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 #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.

WHAT I'VE LEARNED ] In Bacolod while half-drunk, half-hungover

Photograph by James Ong

Start drinking as soon as you land. You never have to worry about anything anyway. Heavy meals end by lunch. The beer should keep you going from cocktail hour to midnight.

The best chicken inasal is in Bacolod Chicken House located at the back of artist Charlie Co's Orange Gallery, inside the Lopue complex. In Manila, I know there's a branch at Intramuros across the Manila Cathedral.

It's kind of amazing to see the house where they shot Oro Plata Mata, possibly the most stylish Filipino film, and to be able to walk in the second floor area where they shot that fabulous opening sequence. There are three balkonahes in that house built in the '30s (four when you include the ground floor terrace), and I wanted to take a picture of James getting the kuto from Raymond's hair as homage to the scene where Fides Cuyugan Asencio and the rest of the girls were being fussed over by at least three maids each.



The mestizos don't go out a lot. Or I was going to the sakada places.

The Ruins (topmost photo), the remains of what is touted to be the most gorgeous house in Negros had it not been burned by the Japanese, is quite magnificent. But the landscaping of the garden that surrounded it was a little too Hizon's Catering for us. They should have given the job to an art director.

To reach the ruins, you drive through a long rough road lined with tall sugarcane plants on either side. I complained about it halfway to the trip but our companion said even the hacienderos had to go through them. So I kept quiet.

That during those days, people, even the rich ones, slept in beds without cushions, only the solihiya weaves.

Drinking in the afternoon in Bacolod is the best. Well, drinking in the afternoon anywhere is the best.

No point eating expensive Italian food when in short vacation in province where they have a lot to offer. Even if the pasta is good, its a little pretentious.

The pilipit is Bacolod's Pringles. Once you pop...

The kansi (like bulalo but a tad sour) is the bomb. Especially after extended hours of drinking.

The empanada at El Ideal is, well, ideal.