A photogenic fellowship

Last Friday, May 26, marked the final day of the three-week-long, 45th edition of the National Writers’ Workshop in Dumaguete. Over the weekend, the writing Fellows must have "broken up" rather bitter-sweetly, perchance lugubriously, no doubt with promises or threats of getting back together real soon.

They were a fine, tightly-knit bunch, too. Coming in on the middle week after Marj Evasco, Susan Lara, Danny Reyes and Tony Tan led off as visiting panelists for the first week, Jimmy Abad and I were told straightaway that the 11 fellows of Batch 2006 were an excellent lot in many ways.

No eccentric, loner, or malcontent, no problem diva in the making. They had bonded quickly, went around town together, became intimate with the same attractions offered by the City of Gentle People that previous batches of young writers had savored since 1962.

Well, fresh lures have certainly been added over the years, to replace the clip-cloppity, horse-drawn tartanilla that used to symbolize a once-sleepy town. A thousand other buzzing tricycles must have complemented the increasing legion over the past few years alone. For another, cyber sites have mushroomed all over town, assuring a diehard NBA Playoffs fan of live play-by-play website accounts in the event of a matinee game not enjoying a temporally faithful telecast.

As it turned out, however, we didn’t have to ask resident guru Sawi Aquino to show us the way to 24/7 Internet, as Jimmy and I caught all of the Cavs-Pistons games on cable TV over breakfast in the comfort of our poolside room at South Sea Resort, well before the workshop’s morning sessions.

Well, not exactly, at least in my case, since a couple of critical games had me rushing tardily (and feeling somewhat oxymoronic, if maybe without the oxygen) to catch up with late input on an already belabored poem. Thank the literary gods and muses however that nearly all the poems and stories taken up that week were already at a level of craft that only invited nitpicky evaluation.

Batch 2006 was well selected, I must say, and for this we have to thank the DULA Inc. (Dumaguete Literary Arts Service Group Inc.) president Ernesto Superal Yee, himself an accomplished poet-fictionist besides being a lawyer and a concert pianist; SEAWrite awardee Dr. Cesar Ruiz Aquino; and workshop director Dr. Edith L. Tiempo, our beloved National Artist for Literature and "Mom" to everyone.

Greatly appreciated as well was the funding support from the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA), DULA’s numerous patrons, CAP College for the venue, and sponsors Dr. Jaime Laya, Senator Edgardo Angara and Senator Mar Roxas.

The 11 Fellows who enjoyed this Maytime’s blessings were Douglas "Doug" Candano, Dominique "Dom" Cimafranca of Dumaguete, Erica Jean "Erin" Cabanawan, Darwin Chiong, Patricia Evangelista, Antonio Adrian "Inno" Habana, Ana Escalante Neri from Cebu City, Noel "Doc" Pingoy from Gen. Santos City, Michelle "Mitch" Sarile, Larissa Mae Suarez, and Andrea "Drea" Teran.

One certain distinction for this summer’s batch of writer-initiates is that they must have been the most photographed lot thus far. Almost everyone carried a camera, with three or four of the group enjoying megapixel superiority and techie know-how. Thousands of shutter clicks and filed jpgs have all joined together in several caches that are to be kept private, indeed sacred.

It helped that they were also unarguably a most photogenic bunch. Maybe that’s why they liked to shoot themselves (never in the foot, while that foot was in anyone’s mouth). Frequently did they also get themselves into ideal shooting conditions, whether at a beach (like Bacong’s, where we took them for a picnic lunch of tuyok manok and puso or palm-sheathed rice), the inviting pool at South Sea over cocktails at magic hour, on the esplanade by Tañon Strait, at Hayahay for reggae nights on Wednesdays (where the Misses Congeniality introduced ledge dancing), or on a fabular/fabulous day trip to Siquijor one Sunday.

Frolicsome were the poses, languid the auto-models’ stare-backs, provocatively imaginative the stage-directed group shots, and raucous and rambunctious the general behavior of versifiers and storytellers out on a collegial lark. And yet these kids were a worthy lot, in character and talent. Formidable besides enjoyable, in fact.

Did I say kids? The "uncle" of the bunch was Dr. Noel Pingoy, whose creative non-fiction must be encouraged. I don’t recall ever raving as much as I did over a workshop entry as his "Of Babies, Bulbuls and Bonsai Trees." Here’s a laudable excerpt:

"Doctors dealt with the scientific and the epistemological, quacks concerned themselves with the mystical and the numinous. Evidence-based medicine was the order of the day. It was instilled in every trainee’s mind that each phenomenon should have an etiology, pathogenesis, pathology and therapeutics; otherwise, one must consider shifting to another specialty. Failure to abide by this mantra was like purchasing a ticket that books a guaranteed seat in the front row of the Science Hall, the surest place in this day and age to find gods congregating with mortals, dispensing sagacious truth in one breath and pronouncing a macabre affront in the next….

"As an oncologist who has just started practice, I sometimes forget that things may turn out differently despite one’s most fervent labors and best intentions. I sometimes wish oncologists had a moratorium on signing death certificates. But my father frequently tells me that dying is a doppelganger of living. That’s how the world renews itself, by ridding of the old and the diseased to make room for the healthy and the new. Even the wild flowers have destinies of their own and nobody can no more prevent them from withering in summer than one can cause them to bloom after the rains."

Dom’s speculative short fiction titled "Runeworld," Darwin’s poems "East of St. Louis" and "Tibak," Drea’s poems "Morning After" and "Yearning," the essays "Walang Katapat" and "The Scarlet Handkerchief" by Patricia and Michelle, respectively, and the stories "Sea Magic," "Black and White Squares" and "A Drawing of Hell" by Inno, Erin and Larissa, respectively, were all discussed with much enthusiasm on the part of both the panelists and the subject-fellows.

Doug’s wildly inventive, Rabelaisian/Tsinoy story "Dreaming Valhalla" establishes him as a potential rival to Sir Charlson Ong. It’s a wickedly funny story of an Ericsson Chua who inherits Pancitera Valhalla, introduces "baked quail on thin cellophane noodles, flame-toasted mutton on a spit, and liquidless turtle soup, which instantly became a bestseller, as much as a novelty…" as part of the menu, and eventually frames the chef in the poisoning by noodles of his own mother at her birthday party.

He then turns the family enterprise into the Valhalla Club that is patronized by Marcos-era cohorts who are "welcomed and entertained by the lovely, mysterious and eternally virginal blue-eyed Valkyries… Others even said that the Valkyries were Aetas that took an entirely different form inside the club because of drugs or witchcraft."

It is a marvelously imaginative tall tale, an endearing yarn that revolves around a memorable character whose "shoes appeared to have been made of fingernails" and who orchestrates "well-known incidents such as the Pussycat Orgy and the spread of cherub dust…" – all these before the Valhalla Club self-destructs and finally (or is it ever final?) morphs into the Church of the Nativity!

Ana’s poem "On a Night Boat to Dumaguete" may have captured the seductive essence of time/place invitations:

"I grasp none of your calculations/ nor the hours you said that would take me/ from a life rolled through a napkin ring/ to one loosened/ and unfurled/ like the pages in those bookshops/ you think the streets would reveal to us/ as easily as we would reveal ourselves to them/ and beneath, the sea is a map/ too creased to read/ I could be lost and not even know it/ just like I know little else apart from the motion/ sickness out of this slow/ but inescapable approach towards you."

And then of course there were the daily golden nuggets of grand mentor’s counsel from Mom Edith:

"Individual utterances apropos to what? It is the discerning reader who will penetrate the image that gave meaning, or something to refer to. What you can do is to inter-relate everything…"

At a dinner party at Mom Edith’s hillside place in Montemar, Sibulan, 20 minutes’ drive from the city, the kids had a special treat: a "loosening-up" session conducted by "Mom" herself, to help them prepare for their informal reading program. Sprawled on the sala’s marble floor, they were guided to respond vocally to a series of what sounded like kindergarten refrains.

Ana read the poem "Fly Me to the Moon" by her fellow Cebuano Gerard Pareja. Patricia read an excerpt about important measures from a story by Susan Lara, while Marj Evasco’s "Sagada" poem was read in appropriate, romantic-duo fashion by Mitch and Inno. And Jimmy Abad exhibited his prodigious memory by reciting poem after poem, as if he needed to further endear himself to all the young ladies as Sir Heartthrob.

After which, everyone moved up a notch for an increasingly boisterous sing-along, with Mom Edith, Dr. Sawi, and "Doc" Noel leading the way for the Irving Berlin and Cole Porter classics. Why, spontaneous dance numbers also capped the lovely evening.

Timeless has been the Tiempo workshop. Timeless will be the continuum of young writers taking that proverbial night boat to Dumaguete, and leaving unscathed but for the memory of morning sunlight and nocturnal camaraderie – as the latest revelers in and of a grand fellowship.