literary

Ernest Hemingway, on writing:

“What difference does it make if you live in a picturesque little outhouse surrounded by 300 feeble minded goats and your faithful dog? The question is: Can you write?”

“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”

“All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.”

“All my life I’ve looked at words as though I were seeing them for the first time.”

“My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way.”

“For a long time now I have tried simply to write the best I can. Sometimes I have good luck and write better than I can.”

“When I am working on a book or story I write every morning as soon after first light as possible. There is no one to disturb you and it is cool or cold and you come to your work and warm as you write. You read what you have written and, as you always stop when you know what is going to happen next, you go on from there. You write until you come to a place where you still have your juice and know what will happen next and you stop and try to live through until the next day next you hit it again.”

Ernest Hemingway fishing off Key West, circa 1928. Image here.

“i believe that basically you write for two people; yourself to try and make it absolutely perfect; or if not that then wonderful. Then you write for who you love whether they can read or write or not and whether they are alive or dead.”

“As a writer, you should not judge, you should understand.”

“In order to write about life first you must live it.”

“Write hard and clear about what hurts.”

“It’s none of their business that you have to learn how to write. Let them think you were born that way.”

“There is no rule on how to write. Sometimes it comes easily and perfectly; sometimes it’s like drilling rock and then blasting it out with charges.”

“Good writing is good conversation, only more so.”

“The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shockproof shit detector. This is the writer’s radar and all great writers have had it.”

“If a writer stops observing he is finished. Experience is communicated by small details intimately observed.”

Ernest Hemingway works on “For Whom the Bell Tolls” at  Sun Valley Resort in 1939. Image  here.

“It’s harder to write in the third person but the advantage is you move around better.”

“Remember to get the weather in your damn book–weather is very important.”

“…it is all very well for you to write simply and the simpler the better. But do not start to think so damned simply. Know how complicated it is and then state it simply. ”

“The good parts of a book may be only something a writer is lucky enough to overhear or it may be the wreck of his whole damn life and one is as good as the other.”

“It’s this way, see–when a writer first starts out, he gets a big kick from the stuff he does, and the reader doesn’t get any; then, after a while, the writer gets a little kick and the reader gets a little kick; and finally, if the writer’s any good, he doesn’t get any kick at all and the reader gets everything.”

“Since I had started to break down all my writing and get rid of all facility and try to make instead of describe, writing had been wonderful to do.”

“I sometimes think my style is suggestive rather than direct. The reader must often use his imagination or lose the most subtle part of my thought.”

Hemingway and Castro. Image here.

“Show the readers everything, tell them nothing.”

“The first draft of anything is shit.”

“I write one page of masterpiece to ninety-one pages of shit. I try to put the shit in the wastebasket.”

“Write drunk; edit sober.”

“Work every day. No matter what has happened the day or night before, get up and bite on the nail.”

“Any man’s life, told truly, is a novel…”

“When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature.”

“The hard part about writing a novel is finishing it.”

“A man’s got to take a lot of punishment to write a really funny book.”

Ernest Hemingway quotes here.

taste more:

POP GOES THE WORLD By Jenny Ortuoste for Manila Standard-Today, 10 March 2011, Thursday

Literary Musings

As a writer, things literary catch my attention and that’s what has been on my mind lately, starting with the annual Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature.

The CPMA was established by businessman Don Carlos Palanca Sr. in 1950 to encourage the development of literature in the Philippines. In the local literary world it is considered the most prestigious prize for writing. From only a few categories at the inception of the program, the CPMA now has quite a lot and in several different languages – English, Filipino, Cebuano, Hiligaynon, and Iluko.

This year is a “novel” year, meaning entries in the Novel category are being accepted. This happens only every three years.

One innovative development that fosters creative writing among the youth aged 17 and below is the Kabataan Essay/Sanaysay category. This year’s theme is “What valuable lesson have I learned from the Internet?” The work should be from four to five typewritten pages.

Among the members of the CPMA Hall of Fame are the following celebrated writers: Isagani R. Cruz (2004), Krip Yuson and Leoncio Deriada (2001), Jose Dalisay Jr., Ed Maranan, and Roberto Añonuevo (2000), and Cirilo Bautista and Greg Brillantes (1995). Hall of Famers are writers who have won at least five first prizes in the regular categories.

The deadline of submission of this year’s entries is April 30. The website (palancaawards.com.ph) carries a countdown clock on the homepage – there are as of today only 51 days left to go!

*****

My deepest thanks go to writer Rose Lamb Sobrepeña who sent me with a copy of her book “Fragments of Memory” with a warm dedication inscribed on the flyleaf. It was a pleasure indeed to receive the slim package she sent to me care of the MST office. I recognized her name on the book cover immediately, having read some of her columns before.

I have not had the honor of meeting Mrs. Sobrepeña, but I hope to someday, and to visit the Silliman University Rose Lamb Sobrepeña Writer’s Village, the permanent home of the Edilberto K. Tiempo and Dr. Edith L. Tiempo Creative Writing Center. The Writers’ Village was inaugurated last summer, and was the venue for the 49^th Silliman National Writer’s Workshop.

One of the cottages at the Rose Lamb Sobrepeña Writers Village, Camp Lookout, Valencia. Image here.

*****

Speaking of workshops, I’m looking forward to attending the 50^th University of the Philippines National Writers’ Workshop on April 10 to 17 at Camp John Hay in Baguio City. I remember being too chicken to apply for the workshop when I was an undergraduate in UP-Diliman some twenty years ago. The truth is I had nothing worth submitting then. But it was something that was on my bucket list, a wish that I hoped would be fulfilled someday, and now that day has come. Dreams do come true, and I’m a walking talking testimony to that.

The UP Institute of Creative Writing, which administers the workshop, recently announced the twelve fellows chosen to attend: Ronald Baytan, Clarissa Militante, Allan Pastrana, Nerissa Del Carmen Guevara, Yvette Tan, and myself for English, and John Torres, German Gervacio, Genevieve L. Asenjo, Axel Alejandro A. Pinpin, Khavn dela Cruz, and John Iremil Teodoro for Filipino.

The panelists are ICW advisers, fellows, and associates: Jun Cruz Reyes (workshop director), Jose Dalisay Jr. (ICW director), Gemino Abad, Cristina Pantoja Hidalgo, J. Neil Garcia, Charlson Ong, Conchitina Cruz, Rolando Tolentino, Victor Carmelo Nadera, Mario Miclat, and Romulo Baquiran Jr.

Most national writing workshops are open to beginning writers, as was the UP National until it changed its format. It is currently the only workshop for “writers in mid-career”, and aims to provide a venue where advanced writers may meet to discuss their craft, give and receive feedback on their works-in-progress, and get to know each other and the panelists as well.  ***

Palanca Awards logo here. UP Workshop logo here.

taste more:

In our creative non-fiction writing class this semester, our professor Dr. Cristina Pantoja-Hidalgo challenged her eight students to come up with CNF narratives. These could be memoirs, travel writing, or other forms; we had to “pitch” our ideas to her first. If they passed muster, we were told to proceed with writing. PhD students like myself had to write a work no shorter than fifty pages. I pitched the idea of a memoir and have written 53 pages so far, with the work still unfinished.

It’s a work in progress. Here’s an excerpt from my chapter on Bacolod City, where I lived for a year when I was eight:

In Bacolod we ate a lot of chicken because Lola Bennett ran a huge poultry farm in addition to the sugar cane plantation. On a couple of visits the foreman gave me undersized hen’s eggs that didn’t pass their quality control inspections. I kept several of them under the bed in my room, right on the orange carpeting. Some months later one of the maids found them. She called my lola, lifted the bed skirt, and pointed to them without saying a word. My little collection was taken away. “Eggs are not toys,” I was told. Too bad. I liked those eggs, some of them as tiny as quail eggs with pebbly surfaces of calcium carbonate in raised and ridged patterns, random as nature makes it.  I was never taken to visit the poultry farm again after that.

My Bacolod nanny, Mila, was scolded over that incident for not watching me carefully enough to know that I was smuggling home rejected eggs. I don’t think she was with us when we visited the poultry farms; she wasn’t with me all the time, as far as I remember. I usually saw her at bath time, when she’d take me to my white-tiled bathroom off my bedroom, switch on the shower, and try to whip up a soapy lather in the hard water which ran out of the pipes. At first I resented her bathing me because I told her I had been giving myself baths in Manila since I was seven years old. She smiled and said, “Your lola told me to,” and we both knew there was no arguing after that. I came to love the way she wrapped me up in thick white towels and rubbed me dry, giving me a quick hug before letting go.

After the egg episode Yayay Mila whispered to me, “Nugay nga hampang sang pagkaon. (Don’t play with food.) I know other things you can do.”  One night she handed me her notebook, about the size of a pocketbook, hardbound, and filled with smooth creamy pages half-filled with her notes written in flowing cursive with a black fountain pen. She opened to a page and pointed to the title at the top – “Moon River”. “This is a beautiful song,” she said. “Memorize the words and learn it.” She sang it to me in a light soprano. “Moon river, wider than a mile, I’m crossing you in style, some day…” I’ve associated that song with her ever since, although I have forgotten what she looked like. I wonder if she ever did find and cross her own moon river.

I deeply admired her notebook – all I had for school were the usual ruled spiral notebooks with thin cardboard covers and cheap paper – but I never thought to ask if she could get me one. Now I know what it is like – a Moleskine notebook – and the memory of this may explain why my stationery drawer is crammed with Moleys of different sizes.

Another time she took me out into the garden, bearing a basin of soapy water. She made for a gumamela bush, plucked a handful of its glossy leaves, and showed me how to pound the leaves in the soapy water with a rock. Making ‘o’s with our hands, we blew bubbles that were strong and did not easily pop, even when poked by leaves or sticks. I pealed with laughter, and for most of that afternoon blew myriads of rainbow bubbles into being, sending them down the garden path and up into the air to bounce in the light, as Yayay Mila beamed.

Mila also took care of feeding me. I was fed – usually with scrambled or sunny-side up eggs for breakfast, for lunch and dinner fried chicken and rice, no ketchup – in the “clean kitchen” off the dining area, which was furnished with 1950s-style folding metal chairs with red leather seats – a set of four – and a matching table. That kitchen was painted white and was always very very clean, since nothing was actually cooked there. That room glows in my mind, always flooded with light, because a screen door at one end let sunshine in during the day. Through it I could see coconut trees, ornamental plants, and the Bermuda grass of lola’s well-kept lawn. Green and white and brown are the colors I associate with Bacolod – the colors of sun and earth and garden and fried chicken.

Nowadays I can’t get enough ketchup.

Images: Egg in hand here. Ketchup here. Gumamela (hibiscus) here.

taste more:

There are times in one’s life when the mood to versify strikes, when the urge to string words together into sentences that may or may not mean something is too strong to overcome. Then one may wish to write poetry to unlock the emotions within that are clamoring for release and expression.

During these times, only one form of poetry will do – bad haiku.

Haiku is, simply, a form of Japanese non-rhymed poetry, with seventeen syllables 5-7-5 – five in the first line, seven in the second, five in the third. In Japanese there are many strict rules that govern the construction of haiku, but in English, anything goes.

Bad is – well, bad. Not good at all. Verging on the horrible, skating perilously close to awful, at times crossing the line to gross and disgusting.

Behold!

Banana harvest –
Too much fruit! What to do with?
Start a monkey farm.

I will rule the world!
But how? I don’t have a plan.
I’ll go back to sleep.

Jam between my toes –
It’s not for eating? Says who?
You’re right – it’s stale. Ptoo!

Where are we going?
And why have you put me in
This large handbasket?

Anyone can write bad haiku! They probably shouldn’t, but they could. That is the beauty and the Zen of bad haiku.

Come, why don’t you try?
You too, can write bad haiku.
It’s not rocket science.

taste more:

I have built a house, in my dreams. It is small, cozy, intimate, magical, whimsical – a cottage.

This is a Moody cottage, one of thirty or so “pixie houses” built in Los Angeles in the ’30s and ’40s by the four Moody sisters, who pooled their talents on these projects. Photo by Ricardo de Aratanha, LATimes. See the story and enchanting photo slideshow about Moody cottages here.

My cottage has exposed roof beams, shiny wooden staircases and floors, a tall steep roof, low ceilings, and diamond-paned casement windows that I fling outward to let the breeze in.

My aunt owns this “green and white” cottage in Baguio City that dates back to the ’30s or ’40s.

It is surrounded by lush plants and flowers – tea roses, morning glory, irises – in a garden that turns misty after a summer rain.

In my cottage, white lace curtains frame the view of sun and sky. They flutter in the wind that blows in through the open shutters.

The interior is filled with familiar old furniture, polished to a warm patina by the years. Hand-stitched quilts – earth tones of tan, brown, rust, olive, and orange in winter, pastels of pink, lavender, blue, and sunny yellow in summer – are draped over the backs of couches and chairs.

Embroidered and framed samplers hang on the walls beside watercolors and paintings and vintage black-and-white photographs. Books line the shelves.

There are fresh flowers from the garden on the fireplace mantel and on the sideboard in the dining room, pink and red roses in a goldfish bowl and white lilies in an antique vase.

The kitchen is cheerful and welcoming and smells like apple pie, all cinnamon-y and nutmeg in a flaky baked pastry crust. I offer you a slice on a bright blue Fiesta ware plate and we sit at the white enamel kitchen table and perch on stools and eat and talk in a room flooded with sunlight.

When evening comes we sit in the living room in front of a crackling fire. A scented candle on the coffee table throws off a vanilla aroma. You read or strum a guitar with nimble fingers and sing to me while I needle in a leaf pattern with dense rows of satin stitches or pen a letter on creamy notepaper, drawing the inkwell closer to dip my nib.

We talk about the books we have read and not read and the stories and songs we have written and have yet to write.

And when night falls we lay our heads on pillows strewn with rose petals, snuggle under more quilts to keep toasty warm, and kiss each other good night.

And the cottage creaks and sighs as old ones do, as it watches over us while we dream and yet again dream, now and in the years to come.

taste more:

POP GOES THE WORLD, By Jenny Ortuoste for Manila Standard-Today, 7 October 2010, Thursday

Culture Stock

Where resides a nation’s heart and soul?

This was the question that several university professors, media professionals, and I discussed the other night during a PhD class at the University of the Philippines College of Mass Communication. It stemmed from College of St. Benilde professor Rod Rivera’s report on theaters in Manila that screen films bordering on the pornographic.  There are those, he said, that claim that such theaters in Quiapo and Recto are a front for male prostitution.

From there, Dr. Jose Lacson segued to commercialism in television and film. Advertising executive Chitchat Diangson said that much of television content in dictated by what producers believe will sell, leading to the creation of mind-numbing programs like “Wowowee”. Professor Bea Lapa deplored the entertainment media’s unwillingness to raise the programming bar in standards and taste, while writer Nina Villena brought up the issue of media gatekeeping. Women’s development professor and staunch feminist Julienne Baldo decried the media’s reinforcement of negative stereotypes of gender and class, perpetuating cruel cycles of prejudice and bias that further retard national social development.

Prof. Julienne Baldo analyzes the poster of  ”Serbis” at a theater in Quiapo.

Which brings us back to our question and its possible answer. It is in art where commercialism does not hold absolute sway and the discourse on social issues may be expanded without the taint of capitalism and the imperative of profit. There are those of us who write, paint, make music, and sculpt not for money, but because we need to express the meanings and concepts that burn within us and cry to be expressed and physically manifested in forms that may be shared with others.

These forms – books, songs, paintings, theater plays – often do not translate into income for their creators, but that was not the point of their creation anyway. It is in a nation’s art that current social events and issues are poked, cut up into bits, and licked to find out what they taste like. What’s important to people? That is what floats up in the content being made nowadays, and is disseminated over channels such as the Internet.

Dulaang UP scored one such intellectually-shaking triumph with their recent hit production “Shock Value”, written by Floy Quintos and directed by Alexander Cortez. It’s been given a positive review by MST opinion editor Adelle Chua, who focused her piece on the play’s theme of the commercialization of television, and how producers of celebrity shows of mass attraction artificially manufacture the scandals and intrigues that make up its content.

“Shock Value” cast members sashay across the stage. (Dulaang UP photo)

Among its stars in its cast are John Lapus, Mylene Dizon, Andoy Ranay, Christian Alvarado, and the awesomely talented Sabina Santiago. As “Little Tweety Girl”, Santiago’s hilarious on-stage simulation of an orgasm, eyes rolling back in her head, demotes Meg Ryan’s performance in “When Harry Met Sally” to amateur status.

Dulaang UP’s next offering is “Isang Panaginip na Fili”, “an edgy, dreamlike interpretation” of the Jose Rizal novel El Filibusterismo by writer/director Quintos, which will run from November 24 to December 12 at UP Diliman’s Wilfrido Ma. Guerrero Theater. Call (02)926-1349 or (02)433-7840 for tickets.

“Isang Panaginip na Fili” publicity still, courtesy of Dulaang UP.

A fresh take on heartbreak, loss, and recovery comes from writer Carljoe Javier by way of his non-fiction book The Kobayashi Maru of Love, with artwork and design by Adam David of the Youth and Beauty Brigade. It’s available at avalon.ph.

Says Carljoe: “I wrote The Kobayashi Maru of Love because, first, I was trying to understand (a recent) breakup, and I was trying to work through my feelings about it. Like any breakup, there are nasty emotions that follow, and I was going through all that. But I thought that if I was forced to apply aesthetic distance, if I was forced to try and be funny about it, that I would be able to cope better. And as I got back into the dating game, well, things were just funny and had to be written about.”

The book is indeed funny, but beyond that, it dwells on themes that nearly everyone who reads it can relate to. “I think that I’m talking about something universal,” says Carljoe, “and that’s loss. Pretty much everyone has gone through a heartbreak or a heartache. I guess that I was just trying to connect to that, to make the book not just about my own personal heartbreak, but to make it for everyone who’s ever been through it. Our individual experiences are different, but the hurt is the same. So I wanted to write a book that talked about that.”

Carljoe’s next book, Geek Tragedies, will be published by UP Press next year. “I have a number of projects in the works,” he says, “among them a book I hope to write about the Filipino diaspora and the effect that having parents abroad have on kids; a book about me, a fat man trying to get healthy; and a novel.” A freelance writer and editor of the Philippine Online Chronicles, he is also taking his MA Creative Writing at UP’s College of Arts and Letters.

Art in this country is alive and well and a thriving part of our culture, a part that is not a slave to commercialism but is free to speak out on social matters, the human condition, and what lives inside the Filipino heart and soul. ***

Photo above, L-R: (front) writer Bambi Harper, UP professor emeritus Dr. Cristina Hidalgo. (back) writers Waldo Petralba, Jeena Marquez, and Carljoe Javier.

taste more:

I was looking for old files in my computer when I came across this short story I wrote in 2008. I had forgotten all about it. But I remember the impetus for the narrative was my finding a sad note like this one in the story. I put myself in the place of the scribbler of the note, and imagined “What if…?”

SIRE OF SIRES

It was 2008, and Danny was forty.

He felt old. It wasn’t that long ago when he was fifty pounds lighter with a full head of hair, jauntily entering the state university’s Malcolm Hall law school as a student. Where did time go?

Do the math, mocked Rina. How old will you be by the time your youngest child has finished his university degree? I loved you, Danny. I still do, a little. But you got yourself into this situation. Not me.

As much as his hand itched to slap her, he couldn’t do it, couldn’t even find the words to reply, because he knew she was right.

After she had gone back into the house and slammed the door in his face, and after he had driven back to his and Thess’s apartment where she, tired of waiting up for him, tired of putting up with his promises to leave his wife and excuses why he hadn’t, couldn’t yet, was asleep on one side of the bed, her bulk taking up fully two-thirds of the mattress, he went down to the living room and sat at his desk.

Drawing a piece of paper toward him with trembling hands, he made a list of his offspring. Lissette, born 13 November 1990; Migs, 25 October 1998, Marco, 29 October 2002. His youngest by Rina, Manolo, was born 8 March 2004, barely a month after Thess had given birth to their firstborn, John, on February 16. His and Thess’s youngest, Matthew, came along on 8 August 2005. Roselle’s baby was due in December.

In 2010, Lissette would be in her fourth year of college; Migs, in sixth grade, Marco in the second, John and Manolo both in Prep, Matthew in senior kindergarten.

In 2015, Lissette should be working, unless she took it in her head to attend law school; Migs would be in his first year at college, Marco in the first year of high school. John and Manolo, the almost-twins, in fifth grade, Matthew in the fourth.

By 2020, Lissette would be 30 years old, presumably working and with a family; Migs, at 22, should be working also. Marco would be 18 and in his second year of college, John and Manolo, both 16 and in their last year of high school, Matthew, at 15, in his junior year at high school.

By 2025, John and Manolo would presumably be in their last year of college, Matthew in his third. Roselle’s child would be 17, and perhaps newly-graduated from high school.

And Danny? He would be 58, with four children still in college. He would still have to be working and earning; there was no guarantee that Lissette, Migs, and Marco, his older children, would contribute towards their half-brothers’ education and upkeep. They would, of course, help out with their brother Manolo, but with John and Matthew? His child by Roselle? He didn’t think so. On the contrary, he felt that they would tell him in no uncertain terms to go to hell, dragging his own tail.

Buntot mo, hila mo.

The jokes comparing him to the prolific stallion Conquistador who sired countless colts and fillies weren’t funny anymore. No, the entire situation had lost its humor long ago.

He wondered where now were the drinking buddies with their ribald challenges of his manhood, where his employers, the racehorse owners with the expensive young women on their arms, where were they now that his life was falling apart?

Danny placed his scribbled list on the desk, weighed it down with an old horseshoe. His  neck hurt. The house oppressed him; it was as if he could hear Thess snoring, John and Matthew breathing heavily, even though they were yards away from him, in their own rooms. Oh, but he loved them so, and Roselle and their unborn child, and his older children, and yes, Rina too. He was never one to stop loving, he could only love more people, add to those already in his heart. Didn’t the old rascals say, “Magdagdag ka ng minamahal, huwag kang magbawas?”

He had always fancied himself a stallion like the late great Conquistador, and he was, with his six progeny, a filly and five colts by two broodmares, with a third dam in foal, and he was magnificent in his sexual prowess, a stud just like his father, they all said so.

His old man died at the track, watching races till his breath caught in his chest and his heart gave out and whose last sight was of horses running till his vision narrowed to a pinpoint and dissolved into darkness, at whose funeral two wives showed up, the first wife sharing bitter whispers with a woman whose jockey husband had left her for a slut: “They come back to us when they’re dead.”

But there was still one more way Danny could be like Conquistador.

He got out of the house, locked the door carefully behind him (it wouldn’t do at all to have an intruder or a burglar come in, an akyat-bahay who would not be content with stealing the plasma TV or the few pieces of jewelry he had managed to buy for Thess, but who would stab his family where they slept, turning them into another “Massacre In (insert name of city here)”, tabloid-fodder for the masses), got into the car, and drove to the racetrack.

The night guard was surprised to see Danny there so late, but waved him through and went back to sleep. Danny parked as close as he could to the first bend. Sitting in his car in the driver’s seat, the seat pushed back as far as it would go so the steering wheel wouldn’t dig into his gut, the moon shining into the car and filling it with silvery light, Danny unzipped the black leather case beside him on the passenger’s seat.

Inside was the bolt gun he used to put all those horses to rest.

It was heavy, the rubber grip rough in his hand, the barrel cool against his temple. He gazed at the track, it was aglow in moonlight, each particle of sand luminous, and over this brilliant surface he saw Conquistador’s legs pumping, galloping for the turn home.

Smiling, he pulled the trigger, and ran to meet his hero.

It was 2008, and Danny was forty, forever. ***

taste more:

I had my first creative writing workshop experience a couple weeks ago in our non-fiction writing class taught by Dr Jing Hidalgo. I had no idea what she meant by choosing our “workshop slots” or what a session would entail. Before mine began she murmured, “Is this your first time? Try not to be sensitive. It’s a learning experience.” Since I was already herky-jerky nervous, not knowing what to expect, that got me even more anxious.

As it turned out she – and quite a few of my classmates (the women) – enjoyed my piece (about the old Santa Ana Park racetrack). They were swept up in the narrative, interested in the sprinkling of karera terms, curious about the lifestyle of a little-known sport (horseracing) and way of life. The men had much to say, mostly on technique – the introduction, scene transition, and so on.

Which showed me how differently the minds of men and women work. Is it a sex-based wired-in-the-brain thing? A male friend told me just last month, “Your ‘Pop Goes the World’ columns (opinion for the daily Manila Standard-Today) are getting better. As for the other stuff – try not to write like a girl.” I pondered upon that, long and dreary, till I was weak and weary, into the wee hours of the night. Mainly I wondered, has my friend not noticed that I am a girl? As the raven quoth, “Nevermore”, I suppose.

My ‘Pop Goes…” columns come primarily from the brain. They are analyses of cultural phenomena in Philippine society, rooted in social science and literary theory, social commentaries from my viewpoint as a communication practitioner and scholar.

The rest of my written work comes from the heart. I use the tools of my art, weaving words and ideas and emotion into nets of fragile gossamer beauty or fabrics of wild or subtle color and texture and dimension, to craft with much care works that are ephemeral, existing as they do on only as ink on paper or dancing electrons on a screen, but that will have their existence in your mind and remain there, alive, as long as you are, as long as you do not forget.

My heart is a girl’s heart of sixteen summers, warmed by the sunshine of love and tenderness, battered by the storms of rejection and adversity, strong and resilient enough to go on beating with hope and still more glowing hope.

It is from this heart that I offer the essays that get the most pageviews and comments and re-tweets – the “popcorn manifesto”, the column on my sisters and daughters.

It is when I write from my girl’s heart that I reach and touch more.

My male friend said, “Make them think.” Yet do I accomplish more that is humanly significant when I also make them feel?

My male friend said, “We are not teenagers anymore.”

In my heart I am, ever naïve and gullible, with a core of unshaken innocence that believes no matter how evil some people are, how they may hurt you and others, still good is out there, and life is a quest to look for it to preserve and protect our humanity, the condition in which we shall exist in the face of advancing technology and much of world culture’s seeming slide into barbarism and cruelty.

Good is out there and I keep searching. Sometimes I find it.

There will be other workshops in our creative writing class. I will hear Dr Hidalgo and my classmates critique my forthcoming essays, and I will hone my writing skills. Perhaps I will become more technically proficient, adept at the active opening, smooth transition, and insightful ending. My male friend might have more to say on why he prefers my cerebral pieces to the emotional.

But I will always write like a girl.

Do not be afraid of that. My heart is open, even if yours is not. Come then, into mine.

taste more:

Once upon a time, in a big city on one of the big islands of a tropical archipelago close to the equatorial belt where the best coffee in the world grows, there lived a pair of feet.

They were happy feet.

The happy feet loved to walk. Oh, how they could walk! The right happy foot and the left happy foot would take turns being in front, one after the other, walking around the city, getting from one place to another, doing what they were made to do.

But the happy feet were attached to the ankles of a lazy writer who stayed indoors for weeks on end, her bottom growing roots into her armchair as she typed boring articles and surfed the Intarwebz for hours and hours.

The happy feet didn’t get to go out much. That made them sad.

One day the lazy writer’s doctor-classmate-from-school said: You must exercise. I recommend walking. Everyday.

But how, the lazy writer asked.

Baby steps, he said. Take baby steps.

One day, the lazy writer put on a pair of wooden sandals. They were also called “Happy Feet“. The lazy writer’s happy feet loved them because they were light, which meant they could move faster.

They were cool, so the happy feet would not feel hot even on a blazing summer day.

They were open, and the happy feet loved that best of all! Because that meant the happy feet’s toes could wiggle and jiggle and wriggle like toes love to do.

The lazy writer took a cab to work because she was late for a meeting, as she usually was. On her way back home, she remembered her doctor-classmate-from-school’s advice. Baby steps, she told herself. I will walk home.

The happy feet were so excited!

The right happy foot and the left happy foot took turns taking baby steps, one in front of the other, walking towards home, as their toes wiggled and jiggled and wriggled with joy.

They walked dusty gray pavements, but they didn’t mind; there were many things to see along the way.

The happy feet met a plant that grew close to the ground. Its stalk and leaves were very green and they reached out to passing feet. Clip-clop, clip-clop, went the happy feet in the wooden sandals past the plant-in-the-pavement.

Along the way there was a sign for the lazy writer’s favorite energy drink on the facade of a sari-sari store in an old house. Beside the store was an old church. It had red-painted walls. Clip-clop, clip-clop went the happy feet past the store-in-a-house.

When the happy feet first set out, the sun was hidden behind gray clouds. After a while, the sun came out. It shone on the lazy writer’s head. A tall tree’s leaves glowed bright green against the sun, making the lazy writer squint and blink. Clip-clop, went the happy feet past the tree-in-sunlight.

They passed the site of an old racetrack. Once there were loud fans cheering race horses on. Now there were no more fans, no more horses, and no more track. Big noisy construction machines had leveled the place into the ground. Clip-clop, went the happy feet past the once-a-racetrack.

The happy feet met another plant. It was growing in a large metal can that once held infant formula, but now had holes punched with nails all over its bottom while inside it was soil from the old racetrack. The plant was healthy. Its leaves were pretty. Clip-clop, went the happy feet past the plant-in-a-can.

They rounded a corner and saw a big concrete horse’s head. It once sat on the gate in front of the old racetrack. Folks had taken the head down, cleaned it, and put it on a pedestal covered with tiles. This was so that people would always remember the old racetrack. The happy feet knew they were near home. Clip-clop, they went, taking baby steps a little bit faster, past the horse’s-head-marker.

Before them was a long stretch of road. Green tricycles lined up under big old mango trees wrapped in a rainbow, waiting to take passengers where they wanted to go. The drivers asked the lazy writer if she wanted to take a ride. No, thank you, she said. I’ll keep on walking. Clip-clop, went the happy feet past the tricycles-in-rainbow.

At last they came to their street. Close to the corner were two fighting-cock farms. Inside the red gate and the blue gate were many scratch pens of wood, like triangles set into the ground. There were also tall fly pens of wood and plastic mesh. There were many fighting cocks, crowing tik-ti-laok. The happy feet knew they were very near home. Clip-clop they went past the cockpits-in-city.

At last the happy feet were home! The lazy writer was happy too. She had taken baby steps to exercise and it wasn’t bad. It felt very good. And she saw a lot of interesting things along the way. She decided to take a walk more often. The happy feet were glad they got to do what they were made to do. And the toes wiggled and jiggled and wriggled for joy.

~ The End ~

taste more: