ERAP BEFORE ERAP ] My favorite scene from Quijano de Manila's Reportage on Crime

With Boots Anson-Roa. Photo from bootsansonroa.com

About a month ago, Joseph Estrada went nightclubbing with a girlfriend and another young man. At about four in the morning, they went to a Dewey Boulevard restaurant for a breakfast of arroz caldo. As they entered, two men at a table whistled in admiration at Estrada's girlfriend. Estrada seated his party at a nearby table, put his gun on the table when he saw the two whistlers displaying their artillery. The waiter arrived with the arroz caldo. When Estrada next looked at the neighboring table, the two men there, he says, had their guns pointed at him, daring him to draw. "Don't draw!" screamed his girl companion. "There are others behind you!" Estrada glanced around and saw three or four other men standing behind him, their pistols at his neck. The other folk in the restaurant were meanwhile fleeing to the exits, shrieking like mad. Estrada, believing his last hour had come, picked up not his gun but a spoon and began to eat the arroz caldo. Suddenly he felt as if the ceiling had crashed down on his head. He was pistol-whipped unconscious, had to be hospitalized for a week.

---From "Gun Duel at LVN," Reportage on Crime, Quijano de Manila, reissued by Anvil Publishing, 2009

THE THOUGHT THAT COUNTS ] As we officially close the holidays, a belated note on gift-giving

As Christmas as it got. There's red (the taka), there's green (the Kate Spade book), and a white satin ribbon 'wreath,' a gift from designer/painter Doltz Pilar.

There is a part in Michael Cunningham’s book The Hours where one of the three main characters, Clarissa (played by Meryl Streep in the film), is contemplating the perfect gift for a sick colleague. “You want to give him the book of his own life, the book that will locate him, parent him, arm him for the changes.” And I thought, wouldn’t that be the kind of gift that would blow any recipient away, sick or not. A gift that defines a person, or simply say that you know someone well, or have glimpsed a shred of someone’s often-masked truth.

But there it was, the first gift of the holidays: made in plastic and whose provenance is a store you never, even in your wildest of nightmares, thought of entering. Because you’ve always seen stores like these, a P99 store perhaps, a Japanese grocery of trinkets, as a dumpsite of similarly cheap, plastic objects—temporary, bereft of taste or history. And you look at it and think this was how the bearer defines you. You, a writer, a 36-year old gay man who cares about clothes. Even your oversimplified definition of yourself refuses to make a connection to this transparent plastic thing.

And you have been given similar assembly line stuff through the years: a baseball cap that bears the insignia of the clubhouse of the village where your boss lives (from your boss, of course), a calling card holder, body wash bottles of different scents, an early warning device. All from people who, if they had actually paid attention to you enough to think of buying you a gift, would know that you don’t wear caps much less play baseball, never care for calling cards be it yours or others, never wear scents except for the rare unpleasant odor from a shirt that was never taken out to dry in the sun. And you don’t own a car.

Surely these are not examples of adhering to a gift-giving tip that remains with me from so many years ago: Give something that will make the recipient see another side of himself, that side that you, the giver, sees. Did my boss see me as someone who could be running and kicking in the fields, pushing and shoving other men to get hold of a ball (not the kind that usually come in twos)? Did she see me playing with my friend, another gay writer, who she gave the same gift to?

Because it doesn’t take much EQ to guess what was going on in a thoughtless gift-giver’s mind: a) Puwede na ‘yan kay ano. b) I’ll buy twenty of those and decide on who to give them to later. It’s like grocery shopping for relief goods, and you, the recipient, are one of the faceless flood victims, a statistic. The only difference is that donors to tragedy actually give something the recipients need.

It’s like grocery shopping for relief goods, and you, the recipient, are one of the faceless flood victims, a statistic. The only difference is that donors to tragedy actually give something the recipients need.

What I just want to say, really, is if next year you want to participate in a gift-giving frenzy, it would be nice to find a little reason why you’re doing it. Are you buying him the paperweight because you want him to know you remember him? Or you want him to remember YOU? Sometimes this whole gift-giving exercise can actually be, ironically, a little self-serving. Are you just giving gifts because everyone else is doing it? If you buy all those little trinkets to give away—which most often end up in the piles of accumulated junk on someone's working table—aren’t you just contributing to the trash of the world, encouraging manufacturers of plastic whatnots to keep manufacturing plastic whatnots that will most likely end up in some island-size Smokey Mountain and take a million years to decompose? I guess I am looking for a little more authenticity in a season when we want to show appreciation. A sensitive method to all the Christmas madness. If this new approach doesn’t win you points from the guys in the office, at least you’ll save a lot of money.

Still, there are those rare moments that a gift, no matter how carelessly given surprises you eventually. A mug that a friend gave me one New Year’s Eve, a recycled gift, has remained the one and only mug I drink coffee from at home. Another gift, one of my favorites from this season, from my sister and her husband, puts another spin to 'reycle:' they gave me their old iPod whose early discovery--she was already using a new iPod before gift-unwrapping time--made me laugh. Some gifts, no matter that the giver has shared the same to other people, connect with you. Before Christmas, our copy editor, Pete Lacaba, gave all of us a copy of the newly reissued books by Quijano de Manila (Nick Joaquin’s pen name), “Reportage on Crime” and “Reportage on Lovers,” a collection of his journalistic pieces from the ‘60s. I got the former and just read the first story called “The House on Zapote Road,” from which one of my favorite films Kisapmata was based. The prose is beautiful, and it is a lesson in imaginative, literary reportage. It turned out to be, as Cunningham would prefer it, a gift that will parent me in this field called writing, arm me for the changes, and while I’m not sure that it “locates” me, it allowed me to get lost in a world outside of my own. Naks naman!

While I may have made this whole gift-giving thing sound complicated, the key really is quite simple: listen. The other night, a friend gave me a book by the late great comic George Carlin. The dedication quotes a line from page 79. “Joan Rivers turned out to be one of those people she used to make fun of.” He knew I love Joan Rivers, and love humor books since Woody Allen. It’s one of those gifts that didn’t need wrapping, and there it was, an uncontrived smile on my face.

So I don’t really buy that crap when people say it’s hard to give me a gift because it’s hard to predict my taste: we live together (if you’re family), work together, I blog, I facebook, I tweet, my life is out there, spelled out in, I would like to assume, entirely engaging prose. When I’m awed by something I see, I text it, talk about it, my hand in my heart, like someone’s just proposed marriage to me.

I always believed gifts are born from inspiration—a shirt that reminded you of someone, a beautiful bag that so impressed you that you wanted to share it, a crafty artwork you made yourself. Inspiration, not obligation. But if you do feel obligated, it wouldn’t hurt to remember this: the thought only counts when there was actually thought put into it.

REMEMBERING COCO BANANA ] As we say goodbye to Malate as we know it

Madame Coco.A page from Metro Society shows Ernest Santiago standing guard by the entrance of his legendary club.

In light of the news that the two remaining bastions of Malate's bohemian nightlife, Penguin and Oarhouse, has announced its last calls--forever--we look back at the club that defined Manila nightlife in the '70s, Coco Banana, whose createur Ernest Santiago died two years ago this month.

To hear its devotees describe it, the look of the place fails to evoke the fabled long nights and decadent parties that made it a legend. The vignettes its habitués remember comprise an old house rustic in appearance, Machuka tile flooring retained from the original structure, bleachers made of wooden planks surrounding the dance floor, the bar at the right, and the metal and glass door entrance.

How these become by nighttime Coco Banana, the most fabulous club in the history of Manila nightlife, is a transformation born out of the virtuoso hand of Manila’s Steve Rubell, Ernest Santiago, and the cast of characters he assembles every night. “You can’t be too straight or square if you want to be at Coco. Even society people—they have to be a little mad to dare enter,” remembers a former Malate club owner. But the people alone didn’t account for each evening’s high spirits: there were the music, the drinks and the drugs.

The club was born in the era of disco and Donna Summer and, cliché as it may sound, the days of sex, drugs and rock and roll. “It was the first openly gay club in Asia,” says Louie Cruz who can’t remember if he was already wearing his off-the-shoulder blouses then. “But it was not just a gay ghetto,” offers Ricky Toledo, who started frequenting Coco as a student in Ateneo. It was the club to see and be seen, and during the Martial Law years, everyone’s fun, glamorous jailhouse of choice if you want to avoid the PC.

The place never announced its exact address. “The world knows where we are,” its tagline said. And it seemed, in its twelve-year run (it opened June 12, 1976), Manila’s nocturnal creatures knew exactly where to go when they wanted to party like it’s 1979: that old house-turned-hedonist mecca along Remedios Street, three houses from the corner where the atelier of designer Mike dela Rosa now stands. One would think the owner could have printed its location on the souvenir matchstick pads scattered at the bar. Those pads, it turned out, proved handy and popular for jotting down the name and number of one’s catch for the night.

The club was created by Santiago, a designer by day who, bored by the dreary Manila nightlife and with P25,000 to spare, decided to open Coco “para may mapuntahan naman ang mga bakla.” He was a lean butch-looking fella with jet-black shoulder-length hair who could be wearing something fabulous of his own creation (a white denim trench coat perhaps, sprinkled with rhinestones) or something that enhances his gym bunny reputation (military pants with a metal-studded belt, a cut-off shirt and a pair of leather boots).

'You can’t be too straight or square if you want to be at Coco. Even society people—they have to be a little mad to dare enter'

Then in his 30s, Santiago was the club’s proprietor, creative director, Mother Superior, and door bitch. By 9pm at the entrance, he would look members of the queue head to toe and decide if one would be let in or be told to go home and dress up (most of those declined actually go home and dress up; those who don’t follow a party’s costume theme is ‘quarantined’ for an hour and a half at the holding area before they could join the party). Those whose "vibes" he simply didn’t like were told the place was full. He wasn’t called ‘tarurit’ (or mataray) for nothing. “He was a force to reckon with,” says Chito Vijandre, who once won a trip to Paris for showing up as the lion in The Wiz. “He had the most piercing eyes,” he says of Santiago.

Weeding out the undesirables at the entrance allows Ernest to create the potent cocktail of a party crowd the club was famous for: a mix of artists, drag queens, diplomats, journalists, show biz celebrities and members of Manila’s 400. For Santiago, it is always about the mix—and the liberating feeling of being in a huge crowd packed in a small place, with the collision of everyone’s breath, sweat, perfume and smoke just adding to the dizzying effect of one’s tall drink or downer of preference.

The dance hall itself was a dimly lit place, with only a few pin lights landing on guests’s faces, “so that everyone gravitates to the dance floor like an enigma,” Santiago says with theatrical hands. A spotlight quickly locates a new guest’s arrival each time the door opens “so that everyone feels like a star.” On special evenings, a significant portion of Remedios will be closed and a red carpet rolled out for Coco’s guests—velvet ropes, spotlights and all.

Whenever a foreign celebrity arrived in town, there was a big chance he or she will be at Coco. At any given night, one can meet a royalty from Europe, a baron, a vicomte (if one is lucky, even get to go back with said royalty to his hotel). It was a melting pot of nationalities. For young men like Toledo, Coco was “a lesson in international relations. What they don’t teach you in school, you learn at Coco.”

During the Marcos years, Santiago’s flair for entertaining was so renown Malacanang would often call on his services to take care of its VIP guests. Champagne, needless to say, flowed like water in the club on those occasions. Once, he got a call from Francis Ford Coppola asking if he could accommodate cast members of the Apocalypse which was then filming in the Philippines. Celebrities from Sean Connery to the Village People have partied at Coco. Felipe Rose, that American-Indian-attired Villager, loved Coco so much he stayed on in Manila after the rest of his group had left. He even found himself a boyfriend. When Linda Carter, Wonder Woman, landed on the cover of Time Magazine, she wore a Coco Banana shirt bought from the club’s souvenir shop.

You want a tablet of Q, Louie Cruz will gladly put one on your tongue--but he wants to see you swallow it. 'Because he might want to take it in his own time, but you’re there to get high sabay.'

The popularity of Coco was such that it was immortalized in a popular Hotdogs song which became a Nora Aunor movie (Annie Batungbakal). The same song made a household name of hairstylist Budji Layug, more famous then as Budjiwara or Budji for short (“Buhok mo’y Budji, talampaka’y Gucci”), one of a batch of fabulous young men—which included Louie Cruz, Ron Gomez and Ruben Nazareth—who made Coco their second home, fresh from their training under Vidal Sassoon in London.

There was a lot to love about Coco. For the entrance fee that began at five pesos (which reached P150 before it closed), one is assured of an elaborate visual treat beginning with Santiago’s lighting effects and a show featuring gay performers. James Cooper as Diana Ross was a star and so was a group called Coquettes who performed musical reviews. The club’s excellent production of West Side Story ran for eight weeks, prompting the CCP to write a review in its gazette. Then there was the dance music—the latest from underground cult clubs in New York. The swing was at its peak. Gloria Gaynor. Alicia Bridges. Yvonne Elliman. “People really get up and dance like it was a show,” recalls Vijandre.

And everyone brought their baon because Santiago prohibited any drug-dealing in the club. The drugs of choices were Quaaludes (called “Q”) or Mandrax (then “ekis), and the occasional cocaine. You want a tablet of Q, Louie Cruz will gladly put one on your tongue--but he wants to see you swallow it. “Because he might want to take it in his own time, but you’re there to get high sabay.”

Drugs were so commonplace that an accidental dropping of a tablet will cause a mild commotion—everyone will start searching the floor to snatch it. Otherwise, Cruz jests, it was a welcome idea to vacuum-lick the floor.

The ekis action would reach its peak at The Rocky Horror Picture Show productions. Santiago played Mr. Frank-N-Furter, the mad scientist slash transvestite at the center of the ‘70s musical on sexual confusion and ambiguous morality. “Everyone was already drugged when the show starts,” says Vijandre. “And that’s the only way one would understand that show!”

Most nights, guests would pass out wasted on the cushioned bleachers, from which they will be carted off by their drivers who would knock on Coco’s doors come four in the morning ready to retrieve their senyoras.

“Walang away-away no’n,” Santiago recalls, “Everyone was kalmado, parang nakatingin lang sa langit lahat.”

Although there were mild catfights here and there, the one memorable eksena took place one Saturday night between a pair of very prominent, very rich lesbian lovers—and a Bvlgari necklace. As soon as lesbian#1 found out lesbian#2 was at Coco with a date, #1 approached #2, and dragged her out of the club by her Bvlgari. And because #1 refused to contain her rage, she slammed one of Coco’s lights with the necklace. The scene lasted a whole ten minutes--afterwhich everyone went about dancing again as if nothing happened--but Manila society talked about the Bvlgari incident for weeks.

And then there will be another Santiago gimmick to talk about: an Orientalia party, a L’Uomo Vogue-inspired night of all white and mirrors all over. “Parang Midsummer Night’s Dream araw-araw,” describes a regular. From nowhere, muscled men were carrying a Cleopatra-wannabe to the dance hall. One time, Santiago rented the little people from neighbor Hobbit House so that he entered the party escorted by a throng of elves. Once there were mannequins everywhere painted with street graffiti, or an ukay-ukay theme, with vintage clothes that hung from a number of suspended copper wires. A favorite of the gay men were the horses at the Carousel-themed parties. “They will sit on the horses holding their drinks. It was a great place for vogue-ing. And cruising,” says Toledo, who once appeared at Coco wearing a Roman toga and sandals, holding a party mask with its replica painted on his face.

“Everything was done in good taste,” says Santiago, “wild but in good taste.” Not surprising since it was the favorite hangout of the style and fashion set, from designers like Inno Sotto, Rusty Lopez and Romulo Estrada, to top models like Anna Bayle, and fashion patrons like Chito Madrigal. One could watch Chona Kasten or Mary Prieto all night just being themselves, keeping their poise no matter the number of drinks. Once, socialite Cristina Valdez showed up in Eliza Doolitle’s Ascot garb complete with parasol. Designer Larry Leviste walked in as a bum-revealing net-stockinged showgirl. Joe Salazar won a prize for his stylized Ibong Adarna costume: a bodysuit with feathers, sequins and mirror chips. Helena Guerrero of Azabache fame stole one evening when she came in full geisha regalia.

Much as there was always someone to look at, there was always something to turn one’s gaze above eye level—-a huge jar with an outrageous, larger-than-life flower arrangement perhaps. Santiago has a reason for this: when the eyes are looking up, they are strained to become bigger. And big spotlight eyes were all the rage in those days.

At one point in the evening, just when everyone is in the highest spirits, say when Diana Ross is on the last notes of “I’m Coming Out,” a wave of Santiago’s hand would bring the music to a halt and a collective “Awwwww” and whistles will be heard from the crowd. Barbra Streisand and Donna Summer’s “No More Tears” would come in past 4am, a signal from Santiago that says, ‘no more partying, enough is enough.” Most nights, guests would pass out wasted on the cushioned bleachers, from which they will be carted off by their drivers who would knock on Coco’s doors come four in the morning ready to retrieve their senyoras.

But nobody it seemed wanted to leave Coco Banana. At six in the morning, one could still hear glasses tinkling inside.

Even in the last days of disco, the club’s loyalists continued to want more.

In 1988, however, Santiago thought the club has had its time. Vijandre recalls the tears during that last big party. And everyone made sure they partied and got wasted as if doomsday was but a few hours away. Nobody remembers what exactly happened the night of the last big Coco shebang--and with the club's reputation, that's totally understandable. In fact, Santiago recalls no such party. In his mind, he gave no announcement of Coco’s closing. If his memory serves, he got up one morning and locked the place forever.

--Jerome Gomez

This story appeared in the May 2007 issue of Metro Society.

NOUVELLE FICTION ] Ricky Torre imagines a page from the diary of Chow Mo-Wan

From the Diary of Chow Mo Wan/By RICKY TORRE

I CAN’T recall the name of that pension house, tucked in that hidden corner we wandered into one evening from our strolling along Remedios. But the address of our room—No. 12—yes, I remember that one, framed as it is now in my head, much like 2046, that other room number in my story over which you were once filled with jealousy, Madame Doinel.

Room No. 12. You didn’t even own that room. Remember when we first set foot in that alcove? We paused at the landing after we walked up those narrow three flights and you were à bout de souffle, more it seemed out of anticipation, as your eyes flashed at me their blue. I remember every detail, to borrow Bogie’s phrase to Ingrid—despite my heart pounding like cannon fire, to paraphrase Ingrid. Despite being beside myself. Inside our room you went mugging before the octagonal bathroom mirror, then you counted with your fingers the number of men you slept with in your dreams. The handkerchief you liked to tie into a loose ribbon around your neck I cannot forget also. And your sleeveless blouse, baring the wide smooth plain of your arms. You turned to me, your delicate hand on the doorway, and I asked the question that was supposed to come from you—“Why do you keep looking at me?”—because you preferred to be the one answering, “Because I am.”

You became Jean and Jean-Paul even before that moment, Christine. They were refracted into the prism of your individuality. You became a composite, which is what are all lovers. “Pas mal, no?” went your typical remark.

We lay in bed close to each other, denting the sheets with its pattern of dots and loops. Pliable like fashion models, for we both looked absurd in our stylish clothes were it not for your naked arms. “My accent,” you once said of that detail. I gave in to the impulse to stroke them, as you went on staring at the panel on your side of the bed that needed a paint job. “Is it that Madame Su still enters your mind?” you asked finally, without warning.

“Ooh la la!” I said startled. “I tell you about her only once and she sticks with you. I was never bothered by your stories about your childish Antoine.”
“Ha ya, maybe because I’m not that special to you.”

I thought of leaning over to see your expression but you turned around to face me with a bold smile that contradicted your doubt.

“We look at each other in the eye and it’s no use,” you said to me, still smiling.

“Écoute, Madame C.D.,” I said in a dull voice, without a hint of exasperation. “We’re both fictional characters, as you know. My creator idolizes your maker. But somehow that has not led us to being wrapped in each other’s arms.”

“Or maybe exploring each other!” you replied in your radiant staccato. “Which is what would have happened even if I really don’t belong to my creator’s movement because he drew me up during that period of formalism that became his pattern after deriding it a lot when he was still a critic. Est-ce que tu me comprends?”

It took a world of a second for me to understand you. I was listening more to your voice.

“Well, you struck out on your own anyhow, Madame. I keep reminding myself of your stories about your wondering around Montparnasse like a lost prostitute, as you put it. That wasn’t even like you, unlike my loitering on Lan Kwai Fong.”

“And now we’re here, Monsieur. Your maker’s dream place, if I’m correct. Mine had never even heard of this city.”

The Paris of Asia at that, a title this city had aspired to on the cusp of revolution. That was two centuries away—from the concrete slab fractured everywhere that it is now.

“This isn’t at all what our makers had planned.”

“We’re both here,” I said, as I cupped my hand on your cheek, “but there’s a plot point missing. That’s why we haven’t gone further. Do I make myself clear?”

“No,” you said softly.

“You like it when I needlessly explain things, don’t you?”

“Oui.”



“YOU’RE WRONG about one thing,” you said in hindsight as we walked down the small steps to the ground floor. “We did wrap ourselves in each other’s arms.”

“Oui,” I said. “Wei?”

“Écoute, Monsieur Chow, we didn’t see each other for cute talk. ‘I wanted to see you, to see if I wanted to see you,’ or something like that. I won’t have any of that.”

“How about, ‘Is it that you like my eyes, my mouth or my shoulders?’”

“Comme ça.”

On that note, I kissed you suddenly. We could have missed a step, but, to my surprise, you reciprocated almost with impatience, before we settled into this languid wavelength, like when you take your time nibbling at your favorite petit four.

“C’est formidable!”—at last, your other trade(re)mark.

Then you gave out that throaty laughter you were never embarrassed of. “Monsieur, don’t ever do that again,” you said, laughing still, amid the ruckus of mahjong tiles at the ground floor, the happy cursing that filled the hall and the nicotine tainting the air. At the foyer there was a young couple nursing their beer. I stepped out of the building to light a cigarette and behold my solitude—for I was back on earth, in vain trying to remember the empress dethroned by you.


"From the Diary of Chow Mo Wan" is the second of our two-part tribute to the 50 years of New Wave cinema.

THE NEW WAVE AT 50 ] Ricky Torre + Dodo Dayao pay homage to film's most stylish movement

Before this year ends, we add our voice to the 50th-anniversary celebration of the French Nouvelle Vague, arguably the most stylish movement in all of cinema history. We won’t be so presumptuous as to say this movement is the greatest because there is still its dynamic precursor, Italian Neorealism. But the French New Wave is as revolutionary to the development of cinema as Griffith and Eisenstein. (Although, to be sure, as writers on Philippine cinema have pointed out, filmmaking in this country was already way ahead in carrying out the New Wave school of filmmaking: the improvised sets, the improvised shooting, the storytelling and dialogue handed out on a per-need basis, and the disregard of continuity and other standards of conventional excellence.)

This year, the distinguished film magazine Sight & Sound has put out a special issue paying tribute to the movement; so, too, has Cahiers du Cinema, the magazine where Jean-Luc Godard, Francois Truffaut and other New Wave filmmakers got their start as film critics. Instead of coming out with the usual retrospective chronicle, we present here some poetic musings, so to speak, on the movement: Dodo Dayao’s “You Don’t Love Met Yet,” inspired by Danish actress Anna Karina (Godard’s first wife and one of the New Wave’s iconic stars); and Ricky Torre’s “From the Diary of Chow Mo-wan,” an imaginary episode between bourgeoise young wife Christine Doinel, one of Truffaut’s evocative film characters, and the lovelorn writer Chow Mo-wan of In the Mood for Love and 2046, by Hong Kong filmmaker Wong Kar-wai, a prominent devotee of the New Wave.

You Don’t Love Me Yet/By DODO DAYAO

ANNA Karina, all she had to do was run through the Louvre to take my breath away, steal my heart. She didn’t have to dance, but when she did, it was too much and my heart sort of broke a little. She broke Godard’s heart, too. That’s what exes do. And sometimes muses.

Anna K’s a fantasy of mine. Not that sort, but that’ll do, too—the woman is digable, I’m not blind. I do prefer Yoko, in principle, for standing by her man, never leaving. I’d rather have a Yoko, all told. I heart the long haul. Jean-Luc, he may have had Jean Seberg in À bout de souffle, Brigitte Bardot in Le mépris, Chantal Goya in Masculin féminin, but Anna K had this perilous radiance none of them had and, with or without knowing the back story, you get this sense of a lot more at stake, which is how it should be with muses. And Anna K was the proper, righteous, consummate muse. Jean-Luc never stood a chance.

True story taken from Garrison Keillor: “Robert Louis Stevenson was passing by the window of a house one night in France when he looked inside and fell instantly in love with a woman he saw eating dinner with a group of her friends. Stevenson stared at her for what seemed like hours, and then opened the window and leapt inside. The guests were shocked, but Stevenson just bowed and introduced himself. The woman was an American named Fanny Osborne. They fell in love and got married a few years later.”

I saw Vivre sa vie some time back. The resident awe for Anna K’s face, parts of it, if not most of it, like some porno of that visage. Everything begins with a face you can’t escape. Even before the first word is spoken. Even before the first transfer of energies. Even before the parts match. The longing to connect. The urge to pursue. The thundering desire for love. The face reduces you to tongue-tied, sniveling, social deficiency. The face makes you palpitate like a caffeine drip. I have a wobbly theory that none of us are ever sucked in by a fat chance, none of us crush for longshots. There’s no empirical evidence—how can there be? But it hasn’t failed me yet so maybe I’m on to something. Love at first sight is not some wayward phenomenon, it’s the standard. I don’t know you. But I want you. All the more for that. Right.

She was the best kept secret borne from fleeting encounters, remarkable for how the imprint got stickier and stickier with each run-in.

Is that you, my Anna K? Will you run through the Louvre with me? Could you be loved?
Bravado is an also-ran as I think about Anna K and my own first sighting and how some of them still burn holes in my eyes still and I listen to Roky Erickson’s “You Don’t Love Me Yet” and Death Cab for Cutie’s “I Will Possess Your Heart,” one after the other, which is sort of trite but so is trying to imbibe the courage of its convictions—the cock of its bull as it were—but I don’t care and I do so anyway.

Jean-Luc said once that all a movie needs to sell tickets is a girl and a gun—a theory that somehow applies to everything.

A girl and a gun, yeah. Shooting at the walls of heartache. Bang bang.

The author writes about cinema here. Next, "From the Diary of Chow Mo-Wan" by Ricky Torre.

KRIP YUSON ON TOKYO ] A Filipino poet's Tokyo

WHEN POETS GATHER, it is all very prim and proper, for starters. When poets get together in Tokyo, the p’s and q’s gain startling modes of, yes, irrelevance. It is a triumph of perspective, one Seoul-based American conferee exulted. Another American, Tokyo-based, quickly took exception.

“Tokyo may make a fine place for any gathering of poets,” he said, “but it isn’t a city for the practicing poet, that is, for the practice of poetry.”

I had known the speaker, Burt Blume, way back since he served as program assistant in Paul Engle’s International Writing Program in Iowa. He had since made his residence in Japan, successfully entering the competitive but materially rewarding field of copywriting.

From his first and only book, Evasions, I recall the lines:

You go on as a wish
trailing its oriental gown of light,

sifting through thickest air,
a song of stone, a measure of moonlight. . .

You go on.

This evening five years later, gorging on a traditional Japanese epicurean feast that includes four colors of seaweed, he confesses to have temporarily given up on his poetry. There is no time, no mood, the milieu is not right, not right for it here. . . I look down at the quail egg resting on a bed of burgundy seaweed; I “sift… through thickest air.”

After a string of nightcaps at Roppongi’s Hard Rock Café, Burt and his pretty Japanese girl Hiromi drop me off by the Yasukuni Shrine. I’d like to walk the rest of the way home to Virgil’s at Fujimicho, I explain, I need the air after all that Scotch, sake and beer, else the couplets may not come in the morning. We wave goodbye for the night.

I trudge hurriedly on through the shrine, shivering in sixteen-degree weather—a clear fifteen-degree difference from tropic warmth back home. A scream rends the air. To the ear it is a grand chiche, but the eye is startled by an uncommon sight. A young man stands before the inner shrine’s torii, his right arm upraised with clenched fist punching the air. He smartly executes a turnabout, shouts some guttural lines in Japanese, marches forward, turns briskly left, the left and left again. halts, whips about to the right, raises both arms and pierces the night with another scream as if from some swollen gut. He lurches then, circles randomly about, mutters some phrases, and begins to repeat the process.

A madman, I ask myself, or a drunk? Right-wing extremist or midnight fanatic? The translations into guttural English would have to wait for the morning, perhaps trail after the couplets. Consult Virgil our trusty guide on this, I say to myself, and walk on home to end the alien night.

THE NEXT DAY it is Kazuko Shiraishi who charges in as a tsunami or a villanelle. She is recently back from a reading tour up north, this premier lady poet of Japan. Woman poet rather. Le rock star du poesie, exclaims a clipping she holds up proudly to my face as a memento of last year’s visit to Arizona, where she had been widely feted for her poetry cum jazz readings, tight electric pantsuits and reputed friendship with Ferlinghetti and Ginsberg.

She had visited Manila early in the seventies, her reputation as the Queen of Shinjuku preceding her. And in 1979 we had swam and sunned together off Makapuu Pt. in Oahu, where she had regaled me with tales of her “man-wife” back in Tokyo, he who gave excellent massage and shampooed her long black hair with unconventional diligence.

I finally met the man-wife Nobu six years later, that second evening of readings at the Grand Hall. Blowing bravely on a five-foot-long Australian aborigine’s wooden pipe, or didgeridoo, he provided accompaniment to Kazuko’s throaty manifestos on sexual and mythopoetical history. The Shiraishi performance was spellbinding as usual, though not one word made itself understood, to me anyway. The predominantly Japanese audience lapped it all up in grander hush, with most nodding their heads approvingly, appreciatively.

The venerable Kenneth Rexroth, who edited her English-translation volume, Seasons of Sacred Lust, had written of Kazuko in his introduction: “Her poetry can be soft and sweet at times, but mostly it has a slashing rhythm read in what she refers to as her ‘Samurai movie voice.’ Her effect of audiences is spectacular. There is the secret of Shiraishi as a person and poet. She is a thoroughly efficient performer and her poetry projects as does that of very few other poets anywhere. Her parents are Dylan Thomas and Voznesensky. She is also a woman of spectacular beauty.”

At fifty-three, dear amazing Kazuko has preserved her youthful face and figure, and now she undulated onstage in skintight gold sequined pants, using her “Samurai movie voice” to wonderful effect. I imagine that the poem she reads is one from that volume of erotica Rexroth had helped put out. Memory helps ferret out some lines, and in the dim hall the alien city begins to make sense.

I’m like Buddha
At last I’ve settled down on this town
October’s knocked me up
with boredom.
…
My Tokyo
The city that’s almost a womb
Has got me knocking on the gate
…
If I’m poking hard
The hot will in the ashes
It’s so I can burry my city completely
…
My city is
Now far distant
It snuggles close to the stranger’s face
Its head drooping on its concrete neck

(“My Tokyo”)

This is the last of three excerpts we're running from the book Connecting Flights, a travel book, an anthology of poems, stories and essays by 20 Filipino writers on 20 foreign destinations. Edited by Ruel S. De Vera, with poems, stories and essays by Dean Francis Alfar, Butch Dalisay, Lourd De Veyra, Karla Delgado, Chato Garcellano, Ramil Digal Gulle, Jing Hidalgo, Alya Honasan, Marne Kilates, Sarge Lacuesta, Ambeth Ocampo, Charlson Ong, Manuel Quezon III, D.M. Reyes, Sev Sarmenta, Alice M. Sun-Cua, Yvette Tan, Joel Toledo, Krip Yuson and Jessica Zafra.

KARLA DELGADO ON BARCELONA ] Breathing Barcelona

“Those who search in the laws of nature to create new works collaborate with the Creator.” --Unknown

BARCELONA. Uttering the name of my favorite city makes me smile. I feel at home here. I always have.

From the mountains of Tibidabo, I behold the city of my dreams, lovingly cupped by the slopes of the land.

“Huele a Baguio,” I tell my friends. It smells like Baguio.

The scent of pine swirls in the wind. Our host, Catalan artist Frederic Amat, plucks a golden rose from his garden of pine, cypress and olive trees. “For you,” he says grandly. I bury my face in the petals. I am transported to 40 Kisad Road, Baguio City, to my childhood home in the mountains, where my mother always kept a vase of fresh roses from the garden. The roses were mostly red and gold, the colors of Catalonia.
From this hillside perch in the neighborhood of Vallvidrera, looking out towards the Mediterranean Sea, I spot some of Barcelona’s landmarks: the Sagrada Familia basilica built by Catalonia’s most famous architect, Antoni Gaudí, and the two towers erected for the 1992 Olympic Games which powered the city’s renewal.

My own history in this city begins in 1983: I am in Barcelona for my senior year of high school. I am sixteen, a transplant from an all-girls’ Catholic boarding school in England. I live with a foster family: “mi mamá española”, as I call her, is a nurse named Petri who works in a hospital in the outskirts of the city; “mi hermana española”, Maricarmen, is a student exactly my age. We have each wished for a sister all our lives, and now we have each other.

We bask in the excitement and constancy of sisterhood, and indulge in the company of each other’s friends. We sit at outdoor cafes and soak in the sunshine while sipping bitter–tart Fanta Limón. Like other teenagers, we go for strolls on Las Ramblas, described by the poet Federico García Lorca as “the only street in the world which I wish would never end.” The tree-lined Ramblas teems with tourists, flower vendors, bird keepers and performance artists.

We wander the interiors of these dimly lit clubs, and dance until beads of moisture blanket our backs. By 9 P.M., we are walking home, the wind drinking the sweat on our satisfied faces.

Some Sunday afternoons, we dance to Euro pop at local dance clubs, or at the warehouse venues like Studio 54 (pronounced “estudio cincuenta y cuatro”), named after its famed sister discotheque in New York. Doors open to teenagers at the wholesome hour of 5pm. We wander the interiors of these dimly lit clubs, and dance until beads of moisture blanket our backs. By 9 P.M., we are walking home, the wind drinking the sweat on our satisfied faces.

My year in Barcelona is a year of awakening. Coming from four years in England, I emerge like a butterfly from the chrysalis I have spun for protection in the emotionally cold landscape of boarding school. The sun literally warms my skin. On the inside, I am warmed by the maternal and sisterly love and companionship of Petri and Maricarmen.

One Sunday afternoon in the spring of my seventeenth year, I meet a boy while dancing. His name is César. He is half Spanish, half Italian, and studying to be a football coach. He treats me with utmost respect and tenderness: a proper gentleman at seventeen. We stroll hand in hand, sit on the benches of Parc de la Ciutadella and Parc Güell, and kiss ardently in the shade of Mediterranean palms. We are each other’s first loves.

My year in Barcelona ends with a massive flood of tears. I cry for three days and experience what it means to have no tears left. On the last day of the school year, my friends and I stay up all night and watch the day dawn in Parc Güell. We sit on the ground, in the stillness of early morning, and give reverence to what has been the best year of our lives. Gaudi’s mosaic sculptures watch silently.


This is second of three excerpts we're running from the book Connecting Flights, a travel book, an anthology of poems, stories and essays by 20 Filipino writers on 20 foreign destinations. Edited by Ruel S. De Vera, with poems, stories and essays by Dean Francis Alfar, Butch Dalisay, Lourd De Veyra, Karla Delgado, Chato Garcellano, Ramil Digal Gulle, Jing Hidalgo, Alya Honasan, Marne Kilates, Sarge Lacuesta, Ambeth Ocampo, Charlson Ong, Manuel Quezon III, D.M. Reyes, Sev Sarmenta, Alice M. Sun-Cua, Yvette Tan, Joel Toledo, Krip Yuson and Jessica Zafra.

ALYA HONASAN ON BHUTAN ] Peace in the Tiger's Nest

BHUTAN can change you. You are silenced by its beauty, humbled by the open hearts of its people, and saddened by the fact that you will have to leave this true Shangri-La one day, and that the world has darkened your own heart so much that you cannot live here forever.

But, as my friend Audrey said, we can always carry the happiness of Bhutan with us wherever we go. This Himalayan kingdom is everything that the mythical mountain paradise could be, a small land of endless green hills cloaked in snow in the winter, and pine trees that share the skies with colorful prayer flags, tied on posts or strung over ridges so the wind can carry petitions to the gods. The valleys are filled with sheep, crystal rivers and people who deeply love their wise king so much they won't let him step down!

Squeezed between its chaotic neighbors, India and China, and most recently, Nepal, Bhutan is a devoutly Buddhist land, and its people practice a complex kind of tantric Mahayana Buddhism called Drukpa Kagyu. Almost each family boasts of a son who becomes a monk, sent to live in one of Bhutan's stunning monasteries and dzongs, centers of both secular and religious authority, where monks and government administrators share space in centuries-old buildings that are architectural wonders in themselves.

It is in the monasteries (called goembas or lakhangs), however, where even the most skeptical traveler can find a silence that is truly not of this world. Inevitably, some of these monasteries are difficult to reach, like Chimi Lakhang in Punakha, sitting amidst beautiful rice fields and dedicated to a beloved Buddhist saint, the colorful "Divine Madman" Lama Drukpa Kunley; or even the quiet little Cheri Goemba, overlooking the Dodina Valley near Thimpu, where a young monk served us sudja (tea with milk and butter) in his little room.

In some parts of the stairs, with no hand railings, there is nothing between you and the wide open space, and we stuck gingerly to the face of the mountain. At the halfway point, before the final climb to the monastery's doorstep, a beautiful waterfall gushes from the rocks

Probably the most imposing and famous of all, however, is Taktshang Goemba, the Tiger's Nest, which was seemingly impossibly carved from the side of a cliff over nine hundred meters above the floor of the Paro Valley. Estimated to have been around since the ninth century, Taktshang peeps down through low clouds, a holy site to where Guru Rinpoche, one of Bhutan's most important religious figures, was believed to have flown on the back of a flying tigress, and where he meditated for several days.

There are three vantage points on the way up to Taktshang. First stop, after an hour's uphill hike, brings you to a chorten (stupa) festooned with prayer flags at two thousand, six hundred meters, a short walk from a cafeteria where hikers usually stop for meals. The way up is covered in lush greens, with the occasional rhododendron flowers blooming on the mountainside. You can stop here, sipping tea, with the monastery looming above you in the seemingly unreachable distance. But we were in for a pleasant surprise: our guide, Tshering, had a permit to enter the monastery, which can be visited only by special arrangement.

The next leg is another hour's climb up to about three thousand meters, to a viewpoint on the same level as the monastery. The air is cool and fresh, the view spectacular. Our bodies were warmed by the climb, but even after just a few minutes' rest, we could again feel the chill on our skin. This wasn't the end, however; getting to Taktshang means crossing a huge chasm by walking down and up stone stairs, over seven hundred in all, another half-hour's journey. In some parts of the stairs, with no hand railings, there is nothing between you and the wide open space, and we stuck gingerly to the face of the mountain. At the halfway point, before the final climb to the monastery's doorstep, a beautiful waterfall gushes from the rocks, under a bridge and down to the valley.

Finally, entering Taktshang, we left our shoes and belongings with the guards and walked into a religious ceremony, where the monks chanted and banged drums in a temple that was hazy with incense. We had already been blessed with perfect weather, not too hot but with no rain; inside the temples, we were blessed further with incense and holy water, poured into our hands and spread over the tops of our heads. Outside, we reveled in the magnificent view, with only the sound of chanting and the whistling wind.

Before climbing back down, we peered into the cave where the Guru sat in meditation, feeling the palpable power of this sacred site. We left some money in offering for temple repairs, and a monk tied bright-colored prayer strings around our necks. I wore mine for weeks until it broke, a constant reminder of the peace I found after the hard climb to the Tiger's Nest.


This is first of three excerpts we're running from the book Connecting Flights, a travel book, an anthology of poems, stories and essays by 20 Filipino writers on 20 foreign destinations. Edited by Ruel S. De Vera, with poems, stories and essays by Dean Francis Alfar, Butch Dalisay, Lourd De Veyra, Karla Delgado, Chato Garcellano, Ramil Digal Gulle, Jing Hidalgo, Alya Honasan, Marne Kilates, Sarge Lacuesta, Ambeth Ocampo, Charlson Ong, Manuel Quezon III, D.M. Reyes, Sev Sarmenta, Alice M. Sun-Cua, Yvette Tan, Joel Toledo, Krip Yuson and Jessica Zafra.

BEST PLACE TO WRITE #5] Sarge Lacuesta for Uno, the restaurant

Sarge does not live on sourdough bread alone.

Uno Restaurant used to be this small, sparely decorated, half-hidden place in QC. My mother, of all people, told me about it. I took my then-girlfriend Mookie here on our first date. Then they added a second floor, put on some wallpaper, and started attracting these loud-mouthed bigwigs and poseurs from the nearby networks and film studios. But it's still a good place to write—there's no music, there's no wifi, they don't accept credit cards (to repel the boorish Makati crowd, I presume) and my favorite corner is still often vacant. And they still serve the most underrated food in the city: well-thought out daily specials, a fantastic menu that changes (too) often, the best cheesecake in QC—and they serve Cerveza Negra. So what the fuck else can you ask for—no, not the address: I'm still never giving that away.

Photograph by Sarge Lacuesta.

BEST PLACE TO WRITE #4 ] In bed with Sarge Lacuesta

"Where I write from. I have a desk at my office and a desk at home, but I do almost all my writing in bed, which is not a lot of writing because I am lazy (hence the bed). Anyway when I do write there is always food at hand and I make sure there is a measure of discomfort: the pillows are lopsided and there are crumbs on the sheets. That way I can lie awake for hours and not get anything done."

Sarge Lacuesta is a Palanca-winning fictionist and the Literary editor of The Philippines Free Press. Here, a sampling of what he probably wrote while being "lazy."

BEST PLACE TO WRITE #3* ] Lourd de Veyra for

"I never, ever write outside the house. Pero nagawa ko noon when I was working on a grant from NCCA, nagsusulat ako sa Bamboo City sa may Cubao (gilid ng Farmers Plaza), kasi mura ang beer, puwedeng magyosi, disente ang pulutan, puro matatandang de-pomada ang mga kostumer, at maigsi ang palda ng mga supladang waitress na makapal ang makeup. Lalabas lang ako pag may "videoke" break na sila: 3-4 songs ng isang featured singer na bakla. Suot niya floral na dilaw na polo. Ka-boses niya si Jun Polistico. Mga isang taon din ata tinagal nito. Mga twice or thrice a week."

*House not included.

THE NEIGHBORHOOD ] Art don't live there anymore

The painter Robert Langenegger in his Maginhawa studio.

Like most provocative art, this one has an ample ingredient of irony. While there have been galleries established before it, the turning point happened when one opened inside the compound of a huge broadcast network, the network that gave birth to Pera O Bayong and Wowowee. In 2002, the artist Rock Drilon and his wife, the broadcast journalist Ces, decided to put up a branch of their magazine store Magnet inside ABS-CBN, on the ground floor of the newly mounted Eugenio Lopez Jr. Communications Center. The couple expanded it in the following year to include their first public art space. It was hard to tell then during that inauguration party, with drunken artists and guests all of a sudden popping balloons on chairs and on the floor as if they were in some televised parlor game, that it will be the beginning of something big.

Cos Zicarelli and Pow Martinez


Lena Cobangbang

It was an outsider, Carlos Celdran, the famous Manila tour guide, a North Syquia resident so attached to the Malate bohemian scene, who pointed it out only recently, more than five years after Magnet Gallery opened: the center for arts and culture has moved out of Manila; it is now in Quezon City. Carlos had casually dropped by QC, and in one night had hopped from an art show in Cubao Expo to a contemporary dance performance at Green Papaya Art Projects in Kamuning. He raved about its vibrance, its energy, its daring.

Before Magnet opened in ABS-CBN, of course, others have begun the handiwork for this blossoming of QC as center for a contemporary creative explosion. Big Sky Mind off E. Rodriguez has been hosting shows and performances for some time, and so has Green Papaya. But one could not deny the fact that it was the Magnet couple’s power reputation and network of artists and society people that got others looking at Quezon City as a destination to see art. Drilon would not lay claim to being the culprit, however. “The decision to open the galleries here was very personal,” he says. “We opened in ABS-CBN because Ces works there, and we opened Katipunan because it’s just across Ateneo where the kids study and I want to be near where they spend most of their time.”


Poklong Anading

Argee Bandoy and Jason Oliveria

Jun Sabayton

“Nagkataon lang siguro na most of the seminal spaces which were artist-run, and which made significant contribution and impact sa practice ng mga artists ngayon, were located in QC,” says Norberto “Peewee” Roldan, the artist who runs Green Papaya together with his partner, the dancer Donna Miranda. Peewee is referring to the spaces that made their name in the early part of the 2000s: Big Sky Mind which used to be run by Katya Guerrero, daughter of the legendary Helena; Third Space; Junkshop; Future Prospects which was one of the first galleries in Cubao Expo; Magnet; and Surrounded by Water, the space named after the group of artists that include then upcoming Geraldine Javier, Wyre Tuazon, Mariano Ching et al. This last one was originally at 18th Avenue in Cubao before it transferred to that spot beside DOLE in Edsa, closing shortly after Edsa Dos. Today, only Magnet in Katipunan, West Gallery in West Avenue and Green Papaya in its new Kamuning space, are still standing.


Louie Cordero

Nona Garcia, Lyle Sacris and Romeo Lee

If indeed QC has become the country’s art center, Peewee explains the Manila-QC art scene transition this way:“Una, with regards to the impression that Malate used to be where the arts and culture scene is, I think the basis for this is the location of the CCP, di ba? And if this is true, we are talking here of the particular period when CCP was still the hotbed for contemporary (conceptual) art exhibitions/happenings. And this should be sometime from the early 70s (the era identified with Bobby Chabet and Rey Albano) to the early 80's. We should also remember that during this time, the Museum of Philippine Art, then presided by its eminent director Arturo Luz, was where the young emerging artists (Santiago Bose, Gus Albor, Lao Lian Ben, etc.) of the local art scene where being shown. While at the nearby Metropolitan Museum of Manila (MET), works by big international names like Joseph Beuys, Frank Stella and Andy Warhol had been mounted. It also helped that Malate, particularly the Penguin Café, was where the bohemian community congregated during this time.

“Although I consider myself actively involved with the early Nationalist movement, having been a cultural activist/organizer in Negros Occidental during the ‘80s, I must admit that the CCP lost its grip on cultural hegemony when it adapted the "nationalist" policies and agenda that were brought in by the new power structure after the People Power revolution. My point is, if there is a shift of the art scene, from Malate to QC, hindi siya nangyari overnight. My contention is, hindi na art destination ang Malate even during the ‘90s.”

Peewee adds that it is difficult to support the claim that the art and culture scene has already moved to QC. “Siempre palagi namin sinasabi: ‘QC rocks!’ But it's more a battle cry--sloganeering, if you may--than a legitimate claim. What is rather easily recognizable is there are more venues in QC, not necessarily art galleries, that have become hangouts for visual artists, independent film makers, writers/poets, critics/academics/scholars, who constitute an important segment of our local art institution/infrastructure.”

These venues have undoubtedly helped nurture the community and the people that make it thrive and flourish. For the common art enthusiast, one can make a day just seeing art and being surrounded by artists when one is in QC. One can begin by visiting the sculptures at the UP Fine Arts compound in Diliman, or come to Magnet in the afternoon where there is a daily screening of some of the most groundbreaking works being made by a new generation of filmmakers. Of course, there’s the ongoing exhibit by an important artist. Or the works hanging on the walls at the cafe upstairs. Every second Monday, the poet Joel Toledo, who teaches literature across (Miriam College) and lives a tricycle-ride away, hosts poetry nights.

There are three other important galleries to visit: Green Papaya, West Gallery, and Boston Gallery, one of the more senior art spaces here, located in Cubao, established for the group of young artists in the early ‘90s called Salingpusa by the doctor and art patron Joven Cuanang. Towards the evening, one can start driving over to Cubao Shoe Expo near Ali Mall and the bus station. Not a few times called The New Malate, it is an enclave of curio shops and galleries (there are at least four in existence at the moment) but its center is the open air resto-bar-cinema Mogwai run by film artists Erik Matti and Lyle Sacris. Mogwai, since it opened late last year, has become the after-opening hangout. Whether the evening’s show opened in Makati or Megamall, the artists and their friends often congregate here in its welcoming open space, its generous Gerry Araos table, and the devil-may-care vibe.


Jeremy and Gary Ross Pastrana

Donna Miranda, Peewee Roldan and Joaquin


At Maculangan

It is this laidback feel that permeates in the city which, really, is more like a neighbourhood where rent is cheap, beer is cheap, there is an ample blessing of green everywhere, and where your friends live near. QC is filled with little known bookstores, shops, eateries, surprises in its quiet little streets. “The relaxed atmosphere is so important in an artist’s life," says Drilon, "because it is usually the perfect surrounding that allows one to create.” While the academics and the intellectuals have lived around the university vicinity for years, some of today’s most sought-after artists also live and work in the area, from Drilon to Roldan to the younger hotshots: Poklong Anading, Louie Cordero, Lena Cobangbang and Jason Oliveria live in Cubao, Robert Langenegger in Maginhawa, Reg Yuson has just renovated an entire ‘50s house to build his modern home/studio in Panay. From the film community, there's John Torres in Sikatuna, Khavn dela Cruz in Kamias and, of course, the late Alexis Tioseco was a resident of Times Street. And then there's Lourd de Veyra off Anonas.

“I feel that there is always a shifting of the 'center' not because of some geographic/topographic tension, but owing to a very unstable, impermanent and almost nil support for the arts in this country.,” says Roldan. “Among the three most important support mechanisms, namely: government support reflected in policies/infrastructure that encourage and sustain artistic and cultural production; private patronage in the form of the commercial gallery system, corporate funding and sponsorship, institutional and private acquisitions, etc.; and, peer/community support, it's only the peer/community system that is consistently supporting artists. Therefore, if you look at the art scene from this perspective, it appears that the art scene in QC is more vibrant and dynamic than anywhere else because there is a concentration of peer communities here.” Jerome Gomez

ALL PHOTOGRAPHS BY M.M. YU
Story originally appeared in Metro Society May 2009 except photographs.

BEST PLACE TO WRITE #2* ] Where to stalk Jessica Zafra

We ask Jessica Zafra which, for her, is the best place to write. The author of the famed Twisted series, who is in the thick of doing revisions for her first ever novel, says she likes noisy restaurants. "I am forced to concentrate." Asked to name a particular one that she frequents: "Wild Ginger in Rockwell."

*House not included.

BEST PLACE TO WRITE#1 ] We begin, of course, with mine

Adarna Food and Culture along Kalayaan near Matalino Street in QC. Been here a couple of times before. Not particularly delighted with the food, but the place is gorgeous (I let other people order). I like staying outside, in the non-airconditioned area. You can smoke. There's free wi-fi. I just order coffee, and maybe the fried lumpia so, you know, it's not naman nakakahiya. The barako was scary at first but I had no trouble sleeping that night (but then I also had five can of San Mig Light at an art opening, so). I went around 2pm, and its cool and quiet even if its close to the street. After 5pm, it seems political hangers-on make it their next place to hang. They talk about their new manoks and their latest moves. But I found out Mary of Peter, Paul and Mary died from eavesdropping on their conversation.

Photograph from the Adarna Facebook account.

POST 100 ] Starting anew

My working desk at home--on a good day.

Written for my last issue at Metro Home & Entertaining.

It took a long time coming but last July, at 35, I finally moved out of my sister’s house into a place of my own. She has just given birth, you see, and suddenly the house has been taken over by cribs and toys and feeding bottles, and this being the first grandchild in the family, my parents have been visiting the house more frequently than usual and sleeping over. Suddenly, there was no place to write and be quiet, and drinking at home just got less fun when sober people are looking. So I moved. A couple of blocks away. Baby steps.

My new space is a one bedroom flat in a lowrise condominium unit in Quezon City. Nothing fancy. Comfortable size. Far from the shoeboxes I found around the area which seemed just enough for one bed and a chair. I planned to have a waking life in my new home, not just sleep and eat Lucky Me Supreme. I planned to cook, have space to do my exercises, walk around, dance. I planned to invite friends over for dinner and drinks. But then you learn that starting a new life can take awhile. Acquiring even the most basic things can cost you, from the fridge to new locks and keys. Introducing another piece of furniture, no matter how small, eats another fraction of your much-valued space. Lessons that only really hit you once you put down work for this magazine and start building a home of your own.

I learned that you can’t just go on ahead and paint your floors in black enamel and not have it look like you spilled grease on it the night before. I learned that it only takes one fag to screw on a lightbulb. And that the one kitchen item you need to introduce to the house first is not salt or uncooked rice—because your parents said it’s for good luck--but a bottle opener. And everytime I walk up the two flights of stairs to my unit, and get a peek of my neighbors’ homes through their windows, I am constantly reminded of the simplest decorating adage: “Edit, edit, edit.” I realize that what’s keeping a lot of ordinary homes from being the nice, relaxing, visually pleasant coccoons they’re supposed to be is their owners’ mindless acquisition of things, things and more things.

'And the one kitchen item you need to introduce to the house first is not salt or uncooked rice—because your parents said it’s for good luck--but a bottle opener.'

Creating a lovely home sometimes doesn’t have anything to do with taste or the number of interior design magazines you’ve read. It’s about listening to ourselves, looking at our space, and deciding what we really need. Most people, me included, do not have money to hire designers and are left on our own to furnish our spaces. I look at my white space now and think I know that I need a few things but they would hardly amount to ten. “Ang kailangan lang naman natin kama at internet,” an artist-friend told me yesterday. He exaggerates, of course, but he has a point. I still need a small round table and maybe four dining chairs. I need a small steel table with racks to put my one-burner stove on. I think I can dispense with having a coffeetable but an accent chair beside my two-seater couch could accomodate another guest.

For the moment, however, those can wait for the next paycheck. For the moment, I’m good with what I have. A beige sofa bought many years back from a second hand store. A 5x4 painting of a doll submerged in a swimming pool by Keiye Miranda Tuason, the color of water matching the kitchen sink tiles across. There is a floor lamp covered in a white paper material, a moving-in (or moving-out?) gift from my sister. An old school sound system under a glass window that frames the sky. Piles of my old Vogues are now a sort of a low holding table for a Venetian mirror from the Kamuning vintage shops. A few pieces of art lean on the wall next to it. All other walls are empty, and I tell myself there’s nothing wrong with an empty white wall (because really there isn’t). In the morning, since I have yet to put on curtains, the light from outside is a good waker-upper. In the evening, in yellow light, even my crudely painted black floor works, and the place looks, dare I say it, hip yet elegant, like a small-time art space.

As I write this, I am also preparing to start anew in my career. This is my last issue at Metro Home and Entertaining. When I started in this magazine, I was coming from the highly stressful world of showbiz reportage, and Metro Home was a magazine that welcomed my resolve to slow down a bit. I learned a lot along the way: from the designers and stylists we worked with, the homeowners whose fabulous homes we featured, and from Carlo, my boss, whose exacting standards and superb taste is something that I believe is unique to this magazine. He is a relatively new homeowner as well. When I started working with him, he has just moved in to a house he built. From the very first dinner we had there in May of 2007 to the last get-together in July, very little in the house, simple and white all over, has changed. Each dinner, it seems, we are greeted only by a new addition, either a coffeetable decor from a friend, a custom-made piece from a furniture shop in Pampanga or Kamias, or a framed work bought from one of those kitschy art stores in Ermita. Each from a special provenance, each precious-looking in its own way. The house hardly ever looks complete, but it never seemed lacking.

Creating a new life is a lot like like creating a new home. Change eventually happens and when it does we wait some more to fit into it, to make it our own. And while we wait, we live and think and discover things we’d like to take in, bring home, little by little. Nothing special was ever made in a rush. Baby steps. Why hurry? Rat races are for the ordinary.

THE DECENT GOODBYE ] Carlo Tadiar on how to write a eulogy. Or why bother

Bea Camacho, Portrait Series, 2007, Artist Book. Photo from Magnet Galleries

The all time worst eulogy I have had the misfortune to endure was Kit Tatad’s for Larry Cruz. What made it egregious was not its excruciating length (Claude Tayag had to cut his charming eulogy short for Mr. Tatad), banalité of thought and expression, and the pompous dirge of its delivery, but the fact that it had nothing to do with the deceased. It was an exegesis on the movie Babette’s Feast. A crappy exegesis.

Hoping to make Mr. Tatad come to a stop (as well as to pass the time), I texted my pew-mate Alya Honasan, who was sincerely bereaved by the death of Mr. Cruz, if she knew the eulogist’s number. She texted back: “1-800-BORE”. And yet still more about Babette and her feast. On and on and on.

As soon as the eulogies came to an end, I jolted out of my pew for a cigarette. Who should walk out from the other end of the chapel but the bore himself. I felt like I ought to go up to him to tell him that that was the crappiest eulogy I’d ever heard in my entire life. But I thought the better of it and had a cigarette nalang. I’m told he wields powers over fire and brimstone.

One of the best eulogies I’ve read is by Teddy Boy Locsin for the recently departed and much beloved Corazon Aquino. Unfortunately, I didn’t catch its delivery as I was engaged in one of the countless quotidian senselessnesses I must endure para buhayin ang sarili ko, those things that fritter away at life so that you might make a livelihood.

Mr. Locsin enunciates his love for his President and describes how she had changed him. Of all her advisers, Mr. Locsin says, he likes to think of himself as “the one who loved her most.” And the desire for vengeance on the few so many suffered under went away even as her victory put him in a position to seek it.

“It never again occurred to me that I had scores to settle,” he remembers. “And not until today, that I had passed up every chance to get even…

“I certainly never noticed that I had left my anger behind. I don’t know how it happened. Except that Cory Aquino ennobled everyone who came near her.”

As a conscientious speaker, Mr. Locsin is reflexive. Tragedy is so easy to exploit.

If you saw me as I felt myself to be, anyone would fall in love with me.

I saw myself in that hospital room, a knight at the bedside of his dying sovereign,

on the eve of a new Crusade, oblivious to the weight of the armor on his shoulders

for the weight of the grief in his heart.

'Nothing can be said. This is especially true of violent, sudden, senseless deaths.'

I always cry at funerals. I will not shed a tear at a wake, but once final rites are underway, I cannot stop the tears. It embarrasses me. In part, it is the rapacious finality of death, its terrifying material sunder, that grieves me so. But it is in greater part the commonality of humanity so often quoted from the articulation of John Donne that makes me weep. The verses have been so often quoted that I cannot bring myself to even point to them.

“Grief too sad for song.” Who was it that coined that verse and in which poem? There is an aspect of death which cannot be addressed in any kind of notes. Nothing can be said. This is especially true of violent, sudden, senseless deaths. I live in terror of those words, of pain which cannot be assuaged by any human intervention. Only madness follows.

WH Auden wrote:

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the woods;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

Even that death, cataclysmic as it was for the author, had the grace to be put into song. They used it (the song, the poem) in a movie.

The one who grapples with words in the face of death grapples with the difference between truth and art. Which is which, what is what? If I had the answers I would charge you for it.


Written exclusively for TheSwankStyle.com. Carlo Tadiar is the editor of Metro Home & Entertaining.

THE EXCERPT ] Carmen Guerrero Nakpil encounters Gina Lollobrigida

In her new book, a kind of sequel to the autobiography Myself, Elsewhere, the writer Carmen Guerrero Nakpil continues to fascinate with her amazing memory and vivid stories of postwar Manila. Here, an excerpt courtesy of her daughter Lizza Nakpil.

"In 1975, as a member of the amen battalion, I was assigned to write the text for two, big pictorial books (one on the Philippines and the other on Manila) by Gina Lollobrigida... The world at that time was unaware that, to her many accomplishments, Miss Lollo had added that of professional photography. She had been able wangle a whale of a contract, befitting her status as "sexiest woman alive" of the last decade.. The stage was set, from the very beginning, for cultural battle.

"I spent a few days as houseguest of Miss L. in her fabulous villa on the Via Antica and met her German boyfriend, about the age of my sons. I was thence transported to a hotel in glorious Florence, queen of the Italian Quattrocento, a city of marvels. I went daily to the printing press, where the staff knew little English, to read the proofs and approve page designs.

'Who are you calling a pygmy,' I said looking down my nose. I knew it had all come from Lollobrigida's photos of the Tasaday.

"In one of the photos, I recognized a classmate of my oldest son. He was scantily clad, exhibiting a lot of musculature. I said, "I think I know that boy. He goes to school with my son." It must have been the only remark that pleased G.L. because she quickly turned sweet and trembly and asked if I could get on the phone to Manila to call him. I refused, of course. That service entailed a profession I had not signed up for.

"The Italian pressmen at the printers also suffered from culture shock. The first day I was there, they took turns coming up to my desk to ask questions about my nationality. When I told them I was Filipino, they pressed:'But your father must be Spanish." Following my reply, that I was full-blooded Filipino, they insisted, "But you surely had a Spanish grandfather." I lost my patience. "I know what's bothering you: that I am whiter and taller than you." And I was. They were swarthy, crusty, little men about half my size. "But it was in our schoolbooks, that you are descended from pygmies." I stood up and drew myself up to my full height of five-eight, dwarfing them noticeably."Who are you calling a pygmy," I said looking down my nose. I knew it had all come from Lollobrigida's photos of the Tasaday. If she'd had her way, all the European readers of her books would have thought of Filipinos as stone-age pygmies. When I think of the rank racism in that print shop in Florence in the 1970s, I dread what our Overseas Filipino Workers must go through among the alien corn."

More about the book here.

THE SEPTEMBER ISSUE ] In which we carelessly judge a magazine by its cover

VOGUE

Charlize again? Federer again? Hugh Jackman? This is THE September Issue?

More like back issue.
BAZAAR

Makes you wonder if they still have money to put out the next one when they can't even afford a real photo shoot anymore. Remember July?



ESQUIRE

Big, bold, brash. But who the hell is Sam Worthington?
DETAILS

Tom Brady does Advocate. Oh, this is Details?



VANITY FAIR

Double cover. Similar fabulous poses. Some wicked fairy won the argument

at the editorial meeting.

MUSIC TO OUR EARS ] Joel Toledo's second book is destined to startle

His poetry breaks our heart, but in a way we wouldn't mind having it broken again and again. TheSwankStyle does a little Q&A with the poet Joel Toledo who is launching his second collection of poems, The Long Lost Startle (UP Press), this Monday at the Happy Mondays night at Magnet Katipunan.

When did you first recognize that you can be a poet. Or when did you tell yourself, 'Uy, this is not so bad.'
I think the idea of trying out poetry started during my national workshop years. But I was only a fellow for poetry once (fiction otherwise), so the confidence came from the comments of writer friends. Of course, the first Palanca really boosted it further.

Is there an ideal setting/time/mood for you for writing?I'm an uber-nocturnal homebody so it would have to be in the wee hours of the morning in front of the PC at home. Occasionally while I'm out with friends and we do little poetry exercises.

Meron ka bang mga rituals before/during/after writing a piece? Music? What kind?None, really. But it does feel really good when you've written something you think has potential. It's not of course the final version so my usual ritual would have to be to have the poem workshopped.

People (meaning me) say there is a very strong female voice in the way you write, the language. Do you recognize this? Where do you think this comes from?Haha. i'm not really sure. I do remember Juaniyo Arcellana saying the same thing when he wrote about his Palanca shortlist years ago and my collection was mentioned. He said to the effect that it was written by an "obviously lady poet". I guess the sincerity of tone and the prevalent nature strain in my poems are not usually associated with masculinity in poetry.

Name a favorite Filipino poem you know by heart and write down a paragraph here.Here's the final couplet from the last stanza of Carlos Angeles' Landscape II: "I touch your absence here/Remembering the speeches of your hair."

You're a teacher and host of Happy Mondays poetry night at Magnet. Anong sinasabi mo sa mga nagpapakita sayo ng tula at talaga namang hindi mo nagustuhan? I would usually workshop poems with a constructive mindset naman. If I don't like a line/image/insight I would challenge the writer to revise. Most of the people who do approach me for comments know the dictates of revision so I try to be open as well to a poem's potential.

Anong kinaibahan ng bagong libro sa una? Iba rin ba ang state of mind mo habang binubuo ang koleksyon?Most of the poems in this book are written during my NCCA Writers Prize grant and i think they are generally less personal and more craft-driven. There are more experimentations with form and the themes are more universal. This collection are made up of poems from 2006 to 2008, so i guess i was also conscious of experimenting with the voice and the musicality in the verses' syntax.

Can you share a poem from the book?
Here's the title poem from the collection, a poem that experiments with half rhymes and a staccato beat:

The Long Lost Startle

Oh my, the familiar, the face of grandfather
the clock declaring its singular point, the hour,
the now again it is midnight, full minute of it,
fulfilled and finishing. It has never been
a matter of fact; even the initial shudder
passes, pauses permitted by the pendulum,
the slow, slow sway then ending, hands resting
again on his forehead, as in prayer. And,
finding nothing to fear, you lean back into
the silence that comes next: the lack of clock,
the rest.

We love Joel.

IN MEMORY OF PARALUMAN ] Adam David's variations on Huling El Bimbo

With One Letter Altered
Kamukha mo si Paraluman nung tayo ay data pa.

With One Letter Missing
Kamukha mo si Paraluman nung tayo ay bata, a.

With One Word Altered
Kamukha mo si Paraluman nung tao ay bata pa.

Unconfirmed Rumour
Uy, alam mo ba, dati daw, kamukha niya si... Paraluman?

Confirmed Rumour
Oo, medyo kamukha nga niya si Paraluman noon.

American Haiku
Recognition
Sparrows in flight
scattering light
You: Paraluman

Chordbook
A7 - C/G - G

Exclamatory
Oh my God, dude! Kamukha mo noon si Paraluman! DaFuuuuuck!

Doubtful
Kamukha daw niya dati si Paraluman. Daw.

Emphasis
Sobrang sobrang soooobrang kamukha mo dati si Paraluman! As in! Ibang klase! Putsa, puwede na nga kayong ipagpalit sa isa’t isa, e! Talaga! May nagsabi sa’kin dati, tapos ayokong maniwala hangga’t sa Ginoogle ko ‘yung litrato ni Paraluman tapos tinapat ko sa litrato mo nung bata pa tayo tapos... hayup! Kamukhang-kamukha mo talaga! Dapat makita mo minsan!


Adam David didn't write these variations on the first line of "Huling El Bimbo" for the actress who died of cardiac arrest last Monday April 27. We first heard David read them at Mag:net Katipunan's Happy Mondays in 2007. For the complete variations, and more, well, wasak stuff, visit Adam David at wasaaak.blogspot.com.