I imagine, high spirited. Women were not allowed to go to school during her time, so, she only reached up to Grade 2, while her brothers went to Manila to become a priest and a pilot. Yet, she was an intelligent and ingenuous woman, who, during the war, was able to feed some hungry souls straying to her house because she never ran out of supply of rice from her harvests. She immediately secured the money (sold their land? Borrowed? I’m no longer sure) for the trip to Mindanao, where they eventually landed in Davao and came to settle in Binugao, where Pa eventually worked as the encargador of the land of the Gods (Guinoo).

In Binugao, the teacher was distraught when all the Grade six pupils failed to solve the Math problems he had written on the board. When he came upon Pa during lunchtime solving all the problems on the blackboard with ease, he asked, “What grade is this?” and someone answered, “Grade 1V.” Pa suddenly basked at the attention of all those girls (dalaga), most of them Haponesa, regarding him with awe, which slightly embarrassed him, though, he said he felt assured to realize he was wearing his Boy Scout uniform on that day, with the matching shoes at that.  He was also amazed that the lessons in Binugao could be that easy compared to those in Mambusao.

When Mr. Espanol and Mr. Buenaluz, the teachers from Luzon, realized Pa was already tilling the land and planting corn in it, they asked with concern, “Why, where is your father?” Pa blurted out, just like a nine-year-old child, “They kept fighting with each other so they agreed to separate. Mother left him in Mambusao.”  His teachers never let him work in school after this. “Parang Luzon (like Luzon),” they said to describe his farm because they were Ilocanos, and might have missed the land where they came from.

Reading the Paris Review

...and loving the feel of it while mulling over the fact that they took Father and Mother away from the rented apartment in Nova Tierra only to move them in a poorly-ventilated one-room apartment in a seedy area not easily reached by taxi, where they were in constant threat of floods when it rains; and how about leptospirosis and other water-borne diseases? Why can't they think about these things when they consider Father or Mother and why did they not tell me about the whole idea in the first place, as if I were a woman from Outer Space? Is it because they hate my penchant to say the things I had to say; which they they equate with creating trouble?

To the Best Beloved

March 18, 2015. Fourteen years ago today, when everyone else was preparing to leave graduate school, I entered Silliman University Medical Center at 1 pm, gladly and fearfully, expecting your birth. I was glad because finally I would be meeting you, not just any other child any mother can give birth to, but the special subject of the personal essay, “Letter to the Womb: Writing and re-Writing Woman in the Literary Text,” I submitted for the final exams of our Contemporary Criticism class under Dr. Ceres Pioquinto. The idea came to me out of the blue, after the realization that on the verge of childbirth, I could no longer think in a clear, linear and logical way but in swirling, maddeningly spiraling fashion; and so, to suit this particular frame of mind, I abandoned the methodical way most scholars used to write their “scholarly” texts and wrote instead a personal essay addressed to you, Best Beloved, applying the critical literary theories I learned by heart.
And so, in a gist, this was how you came into this world, Gloria Steinem spewing words on the TV screen in between my throes of labor, making the pain slightly bearable, Kuya Karl watching at the hospital lobby, as my stretcher rolled by; and Ja, your Dad, trading jokes with the nurses in a voice grating to my ears.
Now, I can’t believe it’s been 14 years; and I'm slightly disoriented. Where is that toddler who used to grab my books every time I attempted to read? Where is the one who tirelessly climbed over my body? Where is the tireless watcher, who used to monitor the hands of the clock inside the newsroom, who used to tell me, Ma, the sky has turned black outside, are we not going home?! What a delight to have you! Happy 14th year, Sean!

Dear Tea

I remember some years ago as I sat in a veranda facing the road towards Genting Highlands, and someone said, “Good morning, how was your sleep, shall I make you tea? Right, I'll make the right tea for you,” and he disappeared into the charming little kitchen of the hut in Kuala Kubu Baru. That was how I got  introduced to Teh Tarik, so sweet, so heady, I thought I could never get over it, in fact, I was crying uncontrollably on the airplane weeks later when it was time to go. I called the Teh Tarik the Malaysian counterpart of the Filipino coffee, which is sweet and creamy, and speaks something about our relationship with either Spain or America; the Malaysians, of course, had their British; and that explains their right-hand-drive cars on the road. I said, we, Filipinos, are coffee drinkers; we rarely drink tea, except when we're sick; and that explains why, traveling by land from Davao to other parts of Mindanao, I always find myself asking the stores in every bus stop for tea, a cup of hot, bitter, sugarless tea, preferably piping hot; because when I travel I endure some discomfort that only the taste of hot bitter tea can ease. But to my dismay, not one of the sarisari stores at the terminals is selling tea. I said, Filipinos are coffee drinkers; some want their coffees pitch black and very strong; some style themselves as real coffee connoisseurs, buying their coffee beans on e-bay from as far as Yemen and developing appropriate drinking rituals to heighten the effect of their every sip. But others like me, want our coffee sweet and creamy, to make us dream and forget the bitterness of life, which in one way or the other is brought about by the convoluted history of its arrival to our shores. But back to you, Tea, you are the love of my life, your benign flavor, your soothing effect, even the sound of the tinkling silver spoon against the dainty cups. I love the shape of teapots, reminding me of some rich godmothers forcing us to take the obligatory afternoon naps. “I have fallen in love with Malaysia,” I once told our Malaysian professor as we inched our way into the jungle called Quiapo, years after Kuala Kubu Baru, hunting for pirated rare DVDs. “I thought you said you fell in love with a Malaysian,” he said. I said, I love the sound of the Malaysian names, it gives me the feeling of deja vu.  But it was you, Tea, that I was talking about. I love you, Tea.

How I once endured the flight back home

What flashed before me was our last day at Esteban Abada, after I discarded my poetry notes and Seng took to our room the weighing scale he borrowed from Lyn, to help us find out if the books we were carrying would already exceed our baggage allowance for our flight back home. No, I told Seng in an unbending voice we used to assume when we were dead set at doing something they did not want us to do. I don’t want to pay for an extra baggage, I told Sengthong, everything that would exceed 10 kilos, I would have to hand carry, I said. So, we were taking out things from our baggage, even as we were weighing them. But we hoarded such an overwhelming volume of  books that summer that I ended up with what I thought must be some 12 kilos of books in my hands.  I put them inside a canvass bag, printed with a reproduction of an Amorsolo painting, and carried it to the airport like a rucksack. If Bryant had only seen me carrying that rucksack of books, maybe he would laugh. The load was so heavy, I couldn’t breathe after every six steps. It felt like all my internal organs would explode. I was already sweating all over. But I was very proud to let anybody notice, so, I made it a point to look natural, prevented my tongue from sticking out of my mouth, because I could hardly breathe.  If you had seen me, you would think I was only taking a leisurely walk as I boarded the plane, you’d never think I was only pretending, taking the easy stride, with a bit of rest every six steps of the way. 

That's how I knew how hard it must have been for you. 

Let me tell you about Eponine, the Grey

You never told me you had a little girl, so, when I heard about it, I was happy and surprised, even as I castigated myself for missing that particular part of your life, which must have been such a landmark. This was before I saw the picture of you and your little girl in my inbox. I used to have three very big girls, too; and I knew how big they have become when last Saturday, faced by a big Cat that suddenly appeared at our doorway, two of my girls expanded to twice their size, eager to prove themselves they were ready to defend their homeland.  I still remember how Eponine, the Grey, stood there, making herself as big as she can get; although the biggest that she can get at that moment was only up to the shoulder of the Cat. But Eponine was the most intelligent and the most brilliant of them all; the type who gets what she wants without even trying. I saw her last Saturday trying to scare the Cat; and I called my boy Sean inside the bathroom to come out fast because he will miss the action.  It was Eponine, the Grey and Oreo, the Black, who stood their ground against the Cat; while Henri Matisse, the Yellow One, shielded herself in the corner ready to duck and dart, if worse came to worst. But after a while of sabre-rattling without any actual action, I finally decided to call Oreo to my lap, leaving Eponine at the door alone to confront the intruder. Although she was able to maintain her size, I can faintly see her legs shaking at the effort. This makes me very sad every time I remember it now, the image of her standing bravely at the door. This was Saturday. The following day, a windy Sunday, Eponine got hit by a slamming door when I was coming out to get something.  What followed must have been 48 hours of terrible pain and suffering that only Eponine knew and I can only imagine with remorse.  In the morning of Tuesday, Eponine still attempted to join the boodle fight that characterized our feeding time with her two sisters but she could no longer make herself stand up.  I went to her to comfort her, telling her she did not have to move about because she was a very Special One, I prepared a special food for her.  Her mouth would no longer open when I tried.  Between 8 to 9 am on Tuesday, February 24, 2005, on the eve of the 29th year of the Edsa people power, I lost an intelligent, brave and loving girl of a cat. Her leaving fills us with sorrow so deep, it will take a very long time to heal.  

Dear Prateehba

Once you told me you’ve been reading Toni Morrison’s Love but can’t get to what she was saying, you decided to discard it, tucked it away somewhere out of sight.  Did I get you right about this, or is my memory messing up again, mixing up a bit of something with other snippets of past conversations?  I bring this up because I wanted to tell you about that particular man in Toni Morrison’s fiction; how he reminded me of a real person, someone I interview every day, sometimes at the dead of night, when everyone else—except for power-starved reporters—is already sound asleep. I think about this man, this Toni Morrison man, whose magic has caught everyone in his spell, so that, just like any other writer who came close to him, I, too, was overwhelmed by the desire to write his memoir; until it struck me one day that he was a Toni Morrison man, whose memoir I wouldn’t dream of writing, if I’d continue to love and honor Toni Morrison, unless I’d do it from the point of view of those who loved and suffered under his spell; the women.  Dear Prateeh, is there a way for writers to unravel the spell of an exemplary magician able to enthral his audience with the strength of his personality and magic?  Is there a way for us to span the growing distance between Davao and Kathmandu before it grows even bigger than the nautical miles in which it is usually being measured? Is there a way to reduce time and space and matter into pulp so that we can finally travel beyond walls, our minds soaring free of our bodies? It’s a Sunday morning here at my desk, where I face the growing clutter of wires, cables, chargers, keys, which I never had the luxury to set in order, as I was in a constant rush, just like the way we were in that dorm at Esteban Abada.  From my desk, I keep hearing the soothing sound of running water in the kitchen, where Sean is washing the dishes I abandoned, and somewhere in another corner of the house, Ja deep into his writing, quiet as a mouse. Outside my window, the three cats bask in the sunlight. Both soles of my feet keep brushing the top of the magazine pile growing fast under my table. We always dream of writing memoirs, though, we know no one else can write a memoir but the owner of the life we want to write. Unlike a biography, a memoir dwells only at a particular moment of a life, projecting it to eternity so as to render that particular life some meaning. 

The Magick "R"

[written when Sean was six, and never finished!]

After Ja first made me see what light does to the shape of an object, I began to be an avid student of light.  I fell in love with lights and shadows, closely studying them every time I get the chance.  Then, I introduced Sean to the “magic hour,” as the hour when unbelievable things happen.  Like most other six-year-olds, he mistook my “magic hour” for the “magic R,” perhaps, because of the way I pronounced it, pointing to the marks the sunlight makes on the wall when the sun starts to slant in the horizon. 

Then, I made him pose, midway between the rays of the four o’clock sun slowly sinking in the west and the white wall of the house directly facing the glass window.  The photo showed the soft face of Sean, half illuminated and suffused with the sun’s orange glow, occupying the first third of the frame.  On the frame’s remaining two thirds was the shadow that Sean’s face cast on the wall. 

It could probably be one of the most striking pictures I’ve taken of him, so full of irony and rich in metaphors; a photograph of life, itself; a revealing moment captured by a click of the shutter, etched on the mind for eternity. But remembering the power of metaphors; and the cruelty that ironies can assume at the most unexpected moments, I took one look at it and decided to erase the photo.

I finally realized that that love you have as a mother could only be measured by how much you could sacrifice your love and lust as a photographer.

For photography demands on its altar the same sacrifice that God once demanded of Abraham, who made an offering out of his son Isaac, a sacrifice that I, a mother, could never probably make of my boy.  This reminded me of what my mother told me one day when I happened to ask her why she remained a public school teacher handling Grade Six all her life.  “Didn’t it ever occur to you that you can be something else?” I asked.  “How come you never chose to defy Fate?”

I asked her this question at the most crucial point of my life; when we were packing my things because I was moving out again from a failed relationship.  For I was the kind of person who has always been defying fate and as a result, ending up in all sorts of trouble. There and then, it suddenly crossed my mind that my mother had never moved and never packed her belongings the way that I usually did in every five years.  She never ended her relationship and never made any life-threatening decisions. She had married and never left my father, never questioned the conventions and simply took, unquestioningly, what life has laid down for her.  It dawned upon me that, perhaps, she never really followed where her heart wanted her to go.   My mother’s answer almost made me choke.  “You were still very young when beautiful things began to happen to me,” she said.  “I was terrified of having to set you aside if I accepted new responsibilities.” 

From what my mother said, I had a sudden illumination about the nature of women’s lives.  Every woman is condemned by the choice she makes of that magic hour, that crucial moment when she can either choose to reveal herself before the light; or stay in mediocrity forever, lurking in the shadows, unnoticed for life.

Thank you, 2014; Welcome 2015!

Welcome and help me make sense of my room happily cluttered with books, photographs, cables, wires, chargers, dirty shoes, slippers, old magazines mixing with the new, soiled clothes piling up to high heavens; old newspapers gathering dust in every corner, discarded schoolbooks that I failed to throw away, more piles of discarded tickets, useless receipts of past travel. Welcome to the life heavily cluttered with people, dreams, meetings and some affairs of the heart.

Love and Spices

There's a story going round and round my mind. It started with that pair of old trousers you were wearing, and traveled downward to your muddy feet. Actually, I could no longer see the feet as we turned to see the scraggly leaves of turmeric, remnants of the recent drought. When you said only a few of them survived, I looked up at the sky and up ahead to the footpath down the river where we were supposed to go.

Elizabeth, the Beloved Monarch

She was the monarch who understood the woman question during her time and in understanding it, kept her power hold. http://europeanhistory.about.com/od/elizabethiofengland/p/prelizabethieng.htm

Cryptic message to the Beloved

The year is speeding away and I have a hard time coping.  You asked me why eating beef and red meat is dangerous but instead of explaining, I told you it’s not your problem, you’re young; it’s  for the old people to worry.  We were climbing down the ravine when I inadvertently grabbed your arm because I was about to slip. What will happen if I quit? I no longer care about things as much as I used to. All I care about now is the image that I take but it's usually an image nobody else would understand. Whatever happened to Sheilfa? Is she happy in Jolo? I told her once I would bring her here. I can imagine ourselves talking, two witches in the holy land. She had a talent for images, whether they be images of the past or images of the future. I don’t know what’s happening to me now that the year is about to end, I could not get anything done. I have lost all love for life until I saw Matisse and then I saw you. 

Beyond Sudimara

Shortly after Indonesia's national elections in April, and the day before our trip back to our home country, Indonesian political activist Tedjabayu Sudjojono treated us for lunch in his home at the outlying district of Jakarta. We--included Tatikarn Dechapong, our journalist fellow from Thailand we called by her nickname, "Boom," and Ryan, another journalist fellow from the Philippines, who is also my fellow corres at the Inquirer. It was one of the rare moments I treasured most, because we did not only spend the hours partaking of the delicious Javanese food that the family prepared, but we also spent the rest of the afternoon talking about books and art in Indonesia.

Pak Tedja, as Boom insisted in calling him out of respect, is the son of the great Indonesian painter Sudjojono, whose works are on display at the Indonesian museum that she saw the previous day. Pak Tedja described his late father as the painter who refused to paint the beautiful scenes of Indonesia but insisted on painting the real condition of his people under the Dutch's colonial rule.
But there was something else that surprised me more about Pak Tedja.

Unlike most people I’ve encountered in neighboring Southeast Asia, he was not a stranger to Philippine history and culture. He learned about Jose Rizal at a very early age. His mother, a political activist fluent in Dutch and many languages, translated it into Bahasa and introduced it to him. Was it at 15, when Pak Tedja said he was already reading the Noli Me Tangere in English?   “She used to speak Dutch like a native,” Tedjabayu recalls his mother, who wrote the book, “From Camp to Camp,” about her experiences as a political detainee in a series of detention cells under Soeharto's Indonesia.

Letter from Kathmandu

I told her years ago, towards the end of our summer together, that I was very lucky to have a poet for a roommate, because I could not imagine rooming with another person who only read politics and current events and neglect all about poetry. I told her I would feel very oppressed. Though, I have disappointed her for refusing to take snapshots of her against the backdrop of that tropical downpour raging outside our window, she said she couldn't imagine rooming with  one of the rest of the fellows, either. I remember  going over the list of the women journalist fellows rooming in for the on campus session of our MA Journalism course at the Ateneo that summer, and indeed, I realized I had been very lucky to have this sweet girl from Kathmandu for a roommate.  I simply loved it. I remember waking up one morning, with her agitated in front of her laptop, mumbling about this guy named Prachanda, as her country teetered yet again on the brink of another political turmoil. Back in Davao, I met a man from Nepal in one of those international conventions on bird migration occasionally held in the city. It took a while for him to remember that anchorwoman of Kantipur TV. Ah! he said, at last, in the midst of my descriptions. She's the one on the English news!
His sudden recognition somehow exhilarated me, as if Prateehba, a continent away and living in another time zone, suddenly appeared in front of me, smiling. 

Understanding the Lumads

I heard from Tebtebba that the book I edited in 2010 is coming out with a new edition this year and is being distributed by the Department Education in their indigenous people's curriculum. I still have something to say about this book, though; which I will set aside for another time, another place.

Remembering Ampatuan

A week before the infamous date, we followed the road from Marbel, South Cotabato to do a story of the backhoe (actually, excavator) used to bury the dead--and the story of the Ampatuan massacre, where 58 people, 32 of them media workers were killed in Ampatuan, Maguindanao.  The road eventually brought us to the town of Tacurong, where the group of media workers slept their last in a hotel five years ago, before proceeding early morning the following day on the road to Shariff Aguak, Maguindanao, to cover the filing of candidacy of the former Buluan mayor, running for governor in Maguindanao against the ruling Ampatuan clan.  The media workers, together with the politician's relatives and supporters, did not reach Shariff Aguak.  They were waylaid to their death in an isolated hillside in sitio Masalay, barangay Salman in Ampatuan town.  They were all buried here.  This was the last of their journey, the beginning of our own, as we continue the search for justice for hundreds of journalists killed in the Philippines since the so-called democracy was restored in 1986.

Still in Search of My Mother's Garden

As soon as I get home, I will retrieve Alice Walker's book, "In Search of Our Mother's Garden," to read the essays again to find out if they still sound and feel the same as the first time that I read them years ago.
 I first read her essay under the dim light of a running jeepney, after opening a discarded Ms magazine discovered in a bargain bookshop. I realized my mother also has such a garden and it is through the colors of her garden that I've come to view even the most difficult part of our lives.