Writing from the south

Following up on an inspired idea to collect, edit and publish brief essays on the subject of comfort food, Erlinda Panlilio asked us some weeks back for additional names of writers we could recommend. Our thoughts instantly flew south, that is, to our many friends who hold up half the literary sky from their vantage points in the Visayas and Mindanao.

First on our list, of course, was our "Mom" Edith L. Tiempo, National Artist for Literature. Also based in Dumaguete were our bosom buddy and fellow lunatic Sawi, aka the distinguished byline Cesar Ruiz Aquino, along with Atty. Ernesto Superal Yee, Bobby Flores Villasis and Ian Casocot. A recent student of ours, fresh Ateneo graduate Nikko Vitug, has joined the Silliman U. faculty, straight out of the National Writers Workshop last summer.

We made a special pitch for Jun Dumdum, aka Judge Simeon Dumdum, Jr., to our mind the finest poet and essayist in Cebu. This we stressed to Erlinda: Her anthology would come short of consummation if it missed out on Dumdum.

Other literary bylines came to mind as we tried to fill in the usual void understandably attributable to Manila-centric privileging. We rattled off the names of other quality writers from VizMin, as well as from Bicol and Northern Luzon. There’s always good sense in spreading the wealth.

As it happened, Erlinda was joyfully surprised to receive the very first submission for her anthology from Edith herself, the premier contributor, on the eve of her departure for Iowa with vacationing daughter Rowena. The Tiempo women even got to meet the grateful, gracious editor when they had to spend overnight in Manila. Erlinda was also promised Rowena Torrevillas’ own contribution, despite all the rush to rejoin intensifying preparations for a big wedding late this month – that of dear Rowena’s dear daughter Lauren Maria, whom we know as Rima.

True enough, barely a week later, the contribution came by e-mail, followed soon after by that of Dumdum’s. Our recommendees have been coming across, much to editor Panlilio’s delight. Now it’s our turn to beat the looming deadline.

Simeon Dumdum, Jr. writes a regular column for Cebu Daily News, in between his duties as an RTC judge – often assigned cases involving heinous crimes – and his devotion to poetry, at which he’s a uniquely impish wiz. Some of these columns are invariably collected to form a personal anthology, such as Love in the Time of Camera (Anvil Publishing, Inc., 1998) which won the National Book Award for the Essay from the Manila Critics Circle. Now he has a second collection, My Pledge of Love Cannot Be Broken (And other essays on, alas, more fragile and edible things) (University of Santo Tomas Publishing House, 2003). The book will be launched on July 27 at Waterfront Hotel in Lahug, Cebu City.

Wish we could be there. But the next best thing is to go over the essay collection. Every time we open the book we’re already smiling in anticipation. Given its title, how can we not? Besides, we know Dumdum to be an unfailingly rewarding read, ever a fount of the hail-fellow-well-met, brimming-with-sunshine, wizened sort of exemplary observations.

Writing of his two-week participation some years back in the Cambridge Seminar on Contemporary British Writing, Dumdum offers:

"There could be no better place than Cambridge for a seminar on Britishness, be it in writing or something else, for the famous university lies in the physical and psychological middle of England, to Shakespeare the ‘scept’red isle… the precious stone set in the silver sea, which serves it… as a moat defensive to a house, against the envy of less happier lands…’ A special realm this England, and a special people the English, and the consciousness of this has perhaps made the latter reluctant to see the completion of the channel tunnel, which will connect England to France and mainland Europe, and, fears a Cambridge professor, stressing that England has never had rabies, will surely bring in the French rat.

"To whose troubles Kei-Kei, Shige and myself – of Hong Kong, Japan and the Philippines, respectively, three small if unwise writers from the Far East – who have often lost the race to the rodent, by way of gratitude to our hosts, would make a toast every evening at a nearby pub with a pint each of the bitter beer."

Wish we could quote an entire essay, as with the brief piece titled "Jukebox." But then you should just buy the book, perhaps on the basis alone of a teaser of an excerpt. Oh, heck, let’s quote it in full:

"There was no mistaking the jukebox. It stood in a corner of the store, itself a curiosity. Alone among the shops of the street, with its shelves and ceiling fans, it spoke of the past.

"Rather, it sang of the past, for loud in the half-lit interior, in response to a coin someone had dropped in, the jukebox was belting out a song by Vic Damone.

"The strange thing was that the order to sing came, not from a doddering septuagenarian, in whose heyday Vic Damone was a star, but from a young man not yet out of college, who definitely had not heard of jam sessions and soda fountains and the Korean War.

"I had my heyday, whatever that means, at a much later time, that, however, still offered a jukebox in a corner of most every store. From the room where once upon a west coast town I was teaching, I could hear the Bee Gees. In the public market, a jukebox was playing I Started a Joke, and the sea breeze carried the music a third of a kilometer away to me and my students, who were struggling with a poem and somnolence.

"Later, with that same jukebox as backdrop, I, Pepsi in hand and two tables away, would eavesdrop on a lovers’ quarrel, and to prolong my stay to find out if it would end with a slap or a kiss, I would endlessly put coins into the jukebox, indiscriminately choosing songs (among which was one by Yoyoy, in faux Vietnamese).

"Now, one rarely sees a jukebox. Music comes free with the beer, music that issues from the FM radio, interjected with inane remarks from a pony-tailed disc jockey with a false name. One cannot choose one’s music anymore. One must drink one’s beer quickly and run away from the assault of Guns n’ Roses, somewhere along the way stopping before a lamppost to whistle a ballad, as bladder more than balladeer.

"And so for a few minutes I stopped to contemplate the jukebox. It must be among the last remaining few, reserved for curious youths and loners eavesdropping on quarrelling lovers. And I hoped that its menu of songs included As Time Goes By."

Okay, you’re in Malate or Greenbelt or Eastwood City or Rockwell. It’s raining, and you have time in your hands. Pick a sidewalk cafe, preferably one that offers churros con chocolate. Then open Dumdum’s book for an additional treat. Life can be so fine, you will note, as you leaf through wonderful jewels with such titles as "The Sound of One Hand Voting;" "Variation on a Theme by a Pagan;" "Off the Cough;" "Zen and the Art of Household Maintenance;" "Portrait of the Cook as Artist;" "Women Who Smoke" ("…So strong was the sentiment against them that I myself, a generous and forgiving person, had considered women who smoke as either prostitutes or writers…"); "Fishing for Stories in the Sea of Silence;" etc. Yes, life (and writing) can be so fine.

We’ve also received copies of other recent literary produce from the South. Definitely a commendable new title is Sky Rose and Other Stories by Macario D. Tiu, published by the Davao Writers Guild as part of the Tubao Book Series. The eight short stories in this collection were written over a period of 30 years, since Tiu was in college. All but one have been published in various magazines and journals.

In the first story, "Figurine," Tiu immediately displays his masterful strokes as a fiction writer.

"The rain pricked at her flesh like a thousand electrical jolts. In an instant she was totally wet, her thin clothes sticking to her body. The wind whipped at her, making her shiver. But the shock wore off quickly; and now she felt absolutely exhilarated.

"How delightfully sinful, she thought. She walked up to him unhurriedly, dramatically, aware that people were looking at them.

"At the patch of grass that divided the two-lane driveway she espied the figurine sticking out. She hesitated, then knelt down to pick it up. She no longer cared if her dress was soiled. She ran her fingers quickly through the figurine. It was muddied, but it was intact. There was not even a crack. She brought it to her breast, and without knowing why, she suddenly cried. She looked up. Dante had come nearer. Through the sheet of rain she searched for his eyes and discovered that he too was crying, his hands extended in a persistent invitation.

"The rain beat down on them mercilessly."

Dr. Tiu teaches literature and English at the Ateneo de Davao University, and serves as editor-in-chief of Tambara, the university journal. He writes in English and Cebuano, and has authored Davao 1890-1910: Conquest and Resistance in the Garden of the Gods, published this year by the University of the Philippines Center for Integrative and Development Studies.

We should also put in a plug for The Sky Over Dimas by Vicente Garcia Groyon (De La Salle University Press), which won the Grand Prize for the Novel in the Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature last year. I stick by my back-cover blurb for this first novel by a gifted young writer who currently teaches at De La Salle University:

"Groyon’s familiarity with the Bacolod matrix of manners -— surreally rich scions, weird personalities, outrageously decadent lifestyles – has endowed him with the rich material to mine and/or undermine for his fiction. The Sky Over Dimas reads exceedingly well, with its stylized construction serving the clear and illuminating prose as fine form perfectly following fluid function. It is clearly a worthy addition to the ranks of Filipino novels in English."

Finally, let us cite three new titles that came our way from Iloilo.

Folk Poetry: The Lo-A by Amorita C. Rabuco (Libro Agustino, University of San Agustin) is a recent addition to the Western Visayas Literature Series, together with Ang Babaye sa Lunok by Maria Luisa S. Defante-Gibraltar (Hiligaynon stories). The third book we received from Libro Agustino, which has vowed to come up with a hundred titles to celebrate the centennial of University of San Agustin, is Jesus, Lord of the Table: Table Fellowship in Jesus’ Ministry by Silvina E. Tejares.

The editor for the publishing label Libro Agutino, which operates under USA’s Coordinating Center for Research and Publications, is John Iremil E. Teodoro, himself an exceptional trilingual poet and literary scholar. Writers of Western Visayas, now you know who to address your manuscripts to. Keep up the good work, John.