Category: Nonfiction

Paleontology of Ink and Bones

Nonfiction by | March 9, 2014

A family. Memories of sanguine childhood. Mama’s home-cooked meals. Hallways filled with history of accidentally spilt milk, and walls occupied by pictures hung of birthdays and reunions seldom dusted… These are the things that make a home, or so they say. None of which I now cherish, for I am the only one left and they are those who chose to live on.

But I have fragmented memories, at least, and I look back at them from time to time. Like those moments I tried on papa’s huge loafers and dreamt my feet would fit them someday. Like when mama woke me up that particular morning to let me ride my new bicycle they just bought me while she sat on the front porch and sipped on a cup of coffee. Come evenings when mama comes home from work with a pasalubong of my favorite Jollibee meal and that time when I locked myself in their room because I did something stupid and only opened the door after a few hours begging not to be punished. Yes, I remember them dearly. I always was so spoiled.

Oh, how I felt so proud seeing papa on TV. He was broadcasting the news back then­ and I always waited for him to greet me before letting out his famous punch line: “Hoy! Gising!” Oh, how I must have felt so proud.

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Shaken and Stirred: The Adverbum Writers Retreat in Palawan

Nonfiction by | November 10, 2013

ShelllsTwo days before I was to leave for Palawan to join the first Adverbum Writers Retreat in Palawan, a 7.2 magnitude earthquake hit Central Visayas at past 8 in the morning. Soon after, social network newsfeeds were filled with initial images of the destruction it wrought. Later, television news programs provided more details. It broke my heart to see the ancient Baclayon and Loboc churches destroyed, but even more distressing were the number of human casualties. The earthquake was also felt in Davao City, but to a lesser extent, and with no reported damage. Still, I couldn’t help but feel anxious to leave my two children for a week to do something entirely for myself.

It was a palpable anxiety that I had been feeling since I learned about the retreat. Last July, I received an invitation to the writers retreat from Almira Astudillo-Gilles of Chicago, who organized the retreat to provide established writers with “time and space for creative work.” On October 17 – 22, I was to join Jose “Butch” Dalisay, Ed Maranan, Ricky de Ungria, and Juaniyo Arcellana in a private and secluded villa in Sitio Bobosawen, one and a half hours by road from Puerto Princesa City. With no mobile signal whatsoever, a two-kilometer stretch of coastline, and a view of the mountains, it did sound like a perfect writer’s destination.

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Men Who Dance

Nonfiction by | July 7, 2013

There is something about men who love to dance even if dance does not exactly love them back in return. Dancing somehow imbues a man with a certain magnetism that would not normally be present. Maybe there is something about his being lost to the rhythm and beat of the music that calls out to us. Even a ridiculous-looking dancer will elicit a bit of admiration for such bravery despite his lack of finesse. The line, “Dance like no one is watching; love like you will never get hurt,” is very telling of how dance could be a basic human indicator of how one lives life. The individual who is able to let go of his inhibitions and insecurities through dance is also the individual who is not afraid to make mistakes; the individual who embraces life with gusto.

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Date a Farmer

Nonfiction by | July 7, 2013

I remember how the mud stuck in between my toes and nails. I never knew my soles’ dead skin was also absorbent. Glad to have bought cheap soap from the nearby sari-sari store. Wala problema panglugod.

I should have worn boots but that could have made him uncomfortable. I don’t want him to be uncomfortable. I want him to like me so that he can open up. Gusto ko lang guid sya mapamatian mag istorya.

I though the chance of talking to him would slip when he said, “Makadto ako sa bukid. Hindi pwede ipabwas kay may tubig na.”

I hurriedly caught up on him and said: “Wala problema. Maupod ako didto.”

He chuckled. I though it meant, sure ka?

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Bulalakaw

Nonfiction by | June 30, 2013

Sa gamay pa ko, kanunay ko makakitag bulalakaw nga kalit lang mosutoy gikan sa kawanangan padulong ambot asa sa kalibotan. Diha pa mi nagpuyo sa Quezon Boulevard, sa may Salmonan banda. Katunggan pa ang maong lugar kaniadto, daghang bakhaw ug waterlili, gurami ug puyo, hasta tangkig. Sa gabii kalingawan namong mga bata nga magdulag biros, tigso, ug tubig-tubig. Tingali tungod kay kanunay ko naa sa gawas sa balay sa gabii mao nga kanunay sab ko makakitag bulalakaw. Apan naa koy mahinumdoman nga usa ka dako ug siga kaayo nga bulalakaw nga mihiwa sa kangitngit ibabaw sa Isla sa Samal. Nakahinumdom ko niini kay morag duol kaayo ang bulalakaw ug dugay napalong ang iyang pagdilaab. Nakahinumdom ko nga mihunong sa pagdula ug gitutokan ang paglupad niini hangtod nga nahanaw.

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Imagination and the Making of a Nation, Part 2

Nonfiction by | June 23, 2013

Keynote speech delivered on the occasion of the Ateneo de Davao Writers Workshop 2013 held last May 27

My Facebook shows a photo of the well-known critic, Isagani Cruz, home from an European sally. He writes, “Geneva might be the cleanest city in the world…Soon I will return to the Gates of Hell, but dirty or corrupt though it may be, Metro Manila is home sweet home.” It’s almost the same way I feel about every place where I have set up a bed and a kitchen, home in its plainest sense–it may not be much of anything in comparison with the magazine-sleek, full-colour portrayals of the homes of the rich and famous. Home to me is three-dimensional, solid and sensual, populous and visceral. It is the house where I live, the cluttered room, the dirty kitchen, the straggling garden, the people I love, those who might dislike my smell or the sound of my speech, the heat, the cold, the mud. If you transport me to another, better place, this sense of home will follow me like the smell of frying buladin the morning, like the muscular memory of the language I grew up with, like the tireless eyes of my mother watching us all from her grave in Ormoc’s hillside graveyard. No matter where I would be in the world I know I belong here even if by chance I will never return here for the rest of my life.

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Imagination and the Making of a Nation, Part 1

Nonfiction by | June 16, 2013

Keynote speech delivered on the occasion of the Ateneo de Davao Writers Workshop 2013 held last May 27.

We have just completed a major political exercise, the mid-term elections of 2013, which left in its wake varied effects upon the countryside, conflicting memories for us to deal with, many dilemmas, lessons and realizations to ponder, and prospects and speculations about our future as a nation. This election has not been as loud and strident as elections past. It did not leave us mountains of trash–literally–to put away as in earlier elections, when thousands of brigades had to be mustered nationwide to rip off the posters and markings from walls, electrical posts, even trunks of trees in every barangay and even along the highways.

This election left a bad taste in my mouth because for the first time I had a close encounter with the vote-buying syndrome. Our day helper is a nice cheerful garrulous lady in her mid-forties, who lives near our little subdivision in Tacloban City. In my family the helper sits and eats with us. So for the duration of the election season dinnertime conversations were instructive on how our neighbors were gearing up for the election. My house help told us how much she expected to “earn” from each candidate, from mayor down to councillor. She did not give a thought about the senators–there were no pickings to be had there, she observed dismissively.

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No Dowry, No Cry

Nonfiction by | May 27, 2013

When we first met, R didn’t believe for a second that I was a Muslim; I had this skimpy dress on that merely flattened out whatever curves remained in my ectomorphic body. I didn’t have a veil on and spoke without any accent.  My peculiar name was the single, albeit tenuous thread to my glorious heritage, frequently inspiring automatic cross references to Abu Sayyaf, Camp Abubakar, and Abubakar Janjalani (we are not related, by the way). For a while, this knowledge immobilized him from taking any drastic and immediate action. But skimpy dresses proved to be too difficult to resist, and almost in no time, R was sitting on my parents’ living room sofa, asking for my hand in marriage, sweat beads rolling down his gently-sloped nose.

“You have to excuse my daughter for her strange behavior,” my father glowered at me. “She grew up here in Manila.”

And my father regaled R with stories about how he’s unlike any Muslim father you’ll ever meet, having studied both the Bible and the Koran, having many Catholic friends, having lived in Manila for so long, and having a decadent urbanite like me for a daughter. He said, back in Sulu, a Muslim woman marrying a non-Muslim was downright unthinkable. “Our weddings are huge; some last for days.  And there are dowries to be made.”
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