coffeeshop

Sometime in the 1960s, when my father, then in his early 40s, ran a modest logging operation in Compostela Valley, he managed to buy himself a camera. I can’t imagine what made him want it, virtually knee-deep as he and my mother were in jungle life. He had acquired a Colt .38 automatic and an Ithaca 12-guage as part of his trade tools, as it were, not to mention the hardy lot of laborers he took under his wing to clear the ground and secure the place with their ploughs and scythes. A camera at such a time and place seemed an anachronism.  

But the Minolta SR3—it came with three lenses: a normal, a telephoto, and a wide angle—proved useful for my father, who apparently took to photography as a respite. Amateur as he was, he clicked away at mostly family portraits whenever he drove back home here in Davao, some 60 kilometers away. Shot mostly in available light, the pictures conveyed the impressionable moods of his young kids, who were just starting to open their eyes to the fading glow of post-war reverie. There were no fancy buildings then, except for a hotel or two. No malls or supermarkets, no glitzy arcades or chic coffee shops. My father’s lenses captured our faces instead, silhouetted against the sepia curtain of the sun’s rays. They captured our pensive moments, our frolicking at the beach, our silences and our laughter. He developed his own prints. And they were all in black and white.

About a decade later, Dad passed on the Minolta to my older brother Boy, who was completing Fine Arts at the University of Sto. Tomas. Boy made good use of the durable camera, recording images from the ancestral home in Paco, Manila. Many of his photographs are now yellowed, if not gone, as were my father’s, a sad testament to how we take our tangible past for granted.

Even I, for all my romanticism then, hardly thought twice about it, this thing about preserving our memories. I hadn’t dwelt on that even when it was my turn to “inherit” the Minolta. Back in 1978 when I was heady with steamy daydreams and liberal magazines, lugging a 35 mm felt hand in glove with the Baby Boomer environment. Everywhere, people were asking questions, speaking out, exploring new ideas. Students were commandeering firetrucks along Bolton St., while bombs were going off in school quadrangles. Girls swooned to Garfunkel’s poetry, while the boys smoked Marijuana and argued over Sarte. What a time it was.

Through it all, the Minolta served us like a chronicler. And although I hardly utilized it for news photography, I suppose many of the images I took reflected the collective mood of the times: pensive, meditative, curious, and exuberant.

When I first stepped into the class on the night of September 16, I knew right away I’d made a mistake. There I was, coming out of nowhere, pitching in for some guy who’d up and left at the 11th hour, leaving them students to fend for themselves. Right off the bat it was unfair to me and to them, who were naturally expecting someone seasoned enough to shepherd them towards the homestretch finals.

True, I had filed an application to the school in August. And yes, I’d had a couple of forgettable teaching loads in my much younger years. But I’d quickly realized my inadequacy after one visit to the head of evening classes, who gave me the dour lowdown of teaching: mastering the grading system, preparing and submitting lesson plans, scheduling quizzes and tests, grading recitations, etc., on top of familiarizing oneself to the performance of each of one’s students (in my case numbering 56). So much for the romance of the profession.

Because my application meant somewhat that I had one foot in, it seemed inappropriate and rather haughty that I’d turn down the request. After all, they were in a fix with the previous teacher’s sudden exit, and the students were, well, hanging in there by a thread, so to speak.

So these were at the back of my mind on that first night with them. My consolation was that I was asked to teach Journalism, something which, despite my PR day job, is close to my heart. The flipside of the coin was that there was a second class, at 6:30 p.m., called Literary Criticism, about which I know absolutely nothing. “Necessity is the mother of invention,” the evening classes head consolingly said to me. But somehow the proverb had a hollow ring to it.

But after a few meetings, things took on a positive turn. In Journalism, the class was alive. Many of my students stood up, spoke out, and stood their ground. And even though they were highly opinionated, theirs were not a homogenous standpoint. On controversial issues like prior restraint, sensationalism, and socio-political biases, they took varying positions and aggressively defended themselves.

It was a pleasure for me to be in the same room with the twentysomething, whose strong opinions of the world around them surprised perhaps even them.

With Literary Criticism it was starkly different. Thankfully, they’d all been earlier tasked to report by groups on literary theories and their applications, so that spared me from pretending to lecture on something that was, literally, Greek to me. But listening to their reports, which were obviously put together with a lot of work, allowed me to reflect on my own appraisals of the great thinkers. I’d brushed up on Nietzsche, who lost his mind at 45; Camus, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature before turning 50; the anti-Vietnam Sarte, who refused the Nobel; and the deeply brooding Kafka who died at 41. I revisited man’s quest, nay lust, for power, from the disturbing passions of Lady Macbeth at the turn of the 17th century to Karl Marx’s treatise against capitalism 200 years later.

I’ve figured that while teaching works with others, it doesn’t for me—not the practical demands of it, anyway, such as structured lessons and individual performances. But I will cherish the short, somewhat accidental detour into academe, and how it felt to be exposed once again to the exuberance of the youth, the prescience of the old thinkers, and the joy in immersing into the contradictions between the two worlds.

If only for that opportunity, I am grateful always.

Through the picture window, life rolls slowly.  

The afternoon sun casts a balmy light on the unkempt garden. On the garage, bougainvillea petals blown clear off their twigs by the gentle breeze roll about like pink crabs scampering away. The lanai is quiet and empty, except for the faint whirring of the aquarium’s pump. Kevin had brought in new fish and some marine plants, which give the tank a better look than the dusty picture frames beneath it. The wind comes, rustles the bamboo tree, and then leaves. My coffee turns cold.  

What keeps warm are some memories. My cousin Bebot suffered a stroke recently which left almost half his body paralyzed. He and his family being our closest relatives in Mindanao, the news had so wringed my heart—out of compassion for how he’d initially looked, and out of gratitude for Neneng who was only too willing to provide physical therapy services. That was a few weeks back.  

These days, Bebot still doesn't talk or walk as he previously did. But both his speech and steps have significantly improved, thanks not only to the therapy sessions but, more importantly, to his dogged determination to heal and his innate positive attitude. Whether it is over coffee with me and Neneng, or over breakfast with my brother Bubu, or over lunch at the garage with our families, my cousin has been braving the odds. And I can only envy his character.  

It was he, Bebot, weighing probably a hundred and eighty pounds in the summers of our youth, who taught me how to swim. Back then when our beaches were clean, he’d knife into the waves, face down, and freestyle until we could make out only a dot in the distance. I remember a quietness in my mind when I saw him pause and tread water on the horizon, wondering how he felt after a long swim and how the world looked from his perspective.  

Today, some 40 years later, he would tell my wife that in those short moments of rest, as he dipped his head from the sting of the noonday sun, he would watch sharks benignly pass him by. It was the first time I’d heard of such a tale. And almost immediately I remembered Edward Bloom, whose devotion to the things he believed in became the singular message that has made ‘Big Fish’ one of my favorite films.  

And perhaps life should be like so. Slow at times, challenging at others. But always full of hope and courage.

... Standing in awe inside centuries-old churches in Maribojoc, Tagbilaran, Baclayon, Loboc, Dauis, etc., and straining to absorb the intricate ceiling murals, the antique chandeliers, the 400-year-old wooden doors, the imposing architecture.

... Walking into a small-town museum in Dauis that opens to a wooden veranda, on which a string quartet practices under an acacia tree.

... Moistening one’s face with holy water drawn from a well inside the old church in Dauis, a ritual religiously practiced by the locals for decades.

... Being serenaded on a boat that cruises across Loboc River, and regaled along the way by the local singers and rondalla who sing kundiman and perform the tinikling.

... Savoring the saang shells while large basnig boats are docked nearby.


... Walking through a 500-meter bamboo platform deep into a 54-hectare mangrove forest, a unique experience in Bgy. San Vicente in Maribojoc that charms and awakens the senses.

... Sipping tsokolate-e and mais brewed coffee in a place quaintly called Bee Farm, against which the wide, blue ocean below serves as a fitting backdrop.

All these in addition to the customary visits to the famed Chocolate Hills and the timid Tarsiers have made our trip such an unforgettable wonder.

OVER THE YEARS, I’ve worked with a few video crews. From the bright and spritely members of Radio-TV Malacanang (of yesteryear) to the hugely talented duo of Ditsie Carolino and Nana Buxani, from the fledgling group of good friend Des Mendoza to another local outfit that I accompanied all the way to the rugged terrains of Zamboanga del Norte…  all these have helped me view our landscapes and seascapes through a different, more focused  lens.

It is true that film, as an art, imitates life, that artists strive to mirror reality however disturbing the latter may be. It seems logical, therefore, that in some way, a work of art mirrors us as well. For two days last week, I was with a crew filming a panoramic countryside, white beaches, and peaceful villagers, footages that were otherwise trite scenes in some institutional AVP. But behind each ridge captured in the half-light, each sand dune bathed in the noon sun, and each word gently uttered by the locals was the singular truth about ourselves: that there was a basic goodness in each of us.

I may be too old for such travels. But the psychic rewards remain timeless.

[In the photo: Jeck Bordios adjusts his Cannon to capture the fading light in Gumasa, Sarangani. February this year, Bordios’s 15-minute “Anod” was selected by the National Commission for Culture and the Arts to participate in Cinema Rehiyon, a festival of noteworthy independent films.]

ON THE WAY BACK FROM a brief outing last week, Neng and I chanced upon an unusual man on the side of the road. We had stopped to look at some wild orchids, and on the dirt shoulder was this tired fellow resting beside a wooden cross. We got to talking for awhile and I learned soon enough that he was carrying his ‘burden,’ on foot, all the way to Manila. Antolin Adlawan had walked from Agusan, and was determined to walk the asphalt, crossing the oceans via barges and bridges, to the fabled City of Man. And why was this homegrown version of Forrest Gump punishing himself in such a manner? It turned out that he had once prayed for the recovery of his son from leukemia. And that the promise he’d made to himself was that if his son was healed, he would make a sacrifice that no one else he knew had ever dared: walk across the sprawling land in a personal pilgrimage of gratitude.  Apparently, the cancer was licked.

It’s humbling to what lengths—or distances, literally—some of us are willing to go, in the name of either our faiths or our families.  Antolin wasn’t just bearing a 72-kilogram wooden cross; he was dragging it across the great length of our PAN-Philippine Highway. That may seem like lunacy in an age of televangelism and emailed chain letters. But how fault a man for living his faith, no matter how odd his ways? Besides, most of today’s televangelists are glib crooks, and most if not all chain letters are sacrilegious frauds.

Yet even faith, for all its divine connotations, means differently for other people. Antolin may be walking for a good cause, but it may repulse him to know that barely a week after we met, a man tried to hack his family to death in a ritual of consummation. A man had calmly walked into a house in Puan, his clothes clumsily stained with red paint, a red turban round his forehead. On one hand he clutched on a small sack, on the other a bolo. Speaking softly, he said to the alarmed people inside the house, who happened to be his long, lost relatives, that he was there to kill all of them. He had come from a remote village in Davao del Sur and lived with a quiet, severe group that called itself Pulahan. He said it was his fate, as it was the Pulahan members’, to be free and live gloriously in immortality, if he carried out their supreme act of faith which was killing their family members.

The Pulahan devotee spoke quietly at first and then later communicated only in gestures. Stalling for time, when his relatives asked him where exactly he came from, he would toss his head sideways to indicate a faraway direction. He was only beginning to corner the elderly members of the household when the police arrived. After a defiant showdown, bullet wounds finally slowed him down.

Listening to this horrid tale brought me back more than two decades, when the Pulahan was often on our news desks. Its red-turbaned fanatics would comb Mindanao’s remaining forests, seek out New People’s Army rebels and suspected sympathizers, and hack them to death whenever they could.  The group’s exploits were so frequent and graphic that they reached legendary proportions, e.g. they were invulnerable to bullets (a thought that had actually crossed the minds of the policemen who took awhile to disable the attacker in Puan). 

Then, as now, faith leads us to the path of liberation, and down the road to perdition.

WOULD I BE INTERESTED IN A COPY OF 

"Ikinekwento ni Trina Paulus sa atin na ang buhay ay nagsisimula sa maliit. Wala pang alam, at numanais pang tumuklas ng maraming bagay. Naghahanap tayo ng tunay na hangarin at tunay na layunin. Ipinapakita niya na sa tuwing nahahanap na natin ang ating layunin sa buhay, ipinaglalaban natin ito."

–mula sa isang sanaysay ni Kevin, ipinahayag sa Mindanews kamakailan. Basahin ng buo sa http://www.mindanews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=5113

We’d known, of course, that Kiko was artistically inclined. He’d been churning out drawings since he was five, I think, and now that he’s all of 14 it shouldn’t come as a surprise that he’s still at it, although his pieces can use a little bit more color, to say nothing of thematic variation. But when he came up with a drawing and asked us to discern a single word inside it, I knew he’d upped the level somehow. Which is most welcome, this dreamy preoccupation with what turns out to be love. It is a wonder that defies science that young people like Kiko, stigmatized as they are by their inherent mental flaws, are more than willing to open their hearts to others and be infatuated with the very notion of newfound affections. Rather than be frightened by possibilities that the real world may be too harsh on him, I am edified by the thought that my youngest boy is overcoming his erstwhile insecurities by acknowledging the basic goodness in himself as well as in others. And I am hopeful of his quest for the True and the Beautiful as one that will ultimately lead him to a fuller life—and perhaps to more colorful drawings.

There is, of course, something benevolent in planting tree seedlings, except that it doesn’t always feel like so. I’d planted seedlings for about four times in my life in various parts of Mindanao, and I can say without compunction that the motions had never quite moistened the eyes, beyond the abstract notion that the exercise had benefited Mother Nature. What’s curious about the experience—each of them—is that it leaves one pondering about one’s generosity, not just towards the earth but, more essentially, towards one’s neighbor. Planting a seed, a symbolic gesture more than anything else of our affinity with the environment, may be akin to planting good intentions to people we love. A kind word, a happy tune, a gentle touch, a hearty laugh, a pat on the back… small things that accumulate to strengthen the ground above which we build our relationships.

But these are not always so. Because we realize, in the stealth of our dreaminess, that the less we give, the less we receive. The more we hesitate to open our hearts and share ourselves, the more unkind our estimation of life becomes. Ultimately, remorse floods our denuded selves, and we are left to pick up the broken pieces of our half-baked intentions. But all’s fair in love and, yes, the environment. Planting a seedling represents the eternal cycle of the earth, from whom we take so much and to whom we must all return. A seedling whose roots reconnect with the warm soil is at once one with its very source,  just as we all must shed our stinginess, offer more seeds of joy, and come home, tearfully, to the womb of all that makes us alive.

One thing about staying home is that you notice more details. A picture looks better on the piano top, instead of the hallway. A throw pillow button is missing. The chirping of the birds outside the bedroom window sounds more melodic in the morning. The garden holds wondrous secrets—if you look more closely. Of course, it can be the other way around, which can be aggravating: paint that starts peeling off, unwanted odors wafting from the kitchen sink, the queen-sized bed that’s seen better days.

 

The other thing about staying home is that the world shrinks—sometimes for the good, sometimes for the bad. I guess it’s for the good when it allows you to spend more time with the family. For example, we’ve finally built a tree house for Kiko, who’d been prodding us since forever to make him a clubhouse. The project was Neneng’s idea through and through. Being acrophobic, I didn’t quite relish it, especially when the last nail had been driven and the modest thing seemed a bit too high up the Santol tree. But Kiko liked it. And everyone somewhat began to warm up to it. So I guess all’s well that ends well.

 

From the tree house, one can have a bird’s eye view of the compound, as well as the distant structures of Jack’s Ridge.  It will be Kiko’s sanctuary, I quietly hope, his corner of the world where he can brush up on his reading, draw yet another bladed warrior, or simply doze off until he’s called for supper.

 

In time, my son will outgrow his little nook, and realize that the world is larger than it seems. As the compound itself isn’t exactly a perfect place, so is the world replete with impurities and uncertainties. If he doesn’t watch out, all the good in him may be sapped by the demands of survival, or the deceitfulness of his environment. He might weather it all, but in the end he will be scarred—not just from battling his adversaries but from wrestling with his own demons: the moments of indecision, a lack of self-confidence, a harsh word, an indifferent tone… a weakness or a flaw that afflicts us all. Out there, it can be one crazy ride, and yet be lonely.

 

Perhaps pondering that future under the stars is apropos—and yet another thing about staying home.

 

[notes on photos: lady bug in neng’s garden was taken by kai; stylized image of kai and her cousins kit and kim was shot one clear night overlooking the city]

THAT'S TATAY NAYONG, MY dad-in-law, browsing through an Israeli culinary mag, at a coffee pit stop somewhere in Marilog. We’d motored to our small patch of a farm last weekend and en route home, we’d chanced upon the place, Log Deck Nursery and Café. Far from being a high-end joint, it had a quaint quality about it, with cheap butter paired with brick oven-baked bread, bamboo furniture smelling of freshly-brushed lacquer, and a modest nursery of wild blooms, herbs, and cacti. Neng was awed.

I was, too, if for nothing else but the ambience. The proprietor, a sixty-something Israeli businessman, greeted us with a smile when we parked up front. “Would you have any lunch,” we asked. “No,” he said. “but I have bread.” Hmm.. If only for the cute curtness, we ought to try the place, we mused. It turned out he had a small brick oven out back and he baked his own bread. Nothing extraordinary in the taste, really, but the butter was a bonus and the 3-in-1 coffee was almost an imposition. “Don’t worry,” he assured us, “you won’t leave here hungry.” How’s that for countryside PR?

The coffee and bread, the omelet stuffed with herbs and spices, and the fresh breeze and the long chats left me and Neng conjuring up images of our own little shack, just before we turned really old and gray.  Picture it: A small, unpretentious  structure made of crudely-cut timber, a deck that oversees a mountain range, thick fog that inches close ever so slowly when the sun begins to sink, and me spending hours on a wicker armchair, unable to write my magnum opus… and not minding it.

Such images may for always remain like so. But I suppose that’s alright. For the strength and the hope that it bestows upon our waking days, at least we keep the dream alive.

Kevin, on stage at Brewedcaster Café, Valentine’s Day

“You shouldn’t say you’re 49; you should say either you’re 50 or you’re 48—but NEVER 49. It’s bad luck,” or so went the dire warning from the wife. That was a few days before the birthday last month, which got me worried about how exactly I’d respond to well-wishes and smart-alecks ribbing me about my age. Turned out nobody asked, which was good.

 

What was even better was the surprise I got in the evening, when friends from God-knows-when came over. Neneng and the children had secretly engineered a modest party at the garage—and in hindsight, after Kevin’s repertoire and the oversized card, the endearing bouquets and the past-midnight booze, I have to give it to the merry caboodle: Thanks for the grand time!

 

Ten years from now, I hope the surprises keep coming—to keep us, as Popong L. had serenaded us that night, “forever young.”

“WHILE A FILIPINO CHRISTMAS should portray clear aspects of Filipino culture and traditions, such a manifestation of originality is rapidly fading in the streets…” so goes the first lines of what was such a verbose feature I wrote in December of 1980, which mercifully landed in the pages of the San Pedro Express. I’d dug out the yellowed clippings after a reunion of the Express staff late last month. The old gang was there—although I’d joined the paper, rather impetuously, at the latter part of its brief life. Old copies of the Express were reverently laid out on a table. And there was talk of a commemorative issue come December this year.

One may wonder why, after all these years, I still kept copies of my clippings. I guess one can be entitled to a few sources of pride.  One of mine is the San Pedro Express. It’s true that at the time I joined the paper, Freddie Salanga had left it as its fightingest editor-in-chief, and I had admired him so. But Gus Miclat, whom I would later work with in another outfit, had helmed the paper in Freddie’s wake. And it was under his watch that I’d somehow cut my teeth in writing. While I was there, brushing up on the previous issues, I learned of the uncompromising integrity and courage of the reporters before me. Freddie was a thunder of a mentor himself, bawling out reporters who’d made mistakes in copy and judgment, scolding fellow editors from the other tabloids who played foul in the business. He was one of a kind.

But it was a flash of brilliance, it would later turn out. Nilo Claudio, who was the Express’ publisher, said so in his speech. The paper, in the late 1970s, had all the elements for an auspicious birthing: Martial law and its repressive shock waves upon the community; Freddie Salanga, whose intellectual and editorial honesty were beyond reproach; a handful of bright twentysomething co-eds, handpicked by him; and, well, Nilo himself who, for all the shortcomings he may have had, believed in the paper strongly enough to have put it up.

The timing was right.

MANY YEARS LATER, FREDDIE WOULD INVITE ME TO JOIN HIM AT THE Independent, one of those feisty tabloids to have sprung out from Cory Aquino’s “democratic space.”  I remember being so excited after our first meeting in Quezon City; I would finally be under the tutelage of this one man, for whom I had only the deepest respect. But no sooner than I had begun daydreaming about my next career moves than Gus calls me up to say that Freddie had died from kidney complications. Consequently, a foundation would be set up in his name. Neneng and I would visit his widow and other friends at his house in Teachers’ Village. But the silent grief would remain.

Nilo may have been right. The Express was ahead of its time.

So were, in fact, the sporadic bursts of academic freedom, the wild cultural experimentation, the brave political thinking. So were the rock opera, “Sa Bundok ng Apo” and the Brechtian play “Caucasian Chalk Cicle.” So were the music of Joey Ayala, the engaging choreography of Agnes Locsin, the boundless creative energy of Nestor Horfilla. And so were all the bold ideas and the soulful songs, the fire in the gut and the calls for renewal, the romance and the originality that marked the days and nights of the sensual Seventies.

Ahead of their time—that’s what we all say of the old days.

Am not—never had been—a Halloween fan. Didn’t grow up like that, thanks to a conservative, ergo rather unexciting, childhood. So when the wife and children began pulling witches’ hats over their ashen faces many years back, I stepped back in quiet amusement.

 

Once or twice I’d appeared like a freshly-stabbed hobo, but not anymore. Kai and her two bros, with the customary prodding from their mother, are now adept at setting up The Grand Spooktacle:  candy worms to go with the strawberry juice, blood-red honey dripping from plastic cups, gooey food that includes green burgers, candles and glow-in-the-dark icons in the lanai, and of course, the obligatory masks.

 

Kiko had anticipated seeing Lengleng, that next-door girl he’d long been aching to be with. He’d been keeping tabs of the time the whole day, like a countdown to a historic meeting, which was all he could do to keep from bursting at the seams. But, as before, she was a no-show. Instead, it rained cats and dogs. “Could we send her some food, instead,” he asked dolefully. I thought it was utterly naïve. But I let it pass.

 

Still, the show proverbially went on. A few silly games later and the subsequent prize-giving of paper money, with accompanying flashbulbs and handshakes, brought the house down. The tattooed hoodlums had a blast. I gather Kiko did, too, even with the afterthought that if there was any KJ that night, it certainly wasn’t the rain.

 

see also Kai's account at http://kaiskidoodle.multiply.com/photos/album/66/HaLLowEeNieS_

Would you give some change to a rapper?

 

I wouldn’t have. The idea alone was outrageous. There was this boy who strode into our group by the beach last Friday, and asked for coins in exchange for a rap performance. Didn’t give it much consideration—didn’t care less, really—except that the wife and the rest of the group obliged him.

 

So he rapped. In Cebuano.

 

Whatever happened to jingling tansans and outstretched hands, to radio-hooked guitars and Christmas carols?

 

This boy was pretty good, considering. He could probably bring the house down in some Wowowee episode, make loads of money off his talent. Yet here we were, condescendingly amused at the spectacle of him.

 

Speaking of spectacles, I wouldn’t know how amused others would now be at the sight of me smoking a Persian pipe at a hookah bar in Gensan. Colleagues and I were at the end of a long, tedious day and found ourselves partaking of Middle Eastern cuisine and the bar’s hot feature: hookah smoking.

 

I’d heard something like that in Davao when my daughter first told me about it, and I shot through the roof thinking how Rudy Duterte, of Dirty Harry fame, could have missed it completely.

 

Now, here I was sampling what Carlos Castañeda had likely written about in his 1970s novels on the tales of Don Juan. For all I know, Davao’s enterprising bar owners spiked their stuff with the real thing. But in Gensan that night, the fumes felt pretty benign, except that goodfriend Sheila reported having dropped like a log in her hotel room that night and overslept way into midmorning. Of course, the hookah probably didn’t have anything much to do about that.

 

Or did it?

 

Pix above by MJ Marañon. Also see http://smaniego.multiply.com/reviews/item/4/Hookah_Bar