Naga Nostalgia

Let me start by saying I love Naga City. I don’t care whether it drips with salvation or sin, I love it. True, at four or five every morning I wake up to the peal of church bells and the voice of my favorite priest telling me to beware of hell. But what else can awaken me, not even hunger at the sound of voices crying bread. 

I love the processions snaking through the narrow streets, the school parades, the speeches on the plazas. But most of all I love the peanut vendors and their peanuts. Every night I walk about among them in their usual places on the park. Their flickering lamps transform my city into a dreamland, but I do not sleep. The best way to enjoy a dream is to be wide awake. 

—Bienvenido N. Santos, cited in “Bienvenido N. Santos: A Homecoming” by Leonor J. Aureus in Filipina II: An Anthology of Contemporary Women Writers in the Philippines—Essays edited by Mila Astorga Garcia, et.al., Quezon City: New Day Publishers, 1985.