Where is Sheilfa?

She vanished after Nico and I appeared lukewarm to her idea of turning the world upside down. The sight of her hauling all her books into the office used to make our day. I am still midway through her old Granta, its pages filled with her marks and comments, which really bothered me as I inched my way through Luc Sante's "Lingua Franca;" her copy of Marcel Proust's "In Search of Lost Time," conveniently gathering dust among the books on top of my cabinet which is not my bookstand, while I watch my dendrobium spikes new blooms right before my eyes, while I water my dillweed, my sage, my basil, my ailing oregano, and my peppermint forever attacked by wilt; while I cooked dishes in the kitchen and blackmailed Sean and Ja to tell me the food is good or else I might not cook again. Where is Sheilfa? She was the only woman who can speak what nobody else I knew dare to speak, with bitterness that could sting the eyes, with so much passion, with so much fury, with so much rage! Where is she?

Admiring Elizabeth

About a year ago, I was at first intrigued, then, taken aback by the exciting and decadent life of Henry VIII, the English monarch father of the first Queen Elizabeth of England, as portrayed in The Tudors, the historical English drama fiction serialized in UK television created by Michael Hirst, filmed in Ireland, with Jonathan Rhys Meyers playing the character of King Henry VIII. I was totally enthralled by the character that must have been Henry VIII, how charming and vain he was, how untrammelled in his sexual appetite, how irrational in his statesmanship and in his policy-making, I was willing to be taken in for a voyeuristic ride except for the disturbing scenes which I could not accept: the senseless slaughter of peasants who questioned and opposed Henry’s policies of shutting down and ransacking of abbeys in rural England, the untrammelled use of the torture machine inside the Tower of London to extract confessions from suspected heretics; the untiring and overzealous witch hunting carried to the height of abuses that led to the death of so many innocent people. Yet, what really struck me was how accurately and astutely Henry VIII’s daughter Elizabeth figured out on her own how to survive as a woman in that patriarchal world: how rightfully and correctly she had guessed that her marrying someone, whether for love or for any other reason, will erode her power as a queen, and might even annihilate her as a person. And so, Elizabeth, the astute Queen Elizabeth, deemed enemy and political rival of King Philip of Spain (the monarch in whose name tributes were extracted from the Philippines) lorded it all in England, ushering in the era of English history that brought about the likes of William Shakespeare. But the reason I was struck by Elizabeth figuring out the equation of power all by herself, was because it took me years to understand that woman question myself, as it manifested itself in my life; and then, when I understood it completely, it was already too late. I could no longer do anything about it. I admire Elizabeth for holding it out, for being so tough and strong, for keeping her emotions (and affection) in check and for keeping the men at bay while she stayed in power.

I did not make it to the book launch

Monument of Grief

January 14, 2013, the 40th day after the onslaught of the killer typhoon Pablo, a wall was unveiled in the old barangay site of Andap, New Bataan, bearing the name of those who died and those who went missing and were never found. Rampaging waters from the mountains reached a volume so high that it created a new river course, shortly after it passed the intersection of the Mayo and Mamada rivers, descending upon the whole barangay of Andap, washing away everything along the way.

Glossy M

At last, a lifestyle article! That's just how I feel when I write that story, "Coming Home: Teddy Casino's Davao." But I haven't got a copy of the magazine, yet; so, I haven't seen yet how the article came out.

River Crossing in Barangay Baugo

Sometime in December 2012, I arrived in this part of barangay Baugo (pronounced by people there as Baw-go), Baganga town's boundary barangay adjacent to Caraga.

Bittersweet Stories

Soon the Task Force Mapalad book "Bittersweet Stories of Farm Workers in the Philippines, a project with Vera Files with Luz Rimban, Kira Paredes, Mylah Roque, and yours very truly, will soon be launched; and I personally dedicate my part to the farmworkers in the Philippines; especially those whose stories have not yet been told.

Nana Olang, Portrait of Old Sawata

How could I forget this old woman in the town of San Isidro, squatting in the doorway of an empty bodega whose wooden walls were darkening with age? I was on assignment for Newsbreak magazine sometime in 2007 when I realized I arrived in the village of Sawata-turned-San-Isidro-town too early for an interview. The town mayor just called me on the phone he would not be arriving in his office until past noontime that day, because he was still in some far flung fringes of the town doing something, a piece of news that practically sent me in a fit of panic and frustration. I was in a rush to get to the next towns of Asuncion and Kapalong to finish my assignments that day! Totally at a loss of what to do, I strayed towards an old bedraggled store, a few paces away from the townhall and noticed in a doorway of an empty bodega beside the store, an old woman squatting, as if lost to the world. For some reasons, I thought, the old woman could no longer talk to me. There was something about her that told me she was no longer there in that doorway; so, I befriended a middle-aged woman cooking bibingka by the roadside, eventually asking her the name of—and the permission to photograph—the old woman in the doorway. She said the name of the old woman was Nana Olang; and she can talk to answer my questions. I asked Nana Olang how it was when the village was still known as Sawata, how different or the same things were after the village was made into town? I never knew that a woman like Nana Olang, who was then 72 at that time, could supply me with interesting nuggets of information I couldn’t get anywhere else (even if I happened to interview some venerable town officials that day). She described Sawata in the 1970s as "muddy" and "full of horse and carabao dung," where people from the surrounding mountain barangays came down to trade. She said it was already a far cry from how it was at the time when we met, because then, people from the city were already coming up the mountain barangays to buy farm goods at bargain prices. Nana Olang said she was glad that Sawata was turned into a town. When I took Nana Olang’s portrait, I never intended to submit it for publication. Yet, seized by a moment’s madness, I decided to send it to the magazine at the last moment as a portrait of life in San Isidro. Just a few paces from where Nana Olang was, Nating Paras, 50, the middle-aged woman I first talked to, was cooking "bibingkang pinalutaw" (steamed rice cakes) right in front of a billiard hall near the roadside. She told me before she introduced me to Nana Olang she can't afford to buy a real bibingka-making "pugon" (oven), which cost at least P1,500.

I still remember these small town assignments I did for Newsbreak with a certain degree of fondness. First, they took me away from the daily round of press conferences that was becoming a regular fare for news reporters every day; to travel off the beaten track to the lives of ordinary people. Most of these people never knew, or even read, Newsbreak itself; and it was often so vexing and exasperating to talk to officials of those small towns and tell them I was writing a story for Newsbreak, almost spelling N-E-W-S-B-R-E-A-K in bold, capital letters, to make them recognize what it was, a magazine priding itself as a must-read for the country’s top policy makers, in Congress and in the Senate in those days—and yet, the people I interviewed never had an inkling of what it was. That day, when I strayed towards the bedraggled store, I did not have such pressures. I merely had the natural human feeling to talk to Nana Olang. I photographed her simply to remember her by. It never struck me at that time that such moments people normally regard as trivial could weigh so heavily, and with such meaning and significance, in the passage of time.

Being Woman

I know she was not the one who posted all those things on her website because when I asked her for comment about something which was already posted there, her words were different. Well, she also meant the same thing, but the way she said it was different. No, I am not imagining things. I pointed it out to her just to let her know I still existed. I thought she overlooked my name when she sent those messages to everyone except me but the truth, I found out only now, was that she did not send anything to anybody. It was another person who sent them. The other person simply left me out; why can’t I get used to it? They’ve been used to doing things like this for centuries. The other person did not want to have anything to do with me, maybe, she hated me. Thinking about this, I feel depressed. I missed my laid back life in the state university when I was 17, and we used to gather together in groups to study Calculus. I can still see Alice, her longish face tilted, her doleful eyes drooping as she stops below the eaves of the Methodist Church’s Dormitory, turning to me, pausing dramatically just before the stairway to tell me, I had to be there at exactly six o’clock after prayer time because Rey or LaPaz will be there to help solve our problems.

As if Calculus, or Physics, or Chemistry, or even Spherical Trigonometry was even my problem. I was already uneasy then. But still, it took years for me to figure out what was the matter: that what was bogging me was not Calculus, nor Physics nor Chemistry nor Spherical Trigonometry, nor Engineering Mechanics. Not at all. I remember staying inside the room of my dormitory, listening to the pitter-patter of rain outside the jalousie windows, watching the dewdrops on the leaves of grass, turning the pages of my book, and still, I failed to figure things out, failed to directly lay my finger on what really was bogging me. It took me half a century to figure out the problem. I never knew it then. The problem was being a woman.

Aunt's Fantastic Tale

EXCERPT FROM A JOURNAL. November 7, 2007. Auntie Cora—Corazon Ignacio Lunas—arrived in this part of Mindanao I call B’la from Piddig (pronounced hard as Piddig), Ilocos Norte; a place about as far from Laoag city in Luzon as Bansalan is from Davao city here in Mindanao. (My Aunt wavered in her estimates here, quickly adding, as if to correct herself, “Maybe not Bansalan and Davao city, Day, but Bansalan and Santa Cruz town of Davao del Sur,” she said.) She was still five years old when she arrived in B’la after the war. Everything was still a forest. She went to school in Grade One, in the first public school set up in B’la among the settlers. The neighbors were just a kilometre away, she recalled. Her classmates were already big, she said, “They were already bayongbayong,” she smiled, referring to boys approaching manhood, “and ulitawo (young men).” When she reached Grade Three, she returned to Ilocos Norte and came back here at 22, to teach elementary school. Sometime in between, her father opened a kaingin in what is now known as Tagum city in Davao del Norte, the first settler to do so. Unfortunately, he was killed by a fallen tree, so, he was deprived of the fruits of his labor, my Aunt said. The images she painted to me about B’la at that time bordered on the fantastic: Vegetables like squash, ampalaya and alugbati, just growing by the roadsides, with nobody planting them. “They just grew wild abundantly in the forest,” my Aunt said. Everywhere in this part was still a forest, she said. Her Uncle Onor would set up a trap for deers and baboy ramo and when they heard an animal scream, they knew they had caught something. “What if they caught a man?” I asked, alarmed. My Aunt is an Ilocana. She and Ma, who came from Argao, Cebu, are not in any way related except that they spent their whole lives teaching children in B’la (the mythical place where I grew up) and married the cousins from Mambusao, Capiz (my father and my uncle). My Aunt never had the chance to go back to Ilocos Norte since she married and had children (that’s how a place like B’la could tie someone down), so, when my Aunt had a chance for a brief visit up north in 2000, she was already having trouble with the language. She told me she felt she had lost her Ilocano tongue. Almost. “I had to think first and construct my sentences before speaking,” my Aunt said. “The words no longer come out automatically to me like they used to.” She said that because there are different variations of Ilocanos spoken in the north, there are already some words she could no longer understand.

The Wrath of Manurigao River

The wrath of the Manurigao River is turning into murky brown the color of the sea, I was about to say when I posted this picture. Seen from the highway of Caraga while on board Ramsey Ahmed's motorcycle about a week after typhoon Pablo, the vision itself looks threatening, reminding someone of a scene from Armageddon. Is that a natural color of the sea? I asked Ramsey, who stopped his skylab to allow me to take some pictures. The gigantic waves even dwarfed a carabao grazing under what remained standing of the coconuts along the shoreline. I have known Manurigao long before typhoon Pablo made its landfall in nearby Baganga and Cateel areas of Davao Oriental, leaving behind a trail of devastation to people and communities. Manurigao figured out in many of Allan Delideli's stories and anecdotes during the making of the book, "Understanding the Lumads: A Closer Look at a Misunderstood Culture." During those times, he couldn't help telling stories how the lumads had to hike for very long hours on their way to school, crossing the river along the way; and how dangerous the water current can get during days of torrential rainfall. When I arrived in that part of barangay Baugo, where the bridge traversing Manurigao had fallen, people told me how the logs had gathered its strength underneath the pillars supporting the bridge, so that eventually, the bridge had to give way. "It was also for good, Day," a storeowner said, "With all those logs gathered near the foot of the bridge, trapping the water, we would all have been submerged. If the bridge had stood, the water would have killed us all!"

Greenpeace comes to bring relief--and a warning

This story did not come out of the paper where I work, so, I decided to post it here. Greenpeace describes the recent typhoon Pablo as “very rare” and “unusual,” a sign that what has been predicted a decade ago about climate change is already happening. Mark Dia, Greenpeace Southeast Asia typhoon Pablo operations chief, reiterated the environment watchdog’s warning for governments to do everything they can to stop carbon emissions, including calling off coal-fired power plants being lined up in Mindanao, before the worst can happen. “It is very rare to see typhoons forming near the equator, especially at this time of the year. And for us (in the Philippines) to be hit by a category five typhoon is something unusual and extraordinary,” Dia said as the Greenpeace ship Esperanza docked at the berth 3 of Sasa wharf here, to deliver relief goods to typhoon victims. He said the impact of the recent typhoon should be sufficient warning for the Philippine government to take with extreme urgency the call to shift away from coal-fired power plant in favour of renewable energy. “We have to act fast,” Dia said, “Are we going to wait for a tsunami type of event to happen?" he asked. "Even Japan has declared it will close a lot of its nuclear power plants after the Fukushima disaster.” “For those who are still skeptical, are we still going to risk more lives and limbs before you can change your mind?” He cited the report of the intergovernmental panel on climate change that the severity of typhoons, drought and extreme weather conditions has been increasing in intensity for every rise in seawater temperature. “We don’t have any argument now that the weather has been changing in a very bad way,” he said, of the typhoon. He also said that for countries like the Philippines, identified among the top 10 countries most vulnerable to climate change, with very limited resources to deal with the problem, “It is very urgent that we solve the problem, not only globally but also in our own small way,” he said. “We have to ensure a better pathway for development, one of which should be a shift to from coal-fired power plants to renewable energy,” he said. “If we will not help each other now, we can see more of this (typhoon) happening in the future and the cost will be immense in terms of property and agriculture and lives lost.” He said once each coal-fired plant is built in the country, people will be stuck in this form of energy sources in the next 20-30 years, and hopes for the environment will be getting dim. “We have to do it now,” he said, referring to the shift to renewable energy. “We need to really act fast at the same time, start preparing for the worst.” The Greenpeace ship Esperanza, which has last been involved in the clean up of the oil spill that hit the island of Guimaras several years back, unloaded 55 tons of relief goods from the Department of Social Welfare and Development and Save the Children Foundation to help the typhoon victims. “This is just a small thing against the immensity of the impact of the typhoon,” he said.

What Pablo brings in Compostela

December 6, 2012. Ja said as soon as I arrived several hours after dark, "How can you help yourself from being overwhelmed? Were you not overwhelmed? I've done that before and I was just overwhelmed. There were just so many things to shoot. Many things were happening all at once. You get distracted. You don't know where to start. You would naturally lose your focus. Even the most professional of of us, do, did you not lose your focus?" I said, "!!!" He did expect me to lose focus. I felt bad because I ran out of battery. I showed him the pictures because I felt bad. 'Ahhh!" he said, "So, you lost focus, too! You're simply overwhelmed!" I felt worse. I no longer wanted to see the rest of the pictures. Earlier, at the Compostela terminal, I texted him, I'm going home now because I ran out of lithium. Instead of staying close to my subject whose houses were torn down, I allowed my subject to guide me to a bridge somewhere because they said that bridge directly face the valley of New Bataan, where many people were carried away by the flash flood. They said it was important that I should see that bridge across the Agusan River, which overflows sometimes, and inundate the landscape with muddy water. Perhaps, Ja was right. I was also overwhelmed. I let my subjects guide me, instead of me, charting the story. When we returned to their shattered hut, their Grandma was sitting on the old sofa in the midst of the muddy sala. She sat just below her picture on the wall, the last thing staying there after Pablo's devastation. The Grandma wearing the same dress as the one in the picture. I told her to stay where she was but when I finally pressed the shutter, my camera said, re-charge the battery! The whole area had no electricity. I said I had to rush home. At the bus terminal, it was so hot I wanted to collapse. Somebody was selling water inside the old bus. He handed me one. It was warm. "Please give me a cold one," I said. The vendor looked at me, then he looked around, then back at me. He said, tongue in cheek, "There's no brownout in this town," he said, glancing at the other passengers. "Yes, there's no brownout in this town," he said. "There's electricity everywhere."

Will you please tell Leopoldo I'm going back to Silliman U

Yes, we’ll go back to Dumaguete; yes, we will, we really will. Though, I have to warn you, this is beginning to sound like John Steinbeck’s alfalfa in Mice and Men—of Lenny and the rest dreaming of planting alfalfa on the patch of ground they dreamt of owning one day and never did, as far as that novel was concerned. We will still go back to Dumaguete—Karl, Sean and I; we’d get inside Silliman University as a matter of course; careful not to sit on the bench under the acacia no matter how tempting, because the itchy til-as is sure to fall from one of the branches, just like what it did to Karl the first time we arrived several years ago. Instead, we’d go straight to Katipunan Hall hoping to find Prof. Philip van Peele, the Belgian professor who speaks perfect Bisaya when all the rest of the teachers (Filipinos) speak English; perhaps, to ask him why some people like me have poor memories of sound? Though, I am merely speaking from memory, I still would like to discover again how it was to walk the lane from the pier straight to the university, how it was to see for the first time the waves smashing violently against the seawall, as if the whole sight was a copy of an old painting; or, how it is to look up and listen to Karl’s six-year-old footfalls shaking the very foundation of the wooden Hibbard Hall; or was it the second floor of Katipunan, where the dean finally approved of all the subjects I was to take that semester? How could an unlettered soul like me arrive upon the shores of Silliman, dragging along with me a six-year-old child ripe for the first grade while I joined the graduate class at the English department just a spitting distance away? Soon, everybody I knew in Silliman was gone, except for the creative writer Ian Casocot and the venerable Cesar Aquino, every poet (including Sheilfa) calls “Sawi.” But still we find ourselves going back to Silliman, our thoughts straying inside Katipunan Hall, the domain of the English Department, a place which I described that first time I arrived as the most likely place where Andres Bonifacio could have held a meeting. But having exhausted our memories there, we’d go to Claytown to find out about the old apartment where Karl and I spent horribly lonely days together, our door switched in between the one occupied by an Indian couple and their five-year-old girl named Unnam (the Indian word for moon) and the door occupied by the Balikbayans who just arrived fresh from the US. We will find the spot where Rafael, Karl’s first pet kitten, died. One of the days-old kittens Karl’s Korean friends stole from the cat-mother, Rafael did not survive on milk and water. We will stand on the exact spot to remember the sadness written there, leaving a permanent mark in our hearts. If Silliman wouldn’t want me, I would be going there as a ghost. It would still be 5:30 pm of a typical university day, and I’d be rushing to Dr. Ceres Pioquinto’s Asian Literature class, trying to stop the ticking of time as I wait for a photocopy of Ceres’ lecture, while students ambled around me, whispering about my old alcatel; while I—hunched, waiting before the photocopying machine, praying hard I won’t be late, I won’t be late for Ceres’ class, fearing Ceres’ catastrophic outburst, which I used to find so devastating. Or, maybe, finding myself in that bookshop tucked somewhere beyond the public market, looking for some undiscovered English author but finding out to my dismay that the bookshop has already been mined of its best titles; all I found were rejects and leftovers. What do you expect? The whole university was crawling with scholars, writers and aspiring writers, potential artists, beating each other to such stuffs, while I was in my room at the Nerisse Dorm, trying to understand Plato’s Metaphysics before plodding on to the neo-classical poets. Sheilfa said there was definitely one place inside the university we would not feel so outcast: inside the three-story library whose vast windows faced the expanse of the football field. We will go back to Silliman U and spend entire days inside the Library, hungry eyes mining the darkened rows of books displaying Balzac, Petrarch and the like. The last time I checked, I could no longer find Susan Sontag on the shelves. Her books were stolen. It was still the turn of the century. Year 2000. The air between the darkening rows of books written by Dead Authors was musty and full of mysteries.

Reading Miguel

Last night, while forcing myself to fart, I finished Miguel Syjuco’s “Ilustrado,” and in the morning, forcing myself to burp, I was still puzzling over its ending, I decided to read it again; discovering and deeply appreciating with utter amazement the book’s extraordinary style: Miguel Syjuco turning out to be fictional at the end of the novel; and Crispin Salvador, who was supposed to be dead at the beginning of the novel, turned out to be the one writing it—or do you get that disrupted feeling it is the other way around? Just to get a taste of how post-post-postmodern authors disrupt our usual order of reality, read the prologue and epilogue of the novel, written by Miguel Syjuco and Crispin Salvador, respectively, in route to Manila on December 1, 2002; and let's see if you won't get confused, or wouldn't want to take a pause and think; or, read the entire novel again, slowly, as in s-l-o-w-l-y so as not to suffer indigestion, in checking and counter-checking which reality you are still treading. This might be a good example of how the novel invents and re-invents. "Which point-of-view was it written?" Ja asked, over breakfast, as if the novel was written in the 1960s. No, not a point of view here, Ja, but points-of-view; and be careful when you speak, from which point of view are you speaking; because realities could easily be interchanged; the author playing, Miguel becoming Crispin and Cripin, becoming Miguel. It was a totally enervating experience!

One living artifact in the village of B'la

The River Talks

I spent the early morning along the banks of Lipadas River--no, not really that early because I was tempted to take a sip of coffee and I also got lost along the way. But once I was there alone with my point-and-shoot, trying to compose the image in the frame, I heard the river talked and gurgled; yes, it talked to me. It tried to attract my attention, it told me the stories of its long, tumbling journey from the mountains and how it arrived there, and what it found. I couldn't completely understand what it was saying because I have not studied yet the language of rivers; yet, I knew the river wanted me to stay, it was lonely, it wanted company, someone to talk to about all the shocking and disturbing things that it found along its banks. And for a while, I was tempted to stay. I was thinking that, maybe, if I stayed long enough, I would completely understand the language of the river, I would come to know what it was trying to say, I would be able to follow what it gurgled. Yet, I also knew that if I stayed long enough, I would change. I would metamorphose into something else, totally unrecognizable in my own transformation, even to myself. Then, I would find myself one day speaking the language of rivers.

Remembering Lianga, Surigao del Sur

How it Dawned Upon Me

Of course, I consider myself lucky, even privileged enough, to be surrounded by so many photographers, photojournalists in their own right, who wield their cameras like seasoned warriors in the Trojan War. Standing by the doorway, awed by the color of the sky, I would aim a point and shoot, and over my shoulders, Ja would say, "Not too much of the sky, Ma, look at the dome, instead. There should be more of the dome and less of the sky." "But the sky, I want the sky, can't you see its color, how different it is from yesterday?"
In another place, another time, I'd look over the window on the third floor of Marco Polo, fascinated by how the Ateneo de Davao building looked from there. So, I'd aim my point and shoot again, near where Tatay Rene was engrossed over his aerial shoot; then, unwittingly, he'd take a glance at what I was doing and say, "Why do you include the windows, Day, that would clutter the picture, you can do away the windows." "But I want the windows, Tay, I want to take a picture of that building through the window of another building." He would give me a puzzled look; and shrugging his shoulders, leave me alone.
At the lobby of a new mall, fascinated again by how the speakers creatively used an overhead mirror, instead of an overhead projector in making their cooking demonstration visible to a larger audience, I aimed my camera again to capture the scene. Keith, with a calculating photographer's eye, noticed my distance from my subject; and nudging me, said, "Get closer. You won't get anything there." In another forum in another mall, Bing Gonzales noticed how I was focusing my camera at the cords on the floor while a press conference was going on. "What are you trying to capture? What story are you trying to impart?" "I don't have a story here," I said, still focusing on the stupid cords. There is no story here except my endless search for stories.
Then, finally, I found solace on what photographer Nick Onken said in his book “photo trekking”: Choose subjects that interest you. Don’t only photograph subjects just because you are paid to do it but you should follow your guts. Explore subjects that naturally fascinate you and attract you for some reasons. This is how you develop your style.
It's just a bit like writing, I guess.