A Father's Heart

My college friend, V, a photographer and artist, was born a fish. Even when I had a few years’ head start on him, he still takes to diving better than I do. He is unfazed by the weight of the sea, unafraid to take risks even when his decisions violate NAUI safety guidelines, as well as all the laws of physics. I was his buddy when he first dived in Anilao, and he should’ve paid me for that service for he kept speeding after every fish he fancied, parting away from us, and I had to tear after him to lead him back to the pack—no easy feat for he had a UP swim team’s body, built for speed.

When we dived Kho Tao, Thailand, our entire team had to do an emergency ascent after a mere ten minutes: we lost V underwater. He had seen something interesting and tore after it. His lust for life and all its beauty proved far too irresistible.

V is able to bear pain and when he severely hurt his back in Bohol, he still managed to don his tank for one last dive in Balicasag, never mind that I had to tow him for, oh, about forty minutes.

V is creative, funny and gentle in adversity: when our friend, B, fell into the sea together with V’s camera—one of the first (and very expensive) digital cameras that came out then—V, without missing a beat, hugged the dripping B. He knew B needed more assurance of their friendship than he did over the state of his very wet camera. And when the hard rains lashed at us when we emerged from the Coron seas, with waves that turned white and foamy, and pitched the boat to and fro, V kept us singing for the hour’s trip back to the resort all the songs that contained the words “rain” and “ulan.” And we sang, punctuated by thunder and lightning.

Yet there is an aspect of his life where V is unsure of his footing: fathering. For many years now, V has struggled with his eldest son, who claws at life, at anybody. Several times V finds himself trapped between a rock and a hard place. Disciplining his son is such a sorrow: How can V protect his son from his own wrong decisions? Often V finds himself giving up.

But not last night.

Last night V wrote us from Hong Kong, where he and his family have lived for over ten years. The Coach and I read his letter in silence, touched by V's father heart. I asked V's permission to reprint his email here.

Mga kapatid,

Last Friday, my elder son decided to leave home. My wife and I are not in favor of his relationship with his girlfriend because it is detrimental to both of them. The girl is not allowed in the house. On that day I caught them in his room.

My elder son has been making wrong choices in life because of this relationship. He is out of school at the moment, and his violent tendencies have been apparent. He has not been following house rules and advice. He is a total rebel. When he left, I did not decline.

For one whole week, I tried to be strong in my decision to let him go. In fact I locked the gate of the house when I leave so he cannot enter when nobody is home. He cannot take a bath, he cannot eat the food at home. I was hoping that by doing that he will learn his lesson, that it is difficult to be away from your family, that it is difficult to succeed in life without proper education, that life is not easy. He doesn't have money so I assume he cannot be mobile and will probably starve eventually. I thought in my mind, "How long can his friends support him?" All through the week, I was hoping that this experience will teach him life's lesson.

This afternoon, just after office hours (I usually extend my working hours), I received a phone call from him. He said "Papa, why is it that nobody is home? I need to get something from my room." I almost did not hear the other words he said—just the word, "Papa." The word "Papa" melted my heart; it sounded so beautiful to my ears.

That was a spiritual moment. Now I have an idea how God feels when we call him Father. I haven't finished everything I needed to do, but I told him to wait for me because I am on my way home.

If it has been a difficult week for him, so it was for me. I suddenly realized where the pain and frustrations are coming from. What if my colleagues know my son does not live with me anymore? I am supposed to be a good manager, why can't I manage my own son? What if he cannot finish high school in time, or not at all? What about university? Other people's kids are doing well, what went wrong with my son? And the list of questions goes on.

When I heard my son say "Papa," I know deep in my heart that I love my son. I still love my son even if he is a total rebel. I love my son even if he doesn’t get into the university. I still love him even if he does not perform. Children are not trophies, sabi nga ni B. I felt a sense of freedom. Ngayon, alam ko na talaga ang meaning ng unconditional love. Our relationship with our Father God is the same. Even if we, His children, will go astray, it doesn't mean that He will cease to love us.

I will be patient. I will wait. My son is coming back. If I think this way towards my son, I wonder how God feels towards His children.

This night at home, I asked my son if he would like to eat out with me. He said he already had dinner. I told him to sleep in his room tonight: his mother will be arriving tomorrow from New York and his aunt has something for him. I know he was just waiting for the invitation. He went inside his room and sprayed some fragrance. He said he didn't like the smell. Then he asked for two hundred dollars. I gave him two hundred dollars. I felt like I gave him only two ten dollar bills. I wanted to give him some more. After putting the money in his pocket, he said he has to go but will be back. I asked him what time is he coming home. He said, before twelve.

I am not sure if my son has learned his lesson, but I'm quite sure I did.

V

Fishing

Maybe I don’t pay The Coach enough compliments or maybe he feels guilty for only recently picking up on the chores he abandoned, or why else would he dance around me whenever I approach our bathroom, chortling, “Look how white the tiles are” or “Hmmm, ang bango ng banyo.”

I can’t blame him. I do my own share of fishing as well.

“Honey,” I asked one day when I felt bloated. “Am I beautiful?”

“Maganda ka naman,” he said. Stoutly.

“Naman?!?” I shrieked, piqued at the qualifier. “Why is there a naman?!?” The good man, never knowing what hit him, had to stop what he was doing to explain the ramifications of “naman.” Being Cebuana to the core, I didn’t believe him entirely. It would’ve been simpler if he had used the term “quite”—all I would’ve done was ask whether he was using the word in the American sense (somewhat) or the British sense (entirely).

But I never learn. Last night before we slept, I snuggled up to him and asked, “Honey, am I a good wife?”

“Of course you are, sweetie,” he said, readily but not too hastily or else I’d suspect it was a stock answer (I am impossible, am I not?).

“But I want to be a better wife,” I said.

“Okay,” he said, quick to the draw. “Then you wash the dishes.”

Remind me never to go fishing again.

True Colors

The tests we take online--to find out what kind of movie we are, what our name would be in French, what our eating style is--they are indubitably fun, fun, fun, but no different from horoscopes and I-ching, methinks. Many of us desire to be told who and what we are. But in many instances it’s not a genuine search for self: sometimes we cheat in those tests, perhaps make our answers more palatable and manipulate the results. We have in our minds an ideal of what we are and could be, and wish, almost with despair, that we are right.


Janet, your true color is Red!

Your color is red, the color of racy sportscars, blushing cheeks, and luscious roses. Red symbolizes passion, romance, and love. So, since you're ruled by red, you probably trust your feelings more than your brain and tend to act spontaneously. If you see something you want, you go for it without thinking twice — impulsive is your middle name. You don't wait around for people to make decisions, either; you dive right in. Quite the romantic, you pay close attention to your emotions. In fact, if your heart isn't in what you're doing, you won't be satisfied. Of course, even when you do pour all your energy into the projects you tackle, your impetuous nature means your passions can shift as frequently as the wind. That's why some reds have trouble with commitment. Our advice? Next time you're feeling fickle, think before you act, if possible. You might be surprised at the results. Overall, though, it's great to be red. No one lives life more completely than you do.

Making time

My friend, Winthrop, who doubles as our computer 911 guy, whooped when he learned I joined the blogosphere and wondered how much time I really have for blogging.

Very leeeeeettle time, but, yes, there is time. While defrosting the ref or waiting for the manang to pick up our laundry, and at the right moment when I am about to go berserk computing the budget or editing another—sigh—constipated magazine article, then it is time to blog or trawl the blogs. Calms the nerves. (Or I can just exercise, but, heck, why stand up? As the fantasonic Freddie Mercury sang, “Fat-bottomed girls, you make the rockin’ world go round”—by which definition, oh yes, I do rock!)

Which begs the question: if I have time to blog, then surely I have time to write fiction? Since 2003 I have written only one and a half stories. The half-story is promising, but only as an essay, while the lone story needs, oh, about 78 million revisions before it gains shape.

I have every other writer’s usual excuses for the lame output, the most popular being, “I don’t have the time.”

Which, as the other every other writer knows, is a lot of hoohah. There is always time. Even I, who straddle work and housework (The Coach and I are a tad allergic to having house help), have the time.

So here I go. I will find time to write. Starting today. I’m making the third of the 78 million revisions that the lone story needs and constructing the other half of the half-story. Before moving on to writing on an area I should probably mine: the world of lawyers.

Three people helped me in recents days to wake up from my stupor: one of them does not know me, the other knows me only in cyberspace, and the third I haven’t seen since 1983—all of them unaware of their impact.

There is Silliman University professor Ian Rosales Casocot, who makes no excuses, thankfully, or otherwise we wouldn’t have his beautiful Old Movies and The Hero of Snore Tango, as well as his portal to Philippine literature, which brings the writing community together. And there’s my high school classmate Giselle Doherty, more than 7,000 miles away in California, whose comment to one of my posts reminded me to properly steward my writing. And there is Dean Francis Alfar, who manages the “tension between words and work.” Like Dean, I will choose my attitude.

Thank you, guys. You rock!

From our shelf: Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman

I snatched Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman by Elizabeth Buchan from the Booksale bin (P70.00) because of its title—as did its one million other readers, I suspect. I settled comfortably on my side of the bed and waited until The Coach fell asleep; it didn’t seem like good manners to brandish such a title in his face as his last memory for the day.

About six hours later, half of me was cheering on Rose—the book’s middle-aged heroine who lost her husband, job, and home to her own young, beautiful assistant—and the other half was sheepish because I had just finished a truly wonderful book by Paula Fox, and I felt I betrayed Fox somewhat by taking pleasure in what had been made into a TV movie, starring Christine Lahti.

Revenge will never be considered highbrow lit, and a few of its de rigueur confrontations with the husband and the other woman made me squirm: oh please, please don’t go melodramatic, and they almost did, teetering dangerously, dangerously so.

But humor abounds, even in the way Rose committed to break down:

If I was going to suffer—that is, more than I was at the moment, and there was no doubt that I would—I might as well do it properly and give myself up to grand and august pain.

Buchan writes intelligently, and by that I mean her writing can be insightful and, while uncertain and a tad overdone in some portions, her language can be beautiful.

Because I am on my way to being middle-aged, I needed to see Rose through her bewilderment and bawling, and on to her choice to live. Rose, who considered herself “the grit in the oyster,” read in her body the life she led:

What did I expect to see? The gleaming bronze of a fountain nymph, whose lines flowed untouched and unmarked? My body had swelled in gestation. It had been stretched, ripped, sewn up. It had carried children, cradled them and, when the time had come, pushed them gently away. It had learned to be endlessly busy, to snatch at repose, to guard its silences in the hot, crowded demands of the family. How could all this activity not be written into the flesh?

Yup, none of that You complete me hoohah. Some of Revenge’s other lines I like…

Poetry hovered on the weightless and was decorated with wide white margins.

...

As an organizational principle, love has flaws.

...

Supposedly the past is a foreign country of which we should beware. That was not true: it was oneself that was the foreign country, the unexplored, possibly dangerous side.

...

Life, wrote Virginia Woolf, was a luminous halo, a semitransparent envelope. Oh no, it was not. Not for some. Some of us lived in a plain brown envelope.

…as well as an old Spanish proverb for a great epigraph: Living well is the best revenge.

Why I am not a poet

Because I stink at it, too.

I stink even at reading poetry. At a Baguio workshop in 2003, panelist/poet J. Neil Garcia (whom I adore just for being Neil), asked me to share what I thought of wunderkind Gelo Suarez's love poem. I looked at the lines on the page, black and white, and launched into a desperate exegesis about the beauty of love.

Neil, gracious as ever, peered at me and said quietly, “You do know this talks about incest, don't you?”

Of course I didn't.

Now, imagine my agony when I tried to combine children's writing and poetry.

I don’t know how well I relate to the young ones. If a child, for instance, were to ask me why the sky is blue, I would answer, “Because it does not look good in red.”

The Coach and I disallowed kids from our wedding, even my beloved nephews and nieces (I have fourteen who deplete my savings every time I go home to Cebu, plus two grandnieces, with another one on the way). No flower girls or ring bearers, no little feet trampling on my veil, no tugging at itchy hemlines.

In the first few years of our marriage, The Coach and I were intolerant of children's excesses. In one trip to Boracay, there was this rambunctious little imp who ran around our smallish banca, squealing and squalling, pitching all of us to and fro. Everyone and his brother was annoyed, but looked the other way. When the little volcano next passed us, The Coach, exasperated, stuck his knee forward and the tyke-tyrant tripped, then caught his footing, and, perhaps scared of his near-tumble, sniffed and ran to his mother, where he stayed quiet the rest of the journey. I could barely restrain a yippee.

(Ahem. Please note the use of the past, past tense. The Coach and I have since matured. Heh.)

I figured children needed a hero so my kiddie poetry often talked about someone saving another, prompting my then classmate and writer extraordinaire Migs Villanueva to say, "May messianic tendencies ka pala, Janet." Eeeps. Not. Just a limited mind, that’s all.

I started with a great title to the, uhm, collection: The Not-So-Ordinary Days of Jamie, but teetered dangerously from thereon. The collection traveled to the land under the stairs (my favorite hidey-hole when I was five), cooked up an alphabet soup that form its letters to warn children of danger, helped a cloud that lost its way, and revealed the magic of the forty winks.

They sound good in theory, perhaps, but the execution was less than desirable. I was hobbled by my myopia that children’s poetry should rhyme. I thought too much like an adult; my language was geared for adult readers. I can almost forgive my teacher for giving me a 2.0 in children's writing class—a failing grade, if you should know. Almost. But not yet.

Here are two of those poems that suck the least. You can bet that when the Lord finds it right to grant us the twins The Coach desires, I will definitely sic these poems on the poor kids. Heh.

Well, at least I know how to rhyme.

The Blues

When Jamie woke up one bright sunny morning
She saw the world in blue, all colors transforming.
The trees weren’t green,
They were clearly cerulean.
The flowers changed dresses—of that she was sure
Gone the rainbow tresses; they were entirely azure!

“Mom!” cried Jamie, “there’s been a big whammy!
All that I see is a completely blue scenery!”
Mom was so puzzled; she could barely understand it.
So they rushed to Doc Snorton for some handy little fix-it.

Poor Doc Snorton, he didn’t know what to do.
He poked her and checked her ‘til he almost turned blue.
“Ahem,” he’d say when there was nothing else to say.
“I see,” he’d say when there was nothing else to see.

“My dear,” he sighed finally, “this is all a mystery.
How you lost the other colors is really beyond me.”
“Oh no,” Mom said, “what are we to do?
Blue is your favorite but you can’t dump any other hue.”

“That’s it!” yelled Jamie, “that’s exactly what I did!
I adored blue above all, other colors I forbid.
I forgot that all colors make up a pretty rainbow
And only one-seventh is made up of indigo.”

“But how,” Doc asked, “can I put right your eyesight?
I have no treatment or remedy; we have only your insight.”
“I don’t know,” said Jamie, “but I do hope and pray
That my discovery will bring back other colors to stay.”

When Jamie awoke the next sunny morning
Gone were the blues, all the colors returning.
The trees became green
No longer cerulean.

“Hurray!” she rejoiced, “What a resounding relief!
I see red, I see yellow, and green on a leaf!
How wonderful to know that my favorite blue
Only looks better when paired with some other hue.”


The Angry Sink

Jamie was washing some dishes one evening
When a noise crashed into her pleasant daydreaming.
Growwwl, rowwwl, browwwl—went the terrible noise.
Shlurrrp, flurrrrp, blurrrrp—‘twas like no other voice.

“My goodness,” jumped Jamie, “what on earth could that be?
There’s nobody else in the kitchen but me.”
Brreee, greeee, dreeee—it went on and on.
Gurggle, murggle, plurggle—so forth and so on.

Poor Jamie stood shaking, so frightened was she
Of this roaring deep noise from where, she couldn¹t see.
Then all of a sudden, she saw the sink spouting
Some eggshells and clamshells, all stinking and rotting.

“Hogwash and balderdash,” the sink reared up and roared.
“How could I work in peace with all the rubbish you poured?
Hokum and bunkum, what a terrible mess!
The way you wash your dishes makes me really distressed!”

“I’m sorry,” quaked Jamie, “I didn’t realize
That my washing the dishes was the cause of your cries.
But, please, Sir Sink, you must tell me more.
How could I hurt you with an innocent chore?”

“Twaddle, dilly-daddle,” the sink sputtered and stuttered.
“The scraps you poured in me left me littered and cluttered.
Higgledy-piggledy, bits of broccoli and baloney
Are choking my windpipe, what a great big malarkey!”

“I’ll remove all that garbage,” offered Jamie to the sink.
“If you’ll give me a chance, I could be more than you think.
I promise never ever to burden you with garbage.
Ewww, all this rubbish I don’t ever want to rummage!”

So Jamie from then on first scraped away the scraps
To avoid the barrage of an angry sink’s claptraps.
And the sink? He was happy, so peaceful was his swishing
Saving our Jamie from an outburst so alarming.

Class Struggle 101

This is my third summer teaching Business Writing and Presentation to incoming management seniors at a nearby university. I love teaching, except the part where I have to grade papers: I discovered that if I leave the papers stacked on top of each other, they breed overnight.

The Coach sometimes yields to my insistence that he help me check papers. But you cannot get the imp out of The Coach. In one exam, I asked my students to define the word stoke. One guy rather desperately, answered: Past tense of stick, he he he. Not to be outdone, The Coach wrote back in glorious red ink: You're wrong! He he he.

There are times when I get thoroughly stumped: what to do, for instance, when your student defines alternate as something like one, it's blue, two, it's white; three, it's blue, four, it's white; next, it's blue, then it's white--about six pairs of blue and white. The Coach, champion of the oppressed, pleaded on the boy's behalf, "Sige na, give him the point. He knows the answer naman."

One of my students this summer is wonderfully creative. The topic this afternoon was conciseness in writing. I encouraged them to omit needless words and to use verbs instead of nouns or adjectives for crisper, snappier language. How, for instance, can they shorten the phrase expressing yourself well by means of the written word?

"What's the one-word equivalent?" I asked them. "I'm looking for a verb."

"Expressing!" a guy in the middle row said.

I was actually looking for the verb writing. "Okay," I said. "But what's even shorter than that?"

"Express!" another student said.

"Shorter," I said.

Silence.

"One word, one verb that's shorter?" I prompted. "Anyone?"

And someone from the back answered, her voice clear but trailing towards the end. "Ex?" she said.

Siyanga naman.

Face/Off

Sometime in March 2004, in the heat of the presidential elections, I interviewed Chiz Escudero, then spokesperson for candidate Fernando Poe Jr. While we talked over early breakfast at the Manila Peninsula, several thought balloons popped up in my mind, thoughts I could not include in my article. These are some of those thought balloons.

It’s a pity that those who woo us to hire them as public servants aren’t as public as they should be. I had long been anticipating my interview with FPJ, struggling through the maze of kingmakers and court jesters that form Da King’s cordon sanitaire, careful to protect him from himself.

But the man who sits before me, who begs for a minute to finish his phone interview with DZMM, speaks too fast and confidently into his mobile phone, far from the abbreviated and tentative rejoinders I was prepared for.

This morning I am asked to look beyond the youthful dynamism of Sorsogon Rep. Francis Escudero and pretend that he, as the newly designated official spokesperson, is Da King.

I am not supposed to mind the switch. After all, the congressman extended his hand first and introduced himself by his nickname. I am to be charmed by this. For this breakfast interview, I am Janet and he is Chiz. I think maybe I should have good reason to have a semi-crush on this man, never mind that The Coach and I think Chiz looks like a munggo with ears.

While he shoots rapid-fire reasons for FPJ’s mini-scuffle with a reporter late yesterday, Chiz waves at the waitress to give us a menu. Is he naturally solicitous? Or is this part of his job description? FPJ or the powers behind him choose Da King’s talking head well. Chiz makes me feel almost considerate to FPJ for in effect standing me up—not too bad considering that I still carry in my head Fr. Robert Reyes’s jab against FPJ. Sitting in his Project 4 office with his knapsack still strapped to his back, the priest who runs to steer attention to the country’s burning issues said, “It’s very clear: FPJ is not a bridge to the future. He is a bridge to Erap, who is a bridge to the Marcoses.”

Chiz finishes his phone interview on a high note. His account of how FPJ did not really swing his elbow against the journalist but was merely warding off the pressure of the teeming masses may not have justified FPJ’s much-maligned temper, but it sure did mollify the radio commentators.

Chiz clasps his hands together and smiles, “So how should we do this?”

I smile back. “I ask you questions, and you answer them.”

He laughs. We are off to a good start, especially since my breakfast bacon is crisp and the hot chocolate is like pure cacao concentrate. I hope he won’t mind my first question.

“How would FPJ protect himself from being manipulated by his advisers?” I ask.

And he rattles off, his mind moving faster than his mouth: “One advantage FPJ has is his popularity. He doesn’t need that much resources to win. People flock to him in droves just to hear him speak. That’s a good start. He will not be manipulated later on by vested interests since his winnability is not dependent upon money that a person or business unit will give him but rather on the outpouring of support from the people.”

My editor’s mind paused when he said “winnability,” but I will forgive him since he speaks for FPJ. And because I myself like to forge non-words like “lawyering” and “tanggalable.”

I clear my throat. The Honorable Chiz did not really answer my question. “Well, yes, that is true,” I say. “But many are worried about the people egging FPJ to run, the kingmakers who might take advantage of FPJ’s inexperience in government.”

“That question should also be asked of other candidates,” he shoots back. “All other candidates have kingmakers and backers behind him. For instance, GMA: who is behind her? Why is nobody asking that question? Or is the answer to that already too obvious? The same is true for presidential candidates Ping Lacson and Raul Roco. Who is spending for their campaigns?”

Feint, sidestep, and draw. This man sure knows how not to answer a question. Pretty much like the man he represents. When asked for his qualifications, Da King mentioned his 40 years in showbusiness: “Karanasan ko.” Pause. “My forty years bilang isang artista, kung saan-saan po ako nakarating—sa gubat, bundok at dagat.” Reacting to claims that he had no experience, FPJ said, “Wala daw akong experience. Pero ginampanan ko ang mga papel bilang Muslim, military officer, pulis, jeepney driver, taxi driver, kutsero. At nang minsan ginampanan ko po ang pari.”

How can I press my point further? Chiz is determined not to answer my question. His eyes retain the same level of stoic niceness as when he offered me coffee, unchanging even as he drags on his cigarette or as he launches into animated speech.

“Some candidates have lamented FPJ’s deficiencies in formal education. How will he work and decide on, say, trade agreements?” I ask.

His eyes stretch. What an amazing trick: to stretch the eyes like he is smiling, when he actually is not. “Do you think it’s GMA who’s actually going through the nitty-gritty of contracts or trade agreements?” he confronts me. “If at all Roco will become president, will he actually be going through the details of each transaction? No. One thing we have to rely on, one thing we have to accept, is to trust our civil servants and those in government that they will perform their job regardless of who is the sitting president. That lack of trust also probably explains the utter absence of continuity with respect to our government. People question FPJ’s lack of government experience, but it also means that he has not been tainted by politics. He has not been consumed by the system. There lies our hope for the country and the government.”

I choose to think that Chiz, armed with a law degree from the University of the Philippines, knows exactly what I was driving at, and knows exactly why he frantically needs to persuade me that political naiveté leads to “our hope for the country and the government.”

Sigh… This Artful Dodger has an entire arsenal of verbal maneuvers and sound bites for every question.

So I am not surprised that he can still deify Da King’s failure to list in his Certificate of Candidacy his illegitimate offspring, saying that FPJ’s readiness to admit his extramarital liaisons (after somebody else made the discovery, of course) underscores his honesty and transparency. “FPJ has talked to Ms. Roces about this years ago. That speaks of the character of the person: he’s not afraid of telling the truth, unlike others.”

I scratch my head. Does Chiz mean others like, say, himself?

Anyhow, Chiz continues, “That is another factor to consider. When you’re president, you will stand as father of the nation, and the lines of communication have to be open between the father and his children.” I wince, not only because I cannot imagine FPJ as the father of the nation, but also because there are, particularly now, definitely no lines of communication between me and the Honorable Chiz, spokesperson of FPJ, the father of the nation.

And when I ask him which presidential candidate FPJ would vote for should he withdraw from the presidential race, Chiz threw me a bone: “That’s a very good question.” Translation: I can answer that, without hedging, quibbling or dithering.

He smiles, and it almost reaches his eyes. “If you look at the platforms, there are similarities between him and Bro. Eddie Villanueva, about where they’re coming from. They both seek to inspire new hope in our people. They do not come from politics and have no bad record of unbroken promises. People can hold them to their word.”

Bravo. While Chiz did not actually talk of platforms but personalities, he has chosen the safest presidential bet, one in whose perceived morality and integrity FPJ can take refuge, particularly since Villanueva lags far behind FPJ in the polls. Contrast this with GMA’s curt email reply to the same question: “But I am running.” Or Lacson’s pointed comeback: “I will not vote for GMA.” Or Roco’s obsequiousness: “I’m sorry but I don’t engage in negative thinking. I learned in Journalism 101 not to engage in speculative thinking.” Or Villanueva’s caution: “I will have to carefully study their qualifications.”

But Chiz’s—and hence FPJ’s—crowning comeback is still to come. When I ask if FPJ had done any social or charitable work, he replies: “Only in his private capacity. He has chosen, and this is known in the movie industry, for his charitable acts to be kept private for the simple reason that as stated in the Good Book,”—and he grandly gestures to the Bible peeking through my backpack, caught up in his religiosity—“once a charitable act has been made public, then such charitable act is considered paid for and will no longer receive a grace. That’s why he’s admonished every person he helped to keep the kind act to themselves.” Translation: Whether or not FPJ did any charitable work, you have no means of verifying.

Right.

The waitress arrives with more coffee. That is all he takes with his cigarettes. “You are going to die early,” I say, glancing at his breakfast. Then I compose my face into a smile, so he will not think I made a threat.

“I know,” he says. He looks at his watch, and asks for my leave to attend another meeting. He stands, courtly: “I’ll just go to the restroom. Please wait for me. Let’s go out together.” Translation: If I am seen leaving with you and if I grace you with my presence, will you be nice when you write your article about me?

I motion for the waitress to bring the bill, but she politely says that “the congressman has paid for it.” Set, game, and match. There goes my budding journalistic integrity.

I look at the remains of my scrambled eggs hardening in the bacon fat, all the calories trapped in the cholesterol, and I think maybe I should join Fr. Robert in his next protest run.

On the way to the Palancas

If I had a story worth the Palancas (and, sadly, I don't), this is the conversation I imagine I'd have with the other hopefuls once I get to its Makati office, right before midnight of April 30, of course--procrastinators rock!!

ME: Who else do you think is joining the Palancas?

KIBITZER: I hear Chari Lucero submitted an entry.

ME: Ooookaaay. That means the most I can hope for is second place.

KIBITZER: Migs Villanueva also joined, they say.

ME: [sighs] Third place, then.

KIBITZER: Ian Casocot, too...

ME: [gets desperate] Maybe tie for third place?

KIBITZER: ...as well as Luis Katigbak, Faye Ilogon and Yvette Tan.

ME: [stuffs entry into bag] Next year na lang.

Why I am not a children's writer

Because I stink at it, that's why.

But, see, I didn't know that in 1999. So the very first story I wrote in my entire life was, dum-dee-dum, a story for children. I thought it was easier to write for minds still developing. Mistake. Big one.

It was about a question mark.

"A what?" my buddy Abet asked. We were waiting for our tapsilog with extra egg at Rodic’s, the UP institution of our dormitory life; sixteen years after we met in 1983, and we still couldn’t wean ourselves from Rodic’s.

"It's about a question mark," I repeated. I had not written the story yet. It was just in my head, prowling.

Abet smiled. It was so easy for me to be vulnerable to this friend. He too was a soul-seeker, restless in either of his two professions, engineering and lawyering. He and I connected: we had the same woes.

“His name is Quentin. Quentin the Question Mark. And he’s very sad because unlike the other punctuation marks, he was rarely used. And if he was, it was always with a quizzical note at the end, as if people were perplexed or doubtful. Like, ‘Where am I?’ or ‘Are you there?’”

I said it all in one mad rush so that Abet, with his genius IQ, would not have time to object.

Abet chuckled. I was getting a little desperate to prove to him that, hey, this could be a great story. “Quentin wasn’t like, say, the period, which was declarative, with such a stabilizing effect, so calm and dignified. He spoke with authority. And Quentin wasn’t like the exclamation point, which was sparkling and energetic, so vigorous. You use the exclamation point and you’re like jumping cartwheels, ‘What a life!’ or ‘Woohoo!’”

By this time, Abet was laughing, apparently also using a lot of exclamation points while he did.

“So on Quentin’s birthday, when no one in the Land of Grammar remembered that it was his day, he decided to leave, just like that.” I snapped my fingers, hoping the extra action would add, well, more action to the story. “At first no one in Grammar noticed he left. And when they did, they thought it was cool. The students had a blast because the teachers could no longer ask questions. No exams, no recitation.”

What the heck, by this time, I was laughing too. It did sound ludicrous, but I was on a roll. I didn’t know better.

“Slowly, things went berserk. The TV game show hosts could not ask questions. Jeopardy! was cancelled. People could not ask for the price of broccoli. Many who could not read or follow maps got lost.”

Abet was guffawing, like only he can, without restraint and with tears in his eyes—what, for me? We were seated at the table jammed next to the mirror, so there were four of us doubling up, having hysterics. It was a laugh party, and we had immense fun even before our beloved tapsilog arrived.

Maybe I should’ve taken that delightful dinner as a hint, but since I didn’t know better, I went ahead and finished the story in 2001 for a writers’ workshop in Dumaguete…

…where it did not necessarily fare better. I’m still puzzling over the effect, really, of Quentin. It was the third and last week of the workshop, and Quentin was, oh I don’t know, probably the last story to be critiqued, and everyone was most likely tired of objective-correlatives and données. Anyway, when it was Quentin’s turn to be workshopped, the entire panel of distinguished writers—lemme see, there was the poet DM Reyes, fictionist Susan Lara, and probably award-winners Ernie Yee, Bobby Villasis, and Sawie Aquino, too, and, oh I don’t really care to remember who else—they all looked at each other, conspiratorially. Then Susan Lara counted aloud, “One, and two, and three…” and the entire panel, mercy!, broke into song, putting their hands in the air and swinging them about, singing “Quentin the Question Mark” to the tune of (I think it was) Popeye the Sailorman.

What a sight.

I should probably have abandoned children’s writing right about then. But the Polymath, one of two child wonders at the workshop, piped in helpfully at my right. “Mudra, you can also write about Ulrich the Umlaut.” I laughed. Of course.

Germaine, to whom I told the story afterwards, was another big help. “You can write about Anna the Ampersand,” she said. And I said, “Yes, and let’s make her a matchmaker. She connects people to people, like Mark & Susan, John & Alice.” A series of children's books, why not?

Hah.

Getting along

A while ago The Coach asked me to pray with him. He prayed for our friend M, whose marriage is a step-yes, step-no non-union; for her little son, A, who at six thinks that by hating his father he is loving his mother; for grace in fulfilling our calling—that is his term for his coaching and my writing, bless him; and for the child/children we desire (whenever he starts praying for twins, I silently add a little caveat: Lord, when in Your most gracious will, You answer his prayer, please grant the resources and the strength to raise—gulp—twins).

Then he prayed for us, for our relationship. “Panginoong Diyos,” he said, “we don’t have a perfect marriage. But…” and then he semi-laughed, so faint I could discern it only from the way his voice rose and fell in slight singsong, “…we get along.”

A few hours before, while he was trying to earn brownie points by washing the dishes he should’ve done waaaaaay earlier, he had mentioned how many of our laugh-out-loud times are fun only to us and don’t elicit as much amusement from others, when shared. I thought maybe he was referring to those fun times when he was praying, but now I think he was truly, honestly grateful, and perhaps a little surprised, that we get along—in spite of.

Getting along 24/7 is incredibly difficult, even when you love the other. The very things that you used to consider cute in the other could be the very same things that exasperate you no end. It takes enormous strength not to nag a spouse (The Coach) to please put the dirty clothes in the hamper, as well as enormous grace to forgive an erring but unrepentant partner (me) who still doesn’t know how to say sorry. Little things—like not jiggling the flush handle a couple of times to stop the water closet from continuously flushing water (me) or forgetting to water the plants (The Coach; his classic line: What? We have a plant?)—could start a war. It is unbelievably easy to fan a spark of irritation into an inferno simply by hurling grand generalizations that start with, “You never…” or “You always…” Dangerous ipse dixits that attack the person instead of the fault or omission can escalate, and before you know it, one will end up sleeping on the couch, while the other tosses and turns in bed, pretending she (all right, me) is justified in locking the door. (That’s why you gotta believe them truisms printed onto mugs. For a time I sported a drink holder that read: Marriage is the only war where you sleep with the enemy.)

Getting along takes the right combination of and timing for blindness and deafness, perhaps more so for The Coach, since I can be quite crabby, PMS or no, and veer annoyingly to the dramatic. If, say, he were to ask me where the key to our inadvertently locked bedroom is kept, I simply wouldn’t tell him where it is: I have to lean my head to my left, tap my fingers on my cheek, one after the other, look up to the ceiling and say not so nicely, “Hmmm. If I were to die, say, right now, then you’d have to break down the door to get your pants so you won’t be in your boxers when the guys from the morgue arrive to pick me up.” Oh, I can be so annoying, even to me.

But The Coach has learned to just snort at my affectations (as well as know what items are stored in the utility room), even before I learned not to carry over into our home any dramatizations that should remain in my writing. I just zip my lip. And somehow we get along.

Just out

Phoem Barranda graces the April issue of mph, one of the mags I copyedit. (The inimitable Adel Gabot is the Big Chief.)

Check out the cover in this blog's sidebar.

He did it his way

Boy, oh boy, you gotta check out this site and catch this French techie sing his entire CV.

He struggles with the English lyrics, his guttural Rs and the unforgiving IT terms getting in the way, and there are about only 4 or 5 discernible notes in the song. But we forgive him, for not only did he provide us subtitles, he also gave us a pretty good laugh--the good kind.

Anyhoo, Frenchie received 180 job offers. He now works for the Microsoft graphics team. Beat that, American Idol!

Writing and compassion

The Polymath (i.e., my brainiac friend, P) thinks the strength and beauty of Alice Munro's fiction lies in her compassion for her characters. I agree. (That, and her richly connotative language.)

Author Crawford Kilian in his blog highlights the importance of the writer's attitude:

Some successful writers just transcribe what their inner authors dictate, and have no idea whether it's any good. Paul Theroux thinks about the act of the writing, and the attitude of the writer, and makes that an important part of his storytelling.

My lack of compassion for my characters and lack of attitude to my subject (what my teacher says is my story's lack of authorial voice, though the literary glossaries define authorial voice as something else, dagnabbit, getting so confused!)--these hinder the piece I am struggling over.

I don’t know what’s wrong with me, why it’s so hard for me to sit still, read and write. I have tons of books worth every other writer’s while, but only recently regained the spirit to open them. I have stories that boil in me, yet all I’ve drummed up in the past five months is wanting.

I have every possible tool: the (requisite?) Apple, journals, and fountain pens. I have my own nook carved from the walls. It is mine alone.

I have time, perhaps not that much, but there is time, nonetheless.

The Coach is giving and forgiving. He gives me space. He washes the dirty dishes I leave lying for days. He doesn’t mind the mess of a week. He overlooks the unmade bed, takes out the garbage, cleans the toilet, lets me oversleep in the morning, irons his own clothes, and orders takeout. He kisses me while I sleep, hugs me from behind as he passes me in our home's teeny hallways, drives me to school.

And I just sit here, bleeding.

Aye, I think I need to go back to the reasons why I write.

Freakbast

Maybe each person has at least one talent that's utterly useless, one that won't change the world or earn him or her a cent--say, wriggling the ears one after the other, or tying a cherry stem into a knot with the tongue, or knowing which among the walnut, coconut or peanut is not a nut. (I still can't figure out how the non-nut will rock my world, but apparently law schools think it might generate good lawyers since I saw that question in one law entrance exam. Go figure.)

Mine is spelling words out loud and backwards, with hardly a pause. Give me a word, a second or two to visualize the word in my mind, and I can more or less spell it backwards without missing a beat. Jon, friend of my soul, thinks it's like thinking twice at same time: spelling it the right way and spelling it the wrong way, like juggling two balls at a time. He seems impressed. I will be, too, as soon as I branch out to spelling entire sentences backwards. Utterly useless.

My friend, Germaine, is dyslexic with words. She would inadvertently jumble her words, uttering phrases like "throwing pigs to pearls" or "putting your mouth in your foot," which, because of the riotous fun we've had over her unpremeditated bon mots, doesn't count as useless and is therefore disqualied from the enumeration.

Jon's specialty is mixing up his syllables, like, saying base to base casis instead of case to case basis. Useless and dangerous. What if he tells his wife You deviler instead of You deliver? Like I said. Dangerous.

We three freaks--spread out in the archipelago, and coming together a precious once or twice in a year--had laughter for freakbast at Bizu last Monday. Had our beloved Benjie been free to join us, it would've qualified for what Germaine considers the life of our time.




This severely-priced slop was my breakfast: two pieces of ham on bread, some greens, with two poached eggs smothered in goo. (The goo was quite good.) And I ordered a basket of bacon on the side. Yum.

In his eyes

Twenty years ago last January 9, The Coach and I started dating: he was 19, I was 18, and the rest of the world in our eyes was fresh and wonderful and passionate and carefree.

The Coach, now 40, surprised me with an enormous bouquet of flowers, so many they filled three vases and took me an hour to fix (plus another half-hour to clean up after my mess). Silly me, I couldn’t help asking if they were expensive. (We are, after all, penny-pinching. Actually, he does the pinching; I do the inordinate buying of books which will take me, if I were to read a book a week, about, oh, ten years to finish.) His rebuke was so gentle I almost missed it until I thought about it afterwards. He just said, “A bit, but not for twenty years,” and smiled. Hours later he asked me if it was true that I was surprised by his present, since he always buys me flowers anyway, special occasion or no, like when he atones for sins imagined or real. And I said yes because I thought we were cost-cutting (D’oh! There I go again). And he harrumphed, properly, like an old gentleman aggrieved by the indignity of money: “Cost-cutting, cost-cutting. What's cost-cutting to twenty years?” And I just had to hug this man, this one whose masculine eyes and heart could not see that some of the flowers he bought in the huge bunch had probably withered earlier but were artfully hidden by the flower peddler to make a quick buck, the same eyes and heart who tell me day after day, truthfully, wonderingly, that I am more beautiful today than yesterday. I love eyes like those, because they know when to skip over unwashed faces and past flabby thighs, and even the occasional PMS that furrows the forehead. And it is true, what he said over a year ago, looking up at me while we were rummaging the fridge for leftovers: “Jan, would you agree with me? That we are happier now than we have ever been?”

Yes, honey, we truly are.

This is how a writer commits suicide

I should be revising my stories. In about five hours I need to finish my papers for Chari's fiction class. Yet here I am, creating a blog.

Look, Ma, no hands.