Homecomings

Over the holidays we had a surfeit of parties, clan gatherings, assorted reunions and get-togethers. And we can bet our proverbial bottom dollar (American, Canadian, Australian or Singaporean), mighty mark or darling dinar, that everyone enjoyed meeting up with what’s now become much more than your usual balikbayan or two.

Indeed, if Ruel de Vera and Anvil Publishing, Inc. can come up with an eminently readable literary anthology like Writing Home: 19 Writers Remember Their Hometowns (launched last month at PowerBooks Makati), soon enough we should be treated to a similar collection of essays put together as "Homecomings: Balikbayans on Holiday."

One didn’t have to be a partyphile to have engaged with the increasing slew of homecoming heroes. You saw them everywhere, at wakes and malls, lining up for "LOTR: The Two Towers," reveling with local hosts at Dish or Conway, where they’re treated to nostalgia numbers by the Spirit of ’67.

Now, we’re no spirited nor serial partygoers ourselves, and yet we can’t count with the fingers of both hands, unless we used one twice, the number of writer- and artist-friends we had the pleasure of high-fiving with over the twelve-days-of-Pinoy-Christmas-and-then-some.

In late October we had occasion to barnstorm paranoid USA and interview some writers for a videodocu. Among them were Ruth Elynia Mabanglo who teaches at University of Hawaii in Honolulu, Oscar Penãranda who teaches in San Francisco, and Vince Rafael who teaches at the University of California in San Diego. Apart from indulging in the groves of American academe, what these friends have in common are distinguished authorship and scholarship. And the fact that they all saw fit to come home last Christmas.

Ruth Elynia we failed to get together with here in Manila, however. She was off and running around with kin on a daily basis, and didn’t make it to our Boxing Day party for writers when she couldn’t motor back in time from Tagaytay. We just wished one another good cheer and glad tidings through texting.

Vince did come, as well as balikbayan-from-Bangkok Danton Remoto, who’s been enjoying yet another study grant, unconscionably leaving us rather shorthanded at the Ateneo. At least he managed to assure us that certain rumors on his current proclivities have been grossly apocryphal, especially that one imaging him as still making palu-palo some lover’s laundry right on the banks of the Chao Phraya River.

Itinerant R. Zamora Linmark, Zack to friends, showed up, too, and subsequently e-mailed a wonderful love poem for a UP Likhaan anthology we’re co-editing with Jimmy Abad. He’s probably back in San Fran by now, winding down on his second novel (a follow-up to his wildly successful Rolling the R’s) to be titled "Leche."

Also at the party was gorgeous Dominique Gallego, a corporate lawyer in New York by profession, and an excellent short story writer by avocation. Her brief dalliance with writers that night may soon inspire her to resume her fiction duties.

Oscar Peñaranda arrived from SF late that night, and missed the party. But not the one hosted a week later by UP Creative Writing Institute Director Rio Almario, where bringhi-stuffed lechon was avidly washed down with various spirits, including a Glenfiddich pure malt.

Also around was vacationing Edgardo Maranan, who made it down in time from his Baguio homecoming. Ed is our do-it-all Information Officer at our embassy in London, at which post he really deserves recognition, as much perhaps as the quality of distinction he’s received for his poetry and prose.

It was great to see Ed and playwright Rene Villanueva together in the same hoe-down. These two guys are still running a race for the most number of Palanca prizes. Everytime Ed wins one, Rene makes sure to pad his lead by taking another, the bully. Well, bully for both of these quality guys.

Co-hosting with her Dad Rio was balikbayan Ani Almario, former head honcho of Adarna Books and a mover and shaker for the PBBY or Philippine Board of Books for Young People. All too briefly was she back from a scholarship at Stanford University in lovely Palo Alto.

Missing out on that party was our best buddy Victor Jose Peñaranda aka Bimboy, back from a four-month stint in magical Bhutan. We had occasion to see him at Penguin Cafe one night, and another at a despedida Japanese dinner hosted by memoirist Boy Yuchengco.

Bimboy’s back in the mountains doing developmental work for a Dutch NGO. He’s taken along lovely Jo, as his contract lasts another year. Now that gives us good cause to visit with them sometime, perhaps together with our godchild Saira and her siblings. Meanwhile, Bimboy has not been remiss with his fine poetry.

Also in town for the holidays, and a festive book launch at Penguin, were Angel Shaw and kid bro Noel Shaw, himself no mean writer. Angel co-edited Vestiges of War, a handsome coffeetable book on the history of Philippine-American love-hate relations, together with Luis Francia, her fellow Nuyorker.

Angel had occasion to visit Dumaguete and scout around for a site that may just be transformed into a center for cultural pursuits, care of a grant to be handed out by a successful Fil-Am with Silliman U. roots.

Sculptor par excellence Agnes Arellano hosted a despedida party for Angel a week ago. And there we last had the opportunity to trade notes and wish her well on the Dumaguete venture.

Now if we can find Noel who’s extending his stay, he might just wind up as our special courier for a couple of books for our friend Luis Francia in New York.

Thankfully, although yet another balikbayan, the young poet Mookie Katigbak who’s pursuing a Master’s degree at The New School, succeeded in making herself scarce throughout the holidays, she didn’t quite give us the slip entirely. When she flew back to the Big Apple a week ago, a hefty part of her luggage consisted of sets of mint-fresh UP Press titles for our friends Luis Cabalquinto, Eric Gamalinda and Bino Realuyo.

Another best buddy, artist Jon Altomonte who’s been based in Sydney for close to a couple of decades, also provided us good company as the year turned. Only last week we picked up another gloriously successful expat writer, Merlinda Bobis, at the new TARC Bldg. at UST, where she stays while conducting Tuesday lectures all of this month and doing research for a new book.

Last year Merlin had a splendid book tour in the U.S., promoting her short fiction collection The Kissing, which initially appeared in Australia, and here, as White Turtle & Other Stories (DLSU Press). By February Merlin will resume her academic duties at the University of Wolonggong, albeit those won’t stop her from indefatigable authorship. Already she has another manuscript, a novel expanded from her short story "Fish-Hair Woman," awaiting publication in the U.S.

And finally, Germany-based writer Edna Weisser we finally got to meet in person, after occasional e-mail correspondence as Flips list-serve co-members. Edna runs the stylish Maarte literary website in between her forays to the Frankfurt book fair and the like.

Unfortunately for us here in Manila, however, her homecoming will be spent mostly in Naga, so that we can only hope we get to round up her fellow Bicolano Marne Kilates for another quick get-together when Edna returns from the peninsula at the end of the month.

Of such an ephemeral nature are blood ties and spiritual kinship resumed and/or renewed in holiday times. We wish all these friends well in their return to their temporary foreign havens, recharged as they have been, surely, with rekindled camaraderie and refreshed memories courtesy of yet another priceless homecoming.