Category: Nonfiction

‘Nuage de Pluie’ is French for ‘Rain Cloud’

Nonfiction by | August 7, 2016

Everything about my life in my twenties so far has been about self-discovery. The endless nights I’ve had questioning myself over and over (“Who am I? Do I like who I am? Who do I want to be?”) have inevitably resulted in an obsessive analysis of my name. Do you do that too? Have you ever spent an absurd amount of time just wondering about it? I mean―your name has just been given to you, chosen by someone else, and usually it’s not because of the newborn you were at the time, but what your name givers had hoped you’d grow up to be. Given that it was just assigned to you, do you feel like your name fits you now that you’re older and an actual person of your own? Some names have histories and meanings―do they ring true for you? And some have namesakes and legacies―do you feel like you’ve lived up to them? When someone calls it out, can the deepest, darkest recesses of your heart honestly answer that that’s you?

I know that it’s just a name. Like all labels, it doesn’t define you. But, it’s your name: You wear it. You bear it. As Rick Riordan ominously wrote in his first Percy Jackson book, “Names have power.”

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Notes on Peace: In Ciudad de Sambuwangan

Nonfiction by | July 31, 2016

The rugged coastline came into view as our plane approached the airport of Zamboanga City, Sambuwangan to the ancient Sama people. This was only my second time to visit this city. The first time was a quick stopover as we transitted for Tawi-Tawi. But this second visit, only days after the Zamboanga Siege, and with the city still trying to salvage itself from the trauma of those days, brings out various emotions in me.

As we neared land, houses on stilts below us grew larger, ships lining the coast called eager young men and women to a better life, perhaps in Sabah. Flooded houses also grew more vivid, reminding the plane’s passengers of yet another recent calamity that hit the city.

I searched within me if I’ve come prepared for the work ahead. Have I read enough materials on this siege? How much do I know of the ethnic diversity in the area, to better understand the situation? How sensitive am I to woundedness? Will anyone be ever really prepared to face such monsters as trauma and grief?

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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]

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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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