Manny's Journal

TAMALES CON AMOR

2020-11-02T07:01:00.009-07:00

TAMALES CON AMOR

It was the tamales that I remembered most of all. The spicy chili pork stuffed into the steamed masa wrapped in corn husk crept back into my memory with the insistence of a classic song from Mexico: “Me gusta tu, y nada mas que tu.”

Rosa Alarcon had prepared it and a host of other Mexican dishes that were originally intended to be mere snacks but eventually acquired the heft of an early evening’s supper.

Aside from the tamales, there were the chili rellenos, whole green peppers from Hatch that were lovingly dipped in a tempura batter. Then there was the menudo, in and of itself a meal, quite different from the Philippine menudo because it was beef tripe and hominy grits swimming in a tomato- sauce infused sea of “caldo”, a soup. A slice of lime brought a tangy finish to this heavenly concoction, a true child of Mexico. And then, for dessert, there were the tamales of a different sort made of corn masa which harbored the richness of almonds and honey, like the Greek baklava, but with corn dough.

I remember that evening that we had wine and coffee. That afternoon snack rolled on into the evening and became supper.

I did not come to Rosa Alarcon’s house to be fed though. I came at the invitation, a request really from the kindest and most unassuming couple who ever served the parish church of St. Xavier in El Paso, Texas. I am referring to Pepe and Juana, both retired teachers, but still serving the church, he as a sacristan, she as a lector.

“Manny,” said Pepe, Juana smiling sweetly beside him,” we have a request to make of you.”

“Oh? What is it, Pepe?”

"We have a friend, Rosa,” he said, “She lost her husband three months ago. She lives all alone by herself in a house in the hills above El Paso. May we ask you to spare some time to play the piano for her? She's so sad."It’s Christmastime. We’d like to cheer her up.”

I wasted no time in saying “yes”. Playing the piano had always given me joy; to share that with another human being, especially one who was in bereavement of a lost partner, was a no-brainer. I needed to do it.

When Rosa opened the door to her house, I saw a slight woman, about 60 years old, with a smile on her face and no trace of sadness that I thought I could detect outwardly.

“Welcome, welcome,” she cheerfully piped up. Whatever sadness there was that lay in her at the loss of a lifelong partner I could perhaps sense in the deliberation that she greeted and kiss us on the cheeks. There was a softness that seemed easy yet thoughtful, like the touch of kitten’s whisker or the slight tremor of a butterfly’s wing.

“Thank you for coming, Manny,” Rosa addressed me. “I hear you play the piano. My Yamaha has been feeling lonely. I’m sure you can do something about her.”

Juana gave me a smile, a sad twinkle in her eye.

“Rosa hasn’t played her piano for quite some time,” she remarked.

“It makes me sad, let’s just put it that way,” said Rosa. “I had a ready audience, however badly I played.”

She did not follow that up with the obvious corollary: her audience had gone.

“And Eileen and Susan, how are they?” asked Pepe.

“They come to visit me sometimes with the kids,” Rosa replied. “It’s been hard for them too, but they have their own families now. But enough about them,” she cut to the quick. “I prepared merienda.”

And that was when she brought us to the table laid out with the repast she must have prepared for the better part of the day.

“You prepared all this?” exclaimed Juana. Pepe shook his head slightly, as if in disbelief. I looked on in gustatory anticipation. Mexican culture looked back at me in a medley of tamales, rellenos and menudos.

“You didn’t have to!”Juana continued with her obvious surprise.

“Oh but I wanted to!” said Rosa. “Takes my mind off things. I want Manny to taste my tamales.”

“That I shall,” I replied. “Thank you, Rosa. I’m sure they’re divine.”

We ate and had a convivial conversation. And before you could say “Cielito Lindo”, it was time for me to play the piano.

The piano in question was a black Yamaha upright. It was standard issue Yamaha, with a resonant soundboard and a full, excellent tone. The keys needed a little tuning, but the off-ness didn’t verge on the dissonant, so I had no problem with it. As I opened the lid and wiped the keys with the red felt cover, I noticed the small silver-framed pictures of Rosa and her late husband (I presumed), a picture of two girls dressed in white holding hands together in front of a communion pew, and two more pictures of what I presumed again was the grown-up version of one of those girls holding a baby in a christening gown while the man beside her who I presumed was her husband was holding perhaps two-year old girl.

“That’s Joe, my husband,” Rosa spoke to me. She must have seen me glance with curiosity at the framed photographs. “Those are my two girls. Susan is the one with the husband and two children. Eileen is in New York.”

I did not press her for any more information regarding her family. I was ready to play.

When I was seated at the piano, the three of them seated at some remove on the comfortable sofa, I turned to Rosa and asked: “Is there any song you would want to hear, Rosa?”

She gave me a look that seemed on the verge of tears: “Can you play Noche de Ronda? That was Joe’s favorite. It was our theme song.”

I knew the song quite well. Being Latinos in sentiment and inclination if not in appearance, Filipinos of a certain age in my country knew and sang this song. The song was written by the same composer who composed “Granada” Agustin Lara. It starts off like this:

Noche de Ronda
Que triste pasas
Que triste cruzas

Por mi balcón

Roughly translated it means:

Night of the guard’s watch,

How sadly you pass

How sadly you cross

By my balcony

The main verse starts with the “moon” and ends with “tears”, so you would be correct in thinking it a sad, bittersweet song in ¾ time written by a Mexican composer, whose full Spanish appellation, if you must know, was Ángel Agustín María Carlos Fausto Mariano Alfonso del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús Lara y Aguirre del Pino.

I played the song. When I finished playing the last chord, I glanced at Rosa and saw that she was weeping. Pepe and Juana drew close to her, stroking her hand and shoulders.

Pepe gave me a quick look, and said: “I have a request, Manny. Can you play “The Entertainer’?

I was happy to play the sprightly jazz-rag tune. I did not launch into it with mindless gusto, but with a tentative touch, starting slowly, and then gathering a little more speed where it needed to go. By the time I had played the last descending riff of the joyful music, I saw that Rosa had regained her composure, though I still caught the glisten in her eye.

Songs mean many things to different people. What would seem sentimental claptrap to some is a fount of memories to others. And so it was with Rosa. Who knows how many mariachis they had requested to play this song on special occasions, or how far back the origin of their romantic attachment to it went back? The years flew by quickly. One of them is gone, and she would follow him too, unless, in the mysterious byways of human nature, she finds another man to cling to. But at sixty, that would probably take some diligent motivation, if she had a mind to do it.

I played more songs that night but then, inevitably the visitors had to leave.

“Will you have some café con leche before you go, Manny, Pepe, Juana?” asked Rosa hopefully, even pleadingly. Pepe and Juana demurred, but I said:” Sure, I will have that and some of the tamales de mandorlas.”

Later, when we went outside of Rosa’s home, up in the hills above El Paso, we could see the plains below lit with many lights. In the desert air, there was no smog or humidity to obscure their brilliance. Somewhere in the darkness, there was a dividing line, a wall roughly following the course of the Rio Grande that here is a mere ditch, a wall separating El Paso, USA from Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. But these cities of the plain, with its many lights, and a particularly brilliant configuration of lights shaped like a giant star on the south side of the Franklin Mountains would seem to be merely one entity enveloped in the same darkness and lights. A Noche de Ronda, in a manner of speaking.

“How beautiful this evening is,” remarked Juana.

“I agree,” said Pepe. “Someone had the Star lit tonight.”

“Thank you Manny for a lovely evening,” Rosa said to me as she gave me a soft kiss on the cheek. “I hope we can have another evening like this someday.”

“I hope so too,” I replied sincerely.

There is always another time, is it? I thought. And then again…

Many years later, having been away from El Paso for a while, and happening to pass that way again, I once again saw Pepe and Juana.

“It’s October! We’re going to the Albuquerque International Balloon Festival”, Juana beamed.

“We always go every year,” added Pepe. “Are you going?”

“Maybe,” I said. Actually I had made my own plans to go, but I would be including a side trip to Santa Fe and Taos, New Mexico. I had rented my own car and booked my own hotels. Pepe and Juana would insist that I go with them, but I didn’t want to inconvenience them with my company. It was their trip together, as man and wife still in love with each other, still serving in church, despite their advancing age, and now renting an apartment. They had sold their longtime home where they had raised their kids till they were of age to have families of their own..

“It was too large for the two of us,” confided Juana. I agreed. I had been to their house.

“And Rosa, how is she?” I asked.

“She sold her house too and is now renting, ” replied Pepe. “She felt too lonely in that lovely house. Her kids don’t want to live there anymore.”

“And the piano?” I asked.

“She donated it to Goodwill,” said Juana. “She tried to play again, after your visit, but it was too hard for her. Too many memories, too many ghosts, she said.”

I never saw Rosa again.

TOTAL ECLIPSE OF THE MOON

2020-09-28T03:10:00.001-06:00

8:00 AM.

That’s what the clock face read when I looked at it with sleep-drowned eyes.

I had awakened with a start in the pitch-black darkness of my cabin, not because of a noise, but because there was none. The engines had stopped. The ship was dead in the water.

I waited for an announcement on the ship’s PA. Nothing.

I sat at the edge of the bed trying to clear my head. The air-conditioner was still on. The lights still worked. Except for the fact that the ship had stopped moving, everything seemed normal. Still, I felt a rising sense of dread, a premonition that something was wrong. I stood up, opened the door and peeked outside. Two or three other heads poked out of their respective doors.

“What’s going on?” I asked one of the heads. “I don’t know,” the head nearest me replied.

“I heard something but it was on the speakers on the corridor. Couldn’t make it out,” said another head further down the corridor.

Just then the ship’s alarm went on, but it wasn’t the usual seven short and one long blast. It was three short and one long. A voice materialized from the overhead speakers and said: “ Code Oscar, Code Oscar. Man overboard. Man overboard. This is not a drill. Repeat, this is not a drill.”

I went back to my room and lay on bed.

Somebody had fallen overboard. Essentially this did not concern me, but all the same, I felt uneasy. Who fell, crew or passenger? Why and how?

Most of us on the M/V Glorianis had looked forward to this day for a reason. Tonight, a rare celestial phenomenon was about to occur. Predicted by astronomers years ago, tonight the western hemisphere would witness a total eclipse of the moon. Everybody would be out on deck to watch the full moon being obliterated by the shadow of the earth as it passed in front of the sun. It was a sight nobody wanted to miss. Anticipation hung heavily in the air in the days leading to this night. Now, with this accident, anticipation had given way to a sense of horror. Accident or not, no one wants to hear about anyone falling off any ship.

I bathed and dressed, ears cocked out for more announcements. Through the hull of the ship I could hear the sounds of motorboats starting and shuttling to and from points beyond and near the vessel. I decided to go up to the open deck to see what was going on. By this time, an hour had passed since the announcement. In that time, the ship had actually turned back to retrace it’s route. Tender boats were launched and a search had been made. Another hour passed, and then another. Finally the boats were called back in.

The captain’s voice came on the PA. It sounded sad and heavy.

“To all ship’s passengers and crew. As you know, at roughly 800 hours this morning, the bridge received notice that an individual had jumped off from the ship. We immediately stopped and turned the ship around and initiated a search and rescue for this individual. However, we failed to find any trace of him. So it is with great reluctance that I have decided to call off the search. We shall be continuing on to our next port of La Guaira, in Venezuela. For your information, the crewmember’s name was Salvatore. He was a cadet, 21 years of age from Genoa, in Italy. May God rest his soul.”

I stared at the Caribbean sea, so blue and so inviting in this halfway mark between Venezuela and Hispaniola. Brilliant sunlight played and sparkled on the water’s surface. Warm ocean breezes caressed the skin. The waves wore small frothy white caps that seemed to beckon and say: “Come on in, the water’s fine.”

All throughout the afternoon till sundown, the young cadet’s fate was on everybody’s lips.

“So sad, so sad.”

“And where was he from, again?”

“From Genoa”.

“Is that in Switzerland”.

“No, Italy. The one in Switzerland is Geneva.”

“Ah. Why do you think he jumped?”

“I don’t know.”

“ I heard somebody say that he was being escorted to the clinic. He escaped, took off his shoes and socks, piled them neatly on the floor, and dove from the front of the ship.”

“Why was he being escorted to the clinic?”

“They said he had been acting and talking strangely since he left Genoa. They said he was hearing voices.”

“Maybe he was just being homesick.” “Suicide sounds extreme for me.”

“So sad.”

The whispered consolations and expressions of horror and regret faded into the gathering dusk.

The moon, large and yellow, rose up from the eastern edge of the sea. People gazed at it with expectant faces.

For my part, I dined at the officer’s mess on mushroom soup, steamed rice, beef bourgouignon, and wrapped it all up with a New York cheesecake and coffee. Nobody spoke about the cadet. Afterwards I went up to the pool deck. The hour when the moon would fade into black was at hand. All around me passengers and crew angled to get a good view of the moon. Many reclined on deck chairs, looking up at the night sky. There was no need to wear eye protection because there were no ultra-violet rays or solar flares to damage the retina.

At 9:00 PM, a dark shadow started to pass over the moon. A collective “Aaah” arose from the gathered crowd. After 20 minutes, the moon completely vanished from sight.. An eerie, penumbral darkness suddenly engulfed the ship and the ocean around it.

The people looked up at the dark spot in the sky where the moon used to be. They were silent, rapt in the magic of this disappearing act. Somewhere in China, or wherever they still believe that an eclipse is the result of a giant dragon swallowing up the moon or the sun, bands of rural folks must be out banging pots and pans and setting off firecrackers to force it to cough it out and restore the natural order of the universe.

As I continued looking up, waiting for the moon to re-appear, everything else that happened during that day became a distant, fading memory.

A Journey to Marabut

2018-11-22T00:46:00.000-07:00

Ever since I became aware of it, back in my seminary days in Palo, Leyte, Samar island had always been an entity known to me only from other students who came from there. They were just as ordinary as they come, although the way they spoke Waray-waray varied a bit from the Leytenos . Where the Leyteno would say: "Ano man iton?" (What is that?), the Samareno would say: "Ano ma' it'?") In time, because Samar was a hotbed of Maoist rebels since Marcos times and still, to a lesser extent, today, I never went to Samar, except once, when we made a class visit to the town of Basey. At that time in the middle 60's, the only way you could get to Basey was via pumpboat. When the San Juanico Bridge was built by Marcos, it was possible to get to Basey via motor vehicle in less than an hour.

The Drowned Village of Lake Phoksumdo

2017-06-13T10:20:00.002-06:00

A Himalayan Legend Retold

by Manny Panta

In the Dolpo region of Nepal, where the bharal and the wolves coexist in uneasy harmony, there is a lake of such depth and deep blue turquoise hue as to be beyond belief. No manner of creature lives in this lake, so the lake is extremely pure. The name of the lake is Phoksumdo Tal. Geologists and men of science will tell you that this lake was originally a valley that had been inundated by the rising waters of a river that in turn had been dammed by a landslide. An earthquake caused this landslide, the scientists say. But to the local Buddhist people, this was not so. In the depths of this lake, they say, lies a village, submerged by the wrath of a demoness.

In the ancient days, Guru Rimpoche, one of the most eminent disciples of the Lord Buddha himself, resolved to convert the people of the Tibetan highlands to the Way of the Enlightenment. In those days the people of Nepal adhered to the old shamanistic ways of the B’on. The shamans were demons and demonesses who resented guru Rimpoche’s efforts and made life difficult for him. But guru Rimpoche, aided by the grace and power of the Supreme Buddha, the Lotus-born, prevailed, and he sent the demons and demonesses fleeing from Dolpo. A demoness escaping from the guru passed through a village. This village was nestled beside a river at the bottom of a deep valley. Tired and exhausted, she sought shelter in the chief’s hut. The chief, recognizing her to be a demoness, called a meeting of his fellow villagers. He did not feel it was up to him to be hospitable to such a being.

When the villagers had assembled, the chief announced:

“My fellow villagers! This demoness is seeking passage through our village and requests shelter for the night. Furthermore, she also asks us that we not reveal her passage to guru Rimpoche, the One True disciple of the Buddha, the Lotus-born. What say you?”

The crowd murmured and argued among themselves.

A scruffy man with his front teeth missing declared: “The time of the demons and demonesses of the old religion is over. I say, cast her out!”

An older man, still adhering to the ways of the B’on, retorted: “No. We are a hospitable people, even to demonesses. I say, let her stay and rest.”

The demoness, who was in actuality a shaman, one of the priestesses of the old religion, stood up and pleaded:

“I will leave at early light tomorrow,” she said. “In exchange for your hospitality and your silence, I will leave you a gift.”

She took off her necklace. Dangling from the necklace was a most brilliant turquoise stone. She held it up so the people could see how beautiful and costly it was. She then placed it over the chief’s head.

“A token, a gift for all of you good people of this village.”

The villagers gawked at the necklace. The turquoise hung against the breast of the chief. The chief, seduced by the beauty of the turquoise, was beaming with pride. To the villagers’ eyes the necklace and the stone must have cost a fortune.

“I say, let her rest with us tonight,” the chief declared. “Though I may wear this necklace, this jewel belongs to all of you!”

“Once again I beg you: let there be no word of my passage,” cautioned the demoness.

The villagers murmured their agreement.

The demoness rested that night in the hut of the chief, and before dawn had broken she fled up the pass on her way to Tibet. Shortly thereafter, guru Rimpoche arrived and immediately realized that something was amiss. He went to the village chief and asked:

“Has a demoness passed through here in the night? “

“No,” lied the chief. “No one has passed through our village.”

The guru stared at the necklace worn by the chief, for the chief had not taken it off in his pride and vanity.

“Where did you get that necklace?” he asked.

“From nobody,” said the chief. “It has been with our family for generations.”

Guru Rimpoche stared at him.

“You lie,” he said. “Call the villagers to an assembly. I have something important to tell them.”

The village chief called the villagers to a gathering outside his hut.

“Good people of this village,” Guru Rimpoche said. “I come bearing the truth about the Way of the Enlightenment of the Lord Buddha. He showed us the way to peace and happiness and must not refuse Him. The old ways are the ways of the demons and demonesses. You must not give them shelter, both in your homes and in your hearts. Their time on earth is over. So tell me, did a demoness pass by here last night?”

“No!” cried the villagers as one. “No demoness passed by here!”

“Then,” asked the guru, “what is this necklace that your chief is wearing? I have seen a demoness wear the same necklace before. Do you deny that it belonged to her?”

“Yes, we do!” insisted the villagers.

“Then by the powers of the Buddha, the Enlightened and Lotus-born,” declared guru Rimpoche, “behold your turquoise necklace. It is nothing but dung, for you have been tricked!”

The chief looked down at the necklace. Sure enough, the stone that had looked so blue and precious was now nothing but a piece of dried-up turd. He angrily took off the necklace and threw it down to the ground in disgust.

“We have been tricked!” he cried.

The guru raised his staff in triumph.

One of the villagers picked up the necklace, raising it up for all to see. Before the eyes of the villagers, the blackened material that used to be a precious turquoise crumbled into dust.

“We have been tricked!” cried the villagers.

“Yes,” admitted the chief. “A demoness passed by here last night. She fled before dawn and went up the pass to the north. She said she was on her way to Tibet!”

“Then I shall pursue her,” said the guru Rimpoche. “I must not allow her to continue propagating the ways of the old. Farewell my friends, and remember, the Way of the Buddha is the Way to Enlightenment. You must reject the ways of the old, for this is the only Way that leads to True Happiness.”

Guru Rimpoche left in pursuit of the demoness. He caught up with her near Mustang and imprisoned her in one of the ancient caves that dotted the cliffs there. The demoness, embittered by the betrayal of the villagers of that deep valley in the Dolpo, uttered a curse: “May your valley tremble and fall down on you, miserable and treacherous people of the village, and may the waters of your river rise till nothing is left to show that you existed, save for the color of the turquoise that I gave to you.”

As soon as she uttered these words, a fearsome earthquake caused the cliffs surrounding the village to collapse. At one end of the pass through which the river drained, great boulders rained down, blocking the passage of the waters. The waters of the river, unable to drain away, rose to the very top of the cliffs, submerging the village and drowning its inhabitants.

To this day, if you go to the Dolpo region in Nepal, you will still see this lake created by the curse of the demoness. They call it Phoksumdo Tal. Everyone who has seen it remarks on its brilliant turquoise color. No living thing exists in it. By local edict and custom, it is forbidden to swim in its waters.

_______________________

ZORAYDAH'S TALE OR:THE TREE OF DIAMONDS

2016-08-14T10:22:00.004-06:00

ZORAYDAH'S TALE OR:

THE TREE OF DIAMONDS

by Manny Panta

In the great bazaar of Chandni Chowk in Old Delhi, during the reign of Shah Jahan, the same who built that shrine to immortal love, Taj Mahal, there dwelt a seller of gold, silver, diamonds and other precious stones. He was prosperous, his business was thriving, and, spoiled by his success, he had become quite greedy and cynical. He bought his jewels and precious metals directly from mines and impoverished widows for a pittance and sold them for huge profits to the public. He built for himself a sumptuous haveli near the Red Fort. Its walls and columns of its courtyard were adorned by colorful tiles and paintings of scenes from the Mahabharata. There was continuous feasting at his house. When the Shah paraded in his richly caparisoned horses and elephants through Chandni Chowk, he and his family stood in front of their shop dressed in their finest clothes and jewelry to pay homage to the ruler. Life for the dealer was good.

One day, a man in ragged clothes came into his shop. The seller looked at him crossly, thinking he was a beggar and shooed him away.

“Please sir,” said the man in the ragged clothes. “I have something to show you.”

Overcoming his disgust, the dealer relented.

“What do you have to show me?” he asked brusquely.

“This,” said the man. He took out a dirty piece of cloth and undid the knot that secured it. The dealer’s eyes nearly flew out of their sockets when he saw what the man showed him. Staring back at him was one of the largest raw diamonds he had seen in his life. True, it looked like dried milk sap the size of a pear, but to his jeweler’s eye he could see that it had the attributes of a diamond.

His hand trembling with excitement, he snatched the stone, examined it with his jeweler’s loupe and sighed. It was real. He estimated that it easily weighed one hundred carats polished. If he had it cut into several smaller diamonds, his profits would be even more massive. As far as he could tell, the diamond had no inclusions. If it turned out to be flawless, it would be worth a rajah’s ransom.

“Well?” he asked. “I can see that you want to sell this to me. How much do you want for it?”

“Ah, sir,” said the man, “I do not quite know.”

“It is diamond, that I must tell you,” the dealer said. “However, it is low-grade. I will give you ten thousand rupees for it.”

“Sir,” said the man, “I am sure it is worth more than that.”

“All right then,” replied the dealer, “twenty thousand and not a rupee more.”

The man thought for a while.

“You need the money, my friend,” encouraged the dealer, trying to distract the man from thinking too much. “You cannot eat diamonds for lunch.”

“I accept your offer sir because I must leave tonight,” said the man. The dealer gave him twenty thousand rupees, and the man left.

The dealer had his most skilled craftsman polish the diamond. He sold it for one million rupees to the Shah in Agra. The Shah, dazzled by the size and brilliance of the diamond, caused it to be placed as a centerpiece in his processional turban where it provoked great admiration and envy among all those who saw it.

Wealthier than ever, the dealer wondered whether he was going to see the man who sold him the diamond ever again. He needed not have wondered. One year to the day of the sale of the diamond, the same man went into the shop of the dealer. This time he was dressed more smartly.

“Do you recognize me?” the man asked the dealer.

“Yes, of course,” replied the dealer. “Do you have anything for me?”

“Yes, I do,” said the man. This time he produced a plain silk purse from which he produced the same kind diamond that he showed a year before. The dealer was even more mesmerized by this stone. If it turned out to be as flawless as the previous one that he sold to the Shah, it would make him even richer than he was now.

“How much do you want for this?” asked the dealer, practically salivating at the mouth.

“One million rupees,” said the man. The dealer looked up in surprise at him.

“But that is outrageous!” he protested.

“If you do not want it at this price, sir,” said the man, who did not look as abject as he did before, “then I shall look for another buyer here in Chandni Chowk.”

“Wait! Wait!” said the dealer. “Five hundred thousand rupees. That’s my final offer.”

The man looked at him and demanded: “Eight Hundred Thousand and that is my final price.”

The dealer hurriedly calculated that he could easily sell the diamond to a maharajah or even to the Shah himself for double the amount.

“Agreed!” he said, and paid out the rupees, albeit reluctantly.

Once again the man disappeared. Once again he would appear every year, bearing the same kind of diamond, striking a bargain with him that grew even more painful, but which proved to be extremely lucrative. His flawless diamonds now reached the noble families not only of India but of Europe as well.

On the fifth year that the man paid him a visit, the dealer could no longer contain his curiosity.

“Where did you get this diamond, sir?” he asked. “You must tell me its provenance.”

“Ah, I cannot tell that to you, my friend,” said the man, no longer addressing him with the honorific sahib.

“If you do not tell me now,” said the dealer, “I shall have you arrested by the Shah’s men. You won’t be able to refuse the Shah as you now do me.”

“And what will you say to the Shah?” the man asked.

“I will say that you are a thief,” said the dealer.

The man considered this, sighed and said: “Yes. I might as well tell you. This diamond and the other ones before it do not come from a mine. They are the fruit of a tree. The tree grows from solid rock. Its roots go deep into cracks in the rock and into the ground. Once a year, it blooms and yields a single fruit. This diamond is that fruit. Believe or don’t believe me but it is the truth, by Allah.”

“That is impossible,” the dealer exclaimed, incredulous at this assertion. “Diamonds come from deep beneath the earth!”

“Yet, in this case, it does not,” said the man.

“I must see this tree for myself!” said the dealer.

“Then you must wait a year before it bears fruit again,” said the man.

“I want to see it now, even if it hasn’t borne fruit yet,” demanded the dealer.

The man sighed.

“Then prepare yourself for a long journey,” he warned him.

The dealer prepared a caravan, and at the direction of the seller of the diamond, traced a route inland from Delhi to Udisha, past the tiger-infested swampland of West Bengal and into a land where even the pebbles of the streams where rubies. But they pressed on and after many a hardship, they arrived at a valley with a pleasant river running through it. In this valley rose a rock of great height. Atop this rock, a solitary tree stood like a sentinel. It was stout at the base and many-limbed at the crown. The tree was leafless.

“Is that the tree?” the dealer cried, trembling with excitement.

“That is it,” replied the man. “We must climb up to the summit of the rock to be near it.”

Grown fat from too much indulgence in food and drink, the dealer could not carry his weight up the rock. He called his servants to hack a staircase from the rock and caused himself to be hauled up on a palanquin.

In time, he finally stood at the base of the giant tree.

“You are in luck,” said the man who led him there. “It has been a year since the tree had borne fruit. I can see that it has produced a single flower. If you wait just a little bit longer, that flower will become a diamond.”

After a week this came to pass. Up on a branch high up the tree, a milky white substance materialized from where the flower used to be. It was a raw diamond.

The man climbed up the tree and plucked the fruit from the branch. He went down and offered the raw gem to the dealer.

“Behold!” cried the man. “The Fruit of the Tree of Diamonds!"

“How is this possible?” cried the dealer, as he held the rock in his hand.

“The roots of the tree probe into every nook and cranny of this rock and, by my reckoning, finds the diamonds from inside the rock,” offered the man.

“If what you say is true,” said the dealer, “then the tree itself does not produce the diamonds. The diamonds come from within the rock!”

The man looked doubtfully at him and said, “Perhaps.”

“Why wait for the tree to render a single fruit once a year?” asked the dealer. “Why not dig for the diamonds now?”

Despite the remonstrations of the man, the dealer had his men cut down the tree and the rock blasted until nothing remained of it but a pile of rubble. He was convinced that the rock extended into the ground and a fortune of diamonds lay within its seams. He returned to Delhi and recruited more men to excavate the place where the tree used to grow. In time the whole scenic valley became a wasteland. In time, as he poured money over his venture, he lost his shop, his customers and his haveli, so convinced was he that he had found a new Golconda.

In the end, his expense and effort came to nothing. Several years of excavation rendered not a single diamond. All that he and his workers found were pebbles and rocks.

On his deathbed, as he lay ill and impoverished in a hut within the shadow of the cliffs that surrounded the now despoiled valley, the man who had first sold him the diamond came to visit him.

“Where?” the dealer cried. “Where are my diamonds?”

The man looked at him sadly and said contemptuously: “The diamonds were the sap of the tree, didn’t you see? It took nourishment from the rock from which it grew. It drew the elements that make up a diamond from the raw matter of the earth. The tree combined these elements in its body and produced the fruit. You did not believe me. Now the tree and rock are gone, and so are the diamonds.”

The dealer stared at the man, gave a deep sigh of disappointment and died.

Manti-Anak by Nards Ver Melendres

2016-07-14T20:52:00.012-06:00

MANTI-ANAK
by Nards Ver Melendres
Translated from the original Cebuano by Manny Panta

________________________

The report that Imong met a monster roiled the entire community of Apokon. The rumor spread like wildfire. In places where people congregated such as liquor stores, barbershops and petty gambling spots, the topic on everyone's lips was Imong's supposed encounter with this monster.

"By golly," started Noy Andes who was washing his tied-up fighting cock, "Impong would have been killed if he wasn't able to run away quickly; they say he encountered a manti-anak!"

"Yeah, supposedly. We'll just suppose it happened because we didn't see it, Noy," agreed Salo, who was stroking his bee-eating rooster that he had just bathed. "But where was Imong, Noy Naryo, that he would encounter this manti-anak?" asked Salo.

"Oh, you know, it is already durian season. Apparently Imong was going to steal some fruit from Digirmo-Floring's durian orchard. But instead of stealing fruit, he met the manti-anak," said Noy Naryo who fetched another rooster from the bamboo cage. "But it was raining lightly the night Imong went there," continued Noy Nario. "That's when they say the monster, if we can call it that, usually appears. They say that Imong was sputtering in terror because the monster chased him."

"So where's poor Imong now?" asked Salo who made feints with Sidro-Kiang who had just arrived with his fighting cock.

"Where else but at Mano Ekoy, the medicine-man. It seems that until now Imong has still not recovered his wits. Probably because of too much terror."

"Poor man," said Sidro-Kiang. "Digirmo must be very happy that nobody is going to filch his fruit. Nobody would be stealing now!"

"That's right!" said Noy Karyo. "Who would dare steal from that durian orchard now? That monster will not fail to appear there."

"You,"said Noy Naryo addressing Sidro-Kiang," you've been here in Davao for a long time already, that is to say, you are among the first in the cradle in this place, what really is this manti-anak that everyone is afraid of?"

Sidro-Kiang did not answer immediately. He thought for a moment.

"Okay, listen well," he said. He looked at Salo then swung his gaze at Noy Naryo who had seated himself on a rice pounder while holding the rooster he had taken out of the cage. "I will tell you what little knowledge I have of the manti-anak and this knowledge came from the stories related by the natives and aboriginals of this place, the Mansaka. According to the Mansaka, the manti-anak originates from a mother who is unbaptized in the Christian faith and dies at childbirth. Its face looks like a cat's," continued Sidro Ki-ang,” and the voice sounds like a newly-born child's cries. The unbaptized mother who dies at childbirth becomes the manti-anak and goes after men only because man is supposedly the cause of her death and therefore deserves vengeance."

"What are they going to do with the man?" asked Salo curiously. "Will they kill him if they capture him?"

“Of course they'll kill him!" Sidro-Kiang answered emphatically.

"The manti-anak is going to suck the blood out of the man until he's dead."

"Come on, won't he be aware of that?" interjected Noy Naryo while looking at Sidro-Kiang.

"That's the difficult part, because we won't be aware that our blood is being sucked away. According to the natives, when you hear the cries of the manti-anak up close, that means it is very far away. But when its cries sound far away and suddenly it is so quiet you can feel it in your bones, that’s when it is very near.

"That's terrifying, isn't it?" Salo and Naryo exclaimed almost simultaneously.

"Of course, it is terrifying," said Sidro-Kiang.

"Can't we escape that fate?" asked Salo.

"Why not? Through a woman...they say only a woman can counter the curse of this monster."

"Why a woman?" asked Noy Naryo.

"Why a woman is the antidote to this monster, I know not the precise reason. But that's what the natives say. The manti-anak is afraid of women."

The conversation ended when Sidro-Kiang's eldest son fetched him for breakfast. And that's when they went home separately.

**********************

Digirmo-Floring's durian was famous in Apokon. Its fame reached even the neighboring barrios of Pangi and Anibongan. Digirmo-Floring's durian trees were first in fecundity. The fruit were not just large but they were tasty because they were thorny. In the past years, husband and wife made a lot of money every time the trees bore fruit. Last year alone they made more than two thousand pesos. Two years ago they made three thousand pesos. But in the past harvest season, they barely tasted any durian. Every morning that they went to harvest the fruit, not even one fallen fruit was left on the ground. Everything would be scooped up by the thieves. And one of the quickest was Imong.

“The savages! The devils left nothing behind. As if they planted the trees! They’ve stiffed me who’s done the hard work!” Digirmo was complaining one morning when he visited his orchard and found nothing left behind. “They didn’t choke when they ate the fruit of my labors!”

Digirmo went home in a fit of anger. He arrived home still muttering his complaints. “One day I am going to get you, you wretches! Your day will come!” His face was contorted in rage.

“Ay, just let it go, Digirmo, what can you do since you didn’t catch them in the act,” admonished his wife. “How can you accuse anyone whom you haven’t seen?”

“I will give the savages their own medicine,” said Digirmo, his anger abating.

Thus began the haunting of the durian orchard. After Imong got scared off by the manti-anak, nobody dared go into Digirmo-Floring’s orchard. The couple was able to sell fruit again. But mostly what remained of last week’s harvest.

**********************

Salo, Andes, Atoy and Sidro-Kiang met at Nang Eka’s tuba place at the Crossing. Andes who was already there offered a shot of tuba to Sidro-Kiang when he arrived. “Oh, this is your glass, Dro."

Sidro drank the liquor with a gulp as if it was nothing. Salo gave a separate shot to Andes who drank it without spilling a drop, dregs and all.

As their drinking wore on, their topic turned to Digirmo-Floring’s durian orchard.

“Dro, I admire your courage,” said Salo who was already slurring his speech, “so, hey, will you be going into Digirmo-Floring’s durian orchard?”

“Really?” riposted Sidra-Kiang at Salo’s challenge. “I would, even tonight,” he boasted.

“Aren’t you scared of the manti-anak? What if it gets you?” asked Andes as he gulped his shot.

“Hey!, Des, Lo, Toy… I’m gonna tell you the truth, Sidro ‘aint scared of a dozen manti-anak!” Sidro-Kiang answered back. “I will eat anyone who is foolish enough to play monster with me, raw and without vinegar!”

“Bai, in order to test Abai Sidro’s bravery,” said Andes who was exchanging looks with Salo, “let’s all bet a demijohn of tuba. What say you, Bai Salo?”

“Agree!” Sidro-Kiang exclaimed. “What should I do to win?”

“This: tonight you are going to Digirmo-Kiang’s orchard,” explained Atoy. “If you can bring back a durian fruit, we’ll cut the story short. You win a demijohn of tuba. The loser pays!”

“If you can bring back a durian, we lose!” Salo added.

“All right!” said Sidro-Kiang who gulped down his glass of tuba. “Sidro aint scared…”

That night they all met at the tuba place at Crossing. It must have been eleven in the evening. Their plan was that Atoy, Salo and Andes would be waiting. They were getting tired because Sidro was nowhere in sight. They suspected that Sidro-Kiang was making fools of them.

After a while Sidro-Kiang showed up carrying eight pieces of durian fruit on a pole. At each end of the pole were tied four durian fruit. Their eyes widened at the sight of Sidro-Kiang who was staggering from the weight of the fruit.

“So you lose, eh?” declared Sidro-Kiang after he had unloaded the fruit right near Salo and Andes.

“Golly, we’re impressed, bro!” said Salo.

“So did the manti-anak find you?” asked Atoy who was waiting for the answer with bated breath.

“The manti-anak was nowhere in sight!” declared Sidro boastfully. “It was afraid of Sidro…!”

They all drank the contents of the demijohn of tuba. Salo’s ear had hardly heated up when he hurled the challenge again: “Again, on Saturday, and the prize once again is a demijohn of tuba. Perhaps the manti-anak was inattentive tonight. It didn’t rain.”

“Anytime, I will always say yes,” said Sidro.

********

Digirmo was fuming with anger that morning. He was only able to harvest two fallen durian fruit. “Stricken again!” he thought. “Now let’s see what you’re made of!” He forced a smile on his lips.

Early that evening Digirmo hid among the durian trees. He promised himself that he would not fail to be vigilant for as long as fruit remained on the durian trees. Every night he would make his way to the abaca grove where he had prepared a bed of dried fronds. He would rest there.

At around nine o’clock Digirmo heard noises. He felt excited. “I’m gonna get you know you wicked man,” he said silently.

Dried sticks snapped on the ground, surely under the weight of a man’s feet. Then he made out the shape of a man who was starting to pick up the durian fruit that had fallen to the ground. He saw a lighter turn off and on which the bastard used to illuminate his misdeed.

Digirmo started to press off and on the belly of the object in his hand. At once the cries of a suckling baby spilled out. The cries were loud. Digirmo saw that the man looked around. He touched the belly softly. The crying subsided. Silence fell. But the man continued picking up the fruit as if nothing had happened. Digirmo impatiently put down the doll which belonged to his youngest kid and which in turn was a gift from his younger sister who was in the United States, a doll that cried when you pressed its belly. He took out a lamp that had already been filled with compressed gas and lighted a candle that had already been fitted into the lamp. He pressed the doll’s belly down at the same time that he lighted the lamp. The resulting flare looked like a St. Elmo’s fire gone amok.

Digirmo could barely suppress his laughter as the thief scampered away for dear life, shouting for help.

AN ACCOUNT OF A BUS TRIP FROM CUBAO TO ORMOC CITY

2016-02-23T19:52:00.002-07:00

February 22-23, 2016

I bought a ticket from DLTB Bus Line for 1350 pesos discounted senior’s price at the Cubao bus terminal. The bus terminal itself is a gloomy, dingy, ill-lighted hangar you wouldn’t want to hang around in. This is in sharp contrast to the ultra-modern architectural transformation that the Cubao commercial center has undergone. DLTB itself has a small but clean waiting station located on the outer wing of the terminal. I was going to spend some time here when a woman suddenly erupted in anger. It seems she was going to Sogod, Southern Leyte by way of Bato, Leyte, but she learned that her bus was going via Agas Agas Bridge (a previously famous, but now closed venue for a zipline). Well and good. An obvious way was to change her bus. However, although the person she complained to had left the waiting room, she could not stop mouthing off her disappointment to no one in particular. We listened to her rant, totally disinterested in her concerns. Finally, I told her to “Shut up!” She did, perhaps surprised. The others seemed to look at me with gratitude. Before I could settle in to read my iPad, the door flew open and in rushed a flustered woman who looked to be in her 30’s. She sat beside me and started to noisily transact business with some DLTB men. It turned out that she was involved in buying and selling jewelry. Unable to withstand the hubbub, I left the waiting room and hauled me and my luggage to a Jco Donuts café where I spent the better part of two hours enjoying their excellent donuts and coffee and using the free internet. Before 1 pm I went to join the bus. Because nothing in the Philippines is ever punctual (my previous Air Asia flight from Tacloban to Manila was delayed by an hour), we did not leave until 2 pm. The bus then went across the metropolis, through the EDSA skyway, to Pasay City, where it lingered for a while until we finally left at around 5 pm. The bus itself, which they referred to as the Greyhound on account of a logo that was on the outside of it, was well-appointed. It had a toilet which you can only use to pee, not poo in. Ventilation was individually controllable .The chairs were clean and comfortable. Not only could you lower your backseat, but there was a cushioned leg rest that could be raised with a lever so you could rest up your legs as well. Not having to have to keep your legs down on the floor all the time is a great boon to long-distance travel. One of the best features of this bus was the free internet. The last time I had a bus with internet was on a Greyhound on an overland trip from New York to Dallas, Texas. You can also charge your cellphone, but I learned about this only in the last third of my trip. There was a 42-inch Flat screen showing the likes of Transporter 4 and Taken 4, not necessarily my type of movies. On the other hand, who among my fellow Filipino travelers would want to watch a 5-hour telecast of Wagner’s “Das Ring Des Nibelungen” except possibly me? The one movie that I truly suffered through though was a Vice Ganda “comedy” called “Beauty and Da Bestie”. If Filipinos watch this kind of hysterical and nonsensical movie with characters drawn from all types of Filipino caricatures (the screaming gays, the overblown action hero with not a scratch on him, the American pinoys who can barely talk Tagalog, the unconnected scenes just slapped together for laughs) then there is no hope for movies in the Philippines. The bus wound (or should I say rolled slowly on) through Paranaque and various towns in Rizal and Laguna. If we ever went through the South expressway, I didn’t notice it, because traffic was slow. Finally the bus picked up speed somewhere in San Pablo, where there was a notice of a highway bypass. This was a trip where I was hoping to catch a glimpse of Mayon volcano in Albay, but the entire trip took place at night. There was a moon, but there were also clouds, so I saw nothing outside, just the usual jumble of galvanized iron roofs and dark tropical vegetation. I nodded off to sleep. The bus was half-full, so I had both passenger seats to myself. At some point, the bus stopped, the lights went on, and it was announced that we were in the ferry point in Matnog, Sorsogon. It was 2 AM. I thought we would be arriving at 6 AM! When I got off the bus, I was slightly disorientated. Back in the first few years of the Maharlika freeway and the opening of this trans-insular bus route in the late 70’s, I had taken the same bus trip twice. Matnog at that time was just a backwater barrio, with fishermen’s huts and people who regarded you seemingly in awe because you were passing through their dirt-poor town. I remembered stepping into the nearby brown sand beach, the waves rolling under the light of a cloudy dawn and the hermit crabs scampering among their holes. I thought: “What a pleasant, idyllic place!!” Now the beach was gone. In its place was a yard typical of built-up ports: cement tarmac, steel fencing, a line of snack stores, some steel containers and lines of buses waiting to board the ferries. Matnog now also had a transit terminal, with the required terminal fee (30 pesos). I discovered this on my own because the driver made no announcements on what to do next. If you are taking this bus trip for the first time, ask around. You will discover that you should leave the bus, go into the ferry station, and wait there till your ferry, where you bus has been loaded, is leaving. The ferry station was the most modern aspect of Matnog. It was not luxurious but functional. It was also hot, at 2 AM. It had air-conditioning units, but the units were not turned on, despite the crowd of passengers inside. A few fans were turning, but because the whole station is hermetically sealed with storm glass windows and walls, they were just fanning hot air. Despite it being beside the seashore, no windows were opened to let the air in. The station had no ventilation whatsoever. That’s probably were I picked up my current cold. My delight at seeing this ostensibly modern terminal turned to dismay. And I had to pay 30 pesos for this? One positive feature was a free cell phone charging station.

In the past, there were only two ferries. They left at noon. If you missed those ferries, you had to wait the next day to go across the San Bernardino Strait. Now they had several private ferries operating, so crossing the San Bernardino strait is now very much a 24-7 operation, barring bad weather.When we were finally told to embark our particular ferryboat, this marked the start of a demonstration for Filipinos’ penchant for needless bureaucracy. First I had to undergo a security checkpoint previously at the entrance of the terminal. I then had to present my paid-up terminal fee ticket, which a woman at the exit door dutifully stamped. After negotiating my way past trucks and buses outside (there is no covered walk, which would have made sense in the unpredictable weather) I then had to present the ticket again to the security guard. He tore off part of it while another guard deposited it in a slotted box. When we made it to the pier (there are now several jetties, so you must determine that you are in the right one), a youth called on us to produce our bus tickets. Oh? The driver of our bus made no mention of this, no “Please hold on to your ticket to present to the agent” sort of announcement that is usual and mandatory in most places (the US is very good at this). As a result, I and several others had left our tickets on our bus seats. The youth gave us our boarding tickets anyway. When we went to board the ferry, a young lady took our ticket and tore off a third of it. When we went climb up a side staircase to the upper level of the ferry, another young lady took our ticket and tore off the remaining 3^rd. So, counting the security check at the entrance to the terminal, I counted six levels of check-ups before we could board the ferry. What’s that saying: the more backward and corrupt a country, the more regulations it has? Certainly, the more steps there are to an end, the more palms will need to be greased.

The ferryboat that we embarked was a rusting junk that must been used to ply Japanese waters. I gathered this from the safety signs that were still plastered on the walls. Judging from its condition, it must have never seen any refit or any attempt to make it a comfortable ride for the public ever since it was bought from the Japanese. It was filthy, and shamefully so. The worst features were the toilets. Just a yellowed and rusty open latrine with a divider on which an inadequate number of naphthalene balls were sprinkled. The stink was awful and possibly life-threatening. Where was the Coast Guard? Where was the DOH? Why do we keep saying it’s more fun in the Philippines? Why do we keep inviting foreigners to come visit just to see and smell the abominable conditions on our ferryboats on what should be a pleasurable transit from one island to another?

One other thing: our bus arrived at 2 AM in Matnog. We finally boarded the ferryboat at 4 PM. I thought that was it: we leave. No. As it turned out, the ferry wasn’t leaving until the hold was full, and that could take a few hours waiting for vehicles to arrive The ferryboat did not leave till 7 AM, when dawn had already broken. It was only by the light of the morning that I saw how transformed Matnog really was. The fishermen’s huts still stood in the far distant shores, but the main barrio itself was now an assemblage of cement, painted houses, with the large ferryboat terminal dominating the foreground. Not far from the port, on the opposite side of the cove was a mountain still lush with greenery and a long stretch of sandy beach. Nearer the boats, plastic garbage floated round the port. Here was also something that I did not see before: badjaos, boat people. A man was paddling a boat with a woman and baby in it. Others dove into the waters, yelling for the passengers to throw coins. Just to be sure I asked a ship’s attendant (such as he can be said to be one) who they were. Are they sea gypsies? Some were, he replied, but others were locals, trying to earn a pittance by diving for coins. I saw signs that said: “Please do not throw coins!” Yes, throwing coins is not allowed, said the attendant. You could be arrested for it. And the badjaos? They were not subject to arrest, he said. But if they were not there in the first place, making so much noise trying to get people to throw coins, no one would be throwing any coins in the first place, right? Yes, said the attendant, but they are able to go through security (the port is a supposedly secure area) and do it. So it’s security’s fault, right? I suppose so, said the attendant, but “Puwedeng mapakiusapan ang lahat. Besides, these people have to earn a livelihood.” This kind of self-defeating, convoluted reasoning is why the Philippines can never be said to be under the rule of law. A passenger who throws coins can be arrested, while the diver cannot, when in fact he is not only in a secure zone under the very noses of the security guards, but could put himself in real danger by being accidentally sucked in by the ship’s propellers. Those who are supposed to enforce the law look at the poor wretches and allow the situation to continue because they are sorry for them since they need to earn a few coins to survive. “Ganyan dito,” said the attendant with a smile, “patay malisya”.

When you make the hour-long run across the straits from Matnog to Allen, there are usually a few islands with white sand beaches that you can see along the way. It rained and was misty all the way to Allen so I saw none of the islands. Getting off the ferry in Allen, Samar was a straightforward proposition. I got off the ferry, found my bus and with no further hassles went our way.

Despite the existence of the Marlika highway and the improved transportation that it brought to Samar, nothing indicated to me that Samar itself had really gotten off the poverty rut that it had always been known for. In fact, I saw more houses and hovels. Where before Allen charmed me with its white sand beaches and sleepy-small town feel, those beaches seemed to have disappeared, replaced by a rocky shoreline overrun by nasty-looking green algae. There were no factories or any sign of industrialization anywhere. I could be wrong, but it is not a town you would want to holiday in. The monotonous greenery of Samar sometimes opened up and revealed beautiful looking coves. In Calbayog, there were more signs of urban improvement and vacation houses lined the beach outside town. The water here was clear and from the little I saw, not much garbage. The same could not be said of Catbalogan, where a small inlet that was used as a docking area for boats was positively swimming with garbage. Outside town, garbage rolled down a hillside like a fountain of unmentionables. I would definitely check out Calbayog again, especially with those islands I saw beckoning from the distance and the waterfalls I’ve heard about that abound in this area. Catbalogan, not so much.

Despite the presence of some improved housing, I would conclude that Samar seems to still be a definitely poor province, poorer even than Leyte. With the NPA still conducting raids here, the typhoons that ravage the island like clockwork, and the lack of big-ticket industrial production, I doubt if Samar will ever get off the rut. Its one big hope for improvement is if it seriously promotes itself as a tourist destination.

The bus stopped off for lunch at 2 PM at some DLTB depot and eatery. The food on offer was crap. In fact, in the two eateries that the bus stopped by en route, the food was just plain crappy. I probably have had too much pampering in Manila, having been treated to high-end meals by friends, not to mention the buffet at our Yupangco-Yamaha reunion. But sometimes there are really good eateries out in the countryside. In Ormoc, we have our cheap, filling and tasty bbq chicken at the plaza and they cost almost nothing. A woman who was riding the bus from Manila to Mahayag near Ormoc explained that she never ate at these food stops. She brought her own packed lunches: fried chicken from Jollibee, the like. I had to eat at the food stop at Calbayog, but did so only due to hunger. I didn’t bring any box lunch, an elementary mistake for a traveler like me. The toilet facilities were no better either. But enough of that.

After a brief delay in the mountain pass above Kananga due to road construction, I finally made it back to Ormoc at around 7 pm. My grandniece Keziah May babbled delightedly when she saw me. Then she was off to spend some fun time at the Ormoc plaza with mom and dad. Ah, Keziah, if I could only bring you to ride the carousel at Mall of Asia!

Some words of advice: if you want some sightseeing, take the bus and spend a day in Legazpi or a week trekking up Mayon Volcano. Stop at Calbayog and go visit its islands, beaches and waterfalls. If you just want go from Manila to Tacloban, take the plane, it costs virtually the same, without the aggravation. Don’t eat at the foodstops. The toilet facilities are bad. The ferryboats are decrepit. You have been warned. If you are an adventurer, none of this will matter to you.

And one last thought: travelling by bus from one end the Philippines to the other would not be possible without the Maharlika Highway. Travelling from Samar to Leyte would not be possible without the magnificent San Juanico Bridge. Whatever their hygienic conditions, the establishment of RORO’s has increased and made convenient bus and vehicle transits between islands. The first two were built during the Marcos years, the 3^rd, under Arroyo. Is there anything comparable today?

Review of Stephen King's "Mr. Mercedes"

2015-01-04T20:37:00.002-07:00

Whenever I start reading a novel by Stephen King, I somehow know what’s in store for me. It will be a roller coaster ride of a story, somewhat slow in the beginning but set up with local flavor suffused on the whole with an overriding sense of Americana, gaining steam in the middle and rushing into a terrific finale, just like in a movie. In fact, I could already smell the movie in his latest opus, “Mr. Mercedes”. The novel is set in an unnamed Midwestern city, a departure in locale from his usual home state Maine, although some of his novels have had other locations as well(“The Shining”, “Duma Key”). It features a villain that is nowhere near the supernatural ghouls of “Doctor Sleep” but rather that most quintessentially innocuous personality of the streets of small-town America: the Ice Cream Man in his Ice Cream van, here named “Mr. Tastey”. It turns out that not only is he the Ice Cream man, he is also that most familiar of contemporary Americans, the techno-geek. That he has somehow taken the leap from harmless pursuits to being a serial killer is explained in the usual love-hate maternal crucible that has been the staple of literature since Oedipus Rex and Psycho. His complicated relationship with the retired detective, name of Bill Hodges, who is as flawed and charismatic as a Raymond Chandler dick, is what powers the narrative.
The novel starts with that most sickeningly familiar scenario of American urban nightmares: a car, a stolen Mercedes, driven by Mr. Ice Cream Man plows into a line of jobless Americans looking for work. This leaves several people maimed and killed, including a woman with child. Later, we learn that his only motivation for the deed is not rage of any kind, but simply the thrill of the act. He is a true sociopath.
Hodges never caught him and this proved to be a thorn on his conscience. He had a suspected facilitator in the person who owned the Mercedes, a socially prominent and disagreeable lady named Mrs. Olivia Ann Trelawney, but they couldn’t pin anything on her, except to suspect that she had left her key in the ignition, and thus enabled the killer to steal her car and do his crime. The killer had abandoned the car later and left his sign on the dashboard: a smiley.
When Hodges receives a letter with a smiley on it, the narrative quickens. The writer, who signs himself “The Mercedes Killer”, taunts Hodges for failing to solve the crime a year ago, and promises to lift him out of his depression by doing another mass murder. Or, suggests the writer, he could kill himself and end his misery. Rejecting Mr. Mercedes’ suggestion to commit suicide, a re-motivated Hodges visits Mrs. Trelawney at her villa and tries to juggle her memory for some detail that she may have missed. She could not. A short time later, she commits suicide by ingesting pills. Her estranged younger sister, Janelle Patterson, who lives in California and has come down to Maine to attend to her sister’s estate, insists that it was out of character for Olivia to kill herself. She hires Hodges to find out why she did it, or if the Mercedes Killer had anything to do with it. They also have an affair, which brings a necessary complication to the plot.
There are other interesting characters in the mix of the novel: a computer-savvy black kid named Jerome, the former cop partner of Hodges, the ailing mother of Olivia and Janelle, and ultimately the creepiest mother this side of Bates motel, the Mercedes Killer’s own mother, a reclusive alcoholic with a tainted past and an even more tainted present.
True to its cinematic structure, the novel ends up in a climactic bomb scene at a One Direction-style concert in a city arena. In writing this scene, I detected a kind of unspoken wish by the 60’s and 70’s music –loving King to annihilate the boy band. As to the staging of this scene, you’ll have to read the novel to get the full effect.
Overall, this was an entertaining and page-turning novel, filled with the usual characters that Stephen King has given dimension to in his direct and particular prose. There is nothing contrived about these individuals. We know from the news coming from America that they do exist in one form or another. A serial killer who happens to be the driver of an Ice Cream Truck isn’t so farfetched. Several years ago, a 10-year old Filipino-American girl in a Los Angeles suburb heard the tinkling music of an ice-cream truck and together with friends, waited for the truck to appear. When it did not, the girl’s friends got tired of waiting and left. The Phil-am girl insisted on waiting for the ice cream truck. She was never seen or heard from again.
Mr. Mercedes, like many Stephen King stories, is rooted in the American mundane. It is the macabre twist that he gives into it that makes him such a distinctive and entertaining author.

The Moon

2014-06-06T07:26:00.004-06:00

THE MOON

I often see when the nights are long

and the mists are on a breeze

a stately ship that sails above

the nodding tops of treess.

Drifting slow to meet the foams

and sprays of a darkling sea,

it's a wonder it doesn't get wrecked.

Will it ever be?

This silver ship's a wonder,

as it has always been.

But more has been the wonder

For the Pilot's never seen.

Making Waves in a Small Pond

2014-05-23T05:24:00.002-06:00

Some people come up to me sometimes and express surprise that I am not on a cruise ship or otherwise travelling abroad. Here's the thing: there were at least three highlights of my travelling/cruising life that told me that I had accomplished as much travel as anyone can hope to do in a lifetime: a 4-day hike to Macchu Picchu, visiting the temple of Karnak and the pyramids of Egypt, and doing a safari in South Africa. If you add in the numerous times I've seen glaciers calving in Alaska, or gawked at innumerable paintings of saints and devils in the churches of Italy, or ate a thousand and one meals in numerous countries that ranged from the sublime (a rich bouillabaisse in Provence) to the earthy (boiled lobster in Vanuatu) to the bizarre (raw blue crab in Incheon), you could say my cup runneth over, travel-wise. I have lived (and worked) in Los Angeles, New York and Las Vegas. But most of my working life was spent on board cruise ships of all sizes and dimensions, from the smallest (15000 tons) to the biggest (like that Costa ship that sank in Italy). In that peripatetic, spoiled, at times regimented but always interesting life, I made many friends, some of whom I keep in touch with on Facebook (thanks FB!) But I left no footsteps, or memories that clung to the rafters of the ships' theaters. Nobody can say that they learned anything from me as a musician, because everyone was (or at least expected to be) at the top of their game.If you didn't follow the rules, or conform to certain standards, you were out. If you performed and didn't piss off the captain, you stayed. Everyone may have worked to please the passengers, but in the end, everyone worked for themselves. Memory, or memorableness, as far as being a musician or performer is concerned, is not a currency on cruise ships. Currently, there is no reason why I couldn't just scoot off and play in Manila, Hong Kong or Singapore or Malaysia (cruise ships are not the only places musicians can work, you know). In Hongkong and Singapore, I would listen quietly to some Filipino musician playing at the lobby and thought: "That could be me". But in the end, I am back here in my relatively backward and insignificant corner of the world. So why stay? Well, for one thing, family. Secondly, property. Thirdly, being past the minimum age of retirement, I am coming into my "reflective" stage. In this stage, I see myself, as in a time-travelling mirror, reflected back into the persons of the music and art students I have accepted this summer. I see children needing guidance in the arts, something I never truly had in my youth, and which, sadly, this government doesn't seem fit to encourage. Children need affirmation that they can sing, paint, play the piano, act. If no one tells them that, or at least shows them the way, then they will never become artists. I am not saying there are no artists or artistically inclined teachers in my hometown, but judging from the fact that there are no classical concerts, plays, recitals, musicals of any significance here, it means no one really gives a damn. This was brought home to me even more succinctly when, on trying to select a song for one of my voice students, I chose "Wouldn't It Be Loverly" from "My Fair Lady". Has she ever heard the song before? I asked. She never had. Later, I had her learn "Locomotion". She had never heard this song either. She can now sing both songs. So now, I am wondering: if I had not stayed here long enough to teach this girl that there was such a musical called "My Fair Lady" and a song in it called " Wouldn't It Be Loverly", would I have not helped usher in a new Julie Andrews or a Lani Misalucha? Who knows? Back in the 60's, I bought a travel book about Spain, hoping to get there one day. And I eventually, I did via playing the piano on a cruise ship. So, after rolling around gathering no moss, I am thinking that if I stayed just a little bit longer in this little pond called Ormoc City whose main claims to fame are natural disasters and pineapples, I might stir the waters just slightly and create just enough waves to influence somebody into becoming an artist of some kind. Call it an experiment in discovering talent, of which I am starting to become aware that there is a lot of in this city, but partially manifested and encouraged. Whether they become working artists/musicians working on cruise ships, or fitting the marquee on Broadway, that is for the future to decide. All I want is to be a part of this cycle that creates, and not discourages, the love for the arts, and hopefully to be able to make a living out of it. My services don't come free, but that is part of the experiment.

ALASKA POEMS, 1992

2014-01-22T18:08:00.000-07:00

in my mind I sing songs

that know no endings

arias stretching into infinity

melodies without cadences

chords without resolutions

notes trembling in empty space

searching for a symphony to cling to.

looking blankly at the sky

i weave wings of sound

in my head

that I may fly

that I may fly.

i have shed long ago

the tears I would have shed now

if I were less tempered

and more naïve.

reality, that eternal curmudgeon,

having spared me no dagger thrusts

i leave to the rest

henceforth I shall live life detached

eyes closed to the world.

sometimes in the unconsciousness of sleep

i thrill at the sight of your face

glowing like the sun

i awake

it is dark

i am alone.

do not take for granted

what nature seems to grant in excess:

the rising and setting of the sun,

the greening of the land,

waters swirling into creek or sea,

the rocks, flowers,

the very air we breathe.

do not take for granted

a lover’s touch

or a warming smile,

or the milk that flows

from a mother’s breast,

the song of the thrush

or the flight of a tern,

the clouds tinged pink with sunrise

or the stars peeping out

from behind the dark curtain of the sky.

what seemed to last forever

oft falls prey to man’s depravity.

the mountain that was is now a plain

a briny wasteland where nothing grows

over which a dusty wind

keens its sad lament

over and over again:

“ah, the loss! ah, the woe!”

I used to be wise

in the ways of reason

till emotions rendered useless

my skill at logic.

sure, there is no sense

in an attachment that may

dwindle into a farce

but who’s to say it makes no sense

while it lasts?

love,

fools say with passion,

is its own reason for being,

a conflagration stoked

in the depths of a

barren heart

that will find love

where it will

despite the remonstrations of a cold

despairing mind.

alaskan landscape

dark jagged peaks

caressed by fingers

of silent snow.

ice sliding down steep ravines

fracturing , dissolving

in the frigid ocean’s maw.

a lone eagle

shrieking down from the heights

its cry puncturing

the silence of the trees.

the wind rakes my face

with icy talons

whistling, growling, hissing:

“walk where you will,

watch what you may

but know that I am lord

and this land belongs to me!”

the essence of love

is distilled in an alembic of tears,

an elixir

sweeter than ambrosia,

a poison more potent

than witches’ brew.

to sip of it is to leap

from the highest cliff

believing one could fly

where many have fallen

to their deaths.

why drink of it, then?

why quaff a draught

of life and death

in equal measure?

because love intoxicates

and one forgets.

how easily

one forgets.

I tasted love and found it sweet

with a bitterness that numbed my lips

I touched your hand and found it warm

as the icy grip of an arctic storm

I stole a moment from your eyes

that hypnotized

and told me lies.

when loving fails

though love be true

the reddest sun

turns darkest blue.

written in the light of an absent face

my love for you is indefinable

like a lifting of the heart

at the sight of a sunset.

so what does this mean

this melancholy that grips me

when the sun disappears from view?

there is always the moon

weaving around itself a misty corona

and the stars filling the night sky

with their immutable brilliance.

I love them no less

than the sun.

but

as I stand here at water’s edge

I long once more for

a sight of the sun’s face

splintering and re-forming

on the crests of dancing waves.

so it is with you.

time

which blurs or brightens memory

may prove me a hapless fool

too easily dazzled by transitory light

and you, a creature

that merely crossed my field of sight,

destined to move beyond the edge of vision.

whatever befalls me

(whether love, fancy or mere delusion)

I know,

have learnt

that sunsets are better seen than touched

for the tremendous fire of the sun

will consume and destroy

the unwary and trusting heart.

to chet baker

in memoriam

music killed him you know,

music that soothes the breasts

of savage beasts

rendered him mad

with her intoxicating beauty.

music was his way out of mortality,

his mistress luring him

to an embrace of death.

when he died

fallen from grace

the notes he played in life

cradled him in his grave.

i picked a pebble from the sand

and felt its form within my hand.

perhaps it had lain there for a century

worn smooth by waves of a raging sea

its surface shone like porphyry,

its color, blue as a twilit sky.

its shape was oval, soft and sleek

like a teardrop falling down a cheek.

feeling it within my hand

that pebble I had picked up from the sand

I thought of life and love and other things

of little joys and little schemes.

of dreams I had that came to nought.

and, in this reverie, I thought:

my heart is like a pebble, too,

worn smooth by passions strong but true.

to a waterfall

Juneau, Alaska, may 1992

rage on!

rage on like me!

give form to existence

unshackled from destiny.

pound the rocks with your rain-swollen hands

roar your mouthless wrath

and splash the gray sky

with drops of your icy blood.

let no mountain crag contain your fury

or granite stand in the way

of your heedless rush

uproot the arrogant pine

from banks of bouldered streams

and splinter it to pieces.

be cruel! be cruel!

the sea will soon engulf you

and then you will be gone

so while the glaciers still feed you

rage on!

the hike

Skagway , Alaska

June 1992

part one

I caught the stillness in the air

when I paused to rest

panting for breath.

the stillness moved

for in the forest

halfway to the mountaintop

nothing is really still:

birds sing

trees creak

the wind scurries and slashes

through the leaves.

through the pines

I saw the town below me

nestled amidst blankets

of greenery and bay.

it seemed so far away

as if my gasps for breath

had lifted me beyond this earth

into a realm where rocks,

cyclopean and moss-draped,

and trees, bare

to where last winter’s snow

had buried them,

stood sentinel to a world

beyond human reckoning.

the trail angled sharply

and fallen logs blocked my path.

often the trail became

a stream or was simply lost

in a cover of snow,

though I never went astray and

followed the path of those

who had gone before.

on and on I carried

my protesting limbs and heaving lungs

for, I reasoned,

having gone so far,

suspended between heaven and earth,

why waste a minute more

even thinking of retreat?

i thought of sir galahad,

he of the holy grail .

like him I was (I thought)

searching for something, if less divine,

yet no less true: a view.

part two

upper dewey lake

it wasn’t the sun that blinded me

nor the white of untrodden snow

nor the unclouded sky

itself of pure unblemished blue

nor the spired walls of windblasted rocks

that rose above this reservoir

of slow-melting ice

nor the scattered stands of dark-green pines

marching up the steep snow-blanketed ravines

nor the distant mountain ranges,

glaciers glinting on their crests.

no, it was none of these things at all.
it was you.

love at first is a worm

that writhes

in a mess of lust and greed

desire and need.

it flings itself and clings to

a sturdy twig

and spins itself in a frenzy

of longing and intrigue

till, spent,

it stops, sensing perhaps

that desire must cease

and give way to quiet feeling.

silently love broods there

in its cocoon

rough and gray outside

but within, silv’ry as the moon.

in the full flush of morning

as the dew melts into the sky

freed from its chrysalis

love becomes a butterfly

i must constantly touch the sky

or I will die

the slow death of those

for whom clouds mean nothing

or forests are for burning

or flowers are for trampling.

i must constantly sing

or I will grow numb

with the coldness of those

for whom birds trill no enchantment

bees buzz no excitement

or breezes bblow no endearments.

I must constantly touch my heart

Or it shall grow cold

as a piece ofrock

gray, dark and grim.

When the wind rises

and chills my bones

and the light grows dim,

i shall build a fire

and warm my heart

and I’ll dream on

dream on.

i have no will

to change my ways

for something more

acceptable or apt.

and so I’ll live

the life I want

and never mind the rap.

manny panta

Dawn Princess

June 22, 1992

ALASKA

copyrightmannypanta2014

TALES FROM THE STORM

2013-12-19T22:35:00.004-07:00

This was my experience of supertyphoon Yolanda aka Haiyan.

The night before the storm, which was projected to hit Ormoc City at seven am, I posted one last message on Facebook to my friend Billy Ray in San Diego. It had been raining, and then the rain suddenly stopped. There was an eerie silence in the city, except for the occasional vroom of a motorcycle driven by a foolhardy idiot.

The rain stopping that way worried me, I told Billy Ray. Then I went to sleep. I woke up around six o’clock AM and noticed that the wind had started to rise. I looked out the window. Strong gusts of wind were making short work of the tarpaulin roof of the used-clothes flea market (ukay-ukay) below me. I chuckled.

“Here we go,” I said to myself. It looked like a normal tropical cyclone, like the numerous ones I went through in the past both here and abroad (hurricanes in Florida!) Fun, but nothing to worry about.

At seven, the brunt of the storm descended and started really shaking the trees. The wind was so strong that it drove the rain almost horizontally. Still no need to panic, I thought. But I already felt that there was something different about this particular typhoon. The wind made too much noise and blew too many crumpled sheets of roofing across the streets like so much flimsy cardboard. The roofs of the tile store across from me were starting to shed like the scales of a skeletal insect. The house shuddered, something it never used to do before.

After an hour of this caterwauling, the wind suddenly died. The sun tried to peep through an opening in the clouds. It was so eerily quiet.

“The eye of the storm is passing above us,” was our universal opinion.

“So that was it?” I remarked.

I went outside to survey the damage. There were pieces of roofing everywhere. Posts leaned from the shock of the wind. Roofs lost their sheathing, but not a whole lot. I walked down to the bridge to see if the river had risen. It was frisky, but not by much. I had a tete-a-tete with my friend Godillo who lived beside the dike. His house bore little damage.

Then, as quickly as the wind died, the wind rose again and brought fresh drops of rain. It had changed direction, from the Northeast.

“I’m off,” I yelled at Godillo. “ This is the second round!”

I hurried back to the safety of my house and with the rest of family tried to plug in the nooks and holes and crannies that the wind and the rain seemed to find, exploit , and point out to us ruthlessly. The kitchen took on water. The wind slammed against the glass jalousies like a sledgehammer. I did not realize it at the time, but it was already smashing down plate glass windows all over the city.

The wind rose, and rose and at a certain point, it did not shriek anymore. It hummed at a high pitch. This was something new and terrifying to me. I went up to my room and looked out the window. The flea-market was totally roofless, and the tile and hardware store across from the house as well. This storm ate roofs like munchies. A tall leafy caimito (star apple) tree had toppled on the street. Another one on the other side that I had grown up with had been bodily snatched and thrown down to the ground, roots and all by the wind. Later , I saw for myself that the wind had blasted trees , some ages-old, like kindling. Yolanda: Roof muncher. Tree-totaller. And over on the other side of the island of the unfortunate island of Leyte, a tidal wave of gross and obscene proportions, something that we in Ormoc were spared from, but not the poor people over there.

In my room, I listened to the wind rise and rise and hum like a macabre, celestial spindle. And then I heard something even more terrifying: the sound of our roof being peeled back. I felt that I was living in a scene from the movie “Twister.” That was fiction. This was real life.

I rushed downstairs.

“The typhoon is peeling back the roof!” I announced. What had happened was the wind had already blown away most of the roofs in Ormoc. Ours were harder to blow away because the roof was made of old-fashioned high grade iron, as opposed to the flimsy ones sold nowadays. The iron sheets were fixed to solid wooden trusses that were tied together with a combination of bolts, umbrella nails and iron clamps. Try as she might, Yolanda could only manage to peel back two side-panels. She could not destroy the roof system of the house that my late father Uldarico Sr. built back in the 70’s. What she did manage to do was to dislodge all the gutters, break the PVC pipes through which the rain coursed and cause the collapse of the eaves on the east side of the house. On the looks of it, compared to the rest of the houses, our house got off relatively undamaged. Two weeks later, I had the roof examined and fixed for damage. The carpenter told me that only six umbrella nails remained. The rest had been pulled out by the force of the wind. One single nail held on to a line of corrugated iron roofing.
"The typhoon stopped just in time, " said the carpenter. "If that nail went, you would have lost your roof".

When does a typhoon really live up to its billing as a super-duper feak?

When you look out the square window of the kitchen, staring horrified in the surreal darkness (remember, this was morning) at a branch of our backyard jackfruit tree being seized and grappled and thrown against the wall, with the noise rising as if there was a bombing raid consisting of shrieking steel and loud crashes and collapsing trees, and the wind shakes the house as if a giant is shaking a glass of wet rags with you in it, and the bile starts to rise from your stomach and suddenly you start hating this typhoon and you yell : “Enough already!” and nobody hears you because the wind is too strong and too noisy for that. And for a moment, you are afraid that this typhoon was an actual personality bent on making a point by wrecking your house, as if to say:” You think you’ve seen a typhoon? You ‘aint seen nothing yet, dahlink!.”

One storm is bad. Two storms is the worst. Two high winds occurring from two different directions in less than half a day. Plus a devastating storm surge. And do you want fried tin roofs with that?

And that’s all I can say about supertyphoon Yolanda. The aftermath had/has its own miseries, but at least she’s gone.

For now.

**********************************

My grandnephew Aaron, who is seven years old, is a funny fellow. Her older sister Annika, three years her senior, who cares for him as much as a put-upon sister of a hyperactive PSP-addled addict can, reported to us amused adults that at the height of typhoon Yolanda, when the rafters were shaking and the walls threatening to tumble down, he had cried melodramatically : “ I’m gonna die! I’m gonna die!”

“Didn’t he say ‘We?’” I asked.

“No,” Annika answered, “ just him.”

He had of course heard these same words on countless Hollywood films, so for a Filipino kid like him to utter such a typical movie line is both amusing and not too far from the truth. Yolanda, at the height of her fury, terrified me as well into nearly thinking that we were really all gonna die, or at least suffer grievous bodily harm.

*************************

My grandnephew Mark , 19 years of age, a culinary student and as much an addict of games and the internet, came visiting today from Valencia where they lived. In that family estate, all the fruit trees that had so abundantly borne fruit last summer had all been felled by the typhoon. We would have no limes, mangoes, avocados, santol, rambutan, lanzones, or coconuts next summer and in the years to come. Mark had been helping cut the downed trees into firewood.

“I’ve been doing a lot of reading!” he announced excitedly as if it was a new experience for him. Before this blackout, I would always see his nose before the computer, playing internet games or doing Facebook stuff. I was not aware that he read books until today.

“What have you been reading?” I asked.

“Something about artists, by this Gor, or Ba something.”

“The Lives of Artists, Giorgio Vasari,” I said.

“That’s it!” he said.

“You know, it has a second volume,”

“Really?”

“Would you like to read it? It’s in my library above. Let’s go find it.”

We went up to my library, a whole wall of shelves lined with books. I easily found the book because I had cleaned up this long-neglected, unloved corner of my house and re-organized the books.

“Take any book you want,” told him. “I recommend “Spycatcher”).

Mark left to return to Valencia, several books in tow. My library was getting some use. I even noticed that Lorez, she of Naruto fixation and hours of YouTube watching K-Pop, was constantly reading books. Her favorite seemed to be a series of illustrated Bible stories for children. I’m sure the handsome Davids and Isaacs there who looked less Jewish than US high school jocks, had something to do with it.

******************************

On the seventh night after supertyphoon Yolanda’s onslaught on Ormoc City, I had a Kafkaesque nightmare. I dreamt I was trying to get into a McDonald’s in downtown San Diego. However, instead of entering a welcoming space where you went in, made your order at the counter and sit down at one of the formica tables to wolf down your burger and fries, I now had to enter through a narrow turnstile, much like a TSA gauntlet, and eventually ended up in front of a high counter from which an unfriendly looking cashier looked down disdainfully on me. The cashier surprisingly looked like Charice Pempengco in her current lesbian-butch incarnation.

“Whaddaya want?” she barked down at me.

Appalled, I was going to say “ An Angus beef burger with mushrooms and Swiss cheese and a large Coke,” but what came out from my lips were: “This used to be a welcoming place. What happened?”

The cashier eyed me coldly and like a military drill sergeant snarled: “ What is your order, sir?” She was not going to give me the time of day.

I turned around and walked away. I found another McDonald’s nearby and found the same set-up and the same attitude from the employees. It seemed that McDonald’s had re-arranged the furniture to guard against terrorists and undesirables and instructed its employees be correct but cold, ruthless and unfriendly.

Typhoon Yolanda, in her own ruthless way, had re-arranged the furniture in Ormoc City. After her, Ormoc would never look the same to me.

*************************

The families Lastimada and Batucan stayed at my house today.

This man came knocking on the door. He had seen the sign “Room for Rent” and asked if he could rent it. They came from Tacloban and were on their way to Cebu, but they needed time to get tickets on the ferry. I asked him how many people were in his party.

He replied nine: himself, his wife, his mother, two daughters, a one year old infant, two teen-age boys and a little girl. I explained to him that the room was basically good only for one person and they would not all fit in.

“We don’t mind”, said the man. “Just give us five hours till we get our tickets for Cebu. “We don’t care for ourselves, it’s the baby we’re worried about and my mother. She’s having some bleeding and we need to get her to Cebu as soon as possible.”

I agreed to let them stay for the five hours they needed. The five hours stretched to an overnight stay because there was absolutely no way they could just show up to get tickets on any of the fastcraft that went to Cebu. The port was jampacked with people from Tacloban and surrounding areas desperate to get out of Leyte. I had heard of rumors and reports earlier of some bad things happening in Tacloban, but could not confirm anything because we had no TV, newspapers or internet whatsoever. The presence of this family was my first inkling that something terrible was happening in Tacloban and that people were in full flight from it. True, Ormoc was devastated as well, but water was plentiful, order was swiftly restored, and the people, used to having a calamity of this magnitude before, did not panic and commit mayhem. There were tempers at the gas station and bread lines but in general everyone queued in an orderly manner. Tacloban, however, seemed to be a different story.

After I had ushered the family ito their small room, the relief on their faces at being able to just sit and rest on a bed and on the floor was palpable. After mulling it a little bit, I had the spare room that was reserved for guests and family members from Australia cleared and cleaned up and gave the family to use it as well.

‘Oh,” the matron informed me, “My sister and her family are arriving from Tacloban later this evening. Can they stay here as well for the night?”

I said yes.

I asked the young man, the father of the infant , what was going on in Tacloban.

The young man looked at me with a slightly dazed expression on his face, as if he had just seen some unmentionably horrible things, which he probably did, and replied: “ The people in Tacloban are not normal anymore.”

He told of the decision of the authorities to free the inmates of a prison so they could escape the storm surge. The unintended result of this was a crime-spree that terrorized the Taclobanons. Saddled by the storm, they were now seemingly at the mercy of thugs with no police or military protection. He recounted the story, which I’ve heard before, of a prominent doctor who was killed and his daughter raped and murdered in their home presumably by escapees. He talked of people so gripped by hunger they would snatch the food from your hands. He talked of the looting of malls. He talked of the dead lying bloated and stinking on the streets, uncollected and unmourned, the awfulness of their stench provoking people to flee for the sake of their children and their own sanity.

Their world, as they knew it, had ended “Yolanda” came screaming down from the skies.
*********************

The little girl’s name was Sophia, just like my sister.

Sophia was a hyperactive kid of six. She became the ad hoc playmate of my grandniece Lorez, who was three years her senior. They played LEGO and Pirates of the Caribbean cards. She was a very talkative and communicative girl. When our househelp Veny asked her what happened to her home, she replied in Waray: “Nagbaha” ( It flooded.) “Kutob dida,” (Up to there), she said, indicating an area near the ceiling. “May-ada gin-rape,” (Somebody got raped). “Damo an patay” (There are many dead people).

Then she pranced off to join Lorez in a game of tag.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

They lived outside Tacloban proper, near the San Juanico bridge, said the young man. After the storm he and his brother went to explore the effects of the storm. The road to Tacloban was impassable due to debris and fallen powerlines, so they found a route over the hills into the city. Downtown Tacloban was a dead zone, a city that nature seemed to have wiped clean from the face of the earth. A two-storey McDonald’s beside the wharf still stood, but all its contents were washed out into the sea.

“I have a story to tell,” he told me, “about a friend of mine who survived the tidal wave. He was a trucker. He and other truckers normally parked their trucks at the Tacloban pier. He told me that he saw the big wave come in. He said the wind did not seem to strike the sea as much as suck it out. After the sea receded, the giant wave came crashing in to the pier and swept all his trucker friends out to sea except for one, who was clinging to his feet. For himself, he had managed to cling by two fingers to two nails on the roof of a building. He kicked his friend who was clinging to his feet for fear that he would be swept out as well. The friend let go and disappeared into the sea.”

He paused, then confessed that he had stood outside Robinson’s Mall as it was being looted. He was tempted to join in, but he did not. People were going crazy and smashing into stores, emptying them of their contents. A San Miguel Brewery warehouse was ransacked. He could see people trundling carts of stolen beer on their carts. At first, he and his family were able to fly out to Manila on a private jet owned by Willie “Wowowee” Nepumoceno through the intercession of a connected aunt who lived in Manila. They stayed for a while in her condo in Manila. When her sister, who worked for Mercury Drug was called back to work, she decided to return to Leyte, choosing Ormoc City as her temporary base. I asked him why she did not stay in Manila instead?

“She’s afraid of the big city,” he replied. He accompanied her back to Tacloban , together with their parents. His other family members, including a baby, remained behind in Manila.

****************************8

It was already dark, around 7 PM, when the Batucans arrived. The elderly Batucans worked at the department of Agrarian Reform. The matron looked weary and apologetic.

‘Pasensya ka na han pagmerhuwisyo,” (So sorry for imposing on you), she said. I eased them to their room. They seemed as relieved as their other relatives to have been able to make it this far away from Tacloban city, within the relative comfort and safety of a rented room.

Afterwards they went to the plaza to get a bite to eat. They came back an hour later.

‘We just bought barbeque chicken to go,” she said. “There was no room to sit. There are so many people.”

I gathered that they were eventually going to Danao City in Cebu. That was where the elderly Batucan was from. They were going back to Tacloban City only when the situation had normalized.

“That’s where my home and work is,” she said wistfully, almost in a bittersweet voice. . “ I don’t know where else I would work.” They lived in the V&G housing subdivision, a community that was relatively unscathed from the storm surge but was now under the grip of fear from marauding criminals and home invaders. She told me that, aside from their home in the subdivision, they had an apartment in the city. They were there when the storm started. A nurse who roomed with them rescued them and guided them to safety. Her daughters who were with her were both nurses as well. The future for them was not very clear.

After a prolonged relay by family members queuing at the fastcraft offices through the night, the Lastimadas and Batucans were finally able to leave for Cebu at ten in the morning. Sophia came running down the stairs and gaily announced: “We’re leaving! We’re leaving!”

I never saw such gratitude expressed in not so many words but with looks and smiles on their faces as they left to join their ship for Cebu. Sure, they paid me for the accommodations, but their thank-you’s were priceless.

They had the looks of people who had just stepped back from the abyss.

*****************************

On the same day, in the afternoon, after the two families had left, there was a knock at the gate.

A gentleman and a young man, presumably his son, stood outside. I noticed the line of people outside queueing to withdraw from the ATM at the Land Bank. There were no functioning banks in Tacloban city and its environs. The ATM’s there were smashed and looted. Just round the corner, in the same building beside my house, there was another queue in front of the Mercury Drug store. There are two Mercury Drug store branches in Ormoc City. There were five or six in Tacloban City. All of them were ransacked and looted. An apologist for the looters was quoted in the newspapers as saying that desperately hungry people were justified in looting the stores. Looting for food, I can understand, but baby diapers and 40-inch flat screen TV’s? Without a doubt, greed, not desperation, was at work there. Without effective police or military protection, the result was anarchy. I heard that the military was now starting to assert itself in Tacloban City, effectively putting it under martial law.

“Can we please rent a room for the night,” said the man. “We need a place to rest. We are priority number 1500 in the hydrofoil to Cebu.”

“How did you learn about me?” I asked.

“A woman told us about your place, the house with the red gate behind Land Bank. They stayed with you last night.”

Naturally I agreed. He left to fetch his family and half an hour later I showed them to their room. They had a son and a daughter.

“I was going to send my family to Manila and stay behind and watch the house in baras but they wouldn’t let me,” explained the gentleman. Are we safe here?”

I assured him that it was. ”My children have become anxious about noises ouside,” he said.

Slowly I pieced the family’s story.

The man was originally from Guian and now lived with his family in Baras, in Tacloban city, an area that was smack in the path of the storm surge. He was in Manila when the storm happened. In Baras, his wife and two kids, a boy and a girl, were nearly caught in the floodwaters and managed to escape to the roof. The girl fell into the water but was urged up into the roof by her mother and brother. She suffered deep cuts and bruises. After the storm, they went to escape to the town of Alang-alang. There they were terrified of reports that some armed men were knocking on doors and looking for well-to-do people from which to extort money or otherwise do harm upon. Meanwhile, in Manila, the husband wangled a seat on a C-130 flight from Manila and proceeded immediately to Alang Alang. He was intending to stay behind to watch after their house, but his family nixed the idea, so they rented a van and went to Ormoc instead . From there they would take a hydrofoil to Cebu and eventually Manila.

Once inside their room, the wife and kids stayed inside all day. When the hm husband would go out for a while, th kids would call out to him in concern, if not panic: “Dad? Dad?”

A van driven by the husband of the wife’s sister was supposed to fetch them in Ormo and bring them to Davao. It turned out that the brother-in-law had family stranded in Tacloban City whom he was going to rescue as well and bring to Davao. That meant that my guests would have to return to Tacloban City, a city they had just escaped from, back to the dragon’s lair, so to speak. They would then take the route to Southern Leyte via the decimated towns of Palo and Tanauan.

From the jaws of hell and back again. Just like in the movies.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Not long after my Davao-bound guests had made themselves confortable in my home, there was another knock on the gate. My househelp Veny opened it, listened to whoever was there and came back to me.

“These girls want to rent a room….for seventeen people,” she announced.

I gulped.

“Seventeen?”

“Just talk to them,” said Veny.

I went out. A young woman who had obviously done some travelling looked me with anxious eyes.

“Sir,” can we please rent a room in your house?” she asked.

“And how many would you be in your party?” I asked.

“Seventeen,” she replied. We have four kids, sir, please for their sake, rent us the room.”

“Why don’t you go to a hotel?” I asked.

“We would if there was any room available. There’s none. Please sir.”

“ I have two rooms that could hold ten people, but seventeen…” I replied doubtfully. “You’re too many.”

“We just need rooms for the kids and their nannies, sir. We don’t care about ourselves.”

Her pleas felt so heartfelt and desperate that I answered: “Come back later, I’ll see what I can do.”

I talked to my niece-in-law Erma about the seventeen people wanting to stay the night with us.

“That’s a lot of people,” she said.

Later, I talked to my nephew Butch about the situation. He had the same reservation. I knew they were leery about taking in guests in to the house, basically strangers. There had been a rumor that brigands disguised as beggars or destitute were knocking on doors in Tacloban. Once the door was opened, they would stage a home invasion and rob, if not kill, the occupants of the house.

I took a pause and sat down on the sofa facing the gilded wooden bust of the Enlightened Buddha that I had bought and laboriously shipped from Koh Samui, Thailand here to my hometown. My mind turned back to one of the shocking revelations I heard about the storm surge in the Palo-Tacloban area.

During the course of my conversations with the first guests in my house, the Lastimadas and the Batucans, they noted my fluency in the Waray dialect. I explained to them that I studied at theSacred Heart Seminary in Palo for eight years, hence my familiarity with Waray. Despite barely speaking a word of it in the years after I left the seminary, the knowledge never left me. They asked me if I knew the late Monsignor Estanislao Abarca. Of course I did, I said. And Avestruz? Years below me, I replied. The sisters it turned out were from Barugo, a town I had occasion to visit many times as a seminariwan.

“And how is the seminary in Palo? Was it affected by the typhoon?” I asked quite disingenuously.

They looked at me with stricken faces.

“It’s totally destroyed,” said one. “ The waves went over it. Bodies were seen on the rooftop.”

If I remember rightly, the seminary had three floors. The first floor housed the classrooms and the two upper floors housed the dormitories.

“On the roofop?” I uttered incredulously. “Were there students there at the time?”

“There must have been,” said a woman. “They had classes, or they were staying there since it was the start of the semester.”

I fell silent. An institution which was practically my home for eights years studying Latin, music, philosophy and theology: gone, its scholars dead, perhaps those bloated corpses reportedly on rooftops. The sea was distant enough from the school to discount any storm surge reaching it. But evidently, a tidal wave did reach it, as well as most of Palo. What kind of providence was at work here, divine or demonic?

I decided to accommodate the troupe of seventeen in my home. I dedicated this act to any dead seminarian from my former alma mater.

Somehow they fit into three rooms. I had given up my room and slept in my studio downstairs. When I agreed to let them in, the girls clasped their hands in gratitude. I never saw such desperation in their eyes followed by gratitude for my willingness to accommodate. Ironically, I was housing an old man who was a retired seaman. His three sons were working on ships and were abroad at the moment, probably out their mind with worry. You see these were their kids and wives who I was giving shelter to. Back in Tacloban they all lived in a compound that the storm had destroyed.

Whatever it was they were fleeing was to horrible for me to imagine. Ormoc has painful memories of the 1991 flood where thousands were killed as well. Now, although house were destroyed, few lives were lost. Not so in Tacloban. This is something I wish I never had to deal with, ever, in my life.

*************************

This morning I served coffee to a group of travelers who had come in the night from Davao and intended to drive to Tacloban to fetch family members of Armand Dacuycuy of Davao. Armand was the brother in law of the wife , a Mrs. Yu, of Alang Alang, He had driven in a two car Toyota Grandia caravan for eight hours from Davao City to the ferry point in Matina.. They had intended to do the crossing over the Surigao strait and into Leyte at 10 AM and arrive in Ormoc by noon, but the relief trucks bearing food and and supplies for the stricken people of Leyte and Samar were given priority on the ferries. They were only able to load their vans at 2 in the afternoon. By the time they arrived in Ormoc, it was already 7 PM and quite dark.I had a discussion earlier with Enrique and his wife. They were hesitant to go back to Tacloban, but they had no choice as they were just riding along. Armand had an important mission, and that was to save his own kin and bring them to Davao.

At the very least, I said, try to tell him not to travel tonight but at dawn or early morning. Better safe than sorry.

They would try, they said.

As it turned out, Armand had decided to stay for the night and drive in the early dawn because the drivers were exhausted from the long drive.

So I gave them a room to stay in the house free of charge.

In the early morning I boiled water for coffee at 3 AM.

Armand came down and I offered him and the rest coffee which he accepted.

They had decided to go early, Armand said.

We got to talking. It transpired that he used to be a member of the Kalipayan dance troupe. This was a famous and internationally well-travelled dance troupe based in Tanauan, Leyte, one of the hardest-hit in the storm surge.

“Does it still exist?’ I asked him, meaning the Kalipayan Dance Troupe, not Tanauan.

“Yes, but the director is already old,” he replied.

He knew a few of the same people I knew: Tex Almeria, Fr. Aguilos, the late Fr. Ben Bacierra.

“We had the same kind of typhoon in Davao, Typhoon Goring,” he said. “My business suffered a lot. But Yolanda was definitely stronger. “

Later they left in a convoy of two Grandia Toyotas. I bade them bon voyage and not to stop for anybody on the road.

*******************

Mang Pilang Arradaza lived in Tondo, Bagong Buhay, outside Ormoc City proper. This is near our family rice farm. She was seventy years old and sold native rice cakes for a living. She lived in a ramshackle house made of cement blocks and wood. She was fond of her house, even if it was not soundly constructed. Before the storm hit, her children urged her to move out of the house and seek shelter in a safer building. She refused. She considered the house strong enough for her. Besides, at seventy, she had seen her fair share of typhoons and not one managed to injure her. Her home had gone through unscathed. What was different about this one?

After the storm, they looked for her. They found her lifeless body crushed, pinned down by the rafters of her home that had collapsed on her.

********************

Here’s one thing that our no-electric power situation after typhoon Yolanda has taught me:

without electricity, man’s current veneer of acquired civilization, his world of the internet, ipads, iphones, frozen foods and illumination on demand falls apart like a deck of cards. What is left staring him in the face are the stark basics: the need for food, shelter and clothing. When you sweep away the need for TV, a laptop or Netflix, these are the needs that remain and that you must fulfill in order to survive. Then: family and, if you’re religious, God.

*******************************

Books I’ve read during this month of no electricity: “Doctor Sleep” by Stephen King, “The Blue Hour” by Jefferson T. Parker, “A Tidewater Morning” by William Styron, “The Alchemist”, by Paolo Coelho, the volume on The Renaissance by Will Durant. Currently halfway through Tolstoy’s “War and Peace”…an amazing achievement by my reckoning. Reading it is not nearly the chore that I thought it would be. It helps that I have been to its main location, St. Petersburg, Russia. Simultaneously reading “The Age of Napoleon” by Will Durant on my iPad. The Napoleonic age seen from two different sides: the Russian and the French. Illuminating. In the days of complete darkness (we have streetlights now), I studied the stars. Ask me what those stars are now and I’ll tell you what they are: Betelgeuse, Bellatrix, Sirius, Jupiter, Andromeda etc… I am inching towards the concluding chapters of my third novel, "The Time Breathers". I am also working on a symphonic piece for chorus and orchestra, a Requiem for the people who died in this storm and the 1991 Ormoc floods. In my own way I will remember those who lost their lives needlessly and are now buried in anonymous mass graves. Strange how having been deprived of power and the internet, I now have all this free time to read, contemplate and create.

REVIEW: DINGDONG FIEL PIANO CONCERT, ORMOC VILLA HOTEL, 4 MAY 2013

2013-05-04T10:54:00.001-06:00

Although I am from Ormoc City, I had never heard of the pianist Dingdong Fiel until a couple of weeks ago, on Facebook. I put this mainly to the fact that I have been abroad for the past five years and have only come home to roost back in my hometown in the past month or so. Also I am sure Dingdong had been busy building up his pianism and musical reputation in the past couple of years both in the Philippines and abroad. Hence the lacuna in my recognizing a pianist who happens to come from one of the oldest families in Ormoc, the Fiels.
     When I read his FB resume prior to his concert on May 4, 2013, my interest was piqued when it mentioned that he graduated from the UST conservatory and was a pupil of the late Ms. Erlinda Fule. I also studied at UST, in the Central Seminary back in the '70's, and, while there, I cross-enrolled at the UST conservatory and took a few piano lessons with the said Ms. Fule. I didn't last long with her, because like any self-respecting classical purist, she used to yell into my ear whenever I played Mozart with jazz accents. She was also my teacher in harmony, and the way she stretched her writing arm and made her joints crackle was legendary among us students.
So, yes, even if Dingdong just played 'Ding Dong the Witch is Dead", I would still attend the concert to find what the late Ms. Fule had wrought. From what I eventually heard, she did well by him, or him by her.
Before presenting my thoughts on his concert, let me present my thoughts on what went on before the concert itself.
A cursory examination of the programme told me that this recital was going to be a heavy-hitter. Any concert that featured Liszt's "Tarantella" and Beethoven's "Appasionata" sonata was either overly ambitious or challenging the attention span of the audience. On the other hand, the presence of a grand piano onstage jolted me out of my low expectations. I had never seen a concert grand before in Ormoc City, so I figured that Dingdong and the organizers meant business.
In true provincial Philippine fashion, the concert started with a prayer. I was expecting a priest or a minister to deliver an invocation to God Almighty, but that notion of mine was disabused when they actually started playing a recording of "The Prayer", that Celine Dion-Andrea Bocelli home run hit. The audience dutifully stood while the song played on the PA. Normally the invocation, such as it was, would be immediately followed by a playing of the Philippine National Anthem but what followed was actually a projected video of the Philippine Anthem that was prefaced by a tableau of killings, namely, the killing of Magellan at the hands of Lapu-lapu, the garroting of the rebel priests Gomez, Burgos and Zamora, the bloody KKK revolution, and finally the execution of Dr. Jose Rizal. Over Rizal's dead body, the camera panned out to a triumphant rendition of "Bayang Magiliw". A slightly bizarre introduction to an evening of Liszt, Chopin et al. you might say, but, to me,as a native Ormocanon, there was also an attitude of sweetness and goodwill on the proceedings, not least because I had the chance to meet once again my local friends. One of the concertgoers was a classmate of mine whom I hadn't seen since 1965!
    The concert, and the pianist Dingdong Fiel, was a revelation. When Dingdong walked onstage in a dark suit, you could mistake him for a sweet-looking nerd with glasses and a somewhat diffident smile. You would be wrong. Because when he launched into his first piece, Debussy's "Fireworks", I realized he had the strength of a horse and the delicacy of a hummingbird. The pieces that he \chose to play where not the usual potboilers, but knuckle-busters like Liszt's "Tarantella". Chopin's 3 preludes, Rachmanninoff's Moment Musical #4, Scarlatti's 3 sonatas and Beethoven's "Appasionata" Sonata. These were muscular pieces that only an athletic pianist could play. This is where I thought the spirit of Ms. Fule hovered over the piano: in Dingdong's muscular, yet delicate fingerwork. Ms. Fule, as I recall, inspired a certain muscular technique in her students. I heard that she even advised a protegee to lift barbells to strengthen his fingers. Of course, Mr. Fiel, as his resume reveals, eventually had other teachers in Europe, but I'm sure his UST Conservatory schooling gave him the solid foundations for his technique and pianistic expressiveness.
    It was in his playing of the Chopin's "Raindrop Prelude", the Scarlatti Sonatas, and Chopin's Nocturne in C#minor that Dingdong impressed me. For, contrary to popular impression, the hardest piano pieces to play are the slow, thoughtful ones such as the "Raindrop" Prelude. This requires a lot of restraint and delineation of interwoven melodies. Dingdong had this restraint and clarity in the enunciation of this melancholy, and somewhat lugubrious, prelude. He also played Scarlatti's more cheerful sonatas with the clarity that they demanded so that they sparkled like little jewels in his hand. As for the Chopin nocturne, which was used in the movie "The Pianist", he gave this piece a thoughtful, unrushed reading.
   Mr. Fiel's final piece was the first movement of the "Appasionata" sonata of Beethoven. This sonata was one of the last five Beethoven wrote before his death, and is considered one of the hardest to play. Dingdong made short work of this, of course, a testament to his prodigious technique, and a tribute to whatever influence his later studies in Germany might have given him.
     For an encore, Dingdong played Rachmaninoff's " Prelude in C#minor", and if he suffered a few missed notes here and there, I probably would put it to the onset of exhaustion (yes, pianists and performers do get tired, even if what they do looks so easy to the uninitiated).
    Normally, in my experience, the end of the concert is where the audience goes wild, gives the artist a standing ovation, shouts "Bravos!", throws roses at Dingdong, brings down the confetti, etc. But since this was Ormoc, whose audiences I know so well, there was none of the sort. Well, after the Beethoven Sonata, people did stand up and cheer the homecoming son of Ormoc. Then they sat down for an encore, and remained seated after it. There was one round of polite applause and a plea for another encore (not heeded) then a post-concert session of "Thank You's" from the organizers of the event, followed by an awarding of a plaque of appreciation to the artist, who, it was announced, played "Gratis et Amore" to benefit a scholarship fund. Ormoc audiences are generally conservative. One woman once confessed to me apropos a past concert I did in the same venue that she wanted to stand up and applaud, but she was afraid of what people might think and didn't want to be the first to stand up.
     However, I could tell that the audience of Ormocanons was enraptured by Dingdong's virtually flawless performance and I'm sure pretty proud to count such a fine artist to be a son of Ormoc City, Leyte. In a season of noisy and tawdry politicking, not to mention almost unbearable summer heat, Dingdong's concert was a breath of fresh air in a city that seldom sees presentations of this sort.

DON PU SOI'S TREASURE ( A SHORT STORY)

2013-04-09T10:12:00.000-06:00

PART ONE - THE LEGEND

Rene Quinto had always heard the story since he was old enough to know his left hand from his right. There was a treasure buried under the foundations of his wife Clara's family's ancestral home, the one which, by virtue of her being the eldest daughter, they now made their residence.
This was one of those old classic Philippine houses called bahay na bato, the type built during the Spanish colonial times by men who were wealthier than the rest of their neighbors. The house had two levels. The first level had supporting walls of blocks of coral. It had a hard-packed earthen floor. In olden times, the produce of the fields were stored here: sacks of rice stacked to the ceiling; bales of tobacco and demijohns of coconut vinegar; jars of rice wine and dried copra. Here the carriage was parked, and when that horse-drawn conveyance's usefulness had passed, the automobile. The smell of that dark space was dank, earthy and appetizing at the same time.
That was then, back in the 18th century, when this house was built. Subsequent heirs to the house had subdivided it into smaller rooms. One room housed the maids. Another was the sports room, equipped with a billiards and a mahjjong table. A larger space had been turned into a lanai with sliding glass doors that led out to the back lawn beside the stream that flowed behind the property. Clara loved orchids, so she planted them in profusion everywhere there were branches or tree ferns to hang on to.
Clara's family was of consequence in those days. Her great grandfather had been a Chinese adventurer named Pu Soi from Amoy China. He had journeyed from Amoy across the straits to Taiwan, then called Formosa, and from there made his way to the northern tip of Luzon. After a year of wandering, he eventually found himself in the island of Leyte,in the town of Ormoc. Back then Ormoc was really just a village with a large Catholic church built of the same coral from the island across the bay and elsewhere on the mainland.The church served both as a place of worship and as a fortress in which the locals huddled to protect themselves from the marauding Moro pirates who swooped in periodically from the sea. The red volcanic earth of Ormoc proved ideal for the cultivation of sugar cane. Pu Soi had some expertise in the boiling of cane juice and spinning it into muscovado, that dark-brown sweet sludge that hardened into sugar, packed into coconut shells or shaped into cones. He found employment in one of the small sugar mills, known as intusan outside the town. He also sold bolos and other farming implements to the local farmers on credit. When the farmers couldn't pay their debts, Pu Soi, a very shrewd businessman despite his impecunious appearance, accepted small bits of land as payment for their debts. In this manner, he amassed a considerable number of tracts of farmland which he leased back to their original owners, effectively making them his tenants. Thus began the wealth of Pu-Soi, whose name was later simplified into the unflattering Visayan word "pusoy" by disgruntled debtors. Although this hardly applied to the Chinaman, "pusoy" meant "loser".
Enriched with money contributed by the poor people of the land, Pu Soi decided to build a house in Ormoc. He decided that it would be grander than the gobernadorcillo's. On the first floor he had for retaining walls coral stone hewn from the rocky cliffs of Camotes island facing the town across the bay. The blocks were laboriously floated across the dangerous tides of Ormoc bay on a gigantic barge of wood and bamboo lashed with abaca rope, to the people's astonishment. For the flooring and beams of the second floor he procured sturdy mahogany and ebony trees logged from the thickly-forested Magsanga mountains on the opposite arc of the bay. He had obtained, through the usual means, a good-sized piece of land outside of Muelle Can-Adieng, across the stone bridge spanning one of the two rivers that bisected Ormoc City. The house was on an intersection facing the sea beside the road leading to the cemetery. A fast brook ran behind the property, a ready source of water for laundry and other household duties. During Pu-Soi's era, the water in that stream had been pure and clean, originating as it did from the virgin forests above the city. Now, it was dirty, polluted by the garbage of squatters who had begun occupying and defecating on the banks upstream.
The years after Pu Soi died saw Ormoc and the entire Philippines, first in the grip of the Philippine revolt, then the American occupation, followed by the disastrous Japanese occupation during World War Two. This period also saw the house that Don Pu Soi built rise up in magnificence and fall into inevitable decay. With it went the fortunes of the Pu Soi family. The axiom that the first generation builds wealth, the second one expands it, and the third one wastes it stood true for the Pusoy family. A series of calamities both natural and man- made had deprived the family of their lands and wealth. Now all that remained was the bahay na bato and with it the legend of its buried treasure.

Rene sat with a forlorn air on a chair in their back lawn. He had just signed away the last bit of land he owned in the sitio of Oac to a land developer. He was in a large measure responsible for the loss of their properties.For Rene was an inveterate gambler. He bet and lost thousands of pesos on cockfights. He also had a passion for the Chinese game of mahjongg. He frequented casinos in Cebu and Manila and contributed a lot to those establishments' coffers. He borrowed money to cover his losses and put up his properties as collateral. His wife, accustomed to a life of luxury, did not realize how much they owed until they received a notice of eviction from the bank. Rene, it turned out, had collateralized their ancestral home without his wife's knowledge. It was only by dint of the efforts of an infuriated and panicking Clara that they were able to save the home.She swallowed her pride and borrowed money from her two younger brothers, Frankie and Aaron, who, despite the loss of their great wealth, still managed to support themselves quite well as professional cockfighters. They were openly contemptuous of Rene's run of bad luck in business and gambling.
"We warned you," they told her.
"Please, we'll lose the house if we can't make payment by next week," Clara had pleaded. "This is our ancestral house, remember?"
"It's your house now so what do we care?"
"I'll give up the rest of my share of papa's land in Mahayahay."
"Done."
__________________

Rene looked up when Clara joined to sit beside him .
As they sat in the backyard lawn overlooking the creek, they took stock of their situation.
"I'll make it up to you, inday, I promise," said Rene.
Clara's plain face was pale and ashen. She gave him a cold, unsmiling look.
"You've said that so many times if I got paid every time you said it, I could spend the rest of my life shopping in Hongkong."
Rene did not reply to her rebuke. He understood his wife's disappointment. There was no use arguing with her.
A rooster perched on the roof of his small shed crowed confidently to the world. Rene had planned to enter him in next month's derby in Valencia, the town near Ormoc that had a large cockfighting arena frequented by many wealthy breeders from all over the Visayas region. That plan was now in the gutter.
"I should just wring that rooster's neck and make a stew out if it tonight," remarked Clara bitterly as she rose up to leave him on the lawn.
Rene said nothing. He knew he was guilty: guilty of losing thousands of pesos three derbies in a row, guilty of taking out too many loans from the banks, guilty of not thinking enough about what her wife would say when she found out that instead of paying back the loans as he promised her, he had spent the money they obtained from the bank at the Waterfront Casino in Cebu. What a disastrous night that was!
There has to be a way, he thought.
He looked at the old house. They had given it a fresh coat of white paint but that didn't disguise its dilapidated condition. One hundred years had been unkind to the ancient relic. He had suggested that they tear it down and build a modern house in its place. Clara would hear nothing of it. It was her ancestral home. What would her younger brothers say? She would hear no end of their jeering and "I-told-you-so's'". The bahay na bato stayed the way it was, creaky, decrepit and sinking slowly into the ground.
He looked with leaden eyes at the rooster as it strutted across the lawn.
Then a thought struck him.
"I wonder..?"
He broached the topic to Clara at supper.
"Are you mad?"she shrieked at him. The maid nearly dropped a tureen of the chicken soup she was serving. She fled into the kitchen as soon as she had laid down the bowl, fearful of getting in the line of Clara's fury.
"I'll make sure it will be done properly," said Rene soothingly. "I'll ask Alfredo to supervise the excavation."
"That doddering old fool? What does he know about digging up a house? And that idea of yours....que barbaridad! I won't have it. Who knows if the house will collapse after you've dug around it?"
"If for nothing else," persisted Rene,"we can verify the truth of that cursed story. It's been driving me crazy the way people keep mentioning it to me. We should at least explore the possibility of the treasure under this house.If we find it, then who knows? That can certainly help us, considering that Gondoy wants to study in UP."

Gondoy was their only son who was in Cebu at the moment but was scheduled to arrive in a day or two for vacation.

"I will have to ask my brothers," said Clara, softening up a bit but still skeptical of the proposed enterprise.
"Why tell them?" asked Rene. " We'll keep it a secret. We'll just say we're having the house renovated. Surely they can't object to that. And they don't own the house. You do."

Clara stared at Rene. Her plain face looked even plainer when she did not wear any makeup. To Rene, she looked like a woman whose every joy and happiness had been sucked out, and in its stead was a stranger he identified as his wife, but not as his lover. Thank goodness for Mercedes, he thought, the obliging young fifteen year old maid. Otherwise, he would have to content himself with the prostitutes in La Suerte massage parlor, none of whom were too shy about broadcasting the identity of the men who patronized their establishment.
"Well," Clara finally said," I suppose there's no harm in trying to find out the truth."
Thus encouraged, Rene called up Alfredo, the white-haired, dark-complexioned and parchment-skinned land surveyor who doubled as an architect, a not very good one. He was just two years shy of seventy and, as Clara had stated, a doddering old fool.
"What a wonderful idea!" cried Alfredo. "Dig up under the house to find the Pusoy treasure!"
The surveyor paused to puff on a foul smelling cigar then said:
"And what will be my share if we succeed in digging up your treasure?"
Rene looked at Alfredo with a wounded look in his eyes.
"You know I'm going to take care of you."
"Good enough for me," said Alfredo. "When do we start digging?"
___________________________

The legend of Pu Soi's treasure went like this: When Pu Soi built the house, he was said to have secretly buried a number of Spanish gold coins in the foundations of the house. This was to insure that his household would continue to enjoy prosperity in the future. Nobody   knew how much gold he buried or whether he really did bury them because it was such a long time ago. However, considering how the Chinese were such a superstitious people, obsessed with feng shui and good (or bad) luck as they were, the people of Ormoc believed that there had to some truth to the legend. Additionally, it was also rumored that the old Chinese had, over time, buried several boxes containing coins and other valuables as a hedge against bad times, such as getting robbed or attacked by sea-borne pirates. In the end, nobody dared make any attempt to dig up the alleged treasure. For like most treasures, it had a curse attached to it. A verse in the Visayan dialect floated around that was purported to be the Pusoy curse. It said:

                      Kung imong kawaton
                     Ang itlog nga gilumlum
           Mangisog ang pusoy
                     Ug sa itlog bitayon.
Roughly translated, it meant:

                    If you go stealing
           The egg incubating
                     Pusoy will get mad
                     And hang you by your gonad.

This could have applied to other situations,of course, since pusoy meant somebody who was luckless or a loser in general. It could, for example, have been a metaphorical warning to a man not to steal somebody else's wife or else suffer undesirable consequences. It could also have been an actual warning not to steal the eggs laid by someone's hens in those woven baskets that used to hang on people's rafters before the invention of hatcheries. Over time, the people of Ormoc accepted this rhyme as the language of the curse. No man, (for most thieves were, with some exceptions, men), risked losing their balls over a pot of gold, real or not.

__________________________________

Alfredo recruited two laborers to do the digging.
"Where shall we begin?" Alfredo asked Rene. Looking on was a skeptical Clara. She had sworn the maids to secrecy until it was proven that there was in fact treasure under the old house.
"The west side seems a good place to start," said Rene, "the side nearest the stream. Nobody can see us from there."
The stream itself was several feet below the foundations of the house. A cement dike had been built to buttress the banks, so even during typhoons and heavy rains, the house itself was safe from the rampaging flood.
Alfredo located the foundational posts and determined where to dig. The men shovelled the earth slowly and methodically. They piled the earth they had extracted outside in the lawn. They buttressed the pits with rocks and cement blocks. They were not about to let the house collapse on them.
What they discovered upon digging was that the posts had been sunk deeper into the earth than they had imagined. In fact it seemed that old man Pu Soi had uprooted entire trees and buried them halfway down the earth.
Alfredo shook his head.
"We have to dig deeper," he said. " This is harder than I thought. We may have to tunnel down at right angles."
Rene looked at Alfredo with determination in his eyes and said: " Do it".
He was thinking of the banks to whom he had collateralized the house, ready to pounce on it when he missed his payments. He was thinking of Clara's demonic brothers who were as arrogant and unhelpful as can be. He was thinking of the people of Ormoc who at this moment were making fun of him and his misfortunes. There had to be gold under the house. He must find it if only to prove them wrong.

On the second day of the excavations, Gondoy, the son, arrived from Cebu City. He was tall for eighteen, fed as he was with a diet of fastfood and sugary drinks. He had an absent air about him, as if he'd rather be in a different century than in the one he was living in. He was taken aback by the upturned soil and general mess.
"But why, dad?" he protested. "Everybody knows that's just a legend."
"Don't tell me what to do, " replied Rene testily. " I'm doing this for you".
Gondoy was studying architecture at San Carlos University in Cebu, but what he really wanted to do was study music at the University of the Philippines in Dilliman, Quezon City. Rene and Clara tried to dissuade him from pursuing that line of study because they knew that there was no money in it. Gondoy was adamant. They had relented and agreed to enroll him next year, with the implied promise by Gondoy to return to a more fruitful line of studies, say, accounting, if music turned out to be a dead end. For this of course, they needed money. Manila was not a cheap place by any measure.
Gondoy shut his mouth and locked himself in his room listening to Beethoven.
The men continued digging, carefully buttressing the trenches to prevent soil collapse. On the third day of the dig, one of the men struck something metallic. They all excitedly rushed to find out what it was. It turned out to be a ceramic bottle of 19th century gin, its contents long gone. Perhaps the workers on the original building had drunk from it.
Alfrdo sadly shook his head. Rene looked away annoyed. Clara looked disgusted. She had hoped it was a piece of jewelry.
"I think we should stop this now " she hissed.
"Just a few days more, mahal " Rene pleaded.
"Three days more, " she agreed," but after that, you must cover those holes again."
The dig continued.
Gondoy would venture out of his room now and then and observe the doings of the men with a frown on his face, but otherwise he kept his peace.
****************
On the fourth day of the dig, one of the men let out a yell.
He held something up for the others to see.
It was discolored green, but there was no mistaking what it was: a coin that had somehow escaped corrosion.
With trembling fingers Rene rubbed off the clay encrusting the coin . Through the oxidized surface and grime he could make out the figure of a woman with a torch and a shield. On one side of the coin were the words: Firme y feliz. On the other side: Por la Union.
Trembling with excitement, and feeling extremely vindicated, he rushed up to the second floor, to their bedroom, and startled Clara who had just come out of the shower.
"Look, Clara!" His voice came out in a dusky hiss. "Look what we found!"
He handed here the black coin.
"Is that what I think it is?" cried Clara.
"The story is true," he replied, breathing heavily.
Clara peered closely at the coin, then gave her husband a stern look:
"So what are you waiting for?" she said. "Find the rest of them!"

                                END OF PART ONE

PART TWO - THE FLOOD

How does a rumor start? It starts with somebody telling his wife about finding an old Spanish coin while excavating the earth under the old Pu Soi mansion. That somebody was the architect of the dig, the white-haired engineer Alfredo, who confessed to his wife about the discovery. His wife, unable to hold a secret, had announced the finding of the coin to her mahjong partners, who promised to keep their mouths shut. They in turn told their family members about the discovery of not one, but several coins, nay, a chest of gold coins, under the Pu Soi house.

It was not long before Clara’s own brothers finally heard about the discovery of treasure under their ancestral home. They were livid with anger, not so much because Rene and Clara did not tell them about the did, but that they found something that could make them wealthier than anyone else in Ormoc. On the sixth day of the dig, they came to Clara’s house unannounced. They insisted on entering and looking at the dig, despite Rene’s protestations.

“My God!” blurted Frankie. “What have you done here?”

“And where is this treasure I’m hearing about?” demanded Aaron.

‘Come up and we’ll talk about it,” said Rene. Clara’s face was pale with apprehension. She knew what her brothers were capable of.

“You have a lot of talking to do, that’s for sure,” warned Frankie.

“Look,” said Rene,” we were only digging to see if the legend was true. Yes, we should have told you earlier, but we were concerned that if nothing came to light, it would not go down very well.”

“But you found the treasure, right?” asked Aaron with some eagerness in his voice.

“We found a coin," confessed Rene. " It’s an old silver Spanish coin. We haven’t found anything else yet.”

“A Geiger counter would help a lot,” suggested Aaron.

“And you’ll tell us if you do find the rest of the treasure, right?" asked Frankie sternly.

“Of course,” said Rene “Isn’t that right, mahal?”

“Of course,” said Clara in a voice that was close to a disappointed whisper. She was right all along. She should have told her brothers. Now the cat was out of the bag.

Before departing, Frankie said: “We’ll keep tabs on the dig. We will know when you really find something more. Depend on it.”

When Rene, feeling like a dog with its tail between its legs, went down to the dig, he was surprised to see his son Gondoy standing there in his overalls. His hand clutched a spade.

“What are you going to do with that spade,Gondoy?” he asked.

“Yes, son,” chimed in Clara, “ what are you going to do with that?”

“I heard what my uncles said,” Gondoy replied. “ I am going to help you find that treasure once and for all!”

Despite Rene’s admonition, even orders, Gondoy would not be dissuaded. He took his place among the other two diggers and proceeded to dig and dig and dig till he flopped down, exhausted. So far they had not uncovered anything aside from the Spanish coin. Nothing but dirt and an increasing sense that the whole town of Ormoc was now scrutinizing their enterprise with ever more growing suspicion and obtrusiveness.

    Even the DENR got wind of the   enterprise and sent a representative to check on their activities. Rene was more successful this time in preventing him from entering the house.

“It’s my private property,” he yelled at the DENR representative, a thin man with sun-burned skin and glasses that perched precariously on the edge of his equally thin nose. He did not seem to flinch at Rene’s show of temper. He had confronted illegal loggers in the upland forests who threatened him with something worse than a scolding.

“Nevertheless, Mr. Quinto,” said the DENR man, “ if you are digging under your house for whatever reason, you will be compromising the land around you. “

Clara came out and joined in Rene’s protests.

“We’re not doing anything wrong!” she cried. “Leave us alone!”

The DENR man raised his right hand to calm the couple.
“As you wish, but you have been warned,” said the environmental representative and left.

As they went upstairs, Clara sighed.

“He’s right, you know,” she said.

“About what?” asked Rene.

“This dig. It’s destroying us. One coin, that’s all we have. Let’s cover the pits before they swallow this house.”

“No!”

The sound did not come from either of them. It came from their son Gondoy, who had overheard what they said as he came up the stairs from the dig.

“We cannot stop until we find the treasure,” he insisted.

Rene stared at his son with surprise. He did not realize he cared that much.

“There has to be something there,” continued Gondoy.

“There is nothing there,” replied his mother.

“How about you, father,” asked Gondoy, throwing his father a fierce look. “What do you think?”

His father looked out the window. It had suddenly grown dark, and he could hear thunder in the mountains. Rain started to fall in little drops, then invaded the room, propelled by gusts of  wind.

“Edna!” yelled Clara at her maid. “ Close the windows! It’s raining!”

The maids bustled into the room and closed the capiz-shell windows. The rain beat a tattoo against them. It was going to be a wet night.

“We’ll stop the dig,” said Rene. “I’ll tell the boys to go home to rest and come back tomorrow so we can properly cover up the pits.”

Gondoy sniffed in disappointment and turned briskly into his room, slamming the door behind him.

“I’ll go tell Alfredo to stop now,” said Rene as he made his way downstairs. He barely gave a glance at his wife, such was his disappointment at his decision, the only sane one that he could make given his wife's discouraging opinion, the unholy interest that his dig was whipping up in Ormoc, the brothers' meddling, and most of all, his wish not to see his son Gondoy digging in the earth anymore , but playing a Chopin polonaise on a Steinway Grand.

++++++++++++++++++++++

That night, the rain fell with a ferocity that the people of Ormoc hadn’t experienced in a long time. In fact, only those who were alive and conscious fifty years ago would have realized on hindsight that there was such a rain then which caused immense floods, but no casualties. At that time, Ormoc was just little more than a sugar depot and the trees in the mountains had not been logged almost to extinction. Now things were different. There were more people living in the city. The old-growth trees that soaked up the rainwater and prevented flooding had been cut for timber and exported to Japan and the US. Ormoc, with its twin rivers that described its western and eastern approaches still had second-growth trees that grew scantily amid the burnt-out kaingin patches that allowed rainwater to slide over them and erode the hillsides.

The rain went on into the night and into a grey dawn. The colorless sky seemed to pour sheets of rain into the hapless city without let-up. The ground, soaked up with water, could no longer accept more. So cataracts fell into the two rivers and the numerous little creeks that snaked among the houses of the city, including the one that ran at the back of the Pusoy house .

It was the maid Edna who sounded the alarm with a heart-stopping shriek. Rene, Clara and Gondoy came rushing out of their rooms.

“What’s the matter, Edna?” demanded Clara.

“Senora,” sobbed the terrified maid,” the first floor! It’s flooded!”

They all rushed down to see floodwater starting to seep and collect into the pits that they had dug in the fruitless search for treasure.

“Madre de Dios!” cried Clara. “ We have to leave now!”

Rene looked out at the back and saw that the water of the creek had risen above the dikes and were now spilling rapidly into their back lawn and into the excavations. He watched in horror and fascination as the earth crumbled at the floodwater’s assault. If it went any further, the water would soften the foundations under the house and bring it crashing down.

“You’re right!” he agreed immediately. “We must tell everyone to go now!”

Outside their house, the floodwater was quickly rising, a phenomenon they had never seen before. If they could see what was happening in other parts of Ormoc, especially the sections closest to the rivers, they would have seen the same ominously rapid rise of the waters that, not properly controlled with dikes, was spilling out into higher ground. At one river, the Anilao, the rain had softened the earth upriver, causing it to collapse and create a temporary dam that threatened collapse at any moment, something that not a single soul in the city was aware of.

At the moment that all of them---maids, Clara, Rene—started piling into the Toyota van, Gondoy froze and looked back in the direction of the flooded first floor.

“What are you looking at?” demanded his hysterical mother.

“Yes,” asked Rene. "What is it?"

“I see something there,” said Gondoy, in a calm voice, despite the gusts of wind and the pelting rain.

“There is nothing there,” yelled Clara in panic,” it’s all going down!”

“What do you see, son?” asked Rene, his curiosity piqued despite his growing panic.

“That thing floating there, where we dug yesterday,” said Gondoy. Without waiting for a response, he quickly alighted from the van and waded into the flooded first floor. Clara shrieked in terror.

“Where are you going, Gondoy!” she cried.

“Wait here, Clara,” said Rene. “ I’m going to get him back.”

Rene jumped out of the van and went after Gondoy. The water was now waist-high.

“Gondoy! Where are you going?” he cried.

Gondoy looked back at him, pale and shaking with excitement.

“Don’t you see what I see? There!” he pointed at an object that was bobbing on the water.

Rene tried to focus his eyes in the dim light. It was a chest. A wooden chest with iron clasps. Pu Soi’s treasure. It could not have held anything else.

Gondoy lurched forward and tried to grab the side of the chest. Unfortunately, in his excitement, he had forgotten how deep the pits they had dug had been. He took one step and disappeared into the muddy water. Horrified, Rene paddled forward and tried to find his sunken son. Instead, he was able to grab hold of the clasp of the chest. Of his son, he saw no sign.

The water continued rising steadily, rapidly and remorselessly.

There is a meteorological phenomenon, often observed, which create disastrous results for any locality that was both near the sea and a river. This was the wedding of high tide and flood conditions. While a flooding river can, of itself, cause destruction, the addition of the sea rolling into that same river during high tide can create extraordinary flooding that can cause more death and destruction than normal.

Thus, on the morning that Rene Quinto had decided to terminate his search for the elusive Pu Soi treasure, the same morning that that the rain fell in such quantity that it caused the Pusoy creek to overflow and flood the excavations and surprisingly, wonderfully even, extricated and floated the chest that Gondoy saw and was convinced contained the fable Pu Soi treasure, the same morning where a despairing Rene saw his son Gondoy disappear in the swirl of muddy waters that invaded the pit-pocked soil beneath the Pu Soi mansion, on this morning, the waters of the Ormoc Bay and the waters of the rivers met. And as they met, the temporary dam that the fallen soil of the Anilao River had created up near its source, suddenly could not contain the weight of the collected waters anymore and collapsed, creating a tidal force that bore, not inland, but outward towards the roaring sea. When ocean and flood embrace, the force of their union tore trees from the banks, floated trucks, cars and giant container vans that rammed into houses and people, threw logs and debris into the roiling waters, broke huts and houses from their flimsy foundations and carried everything into the sea with one great, murderous rush.

The Pu Soi mansion that had stood a century in the same spot, its foundations weakened by Rene’s hapless digging, collapsed , its roof, walls and timber falling down on the Toyota van with the screaming Clara and her maids still in it. To add insult to injury, giant waves of the sea came in, borne by the magnetic pull of the moon. It boiled over the street fronting the Pusoy mansion and carried away its ruined heap, leaving nothing but a piece of muddy ground from which two or three ancient wooden pilings and portions of the coral wall remained. Thus did Pu Soi's bahay-na-bato, the grand mansion he built from money earned by selling goods and exploiting peasants, meet its end.

                                                  EPILOGUE

A week later after what they called the Ormoc Flood Tragedy, where close to eight thousand people perished in flashfloods and mudslides, with so many of the victims carried out willy-nilly into the sea and lost there forever, Rene’s body, bloated, decomposing and barely recognizable washed up on a beach one hundred twenty two kilometers away in Maasin. When they tried to open his rotted hand, they found, partially imbedded in the flesh, a rounded piece of rusty metal that was later determined to be a portion of a metal clasp that was part of a lock of a baul, or chest.

Of Gondoy, Clara and her maids, and even their Toyota van, no trace was ever found.

                                                                  THE END

Coming Home to Friends

2013-04-07T10:52:00.004-06:00

I am of that rapidly vanishing breed of people who believe that books are among man's best friends. They tell you of stories, of foreign lands and wondrous sights, and are great companions in your solitude. When I was a small kid growing up in this speck of a city in a speck of an island in a third world country blessed with eternal summer but cursed with eternal tyrants wearing disposable masks, I found a little book in the house my father had purchased that was left behind by a former occupant. It contained pictures of little mice and a snippet of a theme that turned out to be the Waltz from the Sleeping Beauty Ballet. That book opened my eyes to the world of beauty. I loved that book, Naturally I started reading more serious stuff. The ones that thrilled me most were travel books: titles like "Iberia" by James Michener (about Spain), "Aku-Aku" by Thor Heyerdahl (Easter island), and more National Geographic magazines than you can shake a pencil at. Now I am back home, back where I started dreaming of going to see castles in Spain, the statues of Easter Island and the dome of St. Peter's. The same books that I read and that inspired me are still there, a bit dusty and mostly unread. I pick them up and try to tell them, as one tries to tell friends, that I've gone to all the places they told me about and that maybe they can tell me what to do now. I think of all the children around me, so distracted and enmeshed by digital culture, and feel sad that maybe they won't ever feel the same feeling I have now of coming full circle: from reading entire books to going to the places they described to coming home. It is somewhat disheartening to realize that none of my grandkids seems to have read any book of any sort, aside from their textbooks. The times, they are a-changin', and all I can do is to try to convince the little ones that books -- the real ones, the tangible ones with pages that you flip and that turn yellow with age-- and not just PSP's or iPhones, can be their best friends. If I can get them to read on a Kindle, I will take it.

Champagne Bay, Vanuatu - A Memory

2012-10-23T19:29:00.001-06:00

Champagne Bay is on the island of Espiritu Santo in the nation of Vanuatu. Save for basic toilet facilities, there is no hotel or any sort of accommodations on the beach,The sand is powdery white and the beach inclines into the ocean ever so gently. Dense stands of old-growth trees and coconut palms ring the turqouise waters. The ni-Vanuatu (locals) sell cheap, live crabs and lobster that they'll boil for you with a smile.

Lobster in hand and Tusker beer on the other, you can't help but surrender your senses to this breath-taking confluence of sun, sand, sea and South Pacific scenery. And the ni-Vanuatu has got to be some of the friendliest, most uncomplicated, un-pushiest people on earth.

I’ve heard some company was going to build a resort club here. Fly, sail or swim there if you can before it disappears under a forest of cabanas and stilt-houses.

Reading Peter Matthiessen's "The Snow Leopard"

2012-10-10T10:24:00.002-06:00

The Snow Leopard by Peter Matthiessen

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

It's so uncanny how Peter Matthiessen's hiking journey through the Dolpo region in Nepal seems to mirror my own hike on the Inca Trail in Peru. Even his initial doubts about going on the hike into the unknown in search of the elusive snow leopard rings true with me when he wrote these words: " On the calamitous weather, the journey was losing all reality, and the warm smile of a pretty tourist at the hotel desk unsettled me; where did I imagine I was going, where and why?" The uncertainty of the journey,the grandeur of the mountains, the bad weather, the hardy porters, the poverty one encounters on the outskirts of the wilderness: Peter experienced them all, and so did I. I haven't finished the book yet but I can already vividly recall the pounding in my feet and the heaving of my lungs as I went up and down those Andean ridges and the ecstatic feeling I had when I reached the highest point of the trail. Peter never saw the snow leopard, but entermeshing his journey with Buddhist contemplation, he achieved something else: a sort of Zen oneness with nature. I can totally relate to that. This book is for anyone who seeks a meaning beyond the platitudes of religion and materialism. Peter seems to be telling us that every life is a journey in search of the snow leopard. which we may never even get a glimpse of, but a journey worth taking nonetheless.

View all my reviews

A Bullfight in Juarez, Mexico

2012-09-26T15:36:00.001-06:00

Sunday, September 23, 2012

     Juarez ,Mexico, is just a few steps away from El Paso, USA, but I've always balked at going there due to all the horror stories I've read about its drug violence. However, as a seasoned traveler, I know that the news doesn't necessarily represent the real conditions of a place. As somebody once commented: "The fact that somebody massacred 17 people in a Colorado movie house doesn't mean that the moviegoers in the rest of the 50 US states are being massacred as well." So when I received an invitation from my friend Javier to go to Juarez and watch a bullfight, I thought: "Why not?" It would be my first time to visit Juarez and watch a bullfight. I had been in Spain several times and came close to watching bullfights in Malaga and Barcelona but I never did. I preferred to spend my time sightseeing and dining at the fine establishments in those places. So this time, I decided not to let the opportunity pass by. It was going to be bloody, I knew, but it would also be a window into the culture of a Mexico that had embraced this Spanish bloodsport.
     So, on a warm but not overly hot Sunday afternoon, I and Javier parked the car across from the border crossing on Oregon st. in El Paso and walked across a checkpoint manned by a few relaxed Mexican guards. We paid 50 cents entry each, and then, just like that, we were in Juarez. We walked along a nondescript road not unlike that of a provincial town in the Philippines, and presently came upon the bullfight arena. In its heyday, they used to hold corrida de toros (the Spanish name for bullfights) almost weekly in the cool seasons of fall or spring. Now dwindling audiences and tourists have limited the bullfights to four times a year.
     The corrida is not so much about the killing of a bull as much as the fiesta surrounding it. This fiesta is full of good spirits. Unfortunately, like cockfighting, it involves killing the animal. Barbaric this may be to some, especially PETA, but to the countries that espouse bullfighting, like Spain, France, Mexico, Peru and other, it is a part of their culture. No wonder that, while the E.U. has abolished the death penalty, it has not, and probably will have much difficulty eliminating bullfighting altogether.
     The arena had two sections: the sol (sun) and the sombra(shadow). On the sol side, you get the hot afternoon sun and pay less. On the sombra side, you are shielded from the sun and pay a bit more. Most people opted to sit on the sombra side, which gave the arena a half-full appearance. Make no mistake about it, though: the crowd was loud, passionate and vocal in their olés whenever a torero made a fine pass (say, a veronica, wherein the bullfighter stands in front of a charging bull and lets the cape drift over its horns), or when a feisty bull gains the upper hand and downs a picador on his horse, as happened during this bullfight.
     Hawkers were out in full force, selling everything from chips, soft drinks, beer, tamales, margaritas and boxed paellas.One enthusiastic vendor who wielded a tray full of clamatos (clam juice drinks, which looked like Bloody Marys) stumbled on the steps beside me and splashed clamatos juice all over my shirt. The heat dried the shirt not long after that but I now have a funny story to tell about clamatos.
     Bullfighting is all about pageantry and music. Two bands played various mariachi music and bullfighting songs. Needless to say, Espana Cani was played to death. A senorita danced the flamenco, accompanied by a guitarist. She twirled, stamped her feet and clicked her castanets, bearing the full brunt of the afternoon sun on her body.
     The bullfight opened with a pasello (parade) of the toreros, bandellieros and picador, fronted by a man and woman on horseback in colorful ranchero costumes. The bandellieros wield two decorated spears that they imbed into the back of the bull to weaken it. The picador drives his lance into the bull to weaken him further for the sword of the torero. By any measure, the bull doesn't have a chance.
The toreros, also called matadors, proudly marched towards the box occupied by the judge. The judge wore a gray jacket and what looked like a Prohibiton-style hat. The judge's implements of power were two large white handkerchiefs. He decided whether to award one or two ears to a torero by raising his handkerchiefs accordingly. A torero who did especially well was awarded two ears and a tail.
    I could see that this bullfight was a mainly local affair. The tourist element came from the people of El Paso who trudged over to see this event. I did not see many Gringos here. It was, to all intents and purpose, pure Juarez.
   As to Juarez itself, the little of downtown I saw told me that I shouldn't linger there after hours. But I could also see how, in its heyday, before the drug violence had taken a hold of it, this was a fun place to be. My friend Javier told me that in times past, the sidewalks were so crowded you had a hard time getting through. Now it was all dark and deserted, with a few clubs open and women of the night standing outside the bars impatiently waiting for customers. I hope that one day, Juarez will regain its fun times again. In the meantime, you might consider giving it a pass, especially after dark.
     Finally, regarding the ethics of bullfighting in general, I leave that to everybody else to ponder and argue about. This is such a contentious issue that one friend of mine almost accused me of being a bad person for attending a bullfight. Everybody is entitled to his or her opinion. However, that sort of feeling doesn't really wash with me. As a Filipino, I have been to a cockfight or two ( which I detested because of the noise) and have assisted in slitting the throats of chickens for dinner. I grew up watching pigs being slaughtered in preparation to being roasted. In essence, bullfighting was nothing new to me. What was new (and admittedly disturbing ) was the entertainment value attached to it. Everytime a bull got impaled by a bandelliero or lanced by the picador, I winced. It is a cruel sport.
    Life and death in a few minutes: this is all played out in a corrida de toros. Here are some pictures of the bullfight in Juarez.

GILA CLIFFS ROADTRIP: DAY TWO-THE DRIVE THROUGH THE GILA NATIONAL FOREST

2012-09-06T15:45:00.001-06:00

From Lake Caballo to the Gila National Forest
Highway 152
Day 2
September 3, 2010

After taking a shower in the Caballo State Park's public bathrooms and breakfasting beside the Rio Grande, I swung back to Highway 25. Just before the city of Truth and Consequences, which used to called Hot Springs but changed its name after NBC promised to air the first episode of a game from the first town that did so (and won), I made a brief stop at an RV park that advertised gas. My gas tank was half-full, so I topped it off. The RV park, aptly named Caballo Lake RV Camping was for sale. It looked decent, with cottages and all. Maybe the owner wanted to retire to somewhere warm, like Miami or Hawaii?
After filling up my gas tank, I drove out and hit left on highway 152. I had thought, mistakenly, that I would go on the 256 freeway. However the signs pointed this highway as going to Silver City and the Gila Cliffs, so off I went. What did turn out was that highway 152 would bring me through the Gila National Forest , up the mountains and down over into the high country of Southwestern New Mexico. The topography changed from flat to hilly to mountainous and rocky. The shift in scenery was dramatic. I was glad I took this route and would recommend it to anyone who wished to escape the monotony of the flat plains. The highway made several switchbacks and numerous hairpin curves. I was glad that my rented Chevy was brand-new, with presumably strong brakes. Nothing like brake failure to spoil the fun: for good. This was the New Mexico that I loved.


Highway 152 to the Gila National Forest. Traffic-less, as usual.

I didn't know it then, but the rocky landscape that greeted my way as I drove up to the forested uplands of the Gila National Forest was the result of violent volcanic activity. Around 20 million years ago, a grouping of volcanoes in a 100 mile area formed a supervolcano that erupted continuously for thousands of years and created several calderas. The remnant of one of these calderas became the site of the Gila Cliff dwellers. I saw the evidence all around me: in the rocky monoliths, the red rocks and the layered outcroppings made of tufa and ash. There are hot springs in the area, so there is still some volcanic activity here. Who knows if one day this area is going to erupt again? Just look at Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines.
I passed by several towns along the way: Hillsboro, Kingston, Cuchillo, Monticello: very colorful , quaintnames. One or two of these towns seemed to be effectively ghost towns, with a few dozen residents in them. Shaun and Holly, a couple who I made friends later at the Gila cliff dwellings swore about the lovely bed and breakfast they stayed in at Kingston. Must check that out, sometime in the future. The towns were created due to mining and cattle activity. Oftentimes, when passing by these sort of towns, I'd ask myself: "Who would live in this remote place?" only to catch myself thinking later: "Hmm, maybe I could stay here if...." The scenery can do that to you.
Ah, the scenery. Here they are:

When I had gone through the forested portion of this part of the Gila National Forest which is 2,710,659 acres in area (cf. wikipedia) and started to descend down to the Mimbres valley, these were the sights I saw:

I passed through the town of Mimbres on the way to the Gila Cliffs. Here I went through private land and the Gila National Forest at several points. It had been raining in the area in the past week, so wildflowers, mainly sunflowers, were in full bloom, carpeting the fields and meadows in a blanket of yellow.

And any high country would not be complete without a lake: Lake Roberts, in this instance. I read that there was good fishing here, especially of native rainbow trout.

I stopped so often to take photographs with my trusty Canon Rebel XS, I wondered if I would ever make it to the Gila Cliffs. I did, eventually, and thereby hangs another tale.

A Tent Beside Caballo Lake, New Mexico

2012-09-06T02:45:00.002-06:00

September 2, 2012
Caballo Lake, New Mexico

In the desert of New Mexico, a few miles outside of the university town of Las Cruces, there is a border/immigration checkpoint. You show your ID or papers to the officer there and he waves you on to sample the delights of the New Mexican countryside,which, to tell the truth, doesn't vary much at this point from those on the Texas side because the whole of the desert Southwest is the product of the same subsidence of the same prehistoric Permian sea millions of years ago. But whatever. This is a normally painless, quick process. On this hot afternoon of September 2, 2012, on the tail-end of a long Labor Day weekend, though, things were a bit different. The young border officer took an unwanted interest in me.
"Where are you going, sir?" he barked, as he examined my green card. By the looks of him, he was Mexican-American who seemed like a jock barely out of high school.
"I am going to Silver City," I answered truthfully. I could have said "Albuquerque", and that was that, but my answer provoked his perplexity.
"Silver City? How are you going to get there?"
I had never been to Silver City. The only thing I knew about the place was that the infamous Billy the Kid used to hang out there. Also I had seen signage on the highway on the way to Truth and Consequences pointing out the way to Silver City and the Gila Cliffs. The latter intrigued me the most. This was the site of the Mogollon people's cave dwellings built hundreds of years ago into the sides of volcanic cliffs which were themselves millions of years old. Nobody I talked with in El Paso had ever been there. Such wonders close at hand (relatively speaking) and the good people of my acquaintance think Las Vegas is still the better place to go to! My plan was to follow the directions on Highway 25 and get there by nightfall.
I didn't reckon with the border officer, who either was truly clueless or was just tired of waving people on and wanted a little action. I seemed a good mark, because I was neither an Anglo nor a Mexican. Maybe the fact of being camped out under a shed in the middle of nowhere in all that heat can affect the brain, know what I mean?
"Why?" I replied. " How do I get to Silver City from here?" I was as perplexed about his perplexity as he was about my answer.
He seemed to bristle, in that unmistakable Homeland Security mode.
"No sir," he barked again," YOU tell me. How do you get to Silver City from here?"
Evidently he thought I was on the wrong highway. Instead of offering help by correcting my error, as any official who wants people to go on and gamble at the Hard Rock hotel in Albuquerque or watch opera in Santa Fe would do, he seemed to think I had some explaining to do. Did I look like a drug mule from Juarez to him? I hoped not!
I was glad I had printed out my Google itinerary on an old-fashioned piece of paper. I grabbed it and showed it to him.
He looked at the paper.
"I have the directions right here from Google," I said. The use of the term never ceases to amaze me, even in this somewhat sketchy moment.
"Oh, so you're going via Hatch," he observed.
Hatch is the self-proclaimed chile capital of the USA.I didn't know how long that was going to last, seeing that cheaper chiles from Mexico and China were now eating away at its monopoly.
"No, I'm not going to Hatch. I'm actually going to the Gila Cliffs."
I had the impression that he didn't know what I was talking about.
He knotted his eyebrow. I was thinking: Boy, this is taking a while. What will those people stewing in their cars behind me think? Another officer and a dog had been roaming the vehicles. Thank goodness the canine didn't salivate on my trunk.
"So I see you're taking Highway 26," he proclaimed. This was the back route through the Gila National Forest, up through the mountains. A longer route, but, from what I read, a scenic one.
"Yes," I agreed with him, trying to project an air of assurance. In truth, I had no idea where I was going. I just trusted the signs on the highway to point me in the right direction.
He gave me back my paper and huffed:
"But you know you can take Highway 1-10 to Silver City, didn't you?"
I smiled sheepishly. I didn't absolutely know, actually, but I replied:
"I know, I know, but I've seen the signs on the way to Albuquerque and..."
He waved me on and pounced on the next driver behind me.
And that was that. I was in New Mexico, Land of Enchantment.
***************************************************
People describe the Southwest desert as "hot and flat as a pancake.."
Some parts, maybe, like the Continental Divide, but not here. The highway undulates gently in the harsh terrain. Plus there are all those beetling, jagged, treeless mountains all around you.
What I realized was that it was getting late. I had wanted to set off in the morning, but I had to play for Filipino Mass at St. Francis Xavier at 1:30 in the afternoon. and there was Filipino food afterwards. So here I was, belly full of artery-clogging food, much too late in the afternoon, driving my rented Chevy LT,. This Chevy, which I rented from Alamo, was a small nice gas-efficient brand new car that purred like a cat eager to pounce on the hot tarmac. I always rent a car when driving through the desert. Driving a used car would be suicide. A car breaking down in the middle of (again) nowhere is not a fun thing to see, and I'd seen a few of those.
It was now seven in the evening, and although the sun was still in the sky, it was going down fast and soon it would be dark. I had an inkling that I was still more than a hundred miles from the Gila Cliffs, let alone Silver City. I had to set up tent while there was still light.
I saw a sign on Highway 25 that said: "Caballo Lake State Park". Where there was a state park, there must be a camping site. I decided to swing for it and found myself on a side road which led to a booth manned by a kind-faced woman who looked like a retired school teacher.
"Can I camp out here?" I asked/
"Sure can!" she replied cheerfully.
I paid the camping fee of $8. She suggested that I go to Percha Flats, right beside the lake.
"There's too many people beside the river," she said. "It's the long weekend."
Indeed it was. The Labor Day weekend that stretches to Monday. Much beloved by workers. Not so, by capitalists like, uhm Mitt Romney?
She told me to backtrack and turn left on the paved road that said "Caballo Lake State Park" and ask directions from another booth. An elderly woman was riding a scooter ahead of me. I followed her patiently on the no-passing road. She then sidled to the extreme right of the road. Taking that as a cue to let me pass, I did so. When I arrived at the booth, I could see her mouth yammering. She didn't look pleased. I played innocent and took a tour of the park beside the river. This was the runoff from the Caballo lake, which was itself, a dammed-up portion of the Rio Grande . The park was crowded with tents and RV's. Families and children bustled and shrieked. Grills smoked with sizzling offerings. Boomboxes blared Mexican music. Not a peaceful place to camp out. I must be in the wrong place, I thought.
By asking around, I determined that I was in the wrong place indeed. It turned out that I had to go back up the road then turn off down into a dirt side road and on into the lake side. I did so, and found myself in a primitive campsite with a few caravans parked beside the lake. This was a quieter tent site, with far less people because, as far as I could tell, there were no toilets or bathrooms in the immediate vicinity.
"Perfect!" I thought. I eased my car through the gravel road past cows pasturing among the scraggly bushes. I thought I'd pitch my tent on a space between two RV trailers. There were people here, but they seemed like the sporty types.
And then calamity struck. When I eased my Chevy into the shore, my car, which was no four-wheeler, hit soft sand. The wheels sank into the ground . It tried to back out. That only made things worse. The wheels spun deeper into the earth. WTF?? I thought. I'm...we're..stuck.
The young men on the beach looked up from their beers and stared at me quizzically, if not in amusement.
I proceeded to dig the sand out with my bare hands from under the wheels. Boy, I thought, this was turning out to be one of THOSE camping trips. I had the idea of placing rocks and stones under the wheels so they could get traction.
I was spared the ordeal of having to dig out my car by myself when the young men on the beach came up. One of them asked me:"Can we help?"
Boy, I thought, can you?
"Sure," I replied relieved.
Another guy on a big SUV not too far away yelled out: "Hey! I could chain you up!"
Could you? Please?
The young men talked Spanish among themselves. Another guy was coming up with a shovel.
"Do you see this happen often out here?" I asked one of the men.
"Sometime," he said. He was a Latino.
"Let's just lift the car up," one young man suggested.
And so they did. I placed the car in reverse, careful not to put it into DRIVE as they lifted the front bumper of my puny Chevy. The wheels gained traction again as gratitude suffused my entire being.
"America!" I thought. "I love you!"
I waved at the guys and cried: "Gracias!"
They smiled indulgently at me. They must have thought: "What a stupid oriental!'
"I'm going back up the hill," I declared.
I retraced the gravel road and went up a bluff that overlooked the lake. There was no soft sand here. The only other occupants of the bluff was a trailer and an SUV.
"Good!" I thought. At least I would have company, and who knows, some spare barbequed ribs and beer.
I pitched my tent facing the lake. I could see a giant bonfire on the shore across Caballo Lake and heard disco music thudding through the air.
It grew dark. The moon rose up from behind the shadowy mountains and cast a silver light on the lake water. After a while, the music stopped, and all was peace and quiet. Moonlight shone through the roof of my tent as I slept on that first night of my roadtrip, beside Caballo Lake, New Mexico.
The next morning I woke up with the dawn. The trailer had been dark all through the night. Nobody had stirred in it. No barbeque. No sound. No nothing. I went to examine it. The door was open. A lounge chair sat empty . Nobody was home. Both trailer and SUV were, to all intents and purposes, abandoned.
Who would leave a trailer and SUV out here, out on this bluff, with doors open and unattended on this, the quintessential American holiday? I wondered.
It was just as well that I was leaving that morning for the Gila Cliffs.
After doing some stretching in front of the Caballo mountains and admiring the colors of the dawn, I took down my tent and went back to the riverside campground to have a proper shower and a breakfast beside the Rio Grande.
It was a lovely morning, full of birdsong, in contrast to the cacophony of the day before. Many people had packed up and left. I enjoyed a tin of sardines, a bollillo ( the Mexican version of French bread), raisins and Powerade.
It was a breakfast as grand as on any cruise ship or 5-star hotel.

(Next blogpost: The Gila Cliffs)

A Brief Review of Joseph Conrad's "The Secret Sharer"

2012-07-31T19:26:00.000-06:00

The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

One of my all-time favorite authors is Joseph Conrad. His exploration of the human condition as reflected by the men who toil at sea is as profound as any philosophical dissertation by any name philosopher. His theme is man against nature or man against men, His yarns are full of events both in the inner and outer worlds of journeyers at sea or water. "The Heart of Darkness" of course is essential to his success and esteem as an author/adventurer. But he has many other tales that I've read and appreciated. Foremost among them is "The Secret Sharer". This is a tale about a newbie captain who is piloting a ship somewhere in the Far East. He is not very popular with his men. To complicate matters, he willingly shelters a stowaway, a chief mate of another ship, the Sephora. the man is accused of killing an insolent crew member. The captain develops an affinity to him, hides him from search parties, and eventually maneuvers the ship close to an island so that the "secret sharer" could escape. Conrad's language is dense and somewhat wordy, but if you've paid close attention, by the time you've finished reading the tale, you felt like you've been in that ship with the captain and the escapee. What really made this story resonate with me is that the setting, the Gulf of Siam, is a place that I have been to, and the island that the chief mate escapes to thanks to a risky maneuver by the captain, is named Koh-ring, which is similar to islands I've visited such as Koh-Samui. That the captain was willing to risk his ship to get close to the dangerous shoals of a tropical island is something that I would question, but in the context of the story and his alienation from his own crewmembers, one I could understand. Reading this story, I could smell the salt air,feel the warm, damp tropical wind and hear the plashing of the waves against the hull of the ship. As I read the final lines, I told myself: "I've been there. I've been there."

View all my reviews

At the Santa Fe Opera

2012-07-09T17:31:00.002-06:00

The Santa fe Opera House

4 July 2012
Santa Fe, New Mexico

When I was growing up on the island of Leyte, in provincial Philippines, there was no culture, nor financial resources for producing, much less watching operas. There are still none now, except in Manila.
When I was a student in Manila, I managed to see occasional student productions such as Poulenc’s “Les Dialogues des Carmelites” by the University of the Philippines Conservatory and an evening of operatic excerpts performed by students and faculty of my school, the University of Sto Tomas. I remember the last one with a chuckle, because, during the singing of the “Humming Song” of Puccini’s “Madame Butterfly, the little boy portraying Cio Cio-san’s son wandered out into the front of the stage of the Cultural Center of the Philippines and stared in wonderment at the amused audience. On the occasions that a foreign opera was invited to perform in Manila (such as the Metropolitan Opera Company performing “Tosca” for the opening of Imelda Marcos’s Cultural Center of the Philippines) the tickets were so horrendously expensive that only the very rich could afford them.

When I moved to the US, and specifically New York City, this all changed. Then, I was literally buried in the musical riches and choices, among them operatic, that New York City was and still is famous for.

The first opera I saw, and in fact, the first really professional opera I’ve ever seen, was Puccini’s “Madame Butterfly” at the City Opera. This was followed in no particular order by Gounod’s “Faust”, Lehar’s “The Merry Widow”, the double bill of "Cavalleria Rusticana" and "I Pagliacci" and others I don’t remember (this was back in the late ‘80’s). Over at the Met, the riches spilled out for me to pick and choose, depending on the state of my wallet: Tchaikovsky’s “Queen of Spades”, Verdi’s “Rigoletto”, “La Traviata”, “Il Trovatore” and recently, Mozart’s “The Magic Flute” and Puccini’s “La Boheme”.

Another city where I was fortunate enough to watch several operas was at the Sydney Opera House. I was in Sydney for a month visiting my sisters who lived there, so catching performances at the iconic Opera House was a no-brainer. I can still remember what I saw back in 1993: Gounod’s Romeo et Juliette, Donizetti’s Maria Stuarda, and Beethoven’s Fidelio.

I also had missed opportunites which somehow still annoys me today. I very nearly watched the Italian bass Ruggero Raimondi in Rossini’s opera “Moïse” at the La Fenice in Venice save for the fact that a burly German who was as determined as I was to get one of the last remaining SRO tickets out-shoved and out-muscled me. Shortly after that, La Fenice burned down to the ground (they say, by arson). Poetic justice? Hardly. It is horrifying to think that some demented soul would torch an opera house, but this was Italy, where the real-world underpinnings of violent and tempestuous opera had their roots. La Fenice, which means "The Phoenix", has since been rebuilt and restored.

In Naples, I stood outside the Teatro San Carlo, frustrated that I would never be able to watch an opera in this famous theater because my cruise ship sailed out at five pm every single time we visited that port.

In St. Petersburg, Russia, I examined in dismay the posters advertising the theatrical events in that city. The notices were in Cyrillic so I could not tell which show was showing where and whether I had enough time to watch a matinee performance and not get left behind by my cruise ship. There was no one I could ask information from because no one speaks English in St. Petersburg. Maybe a few, but most of them were tourists.

Although I made Los Angeles my home for close to seven years, I cannot remember ever watching an opera there. The company, even when it was managed by Placido Domingo, didn’t seem all that compelling to me. My experiences at the City Opera and the Met had always been the touchstone of my subsequent operatic forays.

For as long as I was aware of it, the Santa Fe Opera had always loomed large in my must-visit list. It wasn’t so much that the company had an excellent reputation for its world-class productions and oftentimes adventurous repertoire, so much as the fact that its operas were staged in a partially enclosed structure that looks out on the surrounding mountains. This, I thought, I've got to see.

My chance finally came this summer. From my current base of El Paso, Texas, Santa Fe was five hours away by car: doable, certainly. When I examined the 2012 repertory of the Santa Fe Opera, one title leaped out from the computer screen: Tosca by Puccini, the same opera that I couldn’t see in Manila back in the '70's because the price of the ticket was completely out of my reach. Somehow I kept missing it in New York and elsewhere. My familiarity with its music was nurtured by listening to complete recordings and DVD's by the likes of Maria Callas, Placido Domingo and Galina Vishnevskaya. This was my chance to round off watching Puccini’s Big Three: “Madame Butterfly”, “La Boheme” and now “Tosca”. With little hesitation, I bought my ticket online (another of the conveniences of this digital age) and prepared myself for the pleasure of watching a live performance of one of Puccini’s, and the world’s, greatest operas in spectacular surroundings.

Posing with the poster of "Tosca"

I had been made aware that Santa Fe opera aficionados have a peculiar custom: having tailgate parties before the performance of an opera. I prepared myself for this event by visiting the local Trader Joe’s in Santa Fe and buying a sushi plate, some prepackaged provolone, cheese and crackers. For the wine, I bought a pinot grigio from the Veneto region in Italy. A four-month stay in Venice, the homeport of a cruise ship I was working on at the time, had made me partial to this fruity local wine. Since “Tosca” was Italian, I thought this vintage would be apropos.
The Santa Fe Opera is housed in a modernistic structure high on a bluff around three miles from the town proper. You can see its steel ribs sticking out of the landscape as you drive down freeway 258. There are helpful signs pointing you the exit towards the Opera House, proof that this opera has become an integral part of the Santa Fe landscape. However, there is no prominent sign to indicate to you that you must make a sharp turn and climb up a nondescript road up the side of the mountain. I missed it the first time I came to visit it out of an abundance of precaution, and nearly ended up in Taos! There is no grand landscaped approach to the site until you approach a pair of steel gates that look like you’re going into a gated upscale subdivision. Then you are in a parking lot being waved in by uniformed traffic attendants. It can’t be more elite than this.

Prepared to hold my own tailgate party with wine, sushi and provolone but....

When I had parked my car, I saw that some opera goers had already laid out tables and chairs for their parties. I brought no table nor chair so I contented myself with opening the trunk of my car and laying out my repast on a beach towel.

But things have a way of resolving in a quite different, pleasant manner, and I found myself invited to join a table of gracious partiers who saw that I was alone. During the course of the tailgate party which featured several bottles of excellent wine, deviled eggs, a home-made potato salad, great cheeses and meatballs, I learned that among the persons seated at the table were the head of the drama department of NYU, a New York theatrical producer, a lady-painter, and, for lack of a better term, a gay divorcee who confessed that she was “taken better care of by her ex-husband after their divorce than when they were married.” I presented a painting that I brought with me with the vow that I would give it to the first person who consented to have his/their picture taken with me in the spirit of the festivities. That person was David, an art dealer, who had lent me a wine-opener and then agreed to take a picture of me with the group . The monsoon wind bustled in, napkins blew away, my plastic wine glass upended and spilled its pinot grigio, and a good time was had by all.

...I ended up joining a Santa Fe Opera tailgate party with the smart set!

And what of the opera itself?

The theater built for the opera in Santa Fe was structurally magnificent and delightful. It had excellent sight lines, with not a bad view anywhere in the house, astounding acoustics that enabled the singers to sing without amplification and still be heard in the last row, and those open sides that looked out on the Jemez and Sangre del Cristo mountains. This alone was worth the price of the ticket and the effort to get to this mountaintop opera-house.

Interior of the Santa Fe Opera House

I was ushered to my seat by a personable young man named Finn, whose father, he informed me, was a well-known archaeologist who dug around the old pueblo of Santa Fe. Finn was well-travelled, having gone through most of Southeast Asia and parts of Europe and was planning to study anthropology at the University of Mexico in Albuquerque.

Finn, the usher

The stage set-up for "Tosca" was unusual. Where the New York Metropolitan Opera, under Franco Zefferelli, would have given you the original view of the church where Mario Cavaradossi painted his Madonna, or the faithful reconstruction of the room at the Palazzo Farnese where Scarpia nearly rapes Tosca and where he meets his demise, or the exact battlements of the Castel Sant’Angelo, the special qualities of space at the Santa Fe Opera House had given rise to an ingenious solution: a floor which served as a gigantic canvas of the painting-in-progress of the Madonna by Cavaradossi. During Act Two, the canvas/floor lifted up to reveal a painting on its underside that depicts a mural at the Palazzo Farnese. The simple expedient of pushing two turreted walls on either side of the floor conspired to change the setting into Castel Sant’Angelo, the scene of Cavaradossi’s execution and Tosca’s suicide. As a backdrop, a circular vault lay on its side so that the inner beehive chamber looked out at the audience, giving a hint of the majestic interior dome of a church without the opera-goers having to look up and crane their necks. Suggestive and spectacularly clever indeed. Stephen Barlow directed this production.
As for the performers: the South African soprano Amanda Echalaz as Tosca sang with full-throated energy and dramatic flair. Raymond Aceto as the villainous Scarpia was truly menacing. He inhabited his role so thoroughly that boos were heard - for his character, I would say, rather than for his singing! - when he took his bow. Andrew Richards was supposed to sing the role of Mario Cavaradossi, but his replacement, the American tenor Brian Jagde was excellent and handsome, to boot.

I must confess that during the first act, I intermittently dozed off, not because of the music, but because of the effects of the nearly half-bottle of wine I’d drunk before the show. Come to think of it, Tosca is one long operatic performance by a duo and a trio, relieved by transcendent arias. The only spectacular choral part of the opera occurs at the end of Act One, when the priests, bishops and laity come out in full force to sing the Te Deum . After that, it’s a string of arias ( “Vissi d’arte” , “E Lucevan le stelle”) interspersed with trios and duets.To the uninitiated, this can get boring. For me, after I’d shaken off the effects of the wine, it was sheer bliss.

     It also became inexplicably warm. Only at intermission did I realize that it had rained lightly outside. Although the sides of the hall were open, I didn't notice that. I did notice the lights of cars on the distant freeway and remember thinking: "How extraordinary!" I heard that at some performances, lightning could be seen striking down on the mountains in the background. I didn't doubt it. I had experienced a thunderstorm with terrifying lightning strikes just two days ago.
      In the end, I was impressed by everything about this production. The protagonists and supporting cast handled the scenes to perfection. Their performances were top-notch, at par with those I’d seen in New York and Sydney. In fact, these were the same artists you would see in New York or Sydney!
     Finally, I can now check off the last remaining opera in Puccini’s Big Three that I hadn’t seen live until now. Of course, there’s still “Turandot”…

My fun hosts at the parking lot party had intimated that they were going to assemble again the following week for another tailgate party prior to watching a production of George Bizet’s “The Pearl Fishers”.

I just might join them again.

The Santa Fe Opera crowd, many of whom came from Texas,Yee-Haw!

Camping

2012-07-07T17:48:00.003-06:00

Black Canyon, Santa Fe National Forest, New Mexico

July 2, 2012

When you go camping in the wilderness, the meanness of the world runs off you like dirty water off a duck's back.

When you camp, alone, your first concern is to set up your tent for the night. The mechanics of assembling this shelter is enough to distract you from the other petty questions you may have, such as: is there wifi or cellphone reception in the area?

Having set up your tent, you become focused on the basics of existence, such as having enough food and water for the duration of your stay.

When you finally realize that there is no internet, cell phone reception, or electricity in your camp, you have no choice but pay attention to your surroundings. Your senses, dulled by the virtual reality of computers, become sharpened, attuned to the very real forest and its creatures around you. You listen to the sound of the wind through the trees, the rain beating against the roof of your tent, the chirping of the birds, the distant, muffled voices of other campers in other parts of the woods. Those footfalls outside your tent? They were probably made either by a human being, an animal or your imagination. Unaccustomed to the solitude, with your body protected from the outside elements only by the flimsy walls of waterproof nylon, you feel your heart beat a little faster. Imaginary dangers run through your head like little whips of doubt: thieves, serial killers, bears. Eventually, you accept that you can’t spend the night worrying whether a bear will get you, or whether Michael Myers will come dragging you off to his lair. Que sera sera. There is no point in worrying and, with grudging surrender, you allow sleep to steal over you.

You wake up at dawn and are amazed to find yourself intact. You step outside your tent and that's when it hits you: the smell of pine trees wet with last night's rain, the chirping of unseen birds, the visit of a squirrel or two and sunlight starting to filter through the leaves bring you a joy that you will never be able to describe to others without sounding pretentious or corny. At this particular junction in time, in this special part of the world: this is where you wanted to be, and here you are now. This is happiness.

You sit on a bench, watching the fog drift up from the ground like a gauzy curtain. You lie down on your back and look up at the sky, staring at the canopy of fir and pine and wondering at their age and height.

Soon enough, if you allow the forest to speak to you, its stillness becomes your stillness.

You begin to realize that in order to exist, you don’t really need much: just water, food, a tent, a warm sleeping bag, and maybe a fully charged iPod.

Photos and Sketches: A Woodland Diary

Scarlet gilla

Sunflower and bee

Willie, a very friendly cocker spaniel that its owner was walking.

Forget-me-nots

Impression of deep dark woods

Scarlet gilla

A Visit to Easter Island

2012-06-05T15:13:00.001-06:00

December 24, 2007

Today, on the day before Christmas, I was going to visit Easter Island.

I woke up at dawn and made my way up to the top viewing deck of the M/V Pacific Princess as she made her approach to the island.

Easter Island is a piece of volcanic rock in the middle of the trackless Pacific Ocean in which some forgotten race carved and raised giant stone statues and proceeded to plunder their home to extinction. Easter Island is usually held up as a microcosm of the world warring and eating itself out into oblivion. On a traveler’s must-see list, it rates a ten.

Dawn was breaking behind the dark mass of land that had all the features of a volcanic landscape. Cone-shaped mountains, their tops eroded to mere nubs, rose here and there. Lava cliffs reared up from a rocky shoreline beset by turbulent breakers. Towards my right I discerned a fang-shaped rock springing out of the sea several yards from land’s-end.

That must be Birdman Rock, I thought. From my reading, I gathered that young Easter Islanders in the distant past swam out to this rock and clambered to the top in a contest to gather the first sea bird’s egg of the spring. The first one to retrieve this egg was proclaimed king or some kind of exalted personage. Many died in this endeavor. I had seen this kind of rock before. In Capri it’s called Faraglione (Lion’s tooth), in Australia Ball's Pyramid, in Martinique Roc Diamant (Diamond Rock). Except for the fact that it was virtually treeless, Easter Island looked like a typical volcanic island attended by outlying fang-shaped rocks.

      Easter Island’s romance lies in its extreme isolation. It belongs to Chile, but is two thousand miles away from mainland South America. Heck, it’s thousands of miles from anywhere. I would say it is much nearer to Tahiti than to Chile itself. Research have shown that there were several waves of boat people who found their way here, and the first wave was the one responsible for building the moai, the giant volcanic statues for which Easter Island is famous. One school of thought, of which Thor Heyerdahl was a proponent, suggests that the first settlers of Easter Island came, not from Polynesia, but from South America, specifically Peru. They base this thinking on the fact that the Incas were much more inclined to do stonework than the Polynesians, and many of the statues featured certain characteristics, such as artificially elongated ears, that were typical Incan beauty marks. The last wave of settlers, definitely Polynesian, was responsible for the cultural, political, economic and ecological fall and decimation of the island.

      I had read intermittently about Easter Island from the National Geographic. Then, back in the seventies, while browsing through the bargain bin in a bookstore in Manila, I came upon a book by Thor Heyerdahl recounting his experiences excavating and researching in Easter Island. The book’s title was “Aku-Aku”. His descriptions of the statues and the secret caves of the natives made for exciting reading and fired up my imagination. Of course, the possibility of actually visiting Easter Island never crossed my mind. It was too remote and too far away. Even now, its remoteness keeps it from being visited by any great number of travelers, even the most adventurous ones.

      Fast forward to December 2007. After many years working on cruise ships, I was finally getting my chance to visit Easter Island. My ship, the Pacific Princess was going on a world cruise, and Easter Island lay in its itinerary. The ship was going to make landfall at precisely 24 December 2007, Christmas Eve. She would be making only two visits to the island. Even then, actually setting foot on the island was not a certainty because Easter Island does not have a port that can accommodate cruise ships. The ship’s tender boats must ferry passengers to shore. Herein lies the problem. In order to get into the wharf, the tenders must negotiate passage amid treacherous reefs and unpredictable Pacific swells. In bad weather, doing this would be dangerous and the visit would have to be scrapped. This happened several times before. It could happen again.

      So here I was, growing ever more excited as the ship approached the dark hulking mass of mysterious Easter Island, the one Spanish explorers called Isla de Pascua and the ancient Polynesians Rapa Nui. In a few hours time I’d be standing face to face with the enigmatic moai. I hoped and prayed that the mighty Pacific would not throw a tantrum and dash my, and other passengers’ hopes, of seeing these giant statues. I figured that, on a scale of important places to visit, Easter Island ranks right up there with the Parthenon, the Coliseum and the pyramids of Egypt.

      I need not have feared. The Pacific Ocean decided to be nice to us. The tenders made it safely to shore.

      There was another dilemma that I had to deal with. Our time ashore was limited to barely two hours. The ship had to sail in the early afternoon because the build-up of sea swells late afternoon would make tendering difficult and unsafe. It would be a mad dash if I were going to make anything of this visit.

      The town – the main, and only, one on Easter Island - on which the pier is located is called Hanga Roa. Less than a thousand souls lived here, on the leeward side of the island. The bulk of the moai resided on the eastern side of the island. The whole of Easter Island has been declared a national park, and a world heritage site, but of course people still lived here. Nobody is allowed to live on the other side of the island, although there seemed to be a couple or ranches and at least one hotel there. I would suppose the main industry here was fishing and cattle, though tourism must be bringing in a considerable amount of income to the populace. There is regular plane service by LAN Chile, which has ended the isolation of the island from the rest of the world. I imagine ship services would be limited. I wished I had more time to explore the island.

      Ashore I made a quick decision to hire a four-wheel jeep with driver. The driver’s name was Carlos. The fee for the jeep was $80, an exorbitant sum in view of the fact that the other side of the island was less than 20 minutes away. I was in no position to argue, since I saw no other crew members with whom I could share the ride with so off we went.

      Carlos was Hispanic. Not an iota of original Easter Islander blood had he. The current population is mainly a mestizo breed, transplants from the mainland. Still there are some who claim to descend from some great clan back in the heyday of Easter Island. Heyerdahl’s book is full of accounts of locals who trace their bloodline to either the Long Ears or the Short Ears, so-called because one class of people, a type of ruling class, possessed artificially elongated ears, and the others, a kind of sub-class, had normal ones. The principal links the current Easter Island has to its past are the statues and Polynesian place-names: Rapa Nui, Ranu Raraku, ahu, moai, Hanga Roa. There is a kind of runic writing passed on by the ancient islanders that is virtually indecipherable, so details of who did what where are mainly passed on by collective memory and oral tradition.

      The main event in all stories that current Easter Islanders recall as part of this collective memory is a Great War that culminated in a great island-wide conflagration that consumed huge swaths of the island from which it never recovered. Even Carlos spoke of it in a somewhat haunted tone, as if it happened only yesterday.

      A well-recorded fact exists that there used to exist on Easter Island and on it alone a tree, the toromiro that was used to build boats, houses and palisades. By the time Heyerdahl arrived on the island, only one toromiro remained standing, and that has now disappeared.

As the jeep made its way past the town, I noticed military barracks, an airport with a LAN Chile plane parked on the tarmac, a school, and a corner café. Then we turned a corner and it was open country populated by grass and stray eucalyptus trees. A distant ridge sported what seemed like a tree farm. The rest of the undulating country was brown and dry. It terminated on a rocky shoreline framed on either side by towering lava cliffs. Interspersed in the landscape where the remains of dwellings, temples and statues that were so numerous that one had difficulty discerning which was natural and which formed by man. The plain next to the sea was absolutely bare of trees. The emptiness of the land was haunting. The scenery was spellbindingly beautiful and dramatic, a kind of Arizona by the sea. Just fill in tropical foliage and wildlife, and you would have had paradise here, a paradise that is no more.

Nothing but grass and desert plants grew here. They seemed to provide good grazing for cattle and horses, which hove into view from time to time. In fact their aroma tinged the air.

Our first stop was Ranu Raraku, the quarry. This was the gigantic nub of an extinct volcano from which the statues were hewn. Scores of them remained here. Some were left standing, finished and ready to be dragged down the mountainside. Others had fallen, left where they had been pushed down in some ancient conflict. Others remained unfinished, still attached to the mother rock. Few tourists (mainly ship passengers) were visiting this site today so I contemplated this unfinished work in tranquillity. As an artist, I could not help but empathize with the unknown, unsung Michelangelo who tried to wrest out a statue from bare rock. Who was he, what motivated him to wield whatever primitive tools he had ( he had no steel or iron) to apply himself to chiseling out this statue? Was he forced to do it, or did he do it out of some sense of obligation?

Because I had very time left, I decided not to go to the caldera, which was viewable from a nearby ridge, but went down and asked Carlos to bring me to the most spectacular moai site of all, Ahu Tongariki. Here, the ancients had erected fifteen moai all in a row. They were supposedly the first and oldest moai created on the island. Curiously they faced, not the sea, but Ranu Raraku. Ahu Tongariki was a temple with a plaza and remains of auxiliary buildings. I can only imagine what sort of celebrations and sacrifices were held here. Some of the statues still had eyes and topknots. The oval-shaped topknots were made of a special red volcanic stone that was quarried form some other place. This strange feature was added on because some of the Easter Islander’s rulers had red hair. It is tantalizing to speculate that Vikings made it here, somehow, via Peru. Or were there any redheaded Polynesians at all?

As we headed back to the ship, passing through the same desolate landscape, I fantasized going back here driving my own jeep, encountering no traffic and gazing out at the sea as the sun was fading. No tourists, just me, the sea, the sunset, and the mute, enigmatic statues of EASTER ISLAND.

_________________________

NOTE:

It is still very difficult to get to Easter Island. Firstly, you have to fly Santiago, Chile then take a LAN-Chile plane to Easter Island (roughly 5:40 hours, farther even than Los Angeles-New York!) Thereare also flights from Tahiti (which means you have to go to Tahiti first.) Tahiti is one of the most beautiful and most expensive places in the world, so flying from there is not so cheap. You can also take a world cruise, on which fortunately I was on, for free. Thor Heyerdahl wrote an exciting and absorbing book about his and his team's experiences in Easter Island well before it ever became a tourist destination. You can still buy the book (used) on Amazon.com. It is called AKU-AKU. I highly recommend this book. I still have it somewhere in my home ilibrary. If you can't go to Easter Island (few people do), this book will get you a famous adventurer's look into the civilization of Rapa Nui.

Travel Journal: Hongkong, Jan 13, 2010

2012-05-30T21:35:00.000-06:00

(Click to enlarge)

I wandered some more around Kowloon sidestreets in and around Nathan Road. Bought a box of Chinese pastries - hopia. As I wound myself back to the ship, I passed through Star City again, almost bought several exquisite Chinese ceramics (pass!) and eventually bought a (chipped) tea cup with a built-in strainer, a blue and white commercial-grade thing. Then, not feeling hungry at all, but being a foodie, I went up to the 4th floor to the Jade Garden restaurant for some dimsum. As I was seated on the linened table, it struck me suddenly: this was the dimsum restaurant that I had visited in 1975 during the Yamaha Festival. It was just down the road from the Sheraton, and they used to have pushcarts before. Now, everything is ordered a la carte. The shrimp siomai. the beef siopao, the shark's fin soup and the long, slender spring rolls were delicious. I went back to the ship, sated and several dollars poorer but richer and happier.

Jade Garden Restaurant
Hongkong Jan 13, 2010