May iniisip ka?
Oo.
Ano?
Ayaw kong sabihin. Baka magkatotoo.
Dahil makulit ka
Kilala kita. Oo, ikaw 'yun: Nagkasalubong na tayo minsan, sa LRT, sa Gotohan, sa kanto ng Aurora at Katipunan. Nagkatinginan tayo. Hindi mo ako kinausap, pero alam ko, nakilala mo rin ako. Kaya ka narito, di ba? Para sabihing, Oo, oo, ikaw nga 'yun. Naaalala kita.
na, mula noong 24 Enero, 2006, ang nakitambay dito
ang pagbabalik
Friday, March 30, 2007
Isang mabilis, dahil nakikisingit lang ako sa kompyuter na may internet dito sa opisina:
Matapos ang ilang buwan ding paghahasik ng lagim sa trabaho, sa klase, sa tapat ng mga saksi at hurado, sa mga kalye ng Maynila, at Lungsod Quezon at Makati, magbabalik ang Los Chupacabras sa entablado.
Ngayong darating na Abril 2, Lunes, sa Mag:Net Katipunan. Magsisimula ang rakrakan bandang 8:30 ng gabi. Isandaang piso ang entrance, naibaba mula sa karaniwang 150.
May mga magbabasa rin. Magdala ng tula kung gusto mong magbasa.
At siya nga pala, berdei ko nu'n. Tangina ng hindi pupunta.
three poems from "The Wesleyan Tradition: Four Decades of American Poetry"
Sunday, March 25, 2007
No Friends of the Heart Nancy Eimers
Believing the heart was the center of knowledge, the ancient Egyptians would leave it inside the mummified body and hope the other organs, bottled and placed inside the catafalque, might be put to some more enlightened use. The summer I worked in a factory I was told by Edelmira to stay in college to learn more wonderful stories and teach them to others. I would say we were almost friends, working across the table from each other, oiling and polishing notebook binders and stacking boxes all day, every day in a white fluorescent eternity. By midafternoon the women from Cuba and Puerto Rico and Mexico had made each other lonely by talking in Spanish too intimately, parents, husbands, children, brothers, sisters, names that went by and imagined the rest, all the details that get so homesick we can't stay long with each other's lives. But when Edelmira was generous with my future, imagining a white room with windows and the sound of my voice addressing itself to a classroom's shy and receptive silences, she was leaving herself in the dingy present, the little table with somebody else across from her, the piles of binders, ring after ring after ring that would not meet. When I tried to be cheerful-- you have so many friends here-- she answered, putting her hand to her chest, no friends of the heart. She said it in English and it sounded true, breaking out of her language and into mine with the urgency that has still not learned to be indirect. If there is another life, I hope it is ruled by affection, which in this life we can only restore to each other unexpectedly, a chance bit of news, an odor, an old, bleak feeling just biding its time. It seems in this life the heart is not yet the center of knowledge, but we have always been in awe of blood. When I sat by the pond with you a few days ago you said one reason to have a child is so lovers can dwell at last in a single body. But friends can't live in each other's bodies. If sometimes language fails them less than their looking quietly at each other, if vocalizations, gestures, expressions are meaningless layers we have to cut through somehow, I don't know what we will find inside. For now, all we can do is take care of each other from the outside, as when mosquitoes swirled up from the grass and we brushed them off each other's arms and faces and hair.
*
Thirty-six Poets After Sakai Hoitsu Judith Baumel
Some are drunk. Some are mumbling. Many are solitary, each in his way fixed. They are all happy over their very good number, an easy square; its root six, itself a lovely number, exponential chrysalis. And if, in the array of patterns taken from nature-- clouds, spider webs, starfish-- we might yet find a true square not one of these thirty-six, not the one, whose square is on his sleeve or heart, cares.
My old group, my buddies, the Math Team would measure our drunks by booming the quadratic formula, gleaming with rum, slopped over some parents' living-room rug like these bards in their curtained cabal. No one of us flubbed our password, the drinking song, that poem of radicals pressed in our brains, no gauge at all, absurd. Minus b plus or minus the square root of b squared minus four a c over two a. Now even sober I lose those cancelled lines of youth and drunk I am easily distracted, say, by the discriminant, the bee squared et al. Concentrating on minutiae, I am lost in the well- folded sleeve of the great poet's silk kimono, lost on the silkworms trail winding through Japan and wonder, drunk, watching my steps split by Xeno, drunk, wonder what led me to the simple numerical plan and then away like dust in the path of a paper fan.
*
In My Own Back Yard David Young
1 July, I'm dozing in sun on the deck, one thrush is singing among the high trees, and Li Po walks by, chanting a poem! He is drunk, he smells unwashed, I can see tiny lice in his hari, and right through him a brown leaf in the yard flips over flips again lies still all this time no wind.
2 From behind November glass I watch the wind truck all its winter white furnishings item by item into my yard. In a dusty raincoat mu neighbor throws a tennis ball, over and over, to exercise his police dog.
Sometimes I feel like one of the world's bad headaches, sometimes I get no closer to what I have wanted to mean than the gumshoe calling "Testing" up to the bugged ceiling...
You can try to put words to a mood or tell yourself to ignore it, but what kind of message is coming from the chickadee, dapper in his black mask and skullcap, grooming himself on the big pine's branch-tip? His music is small and monotonous, bit it's his own.
3 I am turning pages in lamplight. Outside, above blue snow, in February dusk, in the double world of glass, more pages filp, like wings-- this merging of me and the world done with mirrors and windows.
4 Hunting for duck eggs at the end of March I wacth three mallards and a speckled female make a tight flotilla on the swollen creek.
The dog barks at her counterpart on the other bank. Nothing is green the way these mallards' heads are green.
Empty-handed, I turn back to the house. Small waterlights play on the underbranches of the ash. High up the sycamore lifts its light-peeled limbs against a turning sky.
5 Late May. Summer coming on again. I think Li Po may not be back. Worried about the world's end, as, I realize I have been most of my life, I take my work outside and sit on the deck, distracted. It was a day like this, I think, in Hiroshima. Distracted. There must be something in the pinecones that the chickadees-- there's another one. What's this that's snowing down? Husks, pollen, freckle-sized petals from our wild cherry trees!
We sneeze and plant tomatoes. Ultimatums. The world comes close and goes away in rhythms tthat our years help us begin to understand.
We haven't long to live. And the world? Surely the world... A deep breath. Sunshine. Mosquitoes, bird calls, petal-hail.
'Yun lang. 'Yung hypermasculine na ako gustong sabihin na Fight Club ni Chuck Palahniuk ang gumawang ganito sa akin, kaso, 1) hindi naman hypermasculine ang pagbabasa ng libro, kaya self-defeating ang hirit na 'yun; at 2) bading si Palahniuk.
Kaya siguro babalikan ko na lang 'yung binili ko noong freshman ako: noon, nagkakahalaga 'yun ng P315. May 300 pa sa ATM ko, natitira galing sa stipend; may P50 sa wallet ko. Sa SM North ko nabili 'yun, at hindi ko na mahanap ang kopya ko ngayon, leche. 'Yun 'yung Veinte Poemas de Amor y Una Cancion Desesperada ni Pablo Neruda. Dahil lahat tayo dumaan sa pagkabata.
2. One book you have read more than once.
Hmm. Pag libro kasi ng tula, paulit-ulit ko talagang binabasa para ma-internalize 'yung estilo ng makata. Ang unang tumatatak sa isip ko e 'yung Human Wishes ni Robert Hass. Sabi niya, sa tulang Natural Theology:
"...exactly the half-moon holds, and the city twinkles in particular windows, throbs in its accumulated glow which is also and more blindingly the imagination of need from which the sun keeps rising into morning light, because desires do not split themselves up, there is one desire touching many things, and it is continuous."
3. One book you would want on a desert island.
Ang ibig sabihin nito, ano 'yung isang librong gusto mong mamemorize. Kasi kung wala kang kasama, wala kang kausap kundi halaman at mga mailap na ibon, siguro, siguro lang gugustuhin mong may isang librong bibigkasin mo nang paulit-ulit. Para siguro marinig mo ang sarili mong tinig, para hindi mo makalimutan ang boses mo. O para ituro sa mga halaman at ibon ang tunog ng salita.
Teka, ang hirap naman.
Siguro 'yung Etsa Puwera ni Amang Jun Cruz Reyes. Wala lang. Kasi mahaba 'yun, e, kaya siguradong matagal-tagal bago maka-isang round ako ng pagbasa sa kanya. At dahil kung napunta ako sa isang isla nang walang kasama, na-etsa-puwera na rin ako.
4. One book that made you laugh.
'Yung huli kong nabasa na nagawa ito, 'yung Long Way Down ni Nick Hornby.
5. One book that made you cry.
'Yun lang. Hmm. Nangilid ang luha ko sa Book of Illusions ni Paul Auster at sa My Sad Republic ni Gamalinda at sa The Sicilian din ni Mario Puzo. Pero Umatungal-baka ako sa The Little Prince ni Antoine de Saint-Exupery. Dahil nga lahat naman tayo e dumaan sa pagkabata.
6. One book you wish had been written.
Ang astig siguro kung mayroon pang pagpapatuloy 'yung His Dark Materials Trilogy ni Philip Pullman.
7. One book you wish had never been written.
Ewan. Naknamputa, wala ngang pakialaman, di ba?
8. One book you are currently reading.
'Yung How We Are Hungry ni Dave Eggers. Kaya lang putangina hiniram kagabi ni Joel, e. Siguro lasing ako, o na-hypnotize, kaya ako pumayag na ipahiram.
9. One book you have been meaning to read.
Ngyehehe. Marami, mga kailangan ko para sa klase ko sa Kritisismo at sa Pelikula. Sabi ko sa sarili ko, maglalaan ako ng panahon-- siguro anim na buwan hanggang isang taon-- para basahin 'yung Norton Anthology of Literary Theory and Criticism. Pero bago 'yun, kailangan ko muna ng pambili, di ba?
10. Tag five people for this meme. I won't be upset if you don't do the meme. But I'll be really happy if you do!
Sige. Dahil na-tag na Maita sina Yol at Naya, si Cholo, si Joel, si Waps, si Carl, at si Kumander na lang.
Oo, panahon na naman ng mga contest at national writers workshops. Alam na naman siguro ninyo na mid-March ang deadline ng IYAS National Writers Workshop; end of March ang sa Iligan NWW; at siyempre pa, end of April ang sa Palanca. (I-google na lang ninyo para sa mga detalye.)
Alam kong maraming nag-aabang nito, kaya minabuti kong irepost:
1.
2007 MANINGNING MICLAT POETRY COMPETITION IS NOW OPEN
The Maningning Miclat Art Foundation, Inc. (MMAFI) is calling on young poets writing in Filipino, English and Chinese to participate in the 2007 Maningning Poetry Competition.
The Poetry Contest consisting of 3 divisions - Filipino, English and Chinese – is open to all poets, age 28 and below. An entry must consist of at least eight (8) but not more than fifteen (15) poems. Authors may join all the divisions but can submit only one (1) entry in every division. All entries should be original in every language and not a translation of another entry.
All entries should be submitted in four (4) copies, double spaced on 81/2 x 11 inches bond paper with one inch margin on all sides and with ARIAL or TIMES NEW ROMAN size 12 font. Entry should be submitted with pen name only. Real name and pen name should be submitted in a separate sealed envelop together with a biodata, copy of birth certificate and a notarized declaration of originality and authenticity of authorship of the entry.
Entries must be addressed to the Maningning Miclat Art Foundation, Inc. (MMAFI), 2nd Floor Mile Long Building, Amorsolo St., Legaspi Village, Makati City (Tel No. 816-7490 to 91) not later than 5:00 P.M. of April 17, 2007. Entries sent by mail should be postmarked/invoiced not later than April 3, 2007.
The Maningning Miclat Award has been launched to honor her short but meaningful life and to encourage, recognize and nurture young talents like her. Every year since 2003, MMAFI has been awarding outstanding poets during odd numbered years and winning painters during even numbered years. This year’s grand winners will receive PhP28,000.00 cash award for each of the 3 categories, copies of collector’s edition of “Voice from the Underworld” and “Beauty for Ashes : Remembering Maningning” as well as the Miclat family journal, Beyond the Great Wall and trophies by the eminent sculptor, Julie Lluch. Read the contest rules or email maningningfoundation@gmail.com for more information.
2.
Call for Manuscripts to the 46th Dumaguete National Writers Workshop
National Artist for Literature Edith L. Tiempo has announced a March 31 deadline for applications for fellowships to the 46th National Writers Workshop to be held in Dumaguete City from May 7 to 25.
Panelists this year are Gemino Abad, Alfred Yuson, Susan Lara, Anthony Tan, DM Reyes, Marjorie Evasco, and others. They will compose the revolving panel of writers together with National Artist for Literature Edith Lopez Tiempo, and resident panelists César Ruìz Aquino, Bobby Flores Villasis, and Ernesto Superal Yee.
Fifteen (15) fellowships are open for young writers all over the country.
The first screening panel, composed of the workshop’s resident writers, selects the writing fellows for the summer based on the manuscripts submitted by the applicants. These selected manuscripts are forwarded to the Director of the Workshop, who does the final screening and formally approves the final lineup of writing fellows.
The writing fellowship covers (1) lodging for the full 22 days of the duration of the entire workshop, (2) a modest stipend, (3) one-way fare reimbursement, and (4) workshop manuscripts and reading materials.
The applicant must submit the following requirements:
1. Original manuscripts consisting of at least three to five short (3-5) stories, or three to five (3-5) essays/creative non-fiction, or two (2) one-act plays, or seven to ten (7-10) poems. Stories, poems, plays, and essays in English are preferred. Only unpublished manuscripts are accepted. Works which have previously won in literary contests will not be accepted.
2. An application letter addressed to Workshop Director Dr. Edith Tiempo.
3. A diskette or CD containing the various submitted literary works encoded in Microsoft Word Version 6.0
4. A recommendation letter from a renowned writer or literature teacher
5. Two 2x2 pictures
6. A brief biodata or résumé
These must be sent before the 31 March 2007 deadline to:
Dr. Edith Lopez Tiempo National Writers Workshop c/o College Assurance Plan 2nd Floor, CAP Building Rizal Boulevard 6200 Dumaguete City
Accepted fellows are usually notified by postal mail, or email, or by phone call, although the announcement is usually published by major Philippine dailies.
Interested parties may also apply for sit-in or auditing privileges.
The National Writers Workshop was established by Edith and Edilberto Tiempo in 1962, making it the longest-running creative writing workshop in Asia. The 2007 edition is sponsored by the National Commission for Culture and the Arts, Silliman University, and College Assurance Plan, in coordination with the Creative Writing Foundation Inc. and the Dumaguete Literary Arts Service Group, Inc. (DüLA). Donors to the fellowship program include Senators Edgardo J. Angara and Mar Roxas as well as former NCCA Chairman Jaime Laya and Ms. Erlinda Panlilio.
*
O, rock out, mga pards. Magsimula nang maggayak-gayak ang mga mangangahas.
