“Eksena Kuwatro”

Rating:	★★★
Category:	Other

Theater Review
“Eksena Kuwatro”
University of San Agustin Little Theater (USALT)
USA Auditorium, Gen. Luna Street, Iloilo City
July 25–28, 2006

“Eksena Kuwatro” by the University of San Agustin (USA) Little Theater was an “engaging showcase of new and old works as well as traditional and contemporary theater forms,” as it featured a fusion of monologues, scene studies and performance poetry, signatures of the four-decade-old theater company.

Just like any theatrical production involving a community of members, “Eksena Kuwatro” has been a collaboration of sorts. Aside from portraying Shakespearean tragic heroes Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet that have already found Filipino sensibilities in the authors’ adaptations, "Eksena" also presented satirical monologues written by USALT Director Edward Divinagracia and alumnus Kristoffer Rhyss Grabato, and a number of modern adaptations of classic women characters from Panay folklore.

Cursed Men, Emancipated Women
The concept of theater as claustrophobic enclosures—where statements about man and society are articulated—highlight this theater’s tendency to lay bare the character’s stark, individualized and individualistic realities.

Both women and men’s issues were bluntly tackled in the naturalistic-tragic “Saling” whose storyline clearly delineates the oppressive feudal structures profusely detailed from Rizal to Sionil Jose to Deriada.

William Shakespeare’s tragic heroes Hamlet and the ill-fated amoroso Romeo, along with the biblical Judas are presented as cursed characters.

Hamlet’s indecisive and vacillating character goes consistently well along with Romeo’s impetuousness as a stubborn lover of the equally impulsive Juliet, whose both fates only spell tragedy. After all, tragedy has been the greatest bard’s preoccupation. Though Hamlet’s indecisiveness was not well wrought by one actor, Romeo’s amorousness complemented Juliet’s feminine energy to take part wholeheartedly in an eventual tragic ending.

Gino Santillana’s “Hudas” delivers a marked performance of the biblical Judas Iscariot who forged his chance of redemption by killing his own life instead of believing his Teacher’s on God’s overwhelming compassion. The monologue rendered the audience mum as if it spoke of their own desire for faith, or the lack of it.

On the other hand, the women characters almost perfectly tackled enfranchisement and empowerment. In the equally persuasive characters of Darna, Alunsina, Na-erz, and Pina, the women’s issues were brought out either comically and tragically—in sharp and witty effects. Altogether, they presented marginalized characters still surviving and seeking to be liberated from the clutches of a patriarchal order.

“Pina” was tied to Filipino Diaspora, the tendency to flee poverty and bureaucracy and seek greener pastures through migration, and the Ilongga Na-erz scathingly satirized nurses and the medical [mal] practice in this country, engaging the audience with the Hiligaynon sing-song twang.

While “Darna” was a parody of the woman’s struggle for identity and self-preservation, the erstwhile mythical character “Alunsina” transformed into a sharp feminist full of rage against Tungkung Langit’s patriarchal, dominant male status quo. Most women performances were commendable, inasmuch as their issues constantly need to be addressed.

Pure Forms and Adaptations
As it has been a mixture of forms and genres, “Eksena Kuwatro” notably played around with types and approaches if only to present realities in a number of varied and therefore acceptable ways.

Featuring Western Visayan folk poems, loa, bordon, binalaybay, pagdayao and composo, “Dagway Sang Binalaybay” presented a fresh look at the precursor of vaudeville and Broadway shows—the rather lavish costumes and colorful pageantry coupled with emotional chanting of hearts reminiscent of the Tagalog "Dasalan and Tocsohan" provided an original masterpiece and spectacle. No wonder the company must have toured some parts of the country for such an ingenious performance.

More importantly and more impressively, Isidoro Cruz’s prizewinning “Tarangban” was given a heart-pounding interpretation that included a resident Sulodnon’s chilling chant recounting Humadapnon’s rescue by his bride Nagmalitong Yawa. Center for Culture and the Arts (CCA) Director Eric Divinagracia takes pride in training a Sulodnon tribe member who can render the theater company folk authenticity and ingenuity.

In “Ang Pag-ibig ni Tungkung Langit” and “Alunsina,” the Tungkung Langit myth is revitalized in the work of John Iremil Teodoro, which rather situates banished Alunsina as an empowered housemaid in the modern context. The modern adaptation proved effective not only because Kirsten Marie Primavera’s candid, heartfelt performance elicited elaborate emotion from the audience, but because in fact, Alunsina’s issue—just like that of Sophocles’s Antigone— perennially draws woman’s utter sensitivity and resistant temperament in any oppressive order.

As an added entertainment, the comically funny [redundancy for emphasis] “Baboy” shows versatility of the characters and sensitivity of he scriptwriters to use literary knowledge so as to satirize social realities—ultimately, one of the purposes of literature. The John-Iremil-Teodoro-inspired gay verse text, when fused with superhero and soap-opera caricatures, easily connected with the audience, engaging them in no time. After all, we should say this is how Filipinos are—literally comic and fun loving, certainly homophobic, but seldom cerebral or intellectual.

Art is Style is Purpose is Art
The theater experience is also reminiscent of Swedish dramatist August Strindberg whose techniques of dramatic naturalism included unaffected dialogue, stark not luxurious scenery, and the use of makeshift stage props as symbols.

Consistent lighting effects and swelling music when needed also helped create an organic atmosphere of want and discontent.

Much like a community theater, the cramped stage shared both by the audience and the actors themselves otherwise made contact and rendered the much required catharsis, since the actors literally spoke in the midst of the audience themselves, sometimes bringing them as part of the play themselves either through dialogue or setting. Such setup that also featured makeshift props made the presentation realistic and closely knit to the people whose issues themselves are being tackled.

The theater’s use of the baul as a symbol or treasure trove of the stories proved effective in presenting to us a storehouse of beliefs and traditions from which we could also retrieve our sense of being Ilonggo and of being human. Used as the virtual proscenium for the entire presentation, it also served as the focal point from which consciousness could emerge and sensibility could thrive.

By and large, the production’s well-wrought characters [female actors, in particular] and the entire showcase of persons and realities are all the while promising. While the women characters, articulating their own pains and travails, convincingly push for emancipation and the constant awareness of equality between the genders, their manner of presenting all these sensibilities bluntly says how it [theater] can make people see truths wisely, the way perceived by the Greek greats themselves, and later perpetuated through generations.

Such and other elements and techniques seamlessly brought the theater’s own purpose to the audience.

Insofar as theater ought to “challenge audiences with their productions,” it has so far delivered a convincing performance whose moral precepts and social undertones must have sunk in the minds of an informed audience, [or only if there were].

Through “Eksena Kuwatro,” the theater promises more, featuring sensibilities that reflect versatility and articulates varied influences that may guarantee an impressed global reception.

At least according to Aristotle’s "Poetics," the bottom line is the formative purpose of art, which the tragedy and comedy supposedly seek to deliver onstage. Eksena Kuwatro’s efforts have proven useful in educating the public about the beauty and sense of theater, if only to be sensibly appreciated in its own time, which is both here and now.

People on Guerrero Street

Rating:	★★★
Category:	Books
Genre:	Biographies & Memoirs
Author:	Leoncio P. Deriada

2004 Juan S. Laya Prize for the Best Novel
The Manila Critics Circle

LEONCIO P. DERIADA’S "People on Guerrero Street," the author’s first novel insistently profuse with memory, illustrates that the author is predominantly a diarist—one who chronicles his own life and its realities.

Here, the narrator “I” essays in 55 chapter-episodes his experiences with the people of Guerrero Street in the 1950s Davao City. Set in Davao City’s Guerrero Street during the school year 1953–1954 when the author was a junior in Davao City High School, People on Guerrero Street tells a good lot of realities in Davao City at the time.

The narrator’s sensibility appears to be that of a grownup man, cautious and wary of life’s harsh nature and sarcastic and cynical about life’s funny nature.

Deriada’s “I” speaks very cynical against the harsh modern world but promises more hope for himself when after the death of his brother’s brother-in-law Pepe, he realizes he needs to go on—when he sees that the new year beckons for him better and brighter possibilities.

While he displays utter disgust for the usual, inane, unruly or ridiculous behavior of people in his neighborhood, the events happening around him affords for us the culture itself, the society that ridicules and supports him. The narrator “I” makes clear that he yanks away superstition and fake religiosity, as much as he abhors his rivals for his crush.

Through vivid recollection of things past and present—“I” expresses his utter fondness for a male figure, perhaps being with no father figure in the household he is sharing with his brother. Hewing a verbose reportage of events, faces, things, and realities, the novel unfolds before the reader as it unfolds to the eyes and ears of the narrator “I.”

He is also subject to the “immorality” of some other characters—Carna and Luchi, with whom he is oriented to the lascivious characters and tendencies of a woman—while still being able to hold Terry as his chalice, his prized possession.

Yet, Deriada’s work is more than about teenage puppy love; rather it illustrates a young man’s initiation into the harsh realities of the world, which he is soon facing as an adult. Pepe’s death is the persona’s first encounter with tragedy, virtually the first step in toughening the persona as he faces figurative and real deaths in the immediate future.

In the novel, the treatment of things that happened in the past is equally lengthy—as if the entire purpose of the narrator is to remember everything, and when he does he becomes an anti-character, one whose existence in the novel is questioned because of his very sensibility which sounds like the author’s himself.

Lush with his memorable past, Deriada’s autobiographical tract declares that the author’s memory is worth the beauty rendered in literature. They mirror a beautiful life, something that is full of anticipations, as the “I” narrator’s prospects at the end.

Here and there awarded for his fiction and outstanding work in other literary genres, Deriada says that many characters in the novel are real people just as many are pure inventions or merely transplanted from other times and other neighborhoods.

Regardless of which is real or fictional, he says, these characters all belong to the realities insofar demanded by the novel.

By simple remembering, Deriada employs his memory in including facts into the “fiction.” Maybe, he says he has what is called the photographic memory. “Until now, I have a very clear picture of past incidents in my life, from childhood to the most recent, and Deriada says, “I was born in 1938 but I can remember incidents when I was three. I remember practically everything that happened to my family from the first day of the War [World War I] to the last days of the Japanese in 1945.”

Deriada has perhaps one of the clearest memories—an exceptional ability to remember the past and recollect facts in order to portray significant characters that exist for a purpose. The narrator “I” even remembers words when he encounters images and events which he is narrating. He swings from the present back to the past when some characters remind him of certain things in the past.

Of the book’s creative style, Deriada says the blurring of the boundaries between fact and fiction is [also] necessary in writing an autobiographical or historical novel. The writing must be good if the boundaries between the real and the invented are blurred. A less skilled writer would not be capable of doing so.

Deriada considers that the biographical novelist has to tamper with reality for the sake of fictional reality. He says his remembering of the past was sweeping and holistic, while the parts he needed for the novel he had to choose carefully. At some point, he recognized the need to be factual, and in some instances, he needed to fabricate.

While the girding or the main structure of the novel is factual, inventing or “fabricating” was necessary only when the real past needed the unity demanded of fiction. This fabrication entails tampering with the temporal succession of events, transplanting characters and incidents from other times and neighborhoods and the outright inventing of characters and incidents.

For instance, Deriada recalls fondly, “the big theater production on the college grounds of the Ateneo de Davao was not in 1953 but in 1954. It was in celebration of the International Marian Year,” and even says, “Certainly, Purico’s famous amateur singing derby was called Tawag ng Tanghalan, not Tinig ng Tanghalan.”

Deriada’s freedom to play around with his facts in order to back up his literary purpose—aided him to turn in some durable portraits of people, places, and events,” which can’t be done if it were pure facts alone. Through this, Deriada immortalized his friends, classmates and even loved ones in his works of art.

Deriada shares the sentiment that the “past is distorted,” primarily because it is given existence by memory. “Reality does not have the discipline of fiction. So the writer has to tamper with reality” for them to create his craft.

Of his work, Deriada says he has virtually written his life—with some “beautiful, little lies.”

You Are The One

Rating:	★★
Category:	Movies
Genre:	Comedy

Toni Gonzaga, Sam Milby, Eugene Domingo
Directed by Cathy Garcia-Molina
Star Cinema
2006

Cathy Garcia-Molina’s “You Are The One” is a “good” film once we consider it is familiar to us and once we realize it is our story. The movie is a latest addition to the date-movie flicks, a cinema staple typical of the works by upcoming young directors.

Like other Filipino flicks, though, what follows is You Are The One’s formulaic [a.k.a predictable] storyline. A storyline is said to be predictable if there is not much new anything in it, and when we know exactly what can happen even if we just doze off inside the movie house the whole time.

A young National Statistics Office (NSO) female employee files her visa before a stern Fil-Am boy who is a vice-consul at the US embassy. Immediately the bubbly [read: Kikay] girl is smitten by the boy’s looks. After the girl’s inconsistency in her statements, Fil-Am boy denies girl US visa; the girl gets very disappointed.

Fil-Am boy gets trapped in a noonday Quezon City traffic jam, cancels going to work, and chances by the NSO; he later searches for his roots [requests for a birth certificate], meets the girl in her office.

The love-struck girl who first contemplated revenge now befriends boy. She later helps him find his Filipino parents in Pampanga. Sooner, their partnership develops into intimacy.

Conflict arises when the boy’s supposed parents are not the real ones. Boy gets intimidated by such failure and later, depressed; slams the girl like there has never been a relationship.

After a fellow employee tips her of the boy’s records, girl gives boy other names of his possible relatives in Bulacan. Boy ignores it, badly hurt and intimidated. Girl catches the boy sleeping with a foreigner girl; she confronts him. Girl goes away.

Girl becomes bitter, tries to forget the boy. After the girl’s sister has visited the Philippines for a conference, girl reconsiders plans to go to US after she settles her emotional rift with “estranged” sister. Boy goes back to the girl but the girl has already resigned from the NSO job. Girl gets ready to fly to the US.

But one day, rain pours hard thanks to the director’s props—the girl’s contingent is trapped and delayed for the flight; boy’s taxi arrives just in time. Later, people in the entire neighborhood hold umbrellas for the two to patch things up.

Dressed as a pig mascot, the boy apologizes to the girl publicly; girl demands the boy to profess his love for her. The public witnesses a rainy soap opera live before their very eyes. End of story.

End of story. Of the same story. Of the same story. One critic said that perhaps we want the same story because we are so familiar with it that it dictates our lives. Our familiarity with it makes us want more of the same thing.

So are we not tired of the same story? No, we say. Anything new is not the same story. So we patronize it. And because big producers like ABS-CBN produce these kinds of films and we have no choice not because this is what is given to us, but because this is what we demand. We later say this is what is given to us because indeed this is what we demand. Producers always cater to what we consumers need, and because for long we have been programmed by the media to act like we now do.

This has always been the story we want. This has always been our story in which we forever delight. While making our minds stagnate with these flicks because they do not make us think, these movies do not challenge our minds, but only entertain us and make us forget the cares of the day [which, to us, is more important anyway]. To us it is already okay. We are content with such a treat not because we are mababaw but because it features a number of things to familiar to us—it film features in the characters our very personalities; these characters are our very sensibilities.

First off, Toni Gonzaga is Sally Malasmas, the NSO East Avenue employee whose family migrated in the United States. Left to fend for herself, the yuppie in Sally projects a strong bubbly personality but whose hopes are dimmed when she is denied a visa to go to the States. Her bubbly character affords the movie its comic finesse. Without such bubbly-ness, You Are the One may not at all be the one where we with our time and effort. It is as though Gonzaga’s comic aura just so spontaneously delights her co-characters. Not at all pretty [which is most usually required for lead female characters], her taray personality is entirely unique, not like Maricel Soriano’s or those of her forerunners—you are just elated by her charisma.

From the Sprite commercial [I Love You, Piolo!”] in the late 90s, Toni Gonzaga has come a long way in the film industry. Her lead role in this film all the more makes her a very serious actress to consider. She propels the plot as the story revolves around her relationship with Sam Milby’s character and her remote family in the US.

Sam Milby’s Will Derby satisfactorily delivers a Fil-Am sensibility whose naivety does not become a hindrance to his task of finding his roots in Pampanga or Bulacan. Will Derby, the Fil-Am vice consul at the US Embassy who denied her visa is a typecast—a stereotype. His Asian-Caucasian looks easily fit the role, though most necessarily his diction and twang.

Like other pigeonholed roles, his character is the one that can easily be forgotten in the pages of out “movie memory” because he does not provide a fresh look at our consciousness. He highly portrays a type, a stereotype or stock character—whose existence though necessary for the story, is not a memorable one.

Eugene Domingo’s character is a delightful treat. One of the most sought after comediennes to date, Domingo’s signature antics coupled with her expressive facial expressions and smirks help bring the house down, just like she did in “D Lucky Ones” [together with Pokwang]. It is always wise for the filmmakers to provide for the character of Eugene Domingo because her talent is bankable. She reminds us of Nova Villa characters who are given the best punch lines or one-liners [those statements that make you think deeper about the story being presented].

In fact, Domingo acted out the lead character in the Palanca-winning play “Palanca In My Mind” which was presented during the 56th Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature held in Dusit Hotel September 1st. She led the comedy cast who portrayed the making of a Palanca die-hard. Domingo’s performance before the intellectual elite virtually brought the house down.

Meanwhile, Gio Alvarez’s Melody is another flat character reminiscent of Mel Martinez or Bernardo Bernardo, the screaming faggot who does not only portray the queerest character but even acts as “tulay” to the lovers Sally and Will. Like Eugene Domingo’s role, we do not forget this one because he is queer. To Filipinos, what is queer is always—necessarily—interesting. He interests us because he is noisy, and because he is among us, or one of us.

So there—to us, the movie is good because we find familiar characters in it—we find ourselves in it. Or we [get to] laugh to our hearts’ content watching a comic sitcom on the silver screen. Virtually, we do not feel cheated or shortchanged at all because we are only given what we want.

Yet, hardly we realize that while it does entertain us [because it features the same characters we have been used to knowing or identifying with], it does not at all make us think. Worse, we even feel it is more than enough.

Beautiful Boxers

Rating:	★★★★
Category:	Movies
Genre:	Drama

In truth, some boxers are born.

DURING the Pacquiao–Barrera match some years ago, from out of the blue, my junior student Carlo Timbol texted me exclaiming that Manny won over the Mexican. Perhaps he could not contain his elation that he must have texted more people including me.

I was touched by my student’s gesture—especially when I realized that Carlo, a minute character in his small stature and physique—who fairly looks like Manny Pacquiao—comes to identify and relate with his modern hero.

Indeed, after knocking out three Mexican boxers, famous southpaw Manny “Pac-man” Pacquiao now symbolizes the Filipino fighting spirit. Pacquiao’s successful feat does not only give hope to us but also clouds our real plight.

Through his impressive wins, we are swayed from the real plight of our lives, we become heroes with him—we forget that we live in [or belong to—whichever you choose] a sad republic, we tend to just go on further on.

In his consistently unfazed countenance in every bout, the Destroyer has gradually become everyman. His heroic deed is more than worth telling, for it has unified a divided nation; for many times, he has inspired the Filipino people to go on.

Even now, through the words “Manny Pacquiao,” I can relate to you as a fellow Filipino—despite our social differences engendered by so many isms around.

The General Santos southpaw who has come a long way from poor humble beginnings makes us turn the same way—and make sense of the words courage, determination, and heroism.

And whether or not Manny Pacquiao becomes a stale memory years from now—by then he has already become a household icon, someone whose life is worth emulating by anyone because it was fully lived—for it has had a purpose.

THOUGH Muhammad Ali is worthy of another article, at least here, we should say no other life of a superman could be more dramatic than his. Whenever he appears on television these days, we perennially realize how fates can be twisted, and how bluntly it hurts. His powerful punches against his contenders in the past are indeed nothing compared to the daily struggles he has now—having Parkinson’s disease.

Cassius Clay’s life story rather spells out that life is not a bed of roses—rather a path strewn with thorns—let it be added that we are to walk this path with nothing but our own feet. Nevertheless, whenever we see him shaking and trembling, we would be compelled to value our own strengths while [we are] in our prime. We would see how destiny could play with those who have lived their lives to the fullest. Or we would also realize how—if at all—you could not really waste your life by simply living it to the “fool”est. Just like Christopher Reeve whose life, Ali’s life is plainly irony.

MEANWHILE, talking of boxing as an achievement and later a jumping board for a career, we have the case of Mansueto “Onyok” Velasco. Velasco had his fifteen-minute fame when he clinched a silver medal in the 1996 Atlanta Olympics.

Onyok nearly clinched the country's first Olympic gold medal in the 1996 Atlanta Olympics when he slugged it out with Bulgarian Daniel Bojilov in the light-flyweight finals.

Before this, Velasco was one of the three Filipino boxers who clinched gold medals in the 1994 Asian Games held in Hiroshima, Japan. Even before his career eclipsed into becoming a comedian in some film flicks that feed the movie industry, the honor he won for the country had embedded his person in the sensibility of most Filipinos.

LUISITO Espinosa and Gerry Peñalosa are names I would hear when I was a student through the 90s. In times in the past, Espinosa “the Golden Boy” and Peñalosa dominated the national pages for their amazing fights, impressive boxing records, and perhaps wonderful careers. But now we can only wonder what exactly happened to them.

Lately, we must have heard some famous boxer who got into brawls and fistfights and similar troubles—had murky married life, or unsuccessful occupations and eventual pursuits. Whatever happened to them—famous or infamous—does not at all matter to them. For once in their lives, they became the people’s heroes. People feasted on their strength and claimed it their own.

Sad life, indeed, is the boxer’s life. Yet now, what matters is that for once in their lives, they must have fought and gained honor for every one of us. In each upper cut of left hook they landed on the opponent’s face, we were fighting with them, for they always carried our country’s name. Their valor is that of a soldier, and their wounds and bruises their virtual red badge of courage—the proofs of their resilience, their heroism.

Interestingly, in fiction, most boxers are made [and yet, because they are born].

Perhaps the “Rocky” movies that starred Sylvester Stallone also moved more hearts than any other human preoccupation. The biopic of Rocky Balboa—produced in installments—were another favorite in our clan—probably because the folks loved to see how the actor’s face is transformed from a dashing, debonair man into someone in a vegetative state.

Rocky’s famous blabbering dialogue would not fail to amaze anyone who has seen him in other movies like “Rambo,” “Cobra,” etc. Simply at the time if you did not know Sylvester Stallone in the eighties—you were definitely not in. The Rocky craze became a household philosophy. His dialogues became everybody’s line—his movies’ soundtracks became everyman’s anthems. What made Rocky famous? It must have been his charm and strength and the emotional weakness that he tried to counter. In the movies the boxer is depicted as vulnerable as well as resilient. The usual underdog rising to topple down the crowd’s favorite has never been fresh than in Rocky movies.

As a young boy in the eighties, I must have watched Jon Voight’s “The Champ” [1979] million times. Later on, I would know it is Franco Zeferelli’s masterpiece which is a remake of a 1931 classic.

The film zooms in on how an ex-boxer Bill Flynn redeems himself with his son whom he inspires despite the challenges he faced. The movie asks the viewer to sympathize with the boxer whose failed marriage with his wife renders some payoffs when the boy realizes that his father is his champion and no one else. The film experiments and presents the father-son chemistry as something desirable—since the bonding cannot at all be common, but something that is attainable through determination.

Our relatives must have owned their personal copy—that the movie had become a staple when there were no new tapes to show.

More interestingly, I must have watched it more than usual because it featured how the boxer was able to raise his son properly despite the tumultuous marriage. Talk of gender identification at a young age and family crisis.

Nevertheless, the people in our clan—from the aunties to uncles to brothers to siblings and cousins—must have seen the film more times than we could think of. As young children, my cousins and I even memorized the lines uttered by the son of who encouraged the boxer to keep up the fight despite that he was cheated both in the ring and in the ring of life.

The Oscar-winning character of Hillary Swank in Clint Eastwood’s “Million Dollar Baby” [2004] gives us a skewed picture of the boxer whose life turns around—because her own courage and determination allowed things to happen against her. Maggie Fitzgerald’s eagerness to engage in the sports articulates the passion she sees in it [that is—sadly—predominated by males].

At first, Clint Eastwood’s Frankie Dunn, her trainer, is reluctant to take her on until he realizes they can jive together and realize for her the dream of becoming the boxer. Later on, both realize that they share a commonality that will change their lives forever. Together they will bond and find each other the sense of family which they lost along the way. Eastwood’s opus clinched the Best Picture for last year’s Oscar.

It’s funny how the movie industry has—through the years—created wonderful works in the characters of boxers.

Boxing films are not a new genre. In fact, Marlon Brando’s Oscar-winning character in “On the Waterfront” [1954] in the 1950s and Robert de Niro’s boxer in “Raging Bull” in the 1970s further illustrate how the world of boxing—through its characters and their life stories—literally converts the boxing ring into the ring of life—the arena where people virtually are either scarred physically, or marred spiritually. Of course, the latter casualty is more irreparable—deadlier than the physical trauma suffered.

In the lives of all these pugilists—actual or contrived—nothing is more enlightening than the lessons they teach us—they whose lives afford us the chances to become aware of our own struggles and fights in this ring of life.

In Her Shoes

Rating:	★★★
Category:	Movies
Genre:	Comedy

Cameron Diaz, Toni Collete, Shirley Mclaine
Directed by Curtis Hanson
20th Century Fox
2005

It's a power-house[hold] film. After Eminem's coming-of-age “8 Mile” (2000), Nevada-born US director Curtis Hanson comes back, offering us something familiar, sensible and new.

Treating a theme so familiar as familial relationships, 20th Century Fox's “In Her Shoes” (2005) is a fresh look at how relationships can get so sentimental without being soap-opera-like.

Dissecting filial relationships gone haywire, Hanson's “In Her Shoes” carries double meanings both for the differing characters of sisters Maggie and Rose Feller, and those of their grandmother Ella Hirsch (Shirley McLaine) and the sister's father Michael [played by Ken Howard]. The story presents the rifts between the two characters, allows us to share the journey, and rewards us the joy of reunion in a
dragging yet clean sweep.

For sisters Maggie and Rose, despite their irreconcilable differences, one thing holds truth for both of them. Their being sisters cannot account for their anger at each other. They even allow for them to strengthen the bond that they have. When their emotional plates collided and created a risky rift between them, each moved on until their maternal grandmother comes in between.

Shirley McLaine's "deus ex machina"--or the coming-in-between-the-characters-just before-the-movie-finishes--does not really appear contrived since the sisters are sensibly established to have clung fromeach other since their mother's death and the father's concealment of their grandmother [due to the latter's mutual hatred and indifference over the death of their mother]. In the end, friendship and sisterhood are simply inseparable. In the end, blood is thicker than water, or let it be said further that blood is certainly no water.

Clever is the employment of Shirley McLaine's grandmother character to neutralize the rift between the sisters, especially when each of the sisters strikes a chord in the sensibility of the grandmother.

Intricate are the stories and familial setups divulged by the characters themselves, and yet simple and clean-cut are the resolutions. While “In Her Shoes” renders to us a different Cameron Diaz who journeys through her own transformation from a careless job drifter to a romantic e.e. cummings fan-matchmaker, it also presents a more intense Toni Collette, who has her own transformation from a geek-ish Philadelphia attorney to an open-minded soul-searching dog-walker.

Also an actor [he acted as Orlean's husband in Nicolas Cage's weird “Adaptation”], Hanson zooms in on Toni Collete's “fat pig” countenance, revealing to the viewer the desperation in the woman's stature and posture when she realizes her being sister to Maggie seems like not holding much truth.

Testing the waters of modern themes, Hanson varies his treatment of rather stale themes such as family. From rapper Eminem's delving into film “8 Mile” (2002) to versatile Michael Douglas's “Wonder Boys” (2000) or even Rebecca de Mornay's “The Hand that Rocks the Cradle” (1992),” an HBO favorite mainstay thriller, Curtis Hanson displays sheer versatility in the craft.

His films are bent on the plight of the individual that is affected by the actions of other characters. With this new film, mental or psychological adventure and intricacies seem to be Hanson's forte.

This is a new masterpiece, as it tries to weave the importance of filial piety and family relationships as the be-all and end-all of his creations.

Naga Nostalgia

Mapa-Naga daa ngonyan si Mama, iibahon si Nene. Kaya ogmahon siya.

Malunad sinda sa halabaon na jeep na Tio Magno. Sasakuluhon siya ni Mama. Maagi sinda sa Manguiring, duman sa dinalanan mi nin tunton kaidto. Pag may nagbaba sa Calabanga, makakatukaw si Nene sa tukawan. Mahihiling niya an nag-aaraging mga harong, karaskason. Nagdadaralagan an mga kahoy sagkod mga poste. Maduroson. Mapirirong siya ta maduroson sa may bintana kan jeep. Sasabihan siya ni Mama na dai iluwas an kamot sa bintana. Magagayonan siya ta maduroson tapos karaskason tapos nag-aarandar an inaaragihan ninda.

Madalhog sinda sa may ka Tiyang Didang sa atubangan kan Supermarket. Magkakahiriling ni Nene kadakulon tawong nag-aaragi. Mabalyo sinda sa tinampo, malaog sa bangko. Mahalat siya ki Mama sa malumuyon na kutson na tukawan sa laog kan Bicol Savings. Malipoton sa laog kan hinahalatan niya. Ogmahon si Nene. Pag inapod na si Mama kan magayon na babaying nakamake-up, kakabiton na siya ni Mama, tatawanan kan babaye si Mama nin kuwarta. Pirang minuto na lang maluwas na sinda.

Makakan sinda sa New China. Masakat sinda sa second floor ta magayonon saka malipoton. Makakan sinda nin pansit sagkod siopao sagkod Royal. Tapos malaog sinda sa Shoppers Mall. Mahihiling ni Nene bagohon an bado kan aki sa display-han kan Shoppers Mall. Babakalan siya ni Mama nin bagong bado sagkod medyas. Dakul nang bado si Nene pagluwas. Ogmahon si Nene.

Tapos babakalan pa siya ni Mama nin sapatos sa Zenco Footstep. Papasukulon si Nene kan saleslady nin pirang padis nin sapatos. Hinuhurulog sa labot hali sa itaas an mga sapatos. Hahapoton siya nin Mama kun piot o haluag. Pag may nagustuhan na siya, babayadan na ini ni Mama. Pagluwas ninda, igwa na siyang bagong sapatos.

Mapangudto sinda sa Supermarket. Ma-order si Mama nin kandingga sa Deniega. Mapapaso si Nene ta mainiton an maluto. Mahuhulog niya an tinidor kan kinapotan niya na tulos an bote nin Royal. Aanggotan siya ni Mama ta nabasa an bado niya. Pupunasan ni Mama an bado ni Nene ta nabasa.

Pagkapangudto malakaw sinda pa-Bichara. Mahiling sinda sa kartel kan bagong pasine. Mahamot an parong sa Bichara. Parong popcorn sagkod malipotlipot sa may sinehan. Mabayad si Mama nin tiket. Makabit si Nene ki Mama tapos mabakal sinda nin Growers sagkod softdrink sa tindahan kan sinehan. Madiklomon sa laog kan sinehan kaya dai mabutas si Nene ki Mama.

Pagluwas ninda sa Bichara, mabalik sinda sa Supermarket. Masakat sinda sa third floor. Mabakal sinda nin gulay, bawang, sibulyas, kamatis, lana, sagkod tinapa. Bago magbaba, baad mapilipili pa sa Mama nin segunda-mano sa second floor.

Bago sinda magbalyo pasiring sa paradahan kan jeep, mahapit muna sinda sa Romero's. Mabakal si Mama nin sa diez pesos na pan Legaspi, an tinapay mainit pa. May kakakanon pa sinda sa jeep bago maglarga.

Maiba man daw 'ko.

Iyas Writers Workshop, 2007

Dumaguete Writers Workshop, 2009

Iligan Writers Workshop, 2008

The Daily Tribune, 2006

The Daily Tribune, 2006

Salugsog sa Sulog, 2005

Ani 33, 2007

Sa Kabila ng Ritmo, 2005

Mindanao Times, 2008

Flowers from The Rubble

By Conrado de Quiros
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 01:03:00 06/02/2009

I’ve always liked the image of flowers from the rubble, enough to have made it the title of my first book, a collection of early columns. I first saw it in a poem by a Vietnamese about Vietnam at the height of the Vietnam War. It wasn’t flowers he mentioned though, if I recall right, it was tufts of grass shooting out. From the rubble that Vietnam had been turned into by its invaders, he wrote, the Vietnamese spirit would push out like tufts of grass, stubbornly, courageously, transcendently. Like life pushing out from the thorny thicket of death. Or words to that effect.

Whether it’s tufts of grass or flowers or the first sprouts of greenery climbing out of the black pit, it’s a great image for the assertiveness of life. It’s a great image for the resilience of a people. It’s a great image for the indomitability of the human spirit.

That was the phrase that kept buzzing through my head while in Puerto Princesa the other weekend. What pushed the image through the rubble in my brain (courtesy of a night spent toasting to the wonders of the place) was the sudden realization that underneath the rubble our unelected rulers have turned this country into, a desolate place where vultures perch on top of the wreckage and ruin, tufts of grass or flowers or the first sprouts of greenery are pushing out. Determinedly, vigorously, courageously. It did help that the place bristled with lushness and greenery to sprout that image. But it did help even more that the place throbbed with life, or pulsed with the spirit of a community renewed.

I thought: We do not lack for places like this in the country. Specifically, we do not lack for towns or cities or provinces which, having leaders with character and vision to lead them, are offering a decent life for their inhabitants and hope for the rest of the populace. They are testaments to the resilience of the race, to the capacity of the people to pull themselves up by their bootstraps.

Naga City is one of them. My favorite image of Jesse Robredo is still that of being knee-deep in mud, shoveling the putrid mass out of the front yard of a church. A super storm had driven deep into Naga City many years ago and ravaged it, the floodwaters tearing down into the city and rising to alarming levels before subsiding. It had left mud spills across the city, and Robredo, awake at the crack of one very gray dawn, had gone out in shorts and, armed with a shovel, had been first to start clearing up the mess. He was soon joined by other people in the effort. Example has a way of compelling more than all the exhortations in the world.

Pampanga and Isabela are two others. At the height of the recall campaign against Ed Panlilio, his detractors complained bitterly about his inefficiency or ineptness, proof of it apparently being his refusal to put the provincial revenue, which had grown startlingly overnight, in the hands of officials other than those in his trusted group. Money that presumably would have gone to improving Pampanga. Well, why on earth should he? Why on earth should he put the money in the hands of people who were responsible in the first place for revenues not growing, or indeed decreasing, during their bosses’ watch?

I leave Panlilio and Grace Padaca to flaunt their record in public service, though it is one of the supreme ironies of life (which is why evil often thrives) that the deserving are not wont to parade their virtues, they have better things to do. From where I stand, however, curbing corruption, which both have done magnificently in their turfs, is an epic achievement in and of itself. Particularly in times when thievery is extolled and honesty disparaged, that shines brilliantly like a beacon in a storm-tossed sea.

There were/are as well Olongapo then under Richard Gordon (some insist he was a better executive officer than legislator), Marikina under Bayani Fernando (he lost his soul when he gained Metro Manila), and Makati under Jojo Binay (the favorite mayor of senior citizens). I refuse to include Davao City because of the extrajudicial killings there. That smacks of official policy.

But I am especially impressed by Puerto Princesa because it combines these merits or pluses. It has curbed corruption, City Hall running without much red tape. It has restored peace and order—it has one of the lowest, if not the lowest, crime rates in the country, tourists never having to fear toting their expensive cameras and cell phones in public and it has done this without resorting to torturing or “salvaging” suspects. It has done this the old-fashioned way, which is by making law enforcement modern.

More than this, it has brought progress without sacrificing the future to the present. It has done so in a completely self-sustaining way, something the other model cities and provinces may not always boast of. Call Edward Hagedorn what you will, but you’ve got to admire his unshakeable resolve to protect the environment. Or what is bad news to Malacañang and its cronies, his unswerving commitment to not allow mining and logging in his turf. Puerto Princesa is pushing out of the wilderness without destroying the wilderness.

These are flowers from the rubble. This is the resilience of a people amid war—you look at the debris and rubble around us and you’ll know we are in the midst of war, as real and devastating as the Vietnam War. A war waged by the government against its own people. Maybe these flowers are the Obama we’ve been looking for, maybe these leaders are the Obama we’ve been waiting for. Certainly they have shown that there are no limits to how far we can go with honesty and courage, with vision and political will.

Question is: How do we propagate their kind? How do we make them the true leaders of the nation?

Times and the Man

To Raul J. Bonoan, S.J. [1935-1999]

To the left of the chapel fronting the registrar’s
I am warmly greeted by the bust of the late
great president, his head up in royal stance,
one that commanded, in his life, generosity of spirit
so that everyone in my community heard
“to serve Bikol and country” as a tall order,
as towering as the Four Pillars,

beyond which much I have done.

Bronze perhaps, the bust’s broad shoulders
still remind me of one prominent, imposing
civility, who taught diplomacy as byword;
exactness, crime; and rapport, virtue—
verities even I need now

that the man is long gone.

I, Rooney

To Michael Rooney, S. J.

When I was a high school senior in Ateneo de Naga, I found it hard listening to Fr. Michael Rooney, the new adviser of the Sanctuary Society of the Sacred Heart (SSSH), a group of acolytes who served in the Mass and performed apostolates. Father Rooney replaced Fr. Johnny Sanz who was then assigned in Bukidnon.

Father Rooney spoke Filipino with a twang that sounded so awkward, one which he tried so hard to enunciate. Always appearing eager to learn to speak the language, the priest would greet us “Magandang umaga” or “Kumusta kayo?” with an inflection that was only his.

Though soft-spoken, his Tagalog rather sounded ridiculous to me that I would just be distracted by the way he spoke and not understand what he would say.

Even the way he’d call my name every time I met him in the hallways made me feel uncomfortable.

Whenever I heard him say Mass in the Xavier Chapel, I could not help but while away my time, thinking other thoughts because I could hardly make out what the priest was saying.

But I found it interesting because the speaker himself did not seem to match the words he was speaking. Fr. Michael Rooney looked Caucasian but spoke Filipino—it was just incongruous.

The priest always sounded funny to me.

Yet, everything the priest did was anything but funny. In the brief company I shared with him as a member of the altar boys, I always found him amiable, and cheerful. Towering just like Father Phelan, Father Rooney hovered over us, students, someway like a coach, unfailing to smile and always rooting for us in whatever we would do, always there to make us aspire.

But why did he have to speak Filipino? I suppose Father Rooney spoke Tagalog, or even Bikol because he had to, if only to relate with everyone in Ateneo, the community he had been assigned to serve.

Like that of any other Jesuit seeking to lay down his life for his friend, his should have been the most difficult tradeoff. Perhaps Fr. Rooney’s calling which is hinged on selflessness and vulnerability to ridicule just required that he sound ridiculous (or otherwise interesting), if only to make people listen to what he had to say.

I suppose when Fr. Rooney became a Jesuit, he also knew that he should learn the language of the people with whom he will be called to serve. So he sought to learn it himself, not even thinking of how ridiculous he would sound.

I admire him for his constant eagerness to learn our own mother tongue, Filipino, inasmuch as I feel guilty of not using it myself.

Language was not one to prevent him from doing what he ought to do. For in the fifteen years he had served in the community, through his unfailing efforts for the Ateneo, of which I just heard or learned from others, I can only surmise he surely got his message across.

Surmise—that’s the word. I can only surmise all these because as soon as I entered Ateneo college, Fr. Rooney had already become an obscure figure to me.

I just saw him in one of the pictures taken during my mother’s wake in Tinambac, Camarines Sur sometime in 1996. In the picture, he was seated in one of the pews. He was carrying an umbrella. It rained hard on my mother’s funeral. Fr. Rooney looked so forlorn—looking like he’s almost crying. Or as if he’s listening hard to one of the eulogies being given for my mother—one of which I myself gave in behalf of my brothers and sisters. Later, I would know that a bus-load of members of Ateneo community came to the Bagacay cemetery for our mother’s last rites.

I remember some of my classmates who were in the funeral but I hardly knew Fr. Rooney was there. I was surprised to see him in one of the pictures. During those days in college, being into a number of other things, I would not just be one to pay much attention.

I felt awkward when Mr. Gerry Brizuela, my fellow acolyte in those days, asked me for this tribute. Nothing is more ironic here than not being able to say anything much about the man of the hour.

I hardly knew the man, if at all.

It makes me want to cry, knowing I have not understood what he really said. Because in the rare instances he talked to me, or appeared trying hard to talk to me, I was hardly listening.

Doyong

When I was younger, I would go to my uncle’s house to read old copies of Balalong and Bikol Banner, two city publications where my uncle worked as a serious journalist in the 1980s. Of course, these two papers folded up even before I could grow up—most probably because the politician financiers were ousted from “public service.”

Many times I would sneak into their house to read them, or simply look at my uncle’s article and
photograph on the paper. Such sight was simply interesting to me—someone is saying something and his face is there for the reader to see.

I would always want to see and [read] my uncle’s weekly columns. Some of them were prized possessions in their cabinet—piles of newspaper issues perhaps stored for posterity, until typhoons came and went and soaked them all to oblivion.

Being the eldest son, Doyong, (the corrupted form of "Junior," or the more pejorative "Dayunyor"), my uncle would now and then publicly brandish any of his media projects to us—his nephews and nieces—even his children—that principles are what he stood for; thus,
his work.

In my mother’s brood, he was the one who worked for the media. While my grandparents took pride in that, some folks—it seemed to me—just could not agree or were at all satisfied by the whole idea. Media workhas always appealed to him that until now, I was told, he is still working for a political clan in Camarines Sur, helping them in most of their media projects.

His love of words has been pervasive that in one of our clan reunions—sometime in 1985—her children [my cousins] staged a strike, hoisting placards protesting against “measures” enforced by Lolo Meling and Lola Eta [themselves the status quo owning the poultry and livestock that provided the grand family's livelihood]—perfectly mimicking the turbulent scenes apparent during the Marcos regime.

Just like any writer, my uncle has sincerely professed the love of words. He loves words, and fortunately he profits from it, not like other journalists and media persons who may have just been enslaved by it. My uncle has been a PR man most of his life—serving people in government positions. And as a journalist, he had many political connections. For a time, he even worked as vice-mayor in our town.

Just like a popular mediaman, he can easily ask projects from the governor or congressman of this clan—having been friends with them for so long now. And in one-time projects involving a large amount of money, his family is largely to benefit, his media practice is occasionally profitable that their lives would suddenly change in an instant.

But like most journalists serving the interests of politicians, my uncle and his family would sometimes wallow in poverty—simply, that gross lack of means to sustain themselves. Many times he and his family went hungry perhaps owing to such choice of profession.

But these were all before. Now, things have changed for him and his family as he has had his first set of grandchildren. One of his daughters is now based in Saudi Arabia as a medical worker; while her first two daughters are engaged in information technology and similar professions. Things are simply looking up for my uncle and his family.

In the past, his love of words had long started a family and earned for it their means of sustenance—and truly, deprived them of better opportunities. Yet, until now perhaps—such love of words has not given him up. Or shall I say—he has not given up on what he has chosen to do all his life.

All for the love of words.

Salvation

I cringe at the sight of the Scourging at the Pillar in Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ. Whenever I watch it on DVD, I skip that part where Jim Caviezel’s bloodied body is flogged heavily like an animal, his skin ripped apart by the Roman soldiers. I fast-forward to the part where Abenader, Pilate's chief guard, scolds the soldiers for having almost killed Jesus. The first time I saw it on a wide-screen sometime in 2004, I tossed and turned and could not look, almost wanting to leave my seat, but could not.

Scandal

Back in the eighties, whenever my aunt’s movie (ware)house (they used their copra bodega for Betamax showing) showed bold movies, the owners would announce it would be exclusive screening and then send all the children out. Not once did I ever peek into any of these shows. One time, before we were sent out, their neighbors and friends were excited after they were told they would watch Kiri. But before I and kids my age were ushered out and the door was finally shut and bolted, I already saw something.

I hardly made out anything from it, though. I thought I hardly saw anything at all.

Not Just Another Dog Story

While they say dog is man’s best friend, I then say man is dog’s worst friend.

Take the case of Gundina, our pet dog who mothered a brood of other canines that witnessed tragic events in our poor household in the late 80s. 

One bleak day, when Mother found out that she was bitten by a mad dog in the barrio, she immediately requested our equally mad uncle to shoot the dog using his old shotgun. Mother had simply decided that she wouldn’t be able to recover. 

I remember that day when they cornered her in our backyard one morning after she was out in the streets for days. I heard its final cry and it told me something. Gundina, I learned, never wished to be mad, I thought. She was not just a dog. I mean she was a special one.

She had been Mother’s companion through the years—from the time Mother started to labor single-handedly for her six growing children, after being widowed too early to the time Mother was still laboring much to bring us, her children further, and further forward.

This dog always accompanied Mother when she went to teach grade-six pupils in the barrio school. She would not fail to go with Mother when she went to school, or she would be by her feet beneath the narra desk where she would type away countless souvenir programs for the Cursillo classes held in her father Emiliano’s house, who was himself a great educator.

Gundina witnessed numerous batches of grade-school graduates whom her Master had taught through the years. I always wonder—but she exuded one serenity of such simple creature—and perhaps composure in all instances. I wonder how the animal learned such sense of self-possession after having spent so much time attending to her Master’s teaching work inside a grade-six classroom.

Gundina had grace when she walked, almost like a cat as she sauntered with her Master along the street. The panorama was just impressive—Master and Friend coming together from the day’s laborious schoolwork, strolling towards the sunset, walking almost in cadence—the dog becoming the grace that her Master had, and the Master affecting her pet with such a flourish. The tandem was just one of a kind.

Or I do not know of anyone whom she had bitten—strangers, friends, us, or whoever. If all canine victims filed a blotter case before the Office of Human Affairs Against Canines—I am sure—I would not find Gundina in the record. She was a kind dog. I hardly remember when our family acquired her—all I knew was that there was a dog in our household named Gundina, and she was a gentle ordinary-breed dog with some hazy spots on her off-white hair.

But this one fine day nothing about her was unclear anymore—we were left with no option. When we found out she had been stray for long—and then mad, I felt badly sad. After everything that was shared, such togetherness would have to end—from the unholy and empty afternoons in the classroom to the rabuz sessions in the barangay—Mother could only give her the needed coup de grace to end her “insanity”. And maybe to do justice to her loyalty all those years.

Naturally, Mother could not at all afford to bring her good friend to some sort of a veterinarian or something. No one ever knew of one in the barrio I suppose. In those days in that small place, mad dogs just ended up as one thing—either good or bad pulutan.

How could Gundina’s matter of-life-and-death ever enter her Master’s mind when her four sons in the bigger city were finding it difficult to survive their high school? With a miserable income, Gundina’s Master could hardly provide for her children.

She just had other things she needed to do. She must have thought Gundina’s loyalty could extend to her not being made a priority. Well, the canine’s wails while being gunned down by the furious hunter (and his equally war-freak sidekicks) just vanished. Then it was over.

II.

Then there was Gandhi, a towering figure in our grandparents’ libod (backyard), a sprawling estate that we call with fondness for this is where my mother’s clan had shared many of life’s joys and struggles. Since my high school days, Gandhi has bred generations of good dogs—some of them even helped her breed more all for the service of their owners, Lolo Meling and Lola Eta.

All her offspring have gone through life’s harsh realities—they survived extreme hunger during typhoons or due to the neglect or apathy of their owners and their servants, or are given to the visitors of the old couple—to name of few, Gandhi’s puppies were usually given to rectors, benefactors, and supporters of Cursillos de Cristiandad, who frequented the libod—perhaps owing to my Lolo Meling’s unquestionable commitment to the Catholic movement.

Some of them were also handed to Lola’s relatives everywhere around the globe, and others were disposed to Gandhi knows where else. Others were also given to the friends of their children, or acquaintances of the Grand Dame who usually treated all visitors—aside from select relatives—in full regalia, or cousins who came back to see their relatives after a long while in the city or somewhere else.

Despite having had offspring with her own puppies, Gandhi has remained in my grandparents’ household. She must have seen countless batches of her offspring come and go, live and die. But she has remained as Gandhi, the same dog I knew from the time I entered Ateneo de Naga, the Jesuit high school until the time I needed to get out of it to get some fresh air, er, some real life.

One afternoon in October coming home from a week of facilitating pathetic college classes, I visited the libod to help a cousin clean the poultry houses for the new batch of 45-days chickens in my Lola Eta’s dwindling business. My grandmother was so annoyed when she found out that Gandhi and her new set of offspring had been staying in a poultry house. The brooders smelled horrible. Gandhi must have delivered and bred her new offspring inside the only remaining poultry house. In the middle of hard rain, my grandmother cursed the dogs to no end, and told us to shoo the animals away from the fowls’ cages.

Before we could clean the cages, my cousin Cris had to hurl boiling water at them and we almost scalded her new offspring who howled and scampered in the rain to look for shelter.

Gandhi’s instinctual need for reproduction (has she needed to perpetuate something with her seemingly endless generation of canines?] had not at all merited her Master’s compassion, despite her long years of service. Had Gandhi belonged to government service she would have been awarded a loyalty plaque for years of service and of course—provision of dog power—er, dog personnel that in more ways than one—through the years—certainly accommodated her Master’s sensibility.

But that one afternoon in October disproved this much. And it must have told her many things. How about the security Gandhi and Co. provided their Masters? Despite the countless times that Gandhi and her offspring were driven away from our grandmother’s rickety household, the canine together with her offspring, came back to household. Scalded, bruised, and scathed, they came back. This matriarch had displayed much more sensitivity, as it were.

III.

There were also Kagata (“Bite it!”) and Dasmagi (“Run to it!”), puppies of Gandhi’s with an unknown partner, belonged to my youngest uncle’s household. Their names just showed my uncle’s fondness for grim humor. I feared these two creatures when I’d visit Cabanbanan to help my Auntie Delia harvest some corn at the back of their modest house.

These two dogs heavily guarded Auntie Delia’s house at the time when my young cousin Aldrin was just a toddler, who crawled up the kayo tree while his mother was not looking after him.

I never knew what happened to these dogs but I am sure the fierce creatures were not able to do anything when Auntie Delia filed for annulment or called it quits many times with her husband after he went back from overseas work with a new “wife,” and a few children, too. Like dogs, I think reality simply bites and when it does, it does so very badly.

Hot Summer

Perhaps summer is the best time to curl up on a good book, eat a mouth-watering halo-halo, frolic with friends in the mall, or just be a couch potato the whole day. These activities people would do to get away from the scorching heat, to cool themselves away from the discomforts of the roasting climate. Perhaps going to the beach is one thing that most families anticipate, to get together and do one thing at the same time, bond and get away from the cares of the day.

Yet, some thirty summers ago, one promising poet perhaps fresh from the Tiempos’ Dumaguete workshop, rendered a picture of how one picnic can be one opportunity for something more than frolic and picnic.

In “The Picnic” by Luis Cabalquinto, a Bikolano writer now based in New York, the persona does more than observe the sights and sounds in a beach, say Siquijor.

The first touch of bare feet to sand
Makes of us reborn children
We drop invisible weights
and smile like a seashell.
Our limbs are light as the wind.
Our heads clean as clouds.
Loneliness is the vague land
on the far horizon.

Published in the Manila Review in August 1976, “The Picnic” features a persona who observes more than what he sees on the beach.

For the persona, the beach getaway is an opportunity to not only refresh the body, but to rejuvenate the soul. The cool respite from the heat takes him and his companions away from the hustle and bustle, from all the car[e]s of the day, so to speak:

We are all good people on the beach:
We are quick with our movements
to help
one another—
With the baskets, with the towels,
and our lunch.

We retrieve a smooth pebble
For a stranger’s two-year-old daughter
Against an advancing wave.

The persona sees the people’s good dispositions, of those who have gone to the beach to relax. He sees that people who go to the beach must really be there “for the keeps.” They are certainly there to make fun and have fun just because they are [fun]! They are good people; they are kind ones; or, they become what they don’t seem to be:

We give freely: our gestures generous,
large
as the mothering sea.
We eye each other’s bodies in the spirit
of a free-love commune:
We are ready to sleep with other men
Or secretly lend our wives.

In the poem, the beach becomes an open space, like an open mind that can be polluted anytime. In the preceding stanza, the persona slowly delivers the poem’s tension. In the recesses of the persona’s mind, he ponders duplicity, he contemplates infidelity.

As in any other beach, which must be brimming of picnickers, the beachgoer is indeed thrown open [literally] to hundreds of possibilities, being given more choices than what he can contain. For one, his mind can go freely as to accommodate delicious cravings [for freethinkers] or go overboard as to contemplate acts as sleeping with his own kind [for moralists]. Here, the beach affords the beachgoer chances to sin. The persona can entertain such thoughts as flirting with anyone, or trading off one’s filiations, if any.

Perhaps the 1970s—the period in which this piece was written—was some substantial years after the liberation of ideas, philosophies and lifestyles in the West from within college campuses and beyond. In this poem, Cabalquinto echoes a freethinking sensibility; through his craft he becomes the herald about treacheries [and also truths].

Very well, Camarines Sur-born Cabalquinto sees issues beyond sights; he rather sees metaphors in trivial objects or situations. In a rather fun-seeking rendezvous, the poem’s persona gets to speak out more nasty intentions; the poet [literally] flings open the realities of the “fling.” Flirtations among men and [even] between them have never been as antiquated as in this poem written some three decades ago.

The persona, of course, may just shrink in comparison when—he comes to know some three decades later—what he chooses to do is not something to be wary of—it is not anymore something frowned upon. Times have changed, radically. Had the poem’s persona been alive now, he may not have to hide his affection for anyone whom he desires in one island beach. There will be no more need for corals or shells to speak for what is rather forbidden:

But—
We are not wholly people on the beach:
Back in our houses, back in our cities—
We live on other rules,
follow
different
tides.

Even as we leave on the last jeep
to town—
Our grip grows strongly
over a gold cowrie
We picked off a coral.
We slip it into a pocket quickly,
Away from our neighbor’s
greed
and eye.

Leaving Normal

Just before you bring the last box
of your things to the taxi waiting
outside, make sure the glass-table
they lent you is wiped clean, spotless
like your head free of yesterday’s
they-ask-you-answer conversations
with the committee. No words will be
said, not a word will have to seek
their approval. Dust off the last shelf
and don’t you go and forget the books,
scissors and things you lent them.
Empty your basket, too, of all trash
so the other bins filled to the brim
next to their tables utter nothing,
with their unfeeling mouths,
as you now head toward the door.
The driver’s sounding his horn by the gate
so just run past the guard you warmly
greeted, coming in this morning;
refuse his hand to carry your stuff
but remember friendship, for good.
Seated in the car now, take comfort
in the cushioned couch, wiping off
the dust collected on your palms.

Ateneo English Majors, 1990s

Classical Name
Guild of English Majors (GEMS)

Renaissance Name
Dagubdub (see Xavier Olin)

Literary Kingdom
Ateneo de Naga
Naga City

Literary Period
1992 onwards

Precursors
Rodolfo F. Alano
Paz Verdades Santos

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Xavier L. Olin
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Scandal

Back in the eighties, whenever my aunt’s movie (ware)house—they used their copra bodega for Betamax showing—showed bold movies, the owners would announce it would be exclusive screening and then send all the children out. Not once did I ever peek into any of these shows.

One time, before we were sent out, their neighbors and friends were excited after they were told they would watch Kiri. But before they ushered my cousins and me out, and finally shut and bolted the door, I saw something.

I hardly made out anything from it, though. I thought I hardly saw anything at all.

Hot summer

Musings on Luis Cabalquinto's "The Picnic"
April 2006

Summer is the best time to curl up on a good book, eat a mouth-watering halo-halo, frolic with friends in the mall, or just be a couch potato the whole day. These activities people would do to get away from the scorching heat, to cool themselves away from the discomforts of the roasting climate.
 
Going to the beach is one thing that most families anticipate, to get together and do one thing at the same time, bond and get away from the cares of the day.
 

(Postcard was a gift from Janet Lyn "Selena" Go-Alano back in 1997 in Ateneo de Naga)

Yet, some thirty summers ago, one promising poet perhaps fresh from the Tiempos’ Dumaguete workshop, rendered a picture of how one picnic can be one opportunity for something more than frolic and picnic.
 
In “The Picnic” by Luis Cabalquinto, a Bikolano writer based in New York, the persona does more than observe the sights and sounds in a beach, perhaps like Boracay.
 
The first touch of bare feet to sand
Makes of us reborn children
We drop invisible weights
                        and smile like a seashell.
Our limbs are light as the wind.
Our heads clean as clouds.
Loneliness is the vague land
on the far horizon.
 
Published in the Manila Review in August 1976, “The Picnic” features a persona who observes more than what he sees on the beach.
 
For the persona, the beach getaway is an opportunity to not only refresh the body, but to rejuvenate the soul. The cool respite from the heat takes him and his companions away from the hustle and bustle, from all the car[e]s of the day, so to speak:
 
We are all good people on the beach:
We are quick with our movements
                        to help
                        one another—
With the baskets, with the towels,
                        and our lunch.
We retrieve a smooth pebble
For a stranger’s two-year-old daughter
Against an advancing wave.
 
The persona sees the people’s good dispositions, of those who have gone to the beach to relax. He sees that people who go to the beach must really be there “for the keeps.” They are certainly there to make fun and have fun just because they are [fun]! They are good people; they are kind ones; or, they become what they don’t seem to be:
 
We give freely: our gestures generous,
                        large
                        as the mothering sea.
We eye each other’s bodies in the spirit
                        of a free-love commune:
We are ready to sleep with other men
Or secretly lend our wives.
 
The beach is an open space, like an open mind that can be polluted anytime. In the preceding stanza, the persona slowly delivers the poem’s tension. In the recesses of the persona’s mind, he ponders duplicity, he contemplates infidelity.
 
As in any other beach, which must be brimming of picnickers, the beachgoer is indeed thrown open [literally] to hundreds of possibilities, being given more choices than what he can contain. For one, his mind can go freely as to accommodate delicious cravings or [for freethinkers] or go overboard as to contemplate unspeakable acts as sleeping with his own kind [for moralists].
 
The beach affords the beachgoer chances to sin. The persona can entertain such thoughts as flirting with anyone, or trading off one’s filiations, if any.

Perhaps the 1970s—the period in which this piece was written—was some substantial years after the liberation of ideas, philosophies and lifestyles in the West from within college campuses and beyond. In this poem, Cabalquinto echoes a freethinking sensibility; through his craft he becomes the herald about treacheries [and also truths].
 
Very well, Cabalquinto who hails from Magarao, Camarines Sur, sees issues beyond sights; he rather sees metaphors in trivial objects or situations.
 
In a rather fun-seeking rendezvous, the poem’s persona gets to speak out more nasty intentions; the poet [literally] flings open the realities of the “fling.” Flirtations among men and [even] between them have never been antiquated as in this poem written some three decades ago.
 
“The Picnic” persona, of course, may just shrink in comparison when—he comes to know some three decades later—what he chooses to do is not something to be wary of—it is not anymore something frowned upon.
 
Times have changed, radically.
 
Had the poem’s persona been alive now, he may not have to hide his affection for anyone whom he desires in one island beach. There will be no more need for corals or shells to speak for what is rather forbidden:
 
 
But—
We are not wholly people on the beach:
Back in our houses, back in our cities—
We live on other rules,
                        follow
                        different
                        tides.
Even as we leave on the last jeep
                        to town—
Our grip grows strongly
                        over a gold cowrie
We picked off a coral.
We slip it into a pocket quickly,
Away from our neighbor’s
                        greed
                        and eye.

Recently, a local daily here ran a story on gay prostitutes being barred from Boracay due to their violations on some regulations in the island. The burgeoning business of gay prostitution says only one thing. The business is boiling [high] because the demand for it heats it all up. These facts are clear, however. Most if not all foreigners or even local tourists who go there are not [only] after the beach. They are after the experience from being clients of a healthy and thriving flesh trade—oh well—legitimized by the rest of the world. 

In the hot summer, spirits have already been scalded and scorched by the fires of hell so as to be intense about anyone’s sexual preference. Now, duplicity is not anymore duplicity. For if in the past, duplicity lurked in the realm of the uncertain, today, duplicity is the certainty.