Home with the Cats

I’m the only one who comes home now; which is quite ironic, because I’m also the one who will soon be going away. But perhaps, I am not going away at all, because I will be carrying this place with me where ever I go; and in that case, I would always be here even if I would be in strange cities like Manila.

I often arrive here towards sunset, with not enough time to catch the last rays of the sun after I make a roll call of all the cats. These days, I often find most of them missing but when they’re here, the cats, starting from the dear yellow-spotted black matriarch named Oreo—looking gaunt now because of poverty and neglect—would all come gingerly or with great hunger to greet me at the gate. Then, we would talk about the old times, when they were fat and there were plenty of food around, and we are not yet leading such diasporic existence as we are doing now. Our stories are full of longing. Sometimes, I would arrive when it’s already dark, and I would open Titing’s knot at the gate, which is very hard to untangle, and they’ll rush towards me, no longer in attack positions as if I were a stranger, but with great hunger for food and human company.  
Once, I’m inside, I’d put the keys into the doorknob and when the door opened, I’d grope my way upstairs as I enter the darkest room of the house, where I’d turn the main switch to turn on the light.  All the while, I would talk to the cats, silently wishing that I could spend the whole time here with them, so that they will no longer starve; except that, I’d be thinking in retrospect, if I’d do that, I’d be out of my wits thinking where to get the money to buy our food? So, I console myself with thoughts about my work, although my work increasingly scares me these days. 
I dream of the day when I can finally be free to read my books and write my stories.

I’d spend the rest of the night with the cats, sometimes, reading aloud some of stories from my old New Yorker magazine before the rapt inattention of my captured audience. In most times, I’d skip dinner. To tame down the pain caused by my stomach ulcer, I would bring along biscuits or oatmeal, because the point is, there are only two people who can make me cook dinner and I have left them in the city. (I’m referring to my boys, who are not with me.)

So, spending my time alone with the cats, I’d long for the taste real food, just like what I used to have when Mother used to be here. Mother, however, had ceased to be Mother; we were supposed to switch roles now, except that, I’m not really as financially stable as a daughter, which means, I might not make a good mother to her. A good mother should have milk for her children, a steady flow of cash to bring food on the table, has a busy kitchen, with reliable househelp buzzing about. A good mother would not have anxieties about money, she is already well-provided for, and cash always flows towards her direction. So, aside from being able to take care of her ageing Mother and sending her sons to very good, highly-reputable schools, a good mother always has enough food for her cats.

I don’t have them so I will have to go away for a while. 

Waiting for the President

One hour. Two hours. Three. Four hours. I was under the GI-covered court since one o'clock, when the sun was at its zenith. He was supposed to arrive at two. He arrived at 6 pm, when the sun was already down. When reporters started arriving, they asked, how long have you been here? An hour or two ago, I said.  When you're alone to an event like this, you don't want to be late, to be accosted by the Presidential Security Group and be told, "Sorry, Ma'm, you can't enter now," and there would be no one to back you up. So, you come early. When I arrived, it was very hot, I remembered what Alan told me, "Be sure to bring along a bottle of water, it would be very hot there, and the store is so far away." I did not remember until I was thirsty. The whole week, I've been thinking, my job increasingly feels like a one-sided love affair; I love my lover but my lover doesn't love me back. I was broke. When I told Ruth all my capacity to love has already been drained, and there's nothing left to it now, not even crumbs; she said, maybe, you're just tired. I said, I've been tired before but this has nothing to do with that kind of tiredness. This one has the finality to it. It's like what you feel when you want to leave your husband and you're already set in doing it. Have you ever felt that way? I asked and added, as an afterthought, "But maybe, you've never felt that way to your husband, at all; maybe, you love your husband." 

Her reaction was violent. Her brows suddenly knotted, the color of her face suddenly changed. "Dili oy, dili! Dili!" she protested vehemently.

We were both surprised; and we both laughed.

How I discover Brenda Tharp

Sometime in 2011, when I finally finished my part of what soon will become the book, "Bittersweet Stories of Farm Workers in the Philippines," I was so happy to have written a 36-page manuscript and had enjoyed every bit of it that I entered the bookstore so intent on celebrating.  As usual, I went directly to the rummage bin, where all the books were haphazardly strewn, without any attempt at organization. I did not bother casting a look at the well-ordered display shelf, because I have stuck to the belief that the real treasure are found in the rummage bin and not on the shelf.  True enough, the book, "Creative Nature and Outdoor Photography," immediately caught my eye. When I opened it, I discovered that its author is doing in photography what I was trying to do in my writing. I immediately knew it was a book for me.
All the previous photography books I read had in them what I called a male energy.  Everything was straitjacketed, including your vision, in a way that often constricted me. Aside from touching on the basics of composition and some principles of design, this book allows the beginning photographer to explore.

Torn

I'm lost again and torn in all directions. Three very strong forces are pulling me and tearing me apart.  First is UpperBla, where I am locked in a violent battle against swell-headed monsters and well-entrenched chauvinist pigs that dominate the countryside; another force, a gargantuan edifice that might gobble up my last remaining precious time for pleasurable reading; and the force of love, which requires me to stay put and stay where I am.

Summary of Meetings

Girlish sightings of a young man on horseback by the river, his lean body bent over the horse's mane, as the beast trod water, its hooves splashing, the sun casting shadows on the rider's face.
On the day I realized I was no longer a girl, you were dropping by the house for one stupid reason or another and we spent some time staring at each other.
That Christmas Eve I saw you with long firearms swung around your shoulders, and Pa, in his usual bad temper, berating you, I huddled in a corner, frozen; but you did not turn to fight.
Then, three long decades of not knowing where you were; wondering whether you were dead or alive, and not finding anyone to ask.
When suddenly, one day, someone told me you were around, I fumbled for something in my pocket.  I thought getting a glimpse of your face was an extreme act of courage, a sufficient gratification by itself; and so, I forced a man to drive right to your doorstep just to get a glimpse of you. I was not prepared for what was to follow and that was how I lost you.

A village called B'la

People in the village are dying faster than I can talk to them. He told me his mother came from Bohol but he did not know where she met his father. When he began his story, he was living alone with his mother, because his wife was in Kuwait, and his sons and daughter preferred to go home to their grandmother on their mother’s side rather than to him. I asked, so, who cooks dinner? He said it was his mother. Do you eat together? He said they eat together sometimes, but at other times, they don’t.  I had wanted to see his mother, just to say, hi, if she can still remember the girl in the past, but even before her son could finish his story, she got sick, and while I was away, she died. I suspect that this village was a young village and the people who are dying now, were never really born here. They arrived here at the prime of their lives, settled here, raised a family, and now, they’re dying. I can’t remember where in the Visayas his father came from but he said they were among the earliest people to have settled here in this village when the whole area was still a forest. His father was already gone when he was telling the story.  Although the village is a farming village, theirs were not really a farming people in the real sense of the word, they owned a school supply store, at least; where we used to buy bond paper when we ran short in school. 
While we were talking, another woman about as old as his mother, and who owned the village's longest running rice mill, had lain in a coma and was being taken cared of by their eldest daughter.  She was asleep when she got a stroke, and according to the account of the househelp, her husband had first felt her hand stroking him but he just brushed it aside, until the morning, when he discovered what was wrong.  
Later, I happened to talk with the man, who used to ply the jeepneys that used to bring people and goods to town. He remembered the girl who used to take his jeepney back in highschool. He told me he was born in Iligan before settling here but his father came from Dumaguete City. He and his sibling recently found out that their father had left a beachfront property in Dumaguete City, which they wanted to sell. But someone, a relative or something, was occupying it, so, they were having such a hard time selling it. The man was a good man, they all are, in this village. But unlike my father, he was not a farming man. He'd rather own a store,  a truck, a jeepney, or any vehicle and ply it. Much later, I met another man about his age. He was born in Quiamba, Sultan Kudarat before he settled here, but his mother came from Minglanilla, Cebu and his father from Butuan. He said he had never been in Minglanilla all his life and he was already 73 years old. The man was well-read [[well, he knew the historical role of the Philippine Daily Inquirer and the people power at Edsa and unlike most people in this village, he hated Martial Law!]] When he arrived in this village, there were still so many timber trees around.  There were Apitong, Guijo, Lauaan, Tugas, and others. "Was it the logging that wiped them out?" I asked. "No," he said. "People even burn them, when they get in the way of  corn growing!"  Even if Pa had farmed all his life and must have developed some affinity with the soil, I don't really have some romantic notion about his worldviews. I remember the indigenous varieties of mangoes, guava, pomelos, macopa naturally growing in our backyard, which he cut down to give way to the mahogany trees and the gmelinas. He preferred cash crops to fruits.
I saw where your Ma and Pa were buried as we passed by your area. I remember the last time we talked and felt the full impact of the drought.

I never run out of crazy ideas

In a Distance

Towards sunset, I took a motorcycle and climbed all the way to New Dumanjug (as if it were really that far to climb) to look at the changes in the color of the grasses as the dry condition felt all over Davao del Sur in January this year developed into a dry spell that threatened to further develop into drought. What made New Dumanjug very far for me to reach was not really its physical distance but my lack of courage to go there alone and take pictures all on my own. I gulped down my fear as I disembarked, introduced myself to a woman grazing her cow in the fast wilting grasses, and had a good time watching the children play in a distance.

Dear Solitude

Funny how I read this article exactly at the moment when I’ve been puzzling over my inability to write for days, even if I never used to believe in “writer’s block” as far as journalism writing is concerned.  Long ago, my editor and I had agreed, as a matter of principle, that we, journalists could not afford a block, an ailment commonly afflicting creative writers; because for us, it’s either we have the story or we do not have it, and that it’s only the absence or incompleteness of facts that could prevent us from writing it.  That’s what I used to think before but life is not really that simple. Something has been preventing me from writing these days and I realized it’s not just the absence of facts. I could not bring myself to write because a huge part of me was on strike; and I call this part of me, my writing djinn. It was on strike because I failed to listen to its demand for a long, long time; and for such a long time, I have deprived it of its most basic need: the full and blossoming reading life and delightful solitude. I’ve been jumping from one place to another, soaking myself with the problems of the world, that the djinn is going mad at not being able to read at least four or five books continuously for hours, in total uninterrupted silence. For the djinn, I must say, is an artist, with a well-developed inner life and a will of its own. The djinn it is who fuels my writing. The sooner I recognize this, the better for both of us. I could no longer bring myself to write even if the materials I was supposed to write were already right before me.  The djinn had the anger of Ceres, the anger that prevented the grass from growing, the anger that killed all creativity, it was the anger that practically stopped all life on earth.  Ceres is the harvest goddess whose daughter Proserpine was abducted by Pluto. Her anger had caused the plants to wilt. The anger came that part of me that had supplied the spirit that fueled my journalism throughout these years. I have neglected that part of me. And now, it is demanding attention.  It is demanding solitude. It is going on strike.  It is my only lifeforce, the springboard from which all my writings come from. 

Out of Order

What's happening to you? Don't know how to start a story? Don't know how to begin? Don't know because you no longer care what you are writing? Staring at the computer screen like this, remembering the interview and the expectations that went along with it; what's happening to you? All you're thinking of right now is the taste of peppermint in your lips mingled with the taste of kalamansi and that honey taken from a tree 30 feet above sea level. Or, that secret guyabano recipe you are making in the kitchen to fool Ja and Sean to submission. Or, the cat meowmeowing at your feet. Or, that guy whose hands, already calloused by time, you still wanted to touch.

Old passion re-asserting itself

When I was six, Ma came home with an exciting news about an artist/teacher, a dignified and illustrious Mr. I forgot-his-name, accepting six or seven year-old children to train under him at home. The students--whom Ma imagined could be all boys--would stay with the Master on weekdays and may go home on weekends, an arrangement similar to a boarding school for young artists.  Even in a remote place like B'la, it promised something special; it even sounded different: a training in Art. I felt loved, happy.  Even at that point, I thought, Ma must have felt something about me, must have thought I had some of what people called "potential."  I was filled with excitement. Day after day I waited for it to happen: to learn Art, to watch the Maestro render reality on paper. But the month ended without a word from Ma. I waited and waited until the waiting became so unbearable.  When I finally asked her about it,  she told me she decided against it because she was worried about me. For her, it was unimaginable: a six-year-old girl living with boys under the tutelage of a man.   That officially ended my career in Art and Ma quickly forgot all about it.  I didn't. 
Well, maybe, I forgot all about it while I was growing up but that's what I remember now.  I remember how I was quickly forgotten, my dreams set aside. 
Ma taught us to put ourselves last always.  All the drawings that mattered in school were those being done by boys.  The bold strokes, the tri-dimensional realistic renditions, the portraits that copied reality even if they were only done with a ballpoint pen. Girl drawings were merely beautiful, trivial. Together, we--girls--thrived in the shadows, learning from each other and enjoying every moment of it; and that's how we persisted. It's only now, when old passions try to re-assert themselves, overwhelming us in their intensity, that we come to realize we could have been bolder.  
Then, we want to start all over again.

Lost in Kialeg

What I look forward to

This year, there will be more roads to take, miles to run, stories to write, accounts to hear, things to make, places to go, images to collect, recipes to try, food to taste, books to read, cats to coddle, rivers to follow, mirrors to find in nature and in man-made structures and landscapes.

What do I want?

He is such a delightful friend and he said to me just a few minutes ago, "So what do you want now? It seems you've lost all zest for life, you're no longer happy with what you're doing, you don't want to write anymore, you don't want to talk about writing, you don't want to cover stories, what do you want to do? Maybe, it's high time to look around for things that make you happy. Otherwise, you'll have such a big problem there. What would anyone do to someone who could no longer be happy? I sat staring at my computer screen. No, I said. I want to plant timber trees and read Annie Proulx while watching them grow. That's all I want to do.

Postcard Greetings!

Happy 2016!

Sights to See

At the strike of the magick hour, I went out to see the cats play in the jungle in the backyard. I thought, maybe, they're happier here because they can smell the grass, they can climb the trees and even walk their way through the top of the fence and they have a wide ground where to play, compared to their life in the city, where we used to live on the second floor and there was hardly any ground for them to play. I watched Shocklit clawing the trunk of the tree, watched Oreo climb up on top of a stump, and saw Muffin, her body lost in the wave of grass as she waded her way to catch up with sister and mother Cats. When I ran into the house, the rays of the late afternoon sun have entered the windows and struck the ceramic vase on top of the cabinet.

Christmas Stirring

I had a great time walking to the dam and back and seeing the full moon framed by the kaimito leaves as I crossed the hanging bridge on my way back to the old palengke, trying to find the way to Bebing's house. I'm a bit worried I would be totally broke for the New Year but the sight of the full moon, reflected on the water in the rice paddies, was more than anything money can buy, and so, I stood there, savoring the welcome bout of memory loss, for the full moon simply made me forget all my troubles, and the haunting beauty of the place made me think of you, made me want to see you, although, you're already out of my sight, maybe, even gone from my life forever, yet, I still treasure every tiny bit of memory of you.

My Forgetting

I awoke with a bad headache and suspected it was my cholesterol shooting up again, so, I decided to abstain from my usual breakfast of rice and fried egg and promised myself to eat only slices of fresh pineapples from the market for the whole week. I wasn't able to eat until 1 pm because I still had to do the usual chores at home; such chores as feeding the cats, watering the surviving Oregano and Aloe Vera and mourning over my wilted Dillweed; washing Sean's dirty shoes, dancing the Zumba right in the living room; and then, looking at myself in the mirror while coddling Munchkin, the Cat, which has shamelessly and embarrassingly turned into a lapcat; and then, forgetting all about work.

Inventory

A bit of good news: At least, I was able to retrieve the images from my ruined memory card, after I thought I had lost everything (with no regret) when two computers and my laptop already refused to read it. I may have lost the Dream Journal that I wrote some time in 2007, after I've thrown away all my other reporter's notebooks prior to our moving, but I have full trust in the basic principle which says that whatever has been written has already been revealed, and having been revealed, it has been stored in the great storehouse of knowledge, ready to be accessed by anyone worthy of it.  I realized, too, that no matter what, I can still start another Dream Journal, and I can still recall some of the most important dreams that I've written in that Journal.  I should never feel so incomplete again. I only have to look around to believe that everything that I need right now is just within reach if I only look long and hard enough to find it. I never lack for anything. I have everything I wanted.

Feeling Screwed Up

Last night, I finished Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw and cannot stop cursing Henry James, because I thought I did not really like a ghost story, no matter how gothic; but in between, I thought, is Henry James’ narrator insane?  (It was much, much later, when I learned about Henry James’ ambiguity, that I realized, it was Henry James’ writing working in my head) but hearing me, Ja asked, why don’t you ask Henry James? Stop complaining to us. But Henry James is dead, I said.  Oh, Ja said. Then, he added, and how is the language? He’s a 19^th century author, why would you like to read him? I said, I came to open the page while I was waiting for that guy in B’la, and realized I could not put it down. The guy—who was supposed to put on the grills in the upper windows—did not arrive and so, I continued reading.  I haven’t finished it when I needed to go back here so I took the book along with me despite my earlier promise never to bring new books to the new house, which is very small, and already too crammed with books.  But I can’t help it.  I needed to lose myself in a book to fight the deep uneasiness already bogging me, creating havoc to my nerves. At home, Pa kept saying, he used to have a classmate who used to have so many books, he was so stupid. Bobo. Dull. I told him I met so many people, Pa, who never went to school and yet were very brilliant, they had super-first-class minds. I was thinking of the lumads, who were clear-headed in their thinking. He did not reply.  I also met a lot of people who went to school and graduated and who were very stupid, they didn’t know how to use their minds. He said, I used to have a classmate who had so many books but was so dull (bobo).  I said, maybe, he never read his books? He said, how can he read them, there were so many? He said he never had any book, only a notebook, and yet, he was very smart.  Later, I realized, Pa must have been talking about me: was he thinking I have so many books and is so bobo? I was horrified.

I was getting anxious because I felt I was already being left behind by the election stories that were going very fast, I had trouble keeping up. And yet, while my world was slipping away, leaving me behind, I got so stuck in B’la, where Ma and Pa kept staring in space, as if nothing was happening to the world, and Pa would suddenly say, I need to go to town, I need to drink beer in town, and Ma would be frantic, running after him.  Watching them, I get so confused, disoriented. I could no longer understand what’s happening to me.  Oftentimes, I have grave doubts why I’m even spending time in B’la, especially when Ma and Pa are behaving like they never really needed me there, resenting my presence.  I’d asked Ja, are you sure, there really is any worth to what I am doing? They don’t seem to like me there. Why am I doing this? Why do I need to spend time in B’la when they keep saying to me they don’t even need me there? Why would I go there when I really badly need to earn an income here? Why do I need to sacrifice days-without-income watching them, only to be snapped at, and to be made to feel I was a total failure just because I love books and I hate to drink alcohol?

Moving On

My right ankle is almost healed when we moved to the new house. This one is a smaller one, making me realize with horror how much garbage I have brought along with me.  I'm not yet talking about my books, which I don't consider garbage in any way, but a lot of the boxes we brought along with us are still stuck in the doorway, prompting the landlord to drop by this morning, offering us his bodega for storage, or a piece of canvass covering to protect them against the weather. But still, I can't help feeling guilty and helpless every time I open a new package. I have amassed such a huge volume of books, which I cannot let go, which, in turn, added to the weight I have to carry every time we move. 

What I'm missing

The torn ligaments take very long to heal. I already miss running the stretch of road from the mosque to anywhere in Nova Tierra, I already miss dancing the zumba, I already miss skipping the flimsy rope that I bought from the bookstore and which takes a lot of effort and a lot of timing to skip. I even miss the plain, leisurely unadulterated walking without a limp—as I wait and wait for my swollen ankles to heal.

Room to Write

Just to spite her, I quoted Celia Brayfield, author of "Deep France: A Writer's Year in the Bearn," and said, I could not possibly write in an ugly surrounding. I told her I needed to have a perfect angle of light in a well-organized and well-ordered room to be able to write. I could not write in an area where the light comes from all directions, it would be too confusing, too disorienting, too glaring to the eyes, it could never help in my thinking. It had to be in a room where the desk is placed at a certain angle by a big window, with ample light streaming from a single source outside. For she thought I can just sit anywhere with my laptop and write. She thought writing does not involve deep thinking. She thought writing is as easy as that.

The Thrashing

I sprained my ankle out of my dread for my father. He was abused as a child; and now in his old age, he is unleashing the last ounce of his strength to crush his daughter with the most ferocious abusive language. I wasn't crushed but it takes a lot of effort to see where I was walking or to realize I was already treading uneven ground. Under the Child Protection Act, child abuse comes in many forms. Neglect is considered a form of child abuse. Father suffered neglect as a child. As early as nine years old, he was made to work in the farm, which made his teachers exclaimed, "Why, where is the boy's father?!" They were so considerate, they spared him from all the hard work in school and took time to visit the farm where he worked somewhere in Binugao, which they described as "parang Luzon," for they came from a farming community in Ilocos and was transported only in Mindanao after the war. But midway through highschool, the boy that was my father was made to drop out of school to work full time in the farm and send three or four of his siblings to school. I need another language to describe how hard his life was at the farm. I'm still trying to understand what has turned him into a tyrant even as I try to recover from a sprained ankle.

Once Upon a Lunchtime in Cotabato

The No-Discussion Home

I wish I can write something good about home. After all, this was where I started my first education; and so, it deserved at least to be honored, to be praised. 
But right now, when I think of this particular home, all I remember are the things that my sisters say to me, and they are not exactly good things, nor the right or justifiable things, because they were things not scientifically verified but were born out of their own ignorance and biases. I remember, too, the things that Pa keeps saying to me nowadays, which reminds me of the things he used to say to me when we were children crouching in fear of his voice and his temper. I also think, every time I think of this home, all the things that my Ma doesn't want me to say; for Ma always wanted me to shut up to keep the peace in the house.  You see, even in my early days at  home, I was already cast as a troublemaker, a rebel.  Later, I'd learn, the activists have a name for this kind of peace: it's called the peace of the graveyard.  The peace of the dead.

So, it’s only now, decades later after I left home and returned, that I begin to understand. I was never really free to say anything at home. Not when I was growing up, not now, when I am [supposed to have) grown up. 
No matter how Ma used to expound in the classroom  the concept of a liberal philosophy, for I can think only of first taking that concept from her before I learned about it from other people. 
But at home, no one actually talked about things even when the family was in a grip of a very difficult problem because it was a home that never tolerated discussions. It was a home ruled by many tyrants or one tyrant, depending on the way you see it; and when you started a discussion there, everyone thinks you're starting a fight, and that's the reason I was a perennial outcast, always the odd one out, in that home, where I never really belonged.  No wonder then, that at 17, when everyone had their lovers and boyfriends, I ran away from home  looking for freedom; and luckily, found it somewhere else.

Is Destiny a Woman?

Destiny is not a woman--or is she?! They were waiting for Digong to walk into the lobby of the Apo View Hotel anytime that late afternoon of April to meet her.

Shocked and Awed

On my way back from Cotabato, I dropped by our old home which doesn't feel like home anymore, except for Oreo, the mother Cat and two of her four litters: Muffin and Shocklit. Earlier, I was planning to bring the other two kittens--Munchkin and BlackForest--to this place but seeing how Father whipped Oreo witless, I was thinking, no, I needed to find someplace else. I have to rescue the cats. 
Our family is crumbling; I could no longer talk to Father, who is always angry; nor to Mother, who could no longer make any sense of some ordinary things; nor to my sisters, who wouldn't listen, anyway, and who never seem to care whether the old folks are safe in the house or not, or whether they are safe going to town on their own or not. The old folks are becoming very weak. I could have quit my job to watch them at home but for my sisters' bullying, I was frightened: If they can bully me now that I still have 20 years of journalism as a leverage, an anchor of my identity, what would happen if I give all that up and be a beggar?    So, I refused to quit. 
Besides, do they really think I can just abandon my boys, just like that?
The whole house is a mess but I'm so powerless to clean it up, especially now when I'm in the mid of writing part of a book, and I don't have any choice but scratch my way to eke a living.
Father hates my books--the books that I collected and dumped in this old house which are quite many. He hates my cats and  he hates my guts. He told me in a voice that could turn my stomach inside out, I was maalam (knowledgeable), and he said it in a really deprecating tone, as if it was something I should be ashamed of, when I only warned him against eating corn that must have been contaminated by genetically-modified varieties growing in the neighborhood. He said, "maalam ka lagi," and humiliated me in front of the maid. Of course, he could not crush me. I realized that if I were an ignorant daughter, he would do the same to me.   He also castigated me for talking to my cats.  He   asked,  "Why don't you take them back to your house?" I don't have such a house, I replied. We were only renting an apartment in the city and there's nowhere else for us, nor the cats, to go. Ma regarded my books--which included my Doris Lessing collections--as garbage. When I complained I no longer have enough time to read and re-read my books, she smiled, as if to say, "What can you expect? What's the use of reading a book?" About my Latin diploma, she asked, "What are you going to do with that? Can you convert that to cash?" But this was many months ago. Now, Ma has lapsed beyond caring and disdain.
Then, adding insult to injury, sisters said, "Why don't you quit your job so that you can spend time in the farm?" Throw away 20 years of your life's work to risk an uncertain future, without the blessing nor encouragement, and with only what I can see a mocking and disdainful resistance of a wily Father. I can project myself into the future, and I can hear them say, we never asked you to sacrifice, in the first place!
Though my future here is uncertain, too, I am not the kind who would want to be crucified. After the previous Christmas party, I saw some of my books ruthlessly dumped, their spines cruelly distorted, inside cases of empty beer bottles. I went as berserk  as Jesus when he discovered the people had turned the temple into a marketplace. I said, how they're treating my books only showed what kind of people they are: real barbarians! I was thinking not of Father when I say that. I was thinking of all the drunks  at my sisters' party. I bet they only knew how to gulp beer but never read a single book in their lives! "Why did you brought them here in the first place?" Pa asked, still referring to my books. He loved those beer parties that much.

Sean unfriends me

But does it hurt? Not really because he still talks to me in person, he still kisses me good night, good morning; he still listens to me when I talk to him. He still tells me about his young troubles, his classmates including the ones he likes best and the ones that pisses him off, particularly the boy who scored high in the exams because he cheated and posted his score on Facebook, so that his mother can see and share it with other mothers. He still asks me to bring home some really sweet things, including his favorite which should be our secret. He even asks me about how is it to be ostracized, which I often experienced in the past, and then, told me, yes, some of the boys also form societies like that; just like Lord of the Flies and they pressure their friends to like what they like and dislike what they dislike and sometimes, it's better for him not to be part of them  if they start acting weird like that. He also tells me he also wants some space sometimes, a little bit away from parental eyes just like the way I hate somebody snooping at me when I am writing my journals.

Delirium

Halfway-through Hanif Kureishi’s Black Album, I asked, what is happening to me? I could no longer lose myself in the story the way I used to get lost in the whole universe of words and their meanings. Is it because the camera is already replacing an old passion, rubbing away the old pleasure, replacing it with another one? Is it because I have finally lost all zest for life, and that what is left now is the empty shell of an old longing? Is it because of the blurring eyesight? Is it because I am sick? On Wednesday, while waiting for the President to walk inside the SMX function hall filled with the yellow crowd chanting Oras na, Roxas na, I discovered I had trouble breathing. Ruth handed me a piece of paracetamol she faithfully kept in her wallet, because she said she was also prone to being ill these days. I managed to go out to look for a glass of water, when I came upon Edith R., who again saved me, helped me get some hot water from the jug that stood in the corner. I did not know if the story that I sent to the papers made any sense to those who read it because I was already in such pain and in such delirium, as soon as I reached home and plopped myself to bed, I discovered I was having a really bad chill.  Maybe, I could not stand the yellow crowd. In my half-asleep, half-awake state, I was singing, “Break it to me, gently,” thinking I were Brooke Shields trying to move on from a really bad, devastating love.

Days Without You

Why I Write What I Write

I wrote my last story in 2003; which earned me a slot in the Iligan national writers’ workshop, usually held in summer in the city of Iligan, where I spent about a week with the most amazing mix of young poets and fiction writers from Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao; and some unforgettable awestruck moments before the great names in Philippine Literature, who sat as our panel of critics.

Until then, I realized that no matter how often and how many people abused the term, not everyone can actually be called writers in the real sense of the word until you go through a “rite of passage,” that is called the “writers’ workshop,” and come up with something that you can call your body of works afterwards dealing with serious stuffs.

Yes, serious stuffs.

The workshop, in itself, was an experience. Just think how it is to sit in wait for judgment as critics (most of them belonging to the Philippine literary canon) scrutinized what you’ve written to its tiniest bit of detail.

First, you get the feeling that you are lucky enough to get admitted inside that chosen circle, just for having written something good enough to be chosen over the rest of the manuscripts that did not make it to that workshop.

But just as you thought you’ve got the taste of heaven, you finally found yourself in a series of sessions where each manuscript gets scrutinized for every detail, motive, innuendos, nuance, by all critics and fellows present. Our usual preoccupation, every break of the session and in the evening before we sleep, was to go over the roster of stories and poems to be read next, trying to figure out the author’s name behind the pen name, and trying to guess more as you read the story.  The author’s identity used to be withheld until after the manuscript was read in the session and everyone has given her comments. His identity revealed, the author can finally say something in return; but usually, it didn’t really sound good to defend ones work against criticisms, so, we deemed it best to keep mum and think about everything in silence.

Every moment of the workshop actually felt like a stretch of the Green Mile, every one of us heading towards the guillotine, a terrible execution chamber from which there was no escape.  “But even if they kill every bit of my soul, they could never get to that part of myself where the poems come from,” I remember what a young poet named Duke Bagaulaya said during our darkest hour in another writers’ workshop, the UP national writers’ workshop in Davao; and that was how each of us found the real meaning of what it was to be a “writing fellow.” I remember the elevator ride with the beloved fellow alien named Ava Vivian Gonzales, when our manuscripts were about to be read; the last ones to be scrutinized towards the end of the workshop. Ava and I and the third fellow Janis had taken to calling ourselves “aliens” at this time after our realization that we have been perennial outcasts in the world and its celebrity culture whose shallowness we abhor. We realized we could no longer belong anywhere except to ourselves.

Contemplating our impending doom, I told Ava, I felt like I was about to deliver a baby for the second time, and knowing the impending pain, I wanted to escape from my own body and run. But Ava had put up a good fight during the scrutiny. I remembered her calling the critics an offensive name I can’t recall.

Afterwards, I felt an urgent need to tear the whole manuscript to pieces, except that it was already accepted by a literary editor of a national magazine for publication, which made me feel even worse.

Since then, I thought I haven’t written anything.

But that’s not true! I’ve written many things since then. News stories, long features, a chapter of a book, journals, blogs, diaries, instruction manuals, foreword and afterword, an introduction of a book, a preface of a book that came out last year, introduction of another book I edited, a preface, love letters to my mother, accusatory letters to God, emails, etc.,

But they did not count because they were not the kind of things I wanted to write about. But what are the things that I want to write about? I don’t know.  I must have forgotten.

How I Fared in that American University

[This is an excerpt from a Journal.  I really did not think of posting this here until this time when sisters are bullying me to give up journalism, where I'm earning a pittance, to spend the rest of my life at the farm.]

Sometime in 2010, as soon as I got the Latin diploma for Magistratum Artium (MA) mailed to me from ADMU, signifying my successful completion of the MA in Journalism fellowship programme at the Asian Center for Journalism (ACFJ) at ADMU, it was not my Ateneo grades that that got me very excited upon opening my transcript but something else.

I already knew how I fared in the journalism class, so, it was not the reason why I gasped, half-anxious, half-intoxicated, as I opened the transcript. 

It was my excitement over the fact that I’d finally be seeing the part of the transcript I hadn’t seen before: the part which showed my performance in the MA in English major in Creative Writing programme I took at Silliman U several years earlier.  

I never had the chance to come up with the Fiction Collection demanded by my thesis; and so, I have left that part of my transcript half-finished; and yet, I was wondering how I was faring among the subjects I had loved so much that I crammed myself to the brim with long readings during my brief stay at Silliman U: Literary Criticism and Creative Writing, Contemporary Novel, Asian Feminist Writings, etc. 

Touting itself as an American university that pioneered the longest running creative writing tradition in the country, Silliman U kept a grading system that is quite different from other universities I’ve gone to.  Instead of the usual 1.0, they kept the highest grade at 4.0, which is an equivalent to an A+. This must be why, getting a 3.5 from the American professor Dr. Law once flustered me, because in the previous universities I attended, 3.0 already carried with it the stigma of failure. And yet, looking closer at SU’s unique grading system, I checked and realized that a 3.5 actually meant an A-, which was not so bad after all. I was in the lowest point of my life at Silliman U that I decided to get back through my grades.

So, that day I received my ADMU transcript, I went over my records for Contemporary Novel, Literary Criticisms, Contemporary Drama, and my heart leaped with delight. The lowest grade I got from the university, which I always look up to as the only university that really introduced me to Art and Letters, was an A-, and in some other really difficult subjects, I even managed to post an A+; not really that it mattered so much in life, but I remember standing side by side with journalists, who thought there was only one way to write a story, I can’t help recalling how, in one of those creative writing classes, we were allowed to write about one subject, and each of us came up with totally different stories. Remembering how I straddled the totally alien world of journalism and the world of writers, poets and artists, I realized it was not so bad at all; not really half so bad after all.

Some shocking things I encounter

The past few days, I’m holed inside my room transcribing interviews for the story of a life of a man. I’m holed in, too, for a purely online class on How To Write Fiction with the University of Iowa, which gave me pure delight at some time, and pain and torture the next. But now,  realizing what I’ve done, I’m asking myself, why-oh-why didn’t I remember getting Prateesh, and even Sheilfa, to sign into this as well when I signed in a hurry one deadline day the previous months? We could have been into this together! And they would hate me when things get rough and love me when they find such brilliant and inspiring writers such as what I felt when I heard the Russian writer Alan Cherchesov say in the introductory lecture, “to learn how to write, you have to learn how to not write, how to keep silence, to think and to observe.” I’m sure they would have plenty to say about the whole thing that’s why I miss them so much.

Yet, I also think I was a little crazy for signing into this thing when I have rarely been online the past months, when I was always running after some elusive news stories every day, the kind of stories which increase my skin rashes and irritate my nose, causing sudden bouts of sneezing when I interview my sources, embarrassing me and alarming Pamela, who immediately taught me how to irrigate my nose the other day, using Indian technology with some improvisation she learned on the web! 

I never knew she’s a magician, this Pam Chua, and it’s beautiful when you get a taste of such magic at the most difficult time of your life, when I’m always shuttling back and forth to Bansalan and here, keeping an eye of my old folks, unobtrusively because they do not want to be kept an eye on, “like hapless children,” father says, so, I keep going back and forth, keeping an eye on them without making them feel I’m keeping an eye on them; but as a result I’m quite shocked and horrified of the things that I discover there.  
What shocked and horrified me most are my sisters, who think the old folks will live forever and so, they trust them to strangers, instead of informing me so that I can properly take action for their safety.  It really horrifies me that the helper’s judgment is better than those of my sisters, what a shame, when my sisters, were supposed to be, “educated,” Titing didn’t even go to college, but she knows how to deal with the world, she has wide-open eyes, not blinded with delusion or wealth, she has both feet planted firmly on the ground, and not on the steering wheel of a car.  But looking back, I realized, it must have largely been the sisters' mis-education, the kind of education that is prevailing in the country before and now, who can blame them? I was quite unlike them. I was the odd one out in the family. Owing to my extreme unhappiness, I left home at 17, to study in the University of Life.  I disappeared and learned many things in a life of simplicity and struggle. They stuck to their boring lives and now, they social climb. Their kind of friends are not really my kind of  friends, and now they end up totally trusting and naive, and this really is quite a shocking thing to me.

When I see the mess at home, I get the feeling that we’re back to the Stone Ages, or was it the Stone Ages, before such thing as political organization was invented? Was it the reason that our people were easily conquered, subjugated, because we are so disorganized, and we let emotions rule over our mind? They’re so irrational and you can’t even talk sense with them!

When the island wakes up to the news about a kidnapping

This morning when I wake up

The road that leads to you is nothing fancy

A particular Monday morning

The Myth called B'la

Gecko

Last night, I listened to the sound of the gecko. He loves me. He loves me not. He loves me. He loves me not. He loves me. You don’t have any idea how much each stop or pause of the gecko can affect me. I feel some tightening in my stomach as I lay still thinking of you. I came here by way of Kialeg, where I heard about a new bike trail being carved in one of the mountain barangays in time for the approaching local festival. I learned about the B’laan community in a village called Tagaytay. On my way home, he stopped by the roadside, fiddled with his phone and gave me your number. I couldn’t resist taking it. The number would bring me a step closer to you, a proximity that is fret with risks or dangers, depending how I would use it. I noticed the way he slumped his shoulders. I kept thinking of what I should (or should not) do with your number. With each sound of the gecko, I keep thinking of you. He loves me, he loves me not. He loves me. He loves me not. I lie still in utter darkness until I drifted off to sleep.

Inventory

Pawned my Samsung tablet for the second time after redeeming it from the New World, pawned it again at RV, the guy appraising it nodded his approval and threw a sneaking look at me, thinking this woman must be in dire need of money, this woman is not used to pawnshops, does this woman ever have a piece of jewellery, why does she have to pawn a tablet? and suddenly, I was seeing myself through the man’s eyes, I see this middle-aged woman in a dark blouse, a knitted chalico over it, drawing from a heavy black bag what must be her last treasure in the world, did the man ever see that that tablet was my reading tablet; that I read from there W.H. Auden’s essays on poetry, W.H. Auden’s essay on reading and writing, that guy Nathan Poole’s impressive short story, “Stretch out your Hand,” which won first prize at Narrative.com in 2014,  Joyce Carol Oates, “Fragments of a Diary,”  Salman Rushdie’s The Duniazat, Salman Rushdie’s Personal History; I’ve been reading from that tablet about Stalin’s daughter, and volumes of poetry I downloaded from Narrative.com and The NewYorker and The Paris Review; and plenty of books about photography and the past presidents of the Philippines. Can’t the man see, how that piece of equipment has sustained my life, given me a rare source of pleasure when things are becoming unbearable? But as I said, these are times of extreme difficulty, when the pay I receive could not last until the next payday; and so I have to forego the source of life’s greatest pleasure to buy a kilo of fish and vegetables and rice, pay the fare, and most of all, feed the cats, and the boys, until the next payday comes again with a shock, because no matter how hard I work, the pay always run short, and life always ground to a halt before the next payday arrives. Now, I know that even though man (woman) does not live by bread alone, woman also needs bread to live and have a soul, I’m not sure if I still sound right at this point.

Still, I hope pawning the tablet  will not completely deprive me of my secret pleasure. I can still find so much to read everywhere. I can still make do with the books at home, mounds of them staying unread in one corner, gathering dust; on top of my cabinet, towering over my table, threatening to fall. Books are growing on the floor, at the side of my desk, on my table. Haven’t I told Sheilfa books are streaming in my room, like a river? A copy that I bring home one day can first be seen on my table, and then on the bookshelf next before it succumbs to the floor; and then gone to sea afterwards because I could no longer find it. My books don’t stay in a fixed place, in a fixed position. They form part of a bigger universe where everything is revolving around something and rotating.  At times, they grow wings or gills, they begin to have lives of their own. Sheilfa was shocked. At first, she hesitated lending me a book; but because of desperation, she left me some of her most prized collections, Edith Wharton’s Old NewYork, Proust’s The Germande’s Way, Zeotroppe’s, Willa Cather’s, when she was hurrying to leave for Jolo.  So, here I am now, friendless and tablet-less; my friends are faraway, battling their own battles. I’m fighting my own battles vigorously but I can now feel the strength draining out of my body. I just discovered that I’m now a 47-year-old woman, without a past and a future; trying hard to retrieve my past to understand it; turning it over into the light, like a piece of jewellery you’ve seen for the first time. For a moment, I believed that by understanding the past—my past—I might discover the future—though, the future for me is already way too late. Now that I no longer have that tablet, I feel naked.

Declaration

Since my frequent comings and goings, and my infinite trips back and forth to my hometown are causing so much disruption and severe hemorrhage to my writing life, which also means, my financial life, I promise to spend every tiny bit of a rest day or holiday only with books, and not with people. I will get back by totally boycotting all forms of inebriating liquid, and by avoiding like plague all types of merriment and the wrong type of people.

Dreaming of you

Awakened from a dream at 1:45 am. I was in a group, the usual crowd of journalists herded for an event, trying to find a restaurant. We were on a bus, as usual; and in a strange city. Aboard, we walked and ran while the bus was running, trying to keep pace with its speed inside the abnormally-shaped narrow space near the steering wheel.
The  woman next to me was a journalist from Manila, she had that look; and later on I saw my old buddy Bong Sarmiento, sidling up to me, and we beamed at this pleasant recognition. He used to call me, Luka, which was actually loka (crazy) but in this dream, he did not do such a thing. He was dressed in an old red shirt and he appeared so thin and bedrraggled, which was not quite like him in real life. Awakening with a headache and a bloated feeling in my stomach, I went down the house and did some stretching and kicking exercise before the big mirror. I forgot to say, I was in Ma's house inB'la. W hen I was huffing and puffing, the sweat threatening to burst, I stopped, fanning myself vigorously with Ma's paperfan, the kind the stores at the malls give you to advertise their products. 
When I went back to bed, I dreamed of you but couldn't remember anything from that more important dream.

Growing Wings

My Ma had asked my Pa, so, how is the copra going? And Pa thundered, “How should I know?!” and I told Ma in a whisper, “Don’t worry, Ma, I will go, I am your Magick Daughter, your runner, I am your Mercury, I go where ever you want me to go and you don’t have to worry because I run so fast; just like Mercury, I grow wings on my feet.” She looked at me with amused disbelief, and when I came back, she was surprised that I have paid her tax dues, paid the electric bills, pre-empting impending disconnection, talked to the people at the farm, all in one sweep. I said, I told you Ma, I’m your magick daughter, do you believe now? 
I’ve been intrigued by life at the farm. I’ve never been here for years except to sleep in Ma’s bed and then gone off the following morning, chasing love and happiness, which was always beyond reach.
But now, Ma’s crumbling memory, Pa’s ailment which we want to believe is only old age - [sisters don’t want to talk about Pa’s lungs anymore now that Pa has stopped taking painkillers] - have forced me to stay here several days a week to find out how they’re doing. 
I always find them in the mornings staring into space, their faces devoid of any sense of urgency; and so, I get disoriented, too.  I couldn’t touch the things I was supposed to write, as I stare into space myself.  
But life in this place intrigued me a bit.  Some curious things always happen to people and the rawness of them sometimes struck me dumb. As soon as I arrived here Thursday night, for instance, I heard about a boy the neighbors rushed to the hospital because he cut off the tip of his penis. They’re still in the hospital now, I hope the boy survives, and why would he do such an unimaginable thing? People here are asking. His classmates at the public high school said it must be the exams which are getting tough, but I suspect it must be something about his mother or father’s attitude towards sex, the rest of the folks said it must be that madness running through the family. His elder brother was mad, his father was mad, they’re not the kind of madmen you can see running around naked, but still they’re mad, said T, our househelp. 
I forgot to tell her madness is also a sign of genius, and I hope, I’m also mad—but I mean that in another sense.  I spent the morning reading part of The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, thinking about you; and about what he said about the two of you, target shooting inside the property you inherited from your Pa and Ma. He asked, what did you two call each other before? Luv? Swiddah? I cringed. Questions I’ve been longing to ask you: What is your name? Who are you? Where did we meet? Where were you when I left my childhood?  Where were you when I arrived? 

Thinking of you

At 45

She’s old enough to think and behave like her age, but right now, she’s behaving like an infant straight out of the crib. Maybe, Mother had spoiled her with too much bad milk that must have stunted the growth of her brain; and so, as a consequence of spoiling her, Mother had to suffer. At 45, she tried to justify her lack of foresight, her abject ignorance, and all the weaknesses in her character by pointing out that she is the youngest of the three sisters; but at 45, that’s hardly justifiable anymore, considering that there were only two or three year gap between her and her sisters; which more or less even out the differences in years. At 45, she was supposed to make some discernment in her judgment because at 45, a woman is supposed to have reached her peak as a person, everything that goes from there would be going down; a downward spiral, that is, they say. So, if you’re not getting sense at 45, there’s no hope you could still get some sense at all towards the end of your life.  Besides, I knew of so many people who are much younger than her and yet, they make sense. They would not just leave a sick man alone or ask someone to quit their job in 10 days or else. They can’t even abandon a sick kitten. But she, as a shock, would have a stranger in the house for company of her two ageing parents because suddenly she wanted to serve other sick strangers abroad. Some people have well developed sense and sensibilities, which are utterly lacking in some people like her at 45. At 45, she cannot stand my reasoning, so she preferred to assassinate my character in front of a domestic help who knows nothing about the world. At 45, a person is already considered middle-aged, a scary phase; it is assumed that she has gone through life’s numerous learning experiences. To be haplessly ignorant at 45 is such a big shame for there are so many things she could have known at 45, which she would not have anticipated at 20. Right now, she’s behaving like she missed some important learning of some 25 years of life. She’s utterly lacking in sense and sensibilities alone. She’s such a pathetic character, this woman of 45.