What am I doing here?

For two or three times now, at a particular hour at night, I have watched myself multiply four or five times before the wall as I took my descent from the fifth floor of this university building to the ground floor. I see the images of myself—five of them, of the same height and build—staring back at me, with a look that asked, “What are you doing here?” I did not know the answer. But the mirror on the wall seemed to be telling me what I certainly feel: I was only getting myself sliced; cut up to pieces. The stairway looked dark and abandoned. Everybody still around at this time of night was rushing toward the elevator. Everything about the whole place looked squeaky and clean, which to one more accustomed to chaos like me, felt quite alienating. If I had to work like this, would there be enough time for me to write? Would I even be able to talk about narrative techniques in a class still about to write a breaking story? I was actually thinking of another university very close to the sea, whose turn-of-the-century campus was lined down by dark-limbed acacia trees, and the wooden buildings, particularly Katipunan Hall, looked like the exact place where Andres Bonifacio might just have held a meeting to overthrow the government of Spain. Was it Sheilfa, or was it Claire, who once said it was the only university that celebrated madness as a sign of genius, the madder you think there, the more accepted you get. Am I exaggerating? Is my own memory playing tricks on me, just like the mirrors on the stairway wall? But from the windows of that university’s huge library, near the shelves and corners darkened with the languishing volumes of Balzac and Voltaire, I used to watch the green soccer field teeming with young athletes. I, too, considered myself mad, and remember that university with fondness. In the place where I am now, they try hard to suppress madness. They ask you to dress well, to conform, to comb your hair, get a husband, make a happy home, such things. Sheilfa was mad, schizophrenic even, that’s why she’s really a good writer. Unlike me, she’s not afraid to offend. The greatest thing she ever brought to the office was a copy of Granta featuring an old rat. I loved reading about that rat, I can’t help crying at the end. Yet, Sheilfa was seized by sudden madness, and thought I found her anguish hilarious. She thought I was laughing at the sight of her hauling her delightful books near the office sofa. Perhaps, I was writing so badly, the meaning of my text spread beyond its original intention. She never knew I lived the same life on the edges, and a delight offered by her books, made me last one more day.

Trip to Samal Island

The Marble Console that Reflects my Life

A Reading Journal

On the way to a Rainforest

We went to what I called the secret rainforest in Upper B'la, where the land sloped abruptly down to the Balawanan river about 100 to 200 feet below. I can't be exact about its height. Actually, I can't even tell a foot from a banana, so, don't trust me when I say 200 feet, maybe, it's even higher. But the cliff always had this effect of making me feel breathless as a child, both for its sheer height and for the landscape it offers. It had the same effect on me now. When I was a child, I remember coming down here with my Pa, seeing the water falling by the steep slopes of the cliff, gushing like little waterfalls. I used to see gigantic bird's nest fern and other giant ferns as big as banana stalks thriving by the wayside. I remember the clear, rushing waters of the Balawanan, the pebbles the color of granite we used to play with. Now, the ferns were almost gone and the river was heavily silted, an island of rocks and debris had formed in the middle. But climbing down this place was such a great moment for me. The gigantic timber trees thriving near the rocky brook that ran its course through the ravines felt as solemn as a cathedral. I would love to come back here over and over again.

Sickbed

It was a rare pleasure to have Sean read to me while I was sick. He would have refused but I said, "When you were a baby, you used to stop me and wrestle with me every time I read a book. So, now, it's your turn to please me. Just one page, please." I closed my eyes and listened to the first paragraphs of Milan Kundera's "The Great Return," published by old Granta. First his voice sounded diffident, unsure. Then, he developed confidence and became daring as he gained paragraphs. My headache started to subside. Eventually, his eyes began to jump. "Voluntarily, not voluntary," I corrected. He turned to me. "How come you knew it was 'voluntarily,' not 'voluntary'?" he asked, "Your eyes were closed." "I simply knew it," I said. I was about to explain but quickly he cut me short. "If you already knew everything, even with your eyes closed," he said, "Then, I don't have to read to you at all." He put the book down and walked away.

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.

To Paquibato and Back Again

Life in a Blur

Sometimes, life passes me in a blur, it almost doesn't make any sense. But at other times, it can also be so languid and dreamy, I would reach out for a book and get lost in its pages, engrossed in the discovery of another world. Then, I would feel all right again. Everything just seems to mend.

On the Road to Bansalan

Near the site of the Fallen Lauaan

I need to run to the forest, if the forest is still there.

I just came from a forest area of Upper B'la, where I took a picture of the lauan fell by a neighbor--no, he's not necessarily a neighbor, but he lives somewhere in the area--in a land that Pa has come to consider his home. I took pictures of the dead lauan and caught a whiff of bad energy coming from the greed and pride of men. Maybe, it will take some other time for me to write about the whole thing.

Davao Diaries

Sunset in B'la

B'la is a place where you grow up in order to escape. But once you've done your escaping, you long to go back to it over and over again until the longing for eternal return threatens to break your spirit. This was what I was telling Pa as I rummaged through the dusty remains of old books and letters, one day I arrived home in B'la.
B’la came from the word B’laans, who owned the place before the settlers arrived, I heard myself saying. B’laans, the indigenous peoples in Mindanao, who were already here before the Visayan settlers came in droves. The Visayans, whose tongue had trouble pronouncing B’la, turned it into Bala, loosening it and unwittingly losing something beautiful and important. "That's not true," Pa protested, "That's a lie!" he said, "This whole place was owned by the Bagobos, there were no B'laans here!" His voice was shaking, he had trouble breathing. After all, it was Pa who beat the rest of the settlers by arriving here when the whole place was still a lauaan forest. But I love the name B'la, and I want to create a myth; and B'la and the B'laans fit in well together in the world I want to create. "Calm down, Pa," I said, "Calm down, calm down. Let's listen to a story."

For the Dork: Part II

“You got berated by a—whaaat?” asked J.A. Romualdez, not related to Philip Romualdez, when I told him about the chauvinist pig. “Verbally abused,” I corrected. “No wonder!” J.A. sighed. “What can you expect from those people?” he continued. “They are stupid, mean, ignoramus, they think like machines. Unlettered. Bastos. Couldn’t appreciate the simple things in life. Oh, yeah? An engineer, eh? You know some people, their minds are like engines, and more often, a screw or two loosen/s up, and that’s what you get from them: loose tornillos, malfunctioning engines!”
This was the first time that J.A. took my side in my protracted battle against the Dork, another name for the chauvinist pig. For in all other things, Ja and I always took opposing sides; from the war on Iraq, VS Naipaul, to GMO; from Davao Death Squad to mono sodium glutamate.
Even when I used to rant against the chauvinist pig, JA would often offer irritating remarks against me in favor of the pig; because every time I speak ill of pigs, JA felt he was being attacked.
But I was not attacking J.A.. Not at all. I was only talking about the Dork, another name for the pig, whose number on my phone I had accidentally pressed the dawn that my boy ran away and I was in panic. I was supposed to send a message to my sister but I still had an unsent message for the Dork at noontime the previous day. I had tinkered with my phone for far too long looking for my sister’s number when I accidentally pressed the unsent message to the Dork, and so it happened; at 12:05 midnight when everyone was asleep, my message was gone out of my outbox with hardly a poof! Afterwards, I heard a soft tinkling sound from my phone.
“Hoy, na’y mga batang nangatulog diri, pagka-wa gud nimo’y batasan!” It was the Dork. I was shocked and awed by his manners; so gruff and low, if my mother had to describe it. Yet, I also wanted to laugh! The Dork sounded really upset and troubled, he must have been having a hard time with the one-year-old baby. I wanted to laugh because finally, it was the Dork’s turn to be in trouble. I felt like rejoicing. I wanted to dance.
If the pig had only known what I had gone through all those years he dumped me and left me alone with the baby to survive. I was numbed and dumbed sterilizing bottles and doing the laundry, I hardly had enough sanity left to write a sentence at work, where my editor used to wait for my story. Now it was the Dork’s turn to lick the toilet bowl, God is Kind and Full of Mercy, Halleluiah!

A View from my Clothesline

The Sky You Left Behind

Some of my mint leaves have survived the wilt

So, it was still such a relatively good harvest.

What is going on in my Garden?

I said, what are they doing here? Why did I bring them home? I should have given them to Sean’s teacher, whose grounds are so stable with the blessings of Patriarchy. Here, they will only wilt and die as they witness my devastation. What are they doing here? Are they flowers for the dead? What is there to celebrate? Yet, when I put them in my doorway, I noticed the starcluster in the pot about to burst with flowers; and another green came up with unexpected blooms; and my sage at the backdoor was leafing ferociously. Come on, I'm supposed to be dead, what is going on in my garden?

Turbulent August

I thought the only thing that would confront me this month is the trouble with my eyeglasses. I just had this new pair issued by my doctor the previous week but I had wanted another one, because this doble-vista only makes me feel blind in the middle. But then, Ja left in a huff and my whole landscape changed. Now, I am faced with the horror of sudden, unexpected moving. I needed not just glasses, but a whole new apartment for me and my boys. I needed extra effort to focus on my work because everywhere I go I get confronted by the pressing demands at home; such as what to prepare for dinner, what uniform Sean had to wear the following day, fixing things up, washings; I’m already too exhausted to do other jobs afterwards, including writing. Home is a total chaos right now because we are still in the act of packing. Even the DVDs that I bought on the eve of Ja’s unexpected departure had lain somewhere in the rubbles, totally forgotten. It was the BlueRay copy of “The Adventures of Tintin;” and now, I could not enjoy it, anymore.

What my life looks like right now

I've been to a much harder, much more dangerous climbs before: joining the health workers of Balsa Mindanao climb the miner's trail up the mountains of Pantukan in February for a medical mission to miners' families, mostly survivors of a January 2012 landslide that killed probably over a hundred people; survived the trip to Tudaya in 2007, at the foot of Mt. Apo, following a trail through the almost 90-degree ravine that local people called Palos Dos because the easier route was sealed by soldiers; riding through a skylab through the mountains of Caraga and another skylab to Casosoon in Monkayo, where tires of the Saddum truck left deep craters on the road. But nothing could match this latest climb, this latest hurdle, because it leaves deep, indelible marks on the spirit.

Goodbye

Every three to five years, we say goodbyes to things we love. We stay too long in one place until the place ceases to protect us, cast us away.
Now, I am saying goodbye to this room and this house, where Sean and I curled ourselves together on rainy nights or on lazy Sunday afternoons; and where on late nights or midmornings already late for work, I delivered pretend-lecture/conversations with Karl about Art and Architecture and History; for this has been up to this minute where my small family lived in the last four years--it would have been our fourth year here on August 15, but we never mark anniversaries; we don't celebrate dates.
Four years ago, I remember arriving here both with relief and trepidation. Relief for leaving that house on Mapa Street which used to flood every time it rained; trepidation because the new place was strangely new to us, too far away from the city where we worked, and we can't discern yet the good things that it promised. Or, if it ever promised anything.

But the sight of a cow grazing in an abandoned lot nearby and the sight of the trees and grasses; the comfort of the relative silence of the place; and the warmth of the light streaming from the sky to our windows, removed our initial worries.
"I feel like I'm in Istanbul," Ja had said as soon as we arrived, as he stood by the doorway looking at the Indians, our next door neighbors; and just across our window the beautiful Al-Ziddiq mosque issued its call to prayers.
For Ja had brought us here. Now, there's no more Ja to even ask, "Where are the Indians?" He just packed up and left, like an overnight acquaintance you meet at a party. Clean and light, isn't it? So, before I clean up and start packing, I still have to take pictures of the whole place, the things that Ja had once installed when we first arrived, and later abandoned. He never noticed that the place grows dimmer everyday. I will also take pictures of the stains in the bathroom and the markings on the wall, and the growing pile of books from the floor to the ceiling.
I'm nursing a bad headache as I write this, Dear Reader, and I badly need to vomit; so, will you, dear Reader, excuse me first, I needed to go the bathroom; and afterwards, I have to start packing.

Dear Reader: A Belated Introduction

Hi, Reader. I came upon blogging as a gate-crasher into a party. I arrived without an introduction. It was 2005, about a month or so before Davao Today came out with its maiden issue on the “Rise and Rise of Rodrigo Duterte;” six months before a memorable summer spent in a riverside kampung in Malaysia for the Seapa journalism fellowship, three years before rooming with Prateesh for the on campus sessions of our MA in Journalism programme at the Asian Center for Journalism in Manila, two years before our rented "home" in Matina disintegrated and crumbled to pieces, three years before it could rise again in another part of the city threatening to crumble once more; four years before I met a striking Mansaka woman who gave me a plant which horticulturists and culinary experts would actually identify as chives, four years before the tumultuous time when I would alternately scale skyscrapers and the most dangerous mountains in Mindanao for the editing of an 11-chapter-book on the Lumads, secretly crying on the road while listening to Louise Erdrich read and discuss with Debrah Wickenden Lorrie Moore’s “Dance in America,” and sobbing, to the consternation of other passengers in a bus I was riding. Sobbing because Louise Erdrich’s voice was so good and melodious, and I was so damned tired, body and soul!
I brought these up to describe the particular time that the blog was born.
This blog is not a journalism blog, as you might have felt for a long time now. “Are journalists ought to blog?” used to fuel a fiery debate inside Prof. C.H.’s class in journalism ethics at ADMU, with Bryant espousing the strong “no,” Bryant getting stronger in his "no" as more people talked, while I defended “yes,” not because I did not support the hard stance on journalists’ code of ethics, but because I was arguing not as a journalist but as someone else.
Blogging has democratized the telling of the story; and I am not going to give that up too easily.
My blog had nothing to do with journalism. It was borne out of my desperation to write fiction. In one of the national writers’ workshops, I overheard the writer Cristina Pantoja-Hidalgo telling another member of the panel: “But we, writers of fiction are supposed to be the best judge of characters,” she said. “We study characters in every story we write. The success of our stories depends on how we know our characters.”
That might not be the exact way she said it. But I’ve been thinking of it ever since.
When I opened this blog, I meant it to be a study of characters, I meant it to be an experiment. I hope you don’t feel cheated, once you read this. This blog has no other goals but to stoke the fires of Fiction.
And just like other fires, it is meant only to be discovered. Thanks for discovering it, Dear Reader.

Women I should not neglect

State of Mind

My project for this year is to gather all the Grantas scattered all over my and my mother's place: tucked inside some forgotten boxes, gathering dust in some obscure corner, eaten by termites near a crumbling post, buried under the pile of laundry. This, at least, will give you a hint of my state of mind. You probably know how it feels to have the things you treasure most abandoned in some forgotten corners, gathering dust and in such a sorry state of neglect, as we carry through, running after stories after stories while the real stories that we live every day remain untold and forgotten?

The Damned

She can’t recall how she got there but she found herself one day torn between the devil and the deep blue sea; and it was the worst kind of nightmare because she can’t make up her mind whether to choose the devil or to choose the deep blue sea. She knew that she’d be damned if she chose the devil; and dead, if she chose the deep blue sea; so this heightened her difficulty, so that instead of choosing the devil over the deep blue sea or the deep blue sea over the devil, she hang suspended for quite a time, still trying her best to decide. It was so difficult. She wished she did not have to choose at all between the devil and the deep blue sea; she wished she were free. She wished there were no devil and she wished there were no deep blue seas but there she was, suspended between the devil and the deep blue sea, still trying hard to decide.She thought: what if there were only devils and no deep blue seas? Or, what if there were only deep blue seas and no devil? She found this unimaginable! But then, she thought, if there were only deep blue seas and no devil, then, she would have to choose only between the deep blue sea and the deep blue sea, which was not a choice at all, because it would feel so arbitrary; or if there were no deep blue seas, and only devils, she only had to choose between a devil and a devil, which she found so horrifying, she thought it was better to hang in there, suspended between the devil and the deep blue sea because at least, she had a choice! She can make up her mind between the devil and the deep blue sea; she can choose the deep blue sea over the devil or the devil over the deep blue sea. But still she wished she didn’t have to make such a choice, she wished such a choice were not this difficult, she wished she could escape from the devil and the deep blue sea, she wished there were no devil nor deep blue sea but there they were before her, both the devil and the deep blue sea, tearing her apart, pressing her to choose one over the other.She knew that if she chose the devil, she would feel so bad she would wish she had chosen the deep blue sea; and if she chose the deep blue sea, it would be so bad she’d wish she had chosen the devil. She thought the devil must be the deep blue sea or the deep blue sea the devil--but still. She would have to choose. Between the devil and the deep blue sea. She might choose the deep blue sea over the devil. Or, the devil over the deep blue sea. No, she had to choose the devil. Perhaps, the deep blue sea. No, it has to be the devil. No. The deep blue sea. The devil. The deep blue sea. The devil. The deep blue sea.No.Thedevil.Thedeepblueseathedevilthedeepblueseadevilbluesea.

The Dork, the Pig!

(with honest-to-goodness apologies to the real pigs). Mga baboy ang mga lalaki. Men are pigs. They even neglect the children when they live under the same roof, how can you expect that guy to take care of a kid who is not with him? It was Sheilfa, her voice so calm and quiet; her face expressionless. But he promised, I said. Promised? You believed in a promise? We were inside that café at Humberto’s, which I liked because it reminded me of Umberto, the writer whose stories had a lot of communists, anarchists, Italian fighters, monks and lunatics scattered all about. Sheilfa was sipping avocado shake, and I was crunching under my teeth what tasted like raw peanuts from my salad when I said out of the blue that I still wanted to exact justice from the Dork. Sheilfa regarded me just enough to get the idea who the Dork was. Then, I gained enough courage to say that aside from wanting justice, I also wanted to get back at the Dork a little. I was, in fact, thinking about a machine inside one of the torture chambers in the Tower of London, used to exact confessions from the reformist movement gaining grounds during the time of Henry VIII, King of England. I wish to God the Dork will be fitted into such a machine so that such a machine, symbol of ancient cruelty, will finally serve its purpose. I believed the Dork, not the early Reformists, deserved to be there. For what did the Dork do to me after all? Yes, I said to Sheilfa, I also want to maybe, hurt the Dork a little. How? Sheilfa asked. You could not probably hurt someone who never had a sense of having hurt somebody in the first place? I was stunned because she was right. My mouth hung open for a few seconds. So, you’re saying, there is absolutely no way for me to exact justice? (Note: I did not say revenge). It was about 1 o’clock and the café was not crowded but the men next to our table started turning their heads to us. I’m sorry to say, Sheilfa said. Am I cruel? No justice in this world? I asked again, just to make sure I heard it right. From Sheilfa. Uh-humm. Sheilfa said, shaking her head. No, she said. Am I cruel? she asked. I looked at her and then out the huge window next to our table. The street outside was deserted. Directly across, stood a shabby building, its stone foundation slowly weakened by moss. No matter how I wanted to believe her, the proofs were already showing. Wood rots after the passage of time. Even rocks, too, will soften and crumble. The Dork will also rot inside him, will rot so bad he will slowly be eaten by maggots even while he was still alive. I'm sending him the first maggots now. Take it from me, Dork! I will eagerly await the fall of the Dork.

When I think about Mother

No, we cannot blame our Mothers for the sins of Patriarchy. But why, oh, why hadn’t Mother given me a warning, at least; or, a hint that something was wrong? She was a good woman, a tough one, even if, seeing her close you can sense about her something that is fragile and delicate, although you can’t exactly point out what that is. We first learned from her our English Grammar, Reading and her beautiful handwriting, complete with all the loops and ears, which never failed to impress people. But how could she have failed to warn us? How could she have missed out on the most important things in the girl’s life? Did she expect us to figure out for ourselves, before it was too late, the position that society and culture assigned to us? Did she ever consider that figuring out might take a long time and that we might not be able to do it until it was too late? Or did she ever fail to get the whole picture? Has she completely inhabited men’s minds and men’s structures she had totally blinded herself to them, she could no longer see how they were killing her and how, sooner or later, they would also be killing her daughters and her daughters’ daughters? She was a woman used to being obeyed. When you see her taking off her thick eyeglasses to wipe dry her sweaty nose and put it back again to peer into something to read, you always get the impression she was a woman in control, even if she might not be showing it. She had a way of defying Father, without making him feel he was already being defied, the rug pulled down under his feet without his feeling it. That was Mother’s secret, her extraordinarily ability. Her decisions always made sense to us. She preferred food and books first, before frivolous dresses. (Although I remember now, there were really not many books when I was growing up at home except for her public school textbooks!) She preferred a small, happy house to a luxurious one; although the latter was not really within her choice. She scoffed at people’s penchant for jewellery that her vanity rested on the fact that she never wore one herself. She knew, as most women knew, the difference between need and whimsy. We used to get the impression that she believed in the strength of women; that she fought for our education because she believed in our worth and that she believed in her secret way in the equality of the sexes. But why, oh, why, did she forget to tell us life for a woman would be anything like this? Why did she forget to teach us to love ourselves as women before everything else? Why didn't she teach us to be selfish instead of teaching us very early in life eternal self-denial? Why did she forget to teach us about the primacy of economic power? Was she so afraid or desperate she made up her mind to just leave everything to chances and decided not to talk about it? Did she expect us to just fit into the mold, no matter how square, stupid, unjust and unreasonable, whether we like it or not? Did she perceive the various and subtle workings of women’s subjection to men and their structures? How did she feel about those structures? Did she nurse a burning desire to tear them down or raze them to the ground. Or, did she feel helpless, sad, angry or depressed? Did she feel anything at all? Did she love us enough to warn us against our impending doom or perhaps, to find a way of escape? But why, oh, why, did she leave us alone?