nameabledays

2009-09-08T20:05:00.005+08:00

Parked "female" bike among old stone walls in Basco, Batanes (we're still mining our old pictures from our 2007 visit to our northernmost islands). It's as much at rest as the waters roil around the islands where China Sea and Pacific Ocean meet, and of which there is no indication in this "still life."

Welcome to a newly reformatted Nameabledays. As I maintain this site
but visit less often, it will serve mainly as a portal to my other sites on the Web.
Provided here and on the next page are links to those sites.

E N T E R ►

2009-04-11T11:11:00.034+08:00

A falua (above) is a hardy boat that plies the roiling waters between the islands of Batanes, the northernmost island group and province of the Philippines. These waters, where the vast Pacific Ocean and the smaller China Sea meet, are to say the least, unpredictable. You could sail on them in the morning, towards say Sabtang Island, as if the sea were a placid lake, and come back in the afternoon to Basco, the main island, in a boiling cauldron which, if you were not familiar nor partly Ivatan, you think you might not survive. Ivatans, the Batanes natives, take the afternoon sea as a matter of course. On clear dawns, they say, you could hear the cock crow from Lanyu, the southernmost isle of the Taiwan group.

Welcome to a newly reformatted Nameabledays. As I maintain this site

but visit less often, it will serve mainly as a portal to my other sites on the Web.
Provided here and on the next page are links and pointers to those sites.

Today in our blog:

What do balîgang/duhat, Edd Aragon

& Penshoppe have in common?

E N T E R ►

Rio’s poetry “in English” (& birthday bashes and not exactly "good riddance")

2009-03-24T21:01:00.031+08:00

On the first week of this month the University of the Philippines, specifically its Kolehiyo ng Arte at Literatura (College of Arts and Letters), feted its dean on the occasion of his 65th birthday. It was also his official retirement day, and the party, according to the Dean himself, National Artist for Literature Virgilio S. Almario, was his “good-riddance” party. Anyone is entitled to a little of self-deprecation at the onset of his retirement, the beginning of a perceived “uselessness,” but maybe not Dean Almario, or Rio to his many friends, and to the readers of his poetry, Rio Alma. First of all, while he may be building a “retirement home” in his native San Miguel (Bulacan), many of his colleagues look forward to seeing him handling a few master classes in literature yet, in the campus, even in his retirement. Some graduate students maybe even looking forward to it. For many of his literary friends, well, like this writer, the unofficial translator of his works, he is in fact in the middle of many projects, many meaning not about to run out and give him an idle retiree’s time even if he wanted it, which we doubt. The party we were talking about, where among the many numbers, the European languages class presented translations of Rio’s short poems in major Europoean languages, was on March 4, a Thursday.

His birthday was on the following Monday, March 9, when he had his own small party at home with a few friends. Now almost three weeks later, the tributes and parties haven’t finished, some awaiting a gap in his tight schedule. This time, on March 23, the last Monday of the month and the scheduled “OMG” Open Mic Gig poetry night hosted by UMPIL Chairman Vim Nadera, the fledgling reprographics and licensing group FILCOLS (Filipinas Licensing and Collection Society), chaired by Rio himself, the Unyon ng mga Manunulat sa Pilipinas (UMPIL), and IPO Philippines, tendered their honors for the birthday boy and retiree (just about), national artist. Professor and critic Isagani Cruz was there, and so were Book Development Board chairman and FILCOLS treasurer Lirio Sandoval, Anvil Publisher and PBBY director Karina Bolasco, poet Teo Antonio, fictionist and National Bookstore consultant Abdon Balde Jr, IPO representative Precious Lejano, among others. All of them, including myself, were put upon by Vim to say a few words about Rio, and the common refrain was most had run out of things to say as they had been saying them in previous parties. Of course they proceeded to say something anyway, prodded on by Vim. Now, I haven’t been lugging a camera around lately so even for the UP event I’m using photographs filched from Wendell Capili’s Facebook. He has been recently the busiest snap-shooter around.

And all I can offer here by way of an image of the last party is the cropped shot of the marquee of Mag:net Cafe showing another event. But I can put here the poems I read—my translations of Rio Alma’s poetry, from my unpublished manuscript “Heartland,” for a possible bilingual edition of Muli, sa Kandungan ng Lupa, perhaps from Anvil. I didn’t notice that my choices sounded morbid, starting with “Corpse.” Though perhaps after some readings one would realize the poet is not talking about an ordinary lifeless body, and perhaps something about the whole of us is lifeless right now. So here they are, but before the first poem I would like to insert one I didn’t read. It’s about what we don’t have right now. Smack in the middle of summer—the real dry season of our tropics—let’s dream of rain.

Legend of the Rain

Upon the earth, the lizard’s metaphysical kiss; then
The frogs’ trumpets:
The spider ceases its survey of silk,
Crawls into its ancient chink, snuggles under its sheets;

On the floor the cold’s first messages creep,
The crickets quicken their telegraph of cricks;
The electric wires and poles stand on end,
Tree limbs and the haughty bamboo sway restless;

And the rain marches in with its crystal banners,
Raiding the murky dungeons of the canals,
Its thousand boots trampling the metal roofs and streets,
Soaking and routing the troops of darkness.

Now it is tending the wounds of the paddies,
Bathing soiled branch and thatch. Expect tomorrow
On the rice fields: an Eden of newly washed silver,
The vegetables fresh and full of laughter.

The Corpse

The sea tossed up the corpse
After two days of storm.
The brine had pickled it white
And it was bloated by the waves it had swallowed;
Vines of seaweed strangled it,
A crab shell had plugged its gaping mouth
And its eyes were almost out of their sockets.
When it was found on the beach,
The curious centipede and hermit crab
Were exploring the holes of its nose and ears,
Though the body itself yielded
No story to the inquisitive village folk.
Perhaps it got caught in the storm at sea,
Or perhaps it fell while taking a stroll,
And was swept into the swift current;
Or it was a victim of foul play.
A child of the fisherfolk discovered it
Slumped on a limb of driftwood
And he couldn’t fathom how
The salt of the seawater
Had washed away even its name.

Adoracion Nocturna

The night is for washing the body
After soaking in the day’s pain and dust;
For cleansing the sole and plucking its splinters,
And for soothing the scars of the heart.

The night is for washing the senses
Blurred, choked, deceived, weary from toil;
It is for preparing for the morning,
And for steeling the nerves of one’s faith.

The night is for washing the word
Of its grime and dirt of rage and dreams;
Speech must sparkle and smell good
To face the waiting warmth of blame and love.

And at the altar of the death-watch,
The night is also for the washing of hands.

Mariquita

Because of her,
You will never forget that mole of an island
On the green face of a placid sea.
mmmmmmmmmmmmmMariquita,
Most giving, most guileless allure of brown skin,
Sparkling scent of sweet rice and anise.
What sorcery was there in her kiss—
Waking memory’s seeds when most unwanted,
When we’re buried in the fragrance of a foreign breast.
You say you were an innocent when first enticed
By the tiny stings of her love.
And, too, it was she drove you
To your long and endless wandering.
What weed have you eaten
From the wild of her belly dark and grim?
Friend, what a child you are in your longing,
And you call her Native Land.

(From the unpublished MS. “Heartland,” a translation of Muli sa Kandungan ng Lupa, by Marne Kilates; read on the occasion of Rio Alma’s birthday, March 9, 2009)

As I said during the reading, these are how Rio’s poems sounded in English. For the original poems, see next page.

NOTES:

Adoracion Nocturna. Midnight vigil. A Catholic ritual either for the dead or the exposed Holy Eucharist.

"From the wild of her belly dark and grim." Dark and grim is an allusion to Francisco Baltazar Balagtas's Florante at Laura which begins with "Sa isang madilim, gubat na mapanglaw." The original: "Sa kanyang madilim, mapanglaw na puson."

PHOTOGRAPHS OF RIO'S PARTY by Jose Wendell Capili. Top left, the National Artist, in his now trademark fedora, about to open his life exhibit; lower top left, Anvil publisher Karina Bolasco with two national artists for literature, the other being Dr. Bienvenido Lumbera. Mid-top right: Rio's writer friends and some former students, from right Luna Sicat-Cleto, Maria Jovita Zarate, Rebecca Añonuevo, Romulo Baquiran, Gerry Gracio; and a colorful finale from the UP Singing Ambassadors.

ILLUSTRATIONS: 1) Leaf on Water by Mark Schwab; Dreamfence and Sunspot by Australia-based artists Edd Aragon, from his Digitalla Prima blog.

While our new/old blog is under repair...

2009-03-10T15:11:00.030+08:00

1. A souvenir from Marinduque

The party of National Artist for Literature Virgilio S. Almario (Rio Alma) and I were in Marinduque two years ago. I was in the almost unlikely role of photographer for Rio's then upcoming book of poetry gleaned from his travels throughout the Philippines, but he seemed to like my snapshots from little Fuji FinePix S100 digital and my analog Nikon F60. I had logged on some miles with him in other round-the-country sorties and this one I didn't want to miss (he had engaged other photographers apart from me but this time I was the only one with a light schedule). So we landed on the island after an epic ride bus and boat ride (about which I've blogged before), and this is the tail end of the narrative. In the meantime, Rio's book is almost out of the presses. It is an epic titled "Huling Hudhud ng Sanlibong Pagbabalik at Paglimot para sa Filipinas Kong Mahal." I haven't yet undertaken the translation (an epic job as well) since there is no full-fledged (meaning funded) project for translation, but have been requested to translate the title mainly for the Library of Congress cataloguing, and here it is: "The Last Hudhud A Thousand Songs of Forgetting & Returning to the Philippines, Land of My Heart."

Within the epic is Rio's poem called "Morion" though I had worked indepedently at my own poem as a souvenir of the travel. It has the same time title, and in fact we used the same epigraph from a children's rhyme we overheard during the tour itself. It's not deprived of the cruelty children are capable of, and perhaps symbolic, if not symptomatic, of the ambivalence we have towards these rituals remnant from a colonial past. And as much, ours is a remnant piety (at least for many who went to Catholic schools like me), as we remember it's almost Holy Week again, the Quaresma, the 40-day Lenten observance, is upon us. Here, in rather un-Lenten manner (and sharing with you whether you're going to the dusty Senakulo Passion play or you're going to soak the summer out in Boracay, is my own impression of the Morion.

Morion

mmmmmMoryon bungi,
mmmmmMay tae sa binti*.

1.
Cresting his Roman helmet,
Sprouting all over
His breastplate, skirt, and cape:
The plumage
Of a thousand fighting cocks.

But the face is all:
Cruelty, guilt, and Grand Guignol,
& thus the power
To scare or suffer mockery,
For it is also the grimace of pain.

2.
If one eye is closed, it is
A privilege—
To wear the face of the one
Who poked his spear
Into the Holy Breast

& receive the healing spurt
Of faith—the Centurion’s
Mask reserved
For atoning accountants, engineers,
Mayors, philanderers.

For lesser folk with lesser
Sins or favors—
The out-of-job, the childless,
The returning OFW—the ordinary
Face of infantry will do.

3.
But all is equal in the chance
For show: mohair and nylon fur
Recall a winter campaign,
Throwbacks & anachronisms
From various versions of Armageddon:

Gasmasks from Vietnam or Verdun,
Leather & metal from
“Gladiator” or “300,” plastic
AK47s or RPGs parading on foot,
Calesas converted to chariots.

4.
Under the Lenten sun, on dusty
Fair grounds in Marinduque,
Our motley masque of history gathers
And marvels at itself—the far-flung
Roots of our belief and curiosity:

Longinus appears with his gleaming
Coterie; the crowd falls silent
Or scrambles for a view: the pagan
Rite of blood & sacrifice
Will once more give us a risen god.

We bow our heads, atoning
Or asking for favors, or shoot our
Cameras, oblivious of our own
Unresurrected gods, the unholy
Ghosts of ourselves behind our masks.

Marne L. Kilates
October 30, 2007

*Gap-toothed Morion, / There’s shit on your leg. (Children’s verse)

2. Another poem from a painting

And while we're at it, we return to the oldest of all follies: the human (or inhuman) act of war. All faiths engage in it, from the Intifadas to the Crusades, and in all ages, from hobby-horse brats to armchair generals to Play Station addicts. Some say playing it—in actual arena or the computer game—is cathartic; or having war toys drains out or preempts the future aggression in little children. We hope so, because judging from what we see of the world today as run by its leaders and superpower(s), no one, not one among them, has outgrown war toys. Here's to a properly mortifying Holy Week.

Junkscape

(after Ang Kiukok’s Junkscape: Dove)

mmmmmmmmmmTahimik ang gabi, tulog na ang mga aso…
mmmmmmmmmmIto ang iyong siyudad, ito ang iyong sementeryo…

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmRadioactive Sago Project

All this flap-flapping
To clean up after
The tantrum of brats:

Canon of brickbats
Blind turning
Of batty SALT & MAD

“Either you’re with us
Or against us,” says
The demented diplomacy

Rising from Ground
Zero: terror versus
Dementia praecox

All is hardware
& toxic double-talk
The Dove is old-

Fashioned, tired
Of flying over flotsam
From Mesopotamia

To Iraq: too much
To handle & all of it
Babble & junk

Marne L. Kilates
June 24, September 22, 2008

2008-12-27T18:45:00.000+08:00

poet'sPicturebook No. 23 now online

2008-12-21T16:41:00.010+08:00

Luisa Igloria • Francis Macansantos • Kristian Cordero
Victor Peñaranda • Marne Kilates

Bookmark us, save us in your favorites, update your links, click now:
http://marnescriptsmain.blogspot.com

Christmas Themes & Unseasonable Notions

(excerpt)

Winter in the Diaspora, and the little town of Bethlehem, and Simbang Gabi replicated in barrio visitas, subdivision chapels, metropolitan cathedrals, and minor basilicas in the Philippines. Christmas is just a global locally at home: ancient and new, biblical and folksy, and clad in the gleaming aluminum and frippery of shopping malls, and murmuring with the undercurrents of the global economic troubles. The old beloved theme of the parol lighted in the both the shanty and the mansion still obtains and both the well heeled and the unshod (wearing only fake Havaiana flip-flops) still tread dizzily the granite-tile floors of Rockwell, Greenbelt, or SM (shopping malls in the Philippines) ogling the latest models of Nokias or iPhones. Both buy imported fruits at the stalls, and though both may have a hankering for roasted castañas (the chestnuts of Nat King Cole), one may not know the difference between Ponkan and tangerines and either may go home to a Noche Buena of turkey or Pato hamon (a brand, now traditional, of salted Chinese ham). The seaman and the Balikbayan still go straight to the piping-hot bibingka and puto-bumbong, the and child who was lulled by Bing Crosby and sleigh bells on phonograph records, cassettes, or CD can’t think of Christmas without Santa Claus, grapes, and apples. It’s the sentimental time of the year and Filipinos maximize the season by playing carols starting September, and the Coca-Colas and the Sonys won’t be left behind (in sales) by putting out the Christmas advertising campaigns no sooner. And the buying goes on, despite Wall Street and Chrysler and GM falling under at the other end of the globe, unless the immigrant Kuya, the Ate , or Tita were newly redundanced or separated from AIG or Lehman...

poet'sPicturebook No. 22 The First Anniversary Issue

2008-12-03T22:22:00.017+08:00

Bookmark us now • update your Links

http://manrnescriptsmain.blogspot.com/

A completely redone poet'sPicturebook
on its first anniversary is now online. With the newest features.
A Black Cover Page featuring the finest art and photography
from the Philippines & elsewhere. Like the windows to another world
that they are. A new Contents page
where you can click the titles to go to the poems & articles.
And still, paper-white inside pages for the latest
poems, photos, and art from some our leading writers and artists.
And a black About Us page to close.

Bookmark us now, update your links, or add us to your favorites.
Read and enjoy the completely new, one-year-old
poet'sPicturebook.

Excerpts from the intro...

Wormholes & windows. We made a complete turnabout and went back to our first background color when we started blogging for poetry & art: black. (Nothing to do with the U.S. president-elect.) But only for our Cover and our About Us pages, to distinguish them from the inside ones and, well, there is always the elegance and drama of black. While we “modernize” a bit, we wanted at the same time to pay tribute to the publishing technologies that went before us, from before Gutenburg to the pick-up type, and of course to digitally picking up the images of Letterpress wood types and assembling them for our header; for our other display types we chose the thinnest of san-serif fonts (still serif for the poetry pages), and bolder solid colors to nod to our being electronic, and to signal the sanguine presence we’d like to make for our poetry and art on the Literary Web. Plus, when we think of Space, the cosmos and cyber-, we imagine black. Only the stars are “white.” And our cover pictures, enveloped in black, could become windows of sorts—into the alternative realities of the frozen image—perhaps a bit like the wormholes of physics. And yes, the pictures and paintings! We promise to give you fabulous images on our cover starting this issue. We’ve touched base with friends from all over—photographers and artists, professionals and serious amateurs from various trades who will generously lend us their fantastic work. And so will our poets. I’ve seen some of their work, on websites and albums and notebooks and studios redolent with pigment and imagination, and I oohed and ahed. I hope you do too, and share my excitement for this new edition of poet’sPicturebook. So there, as we salute in our own way the history that brought us to the virtual page, click and enter and linger in our completely redone pages. All in all, as we improve how we look and work, we are just preparing for better contributions for 2009. Because there are lots of them coming.

• • •

This Issue. Our first anniversary issue is in more ways than one, a translation issue (in two ways actually). It is also, once again, more international in terms of contributors. Kim Ming’i, perhaps the greatest contemporary songwriter and poet from South Korea, appears with his poem, in the original Korean ideographic characters, courtesy of his English translator Lee Sanghee and his Filipino translator, Jesus Manuel Santiago, who is perhaps one of our best (and ironically unsung) contemporary songwriter and singer, and who is a poet firstly. That’s why we publish the song lyrics and translations as poems, and we wonder why Kim Ming’i’s exquisitely lyrical pieces earned him the ire of Korean military regimes. (Incidentally, Jess Santiago launches his first CD collection in a long time, of his newer compositions, in 2009. This is our own little promotional effort for the CD, and our first tribute to his art; since more will be coming to these pages.) The second poem and translation piece is a villanelle written in the Bikol language (the editor’s native one) by Jaime Jesus Borlagdan. Jimple, as he is called by friends, appears for the second time in poet’sPicturebook. Our attempt to translate his poem into a villanelle in English thrilled us but it will be Jimple and readers who will tell us if they are satisfied. Another first is a poem from one of our better short story writers, Maryanne Moll. The poem takes us to places that belie its apparent whimsicality (and for the first time to most of us, perhaps, we discover her “secret” poetry). Our last poem is my own, springing from a painting of antique icons (of our, or my, ambivalent faith) that architect, painter, and poet Pancho Villanueva has daubed with a surprisingly realistic brush, because he is better known, and is a well-collected, abstract artist. We close our anniversary issue with the “smiling” letters of our readers from our first year in what is now called the literary web. These are what made us smile in return and kept us doing, as we enter our second year, and doing better, this little online poetry and art magazine, poet’sPicturebook.

It didn't take long, you don't need to preview. poet'sPicturebook No. 21 now online.

2008-11-14T17:18:00.008+08:00

Without much ado, click & go:

poet'sPicturebook
The Yearend
& New Space Issue

poet'sPicturebook: A Year Older, Looking Better

2008-11-11T09:04:00.017+08:00

Preview the reformatted 21st Issue of our one-year-old ezine at its new address:

http://marnescriptsmain.blogspot.com/.

Update your links now.

Visit new Home Page of poet'sPicturebook.

Starting on its 21st Issue, the Yearend & New Space Issue now in the works and for posting within November, poet'sPicturebook welcomes you to the finest poetry and art from the Philippines and elsewhere from its new Home Page (link above). (The old home page, http://marnezine2.blogspot.com/, becomes "Main Page 2.")

Find the wide, wide, wide space for your contributed photos and art in the new Home and Cover Page. And you have the same unique ezine for your poetry, only better looking. Send us now those original artworks, photos, and poems, or poems about art and photos that from the start have gained us the smiles of readers worldwide. Yes, we are being read in more than 65 cities in over 54 countries around the globe (from Sydney through Asia, Europe and the Americas, to Honolulu). And soon we'll be marking our 15000th hit. Not bad for a one-year-old ezine. And neither for a young online publication whose current ambition is to grow to a ripe old age of two. Or three... Only your contributions will make that possible, of course.

Preview now the new poet'sPicturebook.

Marne L. Kilates
Editor

Mostly in Monsoon Weather launch: a little blog plug for meself

2008-10-28T15:35:00.013+08:00

Here's a little press release I sent out to the Web, to be picked up by tolerant friends...

After movies, poetry makes a good antidote for the recession blues

When economies are in recession more people go to the movies, according to economists and movie producers. Some people read poetry, poets and publishers would say. If you belong to the second kind, Mostly in Monsoon Weather, the third collection of award-winning poet Marne L. Kilates, may just be the book for you for just slightly above the price of a movie.

Nominated to the 2008 National Book Awards of the Manila Critics Circle and the National Book Development Board, and published by the University of the Philippines Press, ...Monsoon Weather will launch on November 7, 2008, at 6:00 o’clock in the evening, Friday, at the Roof Deck Gallery of Villanueva Law Offices, CC Castro Building, Timog Avenue, Quezon City. It’s right across Sir Williams Hotel, and next door to RCBC Timog Branch.

Just when the world knows who the president of the most powerful nation on earth will be after a hotly contested election, and if the recession actually recedes into memory, the launch of Mostly in Monsoon Weather will be hosted by art and literature patron Atty. Redem Villanueva and the Unyon ng mga Manunulat sa Pilipinas (UMPIL), of which Kilates is a member of the Board.

“It will be a fun event for literature, especially poetry, which we all love to open our minds in these narrow-minded times,” Atty. Redem, as he his called by artist friends, said when he graciously opened his roof-deck law office and gallery to host the event.

A sketching session by leading Filipino artists, and poets singing “Salinawit” or those lovely Filipino translations of classical standards, led by poet and Salinawit pioneer Pete Lacaba and novelist Charlson Ong, will follow the launch with cocktails.

Kilates is a three-time Palanca Awards winner, has won the National Book Awards for his poetry and translation, and was the winner of the 1998 SEA (Southeast Asia) Write Award given by the Thai royalty.

Apart from Mostly in Monsoon Weather, Kilates’ two other books are Children of the Snarl & Other Poems (Aklat Peskador, 1987), Poems en Route (UST Publishing House, 1998).

Kilates is also noted for his translations of Filipino poetry into English. His nine books of translation include the works of major Filipino poets such as National Artist Virgilio S. Almario, Rogelio G. Mangahas and Jesus Manuel Santiago. His latest book is a new English translation of Francisco Balagtas’ Florante at Laura, the UP Centennial Edition.

The late Alfrredo Navarro Salanga said that Kilates’ “poems do not, as powerful poems do, hit you in the proverbial gut. His poems hit you in that region reserved for the mystic third eye, slightly above the bridge of one’s nose, set directly in front of one’s cerebrum.”

Right on the mark for hitting away those recession blues.

Invitation with location map;
Art Credits
for the book:
Cover design by Ed Cabagnot based on a painting by Sanitago Bose,
from the collection of Glenn Bautista,
book design by Donato Alvarez

“Trains of Our Thoughts”: A Special Blog Plug

2008-10-23T01:18:00.024+08:00

What Bicolano doesn’t miss the Bicol Express (not the watered-down dish that had appropriated its name), the Mayon Limited, the Peñafrancia Express, the Manila Railroad Company, the Sleeperette, the Mercancia, the “railroad towns” of Camarines Sur that the Manila-bound train from the Legazpi Terminal of the South Line passes in the middle of the night and the drowsy passengers wake up to the glare of florescent lights and to the shouts of “Balut, penoy... sinapot, tubig...” or whatever goody or curiosity it was that the vendors were hawking? What Bicolano doesn’t grimace, or not feel his blood boil, as the train passes the shanties near Bicutan hemming in the decaying tracks and the roofs of the decrepit coaches are crowned with human feces and garbage, and curses under his breath the government that inflicted this malignant neglect on their beloved train? (Well, to be fair, the tracks are actually being, and finally, rehabilitated under an international loan, under whose terms the railroad area must be cleared of squatters, and the rich squatters have just actually torn down their concrete "shanties"—some of them have occupied the place for maybe 30 years, and conducted profitable business while paying "rentals" to "squatter-coddlers" at rates that cost almost nothing and cheated even the neglectful government—I know because I live near the place.)

Poet Vic Nierva

These are the trains of thoughts one might find at, or be triggered by, the newly-launched blog, Trains of our Thoughts, created by Bikolano award-winning poet and graphic designer Vic Nierva, a native of Lupi, one of the “railroad towns” in Camarines Sur. “A weblog of tales, verses, and images on railroad life in the Philippines,” Vic says in the announcement email he sent out last October 19. When I surfed the site, I found Vic’s first posting, “The Many Stories of A Train Station,” with these opening lines:

“Manila-bound train Peñafrancia Express passes by our town of Lupi at nine in the evening, at the time when the moon was gently waxing over the silhouettes of hills and coconut groves. Against darkness, one could only imagine the intense color of the fire tree blossoming or the downy kapok fibers falling from the dried fruits still attached to the branches. By that time, the old train station was quiet and almost empty except for frequent bystanders, or sometimes, passengers from nearby villages who slept on the cold concrete benches waiting for the early morning train to Naga or Legaspi. The florescent lamps of the station were the only remaining illuminations reflected in the night skies and all the rest was a small pastoral town deep in slumber...”

Visit the site if you want to read more. The blog, which is not so much a blog as a real and earnest heritage journal, at least by intentions (it’s on its first posting, as far as I can tell), has been adopted and hosted by the Railways & Industrial Heritage Society of the Philippines, Inc. (of which I’ve heard for the first time), and rightly so. Here’s Vic’s email in full:

Dear Friends,

I present to you a weblog entitled "Trains of Our Thoughts," a weblog of tales, verses, and images on railroad life in the Philippines.

This concept is a product of an online conversation between Bikolano poet Frank Peñones and yours truly after talking about the condition of our railroad industry—forgotten, rusting, and corrupted. Perhaps, by testaments and memories of people on their own experiences of of train travels or life along the tracks, we may be able to remind everyone of the heritage of our railway and how it helped establish places, cultures, identities along the way. By such manner, our words or images may be able to make our authorities aware that there is a need for our railway industry to be developed to serve more people.

This also comes with an invitation. "Trains of Our Thoughts" is open for your stories, essays, poems, and photographs. When we are able to collect significant number of contributions, we envision that "Trains of Our Thoughts" will be published as a book. Please send your contribution to my personal email address with "Trains of Our Thoughts contribution" as subject.

Presently, "Trains of Our Thoughts" weblog is hosted by Railway and Industrial Heritage Society of the Philippines, Inc. (RIHSPI, http://rihspi.org) so that its address maybe accessed at http://trainsofourthoughts.rihspi.org/ or at its original address http://trainsofourthoughts.blogspot.com/.

Please help spread this news to your friends. Thank you very much!

Vic

There. You now have several links to be clicked on this page. You know what to do. If you’re Bikolano, read or contribute your “Thoughts” or both, if you’re non-Bikolano but interested in trains (who isn’t), the same. By all means reminisce your childhood trip in a faraway land and era (Bikol is now more and quickly accessible by bus), or fulminate against the perpetrators of this ignorance of our heritage, economics, and neglect. But click and view the weblog, whatever your memories. And this is why Trains of Our Thoughts deserves to be read, and why you may have read about it for the first time here. And look at those train stop ads (to the left, you don't have to read the text, just the headlines), are they from another planet?

PHOTOS & IMAGES: (from top) Boy & Train by Santiago Bose; the header image of Trains of Our Thoughts, the Naga City station in the 1960s, and the two facsimiles of Manila Railroad Company (MRR) ads (top ad dated 1923 and lower ad 1921) are courtesy of RIHSPI but taken from Vic Nierva's Trains of Our Thoughts and Makuapo ni Handyong blogs.

UPDATE: The painting by Santi Bose, with my poem "Boy & Train by Santi Bose," now appears as the second posting at the Trains of Our Thoughts weblog . Thanks, Vic.

Ang Sulat sa Palayok: Has the ancient inscription on the Calatagan Pot finally been deciphered?

2008-09-27T11:58:00.023+08:00

...Is it fake? Is it us? Does it tell us who we are?"

Find out on October 1, at Recto Hall, Faculty Center, College of Liberal Arts, UP

Perhaps it hasn't been and it won't. Perhaps it has been but it won't yet. There has been attempts to decode the ancient script, but it the end it will only give us a clue to who we are. That is a question we can only answer ourselves, but preferably with the help of those who came before us. Those who know what we have been before what we are now. Because what we are now is not what we have been only yesterday, but all the yesterdays before today. Maybe a thousand, three thousand years of yesterdays. Because we can never know who we are (or what we can become) if we don't have a clue as to what we were. Otherwise we will always think that we are not what we are now, which can lead us to want to be what we are not. Americans, for example. Or Chinese. Anything except what we are (because we don't know what it is).

So, even if it's just a mother warning her child to be careful after sending her/him out to buy sukà, whether it's a love song, a prayer, or a listahan ng utang, let's see what our experts make of the Calatagan Pot inscriptions. Is it fake? Inscribed on the unbaked clay by a crackpot? Or a pot of golden knowledge? Since it was found in the late 1950s (bought for P6 and eventually acquired by the National Museum), many attempts have been made to decode the partially-Baybayin inscriptions on the shoulder of the Calatagan pot.The great sculpture, national artist, and Espiritista, Guillermo Tolentino, tried, and even sought the help of his spirit friends to shed light on its probable message. Lately, another Guillermo, our friend Bomen, who is actually the young, intrepid scholar and poet, Dr. Ramon Guillermo (good son of our friends poet Gelacio and art critic Alice), used a computer program and some similar Asian scripts in trying to decode the script. He sent it out on the Internet for reactions and open debate, so the deciphering process can progress further. Other anthropologists and historians, notably the venerable initiator and advocate of Pantayong Pananaw (Our Own Perspective) in the social sciences, Dr. Zeus Salazar, also contributed their insights and even translations, but it seems the final revelation has yet to come.

This coming October 1, 2008, Wednesday, the much anticipated decipherment of the inscription will once again be brought to light in a symposium entitled Ang Sulat sa Palayok: A Symposium on Deciphering the Calatagan Pot Script, organized by U.P. Archaeological Studies Program, National Museum of the Philippines, and U.P. College of Arts and Letters. This event will be held at the Recto Hall, Faculty Center in U. P. Dliman from 2:00 to 5:00 in the afternoon. Two notable presenters (Dr. Ramon Guillermo and Dr. Quentin Oropilla) will be both delivering their papers on their translation and interpretation of the inscription, which will be discussed by a panel including Nestor Castro, Juan Francisco, Alfredo Evangelista, Jesus Peralta, and Zeus Salazar.

Our friend, Cambridge-trained archaeologist Dr. Vic Paz, who heads the U.P. Archaeology department, with whom we and other friends recently have been sharing some good beer and absorbing conversation at the cafe of the U.P. University Hotel, forewarned us about the symposium. He said, if you're really interested, you shouldn't miss it. Novelist and singer Charlson Ong, poet and playwright Reuel Molina Aguila, poet and singer-composer Jesus Manuel Santiago, and the great poet and student of Philippine history, Arnold Molina Azurin, who have been following the developments and discussions among the specialists, and I (who was a recent interloper), won't miss it for their lives. And you, if I've interested you enough about this watershed event, shouldn't either.

PHOTO: Symposium "teaser image": UP Archaeology; OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS courtesy of Bibingka.Com

& While we're at it... Have you been to the National Museum lately?

Join John Silva's National Museum Tour (Fall 2008):
"Juan Luna and the Making of Our Nation"

(Schedules for September, October, November)

Dear friends,

This week, I will be teaching public school teachers how to appreciate
the National Museum. I get the funding through these museum tours.
So, a big thanks to those who've been on them. I attach my schedules
for the rest of September, October and now November. There have been
some dates removed for October so please use this schedule as the
latest to send to your friends. My schedule and further information is also
posted on my blogspot, johnsilva.blogspot.com.

Starting September 27, our Amorsolo retrospective will be showing and
you will have a wonderful experience seeing the best of this National Artist's
work in the National Museum. I have included too a tour of the new
Jaime Laya and Family gallery of contemporary paintings hanging at the National Gallery of Art. More to enjoy and maybe repeat your visit!

Many thanks again for joining my tour and for helping our public
school teachers. Please spread the word.

John L. Silva

JOHN SILVA is senior consultant at the National Museum, and advocate for the arts and heritage preservation. Thanks to Ben Razon for posting John Silva's announcement at Banggaan E-Group.

poet'sPicturebook Issue No. 19, Award-Winners, now online; calling for new contributions

2008-09-22T06:48:00.008+08:00

The theme for Issue No. 20 at poet'sPicturebook is "Light & Shadow." Perhaps the only subject of photography, painting, poetry. Ultimately the subject of all art. But it doesn't mean no-color. On the contrary. Light & shadow. You should have one tucked in under some pile of manuscripts. Or drawer. Or some folder in your hard disk. Poem, photo, art, essay. Light & shadow. Easy.

For posting mid-October.

Send them in now. By email only:

marne.kilates@gmail.com
marnezine@gmail.com

All Our Nameable Days Has a Twin Site (the Website)

2008-09-14T15:37:00.026+08:00

AN INVITATION TO CLICK

Welcome to
All Our Nameable Days
(the Website)
http://nameabledays.jimdo.com

the new web pages devoted exclusively to the works of
Marne L. Kilates
(poet, translator, blogger, Net publisher & editor,
Netizen)

You might have stumbled upon it sometime.
I’ve sent out its link here and there,
at poet’sPicturebook or this blog of the same name.
But now it’s a bit more prepared, with more content
(it will forever be updated), more presentable
for viewing and visits by the larger world.

In the hope that you might have encountered
any of my poems somewhere, and you wanted to see more
(in that case... it doesn’t take much to make a poet happy),
visit Nameable Days. Jimdo.Com.

Poems recent, revised, revisited, or which you may have never read,
& translations of great Filipino poetry, are all there.

You can even contribute pictures for the Home Page.
Visit the site to know how.

It’s not often you encounter such a thing on the Net,
so you might as well remember where to go next time:
http://nameabledays.jimdo.com.

Drop in (click any of the links on this page), welcome to my new website. Thank You.
Marne K
(We're not abandoning this site. I've actually just fixed it up. This continues to be my blog, "my notes & half-notes" and still some poetry, while the Jimdo website makes my work available online. Apologies for the blurred letters.)

Sample my books & translations featured at Nameabledays.Jimdo.Com.

Join us at Jorge B. Vargas Museum (UP) & get a ticket to art, song & poetry

2008-09-03T22:43:00.019+08:00

Hello there. Haven't blogged here for sometime. Many things happening and to attend to. It's the Philppine literary season. I get called here and there to look at some of the best work being done—mainly in poetry (mostly the stuff I know how to do). Joined the panel with poets Krip Yuson and Bimboy Peñaranda to judge at the Philippines Free Press Literary Awards, and it was their 100th anniversary too. That's why there was some waiting involved at the ceremonies: the Head of State, everyone's Tita, was guest of honor. We had to endure pangs of hunger while nibbling nuts and sipping wine at the Mandarin's Captain's Bar, while waiting for her arrival. But she had to endure sitting with the True, the Good, and the Beautiful advocate Imelda Marcos somewhere near her table, who had to sit through a loooong AVP extolling the Free Press' crusading journalism, mostly against Marcos, with some praises for Tita Glo's venerable and late old man Cong Dadong who introduced the Land Reform Law. Before then, the month previous actually, I had to finish a new translation into English of the immortal Florante at Laura, for the UP Centennial Edition, then the awarding the Likhaan Centennial Awards, which no one shouldn't miss (I did not join the contest, my poems were not qualified, having been published on the Net). Then, just the other day, the Palancas. I did not judge there this year (it was our turn, with Jimmy Abad and Krip Yuson, to judge the previous year). But I went to the ceremonies anyway, gatecrashed to partake of celebrations, the excitement of the winners, the nice food, and the flowing cognac. And in between these events of course, just plain old hanapbuhay while cocooning at home. And, too, within these times, Susan's party at My Brother's Mustache, where an army of her friends gathered to help her raise some of the wherewithal for the treatment of her ailment—something that will need not just a few friends to muster. And later, too, after the example of her other friends in the NGO circles and the Kawemenan, the barakos naman came together to do their part. Well, not necessarily barakos but real, honest-to-goodness artists who won't shrink from a fight (of any kind), wield brushes and fists.

At first, three of them, Neil Doloricon, Adi Baens Santos, and the ubiquitous Ed Manalo, met at Susan's home to propose and explore the possibility of a fund-raising exhibit, and they apparently thought I so was good at words and conceiving these things that they asked me to join them. I could not (too many things happening), and I just had to content myself with an email from Susan on the proceedings. Then, a week later, while I was dawdling (waiting for a meeting) at TriNoMa, I didn't know I had missed a meeting again with the artists and Susan. I had to think up of a name for the Exhibit. I hurried to the parking garage, lit a cigarette and sat in the car. There had to be a word somewhere that Susan's friends might associate with her. Well, it could be in the emails she sends or exchanges with them. Ah. She always signs her letters or email with "Lagi, Susan." Always. Laging Nagmamahal would be the great salutation, from her or from her friends. What better words? I texted it to her before I drove off pronto to Vargas Museum to meet up with the three initiators, Susan, and the gracious Ma. Victoria Herrera, the museum curator. Now the three artists are no longer just three, there will be at least 30 or even 40 artists who will give their paintings to the exhibit. Tickets (shown above), will be pre-sold. The buyers will only know which painting they will take home during the raffle at the closing of the exhibit on September 9. Poets will read (or sing), some singers will sing poems, and it will be a night of Maririkit na Guhit para kay Susan Fernandez. Get your tickets now. See you there.

Susan's first album of her famous, beautiful older songs, Habi at Himig (cover above right), has been digitally remastered and the CD will be sold at the Exhibit.

Jorge B. Vargas Museum (right) not hard to find, along the eastern part of the University Loop, just beside the College of Arts and Letters Faculty Center. (Courtesy of ChocolateKiss.Com)

OTHER PHOTOS: topmost, Susan at the Concert in My Brother's Mustache ("Mass Action on Madriñan," previous posting), courtesy of Ino Magno's Multiply site, and apologies to him for Photoshopping it to look like a painting, just a sneak preview of sorts of the great art you will encounter at Laging Nagmamahal Exhibit, and the Ticket to the Exhibit.

Sneek-peek: My new Website

Frontispiece photo of a door & steps to the Chapel of St. Elm, San Feliu de Guixols, Catalunya, by Marjorie Evasco. The site welcomes contributed photos for the Home Page.

AND WHILE WE'RE AT IT. You might perhaps notice the modifier in parenthesis at the blog header on top, which says "(the blog)." That's because I have adopted the same name for my new personal website, Nameable Days at Jimdo.Com. It's mainly devoted to samples of my poetry from my three books, newer ones, and "sundrynotes." If you like poetry, visit it at http://nameabledays.jimdo.com/. This Blogger site becomes my real blog, while Nameable Days, the Website, becomes the online resource for my poetry, for those who may have "encountered any one of them somewhere and hopefully would like to see more." There are at least three links to the site in this sentence. Just sweep your mouse across this text. Any word or words glow with a highlight, or is underlined, click it.

Florante at Laura with my new translation

At right is the cover of Francisco Balagtas' Florante at Laura, the University of the Philippines Centennial Edition (UP Press, 2008), edited by Virgilio S. Almario, with a new English translation by Marne L. Kilates, and illustrated lavishly by 23 of our best artists and illustrators, with their paintings of scenes from the Balagtas masterpiece presented in the Komedya Fiesta Exhibit at Vargas Museum as part of the UP Centennial. Available at UP Press Bookstore.

Mass Action on Madriñan! (Susan says Thank You to all who came and shared)

2008-07-07T09:47:00.039+08:00

“Healing Gig Talaga!”

(all photographs by Gil Nartea)

It reminded you, as the collage of posters on the stage backdrop so unequivocally did, of when James Taylor wasn’t bald. Or Mick Jagger could streak while performing. Or John Denver was singing “Rocky Mountain High” and not crashing into the rock face. Or Jim Croce could be extravagant with his time (he needn't have to save it in a bottle). And Jimi Hendrix was, well, a little sober (he didn't need the bottle).

But who could be sober during such a heady night? Practically everybody who was anybody in Susan’s life was there. From, well, all the musician friends who ever sang a song that mentioned “Filipino” (at the barricades or onstage) to anyone who ever heard her sing “Babae Ka” and that haunting wedding song whose tile I completely forget; and from all sorts of admirers from tongue-tied and over-aged schoolboys to the passionate Kawomenan (did I spell that right?) who organized the event; from the academe to the Comelec.

Just as some friends and I arrived hurrying from a meeting in UP to the event of the night, and chose a parking space almost across Newsdesk, the other watering hole on Sct. Madriñan, because parking space was long gone near My Brother’s Mustache, I overheard the emcee apologizing for not holding the event at Araneta Coliseum.

So how did it go? Here’s from Susan herself writing to e-group Plaridel Papers:

Sa lahat ng dumalo sa Brother's Moustache noong July  3—maraming, maraming salamat! Sobrang saya  lahat ng tao sa very rare line-up of performers.  Grand reunion of sorts ang nangyari with 400 friends from various fields! There were friends from 30 years ago. It was amazing to see them all there  gathered for an outpouring of support... It was a celebration of friendship, of music, of a solidarity that remains alive! It was a truly magical evening  that was full of loving concern. Healing gig talaga... the best medicine for me ang lovefest na iyon!!!  

Thanks very much from the bottom of my heart!!! 

Lagi, 
Susan

And Plaridel member and piano bar comrade Reli German answers:

Alam mo Susan, kung itinanghal yung pakulo para sa iyo  sa Folk Arts, I have no doubt, mapupuno yung lugar.  Ganong karami ang fans mo at nagmamahal sa iyo.  Cheers!

Reli

I had been wondering how I’d do a follow-up blog on the fascinating event when inspiration struck. Don't we have great friends like Susan herself? Who were we with all the time at the entrance of My Bro’s Mustache clicking away at the endless kumustahan among the arrivals? Photographer and friend Gil Nartea, of course, veteran of more frenetic coverages (from Mindanao to Mendiola) who was as “star-struck” as we were at the instantaneous and unfolding “mass action.”

Upon my SMS-ed request, he quickly emailed me these pictures, and after I downloaded them and thanked him, he texted back complaining, “Sayang, dami kong na-miss na mga tao, puro alak kasi inatupag ko. Hehe.”

But that’s all right, Gil, you took these great pictures. I’m the one who should beg the readers’ indulgence. By ignorance or because we had repaired to Newsdesk before the concert was over, I cannot competently caption all these pictures (I keep forgetting names and surnames). So enjoy them as they are, or with my "trying-hard" ad-lib comments.

(Two pictures of the Concert has since been post-added to this blog, from Susan's son, Ino's Multiply site, at the bottom of this page and page 2. Links are provided in the captions for those who want to go to Ino's site.)

PHOTOS from top: Tita de Quiros hasn't seen Bimboy and Jo Peñaranda in ages, as poet-singer Jess Santiago shares in the excitement; the artists' group: Ed Coronel, Jess, Adi Baens Santos, and Neil Doloricon; music stars and Susan-friends Mike Villegas, Cookie Chua and Gary Granada; Joel Saracho & his Bagong Dugo, specialists in political humor; Master guitarist Noli in virtual duet with John Denver; poet, Salinawit artist, and Plaridel Papers moderator Jose (Pete) F. Lacaba; Susan accompanied by composer-arranger brother Dodgie.

(more pictures next page, or click links below & under Our Pages on sidebar at left)

"Full House" by Ino Magno

For still more pictures (like the one above, and 84 of them!) of the fantastic night, go to Susan's son, Ino's site at Multiply.

PREVIEW Marne L. Kilates' personal website, All Our Nameable Days, at Jimdo.Com, making his poetry and translations available online for those interested. My home page is all about doors and windows, which "when we open always let the fresh air in and everything is new." So send me your beautiful pictures of doors, doorways, & windows, the older & with more character, the better. To be fully credited to the photographer, of course. By email only, at marne.kilates@gmail.com. Thanks for the visit.

See you on July 3 at My Brother's Mustache!

2008-06-24T13:07:00.036+08:00

Hey friends, this should be a great concert and get-together! I received a forwarded and roundabout email through another friend, Reuters photographer in Beijing, Claro Cortes, from my other e-group, Banggaan (featured in these pages in the previous post), which counts among its members the great Filipino singer, composer and artist Heber Bartolome, Susan's friend and colleague in Filipino music (and who will perform in the concert, though his name was missing in the list above). So I took some liberties with the little poster which came with the letter, and came up with the one above. And here, too, is the letter from Susan's friend, Malu Maniquis:

Hello Everyone—

You may or may not know of or heard Ms. Susan Fernandez sing but to me she's one of the rarest. She is the voice that made popular the womens' rights song "BABAE KA!". She's not only a friend to me and to many others but she has always been lending her time in fund-raising shows for fellow artists in need of financial help for medical treatment. My documentary films would not have that much impact if not delivered by her clear, soothing voice full of conviction.

It took her sometime to tell me that she has been diagnosed with cancer of the ovary, and thank God it is still in stage 1.

Attending this show will show your respect for one of the jewels of Philippine Arts and Culture though her talent has remained unrecognized by still so many people, especially the present generation. So we are reviving her album in CD format and will be part of the fund-raising as well.

See you July 3, 6-9:30 pm, Brother's Mustache...

Thank you and God Bless!

Malu Maniquis

Susan by Egai Fernandez

Well, also our love, when we show up there. I had to follow the cropping of the painting for the poster above, from the one sent by the Friends of Susan, understandably to have a bigger image of Susan's lovely face as rendered by National Artist Ben Cabrera (Bencab). The painting should be one of a series of portraits by Bencab of Filipino artists, musicians, writers. Ben's full painting is shown further down below. (Incidentally, Bencab lent me a digital file of his The Huntress, the frontispiece for the Independence Day Issue of our other site, the blog-magazine Poet's Picturebook, link at the sidebar). And here too is another fantastic painting of Susan in her singing mode, probably emoting a kundiman passage, by yet another great painter, Egai Fernandez (directly above). Both images are courtesy of Susan's son, Ino, from his Multiply site.

Ah, our dear Susan, who is and has been so much part of our lives (some of such lives spent sub-rosa and underground in the cause-oriented movement), when we were (and still are) all in love with her. Who will forget such a crystal and dulcet voice, either in lament, love, or protest? As her friends describe her and her singing, "Si Susan Fernandez ang 'Nightingale' ng cause-oriented groups dahil sa matining ngunit buo niyang boses sa pag-awit na napakagandang pakinggan, tunay na walang kaparis at walang kupas sa kabila ng nagdaang panahon. Buong puso niyang ibinahagi sa marami ang kanyang talento at oras upang maisulong ang mga mabuting adhikain para sa lipunan at sambayanan."

Full Portrait of Susan by Bencab

But we know her too as the irrepressible friend, easy-to-make-laugh, with an intelligent funny bone (and "laughable," like anyone's Funny Valentine), writer of newspaper columns, college professor at Ateneo, conductor of FGDs in our advertising world, and friend (and inspiration) to writers, who never refused our requests for her songs in many of our literary gatherings such the Congresses of the Writers Union of the Philippine, or Unyon ng mga Manunulat sa Pilipinas (Umpil). Or, whom we love simply to be with in a small gathering of friends such as one recent birthday of long-time friend Jess Sison at their warm home-and-superb-kitchen, where we were spoiled and feted by his lovely wife Lina with an array of her cuisine. Another friend, poet Fidel Rillo, lost his verbal skills in complimenting the food and the good wine. Lina's cooking, the wine, friends coming and going to and from the feast to some unnamed destination (poet Jess Santiago was there but he missed the picture-taking), the long and lingering conversation, and Susan's presence, made the night so heady it seemed forever.

At Jess Sison's birthday: from left, Jess & Lina Sison, Susan, msyelf, and Fidel Rillo

Or, in the recent Salinawit Concert at Conspiracy, where she was our special guest singer, while the "main" performers were "trying-hard" writer-singer-translators Charlson Ong, myself, and Michael Coroza (who's not trying hard), and of course, the Salinawit initiator and culprit himself, the poet, screen writer and journalist Jose "Pete" F. Lacaba. In that Conspiracy night Susan sang "Sa Tanging Alaala Mo," my own salinawit of "The Very Thought of You." And of course, in the more recent past, from Cuba Libre Cafe to Kasalo Restaurant, from Blind Tiger to Conspiracy, we—meaning the not-so-young writers, including now from various trades, writer-traveller-NGO man Ed Santoalla, fellow advertising man Romy Bohol, and journalist-PR man Joey Salgado—and, certainly, old friends like Krip Yuson, Jimmy Abad, Rio Alma, became her camp followers in her solo gigs, or the impromptu Friday night at Silungan Cafe in the basement of Balai Kalinaw at UP, where we would sing with Gougou de Jesus, Celina Cristobal, Reuel Aguila, Arnold Azurin (two Elvis Presley songs), and her gigs or guestings with Cookie Chua or Noel Cabangon at 70s Bistro or Conspiracy, and more regularly later with Lester and Becky Demetillo at My Brother's Mustache. And the nights were all heady and long.

Or yet again, in coming together to comfort a friend, as we did and travelled all the way to Obando, Bulacan to be with Jess Santiago in his bereavement from his mother. It was time too for reminiscing, when the world was young and passionate, and Susan would travel all the way by bus from Manila for the endless meetings at Jess's house. And sure, many times have the young swains of the Galian sa Arte at Tula (GAT), counting Reuel Aguila, (the late) Romulo Sandoval, Fidel Rillo, (the late) Mike Bigornia, Teo Antonio, Vet Vitug, Ompong Desuasido, Danny Consumido, and myself (then a "neophyte" in the poetry group) trooped to Obando, to talk poetry and politics, get drunk, sing, and last but not least, listen to, be around, Susan Fernandez.

Susan in one Silungan night caught by a shaky camera, singing maybe "So Many Stars," one of her Sergio Mendez favorites

But Susan is as hardy as she is lovely. She has toured extensively in alternative music concerts, all over the Philippines as well as in Europe and the Americas, many times with Jess Santiago, Grupong Pendong, and many others. I first worked with her, together with another beautiful friend, Hope Abella, on an album for children and children's rights, as writer of the liner notes and translator of some of the songs, for still another foreign concert. Jess's and Pendong's tours in Europe were also aided by my translations of the lyrics for the European audiences. The friendships continued and the paths crossed and forked, but we had much in common—music, of course, and poetry, beer, good food, and later wine, and Susan Fernandez.

The first time I saw her (which she probably does not remember), was when she recorded, together with another "nightingale," the beautiful honey-voiced Yoni Randrup, and another singer whose name I now regrettably forget, "Babae Ka," Ani Montano's winning entry to that year's Metropop. They recorded late at night in the studio of the public affairs office of NFA, where another long-time friend, Danny Consumido, and I worked. The late Dindo Odra and Feddie Espiritu joined Danny and I in gawking at the bewitching threesome harmonizing and soloing alternately, "Babae ka..."

Since then our common friendships have gone through many of life's flows and ebbs, crests and troughs, arrivals and departures, wear and tear. Yes, she will need all our prayers. But she will prevail and sing for us.

The Banggaan Letters (2)

2008-05-15T10:59:00.019+08:00

Girl in a Makati bar by Ben Razon

Continuing what should have been private conversations (again, the names have changed to preserve the privacy of paticipants), but which turn out to be, well, celebrations. Here are further discussions about things important to us (and to most of our readers hopefully)—mainly art and the creation of beauty amid all that seeks to undermine it, and our perception of an imperfect world. But even then, there is a place for simple joy, like friends in the Banggaan e-group who correspond mainly in the virtual world of the Web, but when they meet in the flesh are simply like… warm human beings (warts, cameras, and all), or even like children all over again…

Post No. 8: "Taninang art yan... kailangan pa ba yan?"

salamat marne. di ko akalaing sagutin mo ng ganyan ka passionate ang tanong ko.

ang problema ko lang ay mahina ang prossesor ko kaya paumanhin kung hanggang ngayon ay iniisip ko pa din ang ilang ibig sabihin ng mga sinabi mo.

pero sa tingin ko natumbok mo ang ibig kong sabihin. siguro nagiging 'offensive' ang isang bagay kung bago ito sa kanya. gaya nga ng mga impressionists at lahat ng mga 'artists' (kasama lahat dyan... poets, photogs etc) na nagiging prominente. sa umpisa ay considered as 'offensive' ang kanilang sining. pero oras na maintindihan ay nawawala na ang pagka 'offensive' nito at nagiging natural na lamang.

actually ang purpose ng karamihang artists ay not to offend but to open up minds to new thinking at yan siguro ang dahilan kung bakit na-ooffend ang iba. masyado nang nakapako sa established beliefs kaya sila naninibago.

agree ako don sa sinabi mo na 'art' cannot change kahit gaano pa ka 'offensive' ito. sabi nga ng kasamako dito... 'tang-inang art yan... kailangan pa ba yan? armed revolution na!' haha.

salamat.
gelo

Post No.9: "...Talaga... but art can only save the soul"

Oo nga, Gelo,

"Tanginang art talaga iyan!" Armed revolution na nga lang. Well, tingin ko ulit, armed revolutions can save nations (from oppressive governments or invaders, etc.), but art can only save the soul (and the soul of a nation...)

Marne

One more Batang Ulingan, by Ben Razon

[Junsy, another Banggaan stalwart, conducts a photography seminar in his home state in the U.S. and posts about the experience.]

Post No.10: “Photogrpahers have no friends…”

Junsy,  

There's not much else for me to add to your account of how you've  presented photography to people who were obviously hungry to see what was beyond just having the latest digital camera or software.  

Banggaan has been around for nearly ten years now, and I have to say that this is the one and only forum where I have stayed and engaged the input of not just from photographers like me, Claro and Joga, but it has been so valuable a sounding board that we exchange, speak or verify our views in the broader arena of all our combined fields, experience and outlook.  

That's why I'll be the first one to say that the reason why I never  participate in forums of just photography is that, to be honest —I  have nothing to say to these people. I really cannot prejudge or size up any kind of fair analysis or critique or advise to anyone who is trying to do the same thing I'm doing, although we could still be many levels different from both background and orientation towards  photography.  

Because like what Marne said, i think it's too limited for an artist  or photographer to just base his or her work in their respective but limited spectrum rather than being able to throw your work out there to be seen and judged by others who are not artists or photographers.  

People don't even realize that my influences don't even come from  other photographers' work but more from my reading, writing, music, and how I appreciate art from my level.  

In fact, I hate photography in how it tries to be art and the things it was never meant to be or was, which is so outside of its inherent nature as simply a visual document produced by a person holding a machine. Unless it's clear that what I see in photographs are a  person's vision or their stamp, pictures are basically not much of  interest to me.  

If fact I don't even like photographers themselves. Most of them anyway. Except of course, the ones I've nominated and asked to join  Banggaan. The rest of them, especially here are just a bunch of self-obsessed egomaniacs, poseurs, self-serving manipulators, and  idiots and I really don't give a shit what they do.  

I'm not going to name names, but they know who they are.  

Photography has no friends, unlike the way the world of Art has. That may be a bit puzzling or hard to get at first, but when you've been a  photographer like I have all my life, I know. You don't have to take  my word for it, but experience has been my best counsel there. I've led a solitary life as one. I've even dismissed and set aside a normal life with a wife and kids for the purpose of just being able to shoot  and live the way I do. And I count whom I consider my colleagues here  and abroad with just the fingers of one hand. 

It's just that I engage myself in other things when I don't have to  shoot. And I only carry my camera with me when I either actually OWN a  camera I can carry, or I've thought that there'd be a picture there.  

But other than that—please. Nothing bores me more than  photographers or people talking about their work or themselves. It's like, yuk. I'm more interested in what other people do, what man  basically creates, what they are more or less and those places they thrive in. And that's the purpose the pictures have served for me.  

Aren't we all as artists and photographers eternally curious about  what else is going on in the world? Photography has been my only way  to get outside of myself. It afforded me a different way to live and  see rather than just plain, boring 'existing'. 

 And it has given me friends who come from completely different walks of life who are far more interesting and worthwhile, and I love and  treasure those relationships more than I would ever keep going on about me as a 'photographer' or 'letratista' or 'maniniyut' or a  'kodakero'. And many of those people are right here in this forum of  Banggaan. I would drop everything including my camera to spend time  with them rather than waste time discussing or debating idiots or  beginners.  

I'm rambling like Marne, but what he wrote is pretty much the  description of the path I took, too.  Ben :-)

Sta. Rita, Pampanga, by Ben Razon

❝

Interlude:

Virtual friends become real...

In a recent Banggaan "reunion," "Banggers" (most of whom know each other only by email) met each other in the flesh. At Oarhouse bar on Mabini Street in Ermita, homecoming artist Edd Aragon, after an absence of some 30 years, I understand, launched the first of his Tres Kantos exhibit: Digitalla Prima (his digital artworks) at Oarhouse. The two other exhibits on the next two Sundays were Mulat! (of his "invisible" or UV-reactive paintings), at Heber Bartolome's Art Center in Banlat, Tandang Sora; and Opp-Edd (his digital editorial cartoons for the Sydney Morning Herald), at Maestro, Masterpiece Art Depot, on E. Rodriguez, QC. That same Sunday, it turned out, was also Ben Razon's birthday, so it was a double celebration. Ben presides over Oarhouse, the unofficial blocks-and-cement headquarters of Banggaan. I was able to go with my home partner Pam to only the first of EddA's exhibits at Oarhouse, and met there, outside of email, another homecoming photographer Tante Tagamolila, and CNN China head Jaime Flor Cruz with whom I had something in common apart Banggaan, a friend also formerly of China, the writer Mario Miclat. But all of us, even before the benisons of San Miguel, seemed like old friends, courtesy of the magic of the e-group and, now, the half-vritual, half-real friendship in the Net. And here, too, below and next page, are, inevitably some of the million photos taken...

THE GANG: Our Muse, writer Sylvia Mayuga, Heber, Claro, Benjo, Tante, David, Marne, Bodyi, Glenn, Edd, Jonet, and Ben. A traffic-stopping bunch (maybe for a minute...until the honking started).

The Banggaan Letters

2008-05-06T18:04:00.018+08:00

These should have been private conversations, insofar as they were exchanged between people who did not expect an audience. The exchanges were what consisted a “thread” of discussions in an e-group (a remnant of the older Net “culture” of the email, when blogging was unheard of), with the understanding that whatever transpired was only between and among the members and not for the public to witness or consume. The egroup referred to is Banggaan (of which I am a member, and which I mention in this blog from time to time), composed of a variety Filipno artists, photographers, musicians, writers, both living in the country or abroad, mainly the United States and Austrialia. (Banggaan in Filipino is collision or encounter—and for the egroup, the collision and encounter of ideas, either in writing, verse, or in digital images put up in the Net subject to the artistic and digital modification and interaction of members, all in lighthearted banter.)

I will break that rule of exclusiveness and confidentiality and reproduce here the exchange with little or no corrections. That’s because I would like to share this interesting thread with my readers. But I will change the names of the participants, except mine and Ben's (he started the thread "for everyone's" consumption at Multiply), to protect their privacy, since this blog is not of their own making. Their names, however, are thinly disguised for those who know them. I will preserve the freewheeling kantiaw or banter, that spices up the otherwise “serious” subject (or at least important to us—blog readers and Banggann members alike who share these things), apart from the fact that it makes interesting reading. That goes without saying that my own “larger” part of the thread were virtual monologues, for which I apologize (I had the time to write and react more extensively, the discussion was stimulating), but which is also what I’d like to share with my readers.

Opening Post, Link Directed to the writer’s Multiply

photographs from film
Apr 27, '08 4:33 AM
for everyone

Digital has so bastardized the quality of photography so much I cannot begin to say how much poorer the new students of photography today are compared to what previous apprentices and photographers had to go through to truly appreciate the technical aspects of the craft such as exposure, being able to read light values, sensing differences in tone and hue, reading and exposing for highlight and shadow, color balance—all the things that film and the truly technical process of photography makes you learn because if you do not know what that is, all you end up with are lousy worthless pictures in the trash can one can neither explain or defend.

but now because of digital's relative ease and what it does not reveal right off, and what most assume as a 'good enough' standard in that most digicams can take a nice picture in available bright light—pictures are now more of an outright lie and are not always the visual truth.

now there are legions of wannabe photographers or graphic artists with horribly vomiting ambition who are more interested in masturbating with awful pictures to begin with on photoshop, thinking that they can turn a failed, unpassable image into 'experiments' or (god forbid) 'art'.

and having done so and getting too caught up in the 'tech and software talk' of today's equipment and programs that they totally miss the point of being either an artist or a photographer.

In short without reference or foundation, we are back to that former but same basic instamatic 'rot' of casual throwaway photography where nothing is preserved or created out of one's eye, mind and heart.

today's pictures just take on the appearances of one big senseless family album awaiting its turn to be burned and forgotten in an incinerator or at the nearest dump.

—Ben

these images are from film exposures taken with the Fuji 645 Wide Professional medium format camera, exposed on Fujifilm Reala color negative film and then scanned at 4000 dpi archival high-resolution quality on the Nikon 9000 ED Film scanner. consequently the images have been resized to lower resolution for web viewing. (Ben's note. Refers to some pictures he published in his blog, two of which are reproduced here, above and below)

[All subsequent posts and exchanges in Banggaan egroup]

Post No.2: Yours Truly Joins the Fray

Hihihihi! Mabuti na lang naging writer na lang ako! Hihihihi!

Ben, magkano nga ba sa inyong YKL shop ang FinePix S8100 fd at FinePix S100 fs? They're the best choices among the present models, I think. Sa Columbia, it's P18k+ and P29k+ respectively. I am canvassing and trying to decide whether I'll continue to be a serious pretender or just a pretender period, and stick to my keyboard. Hehe. I keep scouring the camera brand sites, from the Canons and the Nikons to Panasonics and the Sonys, but I keep coming back to Fujifilm. For my own purposes (and purchasing capacity), parang yung S8100 ang puwede na, pero pag talagang seryoso na ako sa aking new hobby (which is also becoming a new craft and trade), baka yung S100 and kailangan ko, to shoot well without having to fiddle and fumble with lenses, etc. What you think? Which would serve my purposes and at the same time be worth it, without burning a hole in my pocket?

Your comments really got the goat of the Digitalists at Pinoy Photogs Forum, who apparently miss the point. It's not that you have to give up one for the other, it's knowing how to use (competently, not blindly and unawares) both analog and digital and know where you're coming from. It's not, as you say, thinking that photography was invented by Casio or Epson. Of course technology progresses. Among our writers, at almost 80 years old, NVM Gonzales was one of the first to use a laptop to write his great novels, and he was always looking out for the latest IBM Think Pad then (too bad NVM died before discovering the superior world of Mac). Butch Dalisay was the first hereabouts to get his hands on the MacBook Air, but as we all know, he is also a crazy fountain pen collector. And no one's talking about the novels and stories they wrote or continue to write. Sure, the best camel hairs helped painters mix and create colors for their masterpieces, but the Mona Lisa is great not because da Vinci used a special wood in the frame...

Anyways, digital or no, I am and have always been a sucker for The Image, composed or caught accidentally, the light and/or shadow, manipulated in a studio or just streaming from a window, or the detail standing out in such vividness or vanishing softly into shadow, the textures, everything that makes The Image a single moment liberated from the chaos and violence of time and the everyday, the world or the cosmos recomposed in one single frame.

But your piece reminded me na mayroon nga pala akong pambihira nang magamit na entry model na Nikon F60, na pagsilip ko pa lang ay namamangha na ako sa flesh tones. Magamit nga uli.

Mabuhay ang photography!

Marne

Post No. 3: A Reminder from Minnie

Marne, gamitin mo na ulit yan.

Minnie

Post No. 4: “Vehement”

Marne,  

Maybe it's because at some point in our development either as artists, writers or photographers, we were fortunate enough to have encountered getting our feathers and asses kicked by true teachers, mentors or influences.  Yun lang naman, di ba? And having always been thoughtful and mindful enough never to have forgotten what they gave or passed on to you in the tradition which enabled or empowered your own awareness of what you love to do.  

A lot of these people who are in what I like to call 'digital incubation' have their growing up to do. Unfortunately for them, one of my points has been that digital has so scattered the perception that something such as photography can be reduced down to a 'purchased' gadget that's worth nothing more than a computer, a cellphone or an mp3 player.  
I beg to disagree. And vehemently.  

My own mentor, Dick Baldovino, always had an absolute intolerance for what he saw as 'laziness' or cheap rationalizing in the preparation and pursuit of 'the picture' and in the instruments one chooses for achieving that image.  

And it always boiled down to who would tell you what worked, and what didn't. He always used to tell me, 'huwag kang matigas ulo. pag aralan mo yan'. In the unique and different scenario and situation that was photography then here in the Philippines, he knew what he was talking about. And I knew he meant that just because I had a camera, I was already a 'photographer'. Far from it, as he would remind me.  

Today is no different. Marami pa ring ganon. But since I've thrown in my two cents to point it out, it's perfectly alright that not everybody will agree with me.  

It's not my purpose to convince them either, but to just shine a spotlight on this annoying, irritating vacuousness.  

The S100 is really your best bet, my partner at the Digital Q, Angie de Silva has ran extensive field tests with the digicam last week with Sonny Yabao in Banaue, where the weather and lighting conditions was  decidedly not 'casio' 'sony' or 'epson' friendly. Yabao shot with his Canon 40D SLR, Angie used the S100 as they walked nearly side by side documenting the same scenes with both cameras. Biro mong Canon na ito ha, and the differences of the images and the printed out picture files was evident. Iba ang tono ng Fuji digicam sa fleshtones and the separation, smooth gradation of colors. Although the Canon held its own inasmuch as its trademark strength, there were obvious, glaring instances where the 40D could not keep up with the picture quality of the new Fuji digicam. Highlights and shadows both were especially and prominently natural-looking on the S100fs, and the sharpness of the new Fujinon 28-400mm lens combined with the film simulation settings  on the camera were the deal breakers.  

Hands down. It's the Fuji Finepix S100FS as the no-brainer choice. But if you've got an additional thousand or four thousand two hundred  dollars and willing to carry an additional eight to fifteen pounds of camera weight, hey go for the ultimate which is the Nikon D3 or the  D300, lenses not yet included. This single hand-holdable, easier and more compact all in one S100 in my view will give even THOSE cameras a run for the money in picture quality.  

Huwag ka lang mapadpad sa Iraq. ;-)  

kagabi nagkita kami kagabi sa Conspiracy uli nila Edd, Heber and surprise -- si Jim Paredes na kararating lang galing Australia mismo as he'll be here for a month or so, along with Butch Dalisay and his wife June Poticar who happened to be Edd's 'kababata' in their first quarter storm days noon. Funny you mentioned Butch and the great NVM Gonzales. E yun, nakita mo sana si Jim at si Butch kagabi, both sporting and talking shop with their iPhones, hahaha. Jim mentioned the digital photo firestorm I apparently started which he read. And I told Butch there's a newly-introduced, more powerfully-configured 24-inch, improved video graphic memory and screen resolution iMac just announced by Apple yesterday. Mukhang eto na ang magiging pag iipunan ko na desktop before the end of this year. By June or July, that should already be available here. O ano game Marne? Ikaw ang iMac buddy ko dito. ;-)  

It was another great night of music, wished you had been there.  
Ben

So here's a trying-hard photo of Conspiracy Garden Cafe by this amateur (me).

(More of the good-natured debate next page)

Sid Gomez Hildawa (1962-2008): Why architect is poet is painter (but not automatically)

2008-04-03T13:02:00.011+08:00

When spaces
Between walls, between words, between figures
Make room, make sense, take shape
When chair
Is site, is sitting, is sitter
And arm
Is armor, is armchair, is armature
Is sweet-smelling kitchen, warm laughter, overflowing
Pink
And crocodile hiding under the bridge
Is river boat, stepping stone, trail of ink
We move in unmeasured time
The flight of stairs, the flight of metaphors, the
Flight of
Tapestries
Only half-conscious
Of gravity’s embrace
As we step on the landing
(With outstretched dragonfly wings)

Sid Gomez Hildawa
“Why architect is poet is painter (but not automatically)”

On the other hand, maybe it was almost automatic for Sid Gomez Hildawa. There seemed to be no marked difference between his training in the hard science and applied art of architecture (training, because I am not familiar with his work as architect), and the poetry of spaces and absences he wrote. He was always designing and constructing his poems, the metaphor of architecture pervaded his literature. In the right column of his blog, which was a place for more or less permanent images or text, he put in this quote from a Paul Moldoon interview, with the heading, POETRY & ARCHITECTURE:

"...In buildings, as in poems, there's a tendency for that feature over there on the right-hand side to echo that feature over there on the left, and it may have to do with aesthetics, of course, but it's more likely to have to do with pure physics. That's to say, if you don't have that balance then the whole thing is going to fall down. I find thinking in these ways quite useful when I'm building poems. They're bridges. Skyscrapers..." (Paul Muldoon, as interviewed in The Paris Review, Issue 169.)

In fact I didn’t know or simply forgot Sid was an architect by profession, because I first encountered him, and got to read him, and then always thought of him, as a poet. Still we were not that familiar as friends—we knew each other mainly through our work, and in the very few instances we did a collaboration of some sort. The earliest I remember is the last Chromatext show at CCP, which he curated as the Center’s department head for Visual, Literary, and Media Arts. Chromatext is, of course, the poetry-and-art interaction exhibit and event conceived by the Philippine Literary Arts Council. And the 2007 Chromatext (Reloaded) was a revival after an absence of some ten years. Jean Marie Syjuco and Krip Yuson helped Sid contact and coordinate with poets and artists, and I was trying to meet the deadline at the last hour. Sid and Jean Marie were already hanging the framed artworks (other artists had earlier completed their installations), while I kept updating Sid that my participation of one poem and one artwork was just about done in the large-format digital printing shop on Vito Cruz just across CCP. My piece was the relatively new poem then, titled “War Correspondent,” whose visual counterpart I request friend Dan Pinto (editor at Senate publications and digital art enthusiast) to execute on his computer, composed mainly of the latest photographs of the Iraq war in digital collage with Dürer’s engraving of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Sid assured me over the cellular phone they were waiting for my piece. Sure enough I was able to hand in the Sytropore-backed 24x38 in. print at about 10 pm, just in time for the opening the following day.

My second memorable “collaboration” with Sid was for the “Pictura Poiesis” show in November last year at MagNet Katipunan. I had just delivered a lecture of sorts on ekphrastic poetry in Marj Evasco’s graduate class on literature and its sister arts. I was discovering a new stimulus for a series of poems, either paintings or photographs that I kept “stealing” from friends’ blogs or photo collections in online hosting sites. Pictura Poiesis was at Marj’s instigation—why not read poems based on paintings, while showing the paintings or pictures of them, at the MagNet Poetry Mondays hosted by Joel Toledo? Four of Marj’s graduate students were to read: Noelle Leslie de la Cruz, Ida Anita del Mundo, Kristian Abe Dalao and Sid. On hand to support them were the older poets, Marj Evasco, Beni Santos, and Poetry Night host Joel Toledo. Marj’s students prepared their own Powerpoint presentation of their poems and paintings, and those of Marj’s and Beni’s, and Marj handed me the CDs in a quick meeting at Ateneo. Artist Rock Drilon, owner of MagNet, assured us the projection equipment in the upstairs café was ours for that Monday night. But I had a trip out of town during the intervening weekend and I still had to integrate the Powerpoints into a single presentation by Friday. The last chore was to pick up Joel’s poems and the digital images of the Van Gogh they were based on, at his pad, because he was very busy and I had to work at putting together everything in Keynote presentation on my Powerbook.

Happy Mondays Poetry Night at MagNet was one great night. The audience were rapt (since they had to look at the paintings projected onscreen while listening to us), it was well-attended, everybody had fun, especially the poets. One great night, Sid told me so over beer. I seldom visit the Cultural Center offices where I could run into Sid, so Pictura Poiesis poetry night at MagNet, November 5, 2007 (my birthday), was the last time I saw poet-architect Sid Gomez Hildawa.

It is not difficult to retrieve memories when a poet passes away (despite the suddenness and the unnecessary-ness of it) precisely because he is a poet, he is always writing his memory. But it is even less difficult now that memory drifts and lurks in electronic space. Sid started blogging earlier than I did (he started in 2004, I in 2006), and we have linked each other as well as our other friends to our own sites. We are mutually “clickable.” So I clicked his link (you may, too), and here are his poems, culled from his online journal and other places in the Net. Let his memory speak.

Builiding A House

Pack up your day-to-day activities in bundles, the way
one would basket clothes for the laundry;
grouping coloreds and whites, matching socks and outfits.
Measure the bulk, trace the shapes each bundle takes,
then see how they can be arranged:
some easily side by side, while some on top of others,
like displaying boxes in a store window. Translate these
into drawings and get a building permit from City Hall.
(That’s the easy part.)

Gather all your friends and relatives to a barbecue party
at your vacant lot. Before dessert is served, begin digging
the foundation, then hand over the shovel to your contractor
who always arrives late. Give him twice the amount of time
he estimates it will take him to complete the job. Cut his budget
in half by providing the materials yourself: skin for walls,
eyes for windows, mouth and ears and orifices for doors,
feet for floors, intestines for stairs, eyelids and a head full of hair
for awnings and a roof. Then when it finally resembles you,
call it home. Otherwise, have it rented out and build another.

(This poem is part of the collection that won Second Prize for Poetry in the 2006 Palanca Awards, form Ian Cosocot’s Philippine Literature site )

A Pacita Abad painting courtesy of Artes de Filipinas.com

How to be a Ceiling

On her hospital bed, Pacita Abad deciphered
the ceiling as though it were a dead sea scroll
testament on the meaning of upside-
down. We seldom look up long enough,
she said, taking a floor mop for a brush
and painting multi-colored circles and spirals
on the whitewashed surface the way one
would curl up rainbows, spin the iridiscence of corals
into nautiluses, fasten mirror buttons to bottlecaps
as emblems to the bubbly fizz of soda water;
while she sang the groovy hits of the boogie-woogie
sixties, made trapunto with her hospital gown,
fixing it beside the smoke alarm. Next morning,
nurses came and took her pulse, blood pressure.
Doctors in white examined her heart. Beloved Jack
brought in a bouquet of blooms, looked up,
and marvelled at the Sistine Chapel psychedelic.

How to Be a Door

Hinge your life on something 
as steadfast as a jamb 
but know which way to swing. 
(Those who swing both ways 
belong between the dining hall 
and the kitchen.) Hold your breath 
when you are locked, inhale deeply 
with every knock that isn't answered 
with "come in." Be still 
when there is no reply from the innkeeper 
of all things. Your name is Portal 
so with your body keep out sickness 
and greed, and builders who do not know 
how to hammer a house with quiet words. 
Let sorrow pass, and youth, and the goldest giraffe 
who bends low to nibble from a lady's hand, 
that all may enter who have traveled worlds 
to be astonished; weary now of boulevards 
that look out to the sea but never wave; 
finally stepping out of solitude into shade, 
shaking hands with all they meet inside, all 
who have come before them, all who must dwell. 

(Poem printed on acetate sticker and installed on glass door of CCP Gallery for Chromatext:Reloaded)

Morion Picture Book 2: Of Plumed Morions & Ermine Capes

2008-03-24T08:15:00.010+08:00

Morion Poem

Moryon bungi,
May tae sa binti.

1.
Cresting his Roman helmet,
Sprouting all over
His breastplate, skirt, and cape:
The plumage
Of a thousand fighting cocks.

But the face is all:
Cruelty, guilt, and Grand Guignol,
& thus the power
To scare or suffer mockery,
The grimace of pain.

2.
If one eye is closed, it is
A privilege—
To wear the face of the one
Who poked his spear
Into the Holy Breast

& receive the healing spurt
Of faith—the Centurion’s
Mask reserved
For atoning accountants, engineers,
Mayors, philanderers.

For lesser folk with lesser
Sins or favors—
The out-of-job, the childless,
The returning OFW—the ordinary
Face of infantry will do.

3.
But all is equal in the chance
For show: ermine and nylon fur
Recall a winter campaign,
Throwbacks & anachronisms
From various versions of Armageddon:

Gasmasks from Vietnam or Verdun,
Leather & metal from “Gladiator”
Or “300,” plastic AK47s or RPGs,
Parades on foot, cavalcade
Of calesas converted to chariots.

4.
Under the Lenten sun, on dusty
Fair grounds in Marinduque,
Our motley masque of history gathers
And marvels at itself—the far-flung
Roots of our belief and curiosity:

Longinus appears with his gleaming
Coterie; the crowd falls silent
Or scrambles for a view: the pagan
Rite of blood & sacrifice
Will once more give us a risen god.

We bow our heads, atoning
Or asking for favors, or shoot our
Cameras, oblivious of our own
Unresurrected gods, the unholy
Ghosts of ourselves behind our masks.

NOTE: "Gap-toothed Morion / There's shit on your leg."

Marne L. Kilates
October 30, 2007

Moriones!

2008-03-21T11:27:00.016+08:00

It is not for mortification (in the Catholic sense) that I write, on this Holy Thursday (and Good Friday as I post this), but to recall, and actually enjoy the memory of a great interesting trip to one of the “Holy Week places” in the Philippines. And that, of course, is Marinduque, the island province directly south of the isthmus of Quezon, where the province joins the Bikol Region, on the Batangas Bay. And you go there for the famous Moriones Festival.

The epic Ro-Ro ride to Marinduque island

If you’re a landlubber from Manila, you get to it by a rather long bus route from Cubao to Lucena, the major city in Quezon, roll on (in the same bus) to ferry for one-and-a-half hour ride from Dalahikan pier, and roll off at the island’s Mogpog port, and ride again for about 40 minutes, pass by the abandoned mountains of waste of the notorious Marcopper mine, and get down at the capital town of Boac. All this in little less than 12 hours, if it were not Holy Week. Because, if it were, the whole Philippine Christendom would be wanting to go there, not counting the droves of secular tourists, and there are not enough buses between Cubao and Lucena, ferries between Dalahikan and Mogpog. And because it is Holy Week (it was Good Friday last year when we made our trip, on National Artist’s Rio Alma’s tight schedule of soaking in Philippine places for a new poetry book), the bus and ferry ride would be nothing short of Dr. Shivago’s epic Siberian trip.

The citizens of Jerusalem in Boac, Marinduque

Now, the well-off and well-heeled Filipino would probably go on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem to join Franciscan monks on the Via Crucis, or if it were the time for it, attend the once-in-ten-years pageant at Oberammergau. The middle class would cool down in Baguio, or stand the heat to witness the Crucifixion and flagellation rituals in Pampanga or neighboring provinces, and the hoi polloi would go to the neighborhood Pabasa (reading-chanting of the Pasyon ng Hesukristong Mahal), do the Visita Iglesia, or gawk at a senaculo or Passion Play played by the local pious or neighborhood toughies. I am not well off (but I try conserve my heels), though closer to the hoi polloi, and was both lucky and surprised to be engaged once more to take photos for Rio’s book project. The other photographer friends begged out of the once-in-a-lifetime trip, and I dropped everything to join Rio, wife Lyn and son Agno, and witness Marinduque’s Moriones. And, I waited a year to blog this!

(left and down) A morion helmet from an Armor website; Magellan wearing a morion from F.V.Coching; Legazpi laid down his morion to toast Sikatuna with wine spiked with their blood, while his soldiers keep theirs on; an accurately marked Marinduque morion

The object after which the Festival is named is the 16th century helmet called morion. In the archetypal picture of the Spanish conquistador in the Filipino mind, it is the distinctive hat of the Kastila, a plumed or bare metal spherical head, and with it a leather (or is it metal?) cuirass on his chest, a saber or cutlass at the hip, and striped yellow-and-black bloomers and Robin Hood tights. Or, it is the barely visible plumed helmet that Legazpi lays down on the table before toasting Sikatuna in Juan Luna’s Pacto de Sangre. In my mind I like to think of F.V. Conching’s comic-book inking of Magellan making a lunge with his cutlass and Lapulapu evading with his ornate tabak before giving the final blow.

The Marinduque morion departs from the actual object and is both sacralized and profaned in the folk Passion pageant and festival. The Morion becomes a person with a mask depicting the face of the Roman centurion Longinus (Longhino). The Morion costume imitates and improvises on the Roman soldier’s. The mask’s countenance is the essence of viciousness, only to underline the conversion of the Roman soldier formerly blind in one eye, which is cured (is opened and sees the light) as he delivers the point of his spear on the Holy Side and blood gushes out and spatters his blind eye. Every Morion has a panata (sacred promise) to participate yearly in the festival until a divine favor is granted—a job, a baby for a childless couple, success in business, protection for a trip abroad, good luck before joining the diaspora.

Perhaps like the whole of Filipino culture and the post-colonial experience, the Moriones Festival is marked by color, pageantry, hybridization and bricolage. The individual Morion must prepare long beforehand his costume, or cobble up what’s available to him. The sophistication or manner of improvising the costume reflects the Morion’s status in life, and playing Longinus and wearing the mask in one blind eye is a special privilege. The mask itself, of varying designs and sometimes marked “Marinduque” on the visor, is preferably made of jackfruit wood and lasts a lifetime, many masks having been handed down through generations. Gasan town near Boac specializes in making the masks, and while other towns make their own masks (and stage their own Morion pageant), Gasan is the preferred source of the authentic and durable Morion mask.

The Morion is both a fearful and comical figure. The thick beard on strong jaws, the bared teeth, the eyebrows coming together, and holes in the eyeballs (for the man behind the mask), both grotesque and ornamental, are all meant to scare, but does not exempt him from ridicule. We actually heard being chanted, as we saw our first Morion, the children chasing or running away from him as he threatened to chase them in turn: Morion bungi, may tae sa binti! (Gap-toothed Morion, you got shit on your leg!)

NEXT PAGE: A Morion Picture Book

poets'picturebook Issue 12 for posting March 31

Arts Month in our part of the world officially ended on Leap Year Day last February…

2008-03-14T14:27:00.012+08:00

but a whirl of art events continues despite or even because of what’s happening all around

1. Living on Loring

Last posting, about a serendipitous find in the Net of pictures by Maxim Popykin that reminded me of a trip to Russia twelve years ago, we also featured here the announcement for the art exhibit and event “Living on Loring.” Galleria Duemila is uniquely—or even typically—located. Just about next door to this patch of gentility and haven for the arts is a “huddled mass of shanties,” as Romina Diaz describes them. She is the photographer daughter of Silvana (nee Ancelloti) and Ramon Diaz who own the gallery. And she is the level-headed, socially-aware fine arts student who shuttles between Italy and Manila, who apparently cannot ignore the face of loneliness and squalor living nearby.

Around the old genteel enclave of Loring (where the residences of Manila’s old rich were located more or less before or just after the last War and until Edsa Extension cut through the area to connect to Roxas Boulevard), is the unignorable din of the city: the MRT commuter train station on the intersection of Taft Avenue and Edsa, and their obstreperous traffic—of vehicles, commuters, and God knows whatever else. Romina and siblings grew up among these, and she and the children of the other end of Loring Street would inevitably cross paths.

It is perhaps emblematic that Romina is called Ate (Big Sister) by the neighborhood girls, that she used to be walked by them to her bus stop or fetched by them at night during earlier school days. And that on the first night we got acquainted with her mother, on Lina Llaguno Ciani’s opening (the previous exhibit which ended February 29), as we lingered for last beers, they had to be excused because one of the kids of the neighborhood had got bitten by a dog and they had to take him to the hospital. And the days before as I prepared for a poetry reading for Lina’s show, I witnessed one of the sessions of the intensive photography workshop Romina conducted for the “Wild Cat” girls of Loring.

Thus “Living on Loring, Art for Social Change” came about. The photographic installations by the Wild Cat Girls of Loring Street, composed mainly of their photographs and portraits of the shanty life, were assembled together with LBC cartons and Balikbyan boxes. They also wrote journals and letters to their loved ones, or simply expressed their innermost thoughts on paper, all of which became their painted declarations on one part of the surrounding walls of the compound.

And to put the whole thing together, Romina joined hands with other artists, notably her collaborator Ann Wizer and curator Angel Velasco Shaw, the cross-cultural artist, writer, and activist. Velaco Shaw’s bigger project, “Trade Routes: Converging Cultures–Southeast Asia and Asia America,” had made “Living on Loring / Who’s Sita?” its kick-off venue, at the start of the International Women’s Month.

On hand to attend the affair, apart from most of the children of the neighborhood, were numerous artist friends of the Gallery, among them fellow Bikolanos, the abstract master Gus Albor, social-realist/expressionist Dante Perez, Maya Muñoz, film director Butch Perez (who I was surprised to find was a reader of this blog), and the great Tiny Nuyda, my idol since I've been following Filipino art, whom I met for the first time, and publisher Karina Bolasco, and social worker Hope Abella. Hope marveled at the “lightness” of the affair while taking on such serious issues as women and teenage problems, the ramifications of poverty on the young who, it seemed, found some relief, a possible way out, by means of self-expression. And this time it was through the art of photography that Romina shared with them, which in the end helped them confront themselves, and not least, their surroundings.

Romina Diaz

Myself, who’s back into the starving artist mode, freelancing after exiting from the comfort zone of a day job, was simply amazed at the whole thing—this seemingly impossible cohesion or collision between the realm of art, its patrons and consumers (the comparably rarefied), and the realm of the improvised box of discarded wood and galvanized iron and hard things, and the so called public art sprouting in between. It was both edifying and discomfiting, as I remarked to my companions half facetiosusly, that it felt guilty to be bringing a full wine glass into the territory of the fish ball. Eventually, when I asked for a refill at the bar inside the compound, I was relieved to be given a cup of Styrofoam.

“Living on Loring” opened on March 8 and runs for the whole month. It was a “wild,” exuberant carnival afternoon, a street party of deep-fried fish balls, corn-on-the-cob, banana cue, ice cream, poetry reading by Romina’s friends, the group Romancing Venus, composed of my friends Ginny Mata (host), Annabel Bosch, Kookie Tuason and Karen Kunawicz. There was a series storytelling by various groups that was evidently enjoyed by the kids, the last being hosted by Kuya Bodjie (Pascua) of Batibot fame, and of course music by the Bahaghari Kalidrum and other performers.

CAPTIONS & CREDITS from top: Photos 1-3, Loring Street & kids, girls in their boxes, reading, courtesy of the Living on Loring blog at WordPress; the invitation/poster; one of the photo-and-Balikbayan box installations; Romina Diaz reading her poetry at MagNet, by Ginny Mata; the installation art pieces.

❜

From My Shelf:

Children of the Snarl

Streetwise at starfall they come,
Taunting the clumsy behemoths of the rush-hour,
The Children of the Snarl, unstartled
At the demented hunger of the highway,
Weaving a dance among eyes and fangs
Of myriad metal, prompted by their own hungers.

Merchants of poverty, dodgers of death,
They cheat mad chance in the flash of chrome,
In the glint of the fume-choked sun
Caught on the grime of the windshield glass,
In the storm-sunset on the fender-shine, offering
Flowers, appeasements for our own stale airs.

Our vision hurtles forward at morning
And dusk, borne by wheels tearing at space.
It hurtles between our faces in jeeps
Where we avoid each other’s gaze, somnambulant
Or asleep, with our sorrows and hurryings
Hidden, dressed and made up in haste.

There is no pause in the eyes that pursue
Their own appeasements. They peer at us,
We roll up our windows in vague defense,
Or concede buying a garland for our own icons
And talismans. Or choose a lottery ticket
For our chase of Ultimate Chance.

What link of flowers and lottery tickets
Joins us across the chasms of our classes?
What mindless mirth, hunger of eyes, insane dance
Of peddling small vices and poverty’s sweets
In the traffic of our haste convey us across
Craters in the asphalt, fissures in the concrete?

The lights time the rhythms of our chase.
The lurch and the wheel-skid summon their swarm
And us, Children of the Snarl: Slap of slippered
Feet, gnash of wheels worn smooth by pavements
Worn smooth by wheels, fume-storm in the crepuscular
Swelter of crushed petals and burning rubber.

And the rain season devours us, the headlights
Blind us: grit in the metal gutter, leaf-shard and
Insect-wing on the windscreen, stale air and perfume
From the aerosol spray. As dust, dirt and debris
And the day’s wrappers sail downstream, in the watery
Iridescences of the monsoon in the ditches.

Marne L. Kilates
from Children of the Snarl & Other Poems
Aklat Peskador, Manila (1986)

The Russia I saw & Russia now from Maxim Popykin’s camera

2008-02-24T09:36:00.000+08:00

It was the height of glasnost and perestroika, and Mike Bigornia (late, great and sorely-missed friend and poet) and I grabbed the chance the first time we got when the Soviet Writers Union sent invitations for an exchange visit. That was July 1989, we had just taken over the reins of the local counterpart organization, the Unyon ng mga Manunulat sa Pilipinas (UMPIL). Mike was Chairman then and I was Secretary General, replacing Virgilio S. Almario and the late, much-loved, Alfrredo Navarro Salanga respectively. It was my first trip abroad (so far from home, but excited to be away halfway around the world), I was in-between jobs, newly-redundanced from my government work, before I joined the advertising industry, where I would work for the next 14 years.

Mike Bigornia on the cover of his book, Prosang Itim (Black Prose), designed by Fidel Rillo.

In this time of “openness” and “restructuring,” there was a thrill in the air in the three cities we visited: Moscow, Leningrad (now St. Petersburg again), and Kiev. Still, beer was being rationed (people lined up at 7 o’clock in the morning at the tap of tank-trailer, bringing bottles and damajuanas to be filled with the precious brew, and there was only one kind and shape of soft drink bottle for all brands, but books, even in English translation, were cheap). Most of the bigger names of the Soviet Writer’s Union were summering in their dachas (so we didn’t get to meet them) but we were hosted well in the three cities. We soaked up the sites, sampled the food, visited the museums and—at the end of the day (white night actually, it was late summer)—our main guide, Dmitri, for our whole stay, or Vladimir in Kiev, deposited us back at the hotel and we were left mainly on our own. Although, in Kiev, Vladimir never "deposited" us back to our hotel but got drunk with us in his flat before taking us back towards dawn. Thus the germ of these poems stirred vaguely in my mind, I was able to start writing about my Russia experience only a year after. It was also the time I was fond of the long rambling line, the meditative journalizing, the embroidery of threads and colors that could create shapes that sometimes surprised even myself… thus, too, the tentative “Notes” in the title.

I thought to feature these poems here, from my second book, Poems en Route (University of Santo Tomas Press, 1998), only because I found in the Net fantastic pictures that reminded me of that trip. They are not, of course, of the Russia I saw 12 years ago. The architecture may not have changed much (and not much physical change is visible), but they reflect something entirely different, something perhaps that is happening to the culture, after the mantle of Soviet hegemony had gone. One thing, though, that stays through the centuries is the Russian's umbilical link to his religion, despite the socialist denigration of it, how Russia is not what it is without its Orthodox Church. It is part of her landscape, the interior one as well as that which is the subject of these pictures.

I dedicate these poems to our two guides, Dmitri and Vladimir who, as much as they could, became our friends and not just our guides. Tall and bespectabled Dmitri, who looked like he was fresh from university, and though conscious about his work was always smiling. And fiery Vladimir, quick to offer vodka, beer and ice cream, in that order, fervent Ukrainian nationalist. I have no way of knowing how they had fared in the perturbing times their country went through, or where they are now. May they have realized the dreams, for home and country, that they shared with us. And to Maxim Popykin, photographic artist, who lent me his pictures and reminded me of his great nation.

These magnificent pictures by Maxim Popykin I saw featured on Maurice Oliver’s serendipitous online literary magazine, Concelebratory Shoehorn Review. (Some of my newer poems were featured there in January 2008, the month after Isaw Maxim's pictures.) This is the Russia as seen from Mr. Popykin’s skilled camera lenses, and his artistic eagle eyes. I visited Maxim’s site at PBase.Com and sought his permission to use these pictures, on referral by Maurice, and Maxim answered my mail, “I will be happy if you use my pictures (whatever your like) on your blog! You don't have to get permission in the future, it's pleasure for me to share my work with a lot of people around the Globe.” This while apologizing for his English, to which I wrote back, “Don't worry about the English (I wish I knew Russian!)—your great pictures are appreciated in any language!” Maxim’s bionote is found in the photo credits at the end of this posting (page 2).

Notes on a Tourist’s Russia

for Dmitri and Vladimir, able guides; and Maxim, photographer

I. Kiev

Red as flesh in an open wound,
Bricks gaze up from a gash in the asphalt
Down an avenue in Kiev.
Intent as the memory of ages they keep,
Preserved by state edict, they crunch
Under our tires as we speed
Toward the museums of the Vladimirs.
Cities lie beneath this city. Or beside.
Streets intersect, entwine, run parallel,
One below or before the other,
In mirror images, in simultaneous existences:
As the crystal blue of the Dnieper
Cuts between the old capital and the new
District of clustering towers
Of the proletarian housing dream,
Each looks across to the shimmering
Reflection of its twin.
Even our guide is called Vladimir,
And no heady vodka can assuage
The ache that history awakes in him:
It derives from the darkest reaches
Behind the stare of ikons, the sky
Of the Ukrainian steppes, the loneliness
Of siege towers when Rus awaited
The Golden Horde at the gates.
Other hordes have since then ridden down
These brick and cobbled roads, other tyrannies.
Even state edifices and their marble silences
Impose an awe, demand a different sanctity.
I, privileged catechumen, genuflect
Before the varied cathedrals of destiny:
I hear Mussorgsky in the feudal hall
Behind the oaken portcullis of Golden Gates,
The wail of peasants in the ululating
Chorus of folk sopranos, and echoes drowning
In the pottery imbedded in the mortar
Of St. Sofia’s, where ancient fires burn wax
On gilt candelabra, and Yaroslav the Wise
Sleeps like a spider in his sarcophagus.
In jest, history has let a giddy farm swine
Leave his hoofprint on the plinfa,
As the fool’s gold of the mosaic pieces
Dazzled the avid minions of Khan Batu.
I am dazed as I descend the winding turns
Of Andreyevsky Street and gaze back
At the green cupolas of St. Andrew’s.
So is the stranger in his own moment
Of light more intimate with the ghosts
In the house of his hosts:
They stand clearer before him,
More at ease, less circumspect.
For there is no bad blood between,
Nor recrimination, nor ageless pain.
Only the comfort of distance,
The pleasure of mutual surprise.

Marne L. Kilates
(1990)

PHOTOS by Maxim Popykin, from top: Spassky Tower fireworks, Moscow, 2007; in Kiev: Vladimirsky Cathedral, Mikhailovsky Monastery, sarcophagus of Yaroslav the Wise inside Vladimirsky church

✑

Bilingual Statement of the Nation's Artitsts for Truth
on Page 2

One of those unnameable days...

2008-02-20T19:37:00.000+08:00

Dogma, Umbra, and Insurrecto by Dante Perez

Dante’s Triptych

Dogma
Insurrecto
Umbra

Wounds dry
Into scab
Words into
Silence
Beneath them, rot

We pray
to falls gods
Imposed on us

Our betters
Betray us
Because we let them:

We cringe
We grovel
We fawn
We grin
We lie like them

We betray each other

In the dark side
Of the moon
In the ninth circle

Dogma
Insurrecto
Umbra

Marne L. Kilates
February 20, 2008

Accompanying My Son
to an Immigration Clinic

The hours we wait
to be told there’s nothing
wrong with our skin or lungs
our mind or even our sex

The day we await
to be told we can enter
the land of our dreams
& we didn’t bring them our

disease. Ah, the pain
we go through to be given
a clean slate to leave
the country of our unease.

October 17, 2007

Poem Found in Phone

—did u c an angel?
—stl luking

—just saw 1
—any gud?

—yes preti
—how much?

—10 pesos. angel onli?
—r thr othrs?

—dolphin moon sun stars leaves
—wow! how much?

—three for 25 angels & all
—gr8t! get me dozen of each

—terra cota?
—terra cota

October 12, 2007

(It is one of those unnameable days, when the chaos around us freezes us on our tracks, but teaches us not to seek refuge in our art—because it is not an escape—and to look deeper into ourselves.)

A Business Mirror "Clipping" on the Art & Poetry in Lina Llaguno Ciani's After the Rain

2008-02-13T11:14:00.000+08:00

NOON MOON(clock wise), SISYPHUS HOMETOWN, SIX-FIFTY-NINE PM, BIRDSONG, AFTER THE STORM

By Tito Genova Valiente
titovaliente@yahoo.com

ONGOING at the Galeria Duemila is an exhibit featuring the works of two artists: a painter and a poet. Lina Llaguno Ciani is the painter and Marne Kilates is the poet. The preoccupations of these two individuals might as well be considered interchangeable considering that poems paint images, while paintings bring in the poetics of that who wields the brush.

Ciani is a noted Bicolana painter, from Albay, who has produced a series of paintings representing what she felt after seeing her hometown and province following the floods caused by Typhoon Reming. Ciani believes “gloom is not perpetual.” This is coming from an artist whose works have been described by critics as surrealism without angst. For this show, she has invited Kilates, a Bicolano whose poems are marked by their daring incursions into the potency of words to suggest alternative spaces, or to plumb the world of myths where words open paths and light the way to more narratives.

The usual expectation from this tandem is for the words of the poem to traditionally repeat the points visualized on canvas, with the requirements of reading and understanding immediately relegated to a subordinate art or exercise in communication. In the hands and minds—and hearts—of these two artists, however, something else has been accomplished. Perhaps, it is the sharing of ethnicity and geography and the shared memories that go with such alliance. Perhaps, it is being an audience to Nature running berserk and coming back full circle into its nonthreatening origin. Whatever it is, the exhibit is a demonstration of two artists in a conversation, not in a feedback relation.

To Ciani’s leitmotif of eggs, strings, birds, flowers and the solitary figure of a woman, Kilates—agreeing with the painter about the pieces to be addressed through a poem—brings in lines detailing things that have happened in the past, and promising to happen again in the future. In both selected painting and poem, you can smell the scent of wistfulness. An overpowering anxiety of silence has its temporal equivalent in the massive blankness of the spaces created, not left to chance, by the painter.

In the ‘Noon Moon’, the famed belfry of Cagsawa, an icon to a more ancient destruction of Mayon Volcano, is reburied again. Looming above it is a sun too muted to be a sun that it has become the moon. Around it are white spherical shapes. Are they eggs of a mighty serpent? Kilates picks the pun of the landscape and writes about the bakunawa, the Moon Eater. The play does not terminate with words for the poet seizes the forbidding puslike yellow sky and the absence of living things and asks us to Beware of his beauty because/He has never been beautiful:/Ghostly serpent slinking in a circle…/.

The poet composes three tanaga, a convention often compared with the Japanese haiku. A seven-syllable quatrain, the tanaga renders itself crucially well in three paintings dominated by a tree. One tree has its twigs and branches bent to one side by a strong wind even as they seem to balance numerous eggs on its nonexistent crown. From this tree an egg has already fallen as the poem talks about In purple air everything swirls,/Life hangs or clings like eggs or pearls…. The picture is dramatic and superliteral and the poem pushes its literalness, achieving in the double negative a positive way of looking at destruction. The other tanaga is for a tree almost shrouded in an orange that is organically scary. The twigs and the branches this time are home to tiny butterflies metamorphosed into eerie loveliness.

Breathtaking is the painting labeled ‘Six-Fifty-Nine PM’ and there are solid reasons behind its beguiling force. There is the painting itself, which evokes the simplicity of a card that memorializes an event. The field is dominated by funereal purple and the saddest of blues. A strip of transparent pastel white-blue field appears embossed on the upper right-hand corner and carries butterflies (or moths) and brown rotting leaves, a compendium of the living and the dying and the dead. Then comes the tanaga that is both an elegy and a thanksgiving: Grave visits us like moth and leaves,/The rain drumming on roof and eaves./Always, God has something up His sleeve:/Mists and colors after nature grieves./. That’s what the poet says, but the painter returns the metaphor for she also has some tricks up her sleeves. In that strip containing the artifacts of the storm lives on a kakejiku, the Japanese scroll that incorporates a poem with the kana or syllabaries flowing down on one side, a form where image and words are fused in one endearing agreement or even dissonance.

There are more paintings that are not displayed with poems. It is to the credit of these two artists that the poems can be read and enjoyed outside the galleries, and the paintings—all of them—can terrify, or exalt our fear and incite us to hope even without words or poems.

‘After the Rain’ is the 34th show for Lina Llaguno Ciani, an artist schooled in the University of the Philippines-School of Fine Arts and the Academia delle Belli Arti in Perugia, Italy. Marne Kilates was the 1998 Southeast Asia Write Award (SEA Write) recipient, an award bestowed by the Thai Royalty to honor outstanding writers in the region. He has also won several awards, among them from the Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Literary Awards and the Manila Critics Circle’s National Book Awards. The show runs until February 29 at Galeria Duemila, on 210 Loring Street, Pasay City.

TITO GENOVA VALIENTE is a poet who has been a long-time scholar in Japan. We crossed paths when we were both working with the old NFA Directorate for Public Affairs and somehow lost track until we saw each other's bylines again.

After the Rain 3: Poems from the Paintings of Lina Llaguno Ciani

2008-02-12T21:00:00.000+08:00

Six Fifty-Nine PM, oil on canvas, 100x60cm

Tree Tanaga #3

Grace visits us like moths and leaves,
The rain drumming on roof and eaves.
Always, God has something up His sleeve:
Mists and colors after nature grieves.

We come to one of the last of a series on that rare (for me and any other poet, I suppose) occasion when one is asked to write poems on somebody’s paintings and read the same during the art show opening itself. One is honored by the request from an artist who is—apologies for bringing this up—my senior in the craft, as well as in artistic experience. Indulge me some more, although a promise is a promise.

It has been an experience, as has been obvious the way I’ve narrated it in the last postings, the reading and writing. I was facing “real,” “live” and contemporary paintings by a living artist (different from our ekphrastic exercises on, say Luna, Hidalgo, Delacroix, or even the late lamented Santi Bose), as exciting, indeed, as when I first encountered Alfredo “Ding” Roces’ paintings on his blog and furiously tapping away at the keyboard, or when I saw Delotavo's huge canvas of the Filipino diaspora at a group exhibit. I was discovering a new territory, a “scaffolding,” as they say now, with which to build new poems, and a slightly different poetic. Ekphrasis, of course, had been invented or defined, by the Greeks, but doing it in our own contemporary time on the works of living artists, is another thing. Thanks and thanks again to Lina LLaguno Ciani and to Galleria Duemila and its owner Silvana Diaz, for welcoming me and my poetry into a live gallery (quite different from a color plate in an art book).

Why all this fuss about art and painting? (Of course we're always "fussing" about art, and if they’re like Ciani’s art, all the more.) Painting and poetry have always been called the sister arts in classicism. Horace said “ut pictura poesis,” as is painting so is poetry (which I’ve made into a motto of my other blog and ezine, poets’picturebook), and closer to home: I’ve always thought I’d be a painter when I was this big, before poetry seized me, and when I was gawking at my (late) eldest brother doing his boards of frames and talk balloons for the komiks (he was a paid dibuhista for some time). I drew and wrote my own comic books. I went from Superman and Batman and the Justice League to Sci-Fi and Heavy Metal and, well, I somehow gave up comic books for books, pictures for words, along the way, though not completely. It never stopped. I still stop at the new, pricey, and cultic comic book shops (or illustrated novels, as they call them now), I still gawk at art exhibits.

So, here they are. This may be the penultimate post of series, as I might have to reserve a long poem for a separate post (it needs some some work since there are lot of indentions among the the verse lines.) To remind readers, the first post on Ciani’s art was my own review of the show, the second a society page of sorts (beautiful people coming to the show and, in the process, listening to my poetry), and now, for my blog readers, esp. Bikolanos (because this is about us): with their respective paintings, the poems.

Eastern Wind,oil on canvas, 70x100cm

Blue

Across the grass nothing is blue,
Nothing and the feel of nothing,
The nothing we are brothers to,
That will slay us in our sleeping.

Cirilo F. Bautista

Desiring God is transparent blue—the color 
Which makes our souls visible. 

Marjorie Evasco

Is this the river or the ocean?
Where is the garden?

Whose blue is this?
Not the fisherman’s blue
Where he casts his net
To haul in his blessings.

What blue is this?
Not the kingfisher’s blue
Whose wing is made of sky,
Not the soul’s blue
That makes him visible,
If God were looking.

Whose whites are these?
Where is the altar
That shall receive these
Votive stems, these
Unsullied petals?

There is only the blue
Of wind and dark water
Rising:

The ocean is a river,
There is no garden.

Tree#1, oil on canvas, 90x100cm

Tree Tanaga #1

In purple air everything swirls,
Life hangs or clings like eggs or pearls;
What wing or claw can brave the storm,
Man curls under roots: piteous worm.

After November,oil on canvas, 70x95cm

Apáy Leaf

There is a pool below
The leaf left by either flood

Or tears. Even in mud
It catches the limpid droplet

Become a gem as it slid
Down the leaf’s velvet skin.

Taste lingers: Noons of
Rice and coconut milk,

Tang of dried fish stirred
Into the thick stew of leaves,

And the sudden epiphany
Of spice on the tongue…

Beauty,
Bruised and smudged, still
Resides in the blood-caked

Sod mixed with sand
Left by the river choked

With boulders spilling down
The Volcano’s slope.

Life,
Shedding a pellucid tear,
Sprouts like a hear-shaped

Leaf.

Tree#2, oil on canvas, 90x100cm

Tree Tanagà #2

Stripped of bark, the old life lingers,
Its branches a-flutter with green.
The new one sleeps in its chamber,
And soon will wake to tangerine.

NOTES
Apáy. Taro, gabi, Colocasia esculenta
Tanagà. A traditional Tagalog verse form of four rhymed lines of seven or eight syllables each.