Strange, stranger, strangest

This being notes toward the advent of the third millennium, with a couple of scoops here and there, and a death anniversary as well. A night spent at a Mandaluyong hotel listening to Nick Joaquin’s favorite singer. Cesar Ruiz texting from Dumaguete how our poem for our late erpats that appeared in the Father Poems, had the same motif of strange, stranger, strangest as his poem, "X-sight. Days turning to rain, impromptu floods sprouting at Maysilo, the not so rotund rotunda in our crazy city. On a Saturday night across town, the launch of the Santi Bose tribute book at Penguin Café, on the man’s strange life and even stranger legacy. The Doors singing People are Strange in the background of memory, a song we haven’t heard in a long time. Recalling Morrissey’s work with the Smiths on "Strangeways Here We Come," an album we’ve never heard in its entirety. E-mail from Melissa Nolledo about her own dad’s posthumous launch at UST, the great Ding’s Cadena de Amor, stories from a more idyllic and perhaps even future time. Cesar Sawi saying please help out sweet Melissa on a blurb, cull a sentence from an essay printed in this same space, which was in turn lifted from a Sands & Coral article on the first workshop at Silliman written by Dr. Strange. How Wilfrido Nolledo sent an entire generation of Filipino novelists crashing into the sky. We aren’t sure if the blurb reached UST Press in time for the printing of the back cover of Cadena de Amor, courtesy of chain, chain, chain, chain of fools for love (But it did, Quasimoto, it did). Visiting father’s grave on his second death anniversary, between the puntods of NJ and Levi Celerio, the man who made music by blowing on a single leaf. No matches for candles, though, and big bro trying in vain to light up one using the car lighter. Nick’s own grave largely unmarked, except for a single anonymous cross, a piece of plastic sticking out of the upturned soil which we promptly unearth, no sign of San Miguel around. We remember Franz’s essay about the essential humility of the truly great, and Someone to Watch Over Me sang by Girl V breaking Nick’s heart, yea, even in the afterlife, in the afterdeath. Cesar Sawi texting again about his artist friend Dennis Filart, asking for some help to publicize his show. How the artist confesses that his art is not socially revelant, has no deep meaning, but is mainly decorative, aka for aesthetic purposes, which if congressmen are to be believed makes it in danger of being heavily taxed to raise funds for the perpetually cash-strapped and bangkarote government struggling to address the, altogether now, budget deficit. The bigger news than that of Dr. Strange very possibly winning the SEAWrite award, though, is the prospect of his actually riding on an airplane bound for Bangkok, to spend six nights more or less banging in the Thai capital not necessarily with the king and queen unless they are chess pieces of his mind. Which puts Ruiz in the ample company of AZ Jolicco de Cuadra, Ben Medina, and other hoarse doctors of note. Was at a party at Erwin’s another Saturday last, all across town in Alabang, and good old Sawi saying Filart the old buddy could well have been there, the old nearly decorative face in the J Walter Thompson days, the time when we ambled through the noon streets for a quick lunch, nearly on the run, and the folk singer Ysagani "Baket" Ybarra would not grab a bite, merely sat there ruminating while we stuffed ourselves silly, that we couldn’t help laughing holding our full tummies afterwards, and Baket looking like a real aesthetic ascetic, a real biyaheng langit, pare ko. It’s the selfsame song that will be playing on Dr. Strangelove’s head as he boards the plane for Thailand, complete with passport size ID photos and biodata. I remember seeing, in another 19-forgotten year, Baket’s last revenge at Penguin looking none the worse for wear, with a stable of gangmates at a poetry reading, though he himself did not read but a companion did. Not anyway a Cesar Sawi poem entitled "She comes with horns and tail (debt to Fashion TV)" that goes: "She comes with horns and tail/ And in worship we veil her/ Tailor/ Along with poet:/ She comes with horns/ (The moon)/ And tail/ (The comet)/ Mrs./ Sartor/ Resartus/ Along with Teufelschuklh’s/ Muse/ Lady of the Veils/(Lady of the Rocks/ Lady of the Hours)/ Legend/ Says in Eden/ God devised/ Her tresses." What would a poet do thousands of feet above ground on the way to claim an award from the king and queen of Siam? Play lucky 9 on a special features cellphone? Wonder how, if and when, the world really didn’t turn into an apple the moment it fell on Newton’s head? Is our city the only one where the line extends from here to eternity for patents pending? Well, for the record, it was Sawi who said it was Erwin d’ castillong buhangin aka Don Juan who advised him never to expect money for poetry because that would be like a desecration of the muse, and if the muse is soiled where would we be then, SEAWrite or no SEAWrite award? Like orphans all.