Category: Nonfiction

Bye bye, Baby

Nonfiction by | July 12, 2009

I couldn’t say no. I couldn’t grunt ‘But…,” nor ask why. I just said yes, and nodded even when I meant no. Recently, my parents said no about me working in Metro Manila. I was devastated. I wouldn’t survive it, they predicted.

In Kindergarten, my teacher told this story after nap time when other kids were still sleepy. She told us that birds make good parents – they build nests for their young, feed them everyday, and protect them from unkind predators. But there’s one thing bird grown-ups don’t do for their young – fly. They don’t teach their chicks how to flap wings or glide in the air. In fact, some bird parents even risk pushing their chicks from the nest so that they will learn how to fly. It’s nature’s way of saying that learning does not always have to be vicarious. All birds learn to fly the hard way.

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A Bus Ride to Remember

Nonfiction by | July 12, 2009

I am a traveler of the road that connects Surigao del Sur and Davao City. I have lived most of my life in the city, but occasionally visit Surigao, particularly on Christmas breaks, summer vacations, and when the family decides to have a reunion. Sometimes the death anniversary of my great grandmother was reason eough to visit Surigao.

The first trip that I remember making was upon the request of my grandmother, who was longing to see me. I was accompanied by my aunt, whom I called “Mommy.” I had to sleep the whole day to prepare for the trip, which was scheduled at night.

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The Obligations of the Writer

Nonfiction by | July 5, 2009

(In memory of my father, Florentino Evasco)

Invoking the Presences
I would like to begin with a poem which I wrote many years ago for my father, Florentino Evasco. On March 14, he would have been 85 years old. This poem is published in my first book Dreamweavers and part of a cycle entitled “Blood Remembering.” It is called “The Mound of Bones”:

Behind the house,
A mound of earth
Kept my father
Busy digging.
From here the house
Was to extend
A listening ear
To the bamboo grove
And the frogpond.
But father struck
A pile of bones
And was soon lost
In contemplation.
Mother died
When he was fifty.
He told me then the secret
Of the mound of bones:
How the enchanted trees
Dug deep roots and curled
Around the skulls;
How one day, another man
Will uproot other trees and
Unearth our own,
And be lost in
His own reflection.

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Gender In Literature

Nonfiction by | June 28, 2009

The story of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Birthmark” expresses how women are defined as “the other” and men as the powerful sex.

Attics do not house humans. They are wasted space. Women are considered half monsters — and they are wasted. A woman inhabits the attic; literally and metaphorically, she becomes a madwoman, both as a writer and a character.

The fact is, Nathaniel Hawthorne is male; and men don’t glorify women.

Nathaniel Hawthorne did not directly say that Georgina is a monster. Only by the way she is presented in the story will it then become clear that literature had always been confined to male writers and male characters. Georgina’s birthmark embodies the unforgivable flaws of the female body and her position as a woman. She is not any different from Dr. Frankenstein’s monster; and the only way to kill the female monster is to destroy male literature.

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I Owe Y’All Two Pages

Nonfiction by | June 21, 2009

I walk through the long schoolroom questioning: should I wear my hood in class on the fifth of January or should I wear my hood in class on the fifth of January? It’s a tricky question, given that we live in a democratic society. By democracy, I mean being surrounded by people who are as free as you are they’d sing Itaktak Mo over and over until you’d feel odd enough you’d be moved to remove your hood. Scandal has two sides after all: baring your head below, and covering your head above.

I do not wish to move the world. Not that I won’t dare, but how could I disturb the universe given the size of my breasts and my booty? A few years back, a fiction teacher said I was a promising writer. By that I think he meant I have the great talent for putting off one article after another for the next day. My reason is a humble one: I write because I want to play god; so then I could pare my fingernails.

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Ang Kaisa-isa Kong Sandal

Nonfiction by | June 21, 2009

Kahirapan ay di hadlang sa ating buhay dahil lahat ng panahon ay nasa ilalim tayo. May pagkakataon namang nasa ibabaw.

Sa Cebu, naaalala ko pa nang ako’y nasa haiskul. Nang dahil sa mahirap lang kami, hindi ako nakapag-aral ng tuloy-tuloy. Kusa akong huminto dahil naawa ako sa aking mga magulang. Pito kaming magkakapatid at isang manggagawa lamang ang aking ama. Naghanap ako ng trabaho. Nag-aplay at napasok sa isang Printing Press bilang cutter ng
mga cellophane. Ipinagpatuloy ko ang aking pag-aaral sa gabi. Maghapong tumayo ako sa limang taon sa pagtatrabaho para lang matustusan ang aking pag-aaral. Sa awa ng Diyos, nakatapos ako ng haiskul sa University of the Visayas noong 1979.

Ibig kong ipatuloy ang aking pag-aaral sa kolehiyo ngunit parang madilim at mailap pa rin sa akin ang pagkakataon. Ngunit para sa akin hindi natutulog ang Diyos.

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Confessions of a 58-year-old Trekkie

Nonfiction by | May 31, 2009

Space – the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its continuing mission: to explore strange new worlds; to seek out new life and new civilizations; to boldly go where no one has gone before.

These words invaded my awareness more than forty years ago when the first edition of Star Trek came out on television. As a precocious teenager, I became instantly tantalized by the Gene Roddenberry creation, a penchant shared by my sister Thelma. At least once a week, we had a rendezvous at around 7:00 PM with the crew of the Enterprise in our 10-inch black-and-white TV set. As far as I remember, we never missed an episode, and should a storm occur at that moment with a blackout, we cursed the heavens for causing us to miss our date with Star Trek-TOS (The Original Series)!

The sci-fi series became a bonding link between my sister and I. There were other sci-fis that came out on TV later (Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon) but our interest was never drawn to them as much as with Star Trek. From the moment we met James Tiberius Kirk and the pointy-eared Vulcan Spock, we knew we were bitten by a bug from which we never recovered.

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Á Bientô, Great Man

Nonfiction by | May 24, 2009

It is not everyday that one gets the chance to grieve the loss of a great man. Great men come in too little a supply, and often, they leave without so much as a warning to lessen, if not completely halt, any pain that naturally comes from goodbyes. Yes, it is a pain to part, and even more painful to part with great men. Hence the natural order of things where great men are few, and to part with them an even rarer circumstance. My family, however, grieves the loss of a great man once or twice a year. And once again, the time has come for us to swallow the bitter pill that is goodbye.

A great man is one who loses himself in the service of others, including those he loves the most. A great man takes time to make up for lost time, despite knowing the futility of such an act. A great man braves the seven seas and the cruelty of the world, sometimes even literally, for someone other than himself. A great man is my dad.

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