Category: Nonfiction

Kalingkawasan, Katitikan, Katilingban: Ang lamdaman sa akong dagang

Nonfiction by | March 20, 2011

PASIUNA
Sa nagpurol pa ko, gimatuto kos akong mga ginikanan sa pagpangayog katahoran kang bisan kinsa nga akong ikahibalag sa dalan. Busa sugo sa maayong pamatasan, Maayong palis kanatong tanan.

Sa matag tapok-tapok, anaa gayod ang hudyaka. Ug mas lanog ang dahunog sa hudyaka kon mga alagad na sa arte ang magkatapok. Bililhon ang matag gutlo sa kalibotan sa mga alagad sa arte. Panagsa ra ang bakante. Kanunay silang nagpulaw sa pagsulat og balak, sugilanon, nobela. Busa kon sila na ang magkatapok, wa gyoy pugong-pugong. Ug salamat sa komite nga gitahasan niini nga panagtapok sa ilang pagdapit kanako isip delegado ning maong Taboan.

Karong hapona, akong ipaambit kaninyo ang akong kasinatian samtang nagsubay sa dalan sa akong dagang.

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Ang Taboan Writers Festival 2011 at ang manunulat na Higaonon/lumad

Nonfiction by | March 13, 2011

Ang Taboan Writers Festival 2011 ang pangalawang pagkakataon kung saan narinig ang naratibong Higaonon/lumad sa isang uri ng pagtitipong may pambansang malawakang saklaw. Ang pakikibahagi ko sa ganoong uri ng pagtitipon ay bahagi ng panimulang artikulasyon ng Higaonon/lumad, sa larangan ng panitikan, sa naratibong kaakibat ng kanyang pag-iral sa panig na ito ng sansinukob.

Isang magandang pagsalubong ng taon ang pagbibigay-diin sa panitikang lumad sa Taboan 2011 nitong nakaraang Pebrero 10-12. Tinitingnan ko ito bilang isang palatandaan na kahit pa sa gitna ng lahat na di kanais-nais na nangyari at nangyayari sa mga tribung lumad, hindi mababalaho sa ganoong kalagayan ang pakikisangkot ng lumad sa paghuhubog ng pambansang naratibo. Bagaman sa aktuwal na kumperensiya’y iisa lamang yata akong kumatawan sa panitikang lumad.

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Language and Literature: Imagination’s Way

Nonfiction by | March 5, 2011

  1. Any written work is text. “Text” is from Latin texere, textus, “to weave.” So then, to write is to weave language anew, and all we read and unravel is a word-weave, a text-tale.

The text is not so much written in a historical language, like English or Tagalog, as wrought from language. For the writer, the language is not a given. In every instance of writing, language is re-woven, reinvented, because the writer must find his own path through the wilderness of language. Our thoughts and feeling without our words are like brambles – the underbrush of the human psyche, dream and intuition.

To write is to breathe life into language. For the words of any language are single and bereft in the dead sea of the language’s dictionary. No meaningfulness arises from there, from that dead sea, because the meanings of words do not arise from themselves, but from lives lived. The words come to life only when writer or reader light them up with their imagination – then, and only then, are the words brought into interplay in some order by which a thought or feeling, a human experience, is endowed with a definite form. From there – that form made up wholly of elected words, that configuration of a human experience constructed with words – a meaningfulness arises, from reader to reader, from critic to critic, each one drawing imaginatively from his/her experience of the world in his/her own community of a shared ideology.

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Our Love Story

Nonfiction by | January 30, 2011

If you really wanted to hear about it, you will probably want to know where I was born, what the entirety of my not-so-lousy childhood was, and all that crap. But you do not, and that’s good. Besides, I am not going to write my autobiography or whatever, like I am going to die soon. Duh. I am going to tell you about the whole madman process of how I learned English. And hey, looking back, it seems you can compare English to a guy, or heck, maybe a boyfriend. The kind you want to hug and choke at the same time.

Where I want to start telling you all this stuff is when we first met. I was still very young (I was in preschool that time). At that time, it really did not matter to me who he was or what he was; I did not need to know him yet, at least at that point. So, for all intents and purposes at that time, we were just acquaintances. Our teachers wanted me to get to know English better, and use it more often, but it wasn’t a requirement just yet.

And if it is not a requirement, would any kid do it if she did not like it anyway?

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We Might Soon Be Extinct (or Not)

Nonfiction by | January 30, 2011

Why do I write? I have asked myself this question often and most of the time I get a low humming sound from the back of my brain. How lovely.

I write maybe because I want to or maybe because I need to? I write because I have something that I believe in? I write for the people who cannot read and who cannot write, for the people who can’t speak and understand Bisaya, for the people who can’t even spell their names, for the people who go to sleep hungry, for the babies who are not even born yet? I torment my mind with questions that even I cannot answer clearly regarding my being a writer.

Residing in Davao City gives me a lot of things to write about, from the usually uneventful jeepney rides from Boulevard to Mintal to the (maybe) interesting lives of the people that I see with their palms open burning under the heat of the sun, begging on the streets, or the people who frequent the malls some of them indifferent to the problems that plague our society and some of them wanting to forget their own problems even just for a short while, or the people who are living under Bolton bridge. It seems to me that they have a lot of stories to tell under their ordinary, unassuming guises. They only need someone who would listen to their unspoken chronicles and tell it for them. I don’t know if I would be that person, but I want to be that person someday, somehow. I want their stories to be told and not lost in the fleeting current that is life.

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Message Sent

Nonfiction by | December 19, 2010

I opened my inbox and read his message, “How was your class this morning?” I checked the name again and read the message twice. Beside the open envelope was his registered name in my phone: Papa. I stared at the screen as I was thinking of what to reply. But I couldn’t think of any. And I really didn’t know how to reply to a question like that from a person like him. I put my cell phone on the bed and went to the bathroom, thinking that maybe I could come up with a reply after a bath.

It was a strange message from a person so strange to me. My father’s message was like an admiration of a tough professor for his student’s work. For the student, her professor’s words were more than that. It was a bizarre treasure that would be kept in her mind and heart for at least, forever. I could ignore that message and a hundred more sweet messages from someone like my boyfriend, but not a message from my father. He was a man of few words so it was not like him to ask questions like that. Seemingly out of nowhere, a father’s message was saved in my inbox.

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Remembering Lola Juanita

Nonfiction by | November 28, 2010

A white rectangular wooden box with a polished surface and token curlicued bronze-colored engraving on its sides greeted my sleep-deprived and travel-weary eyes. As I entered the funeral home that early morning, I noted with wry amusement that Auntie Vim and her friends were entertaining themselves with their private jokes coupled with comical dancing.  Mithi was lying fast asleep on the sofa nearest the coffin. The bright lights and heavy scent of flowers were an assault on the senses, very jarring in the cool and quiet air of a December morning.  I nervously and slowly approached the coffin and peered into the wrinkled face of this once proud woman now shriveled and utterly lifeless. As I marshaled my thoughts and feelings, I noted how unbecoming the pink lipstick was against her brown leathery skin. I inwardly flinched when I saw that the white lining of the coffin on which she lay had the texture and look of plastic. I suddenly remembered how she hated plastic plants.

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All Souls

Nonfiction by | November 21, 2010

A week after November first, my family visited my grandfather’s, uncle’s, and my mother’s graves. We decided not to go with the heavy flow of human traffic during the holiday, so we went a week after.

At the grave, my aunt and a few family members gathered around the graves to wipe clean a few smudges on the tombstone and took away some clutter along the sides. After which, they lighted candles, and as my other oriental tradition would suggest (Japanese). As all this was happening, I stood from afar, watching.

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