Category: Nonfiction

Subay sa Tradisyon sa Tagay: Nganong Gipalabi ko ang pagsulat ginamit ang dila ni Lapulapu. Ikatulong Bahin

Nonfiction by | July 10, 2016

Subay sa Tradisyon sa Tagay…. Unang Bahin
Subay sa Tradisyon sa Tagay…. Ikaduhang Bahin

Kon ang imong uyoan nga si Shakespeare nakasulat sa mga way kamatayong balak, ang atong mga bantogang magbabalak sa dilang Bisaya may mga garay usab nga mopawagtang sa atong kalaay ug kabudlay.

Atong tilawan kining balak ni anhing Rene Estella Amper, usa ka doctor sa medisina ug kanhi mayor sa Boljoon, Cebu, nga nag-ulohan SA BABAYE NGA NAGHUBO DIDTO SA BAYBAYON SA OBONG [8]:

Nahitimbakuwas ang akong panan-aw
sa kalit nga pagdailos
sa imong patadyong
daw ang labtik sa pasol
tadlas nianang nag-ugdo nga kabilin
diha sa puti mong dughan.
Continue reading Subay sa Tradisyon sa Tagay: Nganong Gipalabi ko ang pagsulat ginamit ang dila ni Lapulapu. Ikatulong Bahin

Subay sa Tradisyon sa Tagay: Nganong Gipalabi ko ang pagsulat ginamit ang dila ni Lapulapu. Ikaduhang Bahin

Nonfiction by | July 3, 2016

Subay sa Tradisyon sa Tagay…. Unang Bahin
Subay sa Tradisyon sa Tagay…. Ikatulong Bahin

KALINGKAWASAN, KATITIKAN, KATILINGBAN

Gina-ingon nga walay balak o’ sugilanon nga maka-usab sa tuyok ug dagan sa katilingban. Tinuod. Katuohan.

Apan ang mga obra sa mga alagad sa arte makatabang paghulma sa public opinion nga usahay makapausab sa panud-ong sa katawhan diha sa mga ordinaryong isyu sa katilingban.

Niining puntoha, tugoti ako sa pagkutlo sa mga pulong ni National Artist for Literature Cirilo F. Bautista. Siya nagkanayon, “To write is to liberate one’s psyche from regular realities without completely being alienated from them. It is a never-ending attempt to escape. For art is a paradox, an illusion, a magical performance by which human experience, of whatever kind is transformed into an aesthetic product. But art is also culturally determined, that is, shaped by the artist’s environment. A poem, for instance, is a manifestation of social dynamics as interpreted by the poet. It is always an artifact of social relationship, a code reflecting human behavior. Its essence is narrative, its purpose commentary. It does not intend to change society—no work of literature can do that—but to change people’s attitude towards society, to make them conscious of the need to improve it. This purpose is embedded in the very nature of poetry because it works through the agency of language, which is a social tool.” [4]

Continue reading Subay sa Tradisyon sa Tagay: Nganong Gipalabi ko ang pagsulat ginamit ang dila ni Lapulapu. Ikaduhang Bahin

Subay sa Tradisyon sa Tagay: Nganong Gipalabi ko ang pagsulat ginamit ang dila ni Lapulapu. Unang Bahin

Nonfiction by | June 26, 2016

Subay sa Tradisyon sa Tagay…. Ikaduhang Bahin
Subay sa Tradisyon sa Tagay…. Ikatulong Bahin

GOOD MORNING. MAAYONG BUNTAG.

Una sa tanan, I would like to thank Nagmac and Xavier University Department of English and Literature for giving me the opportunity to deliver a craft lecture on Binisaya Literature.

Sa dihang nadawat ko ang invitation for this event, wa ko kabalibad bisan tuod nga hagip-ot na kaayo ang panahon. Kana tungod kay mao gayoy akong dakong tinguha nga molipang ang writers community dinhi sa atong dapit.

Akong madumdoman nga niadtong naghinapos ang Dekada ’90, pipila lamang gayod ka mga magsusulat ang nagtikawtikaw sa Cagayan de Oro.

Sa HomeLife Magazine ug sa Philippines Free Press, ang regular contributor nga gikan sa Cagayan de Oro maorag si Arlene Yandug lamang ug ako. Ug kining duha ka magazine nga akong gihinganlan pulos na Anhing Wa Na!

Samtang sa Bisaya magasin, morag nag-inusara si Mario Batausa.

Apan kining atong gihimo nga writers workshop karon usa ka testamento nga nagpakita nga milipang ug nagalipang na gayod ang writers community sa Cagayan de Oro.

Continue reading Subay sa Tradisyon sa Tagay: Nganong Gipalabi ko ang pagsulat ginamit ang dila ni Lapulapu. Unang Bahin

Fiction Making and History in the Era of the Selfie, Part 2

Nonfiction by | June 19, 2016

Fiction Making and History in the Era of the Selfie, Part 1

WHAT HAS CAUSED the monkey’s outrage upon hearing this inadung? Indeed, the inadung has aroused the monkey’s empathy, he has seen himself in it—and that is really the goal of every writer, is it not? Unfortunately, however, the monkey’s empathy is not of an introspective, but of a possessive kind. “This is about me and no one else, least of all about humankind. And I do not like how it reflects my character.”

To understand literature as the portrayal of ourselves as human seems to require two things: It calls for the examination of diverse cultures, and it calls for introspection (i.e., meditating on oneself as an exemplar of the human race); and these are part of the same mental act, a matter of asking, “What would it be like to be who-I-am-not?”

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Fiction Making and History in the Era of the Selfie, Part 1

Nonfiction by | June 12, 2016

I am told that I have all of 15 minutes to deliver my spiel, so I will self-indulge by sharing with you a Subanon masterpiece—a whole epic, including its contextual frame and a considerable amount of my commentary on it—all of which I will squeeze into 15 minutes.

First the narrative frame, before the epic itself:

A gutung ‘monkey’ was looking for someone with whom to share a jar of gasi ‘rice wine’, which he was carrying on his shoulder—in exchange for an inadung, which is the Subanon epic. He met a babuy, who assured him it could sing the inadung. So they drank wine, and when it was time for the pig to sing the inadung, naturally all that came out of its mouth was the squealing of a pig. What did he expect?

So then, when the monkey next met an usá, who said it could sing the inadung, the monkey was a bit more suspicious and had to ask, “Can you really sing the inadung?” The deer assured him yes, and so they drank the wine. But when the usá began to sing, what came out of its mouth was its natural deer squeak.

Next, came the lebuyu ‘chicken’, which could only crow—and only after it had drank some of the monkey’s wine.

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Of STEMIs, Sojourns, and Summonses

Nonfiction by | May 15, 2016

There is something transcendent in the arbitrariness of things that instigates in me a tacit appreciation that despite the hysteria and the bedlam of random life, there is a hand that steers my keel towards safe harbor.

Contrary to pervasive belief, Dubai can get really chilly during the winter months when the ambient temperature plummets to 14 degrees Centigrade. Despite the weather, the adrenaline rush of the Friday graveyard shift is on fever pitch. It is dark and cold outside. A fifty year old local complaining of severe chest pain has just been wheeled into the Emergency Department. Within the prescribed “golden hour,” nurses on duty should have taken the ECG, identified the critical rhythm (in his case, an ominous ST segment elevation), sent in the requisite labs, and prepared the gentleman for transfer to the Cath Lab. He is having an acute heart attack (in medical parlance, a STEMI – ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction). I am the Team Leader tonight and there is a collective whoop among nurses – Kabayans mostly – after the ED doctor complimented the group’s efficiency. The patient is in stable condition now. Still there is an unutterable twinge I could scarcely quench that takes the edge off the exhilaration of the moment.

This is one of the rare times when things sputter up out of my daily routine like fire out of ashes I’d thought were long since departed, and by the flickering, I envision things, or imagine I do, that for too fleeting a time may not count much in the ruse of events but just enough of a tug to linger in memory like a pleasant dream. And upon waking up, I begin to ask myself questions: Have you ever felt that there is something that you were supposed to be doing? Do you experience a nagging feeling deep inside you that you are not supposed to be in the time and place you are in now? Would you rather be the person receiving the patient at the Cath Lab and not the one endorsing him to further care?

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Interloping The Real And Surreal In Creating Fiction

Nonfiction by | April 24, 2016

The title of my talk seems awesome but I will avoid any heavy literary term and speak to you from the heart; and since you are young writers seeking to create masterpieces through your fiction or poetry, I will share with you my earliest attempt at short-story writing. Strangely enough, these attemps have become my most anthologized stories – “The Chieftest Mourner” and “Love in the Cornhusks”.

Soon after the war, my mother put me on a rice truck over dark mountains from Bacolod where my father was a retired judge to Silliman University in Dumaguete, Negros Oriental.

Silliman was a close-knit scholarly community with huge shady trees lining its avenues and the park with an ampitheatre where we held the first Shakespeare plays – in 1946 “The Taming of the Shrew” where I was Kate the Shrew; and in 1948 ”As You Like it” where I transform from Lady Rosalind to the page Ganymede in the Forest of Arden. Reuben Canoy played the princely Orlando.

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Over Unwashed Dishes

Nonfiction by | April 3, 2016

My mom sells home-cooked meals at Davao City Hall. She has been doing this ever since she had my eldest brother. This is the way our family has survived for almost 40 years now.

Mother taught my father how to cook and prepare the dishes in our menu. Every ten or eleven in the morning, they go off to sell the food. Our house would be left in a messy havoc. You see, the whole house is the kitchen. It would be my job to clean up. During the summer or if we had no classes, father would always remind me: “Panghugas ha? Bantay lang ka wala pa ka nahuman pagablik nako.” What a reminder as they took off on our Kawasaki motorcycle, the metal basket on the rear!

I hate washing dishes. When I was younger and lazier, I preferred to watch TV or play outside than wash two very large planggana full of the dishes, pots, and utensils they used that morning? Even now, I could waste my time cleaning when I could be doing more interesting things.

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