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“The Hours” by Michael Cunningham: Time, Identity, and the Echo of Virginia Woolf

2025-07-10T18:34:00.000+08:00

When I first read The Hours, I didn’t know a novel could hold so many worlds in a single breath. Michael Cunningham’s Pulitzer-winning book unfolds like a literary triptych—three women in three different times, all tethered by one haunting narrative thread: Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway. And yet, it’s not merely homage. The Hours becomes its living, breathing thing—timeless, intimate, and dazzlingly recursive.

I came to this novel already reverent of Virginia Woolf. Her stream-of-consciousness prose and raw insight into mental illness had marked me. So, when Cunningham dared to reimagine Woolf—not just as a character, but as a connective tissue between modern lives—I read with equal parts wonder and skepticism. I found it as masterful as it was deeply informed.

What many readers might not know is that Cunningham studied Virginia Woolf extensively in college. His fascination with her wasn’t fleeting; it was deep, rigorous, scholarly. He has said in interviews that the seeds of The Hours were planted during this time, when his close reading of Mrs. Dalloway and Woolf’s diaries began to evolve into something more personal, more novelistic. The Hours is the fruit of that long, respectful engagement—a work born not of imitation but of immersion.

**In The Hours, we follow:**

Virginia Woolf in 1923, battling her mind while beginning Mrs. Dalloway in Richmond.
Laura Brown, a 1950s housewife in Los Angeles, suffocating under the weight of domestic life as she secretly reads Mrs. Dalloway.
Clarissa Vaughan, a modern-day version of Mrs. Dalloway, living in New York City, throwing a party for her friend and former lover who is dying of AIDS.

At first, these women seem disparate. But Cunningham merges their stories through carefully mirrored moments—a cake that fails, a kiss that confuses, a party that never quite arrives. These resonances are where the novel sings. Time folds in on itself. Character becomes archetype. Clarissa is both herself and a reincarnation of Woolf’s Clarissa Dalloway. Laura Brown is reading Mrs. Dalloway, but she is also somehow in it.

Writing the Edges of Reality

What struck me most was how Cunningham writes internal monologues that feel suspended between thought and breath. Like Woolf, he isn’t afraid to linger on a detail, to allow a character’s day to unfold across pages. But unlike Mrs. Dalloway, The Hours makes the shifting explicit. It’s a modern novel conscious of its lineage.

And yes, there are moments when Cunningham writes as if channeling Woolf directly—her melancholia, her clarity, her frailty, and her genius. His Virginia is not a caricature. She is a woman living on the edge of life and death, brilliance and despair. The decision to begin the novel with Woolf’s suicide note is gutting and brave.

The Film: Expanding the Echo

I watched Stephen Daldry’s 2002 film adaptation of the story. With Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore, and Nicole Kidman (who won an Oscar for her portrayal of Woolf), the film maintains the story’s lyrical fluidity. Philip Glass’s score threads the timelines together like breath. Some changes are inevitable, but the spirit remains: fractured identities, temporal bleed, the weight of art and ordinary hours.

What the film does especially well is visualize the mirroring. It lingers on hands, flowers, mirrors—reminders that each woman is both singular and plural. Watching it felt like rereading the novel in another language I already knew.

Why I Find this Book Useful for Teaching Literature

The Hours isn’t just a literary fan letter. It’s a conversation across time about what it means to live a meaningful life when death is always near. It’s about the agony and necessity of writing. It’s about queer love, motherhood, depression, and the everyday moments that shape us.

As a writer, I found it inspiring. As a woman, I found it unsettling and true. As a Woolf reader, I found it luminous. If you’ve ever felt seen by Mrs. Dalloway or been undone by Virginia Woolf’s sentences, The Hours will also open something inside you. And if you haven’t yet met Woolf, this story is a door.

Reread These YA & Kids' Lit Gems—They Still Hold Up (And Maybe Even More Now!)

2025-07-03T23:29:00.004+08:00

I’ve been thinking about how some books—especially the ones I've already blogged about —just keep getting better on second (or third) time reading. So this is my gentle nudge (okay, maybe a friendly shove ) for you to go back and reread three titles on my read YA list: Freewater, Maizy Chen’s Last Chance, and the classic we never quite outgrow—Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.

These stories first drew me in with their heart and honesty. But on the second (or yes, even third) read? I'm getting a deeper resonance: sharper and more real in spite of the different cultural contexts. So here's a rundown of my a repeat reading—just because I think they're great.

Freewater by Amina Luqman-Dawson

First time around, I was floored by the hidden wilderness community and the bravery of Homer and Ada. But now? I appreciate new and brighter layers of resistance, hope, and community-building. The quiet power of nature-as-refuge feels especially relevant especially with all the talk about taking care of our environment. And that twist toward the end still has the power to clutch at my heart. Freewater is one of those books that speaks louder the second time.

Maizy Chen’s Last Chance by Lisa Yee

On my first read, I was charmed by Maizy’s humor and her search for connection. On rereading, I lingered over her family’s stories and discovered a new richness. The blend of past and present feels more seamless now that I know where it’s headed. Themes of identity, belonging, and courage land with even greater clarity. Though as old as time, they grow more nuanced with each revisit. Rereading Maizy felt like visiting family and suddenly catching a detail you’d somehow missed growing up. And those golden dragons? Still magical.

Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. by Judy Blume

Oh, Margaret. You all remember the bras, the periods, the prayers. But rereading it now, with a few more years behind me, I see it’s so much more than a puberty story. It’s about belief, doubt, and the quiet, complicated process of growing up—both in public and in private. When I first read the book, I didn’t find it entirely satisfying. Maybe because I’m a boomer and Margaret, to simplify the gap, belongs to Generation Z. But then I watched the film, and afterward read the book again. To my surprise, the inner monologues—still funny, still awkward—now struck me with tenderness. That thread of spirituality, once just a detail, revealed itself as a real question. And I was reminded: even the young are already searching for meaning. Blume wrote an honest question that’s worth every reread and reflection

Rereading as Recharging

I've come to see rereading as a kind of meditation—a quiet return that reveals deeper layers of meaning, even if you're not actively doing deep hermeneutics or contextual analysis. What once felt like surface-level insight can suddenly spark a eureka moment. With time, books begin to speak to each other, forming a kind of textual community. In rereading, connections emerge, and a familiar book can feel newly alive and even more relevant.

How about picking these books up again yourself? Want to revisit my original blog posts from my first reads? Drop a comment in the thread—I’d love to gossip about bookish epiphanies with you. What did you notice the second time around? Which book shimmered unexpectedly?

Wishing you joy in your second (or third!) read—and may your favoritestories always meet you where you are.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao: A Heartfelt Review Through the Eyes of an Aunt to a Neurodivergent Nephew

2025-07-02T12:28:00.001+08:00

Why Oscar Wao Feels Personal to Me

I met Oscar Wao in the middle of a quiet afternoon, expecting literary footnotes and angst. What I didn’t expect was how deeply I'd connect with this overweight, awkward, dreamy Dominican-American nerd. Oscar is tender, tragic, and deeply human. He reminded me of someone very close to my heart—my autistic nephew.

My nephew is on the high end of the spectrum and has global developmental delay. He doesn’t talk about Tolkien like Oscar, but he too lives in a world slightly apart. Where Oscar’s world spins with comics, Dungeons & Dragons, and unrequited love, my nephew's world is filled with messy cardboard boxes, picked plastic cup caps, tapes, staplers, paints – as he repeatedly constructs (also with Minecraft if this is digital) a building with a ceiling that should have fire alarms and walls with sprinklers. The rooms in this imagined house space are lighted with his favorite bulbs, and always, the bathroom is the only space filled with things – pail, dipper, shower, and the toilet bowl of course

What Makes Oscar Wao a Wondrous Read

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz is no simple read. It's a whirlwind of history, nerdy pop culture, Dominican curses, and footnoted political trauma. But beneath all the layers is a boy who doesn’t fit in—and refuses to shrink himself just to belong.

Oscar’s story resonated with me as an aunt. He’s different, yes, but so full of feeling, imagination, and longing. Like my nephew, Oscar doesn't filter himself to fit expectations. And that refusal to conform is, to me, wondrous.

Recommended Books Featuring Neurodivergent Characters

If you love characters like Oscar or know someone who sees the world differently, here are some books with neurodiverse protagonists that you may enjoy:

**1. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon**

A smart, funny, and moving mystery narrated by a boy on the autism spectrum.

2. Marcelo in the Real World by Francisco X. Stork
A quiet teen with cognitive differences navigates summer work, faith, and justice.

3. Mockingbird by Kathryn Erskine
Told from the POV of a girl with Asperger’s, this novel explores loss and empathy.

4. Anything But Typical by Nora Raleigh Baskin
An autistic boy’s journey to make sense of social cues and creative writing spaces.

5. El Deafo by Cece Bell (Graphic Memoir)
While centered on hearing loss, this graphic novel is a powerful look at difference, friendship, and self-worth.

Reading About An "Other"

Oscar Wao doesn’t get a fairy tale ending—but his story is filled with courage, love, and radical honesty. For anyone raising, loving, or being someone who walks a different path, this book is a reminder: different isn’t broken—it’s brilliantly human.

If you’ve read this book or have recommendations for stories featuring neurodivergent characters, I’d love to hear from you in the comments below.

2025-06-28T17:26:00.003+08:00

Late to the Tesseract: Discovering A Wrinkle in Time (at My Age) and Other YA Books Worth Teaching

By a Lit Teacher Who Came for the Theology—and Stayed for the Time Travel

I have a confession: I just read A Wrinkle in Time for the first time.

Yes, that book. The one with tessering, Mrs. Who, and the planet where everyone bounces balls in sync. The one I somehow missed in childhood, skipped over in teacher trainings, and only recently picked up because I’d fallen in love with Madeleine L’Engle’s Walking on Water, her beautiful book on faith and art.

I expected something whimsical, maybe a little quaint.

Instead, I got Meg Murry.

I got a girl who doubts herself deeply but still shows up. A child who fights conformity with nothing but a stubborn heart. A mother who loves without limits. A cosmos that bends—not for power, but for love.

And now, even though I’ve taught literature for years, I’m seeing young adult books in a new light—not as stories I’ve outgrown, but as stories that meet readers where they are, whether they’re fifteen or, well… not.

Why A Wrinkle in Time Is Still a Gift in the Classroom

Teaching this book isn’t about nostalgia. It’s about giving students a story that takes their moral imagination seriously.

Meg is a misfit, not a martyr. She feels her feelings (loudly), questions adults, and keeps showing up even when she doesn’t believe she can. She is, in other words, exactly like many of our students—and she gets to be the hero.

There’s also something profound in the way L’Engle weaves together physics, scripture, and emotional truth. For those of us who’ve read her nonfiction meditations, it’s familiar terrain. She trusts that the sacred and the scientific can co-exist. So can fear and love. So can doubt and faith.

(And yes—if they’ve only seen the film, they’ve missed the point. The visuals may dazzle, but the soul of the book lives in its language, its moral clarity, and its quiet theological courage.)

And that’s what makes the novel so teachable: it lets teenagers be complicated—and still believe they’re capable of saving the world.

A Few More YA Books I’d Gladly Teach (and Re-read)

Here are some books I’ve either taught or read recently that pair beautifully with A Wrinkle in Time—in tone, theme, or depth.

When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead

Stead builds a quiet mystery around a girl receiving strange notes that change how she sees her world. It’s essentially a love letter to A Wrinkle in Time.
Best classroom use: Compare how both novels handle time, trust, and the sacred ordinary.

The Giver by Lois Lowry

A classic for good reason. A world with no pain, no color, no choice—and one boy who starts to see through it.
Pair with: L’Engle’s Camazotz for a discussion on control vs. freedom.

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

A story where books save lives—sometimes literally. Liesel is another fierce young girl navigating unimaginable darkness with light and language.
Use for: Voice, metaphor, and a gut-punch of a narrative.

Scythe by Neal Shusterman

It’s darker than L’Engle, but just as philosophically rich. A society without death has to invent artificial mortality. What could possibly go wrong?
For older teens: Lots of moral and theological angles to explore here.

Orbiting Jupiter by Gary D. Schmidt

Short, powerful, heartbreaking. A foster kid searching for his daughter.
Why I’d teach it: Schmidt, like L’Engle, writes with quiet compassion. He doesn’t protect readers from sorrow—but he doesn’t leave them there, either.

Teaching (and Reading) With Wrinkles

I used to think YA lit was for the young. Now I know it’s for the honest. These books don’t just entertain—they insist that even the smallest voice matters. They believe in the power of questions. They teach us that mystery isn’t something to solve, but something to enter.

Reading A Wrinkle in Time at this point in my life wasn’t a gap to be embarrassed about. It was a gift. And now, I’m passing it on.

If you’re a fellow teacher—seasoned, skeptical, or simply searching for your next great read—don’t sleep on these stories. They may be labeled “young,” but they are not shallow. They are liturgies in disguise.

Let’s talk.
Which YA books do your students respond to? Which ones surprised you? And have you ever come to a “kid’s book” late, only to find it changed you anyway?

Leave a note below—I’d love to swap book lists and maybe a few stories of our own.

2025-06-28T15:32:00.001+08:00

📚 Books I’ve Loved — Now Rehoming

Each book comes with a memory. Message me to reserve or inquire.

A Wrinkle in Time

A soulful blend of science and spirit. This one helped me write during Lent. Lightly marked with notes.

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2025 Aspen Words Literary Prize Ceremony & Winner Announcement

2025-04-30T07:48:00.001+08:00

Illustrado by Miguel Syjuco -

2024-09-03T14:30:00.004+08:00

[Filipiniana Book Shelf series focuses on books on the PAWR library - that is, bought books that have been read and are being re-read just because... they are valued properties]

From the PAWR Filipiniana Book Shelf, llustrado by Miguel Syjuco is special because it challenges the audience to rethink the role of the Filipino Illustrado in Philippine context and history. More than just a historical fiction this book provokes us to think deeply about the subject of the Illustrado identity.

I didn't always immediately understand post-modern tales but I feel that traditional novels - those chronological, plot oriented or character driven narratives sometimes become dull and boring to read. So to challenge myself I picked Illustrado again from the PAWR library. This novel has given me really deep thoughts about writing a novel.

For instance, I thought about how the narrator in Illustrado isn't reliable and yet, he's the only narrator that can tell me that very tale of why novelists matter. And further, how authors themselves are aware that what they've written probably won't matter at all in the greater scheme of things.

But even with this knowledge, not writing isn’t an option. This is a calling that will not go away –for all the desiring-to-become-writers out there. There’s no way to curb the desire to write, it is simply frustrating and exhausting to do so.

And it seems to me that this is the sadness of Syjuco's tale: how an author can be so engaged with history and the suffering of its nation, and will always be motivated and eager to pen a prophetic piece, but will have to always fight oneself in the process, since all writers who are eager to write anything at all will have to decide against any soul sell-out and scheme for a quick and easy road to prosperity.

In this novel, the term Illustrado is negatively pursued, because the narrator doubts the protege to be a real Illustrado. Like, what does this Illustrado really know about the grim realities on the city streets, the squalor in urban squatters, the catastrophe in the rural areas where disasters are endless? His more financially endowed background should have allowed him more opportunities to advocate for development where change needed to happen, but in his rich location, he often didn’t have an accurate feel of the sadness of the situation. If he would fully engage, he would have to become a traitor to his class.

If he could see his birthplace from exile as most Illustrados did before him, how deeply could he engage the questions of national suffering once he’d gone incognito in some remote place as an OFW? He would have to negotiate the terms of comfort – this freedom from the onslaught of suffering outside his country vis a vis his desire to go back and confront by actually seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, and feeling his country's ills. Perhaps then, he could burn his bridges and tell-all.

This seems to be the burden of the Illustrado. The prospective Illustrado who wants to write-all immediately wasn’t yet fully in the know, at least, as far as the narrator’s assessment is concerned.

The student of history isn’t in the story yet, but only interpolating in the narratives that were penned before his time. Not yet a real witness of history, not yet a real Illustrado.

Or a millennial who is trying not to get confused about the past. Or they have witnessed some facts of history but their own scant viewpoint keeps their language cautious, objective, and probing rather than purposeful.

In the narrator’s portfolio in this novel, he has done all the genre novels - sci fi tale, detective whodunit, even the historical romance. But he is not satisfied. And although he’s begun something that should burn bridges, it’s still questionable if he would be able to divulge in time all that is burning within him. Until he does so then, he hasn't written.

And probably, this single fact redeems the Illustrado – that after all, he's still the ONE who could be writing something that must shake the political systems, provoke a revolution, and change cultural habits and attitudes for the better. Yet, how this novel ends doesn't make me optimistic that this narrator who is the seemingly authentic illustrado is up to the task himself.

No. not at all.

Secret and Dangerous Lives in World War II Memoirs

2024-08-19T14:25:00.002+08:00

I read memoirs because my life is so insulated

Memoirs can offer a window into different worlds and experiences, making them a powerful way to connect with lives and perspectives outside of my own. It's a great way to break out of an insulated environment and explore the complexities of other people's journeys.

Insulation makes me myopic and judgmental. Deeply immersed in my world, it’s easy to lose perspective and form narrow views. Reading memoirs, exploring diverse stories, and engaging with different experiences has greatly helped in challenging these tendencies and broadened my understanding.

Secret Fears Leads to the Current Staple Reading

My reading a memoir is further enriched by reading other books set in the same similar historical period. Lately, I read a biography entitled "Agent Josephine" while still finishing the memoir "When Time Stopped." Meanwhile, I am halfway through a newly acquired e-book, the historical novel by Claire Messaud, "This Strange Eventful History."

Reading a memoir, a novel, and a biography together has given me a multidimensional understanding of the time period that was World War II. A blending of fictional narrative and factual history has enriched my appreciation of not just the 'big' heroes of WW2, but of the million other lives who suffered and sacrificed their lives in that unfortunate global disaster. These include spies, friends of holocaust survivors, mothers intent on the survival of their children, fathers on the battlefields missing their spouses, and underground rebels who refused to capitulate but exerted all creative faculties to source help for others to survive.

While the "big" heroes of World War II are often celebrated, countless individuals represented in these books truly represent the profound impact of the war. Everyday people who endured immense suffering, loss, and sacrifice are often overshadowed, yet their experiences are no less significant. As I read the memoir, the novel, and the biography, stories of often "less important" figures are brought to light, giving me a nuanced and broader understanding of the war's true human cost.

Some Figures from the Books I’ve been Reading

Hans Neuman and Josephine Baker were survivors who kept hoping for the correct world in the light of the global trauma that was World War II. Both adamantly clung to life, and persisted in survival to let the future know about this gruesome past. The world has to learn from the ravages of war after all, although future history has repeatedly missed the lessons.

Hans Neumann, as depicted in "When Time Stopped," managed to survive the horrors of the Holocaust and went on to rebuild his life, never losing hope for a world that could be more just and compassionate. It was as if time stopped during the war, when he had to assume another name and identity for the sake of survival. He triumphed in ‘tricking’ the fate of the ‘jews’ and got to live a new life in a new state. He refused to let that past haunt him by making that time of his life stop, both literally and metaphorically. The memoir takes on the theme of the unwinding of time pieces, which was Hans Neuman’s hobby.

Josephine Baker, often remembered for her glamorous life as an entertainer, was a courageous spy and resistance fighter. During World War II, her efforts in giving the Allies information about plans of the Axis expressed her desire for a better world. Despite her personal traumas, her actions and collaborations with other secret agents reflected a deep sense of hope and determination.

In the novel “This Strange, Eventful History”, Claire Messaud’s characters are as much a product of their time as of their family histories. Individual stories reminded me that even in their most clueless of times and seasons, people can find their ways to resistance, survival, and belief for better life, better coping, better indignance.

These characters in the novel, memoir, and biography will always remind me that nobody will ever be prepared for war, and yet, everybody has a nucleus of loved ones to always stand by and protect. Everybody will eventually find a worthy cause to not just survive, but also believe in survival. This is always for somebody other than themselves.

I’m hoping for no wars or rumors of war although this maybe an empty hope. Even the Bible says that wars are inevitable. But hopefully the younger generation will see inspiration and hope in the heroic tales of those who survived to tell their tales and lived to publish their stories for posterity. Stories of resilience, courage, and humanity—like those of Hans Neumann and Josephine Baker serve as powerful reminders of what individuals can achieve, even in the worst of times.

Recommended novels, memoirs, biographies set in World War 2

While watching the news about the China-Philippine wrangling in the contested territorial waters, I can’t help but think about World War II. Those decades weren’t too far from today. In these Asian shores, the same fires of conflict from ancient times simmer and are threatening to explode.

My prayer is that the younger generation will know how to respond to any outbreak of war, but more than violence, I am hoping for an understanding that war is both mercy and judgment. In the light of the impending chaos, home, family, friends, and other loved ones will take priority over the more material concerns. And in all the commotion, one needs to have the basic and most necessary faith in the true God, either for life or for death.

Here’s a list of historical books, memoirs, novels, and biographies set in World War II that focus on less-known individuals. [This list does not yet include books about the war years in the Philippines, written by Filipinos. Here is that list.]

Memoirs:

"The Zookeeper's Wife" by Diane Ackerman - The true story of Antonina Żabińska, who, along with her husband, saved hundreds of Jews by hiding them in their Warsaw Zoo during the Holocaust.
"Hidden Figures: The Untold Story of the African American Women Who Helped Win the Space Race" by Margot Lee Shetterly - Though not strictly about WWII, this memoir highlights the lesser-known contributions of African American women during the war era.
"We Band of Angels" by Elizabeth Norman - The story of the U.S. Army and Navy nurses who were captured by the Japanese in the Philippines during World War II and survived three years of imprisonment.

Novels:

"All the Light We Cannot See" by Anthony Doerr - Follows the story of a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide during the war, highlighting the lesser-known struggles of civilians.
"The Night Watch" by Sarah Waters - Set in post-WWII London, it weaves together the lives of four people whose experiences during the war shaped their futures.
"The Women in the Castle" by Jessica Shattuck - Focuses on three German women and their survival after their husbands' failed plot to assassinate Hitler.
"The Book Thief" by Markus Zusak - A novel narrated by Death, centered around a young girl in Nazi Germany who steals books and shares them with others during the war.

Biographies:

"Code Name: Lise" by Larry Loftis - The biography of Odette Sansom, a British spy who operated in Nazi-occupied France and survived imprisonment in Ravensbrück concentration camp.
"A Woman of No Importance" by Sonia Purnell - The incredible story of Virginia Hall, an American spy who became one of the most successful Allied operatives in Nazi-occupied France.
"Resistance: A French Woman’s Journal of the War" by Agnes Humbert - A gripping first-hand account of a French woman’s involvement in the resistance and her capture by the Nazis.

Historical Non-Fiction:

"The Girls Who Went Away" by Ann Fessler - While not entirely set during WWII, this non-fiction book looks at the stories of women who gave up their children for adoption in the post-war era, offering a different perspective on the social aftermath of the war.
"The Bielski Brothers" by Peter Duffy - The true story of three brothers who saved over 1,200 Jews by building a secret village in the forests of Belarus during the Holocaust.
"The Spy Who Loved" by Clare Mulley - The story of Krystyna Skarbek, a Polish-born British special agent who became one of Churchill’s most daring spies.

From the sentence descriptions, I can deduce that most memoirs in this list are stories of figures who prioritized desires that served the greater cause of winning against barbaric war acts and decimations. As with the rest of the historical novels, even the intentional entertainment value zeroes in on the valued relationships prominent in the narrative [women who gave up their children, three brothers saving 1,200 Jews].

Among the list above, I have read only “All the Light We Cannot See,” and “The Book Thief”. I am happy to report that I truly enjoyed both and was much enlightened especially with the details of existence in the midst of fires and bombings, how people still kept a semblance of normal life, as they tried to meet the basic and most crucial needs of their loved ones. [I have also seen the film adaptations of both books. I recommend reading the books first before you watch the films if you haven't done both yet.]

As books pass on these stories in the paged legacy of memoirs, biographies, and novels, here’s to the chance that future generations will read and remember the sacrifices, and become motivated to work toward a more peaceful world.

Memoirs in my Library

2024-05-25T11:56:00.010+08:00

My MFA thesis was a biography so I got into reading memoirs and biographies. I enjoyed reading those books and dreamt of writing more in this non-fiction genre. Research took a lot of time, but even after the final defense of this book, I read more books of personal essays to discover how authors encounter and craft lives in real or imagined times. I took my time reading and re-reading the biographies in my personal library, and now, I have gotten into a habit of lingering in the biography section of the Fully Booked store.

Later on, I got into reading e-books. Some of what I own in the list below are e-books. I've been learning a lot in writing about persons from these treasures. And until I've written another biography, [so yes, I dream on] they will sit on my shelf and hover on my personal cloud.

I've listed here only the memoirs I've been re-reading and will list the newly acquired memoirs in future posts after I've actually read them. I still have to account for the biographies on my shelves [mostly of women authors and artists], so that list will follow as well. [Why I'm listing? Well, it's also a way of making a formal inventory - like, I need to be able to find the books immediately when I need them.]

For a preview, below are pictures of the covers of books that are currently on my desk-pile of books to read:

MEMOIRS ON MY BOOKSHELF - NOT A FULL LIST.

1. "Angela's Ashes" by Frank McCourt (1996) - This Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir recounts McCourt's impoverished childhood in Limerick, Ireland. It became a bestseller and remains a significant work in the genre of misery memoirs (lithub). [I remember buying and reading this book because I learned that McCourt was a teacher.]

2. "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius" by Dave Eggers (2000) - This memoir is a blend of tragic and comic, detailing Eggers' experience of raising his younger brother after the sudden death of their parents (lithub). [Before owning a copy, I borrowed this book from the University Library. Having enjoyed it immensely, I had to have a personal copy. I found this one below by Dave Eggers, and am going to read it, too.]

3. "The Year of Magical Thinking" by Joan Didion (2005) - A profound account of grief and loss, Didion's memoir delves into the year following the sudden death of her husband and the severe illness of her daughter (listchallenges). [This book details Didion's grief. The motivation for buying it was Didion's reputation as a classic essayist -- that is, Every essayist I know believes that everyone who wishes to write a memoir can learn much from this author.]

4. "Eat, Pray, Love" by Elizabeth Gilbert (2006) - Gilbert's memoir about her journey across Italy, India, and Indonesia in search of self-discovery and healing became a worldwide sensation (lithub) (listchallenges). [I enjoyed the movie adaptation, only because it was Julia Roberts in the title role. I bought the book because the title has "Pray" in the middle. However, Gilbert is not writing about Praying in the sense of being a Christian.]

5. "When Breath Becomes Air" by Paul Kalanithi (2016) - Although written in the late 2000s, this memoir became iconic. It chronicles Kalanithi's battle with terminal cancer and his reflections on life and mortality (listchallenges) [An amazing book by a doctor. Recently, there were writing workshops held for writers who are doctors or medical practitioners. Authors from this discipline have rich stories to share about their encounters with patients. Dr. Kalathini writes about himself - as the one under examination. He scrutinizes the essence of his mortal body, and how immortality is achieved only by an acceptance of our limitations.]

6. "H Is for Hawk" by Helen Macdonald (2014) - This memoir intertwines Macdonald's grief over her father's death with her experience of training a goshawk. The book received widespread acclaim for its lyrical prose and deep emotional resonance (lithub) [Beautiful book. My e-book copy however is not enough for me, so I will secure a hard copy as well. I've never imagined that one can write about oneself from a dissertation about birds. I just read Margaret Atwood's blog about bird watching and I continue to be curious.. Birds are lovely in whatever shape or color, but they are so rare in the skies of Metro Manila.]

ON THE YA BOOKS I’M READING

2024-01-18T20:23:00.003+08:00

As Brave as You by Jason Reynolds – I picked this book in the young adult section of FULLY BOOKED because, from the blurb, it seemed like a book about family relationships. The protagonists are 9 and 11 years old with a grandfather who has dementia. He lost his son in some war, and the boys learn about his sadness later on. To me, it does not register much except for some parts where the dialogue succeeded in making me read it up to the end. For young boys maybe, this is a wonderful adventure book, but I wasn’t into it that much.

Merci Suarez Changes Gears by Meg Medina was a New York Times Bestseller – and I learned of this book from that list. The blurb was by R.J. Palacio who was the author of that YA Book turned into a movie – Wonder. About a girl in her pre-teen discoveries, this too, has a sub-story about a grandfather who has dementia. I found this a better read than Judy Blume’s “Dear God, It’s Me Margaret”. Merci Suarez is braver, more adventurous, and less self-conscious.

I didn’t enjoy The Giver that much. I have confirmed that I prefer realistic settings to dystopian narratives. However, I can understand how this book resonated with so many young people. I believe that young people prefer structured and probably predictable narratives.

I have to read Human Acts by Han Kang again. This one, has too much reality, the bitter reality. The human body is so thrown out there literally and metaphorically, and the question of the soul separated from the body becomes too depressing to contemplate. Of my December reads, this one really could not even make me cry, but I cringed and felt some similar pain somehow.

The e-books that I finished reading are both enjoyable reads. Freewater by Amina Luoman Dawson is another story about black slaves. Young heroes in this book discover a route to freedom and take it, but in the process, they leave someone behind. The tale is about courage and how this was both an inevitable and a necessary choice even for the young who knew that freedom isn’t something that can be had without a sacrifice and worse, death. The language is unsentimental, I get to see the scenes as if I am watching a film, yet I am not told how to feel. However, whatever feelings I have truly encompassed my deepened understanding of the desperate situation the young characters are in.

Maizy Chen’s Last Chance by Lisa Yee is a narrative of diaspora. The young girl Maizy learns about her roots through a story told by her grandfather’s friend. Incidentally, the friendship is somehow scarred that the girl tries to connect the dots and discovers how her race negotiated the challenges of displacements via migration.

Among these books, I rank Freewater no 1, followed by Human Acts, then Maizy Chen’s Last Chance. I am reading books for Young People to listen to how they respond to real-life situations. I just heard Neil Gaiman say in “Masterclass” that honesty is what makes him go on as a writer – that to be a writer, one must be honest.

In my mid-twenties when I wrote and submitted some poems, I had some friends read the poems first to hear what they thought about them. One of them said that I reveal too much about myself in my writing. Maybe it is both the crafting and the telling. The crafting was juvenile, therefore listless and without direction. The telling almost always established a beginning and an end and I was afraid to get lost in the self-conscious progression. Therefore they were coming out from a bad liar. The fiction wasn’t fictional enough, the poems didn’t have cadence and the voice was generic.

Listening to Neil Gaiman, I thought, well, all writers start that way. However, how writers graduate from journaling personal revelations to crafting a reality to give it a larger-than-life status, is what writing is all about.

ON BUILDING A WEBSITE

2024-01-10T15:42:00.003+08:00

For my book project THINGS, the task today according to my year plan is to blog about a new-year discovery as this is the 9th month of my 60th year. But since April in 2023 when I officially acquired a senior citizen status, my routine has stayed the same. If there were any new discoveries, I didn't have a record of those experiences. The major culprit was my lack of consistent writing. My last diary entry was dated 2021!

Well, early last year, I installed a loft bed with a stair cabinet and moved my Molave desk from the living room to the space under my bed. I made sure that I would be able to sit and stand underneath so I was happy about having created a 'writing space for myself'. This was necessary since my sister and her son have taken over the entire living room, and now, there is a study table for my nephew and a work desk for my sister. Both are folding tables by the way, and my nephew's is right down the stairs of the double bed, while my sister's rests right beside the door of the unit. I have been thinking about retrieving my Narra desk from my brother's resort in Batangas, where I moved it back when my sister wanted me to remove furniture in my mother's house to give space to possible renters. I acquired that desk from OMF, when they gave it to me after letting me work from home when my mother got sick. That table had deep drawers that my nephew could use for his clothes. Right now, most of his garments are in plastic boxes stacked under his round, blue, folding table.

I installed a double bed in the living room, so that part of the condo isn't anymore mine. Whatever mess they make now with the living room-turned-bedroom-for-two is fine with me as long as the mess doesn't get into my newly created space.

To cheer me up, I bought a new chair more for its aesthetic fit in my under-the-bed office than for its usefulness as a writing chair. And now I have been regretting the purchase because it's difficult to write sitting on that beautiful cozy chair. I am grateful that I have kept my blue folding metal chair from the time I was a boarder in Palanan in 2011, so I use that when writing. Meanwhile, the old, rotating, desk chair now belongs to my sister, who has been using it since the time they moved in with me.

Currently, all my positive experiences have to do with the luxury of sleeping on the 'loft bed' in my 35 sq meter condo. Up on my bunk, I am no longer bothered by the traffic of my sister and her son coming and going in and out of the bathroom. I can now rest in peace without Joseph jumping on the bed every time he goes to the window to look at children playing in the garden of Gateway Regency only one floor below. When I had a proper bed, it was also a sofa, and my nephew was hardly in the living room but was always lingering on my bed while he played, painted, or simply watched other children play from the bedside window. His mom has now installed for him a wall fan, and lately, he's loving the independence of watching Netflix on his tablet on his bed, with all his stuffed toys and 'dippers' beside. However, the child still asks me occasionally if he could sleep with me- which I let him sometimes because he is really a sweet boy. But more and more, I have been rejecting his request because he's nine and has grown taller. Cuddling him on my bed has become less cozy and comfortable, but I cherish his little head popping up the loft stairs every morning when he goes up to say, 'Good morning Ninang.'

Today, instead of blogging about any new discovery [because I really don't have one], I went to YouTube for guidance on productive blogging. Half of this day was spent googling and then watching videos on how to create a new website. At this age, I probably need more time to research on these technicalities before I plunge to the actual 'business' of blogging. I found Hostinger Academy which gave me a list of 'no-code' web-builders. I wondered why 'Wordpress' wasn't on that list, however, if I use Hostinger for web hosting, it directs me to 'Wordpress'. So since I already have this Wordpress blog, on impulse, I upgraded my confidantesite. blog, but then I canceled my purchase immediately because I realized that I still didn't understand the process. I had changed the domain name to 'auntiedote.com' but when I searched for the domain name after an upgrade, I didn't know where it went and was lost as to how to proceed to Hostinger. Confused even after three tutorial videos, I have now spent almost four hours of 'learning' how to build a website, yet I haven't learned anything.

I miss Sitesell, the web hosting I used from 2004 to 2021. It really was convenient for old people like me with its full tutorials. Even when you get lost, you can always go back and repeat at Sitesell and there are tons of easy help available which took only a little time to discover.

After cancelling my purchase, I got this email from Wordpress:

The following upgrades have been cancelled and ฿3,348.00 refunded:

WordPress.com Explorer on https://confidantesite.wordpress.com
Domain: confidantesite.blog

Your refund has been sent to the method of payment that you used for your original purchase. You will receive it in 7-10 business days. If you paid with a credit card, this may appear as a credit/refund on your statement, or the original charge will show as reversed, which would simply remove the original charge from your statement - depending on your bank. If you paid via PayPal, you’ll see the refund in your transaction history.

If you have any questions or don't receive the refund, please contact support

Did I lose all of my previous blogs now? Wordpress says that my domain confidantesite.blog has been deleted, and as a result, I might not be able to regain that same domain name.

I should look for copies of my previous blogs - hopefully, I emailed copies of those to myself. This is a bit sad, but well, maybe this is also an adventure, although a sad one. So much for a new website.

ONCE-A-MONTH GOALS

2023-12-25T12:57:00.000+08:00

Hopefully, this time, because I am desperate, I will accomplish everything I will jot down here:

1. I should be able to plot at least one chapter [or two] a month for Bianca's Diary (tentative title) and finish writing by April, in time for Editing and Layout in May. The plan is to finish it in time to get a writing grant in June and publish the YA novel in September 2024.

2. I should be able to blog at least three essays on my '60s journey -- aiming to develop a community of readers for the "Things Book."

3. I should be able to blog a review of any book I am reading -- aiming to develop a community of readers and friends for the YA novel I am writing. I should be able to read all the books I've listed in October of this year.

4. I should be able to read a novel by a Filipino author -- also to upgrade my grasp of Philippine Literature.

5. I should be able to read and do some ART hobby, maybe painting -- aiming to help me build a new skill -- perhaps toward illustrations of Children's books.

FOR NUMBER 1 - Right now, I have eight chapters that aren't yet ordered the way they should [this organization will happen once I've determined all the chapters.] I have been learning that I am not a plotter, that is, my story happens as I write them, and so thinking and writing are always simultaneous -- that is, I can never plot or plan my chapters, and the stories seem to be lodged somewhere in my system and are only waiting to be tapped. Writing then is really slow and kind of forced in the beginning, until every thought has landed on paper and is ready for placement in the yet incoherent narrative.

FOR NUMBER 2 - This is the first blog on the '60s journey thing, however, I wanted to keep this blog more formal and still in the THINGS mode of essaying, so I need to focus on more objects around me, This is difficult only because I am not sure about what other mundane objects will yield some deep meditations. Later thoughts on the THINGS project involve planning and research of an end product, that is 'initially,' BAGS because I like them, after all, in the schema of everyday commute, this is a most necessary accessory. They will be manufactured and sold eventually. What pops up as a brand name is 'BAGAY'. I should look more into how to manufacture bags, and maybe I could also ask Ramon Rocha, former CEO of OMF, who had bag manufacturing as his first business. [This makes me consider the MAI meet in Bangkok come April of 2024, since I need to meet up with people and establish myself in a community of global peers. Why not?]

FOR NUMBER 3 -- Right now, I have been reading two books highlighted in the October list of YA books to read, but I have not been enjoying those books, although I have been learning much from how 'unsentimentality' figures in a narrative. So far, these YA books which are in the realist mode aren't the best reads for me, maybe because I am old, and for somebody wanting to write to Young People, I have to say I am so ancient that I don't yet fully appreciate the ticks of this genre. Then in the process, I think I need to somehow delve into reading fantasy, which, for a long time, except for Lord of the Rings, are books I have avoided for sheer dislike of unreal things.

FOR NUMBER 4 - I should read Biblioepsy to complete reading all of Gina Apostol's books. I have La Tercera in my Kindle App here on my phone, and It wasn't a satisfying read. I have yet to identify what I really enjoy in her books, but with The Revolution According to Raymundo Mata, it was just the novelty of it all -- that is, it was a new experience for me reading such a style so I enjoyed it. After a while, this style becomes tedious and demanding and not at all engrossing - which I think is something needed for one to keep on reading.

FOR NUMBER 5 -- Oh when oh when will I get down to this? So today, I should probably decide to think of this hobby smartly - so if I am going to study drawing, I might as well try getting to a point of illustrating children's books in the future. I have always enjoyed children's book illustrations. I will look at my ART BOOKS collection to see if there's anything at all that will teach me this. Or, there is always YOUTUBE, although I have to really clear this forest of information to be able to spend my time smartly only on the videos that matter.

BOOKED FOR THE FISCAL YEAR [SEPT 2023-202F SEPT]

2023-10-18T15:40:00.001+08:00

1. THE WAY I USED TO BE

2. WE WERE LIARS

3. THEY BOTH DIE IN THE END

4. THE HOUSE ON MANGO STREET

5. THE MAGIC FISH

6. DIARY OF A TOKYO TEEN

7. XOXO

8. PATRON SAINTS OF NOTHING

9. A STEP FROM HEAVEN

10. THROWBACK

11. KAY'S LUCKY COIN VARIETY

12. THE SURPRISING POWER OF A GOOD DUMPLING

13. HOUSE OF GLASS HEARTS

14. SING TO THE DAWN

15. LAST NIGHT AT THE TELEGRAPH CLUB

16. MY HEART UNDERWATER

17. WHEN THE RAINBOW GODDESS WEPT

18. FROM TWINKLE WITH LOVE

19. FORESHADOW

20. GRACELING

21. DAVID TUNG CAN'T HAVE A GIRLFRIEND UNTIL HE GETS INTO AN IV LEAGUE

22. PICTURE US IN THE LIGHT

23. FREEWATER

24. MAIZY CHEN'S LAST CHANCE

25. THAT CHILDREN'S BOOK BY NICK JOAQUIN

Copyright Protection, Smart Contracts, Digital Scarcity, And NFTs. Block...

2021-05-15T13:52:00.001+08:00

Jessica Zafra's The Age of Umbrage

2021-01-20T22:45:00.002+08:00

Jessica Zafra’s The Age of Umbrage is exploring a time when everything is taken as an offense when you didn’t know any better, because, even if you believed you were smart, in reality, you were naïve, but you cared so much that you felt every arrow poisoned and aimed in your direction, even if those arrows existed only in your mind.

Offense is easily taken by the young, and this could be against one’s clique or isolation, status or upbringing, physicality or nerdiness, religion or lack of it. The young are often offended by old people telling them how they know nothing at all. There is that admonition to remain where they are, to not venture into paths they aren’t familiar with because that path could lead to disaster as their elders would attest it would. And who else but the most immediate family members could scare the young people away from pursuing their interests, or inclinations, or creative imaginations?

When the very young exhibit maturity, the very old are threatened. The young have no business knowing-it-all. Only the old have the right to be wise.

But it is not just the old, who offends, but also those who think they will be forever young, who believe that age should always be lived 'at the moment’ no matter how. They go by every trend within the circumference of expectations. They feel untouchable and are determined to show everybody how crossing them could lead to an incognito status. By their judgment is how ‘different’ is defined – to what extent can one be ‘different.’ They are fierce, authoritarian bullies.

A young person is also offended, even if she barely knows how to articulate the offense, by the corruption at home, school, and the community. She will try to cope as much as she can, via the gadgets and paraphernalia of her age, but there is no escaping the consequences of corruption, seeping into the stealthiest of homes, and eventually crushing dreams.

And then, there is that offense which the young do not expect at their age – death.

In Jessica Zafra’s Novel How ‘Offensive’ are the Events and Issues?

Umbrage – a word meaning “to feel offended, insulted or upset by”. How ‘offensive’ events and issues are, seem understated in Jessica Zafra’s novel. Satire dominates sentiment in the tone of this novel while a backdrop of the most unsettling political events of the 90s appends an inner turmoil. Guadalupe takes umbrage at everything the young are naturally confused about. Although she acts impermeable, encased in some uppity-class bubble, she is very much aware of her otherness. Her mom Asuncion had her when she was thirty-two, but Guadalupe’s coming-of-age seems to have begun since she was barely three, when she fluently started asking the most basic of questions: What is your name?

Guadalupe is named after one of the Virgin’s apparitions. The novel situates her being ‘in between.’ Home in Ms. Zafra’s narrative is an abstract location, desired and dreamed of, never owned or claimed. This is an unforgivable offense beyond Guadalupe’s control.

And as sharp as these are in the novel as in life, these upsetting threats to one’s moral and physical well-being are most often denied or ignored. The young have gotten immune to the cold-shoulder treatment of the elders.

Jessica Zafra takes umbrage at the nonchalance accorded to the youth. Spot on, her novel delves into the deep, dark recesses of being young and clueless.

Reading ACH's Anx, an Appreciation

2021-01-05T20:58:00.011+08:00

"ANX is a collection of fifty poems that explores the tensions between stillness and motion, solicitude and disquiet, harmony and discord arising from and/or in response to anxiety vis-a -vis the poetic space." The collection is divided into five parts of "poetic exploration of anxiety as image, where the page becomes an intersection and intermingling of sense, sound, and shape to generate order and meaning." (from the Introduction)

1: In Tales of Trauma and Tears, the lyrical expressions of anxiety and longing are most poignant, leaving us with images of nuanced sadness. The first poem in this chapter “State of Being” seems to declare the magnitude of anxiety that pulsates in each poem. There is a lyrical progression of this state of self that is conscious of its distortion and dreams the impossible. One seeks for a “Reprieve”, longs for peaceful silence, a calmness after the storm, peace following mundane daily battles, but no, there isn’t a chance this will ever happen, since this is what is constant in life, this palpable disquiet, and thus: ‘we keep holding our breaths…’

The last stanza from “One Day I Come Home and Where is Silence” resonates because it’s not a feeling when one is young and untouchable. But at a certain age, such pounding ache is like the fatal threat of a stroke:

So they ask what to do with the silences

that numb when unaccompanied by voices?

Music for killing time? Does solipsism sting?

Does gossiping with one’s conscience prove

too much of a guilty pleasure? How does one

enter this reformed house? Does one cover

one’s ears? Does one sing along? Where’s

that guide for adapting? Or the manual for

singing? How to deal with a case like this—

this life insisting on pushing out the longing?

How true. While just about every minute of longing can’t be denied, a time is set for a declaration that one has perhaps arrived. Passion, mission, profession, the desired business of living converged in a center, and nothing follows. But how this merely pushes a fresh anxiety, professing it to be a negative attitude that can be made subservient to our numbered days.

Then the poet asks in “The Encoder,”

What if time ceased to be? No six o’clock,

Just news. No hands ticking, just your fingers

Typing away. Encoding data feels eternal

When your day finds no pleasure. Time

Or, will there still be time? Other things follow. Regrets. Memories which aren’t simply nostalgic beleaguer and blight what remains in both mind and spirit. Our hope is “Another Life That Afford Us Do-Overs” since nobody can go back. Maybe, this is the eternity promised in the Holy Scriptures, this other life which needs us to cross over. Our anxiety for deliverance place us in cognizance of the fact of our lostness.

And in the last three poems of this chapter “Cake,” “Pater Noster,” and “The Romance of the Dogs” the poet laments the magnitude of such depravities.

2: In The Architecture of Muffled Woe the first poem delays grief through a ritual of acceptable deception: Light them candles…Set them flowers//Let them candles and flowers be,/Let us put on a show to their show./Let us stop the pretense only upon their withering.//

But in “Mourning Song” grief persists in a dream blasting denial into acceptance. “I’m hovering—out of my dreams I’m lingering, /calling out your name at dawn, unable to let go, /your face etched in my recall. But my eyes/now are shutting, waking me up at long last. //

In “All Pains are Asymmetrical” death is something to grapple with, an abnormality that can’t be helped. Same normal for everyone at some point in time, but not everyone will at once be open to receive it. Having lost someone, one will always ask why, or opine the meaning of it all, or pry a legacy out of a permanent departure:

The world appeared to me tilted

like a misplaced apparition

the day my sister passed on.

I had slept absent-mindedly

with my glasses on and I awoke

to things all bent. The shadows,

the stance of lilies, the charisma

of rain. It was a slant so slight, yet

it bragged of permanence, proclaiming

things would never be the same.

So, what is the color of grief? What is its architecture? How does one expunge the pain of loss of a loved one? How does it happen at once? There must be an answer, and in fact, every possible unsatisfactory answer is laid down in verse. Lyrics philosophize, offer antidotes, and theorizes on ”How to Administer Relief” to muffled “Woe”.

3: In Resist the Quiet’s Creeping the poet begins by facing an “Affliction,” the curse of the muse insisting indulgence. Art is never one to simply wait and see. Art needs the cuddle and caress of memories, even the most passing ones:

Take for instance, this memory: during the Feast Day

of San Dionisio many years back, this marching band

ignited the festivities in my hometown with only a lone

trumpeter among a sea of drummers. His quacks

took center stage as he blustered with all his power

the grit in his gut, trumping all percussions poised

to drown out all other sounds. What he had on

was white. What music he had in him was whiter

Art doesn’t offer a mere lovely view, but rather invites one to gaze. In “The Art of Framing” pre-judgment is admittedly careless and based on what one has not fully seen.

In “Language Game,” the poet writes to meet the demands of his own art as he grapples with “power is precisely this: it sings/the language only strangers speak.//

Finally, in “Smoke Fragments” the dynamic structure of the poem encapsulates the rigor of his poetry, his art.

4: In The Mum Knocking on Your Door, woman, mother, mum, wife – the unnerving questions of and about this human beleaguer the poet. Is she a construct? Is she the passive recipient of history’s conditioning? Is she always the martyr and victim? Does she always offer the ultimate sacrifice?

In “Momsense” and “Hand on Hand,” she is the wisest in this poet’s estimate, the ultimate philosopher of life, the perennial questioner of meanings.

5: In Let’s Make Parables of Trees the desire to live life to the fullest is often dulled and frustrated by life itself being difficult to live. In “Daylight” this desire is like grasping a “blazing fire”:

The pursuit gives us nothing to feast on but the tease,

Never the full illumination of day. We labor, stretching

Our fortitude for the flash of awe and beholding.

Our pursuit never wavers however, even as we presume we have acquiesced to monotony or as the poet imagines it in “Settling” when

‘our hands turn restless,

fraught

in their need to wipe the dust

off its claimed residence, ever aiming

for movement, for resolve, always

untamable, never hushed.’

Almost always, we are left with “Antipathy” as we begrudge what must have been or as we belabor pointless, empty wasting of moments. But the poet invites us to gaze and to take note of what we see – ‘notice the clouds…notice resplendence…notice gratitude…notice loss.’

Our ears kept attuned to the “Sounds of Wonder,” we hear the poet sing an affirmation of our state of being, that we are capable of long, stable, duration albeit a lifelong struggle for life itself. In "Let’s Make Parable of Trees," the poet coaxes us:

we ought to make parables that exudes light.

Or vessels through which spirits pass. Breeze,

rainwater, the brown translucency of honey.

Adrian Crisostomo Ho received his Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature from Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Canada and completed his Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at De La Salle University. His essays, poems, fiction and plays have appeared in Rappler, Tomas, Sustaining the Archipelago: An Anthology of Philippine Ecopoetry, Philippine Graphic, Montage Literary Journal and Sunday Times Magazine. ANX is his first book.

Reading "Coders"

2019-03-30T12:36:00.000+08:00

Two hours of reading Coders, this account of the culture and ethos of the engineers of logarithms, suss out the nerdy types I rarely meet (but am very much aware of). My reaction is part envy and part amusement: I'm envious that my artistic temperament (you are free to judge if I'm really an artist) isn't more of the pedantic coder's, thus, being a generalist, I have not had many euphoric 'aha' moments similar to a coder's high when she busts a bug, technology works again, and the user is happy.

To be a coder is to plod through a myriad of frustrations when hacking through smelly code until it is cracked and the glitch is fixed. To be an artist is to care passionately about life, even for only a portion of it. The 'poet' as artist must care by engaging every day's puzzle like a coder, mulling over it and trying out solutions however tendentious, until insight leads to a fresh direction. But while a coder's fix guarantees that a system previously not doing what it should do will now do what it is told to do, a poet's fix is hardly ever a tinker.

The author's metaphors in describing the coder -- as writer, as editor, as poet -- bring me to ground zero of creation itself. You sit down, you labor, you never let up until you've got it right. For the coder to come to the end of the puzzle is to truly find euphoric rest, but for the poet, this only means the end of poetry itself.

N A R I T O -- byTAFTIQUE

2019-03-16T10:23:00.003+08:00

How To End an Essay, and then Probably Publish

What I have been doing all along, beginnings.

I’ve always hoped to become part of the ‘writer milieu’ whatever that means, in this country, mostly because I’m living here and have not been anywhere else. But the thing with writing is that it requires a place to sit down and ruminate. However, all the ruminations I have been doing have always been on the road, as I commute, or as I wait for a cab, or as I line up at MRT then LRT and back. And when I sit, down, mostly to eat – at any fastfood -- the rumination stops because of blaring music and the mind-numbing cacophony of chatter in those places. And this is not a choice, but a circumstance, the layout of my life. Cooking just adds up to a stressful time management – so, Jolibee, Chowking, Mcdonald – and any of their kind – since they’re immediately there – are my catharsis – like, I’m now hungry so I eat – in the most routine, most pedestrian sense of hungry.

When I wake up, it’s not the sleeping in but the hurrying up because I’d like to maximize the time – you know – my class begins, and I’ve requested this, at 11 AM, but I leave the house at 7 AM, so I can read, relax, ruminate, roam – imagining – another life. I’m old, so this is my indulgence.

But that In a sense, I am at a perennial search for a space where I can truly just stop, sit, and write. Maybe, I’m always writing, that is, on the go, where my ruminations begin to assume solutions, or in my dreams, answers, to simple struggles of living, such as when I am at one point sitting beside a child with skin cancer on her way to PGH. I am in the cart for seniors, pwds, and mothers with little children – and I am none of the above – and sometimes, all these vulnerables become more real in their vulnerabilities which are just a breath away. And what can do? I think about reaching out, but all I do is stare or avert my stare. And at one time a lump in my throat rose and I suppressed my tears – the child was so small and yet bore so much suffering. I got something from my bag and gave it to the mother who smiled at me and said “Thank you po pagpalain po kayo ng Diyos.”

Or when I am standing on commute and then some really abrasive creature crushes me and in such pressing brusko-muscular pressure I shriek as a trapped mouse. And then the invectives, with all the Ps, and ‘putchas’, and ‘if you don’t like to be crushed, go take a taxi…. etc.’ exhale all those bad, infectious breaths, and you can’t even cover your mouth because your arms are no more. And nothing of those Freudian mumbo-jumbo can tell me why this is, why this man, why this …this… soul is acting the villain. Our commutes are the same,anyway, all harried creatures, we all are. So why burden the burdened even more? But all I do is grit my teeth and bear it, as so many more oppressed others do, until, an ellipsis of this country’s ills are pointed by seniors as reasons for our common suffering.

Or when at home, I try to think of where to go on a Saturday afternoon to escape the toddler-versus-mother wars that begin at the time of my sister’s feeding her son at breakfast and doesn’t let up until the child is exhausted at play. Outside, I seek the cafes, and once inside, I request the servers to keep the sounds low. Most of the essays I have written for my occasional blogs, and this one, were finalized and edited at the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf (Well, coffee is expensive but train to Lasalle library and back will cost me half so this is the compromise) or on one of those white tables of the fastfood restaurant in Landmark in Trinoma (this one, the price of the coffee in Mr Donut is cheap , plus, it’s just ten steps away from my ‘white-table’). Therefore, I am like a refugee without a chance of crossing over any boarder. At the end of the day, I will have to go back home and sleep – and only sleep – and then the day ends.

I cry sometimes, because of this, because I am always on the move. I’m fifty six and commuting by train – should I stop? I should find another job which will afford me a daily grab taxi. But on the other hand, I’m on the move, alone. I would rather be on the move alone, than static in a place, alone. Maybe, with the ordinariness of my ordinary life, moving is the character which has made it extraordinary.

Which means that I should probably take note of the simple places I’ve been. Which means they probably matter anyhow. Which means I can ruminate about meaning in those spaces. And so I made a pact of peace with this itinerant lifestyle. I still crave for a personal, private, space to write, but it has become less an obsession. I’ve already bought two small houses for this reason, but still, I don’t have this space. So now, I simply tell myself, just write or you will regret it.

In joining this collection of Taftique, I seem to have found another beginning toward this writing track, and this probably, is the best way, at this point, somehow, to move on.

BEGIN AGAIN

2019-03-16T09:33:00.002+08:00

Why is this blog called confidante

Confidante (fem confidante) according to Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary means “a person that one trusts enough to speak to about one’s private affairs or secrets.” In a way, this blog is a revealing of my soul. Yet even with the revelations in poetry, in meditations, in diary entries and in notes gathered here and there so many secrets remain not within reach of any person, even the most “intimate” confidante. My professor in poetry once said that we couldn’t be attached to ourselves in our poems since our words must echo other people’s experiences too. This is why we ought to grasp the most concrete image of our life’s instances in the hope that others may feel in those images a kind of reverberation. A most peculiar thing happens in the search for an image – I often lose the immediate experience and realize that another secret reveals itself and the image formulates its own theme. In the end, I may take up that new theme to echo something already said and in a different way. But there you go; a new secret is revealed, and only to me. So now, I become my own confidante.

Editing is another confidante-thing. An author trusts you with the product of his creative juices and allows you to see through backward and forward, read between the lines, comment, or merely draw a red-line through his thoughts. Once entrusted with a manuscript, I become a confidante.

7 lessons from books made into movie adaptations

2017-05-19T15:44:00.001+08:00

7 lessons from books made into movie adaptations

CINEMALAYA

2016-08-27T13:13:00.000+08:00

While I really wanted to see all the films during the Cinemalaya festival, I was able to buy the only remaining available tickets for "Dagsin", "Kusina," "Hiblang Abo", "Shorts A", "Shorts B", two Asian Films, plus Lav Diaz's "Hele sa Hiwagang Hapis." Quite expensive if you ask me, but this was the only time I could really watch a lot of Cinemalaya films so I endured the pocket drain. However, I wasn't so satisfied, that is, as a simple movie goer.

Dagsin is supposed to be heavy and yet, I felt something was lacking in the gravitas. If not for the ever brilliant Tommy Abuel Dagsin would have suffered more. Judy Ann was exemplary in Kusina, but Kusina itself failed to give me that moviegoer high. I didn't like the Kusina template of stage and film fusion. There is too much going on that deserved great cinematography. I guess, I simply was looking for the Film-ic quality. Kusina's textuality bored me. The kitchen/cooking/food motif occupied too much space in the narrative that its symbolic quality just got lost in the monotony and the repetitions. (I was told that Mercury is Mine handled the same motif more cleverly, so I regret that I didn't see it). And of course, because of the fusion thing, the mis-en-scene is obviously so staged and although I can understand the studio effect, I have long favored exterior and interior spaces interspersing and giving a much needed exposition of characterizations of interior and exterior selves. But maybe that's the point of the film, that there is agonizing interiority that the character in Kusina is unable to exteriorize, and thus, her space doesn't expand and she dies without ever going beyond the boundaries of her safely defined space.

The other characters in Kusina could have been better cast. All of them are stereotypes, with strained albeit contrived dialogue, formula types of formula friends, with their wardrobe amplifying them as formulaic constructs.

In the past, I didn't see Rene Villanueva's Hiblang Abo as play, so I treated the film as play, and did not go look for anything other than the nuance of the text as would be delivered in a play. This is a mistake of course, because film is a visual medium and the nuances that are supposed to be read in the subtexts of a play, the supposed mystery of each personal struggle, ceased as nuanced puzzles and became apparent in the visual montage. I also wondered about the film's casting of one and the same actor for the younger versions of the three old men in the story. I offer myself the answer that there is no symbolic meaning in that casting after all, it was just Indie budgeting constraints which led to that decision. But I hope I'm wrong and just plain stupid in not seeing the reason/meaning behind this choice.

I found the shorts entertaining, but predictable too in the Filipino-indie-shorts tradition (The good ones had a twist of course, like in an O' Henry story). However, I saw great promise in Direk Quesada's film Pektus. For me, Pektus was excellent for a low budget Indie. The pace, the editing, the mis-en-scene and the acting are all well deliberated. But mostly, I like the idea of found chances as opposed to missed opportunities. For me, that was a very ethical point that isn't submerged but also isn't preached. I had an aha! moment in this film, like an epiphany of sorts.

The Asian film from Kazakstan, The Stranger is superb. The cinematography is awesome and the visual footage succeeded immensely in projecting the isolation, the strangeness, the utter difference of one man from the rest of the population. Then as usual, the film from Afghanistan is terribly depressing, but the acting is superb. This film will ever remind me that there is much more that needs to be done for women. A film can only expose. How long will this situation of female subjugation last in other parts of the world such as Afghanistan? What can people do? How can a film make people responsible? The face of that woman in Afghanistan, who is with skill, but whose skill doesn't count; who's only value is in the dowry she gets from marriage; who's recourse against such arranged marriage is begging on the streets for survival -- that face needs a response.

Hele sa Hiwagang Hapis (Lullaby in Sorrowful Mystery) turned out to be easier to watch (eight hours) than Norte Sa Dulo ng Kasaysayan (four hours). The film has a linear narrative that focused on the days of Gregoria De Jesus's search for the body of Andres Bonifacio. The almost mythical telling involving three creatures of the forest, all Tikbalangs, problematizes the still unsolved mystery of Bonifacio's un-recovered body. Considering Gregoria De Jesus's youth at the time of that event in Philippine history, and the circumstances around her capture and her husband's arrest by the Filipino soldiers, the film succeeds in projecting an ancient, almost forgotten, quite anachronistic, and not even a footnote of a question in our national memory. The issue resonates however given that we still have "the disappeared" in our midst, and most of them are rumored heroes as well.

Lav Diaz shoots the entire film in black and white, but the story is not black and white at all. References to the Japanese film classics in the visual narration style is Diaz homage to filmmaking at its core, an exposition of soul and conscience using scarcely edited and prolonged real time photography. (The only downside in watching this film is when somebody, lulled by the scarcely edited footage and getting impatient, started to munch that crispy chips or popcorn and this moviegoer was distracted from certain deep ruminations.)

El Filibusterismo's Isagani and Basilio interpellate Diaz's interior monologue about history. In the end, Basilio, the hero of the novel, lives with all his unanswered questions and lost idealism, while Bonifacio, the hero of the revolution dies in the hands of the men he supposedly led. And the Gregoria De Jesus's of our nation's story? They will simply have to live through the mysteries, endure the superstitions, cast off the demons and tikbalangs of their desperate expectations and lull themselves to dreamless sleep.

Jennylyn's RomComs

2016-05-09T14:15:00.002+08:00

So to relieve my stress, I went to the movies and saw them all - English Only, Walang Forever, and Just the Three of Us. Jennylyn rules the romcom genre at the moment! In the first movie, she is so lovely that I contemplated dressing myself up in a certain translator's stylish country flare for an un-intimidating dating. But not necessarily to meet a Derek (although that won't be a minus), but to get and finalize high paying translation/editing/writing job contracts!

In the second film, Jen was impossibly successful as a romance novelist, getting all her "hugot" premises from real love-life. The romantic course of her life precludes a self-destructive streak but, thank you very much, the self-destruction is worth it because the cause of the ultimately desired self-devastation is Jericho Rosales! I was thinking that precisely the reason for my lack of romantic story arches was my passion for placid wholeness. No wonder, I can't really write anything happy or tragic in a passionate sense. My life has been sooooo nice.

And finally, in Just the Three of Us, Jen's problematic and losyang demeanor, her already devastated self seeking escape, sexes the unromantic, prim and proper John Lloyd Cruz - and bam! They beget a child! Catastrophe in the beginning, but everybody is happy in the end. There's no way this cliched love story will end tragically. But well, Jen's character is one for feminists to grind their teeth into.

I have my own Hollywood RomCom favorites; On top of them all , Nottinghill. The best scene there is the last scene with "When You Say Nothing At All" playing in its loveliness in the background while a pregnant Julia Roberts reclines on Hugh Grant's lap (she's a superstar), as the latter reads a book (he's a book-lover), and both are quiet and comfortable in each other's company.

In Jennylyn's movies however, I can't recall a single scene that leaves an impact. All three movies showcase Jen's comedic flare, but she is the same Jennylyn Mercado, the GMA actress, in all three movies: the same delivery of the dialogues, the same quirky movements, the same laugh when happy, the same cry when sad, the same facial mannerisms. Even her hair style is the same in all three movies, since in all, she looks like she has forgotten to comb her hair, but she looks pretty nonetheless.

Meanwhile, the male characters are mere romantic interests, and to add dimension, they all came from problematic family backgrounds, and they eventually meet Jen's big and happy family (always). There are always those loyal friends of course for both woman and man and the usual complications of friends giving wisdom but philos never wins in an eros charged story.

But I was entertained nevertheless. Would I recommend them? Yes, but just remember that they aren't for the morally upright.

I am still waiting for Jen's definitive romcom. I hope she won't stay on in this stereo-casting.

Tagalog Book of Poems

2015-12-30T10:16:00.006+08:00

Book Review by Jophen Baui

Tagalog book of poems review - reads poetry by Filipino poets, highlighting their celebration of the Filipino language. Here, we take a second look at the "songs" these writers sing when their muses visit them.

MGA TALA AT PANAGINIP

MGA TALA AT PANAGINIP compiles anecdotes, dreams, nostalgia, fantasies, and longings that commuters may have in their minds and hearts while on a long bus or jeepney ride. Some take the train and travel with a crowd of people pushing and shoving their way in for a fast but joyless commute. Each day is the same, commuters stand shoulder to shoulder with other harried souls and hold fast onto the rails from the start of their journey to its end. Each journey follows a linear path, but each moment of travel defies a beginning and doesn't end.

Two hours is all it takes to commute from Dasmarinas, Cavite to the University where Professor Mesandel Arguelles teaches literature and art appreciation. But traffic is always slow during rush hours. Sitting inside the bus he turns to his muses who inspire him to "[pay] attention to everything, even the insignificant details". He records all that he sees inside and outside the jam-packed vehicle into poetry that refuses to downplay the battle out there for every soul who is impatient to reach a destination.

Oktobre 1

"Parang mga langgam na nag-uunahan ang mga tao pasalubong sa pagdating ng bus na biyahe palabas ng lungsod tungo sa kalapit-lalawigan. Wari ay walang takot masagi o maaksidenteng kung paano. Lahat gusto nang makauwi habang papalakas pa lang ang ambon. Bagama't kailangan ko na ring makauwi, hindi ako sumabak sa mga siksikan, tulakan, gitgitan para lang makakuha ng espasyong tatayuan. Gusto kong isiping malaya ako sa ganitong pangangailangan, sa ganitong kalagayan araw-araw." MVA

Daily anecdotes that are snippets of life's energy and resilience break a commuter's monotonous ride; their longings anchor them in hope; fantasies provide them an escape, and nostalgia make their trip tolerable.

Oktobre 8

"Dumating ang tatay ko galing Bicol. May uwi siyang mga abakang tsinelas para sa aming magkakapatid at sa nanay ko. Kulay-kape ang sa aming mga lalaki at iba't ibang kulay naman ang dahon ng sa mga babae, kadalasa'y berde, dilaw, at pula. Pambahay lang ang mga tsinelas, gayunman. Hindi ko magagamit na pamato sa tumbang-preso." MVA

The dreary ride is crammed with nostalgia, giving rest to the poet who is happy to return to his dreams, to memories of unresolved "what-ifs".

Oktobre 12

"May mga talang di-nasulat

"Minsan nang nasulat: isang tala ang sinundan ng tatlong haring naglakbay upang matagpuan ang kanilang pakay. Kataka-takang hindi sila nawala o naligaw.

"Hanggang ngayon, waring nananatiling iisang tala ang sinusundan sa bawat paglalakbay patungo sa anumang hinahanap at kay raming talang hindi nabubuklat." MVA

But all these understate the value of the jotted insights, since every prose poem is a spark, a wisdom that shows us how we may number our days.

Oktobre 15

"Hindi ko pa nakikita ang hangin, ngunit sa sandaling nakakuwadro ang aking mukha sa bukas na bintana ng humahagibis na bus, alam kong hindi kailangang makita upang maniwala: may naghihintay sa aking hantungan." MVA

Mesandel Virtusio Arguelles is a professor of the Humanities and Literature at the De La Salle University. Aside from MGA TALA AT PANAGINIP, he also authored the following books: Mal, Alinsunurang Awit, Antares, Alingaw, Parang, Hindi man lang nakita, Ilahas, Menos Kuwarto.

MGA TALA AT PANAGINIP is published by High Chair.

See www.highchair.com.ph

Aside from Tagalog-book-of-poems-review page, other pages at english-to-tagalog.com recommends novels in Filipino

2015-12-30T10:03:00.000+08:00

Book Review by Jophen Baui

Mga Prodigal may be an allusion to "The Prodigal Son", a story from the Bible that Jesus Christ told his disciples to illustrate a Father's love to his returning lost son. In the story, the son wanted a share of his fortune so he could go his way forth and be free to live as he wanted. For a while, he lived the "good life", but as a consequence of his poor stewardship of his inheritance, he ended up bankrupt. In the end, he decided to go back to his father, who welcomed him back with open arms.

In Ms. Sicat's novel however, the title Mga Prodigal symbolizes the Filipino's desire for freedom from poverty and from oppression. To be a prodigal is to fight the general situation of poverty, by leaving the homeland to search for greener pastures abroad. Overseas Filipino Workers now populate the globe, and as this novel affirms, their stories are as many as the grains of sands in the dessert. In Mga Prodigal the stories told cinematically are generally dim. While reading, one may ask of the characters, "but do they have a choice?" Many of their stories will remain undocumented, so it will be difficult to generalize on whether Filipinos have gained more or lost more from their ventures overseas. In fact the general impression is that there are more positive OFW stories - many are financially able to invest in decent homes, their children attend better schools, their lifestyles are improved. Ms. Sicat however is not interested in positive stories. She probes the truth behind OFWs so called "sacrifices".

Like the stories of millions of Filipinos abroad, the novel is an unfinished account with many beginnings and almost no endings. Every character in this novel has an unfinished sad story to tell. Every chapter is a snippet that contributes to a general depression that will make Filipino readers think more deeply about their choices. Ms. Sicat succeeds in presenting graphic scenes showing the losses and lack and limits that Filipinos have to go through in their collective experience.

READ A NOVEL BY A FILIPINO

"Gustong-gusto niya kapag nanggagaling sa Nasuli ang kanyang Auntie at Uncle. Marami silang dalang prutas at gulay. Kung tag-kaimito, tag-kamunsil, tag-bayabas, tag-sinigwelas, tag-makopa. Doon din nanggagaling ang mga bulaklak na birds of paradise na tumutubo sa likuran ng kanilang bahay at angcome down my love na umaabot sabanggerahan mula sa pagkakakapit nito sa santol sa gilid ng bintana. Naalala rin niya ang mga dahon nglagundi na pinapakuluan ng kanyang Auntie. Ito ang pinapainom sa kanilasa umaga bago sila pumasok saklase." from the novel Lumbay ng Dila by Genevieve Asenjo

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Regardless of their educational background the dominant-all-men characters in this novel are all lumped under one category - the working labor class. Ms. Sicat tuned in to their grievances, their loneliness, their unfulfilled dreams for better lives and homes. Antonio, a former member of the NPA, and now an electrician in Sharjah, Dubai, experiences extreme loneliness from separation from family, and witnesses some sad consequences of living and working far away from home. He works with fellow Filipinos, who each try to make lives back in their hometowns better, but at the cost of their sanity and emotional well-being. By going back and forth in Antonio's past and present, the novel shows how labor as an end in itself gives personal fulfillment, dignity, and freedom. Then in other chapters, the story explores the often constricted and demeaning labor situation experienced by Filipinos in their quest for better life. The men - Antonio, Vito, Ernie, Alvin, Marvin, Treb, and Mitoy sweat in their workshops and assignments while haunted by the ghosts of their unhappy lives. They repair broken air-conditions and fix problematic electrical lines while their families break and disintegrate before their very eyes. Amidst their personal grudges and dissatisfactions they trade Pinoy escapist and sarcastic humor, and bond in all-macho-men drinking sprees. Very rarely do they show their feelings to each other, but the novel is full of their heartaches.

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Mga Prodigal also hits off tangentially at the political system. Antonio is a former NPA rebel. The NPA way embraces poverty and not runs away from it, but from Antonio's point of view, this cause is given a better insight and a more hopeful slant. Ms. Sicat however will probably write another novel that will essay the stories of those who went to this extreme. Who knows what unfinished stories they have to tell? Meanwhile, the Filipino prodigal who is the hero in this story, he who labors and sweats overseas, would rather not confront the system. Some may have actually become richer, yet in many intangible ways, they have become poorer than the ordinary Filipino laborer who chooses to stay.

This novel in Tagalog is recommended reading for every Overseas Filipino Worker and aspiring OFW. Short and insightful at 165 pages, with guide questions for classroom discussions and book clubs.

Gina Apostol's, The Revolution According to Raymundo Mata

2015-12-30T09:49:00.000+08:00

Gina Apostol in her “Acknowledgements; Recuperated Pasts”, The Revolution According to Raymundo Mata, writes:

“This book was planned as a puzzle: traps for the reader, dead-end jokes, textual games, unexplained sleights of tongue; but at the same time, I wished to be true to the past I was plundering. My concept of Raymundo is cut out of imagined cloth; but the details I conjured had to breathe through the web of his actual history. In addition, I needed to conceive Raymundo’s memoirs on my own terms, and so I banned theorists and many secondary sources from my diet."

Magnify Blindness (or Let a Blind Lead the Blind)

A Book Review by Jophen Baui

The Revolution According to Raymundo Mata doesn’t deviate from the usual hypothesis and deductions regarding the events leading to the 1898 revolution. However, the protagonist is both there and not there, always between involvement and simply knowing, calculating but never decisive unless forced into a situation, and passionate about books and reading. “The question”, however, “is whether the chief protagonist's soul is 'too narrow' or 'too broad' in relation to reality” in this case, to the germination of the 1898 revolution.

The Revolution

In June 1896, a crucial time in Philippine history, Andres Bonifacio sent Dr. Pio Valenzuela as an emissary to Dapitan to obtain Rizal’s opinion or agreement to an armed revolution. The Kataas-taasang Kagalang-galangang Katipunan ng mga Anak ng Bayan or KKK led by Bonifacio, the Supremo, had, by then, recruited men and women from both the rich and poor classes of people and was aiming for no less than the country’s freedom from Spain. According to records of Philippine history Jose Rizal did not endorse the revolution, and is believed to have had remarked that based on insufficient arms and lack of logistics alone, the time wasn't ripe for a people's revolution.

In Apostol's novel, Raymundo Mata is with Dr. Pio Valenzuela during this errand to Dapitan. Raymundo Mata is Dr. Pio Valenzuela’s decoy who will help him gain audience with Rizal. In order to distract the Spanish wards, their script is that Dr. Pio Valenzuela will consult with Dr. Rizal about Raymundo Mata’s night blindness so that the doctor's errand would come off as a medical rather than a political mission.

At the time, Raymundo Mata works in a printing press, reads a lot, a college graduate who used to dream about becoming a writer, but now finds it tragic that in spite of his diploma, he has ended up as a regular blue-collar worker who is unpopular among his colleagues in the press. Bullied when he was a student, he is simple and a coward due to others making him believe as such. Nevertheless, he has become a member of the secret society KKK. He admiresAndres Bonifacio, who, he has long discovered, loves to read, too, and he envies Emilio Aguinaldo – Miong, his childhood friend in Kawit – because Miong is a Mayor and commands authority wherever he goes, in spite of the fact that he doesn’t read that much at all.

Mata, witnesses and notes the details of Rizal’s Dapitan: a lush environment planted with fruit trees where Rizal has installed a water system; green forest surroundings where he roams around collecting butterflies to send to his friend in Germany; a wide clearing where he has built a clinic and conducts daily medical consultations –treating all sorts of illnesses that comes to him from all the surrounding areas; and with a school where he teaches fencing and other practical arts to young boys .

While noting the hero's busyness in detail, Raymundo Mata’s main question is implied: “In the thick of his activities, how is the man, Rizal, able to still find time to write?” Mata’s pre-occupation is with the writer – the author of Noli Me Tangere, a book he has read, and El Filibusterismo, which he hopes to read. In fact he steals a fictional third book still in writing by the time he leaves Dapitan with Dr. Pio Valenzuela, because he is sure that like the Noli, this next book will also be a good read. Raymundo Mata craves for Rizal’s words like a historian craving for clincher details in minor events that inform on the major events.

Face to face with Rizal, Raymundo desires to discover the writer. But inDapitan, Rizal, the author, is not living up to his reputation as an author in the romantic sense, while Mata, the participant in history is not being a historian. In Dapitan everything is a clock-ish routine of practical, urgent matters and Mata’s desire for an autograph is always checked by his inferiority over what Rizal would think of him -- he, a simple working man in a printing press, brought to Dapitan not by his choice but by the bad condition of his eyes, which even Mayor Miong, his cousin-kababayan in Kawit knows to be without treatment. In the end, he gets Rizal’s autograph when Rizal signs the prescription pad with the medicines for his ailment.

What’s it All About

Apostol’s novel veers away from an inquiry on that historical mark that will lead to the 1898 Philippine revolution. As she stays true to the facts of the past, Apostol does not alter nor validate what is already assumed in historical records. Instead hers is an exposition of the reader Mata's attitude toward the writer Rizal. Mata sees irony in Rizal the novelist and Rizal the MacGyver of Dapitan. While he is in awe of the novelist, he does not ask any question nor comments nor reacts on any of the themes of the Noli.

Mata is not at all curious about history happening before him. He is more curious about the reason for Josephine’s tears (crying over her stillborn child). He is aware that a revolution is brewing, yet he doesn’t go deep into any debate or discussion about it, before, during, or after the revolution. Instead, like Forrest Gump, he just always finds himself at the right place or he is forced into it. However, unlike Forrest Gump, he doesn’t make the most of it, and misses the point of it all.

The Revolution According to Raymundo Mata problematizes the engagement of “minor” voices in history and parodies their chatter.

If Raymundo Mata were not a fictional character, why would one immortalize his memoirs into a book? Who would take a second look on his vulgarities, his sexual fantasies with the major women around that time of the revolution (Leonor, Oryang, K, and Segunda), his frustrations, and his notes on the Katipuneros, who, in the novel, were his batch mates in college?

Estrella Espejo, the editor, sometimes hails him as a hero as long as she can relate with an experience. By virtue of her age and wisdom, if she can recall a commonality in the experiences jotted, she would use it as a gauge for authenticity. Diwata Drake, the reader, reads some psychological meanings into Mata's dithering, procrastination, non-commitment. Mimi Magsalin, the translator, labors over Mata's words and finds them linguistically challenging. She has translated literally and is the first intervention between the memoirist (Mata) and an absent first reader. TrinaTrono, the publisher, finds the memoir novel, and so it has got to be sold as such, something new, something organic, or something ground breaking, which could win the publishing house a book award.

Within the novel's fictional space, nobody can categorically claim that he or she is the one closest to the truth of the Revolution. Four unreliable voices poke at a historically known fact, peeking at history's most ignored actors in the revolution, the Katipunero recruits. Then, Diwata Drake, Mimi Magsalin, Tina Trono, and Estrella Espejo are pittied against each other -- in small italic fonts on footnote trails, to muddle Mata's version of the 1898 revolution. It is amusing to listen to their voices debate over trivial matters. The fictional footnotes reveal that their personal agenda are also texts to be scrutinized. In fact, the novel basks in the luxury of setting out everything and everyone under scrutiny -- the katipuneros and their women, Jose Rizal and Josephine Bracken, Dr. Pio Valenzuela, and Emilio Aguinaldo, and events in Philippine history which have not yet found closures as to their validity. Only Raymundo Mata is not exempted from this gaze. But Gina Apostol has set him up under a magnifying lens shrinking on one side and enlarging on another any authoritative stamp on his memoir entries.

Readings:

A Theory of the Novel

Apostol Gina. The Revolution According to Raymundo Mata. Anvil Publishing. 2009

Martinez-Sicat, Maria Teresa. Imagining the Nation in Four Philippine Novels. University of the Philippines Press. 1994

Teozin, Lucio F. “Rationalism and Rebellion in the Heroic Confession”. Quest for Truth, A Study of Six Filipino Novels in English. New Day Publisher. 1990

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CINEMALAYA

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Tagalog Book of Poems

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Gina Apostol's, The Revolution According to Raymundo Mata

**In The Hours, we follow:**

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