tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-82789442826782066522026-10-18T07:52:52.323+08:00By a reader and writer who happens to be FilipinoMigs Bassighttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00993507822600826775noreply@blogger.comBlogger96125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8278944282678206652.post-85797083081157450302014-05-05T04:19:00.002+08:002014-05-05T11:33:35.522+08:00

A friend of mine died a few days ago. Let’s call him A. The last time I saw him alive was November in Bangkok. He already had cancer then. Just as I was coming up to his hotel room to give him a copy of the final season of Breaking Bad, A’s wife met me at the lobby to say that something had come up, and could I help wheel him to the emergency room? Bumrungrad was literally across the road,

Migs Bassighttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00993507822600826775noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8278944282678206652.post-65998955651968030572014-04-14T03:39:00.002+08:002014-04-14T03:41:32.002+08:00

But I can’t help remembering the first conversation you and I had, the first meaningful conversation. We must have been six years old. What the actual words were I don’t recall, but I know I was unburdening my heart to you, telling you everything about myself, all my hopes and longings. And all the time I was thinking, So this is what it means to be in love! Because — let me confess it — I was

Migs Bassighttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00993507822600826775noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8278944282678206652.post-71164490564545472014-03-12T05:49:00.002+08:002014-03-12T05:53:24.344+08:00

In most of the men in a gay bar there is a greater responsiveness than is usual in the world outside, and though most of them make it a piece of strategy to restrain their response, and though the elements composing it are more often subtle than not—a shift of weight, an extra blink of the eyes, an effort not to look at something that naturally draws attention—its presence is palpable; the

Migs Bassighttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00993507822600826775noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8278944282678206652.post-53302099032924620312014-02-25T00:28:00.000+08:002014-02-28T17:03:23.320+08:00

My maternal grandmother—her name is Auring—no, Aurora—turned ninety-eight a few days ago. Ninety-eight! We threw her a party. The date fell on a Sunday. From the barangay chapel she was carried up by carers Lita and Yoly into a family van for the lunchtime celebration in Fairview, on the northeast side of Manila, with the Ascaño clan. The wheelchair was folded and put in the back, her

Migs Bassighttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00993507822600826775noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8278944282678206652.post-85308502385040400492014-02-15T18:21:00.001+08:002014-02-15T18:21:34.220+08:00

Note: This piece was originally published in Positively Filipino, an online magazine celebrating the story of the global Filipino. The magazine title is taken from an infamous sign posted on the front door of a Stockton, California hotel in the 1930s. The sign read, “Positively No Filipinos Allowed.” My fellow contributors are a lovely bunch; I encourage you to visit the site and read their

Migs Bassighttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00993507822600826775noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8278944282678206652.post-91563365734551789372014-01-27T04:26:00.001+08:002014-02-15T17:41:21.169+08:00

D is now twenty-six. He was nineteen when he first met M, the Frenchman who was staying in the tropical-hut-style room next to ours. They met here, in Puerto Galera, Oriental Mindoro. M actually lives in Tahiti, if I remember correctly—or could it be Guiana?—but he regularly goes on holidays to the Philippines: I think two to three weeks at a time, a couple or even three times a year, ever

Migs Bassighttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00993507822600826775noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8278944282678206652.post-5274760453869099862014-01-02T03:32:00.002+08:002021-11-12T03:22:35.145+08:00

At some point a monkey appeared. His name was Johnny. He was shockingly small, less than a foot tall, his head probably half the size of my fist. The hawker was selling him for 3,500 pesos. At first—and this is because I don’t remember the last time I saw a monkey in person (probably when I was five or six)—Johnny’s movements made me nervous, despite his being on a leash, but after a while I

Migs Bassighttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00993507822600826775noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8278944282678206652.post-48601544695538594732013-10-31T18:34:00.000+08:002013-10-31T22:24:49.069+08:00

No one will believe this story, but I once saw the hand of a monster. I’m being serious! This was many years ago, when I was about eight or nine. My older brother and I then shared a bedroom at the back of the ancestral house in Quezon City, and our view from the jalousie windows was of the neighboring house’s backyard, which seemed always shadowed by tall old trees. Because I was so fearful

Migs Bassighttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00993507822600826775noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8278944282678206652.post-67829282333698018662013-10-23T01:19:00.000+08:002013-10-23T01:19:22.308+08:00

I have forgotten every New Year’s Eve but two, I have forgotten what my dead brother looked like at the age of nine or ten or twelve, but I will never forget the three little facts the nice people in Brighton told me about the body that they pulled from the sea.   The first is that Liam was wearing a short fluorescent yellow jacket when he died, like the ones railway workers and

Migs Bassighttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00993507822600826775noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8278944282678206652.post-86209559834955438542013-09-24T04:09:00.001+08:002013-10-01T14:04:52.496+08:00

Purple shirt. White chinos. Black sandals. Blue eyes. You’re sitting with a young Filipino man whose head is constantly turned, or turning, away. As if to hide his tears. Because there are tears. This is at Barcino in Makati. There’s Random Customer Number XX, up on stage, singing Stevie Wonder with the live band. He’s pretty good, right? Sings like a freaking pro. A funky “I Just Called to

Migs Bassighttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00993507822600826775noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8278944282678206652.post-74034477998996266272013-09-20T15:02:00.001+08:002013-09-20T15:02:55.955+08:00

I used Grammarly to grammar check this post, because tinkering obsessively with commas, modifiers, etc. gives me an uncontrollable urge to pull my hair, and hair-pulling is not healthy. Everywhere there was the smell of vitality in clothes, the vital something in wool and flannel and corduroy which spring releases. I had forgotten that this existed, this smell which instead of the

Migs Bassighttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00993507822600826775noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8278944282678206652.post-82984316680464795172013-09-13T00:33:00.000+08:002013-09-13T00:33:07.148+08:00

One of my good friends—let’s call him G—is dead. If he were still alive I’m sure he would dispute my use of the word ‘friend.’ No, I’m not being daft. He died two years ago; it will be exactly two years in a week’s time. I only found out about it now. By Googling. An obit came up as one of the search results. There was no mistaking it was him. You can imagine my shock. Some friend. As a

Migs Bassighttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00993507822600826775noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8278944282678206652.post-25645651516899991432013-08-13T11:19:00.000+08:002013-08-13T13:14:31.434+08:00

I don’t know the names of the other two on the boat, but our captain was named Ruel. He is known around Coron Town for his basketball-playing ability. According to the youngest crewman—one of the two whose names I didn’t remember to ask—Ruel almost made one of the college teams that played in Manila, in front of a national TV audience; Polytechnic University of the Philippines (PUP), I think

Migs Bassighttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00993507822600826775noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8278944282678206652.post-20878942944191738122013-07-28T00:54:00.002+08:002013-07-28T00:54:46.291+08:00

Robert imagined his mother talking to him when he had been sealed up in her womb. Of course he wouldn’t have known what her blunted syllables were meant to mean, but he was sure he would have felt a current flowing between them, the contraction of a fear, the stretch of an intention. Thomas was still close to those transfusions of feeling; Robert was getting explanations instead. Thomas still

Migs Bassighttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00993507822600826775noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8278944282678206652.post-69181067669894883782013-07-28T00:49:00.000+08:002013-07-28T00:49:58.948+08:00

She thinks the dog’s name is Pogi, meaning handsome. In general, the names she has decided to call the animals are based on how they look: Budoy is Browny, Tata is Whitey, Maja is also Whitey. The cat that my cousin Frederick used to have, she must have called with a five-letter word that starts with P, but surprisingly Brutus, who’s dead now, she never called Ugly. He was simply Brutus.

Migs Bassighttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00993507822600826775noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8278944282678206652.post-34296818425590668442013-07-01T16:04:00.001+08:002013-07-02T13:14:28.562+08:00

A Facebook friend posted recently, “Is twenty-eight too early to miss twenty-three?” The status update threw me into a panic. We are the same age, but unlike my friend, I don’t miss being twenty-three—because, and this is the cause of the panic, because honestly I can’t remember what the heck I was up to five years ago. My memory is usually not terrible; it’s supposed to be very good. Could

Migs Bassighttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00993507822600826775noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8278944282678206652.post-6428883631395655962013-07-01T15:49:00.001+08:002013-07-02T13:10:05.935+08:00

Here was a Lacoste-wearing young man in Greenbelt 4, between sips of The Original Ice Blended talking to his companion in loud, Atenean English about his Rolex. There was mention of its cost, which did not involve, contrary to what the companion might think, a five-digit figure—by which he meant it did not involve a mere five-digit figure. Asked where this particular watch stood among others

Migs Bassighttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00993507822600826775noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8278944282678206652.post-34123169622724065592013-06-06T12:17:00.000+08:002013-06-13T00:11:32.242+08:00

A little over a week ago, I had my first facial. (Behave.) It lasted about forty-five minutes. During the procedure I swore to myself to never do it again. Why? Because it hurt horribly. Here’s what I now know about blackhead extraction: the reward is not worth the pain. There were tears in my eyes. My masseuse—is that what one calls a woman who does facials: a masseuse?—my masseuse broke

Migs Bassighttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00993507822600826775noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8278944282678206652.post-2932291756835265532013-05-31T12:59:00.000+08:002013-06-01T13:25:53.961+08:00

On this latest trip to Thailand I brought light reading with me—light in content and light in weight. My baggage allowance, the minimum on a budget airline, did not allow for more books. (Or more anything.) So I brought only my Kindle and a friend’s copy of The Boy from Beirut and Other Stories by Robin Maugham. I thought these would do for a couple of weeks, most of which I knew anyway

Migs Bassighttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00993507822600826775noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8278944282678206652.post-36823906017231740192013-05-07T23:19:00.002+08:002013-05-07T23:19:37.848+08:00

Nothing could have prepared for me for Damon Galgut’s In a Strange Room. In the end, nothing did. I finished the novel in a day and a half at home. It is astonishing. Its effect on me was physical. It made my palms sweat. I stayed up to read and did not sleep. I moved from the bed to the couch to the kitchen to the swivel chair then back to the bed. I burst into tears. (My dog Budoy came in

Migs Bassighttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00993507822600826775noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8278944282678206652.post-18185113393435574882013-05-04T22:31:00.000+08:002013-05-04T22:34:05.711+08:00

At dinner, we talk about the restaurant and the baby. Lately our lives are devoted to the actual—we worry over Rebecca’s cough and the delivery of our used-but-refurbished walk-in refrigerator. I am beginning to understand the true difference between youth and age. Young people have time to make plans and think of new ideas. Older people need their whole energy to keep up with what’s already

Migs Bassighttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00993507822600826775noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8278944282678206652.post-78871467298109033912013-04-28T22:46:00.000+08:002013-04-28T22:46:16.041+08:00

I’m reading something else—Michael Cunningham’s A Home at the End of the World—but I haven’t stopped thinking about Madame Bovary. I think I know why. A literary friend had written to me to say that he’d read the Flaubert (in the original French) three times—the first time as a twenty-something, when he still “knew nothing about life”; it occurred to me that my own experience of reading the

Migs Bassighttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00993507822600826775noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8278944282678206652.post-53997981101244882792013-04-10T20:28:00.002+08:002013-04-10T21:50:41.855+08:00

Today my parents celebrate their thirty-sixth (I think) wedding anniversary. They met in a provincial town about three hundred miles north of Manila called Tuguegarao, which is now a city. Mother was a student in Saint Paul, father was in Ateneo de Tuguegarao, which no longer exists. During or after his senior year, at sixteen or seventeen, he successfully joined the AFS program, which meant

Migs Bassighttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00993507822600826775noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8278944282678206652.post-29710352015703147662013-04-07T16:30:00.000+08:002013-04-18T00:42:23.398+08:00

“Conservation instinct,” you write. I’m at my grandmother’s birthday celebration in Manila, you’re at a local hammam in Morocco, and I ask you to confirm that I didn’t really stand a chance. Did I? “I knew you were leaving,” you reply. “Now, do let me say no more.” You don’t have to. It’s all I need. Le Bistrot, on Nueva de Lyon, between Los Leones and Tobalaba. Remember? November. The

Migs Bassighttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00993507822600826775noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8278944282678206652.post-13808483113518039352013-03-25T17:39:00.000+08:002013-10-05T10:35:04.817+08:00

Do you know that Manila is also called the ‘City of Our Affections’? It is. The nickname has quite a nice ring to it—it sounds, to me, a bit more thoughtful than the romantic ‘Pearl of the Orient’—but don’t, I advise, mistake “nice” and “thoughtful” for “feel-good.” To me, the nickname has always been injected with a certain pathos. To questions of why, I’ll defer to a key part of “If

Migs Bassighttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00993507822600826775noreply@blogger.com0