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thank yous are in order, and while Angela and i always difficult to go all me! me! me! or I! I! I! on our blogs, almost two months into 2013, it would seem wrong to not fall back on that i, if only so i can talk to a you and articulate gratefulness. the year kicked off with being offered a regular Opinion column over at The Manila Times. i had hoped i could get away with putting a logo instead of… Continue reading »
Making Lemonade There is a romance that we like to imagine about writing, and especially the writing of a book. And while my rebellious self would like to tell you that this was not the case for Of Love and Other Lemons, that would be a lie. Certainly it came from a personal history of love and loss and sadness, complete with the high – if not OA – drama of buckets of tears. But the writing of this book… Continue reading »
one of the blurbs for this first book asked: what took you so long, ina? and in truth, i’d like to think i took exactly the amount of time i needed. much of what’s in Of Love and Other Lemons is about refusing to write the way i’m expected to, or at least the way i did when i wrote mirrors. i read too much of the personal essay as it’s written and published in these shores, but also i read poetry in… Continue reading »
Tito Jorge would’ve laughed out loud, would’ve teased that this 35-year old was bawling like his widow under the watchful eye of Mother Teresa and an oven called Serenity. The 68-year old man had taught humor well. Irony, too. It seems it took him long enough. In 1994, Tito Jorge was working at the UP Film Center and on the last day for submission of UPCAT applications, arrived in the rain carrying with him – rolled up under his shirt… Continue reading »
will be joining bloggers_united and other bloggers for this tomorrow: old books from my and stuartsantiago‘s shelves, and some CDs from past lives / tastes / interests. do come! you might find something you like, and we can chika. :) cheers!
it must have a lot to do with the conversations. on the last 24 hours we didn’t have yet, before a flight was cancelled and rebooked, before you try and fit in seven months of self into bags, i watched not with wonder but distance: your back was turned to me as you washed the dishes, 10 beers between us, you tell me to stay put. your word upon word upon word become a slow reveal, weighing heavier and heavier… Continue reading »
<…> Enjoy the stories, admire the craft. Then put it in your backpack and go. As far as you can, for as long as you can afford it. Preferably someplace where you have to think in one language and buy groceries in another. Get a job there. Rent a room. Stick around. Do something. If it doesn’t work out, do something else. Whatever it is, you will be able to use it in the stories you will write later. And… Continue reading »
it must have a lot to do with the conversations. over those introductory cups of coffee it was a lesson in first meetings: (1) choose a quiet(er) place, (2) remember to pee before it begins, the better to (3) prepare for a four-hour conversation. measure the time spent sitting across each other, compare it to the time spent in each others arms. get a ruler: how far is the distance between us as we walk the streets? how many minutes to… Continue reading »
it must have a lot to do with the conversations. there’s the limits of a text message, like a finish line i refuse to cross, so i stop right before it, and begin again. you call it eloquence. i edit myself. you call out to me through the tiny box that you complain is too small a space, appearing just above your right hand as we chat. the tiny box ain’t so bad i argue, and isn’t it above your… Continue reading »
this was previously published in Metakritiko when it was still cool and fearless (haha). and because i don’t like repeating myself, and we were brought up to not talk about ourselves, am posting it here as tribute to pinoy music on the one hand, birthday greeting on the other. for Kuya, without whom this blog (and therefore my writing) wouldn’t be possible, and who should really be writing more often, too. cheers! Mix Tapes for the Story of Distance: or OPM? Music… Continue reading »
it must have a lot to do with the conversations. when it can be had about the billboards that riddle the streets, where capital and colonialism, consumption and crises, become par for the course, of that long stretch of EDSA that cradles the car from one city to the next two, as it shifts from quiet residential to sprawling Manila, the dip in the tone, the way that it sounds, onomatopoeic i say, a conversation you’ve been having with your… Continue reading »
in April 2000, Prof. Luisa Mallari-Hall died in a plane crash, along with her husband and two children. she was a wonderful woman/teacher/friend/human being whose teaching continues to resonate with me, 15 years since she was first my teacher in 1996. these two essays were written soon after she died, the first one for a SEA newsletter, the second one i read at the tribute put together by the DECL in U.P. in 2010, i give birth and lose a… Continue reading »
it must have a lot to do with the conversations. but also the fact that as the evening ends with a quick goodbye, that split second that it takes you to unbuckle the seatbelt and give me a peck on the cheek, the swiftness of that moment is in slow motion: the wall of the squatters area further down sounds brighter, the lights of the korean plaza feel like an intrusion, the darkness of your building a foreboding. of this… Continue reading »
it’s been quiet here, which isn’t to say that it’s been quiet where i’m at. been finishing up an MA thesis that’s gone on for too long, and is more about closure to a life lived in the academe more than anything else. while that’s happening, i’ve had more interesting conversations than usual, including conversations about art and the state of things in this country, ones that are kept off the record, unspoken of. sometimes it’s limited to Facebook, other times… Continue reading »
it was daunting more than anything else, though at some point all that operated was an amount of yabang: i’ve seen friends do this before, i’ve seen wonderful beautiful local books happen without a big publisher behind it, without press releases coming out in papers. and this book, i knew, deserved the major major effort of blood/sweat/tears because it is about family and history. because it is unconventional in form, an almost refusal to fall within the genres that are familiar,… Continue reading »
had an infinitely emotional conversation with this non-fiction narrative of a review of Ang Sayaw ng Dalawang Kaliwang Paa. The teacher of literature, Karen (Jean Garcia), is enigmatic for a reason, but effective like every literature teacher should be. She reads poetry and it comes alive, she asks questions about it with certainty. She is unsurprised by any of her students’ assertions, even as these are necessarily about sexuality and desire, love and intimacy, the act of gazing. Even as… Continue reading »
i grew up not really knowing what being an inaanak means, where i never had to call anyone ninang, where that didn’t mean any different from a standard aunt. but the three kids all the way in Holland began calling me such, and i realize it means something, especially when it comes with Lucien instinctively leaping onto the bed to hug me, or Francisco giving me a shy knowing smile like we’re the same age (coz we probably are you know),… Continue reading »
By circumstance, and with a lot of luck, I grew up in homes where grandfathers were fixtures. Today Lolo Ding turns 100. He died in 1989. I was 13. I used to tell my writing students, I tell the ones who have become my friends: talk to your elders, ask them about their stories, talk to them about their lives. Know that they all lived — parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles — long before we did, separate from who we… Continue reading »