Balikbayan writers

Manhattan based poet, writer, journalist and editor Luis Francia came home last month to check out property in Negros Oriental for a possible retirement haven. He went straight to Dumaguete City, but missed out on the National Writers Workshop by a week. A pity, as he could have joined our panel and lent his considerable weight as an internationalist of a creative writer.

Luis’ wife Midori joined him soon after, and together they appraised possibilities, starting with a couple of farm lots in Valencia on the foothills of Mt. Talinis, a 15-minute drive from Dumaguete, where environmentalist and culture worker Gutie Taylor Hoffman has already built a home, and the fine painter Anna Fer of Davao City still entertains hopes of following suit.

Then the Francia couple checked out an available lot beside National Artist for Literature Edith L. Tiempo’s lovely place on Montemar, a hillside subdivision in Sibulan, 20 minutes’ north of Dumaguete. Montemar overlooks Tañon Strait and enjoys a panoramic view of the southern tip of Cebu Island, plus Sumilon, Bohol and Siquijor.

It’s been some years since Luis – also called "Luigi" by longtime friends and "Lugaw" by Nonoy "Ngo-ngo" Marcelo when they were young bucks together in New York in the 1970s – first started entertaining the idea of preparing a place to come home to when he turns 64, give or take a few years. For some reason, he seemed to have set his sights on the towns off Dumaguete, where he’s enjoyed previous visits.

I’ve told him about Tambobo Cove off Siaton an hour south of the capital, where Brit and German retirees have set up home base and a yacht basin. They’ve found it providential that the local folks have a modest boatbuilding tradition.

At one point, Luis’ plan involved our common friends who lived in Toronto. We began to envision adjacent lots for a prospective kibbutz. Er, make that an ex-hippie commune. But it wasn’t until earlier this year that Luis managed to plan another home visit, and this time he was particularly keen on the possibility of becoming Mom Edith’s neighbor. E-mail correspondence with Rowena Tiempo Torrevillas in Iowa City addressed Luis’ expectations as to lot size and possible cost.

Since we didn’t catch one another in Duma last May, it fell to Dr. Cesar Ruiz Aquino or "Sawi" to escort Luigi around. Of course the xenagogue of youthful Zorba spirit spared no x-y-z’s from the daily tour, which meant the inclusion of the latest Thai massage parlor.

In our own communication, I kept urging Luigi to settle for the Montemar property, so he could appoint me as his landscape architect, in exchange for a corner where my own meditation gazebo would be the highlight of the extensive garden I envisioned. When we last spoke, however, Luigi let on that the acreage he was shown was on a low part of the hillside, thus no sea view. And the Valencia properties were larger and cheaper.

Oh well, I can exercise my green thumb there, too, since I’ve communed with the upland gatherers beyond Camp Lookout who’ve shown me how to care for clumps of torch ginger. And the Tejeros River nearby provides countless springs similar to what have been wonderfully developed at the Forest Camp resort, where we occasionally conduct a summer workshop session.

Should the Francias finally decide to claim a stake in Valencia of the delectable budbod kabog and yummy native chocolate, why, Luis and Midori might just agree to set up our own Forrest Gump resort.

We hardly had time and opportunity, however, to sit down for updates even when they spent some weeks in Manila after Dumaguete. Once, I picked them up from Agnes Arellano’s place in Blue Ridge, Q.C., so Luis could join the "Father Poems" reading at Mag:net Katips.

I didn’t realize they were leaving soon for New York. On the eve of their departure, Luis texted that he was at Pandy Aviado’s exhibit opening at Crucible Gallery in SM Megamall’s Art Walk, and a couple of hours later, that he was with fellow Blue Eagles Pete Lacaba and Pandy at Conspiracy Garden Bar on Visayas Avenue.

But by then, Sir "Ray" Charlson Ong and I were already deep into the Brazil-Ghana knockout game being shown live on a large screen at Edsa Shang’s E’s Bar. So it was all I could do to offer a samba train of apologies to dear Luis. It was Pandy who texted back that the reason I was biting my lip wasn’t because Ghana was getting clobbered on the scoreboard, but because I hadn’t even sent a substitute; thus, in my absence the Atenistas of the ’60s had all the right and opportunity to do me in.

Such are our manly options these days, however. Win some, lose some. Just as I was planning (well, once the World Cup was out of the way) to host a comings and goings or bienvenida-despedida dinner for the Francias and other balikbayan writers, they were off. Alas, so much for good intentions.

Indeed, it’s the time of the year (summer in the West) when we expect homecoming visits from old friends – some of whom, rather inexplicably, don’t even make their presence felt in our peripheral corner, like, say, R. Zamora "Zack" Linmark, whom we were also awaiting at the Dumaguete workshop before he dropped plans to serve as a panelist.

Maybe Zack ran out of Royal Kona coffee beans from Honolulu, which he usually picks up on his way here from San Francisco, ever since he started the yearly tradition of gifting me with the aromatic java, whether or not he spoke and read poetry before my class in Loyola Heights.

But hey, this time he came and left, ni ha ni ho, as Nonoy would’ve said. And before I knew it, just as I was drawing up the party list, I got word from a third party that Zack was leaving on the same day as the Francias. Why, a royal snub in lieu of Kona.

Angela Narciso Torres, also of San Francisco, more than made up for it by joining us at RayVi Sunico & Friends’ "Back to School" reading, where she regaled the audience with some of her poems. This fine poet should soon come up with her first poetry collection, especially since she’s been winning important prizes in the US and gaining much appreciation as a "colony rat" – that is, she keeps gaining fellowships at distinctive workshops and conferences.

I still treasure a couple of books Angela’s brought on previous homecomings, complete with their authors’ signatures: the great poet Stephen Dunn’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Different Hours, and Jane Hirshfield’s The Lives of the Heart, which either bore a dedication or came with a personal note. But again, as I write this I fear that Angela’s packing her bags, and preparing to wing it back to the West Coast.

The same is true of our dear friend Blanca Datuin Nolledo of Los Angeles, with whom we’ve just spoken on the phone, and already she’s leaving today, Monday, with no chance even of a get-together over coffee.

Blanca told us that her late husband Wilfrido "Ding" Nolledo continues to gain recognition in the US for his prose works. A collection of stories is due out by yearend, with an Introduction by Ding’s old-time buddy Robert Coover. Blanca and family are also planning to publish a collection of Ding’s essays, and eventually the last novel he worked on.

Ruth Elynia Mabanglo of the University of Hawaii we saw at the Patnubay Awards night at Manila City Hall, but still have to invite for a bienvenida session at no prejudice to her possible "blowout." We understand she’s been in Cavite, however, where she’s leading a group of UH writer-students on a field trip.

Then we hear too that Marianne Villanueva, also based in San Fran, is either here already or coming over. We’d like to see her, too. The last time must have been a decade ago, at Café Caribana, now defunct, in Malate.

And Nerissa Balce’s just given a talk, was it last Friday, at the Ateneo Soc-Sci center, with such an intriguing title that we couldn’t help but beat our chest over our failing powers of bilocation: "The Filipina’s Breast: Savagery, Docility, and the Erotics of the American Empire."

She’s giving another stimulating talk at UP this weekend. There perhaps we can catch her and her husband Fidelito Cortes, old buddies both, and now come a-visiting from Massachusetts.

Last time we got together, it was at the Bay Area a few years ago, and now we have to reciprocate that bottle of wine and the lively video interview we had with Nerissa. And maybe Fidelito, in the brief time they’ll be here, can help advise the young guys who are putting together a Caracoa revival issue.

I still recall when Fidelito and Eric Gamalinda collaborated on several editions of the Caracoa poetry journal in the 1980s, before both saw fit to enter the big bad pond across the Pacific, that larger arena of tighter competition for poets and writers.

We welcome them all back on their homecoming sojourns, and say now that it would be an honor to host an evening of agape soon. Elynia, Marianne, Nerissa and Fidelito, consider this an invitation. To the ones that got away, we can always heap the blame on the ball-chasing boys of Brazil, out there in Germany. But we’ll still toast to y’all, whoever brings home that proverbial golden orinola.