CIRILO F. BAUTISTA

Review of Galaw ng Asoge by Jason Chancoco

2011-01-13T17:42:00.000-08:00

Review of Galaw ng Asoge by Jason Chancoco
Book Review: Galaw ng Asoge
By Cirilo F. Bautista
443 pages
UST Publishing House

WAY OF THE QUICKSILVER
"Asoge", otherwise known as mercury or Hg is described as silvery white and weighs 298K, making it the heaviest elemental fluid. Heavy but swift and dexterous, just like the nearest planet to our sun, or Mercurius, the messenger of the gods and god of traders. A poor conductor of electricity, it is sensitive to temperature and thus used in making thermometers, barometers and other heat measuring devices. When absorbed through the skin, it can be hazardous to health but still it is used by some people as talisman, injecting the fluid in their system believing that it can prolong a person's lifespan, even delaying death during the last hours of life.

"Asoge" has all this reputed properties, thus the term quicksilver, but it could very well be National Artist for Literature Award top contender Cirilo F. Bautista's latest Tagalog novel. Galaw ng Asoge has all the qualities and ways of mercury, plot-wise and character-wise.

The narrative has sudden playful shifts in the point of view.

From deliberately writing boring sequences (except the sex scene) and off humor lines in the first three chapters, the author jolts the readers through a sudden shift in POV in chapter four. Here Bautista talks to his readers and explains some points-that it was a case of wrong choice in POV and some details were missed out because of it. Very modern. A sort of creative acrobatics or literary discourse combined. Reading those parts would seem like the author was doing a lecture on how to write an effective story.

Ending almost like the way it started (as the author finds the first person POV of Amado, the main player, as misleading), the narrative restarts in chapter forty-four, employing the third person POV once again. Obviously there will be a sequel, and in fact Galaw ng Asoge is conceived to be part of a trilogy.

From here we can say that it has the "birtud" of mercury as talisman. A sort of a delaying tactic that leaves the readers craving for more, even if it is just a cycle or repetition of the same storyline but only with varying POVs. Each sequence is well planned and with inputs on the philosophy of the author as articulated by his characters.

But these characters tend to hide certain truths that only the author knows.
Thus we not only have a deceptive narrative but also some characters whom we cannot trust such as the corporate tandem of father and son Carlos and Amado Ortiz.

Amado's Weak Voice
Again, this is deliberate. As this novel is designed to play tricks on its readers, it is easy to fall into the trap of Amado's narrative. A poseur, a poet, and a romantic, his lines are metaphorical, dreamy and unreliable. He is the novel's weak voice and he sees, feels and says only what he finds necessary in building up his image around his selfish motive, and he is so good a pretender that he sounds so sincere-and so perhaps he believes himself.

As the author himself pointed out later in the novel, Amado's viewpoint is limited. For instance, he kept on referring to his mother as "Mama", which is understandable, but almost missed out on mentioning her real name, Rosario. Also his detached relationship with his mother deprived the readers of Rosario's greatness as a woman and mother.

Being a poet, he tends to exaggerate on some details. Not to say that all poets are like this and that in effect they are liars like Amado. Perhaps this goes to say that the dreams of a poet are much different from the ambitions of a politician or business tycoon.

When he says that he adores his sister Clara he also tries to paint a picture of them as soul mates, if we could call it that. He says they could read each other's minds. However, if this were true, how come he did not learn of Mita's (Amado's girlfriend) early relationship with this father? It was later revealed that Clara actually knew all about it.

Amado's younger brother, Gerry is the only character allowed to witness his confused side and this was after Mita's suicide. In the same way that he looks up to his father Carlos for guidance, Gerry also tries to emulate him, as he seems to be so at ease even when in times of trouble. But of course this is just a pose. He still has to learn the "birtud" of his poet-boxer friend, Ben.

Even during his most triumphant moment, Amado is still unimpressive. Sure he was able to trick the corporate trickster Don Agustin. But he was lucky the old man did not have a gun with a silencer when he was trying to blackmail him. He could have easily been shot and disposed of in Manila Bay. Who would suspect a president maker like Don Agustin? Not his Mama who was the fiancé of Agustin in their youth.

Among Amado's exploits was his portrayal of Carlos Ortiz in the novel as a loser and a quitter so that only he would gain glory for their redeemed fortune. Perhaps the sequel will have Don Carlos as voice so that we can hear his side. When he calmly took his own life, there was an attempt in his part to recover his honor.

IMPACT OF CREATIVE WRITING WORKSHOP

2011-01-07T02:08:00.000-08:00

Impact of Creative Writing Workshops
Author:Cirilo F. Bautista
Date Published: March 01, 2004

The creative writing season in the country begins in March and ends in May. It has nothing to do with the weather but with the state of mind of young, aspiring writers who, having been accepted, go through the process of discovering their skills and disabilities. They are the so-called “fellows” to the annual writing workshops conducted by the University of Santo Tomas (UST) in Baguio City, by the Iligan Institute of Technology (IIT) in Iligan City, by the De La Salle University (DLSU) in Baguio City, by the University of the Philippines (UP) in its various campuses, and by Edith Tiempo in Dumaguete City.

No formal studies have been made as to the effects of these workshops on the style and character of the participants. Have their abilities improved? Have their artistic consciousness been significantly affected by exposure to criticism and discussion of their works? Do workshops help advance the national programs for cultural growth and literary excellence?

Literary Discourse and Social Environment

Workshops, ultimately, deal with language more than with ideas. As a communal text, any literary discourse is a contrived utterance that addresses several levels of reality, but to communicate through this text, writer and reader must put into operation certain sociological process that will make it intelligible. “I write, therefore, I am,” might as well provide the structural foundation of this sociology. To write a poem or a story involves the deliberate reworking of social elements to achieve the writer’s intentions, one of them being to ventilate his social and personal perspectives. But it is, first of all, a linguistic construction, fixed in a situs of specific explication, demanding of the writer and the reader a vast expertise in language; in the first, to configure the human condition according to a planned aesthetics, in the second, to be able to embrace it.

Grammatical and compositional knowledge—the first level of reality—clears away impediments to the comprehension of the work’s literalness, that is, the human condition as articulated through concrete and physical verbality. Fundamental matters of diction, idioms, and phraseology, when clarified and refracted in relation of the writer’s sociological perspective, will ultimately lead to the formula that encodes the work’s thought or idea. At the same time, when linkages between the cultural milieu and the linguistic character of the work are established, semiotic signals enrich the understanding of it. The enlargement of this semiotics produces, among other things, the metaphoric significance of the composition. On this second level, figurative language processes literalness to make it yield additional facets. Meaning becomes more than literal and offers itself to cultural interpolation and intervention. Consequently, the work encourages the reader to draw from the wellspring of his societal consciousness those materials that will complete and validate his interpretation of its impact and significance.

In this sense, the text (the poem or the story) must be properly situated in relation to the subtext (the social or human conditions) before a signification is gained. Their context (relationship) produces in the reader a particular perception of the textual idea. A creative discourse, then, is ultimately culturally determined. It cannot be understood without reference to the extra-linguistic realities that surround it—the human factors that provide its framework. Also, it emerges as a rational conjoining of individual and national experiences, the raw materials really of any creative product. This was what Shelley meant when he wrote that the “poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.” Through their meditations on human affairs, their texts become the uncredited almanac of human development. The power of such works as Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere and Hernandez’s “Isang Dipang Langit” resides in their ability to pragmatize in artistic terms the crises and exigencies of the human condition without erasing its artistic character.

The world of literature itself, it must be apparent now, comprises another level of reality. All existing literary discourses exert a tremendous pressure on the human mind and heart, compelling them to examine things in a new and, sometimes, perilous manner. This “intertextuality,” which occurs on the cultural level and intervenes in the operation of the other levels, improves our comprehensive of the text and, at the same time, provides a rigorous criticism of any aspect of personal and social existence. The writer, consequently, occupies a delicate and crucial position vis-à-vis the progress of human consciousness.

All of that, however, is easier said than done. Creative writing is the loneliest art. The writer labors in isolation, and he is not even sure that the poem or story will turn out the way he intends it to. He only has himself to rely on in his attempt to explicate the mysterious meanderings of his soul and of his people. It is a painful and demanding commitment the avoidance of which will gratify him. But it cannot be avoided; consequently, he inclines to the invention of devices that will postpone it, even if only momentarily. Such ritual evasions—smoking cigarettes, taking a shot of whiskey or a bottle of beer, fussing over pages of notes, cleaning the computer, making that needless last-minute phone call—are ostensibly intended to oil the machinery of his imagination but in reality are merely diversionary tactics to try to justify the delay. For man is a social animal, and writing frustrates his contact with his species. Dylan Thomas called it a “sullen art” because it effects melancholia in the writer. “The most terrible thing for a poet,” Paul Engle once told me, “is to be confronted by a blank sheet of paper.”

To write is to wrestle with that horrible blankness, to squeeze it and to bleed it and to maul it until it surrenders to fruitfulness. The struggle debouches into a war whose rules are unclear but whose pain is all too real. Only after his war with words can the writer be at war with other men, Thomas added. That is why it is imperative that the writer be adequately equipped for this job. It is not enough that he knows the principles of grammar, diction and composition—the basics of linguistic usage—but he must know their aesthetic ramifications as well. The role of metaphor, the forms of versification, the reason for rhymes, and the balancing of illusion and reality, for instance, once comprehensible to him, will confer on his work unmistakable direction and a convincing excellence.

The Third World environment, in general, does not offer the writer sufficient equipment to accomplish his task. In fact there is a certain amount of hostility with which writers are viewed in the Philippines, truncating their efforts to make creative writing a profession. It is almost impossible for a writer to survive through writing alone in our milieu. Why this is so is the subject of another paper, but it is relevant to mention in passing that we are a “seeing” society, not a “reading” society. The tri-media of radio, television and newspapers are the dominant purveyors of what is called “literature in a hurry,” which reflects the primacy of simple survival in a society that is not yet prepared for the refinement of its national intellect. The tri-media productions overwhelm the social mind, influence the social taste, and determine cultural priorities.

In such an environment, creative writing workshops perform significant roles in influencing the writer’s artistic growth, creative potential and, ultimately, literary productivity.

Creative Writing Workshops in the Country

The importance of creative writing workshops started to be felt in the 1970’s. Before then, writers had to learn the craft largely on their own, mainly through trial and error and emulation of their favorite authors. On the side, they relied on their friends’ critical evaluation of their works. Their language teachers, if any good, taught them the skills with which they understood the first level of reality; their literature teachers, if any good, encouraged them to read the classical and contemporary masters. But the matter of stylistic refinements, of philosophical and cultural groundings needed to situate their compositions in aesthetic excellence—these they had to gain through personal application and consistent studies.

But the advent of workshops helped clarify mystifying areas of creativity and craftsmanship. Teachers with sufficient training in the creative art fashioned pedagogical models that served as guidelines to beginning writers. Lectures during the sessions delineated linguistic and artistic concepts that helped the writers focus on specific problems and their solutions. Discussions of various critical theories and their influences on writing techniques provided a variety of options for literary approaches. Finally, and this was the heart of the workshop, a communal critique of the submitted works brought out the author’s strengths and weaknesses. The analysis involved a close reading of the text to discover how it internalized the elements of coherence, harmony, and counterpoint, etc.; to justify or reject prosodic or narrative tactics in the context of the work’s aesthetic direction; and to evaluate the clarity of its meaning within the boundaries of its functions.

The machinery of today’s writing workshops are no different, except perhaps in the sense that it is more organized, more monetarily sustained, and more attractive to aspiring writers. The National Writers Workshop in Dumaguete City was the first to be formally set up in the country in the 1950’s. Directed by Edilberto and Edith Tiempo, it is patterned after the famous Iowa Writers Workshop in Iowa City, USA, which they themselves had attended. It has since become the model for all institutionalized creative writing workshops in the Philippines.

The creative writing workshop in Iowa, it must be remembered, has three levels—the undergraduate, where students majoring in creative writing are accommodated; the graduate, where students taking up the degree Master of Fine Arts major in creative writing are guided in their areas of genre concentration; and the international, which is really a separate and independent workshop for writers from various parts of the world. Participation in the international workshop is by invitation only, and participants are acknowledged major writers from their specific countries. It is not really a workshop any more for, as its former Director, the late Paul Engle, averred, the participants are already master of their crafts, and the workshop was really meant to give them “a vacation, to do whatever they want to do.” The Tiempos shaped their Silliman Writers Workshop after the first two levels of the Iowa workshops.

Practically all Filipino writers of any importance have joined the Silliman Writers Workshop at one time or another, either as fellows, lecturers, or panelists. Now in its thirty-ninth year, it is held for four weeks every summer amidst the pleasant and quiet surroundings of the seaside city of Dumaguete. It is an understatement to say that it has a significant influence on the growth of our literature. The number of applicants increases each year, and the works of writers who have passed through it continue to enrich our arts and letters. The amount of learning these writers got from this workshop is incalculable, approximated only in the way they have contributed to the qualitative and quantitative growth of our literature. Being a pioneer, the Silliman Writers Workshop occupies a premier position in the history of creative writing in the Philippines.

The UP Creative Writing Workshop is also held in the summer, and it is held in the university’s campuses located in various parts of the country. Understandably, it has the widest coverage in terms of participants, for it can draw from thousands of potential writers among the university’s vast student population. Yearly, it holds workshops in Baguio, Davao, Leyte, and Diliman. Its staff includes Gemino H. Abad, Jose Dalisay, Jr., Cristina Pantoja-Hidalgo, Ricardo M. de Ungria, and Amelia Lapena-Bonifacio.

The Bienvenido N. Santos Creative Writing Center of DLSU, established in 1991 in honor of the noted fictionist, holds a workshop every December. Following Santos’s expressed wish, the workshop gives priority to new writers from our mass-based universities—University of the East, Far Eastern University, Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Maynila, Polytechnic University of the Philippines—and from the La Salle campuses. The Board of Directors of the Center includes Isagani Cruz, Marjorie Evasco, Buenaventura Medina, Jr., Efren Reyes Abueg, Connie Maraan, Cirilo F. Bautista, and Estrellita Gruenberg.

The Iligan National Writers Workshop, in the nine years that it has been operating, has already established a firm reputation as an excellent training ground for aspiring poets, fictionists and dramatists. Established by the encouragement of Cirilo F. Bautista, managed by Jaime An Lim, Tony Tan, and Christine Godinez-Ortega, and supported by funds from the Mindanao State University-Iligan Institute of Technology Office of the Chancellor for Research and Extension, the National Commission for Culture and the Arts, and private corporations, it brings together some fifteen writers from Luzon, Visayas and Mindano for a week-long intensive literary interaction. It is the only workshop that publishes in book form the fellows’ works taken up in the workshop and the transcripts of the panel discussions. Emphasis is given to writing in Cebuano.

The UST Creative Workshop, directed by Ophelia A. Dimalanta, holds sessions in April. Its fellows in 2002 included writers from Samar, Bacolod, Bicol, Cavite, and Metro Manila. Panelists in the workshop have included National Artist F. Sionil Jose, Dimalanta, Cirilo F. Bautista, Joselito Zulueta, Lourd de Veyra, Ramil Digal Gulle, Rebecca Añonuevo, Michael Coroza, and Jose Victor Torres. Aside from this national workshop, small local workshops are also conducted as needs arise.

The aforementioned are the “institutionalized” workshops. There are other, smaller and struggling ones sponsored by other offices and agencies. Writers in English and in Filipino get training from workshops sponsored by Unyon ng Mga Manunulat sa Pilipinas (UMPIL), Linangan sa Imahen, Retorika at Anyo (LIRA), the Rio Alma Poetry Clinic, the Cirilo F. Bautista Poetry Repair Shop, Palihang Amado Hernandez, Writers Academy of the Philippines, Carlos Palanca Foundation, and the National Commission for Culture and the Arts, to mention a few.

The Carlos Palanca Foundation, before being caught in the economic crunch, held its own national writing workshops for a few years started from 1995. Through its Executive Director, A.B. Battung, it started a series of workshops designed for emerging writers in the provinces. “In this way,” Battung said, “we would bring the benefits of formal literary know-how to those who are not able, by reason of time or distance, to join workshops in Metro Manila.” He put together a team—composed of fictionist Jose Dalisay, Jr., poet Cirilo F. Bautista, and dramatist Rene Villanueva—which managed three-genre workshops for pre-enrolled participants. The team held workshops in Bicol at the Ateneo de Naga University, in Cebu at the San Carlos University, in Laoag at the Divine World College, and in Pampanga at the Holy Angel University, among others. “In holding these workshops,” Battung added, “the Palanca Foundation is signaling its recognition of the important role that our writers play, not only in advancing our literary development but also in shaping our national cultural taste.” Several outstanding writers from the provinces have been discovered through the Palanca workshops.

Impact of Workshops

What impact do these workshops have in the production of Philippine literature in English? A very significant impact, it can be said. From the ‘70s to the present, “literary workshoppers,” to coin a convenient term, have formed the first order of literary artists who have, to a large extent, determined the configuration and philosophy of Philippine literature. Most of them are college graduates or have had college experiences. Because workshops are inextricably linked to the academe, they have a sustained faculty of mentors and well-managed programs. We must not forget that Philippine literature in English was born in the campus as an initial adjunct to obligation of Filipino students to learn the English language. Because the American teachers in our school used literature to teach the language, the students acquired linguistic and literary skills at the same time. Those with literary ambitions were encouraged by their teachers and, if they went on to the teaching profession themselves, in turn encouraged their own students. Before the ‘70’s, therefore, the linkage was tenuous and temporary, depending on the presence of teachers with literary inclinations; afterwards, with the workshops being set up and managed by English departments in the universities, student writers’ training became more systematic and directed.

This training eventually developed into two branches: the criticism of creative writing and the teaching of creative writing.

The first is really the focal interest of most of our writers workshops where participants do not actually do any writing but where their submitted works—the workshop materials—are subjected to rigid and meticulous critical scrutiny. In effect, literary analysis serves the purpose of showing the writers the different philosophies and techniques of writing. Depending on the persuasion of the panelists, therefore, the writers, in the end, may be convinced to adopt this or that school of thought in his craft. The Tiempos, for instance, are very strong exponents of New Criticism; the UP Writing Center inclines heavily toward all forms of Marxism; the DLSU Writing Center encourages various kinds of engagement; and UST, to a large extent, remains Thomasian.

The second emerged with the offering of creative writing courses in the universities. By the ‘80’s, the academic community realized the growing need to organize and systematize the teaching of the writing craft. The quality and quantity of literary production could only be improved through a deliberate and planned program to uplift the literary producers. In DLSU and UP, for instance, there are Bachelor of Arts Major in Creative Writing degrees, as well as Master of Fine Arts Major in Creative Writing degrees in the graduate schools. In other universities, creative works are accepted as thesis requirements for graduation in the undergraduate levels. With creative writing getting degree units in formal educational curricula, students with literary ambitions acquire competent and sufficient instructions from teachers with adequate preparation and experience in literary craftsmanship. Many of them are writers themselves who pass on to their students invaluable knowledge not found in textbooks. It is also worth noting that there has been a significant increase in the number of students pursuing creating writing degrees. In DLSU, the idea of offering creative writing courses in the undergraduate and graduate levels was unthinkable ten years ago. This semester, they have the fifth batch of graduate creative writing students.

Thus, these two branches provide the serious beginning writers with sufficient support and encouragement to fulfill their potentials. At the same time, they have attracted more and more new writers. The mergence of the classroom and the workshop, as it were, has brought together all the forces necessary of make creative writing a profession, with the underlying assumption that literary production, like any human discipline, can be taught and learned in a controlled environment. In addition, the quality of writing continues to show marked improvement. The new writers, possessed of the advantages of expert teachers and technological facilities, are more familiar with recent developments in literary theories, techniques and philosophy. Consequently, their immersion in the world of letters hastens their expertise and mastery of their craft. Also, with more writers joining the field, national literary production has shown a significant increase, as evidenced by new literary titles exhibited in the various book fairs held more frequently now.

There are those, of course, who belittle the effectiveness of writing workshops. They argue that workshops do not make writers; they even unmake them. What can be learned in workshops can be learned somewhere else. A sane enough attitude, on the surface, especially when we hear of the insanity of some workshop panelists, like the one who would tear a poem to pieces to register his displeasure with it, or the one who would insist that young fictionists would do the country a lot of good by giving up writing and planting kamote instead. We remember Sinclair Lewis telling participants in a workshop on how to write fiction, “You want to know how to write a novel? Well, go home and write a novel.”

But that is not as easy as it seems. One does not simply go home and write a poem if he does not know what a poem is or how to go about creating it. True, he can read poems, and books about poems, but he would have the benefit of another consciousness explicating to him the phenomenology and problems of writing. He would not, in short, have appropriate direction suited to his potential and limitation. Only live teachers can do that. True, there are teachers who abuse their position, but they are really the exception rather than the rule. Alone, it will take the beginning writer some time to master his craft. With the help of workshops and literary courses, this period can be significantly reduced. With his sensitivity and imagination unhampered by misconceptions, he can apply himself more productively to the acquisition of those qualities that will maximize his writing potential.

Taken historically and psychologically, then, the effectiveness of these workshops is beyond doubt. The Tiempos of Dumaguete believed that workshops confer on the participants an amount of critical skill by which they will able to examine a text rationally and dispassionately though they may belong to different philosophies and personalities. “Communal textual investigation,” as we call it, exposes writers to crucial and even nebulous aspects of creativity which will have profound repercussions on their own craftsmanship.

Knowledgeable in the way of New Criticism, the Tiempos emphasized poetic integrity and resonance, formal excellence and veracious autonomy—qualities a work must possess by necessity and not by endowment of external agencies. “Many Palanca awardees come to us to find out if they really can be a writer, “ Ed Tiempo once averred. He implied a suspicion for awards, for they are, at best, palliatives. Workshops, Edith Tiempo said, “ teaches a writer to be his own severest critic.” If he learns anything at all, it is how to exercise the ability to tell when the parts of a work succeed, and how to functionalize these parts through judicious selection, paring, repairing, and harmonizing. In due time, his expertise may lead him to introduce innovations in the structure and concepts of the literary genres. Indeed, as a literary editor and critic, we have come across such innovations in the works of Filipino poets and fictionists.

Summary and Conclusion

Its is evident that there is no need for statistical figures to confirm the factuality of creative writing workshops’ effectiveness. Indeed, there is no need for statistics. After all, the effects of workshops are cumulative, rather than periodic. But the encouraging energy evident in writing scene denotes a reinvigoration of the creative spirit, and this alone is a positive sign. Big or small, these workshops answer the need for a rational and sustained effort to build up the country’s literary resources by attending to the requisites of its primary component, the writers. The number of books published by literary workshoppers increases annually, thus fattening the literary treasury. Creative writing workshops attract more and more new writers who realize the beneficence of the workshops’ intention to develop persons extremely sensitive to the human condition, to the alterations and flow of the cultural milieu, and to the determination of the national consciousness. Writers contribute to the sharpening of the people’s desire for the finer things in life, for the improvement of the national intellect. Through their literary productions, they propose ways of upgrading the quality of national life. Their works, when judiciously inputed by the state authorities into their national policies, may provide the government with ideas for social amelioration. The writers’ honest and profound critique of social realities is their ultimate contribution to the formation of an uplifted national intelligence. But the sensitivity, the imagination, and the craftsmanship they need to accomplish this critique are inaugurated to a great extent in the environment of writing workshops.

The First Iligan National Writers Workshop – Pioneering Literary Development in Mindanao

2010-10-31T01:06:00.000-07:00

The First Iligan National Writers Workshop – Pioneering Literary Development in Mindanao
source: Panitikan.com.ph

WE were a participant in the successful Iligan National Writers Workshop held the first week of May 1994. It was a historical event, to say the least, since, for the first time, writers from south of the country acquired the long-needed voice and forum for their creative consciousness. Conceived as a national workshop where the best poets, fictionist, and dramatists can interact and discuss their works, credit for its realization must be given to the officers, teachers, and staff of Mindanao State University-Iligan Institute of Technology, specifically Vice Chancellor Jimmy Y. Balacuit of the Office of Research and Extension; Dr. Jaime An Lim, Workshop Director; Christine Godinez-Ortega, Workshop Co-Director; Dr. Anthony Tan, Resident Panelist; Ralph Semino Galan, Chair of the Secretariat; and Ferdie Areola, Chair of the Accommodations Committee. Our humble contribution was suggesting to Tony and Jaime, when they visited us in the Panorama office the other September, the need for Iligan writers to concretize such a workshop. We never thought that they would do so in such a short time.

The workshop was held also in conjunction with a Literature Teachers Conference, in the belief that the thirty or so mentors, mostly from Visayas and Mindanao, could learn from the discussions in the workshop. And they did so, on their own admittance at the end of the week, especially concerning matters of teaching methodologies, materials, and philosophy. The panelists gave them particular lectures on these areas and their involvement in the workshop enabled us to consider literature from both the creative and the educationist points of view. The output of such an encounter will undeniably be of much help to future classroom activities.

Discussions and criticisms during the workshop were enlivened by diverse perspectives and experiences coming from the fellows. Luzon was represented by J. Neil Garcia, Camilo Villanueva, Jr., Charlson Ong, and Jim Pascual San Agustin; Visayas by Felino Garcia, Jr., Ma. Milagros Geremia, and Dino Enriquez V. Deriada; and Mindanao by Eduardo P. Ortega, Eulogia Salalima, Nancy Allen, Maribel T. Ora, Man V. Gervacio, and Saturnina S. Rodil. The level of discourse was generally high, with theoretical frameworks from New Criticism, Post-colonialism, Pragmatism, Reconstruction and Ethical Criticism being brought in to bear light on the literary works under consideration by panelists Leoncio Deriada, Steven Patrick Fernandez, Anthony Tan, Jaime An Lim, Christine Godinez-Ortega, and Cirilo F. Bautista (whose wife, Rosemarie, was conceded as an unofficial special panelist). Some of the poems were so exceptional that we have asked their author’s permission to have them published in future issues of Panorama.

The formal opening ceremonies of the workshop took place on May 2 at Café Hermoso. The Church, the city administration, and the academe were represented. The Most Rev. Fernando Capalla, Bishop of Iligan diocese, gave the invocation; Mayor Alejo Yañez sent a proxy, Kagawad Pedro Generalao, to read his welcome speech; MSU President Emily M. Marohombsar articulated the importance of writers in national development, of literature to teachers, and culture as a component of the national soul. She cited her own initiatives in supporting the arts as head of the biggest academic community in the South. “Writers are an endangered species,” she said, but they “draw out the richness of life in their works,” providing teachers and readers with “a bridge to various worlds.” We found her speech a blend of intellectualism and common sense, based on a correct understanding of the role of the humanities in social progress. She invited us to visit the Marawi campus – “a most beautiful place,” she said – but we doubted if we could, given our tight schedule. Perhaps next year, we told her, if the workshop organizers could include a session outside Lanao del Norte.

Then the panelists and fellows were introduced to the guests, after which Dr. Bienvenido Lumbera, 1993 Magsaysay Awardee for Journalism, Literature and Creative Communication Arts, delivered the keynote speech. Focusing on the theme of the writer and the institutions of learning, Lumbera averred that “literature today is largely a product of the academe,” that in fact one could not think of writing in the country apart from the schools. This, of course, is true, especially in the case of our literature in English which was spawned by the American educational system. Its language and awareness took roots and blossomed in the classrooms. Now, because of education’s empowering values, even our literatures in other languages have academic configurations. Yearly, upon graduation, writers from the campuses join the national literary streams.

Because of this, Lumbera suggested a re-appraisal of our historical heritage vis-à-vis the literary craft. “To what extent must the Philippine writers allow themselves to be constricted” by western norms acquired in college? He asserted that the search for identity is no longer the concern of the writers, but creative freedom – “to break the confines that limit creativity, to interrogate the past, as it were.” This is a form of subversion, he said, for the sake of liberating the literary mind so that it could soar to new heights and expand its magnitude. Though academic standards have a strong historicity, they can be reshaped to answer the imperatives of the present, thus making the writers attuned to the vibrations of contemporaneity. Lumbera advocated the use of new modes of interpreting social realities to widen literary boundaries, for it is an important tool to creative progress.

Vice Chancellor Balacuit assured us that the Iligan National Writers Workshop will continue annually as long as he is in office – “the funding of next year’s workshop is already budgeted,” he told us. He is very supportive of arts and culture, for a head of a technological university, because he is committed to creating humanistic men and women of science. We admire his commitment and look forward to seeing him and all our writer-friends in Iligan in April this year.

February 1995

Radio Boy

2009-10-13T15:32:00.000-07:00

Breaking Signs
Panorama 10.11.09

AS A YOUTH growing up in the 40’s and 50’s, I was a son of the radio. It was just becoming popular then, one of those foreign items brought by American colonialism—together with apples, oranges, chewing gum, canned sardines, boogie-woogie, jazz, and cigarettes—that irreversibly changed Philippine cultural landscapes. It gained ascendancy over our everyday life from sunrise to sunset. In our humble house in Balic-Balic, Sampaloc, it was the centerpiece of communal living. It was installed in a specially made shelf out of reach of children and covered with a clean mantle when not in use. It was clock, newspaper, and entertainment all at the same time to millions of Filipinos then struggling for a better life after the Second World War. We told time by the soap opera in progress, got the latest political updates from the newscasters, and sat infront of it in rows of benches while listening with our neighbors to our favorite contestants in a singing competition. In our community, it was also an arbiter of sort. An argument was settled when one said, “I heard it over the radio.”

It was a clever contraption—inside a box of wood were bulbs and electrical connections that captured airwaves and processed them to sensible sounds! You turned a knob and you get the program you desired; you turned another knob to regulate the sound volume. As an object it was a work of art and a marvel at the same time. The highly varnished wood was of the best kind, manually shaped to bring out a geometric design. Its working intrigued my young mind no end, and I wanted to take it apart to see how it functioned, but I was afraid I would not be able to put it back together again. The well-to-do families had big models with elaborate facial carvings and sharper sound reproduction.

Unknown to me then, the radio was educating my young imagination. The programs to which I listened formed the seminal character of my perception, making me curious about things in the beginning and in the end, when I was already writing prose and poetry, sensitive to the nuances of words and their connection to human existence. Serial romances, on the one hand, taught me the existence of passion and charity. The plots of Gulong ng Palad and Siete Infantes de Lara, for instance, helped form the behavior code which I would follow in my later years, focusing on the need for moral uprightness and self-enterprise. While I cried over the travails of the poor characters in the story I was impressed by how the scriptwriters understood very well the human condition. I was involved in the story; I was this or that person grappling with tragedies to rise from the clutch of poverty and gain success. I was fascinated by the imagery of the wheel of fortune for it applied to my family’s real situation—we could not always be in the mire; someday, when the wheel turned in our favor, we would be on top, enjoying life.

Horror dramas, on the other hand, taught me the importance of suspense in creative writing. That feel of excitement on the part of the listeners or readers when they anticipate the inevitable outcome of a crisis-- that is something you have to work for, something nobody gives you, and you learn it by the strictest application of narrative rules. My best favorite, Ang Gabi ng Lagim with its howling dogs and mysterious strangers haunting cemeteries, gripped my heart like a vise with its terrifying tension and stress. Each episode left me quaking in my seat and gave me nightmares at bedtime. The more I got scared, the more I enjoyed the story. Is that not what critics desire from horror stories? There too was Ang Sepulturero sa Lumang Libingan which became the model for harmonizing story lines with appropriate sound effects for crickets, snarling animals, storm winds, horses’ hooves, and human anguish.

To our family then, radio and literature were one. We could not afford to buy magazines and newspapers—our little money went to rice and dried fish—and the few books I had were school primers. Consequently, I heard more than I read. Words were sounds I had to reconcile with speech morphology before they became written codes. This training was eventually to be beneficial to my writing verse, for it connected me subliminally to the tradition of oral literature, making me grasp the concepts of language rhythms, especially in reference to opposition and unity, caesura and closure. This knowledge, together with the lessons I learned from the Balagtasan which was then still a popular radio entertainment, shaped my poetic consciousness. Years later, with the publication of my first book of poems, I realized how greatly radio had influenced my literary voice.

Literature as Religion

2009-09-04T14:46:00.000-07:00

Literature as Religion
Panorama, 08/02/09
By Cirilo F. Bautista

In Carlos Ruiz Zafon's bestselling novel, The Angel's Game(London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, translated from the Spanish by Lucia Graves, 2009), the mysterious publisher Andreas Corelli proposes a commission to the protagonist, David Martin, "I want you to create a religion for me," he tells Martin. It seems a ludicrous mandate when seen from the labyrinth perspective of theology, but when Corelli explains the foundation of his thinking, Martin senses some glowing light.

"Religion is really a moral code that is expressed through legends, myths or any type of literary device in order to establish a system of beliefs, values and rules with which to regulate a culture or a society," Corelli says. "Everything is a tale, Martin. What we believe, what we know, what we remember, even what we dream. Everything is a story, a narrative, a sequence of events with characters communicating an emotional content. We only accept as true what can be narrated." Martin, a sickly, impoverished writer, succumbs to Corelli's offer of small fortune to work for a year "to create a story so powerful that it transcends fiction and becomes a revealed truth." Shorn of it's Gothic complicated subplots, how Martin pursues this commission is the central concern of "The Angel's Game," a most wonderful and exciting Gothic tale set in the early 1900s in Barcelona.

The idea of literature as religion had earlier been mentioned by Andrew M. Greeley in his autobiography, Furthermore! - Memories of a Parish Priest(New York: Forge, 1999). Like Corelli, he advances the theory of religion as embedded in literary narratives. Whether in story or poetry, religion, in this case Roman Catholicism, is a body of symbols which aims to explain the meaning of life and death. Since the Greek word "symbolon" was translated into Latin as "sacrament," meaning a revelation of God," religion was first of all a narrative symbol. "Our religion was story and nothing else. We learned about religion from our parents through stories (Especially Christmas and Easter) before we ever learn about it in school," Greeley writes.

These stories form what he calls "popular tradition" - the first component of religious tradition - made up of stories, metaphors, rituals, common devotion, and evidences of superstition and magic. They co-exist with "high tradition" - the second component - which is "organized systematically and logically and presented in prose propositions which are often supported by philosophical arguments. The proposition tell the devout member of the tradition what one must believe, how one must behave, what rituals one must follow, which leaders one must obey. It is assembled from the writings of the ancients, the teachings of the wise, and the decisions of the leaders. It is supported by a claim to sacred authority. While the propositions, may sometimes change and will almost always be added to, the assumption is that they are always the same truth in slightly different wording."

Did Zafon borrow Greely's idea, or was he really simply expressing a fascinating theory that is gaining wide adherence? It does not matter; what is important is that Zafon gives us a novel that is the literary manifestation of that idea.

For Corelli, religion is all about form - the other gestures, words, actions, and elements that are understandable and graspable in the content of the truths of narrative. "As in literature or in any other act of communication, what confers effectiveness on it is the form and not the content," he says. This is Greeley first component, the popular aspect which, in the end, determines the religion's survival. If there are no devotees there is no worship and the gods would be irrelevant. The second component supports with additional or emendatory narratives the first, though its real purpose is to control the society of worshippers. A system of organized government develops therefrom, always vigilant, always insuring that the form is maintained and attractive. The story of Jesus Christ, the story of Buddha, the story of the various saints and martyrs, for instance, have to be told again and again with increasing avidity and faithfulness according to accepted methods previously arranged. Both components are important, though. Without high tradition, folk practices would be directionless and might lead to idolatry. Without popular tradition, high tradition, "becomes abstract and has little appeal to the total human personality. It becomes an arena in which scholars and leaders play their own self-important games with little regard for the problems and possibilities of ordinary people," Greeley says.

It is not difficult to see how ordinary people's metaphors may affect the religious environment, though often they escape the attention of scholars and high leaders. Acts and experiences whose meanings reside outside official propositions but have crucial importance to the common people help build the popular tradition, strengthening their faith in God's graces.

Night Train to Paris

2009-08-30T15:01:00.000-07:00

Night Train to Paris
Panorama, 08.30.09

SOME YEARS AGO in May, I took the night train to Paris. I was a guest of an Italian poet in his house in Rome, and that evening his assistant, Romy Sibug, was taking me on a tour of the nearby countries. I occupied a sleeping berth near the window, and waited for our time of departure. The bed was a bit cramp, but the pillow and mattress were clean and comforting. I had already brushed my teeth and changed my clothes in the small washroom in the next compartment.

As always in such a situation, I could not help engaging in the pastime of comparisons. Why could we not have such kind of trains in the Philippines? The last time I saw the Bicol Express stopping by the España station, it was a pitiful sight—rusted on the outside, uninhabitable inside. Time and hooligans had rendered it obsolete, but the government seemed to have no time for its rehabilitation. I gazed out in envy at the many trains lined up for various destinations in Europe, looking proud and sturdy in the twilight.

Romy seemed to have followed my thoughts. "I was in Manila last summer," he said, "and I could not believe how backward it has become. So many hungry people, so many without jobs. I visited Leyte and was just in time to prevent my two sisters from dying of starvation with the goods and money I brought them. I went to Bicol in the PNR train to see some friends and I must tell you it was a nightmarish ride! Dirt and garbage in the corridors, stinking toilet, mutilated couches— "

"I know. And cockroaches everywhere."

"Those too. And they say Martial Law is a blessing from heaven. I shouldn’t care, you know. I’m already a Roman resident, but I worry about my relatives there. My uncle was picked up on suspicion of being with the underground. He was just planting eggplants on the mountainside. From what I hear in the Filipino community here, the people in power overreact to criticism of their rule."

"That’s the trouble. They see things that are not there and impose sanctions for imagined violations. Soon the imagined assumes real form and becomes their enemy. They are sometimes paranoid in this regard but they hate being ignored, so they must act. Power is not power unless it is used."

"Even to the extent of imprisoning innocent men or confiscating their properties?"

"Often to that extent, I’m sorry to say. No one is safe from their scrutiny and suspicion."

"That’s why I felt an unusual silence in Manila even though the traffic mess has not changed," he said, shaking his head. "What, the silence before the storm? Or of helplessness? But can they not do good things in the meantime? They have all the power, so why not change some things for the better? Like the train system, for a start. You see in Europe that efficient train transport contributes to the overall prosperity, for it brings people and goods everywhere they are needed. You can go anywhere in Italy by train. But I suppose they will say that will involve a lot of money and the Philippines is just a third world country."

"Don’t fall for that trick of us being called poor. We have money, only it goes in the wrong directions, if you know what I mean," I said. "That is why no public project, like a road or a building, is ever done to specification, so the people ultimate gets the rotten end of the deal, with the road or the building deteriorating after one year."

"You know I want to go home and retire in the Leyte. I am not really at home here. My heart and soul long for my place of birth, but as things are going, I might be forced to be stay here till I die. When will things improve in our country?"

As I said, that was years ago, and as our train pulled out of the station for the overnight trip to Paris, I had no answer to Romy’s question. I have no answer to the same question now, for we seem to live in a perpetual cycle of promises and disappointments when it comes to our national life. Each government seems to be like the previous one. All we can do is hope that the storm will not demolish us this time.

Rain is Good for You

2009-08-24T02:21:00.000-07:00

Breaking Signs ( Panorama 08/23/2009 )
THE HEAVIEST RAINFALL so far this year came to my part of Quezon City last July 26.
It poured in torrents from four to six in the afternoon. I sat in the garage and watch it shake the mango tree out in the road and the plants in my small backyard garden. The bougainvillas, yellow bells, and suntan submitted to its fury. Nature is most awesome when it is angry, and angry it was that week, burying people in landslides in Cotabato and Antipolo, flooding the main streets of MetroManila, and stranding, as usual, the unlucky commuters.

I had just brought out of the storeroom for re-reading H. Allen Smith’s autobiographical narrative, To Hell in a Handbasket (New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1962), and was dusting it when the rain fell. It was accompanied by a gusty wind that swept everything that was not nailed down—plastic buckets, old newspapers, garden chairs. I watched in fascination as the silver drops arched and looped in some strange geometric patterns while the wind swished and swooshed in abandon. Smith provided a counterpoint to the noise with his well-known gray humor. "I have heard it said many times that a person cannot tell the whole truth about himself in a book. I honestly think that I can come closer to it than most authors of autobiographies. Gypsy Rose Lee and George Bernard Shaw have said that all men past forty are scoundrels. I am past forty and I have all the instincts of a scoundrel. Even in this time of pressures and compulsions, I tend to speak my mind."

And no one could speak their mind more than Smith who took delight in exposing the frailties and foibles of the great and the mighty. As a reporter, rewrite man, and sports commentator, he watched people and events with objective profundity and wrote about them with acidic keenness. "Scholarly investigators in the field of roughneck linguistics say that a person who is going to hell in a handbasket is going to hell because of amateur sinning, such as playing the horses, social drinking to excess, striking a lady real hard, gossiping, indulging in sex orgies, and other small misdemeanors. Such a person has not murdered anyone, he has not robbed any widows or widowers and he has not been a member of Congress. His sins have been the sins of pleasurable dissipation and I understand, from high authority, that when he arrives in hell they may even turn him away form the gate, telling him that his credentials show he belongs in the Other Place."

How close to home he was as I thought of the hundreds of congressmen we have with their endless inclination toward unpardonable transgressions. The rain pummeled the garage roof so hard that it leaked in two places, and I made a mental note to buy another can of plaster sealant. The rising water in the garden seeped into the floor of a downstair room. My wife cleared the clogged drainage outlet to ease the rise, and old newspapers came in handy in cleaning the room. When I was young, my mother would say, "Go out in the rain. It’s good for you," and so I would bring a piece of soap and take a bath in the street.

After watching the rain for a few minutes, I retreated to my room to go over Recipes for Life: Food for the Heart, edited by Jennifer Lee-Bonto and Christine Penaranda-Concio (Los Baños: Pages Publishing Artists, Co., 2009). This brainchild of St. Theresa’s College, Quezon City batch ’85 is a delightful collection of autobiographical narratives penned with sensitivity, humor, and energy. Like recipes, they are meant to guide, instruct, and direct persons engaged in the kitchen of life to feed body and soul.

As Charo Santos-Concio writes in her foreword, "Every chef has a secret ingredient: it may be the most unique spice you can find in Paris, or it may be just the right amount of soy sauce. We, women, are also chefs. We whip up the best of life. We want it spicy…sometimes sour…sweet…salty… hot… cold…or just right. What we are serving for appetizer, main course or dessert, matters. How we serve it is important. This is what made me crave reading this book. It’s the spices of life that women had to have a taste of and how women handled even the most sour and bitter of experiences. Every woman stands tall and strong…giving hope, courage, motivation and inspiration."

The 56 or so articles—three are poems— in this well-designed and unique book are arranged in the manner of daily eating structure—Prayer Before Meals; Breakfast; Lunch; Afternoon Tea & Biscuits; Dinner with its Starters, Main Course, Dessert; Cocktails, Mocktails & Bedtime Drinks; and Prayer After Meals. They concern human responses to critical situations and show us life’s beauty and meaning in the midst of battering storms that challenge our very faith in God and belief in humanity.

Believe and Betray

2006-08-04T03:51:00.000-07:00

Cirilo F. Bautista Launches New Poetry Collection
by Tim Nubla
Source: http://www.panitikan.com.ph/news.htm#4

“Happy Birthday” said the cake on Cirilo F. Bautista’s book launch that was held last July 29, 2006 at the Gaerlan Conservatory of the De La Salle University, Manila. It is also the birthday of his latest collection of poems Believe and Betray.

Among the well-wishers who graced the event are DLSU-Manila’s EVP for Academics and Research Dr. Julius Maridable, Dr. Carmelita Quebangco, EVP of DLSU-Manila and Dr. Isagani Cruz and Dr. Marjorie Evasco, University Fellows.

Cirilo Bautista is a winner of the Palanca Hall of Fame award in 1995 and was previously hailed in 1993 as Makata ng Taon by the Komisyon ng Wikang Filipino for winning the poetry contest sponsored by the Philippine Government. The last part of his epic trilogy The Trilogy of Saint Lazarus, entitled “Sunlight on Broken Stones,” won the Centennial Prize for the Epic in 1998. “

Believe and Betray is a volume composed of four collections of Bautista’s Lyric poems from1960 to 2005, spanning more than fifty years of writing. The book is available at the DLSU Press bookstore.

New Book of Poems to be launched

2006-07-20T16:15:00.000-07:00

Cirilo Bautista will launch his new book of poems at the Gaerlan Conservatory, De La Salle University, Taft on July 29, 10a.m.

Three Books and the Copyright Law

2006-06-04T23:00:00.000-07:00

DEAN Francis Alfar’s novel, Salamanca (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2006), is now available in bookstores. It won last year’s Palanca Contest for the novel in which we were the chairman of the board of judges. We found it way above the other entries for its linguistic competence and artistic merits. Later, as a reader assessing its worthiness for book publication, we gave it a positive recommendation. For Alfar has created a love story that is memorable for its emotional restraint, sustained interest, exceptional characters, and well-conceived plot. The narrative moves at an appropriate pace to render unique interpretation of a slice of Philippine life. The title it all – there is some magic determining the relationship of the main characters Gaudencio Rivera and Jacinta Cordova, and Alfar does a sleight-of-pen that attempts to draw us into an enjoyable spell.

Alfar is one among those many Filipino fictionists influenced by the technique of magic realism. Popularized by South American writers, it fuses history with imaginings to configurate a situation that verges on the fantastic. The technique is almost made to order for the Filipinos who, like the South Americans, possess a consciousness which is a source spring of the unusual and the grotesque. Our geography and climate encourage extreme imagination. The influences of native religions, myths, legends, folktales, and epics have not been dimmed by the pressures of colonization and advent of modern technology. In fact, this consciousness gains energy by adjusting to western thoughts and gadgets. It accommodates imported realities without surrendering what it considers sacred and inviolable. It is not difficult, then, for our fictionists to write like Gabriel Garcia Marquez. And, alas, that it the peril that they face. They may just end up being clones of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. They have to reinvent magic realism, as it were, to Filipinize it, so that it reflects the Philippines and not South America.

There is nothing magical in Edgar Calabia Samar’s poems in Pag-aabang sa Kundiman – Isang Talambuhay (Quezon City: Office of Research and Publications, Ateneo de Manila University, 2006). They are firmly anchored on the ground, being a collective pursuit of personal roots and identity. The familiar, not the fantastic, delineate the fervor and dangers one must face in trying to discover the land he has left and the land he has returned to. As the poet intimates in the title poem, Pag-aabang sa Kundiman, things change, feelings, ideas, places – the better thing to do is to leave the place again, to just keep it in the memory as it was first gleamed, or experienced. Samar’s Kundiman is both the street in Sampaloc and an imagined country of fulfillment which he can never attain.

The collection’s design is to show through the poems some pattern of the age old theme of journey and quest for the meaning of life. Here, the life of the poem becomes the life of the persona – a believable metonymy if properly accomplished. But that is largely unattained in Samar’s book because the theme has not been profoundly explored and there is the absence of the vital energy that should link the various poems to be thematic structure. Some of the poems even seem to be irrelevant to that purpose (Panaginip, Panganay, Palaging May Ligaw na Pusa). The linkage could be signaled by certain words or ideas that reverberate through the various poems. At the same time, Samar could have used a dominantly poetic rhythm. As it is, his rhythm is prose because he uses paragraphic rather than stanzaic patterns. Indeed, some compositions here are not poetic but prosaic (Liham Kay Elias, Kay Ligaya). How are they to be taken in the context of the book’s overall intention? They have to be justified one way or another.

The best way to approach these poems is to think of them as individual, separate compositions. Then we can read with delectation such competent performances as Mga Pagtakas sa Kamatayan, Pananalig sa Kamalig, and Huling Awit Kay Mariang Makiling.

There are many things that can be said of Poems for Leaders (Naga City: Ina Nin Bikol Foundation, 2005). It is a handsomely designed clothbound collection. It has a noble intention. In the words of Fr. Leonardo Legaspi, O.P., these poems "bring to life the themes: Hopes and Dreams, Faith and Prayer, Courage and Perseverance, Character and Influence, Love and Service, Success and Fulfillment. The poets have employed metaphors that allow them to instruct in a manner that pleases and edifies the spirit." Classical and modern poets are included in the volume – St. John of the Cross, Shakespeare, St. Ignatius of Loyola, Alexander Pope, John Donne, William Blake, Dylan Thomas, Pablo Neruda, Alexander Pushkin, etc.

The important thing that must be said about this book, however, is that the editors did not observe the copyright law regarding literary products. We know this for a fact because two of our works, "The Late and Hardly Lamented Canuplin and our translation of Amado V. Hernandez’s Isang Dipang Langit are included in the book without our permission. We would never have known about the existence of Poems For Leaders if Jason Chancoco, our friend in Bicol, had not mentioned it to us. Worse, we have not received any royalty for the poems used. The editors must remember that they are punishable under the law for this irresponsibility. Poems are properties of the poets and they must be compensated every time these poems are printed in books or magazines. The exception is when the poems have passed to the public domain because their copyrights have not been renewed by the authors or their heirs. We hope the people behind the Ina nin Bikol Foundation will rectify their great mistake.

WHEN THE GRASS, THEY SAY, IS GREENER

2005-12-29T18:16:00.000-08:00

By the end of this year, I shall have retired from full-time teaching. I have been living the academic life for forty years now and have enjoyed it immensely. It has not only disabused me of certain preconceptions about my fellow human beings but also provided me with lessons that have served as moral guideposts "in this dark world and wide". Those years shaped my attitudes and consciousness, establishing the foundation for what I am now, with all my strength and frailties. Recalling them drives little nails into my heart, yet gives me also a surge of joy.
<>Right after graduation from the University of Santo Tomas in 1963, I was accepted as an instructor in Saint Louis in Baguio City. I was twenty-two years old and sure of myself and righteous then, and thought I held all the answers to the riddles of the universe. My Belgian dean gave me different subjects when in fact all I wanted was to teach literature. I was very strict with my students and demanded quality performance from them. Later, after I got my Master of Arts Degree, I taught Poetry and Creative Writing in the Graduate School. My four years of stay in Saint Louis were highlighted by marriage, the publication of my first book of poetry, the begetting of two daughters, and the grant of a fellowship to the International Writers Workshop at the University of IOWA, USA.

The American Midwestern landscape gave me almost a year's respite from the teaching life. I worked on finishing my epic poem, The Archipelago. Paul Engle, The Workshop director, and George Starbuck, the Beat poet who was a faculty member there, gave me encouraging praises when I showed them some parts of the poem. My short poems also appeared in three American magazines. From IOWA, I wrote a letter of resignation to the Rector of Saint Louis in Baguio City. I told him my salary there could no longer support me and my family. I was hoping he could offer me a raise, but he did not, so I had no more job to return to in the Philippines.

But Far Eastern University, and the University of the East offered me positions when I came here to Manila. On the first day of classes in FEU, but I changed my mind about teaching there when I saw what looked like hordes of students moving all over campus grounds. In IOWA, I hardly met students in the hallways and greens, but here, they seemed everywhere. I had the same disorienting experience when I went to US. So I returned home and pondered my situation.

Finally, my former teacher in UST, who is now chair of the Literature Department there, told me she had a place for me in the faculty. There was plenty of space for me in the Dominican school and the classes were not large.

However, because of unsatisfactory salary rate and class schedule, I could not remain there for more than a year. Then I was accepted for a full-time position in the De La Salle College of Manila in 1970. I liked everything I saw in the place -- the small student population, the spacious campus grounds, the excellent qualification of the faculty members, and the Philosophy of the Christian Brothers who ran the school. I found the learning and the teaching atmosphere I had been looking for, and decided to spend my teaching career there. At the same time, De La Salle was sympathetic to my excursions into the field of imaginative writing. The school recognized the importance of literary creativity in the over-all scheme of tertiary education. The Academic vice-president needed only a little prodding to establish the Writer in Residence program for the encouragement of the production of the literary works from both the students and the faculty members. I was fortunate to be the first grantee of the program, a position I held for close to ten years. Later, with the establishment of the University Press and the Bienvenido N. Santos Creative Writing Center, the literary activities in the school were rationalized and centralized.

Now that I am retiring from De La Salle after 33 years of service, people ask me what I plan to do. For teachers who are also writers, retirement is not really a full stop from the usual work: rather, it is just a pause to smell the flowers, or to read that extra book, or to visit those dreamed of places. Or to ponder the mysteries of the living or take stock of one's achievements and failures. As a teacher and writer, I do not have the luxury of time, no matter how much I would like to heed Horace's carpie diem. I am a teacher 24 hours a day, whether I am in the classroom or not. Only between the breaks in these hours do I have the chance to finish that poem or that story.

With full-time teaching over, I can have more time for my writing. There are still some novels I would like to finish. As to whether the grass is greener on the retirement ground, I do not know. Perhaps it depends on the quality of life you will live then.

Philippine PANORAMA
12/18/2005

Writing a Novel

2005-07-04T20:28:00.000-07:00

Writing a Novel is Ninety Per Cent Research Work
February 27, 2005
Philippine Panorama

In a previous article, I emphasized the importance of research in the writing of fiction. Indeed, it might be said that creating a novel involves 90 per cent research work and ten percent actual creative writing. For, if the novels materials are not solidly based on historical truth, the atmosphere of verisimilitude will not be achieved and the story will appear to be false.

I too had to do considerable research when I was working on my first Tagalog novel entitled Galaw ng Asoge. The research focused on creating a true picture of the 1960s in the Philippines, particulary November 1965, the actual setting of the story. The presidential election had just ended, and the inauguration of the winner in December was a much awaited event. This would be the background of my narrative. So, to create credibility in both atmosphere and characters, I had to familiarize myself with the important cultural, political, physical, and social realities of that period. For this, I did library research. I went over the relevant newspapers, magazines and books for information I would need. I found out, among many things, that during that period, men favored Banlon T-shirts and double-knit pants; that they smoked Salem, Benson and Hedges, Camel, Lucky Strike, Newport, Pall Mall, and Marlboro; that Mercedez-Benz190 was the ultimate car, advertised as "a radiant image of perfection in every measure"; that you could buy from Arcega's Department Store in Cubao, Quezon City, an imported frying pan, ten-inch diameter, of finest mirror-polished steel for P4.99; that President Diosdado Macapagal ordered the sale of government rice by the Rice and Corn Administration at P1 a ganta; that the fighting in Viet Name was escalating, that 1965 was the centennial death of Abraham Lincoln and of the birth of Sun Yat Sen; that the space race between the US and Russia was getting more heated; that the economy moved forward to register new highs in production and service, but economists saw a disturbing trend - the rate of growth suffered a sizeable decline, and money remained tight; that the Philippines celebrated the fourth centennial of her Christianization; and that Taal Volcano woke up after 54 years of dormancy to erupt on September 28, 1965.

I noted the last item particularly as a promising material for my plot. I wrote a reminder to myself - "Can be of use to the novel, Taal Volcano through a character." By that I meant I could situate a character in the Taal eruption and work him into the plot concerning the Ortiz family, the main characters in the story. So I made additional researches into the eruption itself. I went over old issues of the Manila Times, The Fookien Times Yearbook, and the Philippines Free Press, and xeroxed the related articles. Around 1,500 persons perished in the eruption while 55,000 were evacuated from the stricken towns. President Macapagal ordered the release of P500,000 from his calamity fund and P20,000 from the Sweepstakes fund. The PC, PACD, SWA, PNRC, Namarco, RCA and other government agencies were mobilized to help in the relief and rehabilitation of activities. I mentally processed all of these materials and determined how I could make use of them in my novel. Ultimately, I created the character of Cornelio, a victim of the eruption, and made him relate, in Chapter 18 of the novel, his struggle with the volcano which killed his wife, his children and his brother. This is one of the most satisfying parts of opf the novel for me, for I think I succeeded in using the research materials in shaping a believable character and situation. Cornelio's narration is one of the most dramatic parts of the novel. It was like that for the rest of the novel - I had to be sure through research work that historical truth and imaginative truth were blendend harmoniously.

Thus, while preparing the preliminary draft of the novel, I had part of my consciousness constantly focused on the historical accuracy of my materials. I knew that just one inaccuracy in that regard would rob the novel of its truthfuless, so I was very mindful of verifying, of checking and cross-checking the story's factuality. After I was satisfied in that matter, the writing of the final draft of the novel was no longer a crucial problem. The artistic configuration of the plot and characters came more easily because I had already prepared for it with sufficient research work. My imagination functioned more freely because it was not hindered anymore by questions of verisimilitude or historical truthfulness.

A New Kind of Writing Workshop

2005-05-22T13:46:00.000-07:00

Breaking Signs, Phil Panorama
05/22/05

A new format was introduced in the fifth IYAS Creative writing workshop held in the University of St. La Salle in Bacolod City April 25-30, 2005. Sponsored by the University of Saint La Salle and the Bienvenido N. Santos Crative Writing Center, with assistance from the National Commission for the Culture and the Arts, the workshop gave emphasis to actual production of literary pieces by the participants under the tutelage of specific panelists.

For five days, the fellows -- Anna Cristina Abola, Dennis Aguinaldo, Zoe Jon Alejandra, Mikael Co, Arvin Ello, Reggie Figer, Jeneen Garcia, Ava Vivian Gonzales, Vlademier Gonzales, Adele Pacificar, John Paul Samonte, Ma. Graziella Sigaya, Telsforo Singkit, Jr., Jason Tabinas and Winton Lou Ynion -- were guided in various stages of the literary arts by well-known senior writers - Resil Mojares, Cirilo F. Bautista, Elsa Coscolluela, Leoncio Deriada, Marjorie Evasco and Vicente G. Groyon.

Instead of a group of panelists giving textual criticism of the fellows' works, the new format involved the convening of a teaching staff with each member specializing in a particular genre and language and depending on the participants' profiles, for instance, poetry in Hiligaynon. The fellows were divided among the teaching staff based on the genre and language of their application, not more than four of them in each group. Each group worked independently of the others. The teacher devised a five-day syllabus that covered such things as short craft lectures, writing exercises, discussion and critiquing of writing exercises, consultation on works-in-progress, and the production of a new work within the workshop period. On the first and last days of the workshop, however, a plenary session was conducted where a panel discussion on current issues and trends of writing enabled the participants to place their individual artistic perspectives in the context of communal and national interests. Also, on the last day, a culminating program featured the presentation of the participants' output. Here, they explained the genesis of the work, the difficulties encountered in its production, and the solution they devised with their teachers.

The group of Poetry in Tagalog had this syllabus :

Unang araw - 8:30-9:30 n.u.
Pagkilala sa mga kasapi - 9:30-12:00
Panayam at talakayan sa Katotohanan at mga elemento ng tula 12:00-2:00
Pananghalian at Pahinga : 2:00-4:00 n.h.
Panayam sa Wikang Matalinghaga 4:00-5:30n
Pagsasanay 5:30-7:00
Pagtupad sa takdang gawain

Ikalimang Araw
8:30-10:30 n.u. - Pagtalakay sa takdang gawain
10:30-12:00 - Laboratoryo, Mga huling pagwawasto sa ginagawang takdang tula
12:00-2:00 n.h. Pananghalian at Pahinga
2:00-5:00 n.h. Palihan sa natapos na takdang gawain
7:00 culminating activity

A glance at this lesson plan will show that on the level of creative production, the teacher and the fellows have a close working relationship from the conception of the assigned task (in this case, the writing of a new poem of not less than 20 lines) to its completion; that, on the level of craft learning, sufficient ground is covered for the learning and exchanging of ideas about the various aspects of poetry, and that, on the level of critiquing, the fellow's submitted poems and poems-in-progress come under rigid and prolonged scrutiny.

Other creative writing workshops in the country are really criticism workshops only, and that is their crucial weakness. Fellows do not get a feel of the hands-on experience that a workshop implied. For a week or more, they get nothing but varied comments on their poems and stories, but they are not given the guidance and follow-up that would lead to the improvement of their art. The true concept of workshop, as Professor Groyon said, "is of a space in which things are produced, usually through craft, skill and labour," resulting in the generation and intensification of knowledge of the art. The IYAS Workshop, in this regard, is opening a lot of possibilities with the new format has utilized. We commend the people behind this significant change -- particularly Vice President Elsa Coscolluela, Dean Gloria Fuentes, and Prof Regina Groyon, all of USLS, and Prof Vince Groyon, of DLSU.

Cirilo F. Bautista, Resident Writer at De La Salle University

2005-05-21T15:41:00.000-07:00

Cirilo F. Bautista, Resident Writer at De La Salle University

A multi-awarded poet, Bautista holds a D.A. in Language and Literature from De La Salle University. He has published poetry, fiction, and criticism including Boneyard Breaking, Sugat ng Salita, The Archipelago, Telex Moon, Summer Suns, Charts, The Cave and Other Poems, Kirot ng Kataga, and Bullets and Roses: The Poetry of Amado V. Hernandez. His novel Galaw ng Asoge was published by the University of Sto. Tomas Press in 2004. His poems have appeared in major literary journals, papers, and magazines in the Philippines and in anthologies published in the United States, Japan, the Netherlands, China, Romania, Hong Kong, Germany, and Malaysia. He is a co-founding member of the Philippine Literary Arts Council (PLAC). Winner of the Palanca Hall of Fame Award, Bautista was hailed in 1993 as Makata ng Taon by the Komisyon ng Wikang Filipino for winning the poetry contest sponsored by the government. The last part of his epic trilogy The Trilogy of Saint Lazarus, entitled Sunlight on Broken Stones, won the Centennial Prize for the Epic in 1998. He was an exchange professor in Waseda University and Ohio University. He became an Honorary Fellow in Creative Writing at the University of Iowa in 1969, and was a visiting writer at Trinity College, Cambridge University in 1987.

Short Story: RESURRECTION

2005-02-28T12:53:00.000-08:00

Resurrection

On a Friday afternoon, Lazaro Corpuz, 38, businessman and head of a corporation that engaged in heavy machinery, emerged from the coolness of his office on the sixth floor of a building in downtown Manila; while the elevator carried his body to the ground floor, or while the building was going up against the stability of the elevator, his mind was flying somewhere else.Ernie was saying as he dropped ice cubes into his glass of scotch that it was better for Garmel, Limited – oplunk! 0 to chuck their deal with them if they would not honor their contract of two years ago, and – plunk! – anyway that lousy president of theirs was no better at golf than a crippled midget.Lazaro had smiled to himself then, thinking of Ernie’s peculiar manner of stringing illogical facts together whenever he wanted, out of envy or sheer malice, to downgrade someone.In this case, the president of Garmel, Limited, who was a friend of theirs both, having failed to deliver contracted items, became the object of his displeasure.The morning, however, ended well for him and Ernie and the absent president because Ernie took his suggestion of freezing the matter for at least tow days until they had heard from the erring company.Lazaro brushed away a bit of white string from the lapel of his dark coat tailored from Italian wool – how the devil it had got there he did not know, his office being air-conditioned and kept clean by a man he had hired to do nothing but vacuum its carpeted floor and dust the bookshelves and the mahogany table – thus he brushed the string away with a little annoyance creasing his forehead.In his expensive suit he felt big and important.Though his friends had ribbed for his western habit, he did not feel comopelled to wear the barong tagalog that Ernie and the rest of his staff favored.What they did not realize was that it was not a habit for him – it was his way of wrapping himself with prestige that his office, he insisted, called upon him to uphold.Inside his air-conditioned [sic] room he enjoyed the aura of superiority his suit gave him, but when walking outside the building, and this he had to admit to himself, he sweated a lot.His physiognomy was such that he sweated a lot, even in the mild season before summer.But then, so what?That was a small sacrifice he had to face, that was a reality he had to face because he, Lazaro Corpuz, had been chosen, out of so many men in the business world, to head a big corporation. He could not let the image of this corporation tarnish because he sweated a lot. Satisfied by this justification,
he looked up at the numerals blinking at the top of the elevator door. Damn, they should make elevators go faster. Suppose I have an appointment to fulfill (and he was glad that at the moment he did not have any), the way this box is running I’d surely be late for it.He gazed at his patent leather black shoes shining against the polished wall of the elevator and again a feeling of
satisfaction filled him.Just last night at a cocktail party, a man, he had forgotten whom – and so he was sure it was nobody important – remarked that he knew how to carry his clothes, and though it had elated him no end, he did not allow his elation to show, he merely nodded at the man as though what he had said was an incontrovertible fact, and therefore needed no commentary.Well, he though, stroking his gray silk tie – cravat, he always referred to it, for he found a secret joy in referring to it thus – he could give any man a run for hismoney when it came to good grooming.Not only was he handsome – that was another fact – but he could also afford to indulge his delicate taste.There was nothing theologically erroneous about it.He flicked
a strand of hair off the cuff of his shirt with a snap of his thumb and forefinger.He worked hard for his money, and it was not his fault that he was a bachelor – and would probably be to the end – and not saddled with a wife and kids.No one could grudge him his pursuit of the finer things in life.It was as though an emblem of some mysterious heraldric origin had appeared
before him, goldenwith some some strange inscriptions that said follow Me, and he had followed, and was still following.Along the way he had to shed off the naivete, the crudeness in words and mannerisms, to be worthy of this singular calling.It was a devotion whose outward manifestation took the forms of expensive clothes, the proper residence, the correct circle of
acquaintances, the right women.And all his waking hours he had stepped to the silent music which accompanied that emblem, ardor and uprightness his cul-de-sac, ready to joust with any intruder that would deign to break his vigilance.There was a slow, soft sound, and when he raised his eyes from his shoes, he saw the elevator door opening.

“Sir!”There was a voice somewhere near his elbow as he walked along the corridor.He turned around and saw Romero holding several sheets of white paper.

“Oy, romero,” Lazaro said with a slight irritation in his voice.“What is it?”He could not imagine what the office messenger wanted with him.

“I’m sorry to bother you, Sir, but these invoice slips I have –“

“Go see Reyes.He’s in charge of those things.”

His irritation was growing.

“I have seen Mr. Reyes already, Sir – he told me these needed your signature.”Invisibly, Romero was shaking in his shoes.Obviously he did not want to get in Lazaro’s way, but he did not want to displease Reyes either, Reyes being his immediate superior.He realized, however, that Lazaro was the Fianl eing whose decisions and orders made the corporation move, and
survive.The wretched man, thus noticing Lazaro’s irritation, had the mind to flee before Lazaro could say another word, and befroe he aggravated the situation, when Lazaro snatched the sheets from his hand and, after glancing at them, said, “Tell Reyes to see em first thing tomorrow,” and with a wave of his hand dismissed the messenger.By God, he said to himself as he resumed walking, what sense has this Reyes got?He should know better than to send a messenger after me.The time I have, my schedule.Again he rejoiced with the knowledge that he had no appointment to meet, at least for that afternoon.

The automatic door hissed ecstatically as he stepped out of the building.Momentarily he shut his eyes against the glaring sun that struck him like a giant machete, then he glanced at his gold wristwatch.Four o’clock.Time enough for a drink.God, how he needed one in this hot sticky
place.He was beginning to sweat inside his coat, but with the perseverance of a martyr buttoned it up, saw to it that his tie was straight, and lsowly crossed the street.a man was mugged, by mistake, by a group of thugs trailing a businessman who had just withdrawn a great amount from a bank; the peso’s devaluation, beautifully illustrated by a graph, showed its purchasing power declining in a world market; a man was hacked to death while sleeping hby his wife who had discovered his affair with her sister.From this last item – literally accompanied by photographs of the bleeding man in bed and of his contrite wife crying in the police station – Lazaro averted his eyes.He had never had the stomach for such bloody things, that was why he never bought htose papers, if he could help it, for they seemed to feature nothing but bloodshed; nevertheless, he had not totally outgrown his habit of browsing over their front pages spread out by the windows of the nesstands.Four-fifteen.He refused the offer of a sweepstakes ticket by a thin, almost cadaverous woman who hung by his side for a few hopeful seconds, then, seeing no encouraging signs on his face, turned around to try her luck with another passerby.He must tell Reyes not to bother him with those little matters of invoice slips.Anyway that was what he was paid for.He could always see the accountant in case of some difficulties.But God, to send a messenger to him, and just when he was about to go home – He dropped a twenty-five-centavo coin in the metal box of a beggar who, by all appearance, was no less healthy that he was, and the clink of the coin was like the sound of heavenly approval of his generosity.As it were, all that was lacking was the blare of clarions or a dance of pyrotechnics to announce his brotherly concern for his fellowmen.As far as he could remember, he had always
patronized that beggar.Probably because the beggar stood in front of the hotel where Lazaro usually took his afternoon drink, and the beggar always acknowledge this patronage with a slight inclination of his head which to Lazaro meant, “Much obliged.”Four-twenty.lazaro touched his tie involuntarily.He returned the droorman’s smile and strode across the hotel lobby.two Americans in their middle fifties, obviously tourists, were signing the hotel book.Their luggage stood beside the registry table.Turning left, Lazaro caught a glimpse of his imge in the giant mirror standing near a door marked “Cocktail Lounge.”He passed his hand over his hair, pushed the door, stood awhile by the doorway to familiarize himself with the dimly lit room, and moved across the carpet to the bar on his right.“Scotch on the rocks,” he said to the barman and took one of the stools linng the counter.It was here, secure and comfortable in this cozy room that caressed him like a womb, where he could sink into the luxury of fanciful cogitation, removed
from the pressure of office work.Papers.Papers.Papers.He had examined and signed mountains of them.Well, he could not deny that he relished his work, but a man needed respite now and tehn.The ice cubes tinkled in the glass as the barman handed him his drink.He took a sip and the coolness and the heat of the liquid snaked down his throat, leaving him with a sensation of
seductive warmth.How would eh tell Emma that everyhting was over between them?A charming girl, but a bit on the aggressive side.They had dinner together yesterday – one of those private expensive restaurants – and he had noticed the signs.She frequently spoke of “our friends,” “our summer vacation,” “our life”.Our.He did not like being spoken of in such possessive terms, no, even though the speaker was one whose company and beauty he had greatly enjoyed.He took another sip.No.The barman was shaking a concoction in a chilled glass, his face serious and impassive.No.He must tell her he hated to belong, to be possessed; he had plans which did not include – and this was what he read in Emma’s recent actions – marriage.He could write her.Dear Emma – I have told you how much I enjoy your company.I always look forward to meeintg you for you – and he smiled to himself at this – are on oasis that redeems me from the ennui of my uneventful days.He could imagine her sitting on the iron swing in her garden, a tall glass of iced lemonade on the table by her feet, reading his letter that would be sent by private courier.He knew that garden, he had been there several times before:there was a small fishpond by the brick wall covered by overhanging morning glories.She had told him the eyllow and blue angel fish had come direct from [sic] Hong Kong, and indeed he has been captivated by the tiny fish that seemed merely to float, so light and delicate they were in water.A pair of sculpted swans stood near the pond, to its left, while to its right was an invitation, almost life size, of the Venus of Milo.Yes, he could imagine her now going over the nseen letter, I’ve noted your – he did not know how to put it without sounding offensive – predilection for speakingof our affairs seriously.I made it perfectly clear from the start that our friendship would be just that – friendship, and I believe you understood that.She would crease her brows at this point, but what could he do?So, much as I hate it, I have to say goodbye.I know this would pain you, but, beleve me, it would pain me more.I must confess it would take me some time to get over the memories of the sweet time we spent together, your smile, your peculiar gestures, your love, yet I hae a life to lead, and must not object to such a sacrifice.He signalled the barman for a fresh drink and crossed his legs.Well, that was that.No used stretching the point.She would understand.He could evensend her a bunch of red roses, her favorite, with the letter, to indicate that he was a gentleman [sic] through and through.Not a bad idea.Satisfied, he sipped his second drink with concentration.A voice at his side said, “May I join you?”He turned and recognized Pete.

“Sure,” he said.

Pete dropped his heavy bulk on the nearby stool.

“I say, nothing better to smoothen a day that a cool drink, eh?” [sic] he said.

“How’s business?”Lazaro said.Pete occupied a room in Lazaro’s building hwere his name, with its proper title, in bold letters printed on the door, proclaimed his existencd:Pedro salgado, Attorney-at-law.

”I can’t complain.a lot of people still get robbed, or embezzled, and I have my hands full settling their problems.”

“Glad to hear that.”

“As a matter of fact, I even get divorce cases.”

“Divorce cases, in this country?Let’s drink to that.Come one, let’s have another round.This one’s on me.”Lazaro gave the order to the barman and when their drinks came they drank in silence, each momentarily absorbed in his own thoughts.Lazaro saw Emma again in the garden.Poor girl, but he had to do it.He remembered they had taken a stroll after dinner.When they came upon a jewelry store.Emma had stopped and looked at the display window.she pointed out a gold wedding band to him.“Wouldn’t that make a perfect wedding ring?”she said.Lazaro knew he was right.That was another sign.Poor girl.He finished his drink.Pete was still nursing his, with his big hand almost hiding his glass.Lazaro checked his watch.Five-fifteen.

“Well, I must go,” he said.He stood up.

“Appointment?”

“No.Home.see you tomorrow.”

“Same time, same place,” Pete said [sic] smiling.

THE DOORMAN opoened the glass door and flashed another smile as Lazaro got out of the lobby.the air had grown oppressively hot, and he began to sweat again.the liquor was working in his system already, no doubt about that, for he felt heady, the flesh of his cheeks was taut in reddishness, his lips dry.After reachiing almost the end of the block he remembered his car was at the serviceman’s.With a sigh of resignatino he walked back to the hotel, trying to ignore the progressive heaviness of his coat that now was like a sheet of copper embracing his trunk.He hurried to the telephone in the lobby.He fumbled [sic] for a coin in his pocket, found it, inserted it into the slot, and waited for a voice on the other end of the line.He was shaking his head as he put down the phone.dAmn it, just when he needed the car it was not ready.He walked out of the hotel, this time not noticing the doorman’s smile, and cursed under his breath. He did not enjoy the prospect of a five-minute walk to the jeepney stop and jostling for a seat in one of those infernal machines.He was still cursing as he climbed up the cement steps of the overpass.The neon lights of the tall buildings near the pass cast shadows of diverse patterns on the people who rushed up and down, their faces commonly haggard and unsmiling, for it was the end of the day for them who had jsut ememrged from struggling with time to earn a living.Typists,
seamstresses, vendors, teachers, waiters, writers – a little scrutiny of the arms, the hair, the movement of their bodies, would reveal they were there, but Lazaro did not scrutinize:for him they were all the same, a faceless tide of humanity that went by him in a kind of blurred procession, hardly distinguishable each from the other, confounding in their continued motin.He
slowed his pace to catch his breath.He took out his silk handkerchief and wiped off the perspiration that dotted his forehead.damn this heat.Paris, or New York – ah, that was something else.It would be spring at this time in New York with those pleasant smiling people enjoying the air and the oakleaves and the elmleaves putting on their sheen of green, and in Paris those fascinating ladies in short skirts greeting everyone, their pretty faces lending a touch of beauty to the already intoxicating beauty of the day, would be letting their hair go in the wind – ah, Paris, why had he not stayed there, why did he have to come back to this heat and this dirt and htis smog that was Maila?Shaking his head in mournful regret he quickened his pace.Well, there was hoe to anticipate, or what passed for his home, he being a bachelor – his apartment in New Ermita, with its air-conditioning and record player and refrigerator always stocked with the necessary provisions.He licked his lips thinking of the drink he would have right after arriveing home.ah, the feel of a soft couch under his tired bones... Occupied by theses htoughts he barely realized that he ahd already reached the jeepney stop.With dismay he eyed the long line of people waiting for a ride.Again he cursed under his breath.He hardly had the strength to fight for a seat with that number of people around, and the number, he noticed, increased rapidly.They were spouted out, as it were, byt he cavernous mouth of the nderground pass near the church and it seemed to him that all of them headed for the same jeepney stop.Damn it.He stood elbow to elbow with a man on his left and an old woman carrying a basket of cabbages and fish on his right.Well, nothing to do but sweat it out and wait.Lazaro dipped his hand into his pocket for the twenty-five-centavo coin that he would need for his fare; but hwen his fingers encountered no round, small, serrated object, he searched more carefully;
still there was no coin.It took him a while to remember that he had used his last coin in making thtat call to the serviceman’s.Grinning to himself in secret shame at this momentary lapse of memory, he took out his wallet.He hoped the driver would have no objection to breaking a five-peso bill – that was the smallest amount he always carried.He looked into the bill compartment of his wallet, and for the first time he felt a shiver that was like a cold knife against his spine:there was nothing there.No, it could not be.Just this morning he had fifty pesos there, he could not have spent all of it...In growing panic he explored his wallet meticulously, inch by inch.First he removed the various cards – credit cards, calling cards, identification cards, and a small plastic calendar – ad transferred them to his left hsirt pocket; then he went over the secret bill folder covered by a false flap, brought out some more cards, a few airmail stamps, folded pieces of paper where he had jotted down important phone numbers and addresses – still he could not find any peso bill.Once more, although he knew there would be nothing there, he turned to the coin pocket, inserted his forefingers there, hoping by some miracle to touch a coin – God, even just a single ten-centavo coin – but, God, there was nothing
there.No, it could not be.How come... In his mind he reviewed his activities that day in order to find out just how his money had gone.There was that drink – those drinks – in the bar, and before that, lunch, taxi fare to the office – no, he could not have spent fifty pesos for those things.There must be

...Damn it , yes lunch. That’s what it went. He had three guests for lunch- prospective buyers-and he had brought then to the Shanghai. He had forgotten exactly how much he spent there, but he knew the place was not

exactly a poor man’s restaurant. Yes. That was why-and this he recalled

vividly –the last peso bill he drew from his wallet was the one he gave to the

cashier in the bar, and it seemed there was no change for that , no, none. He

was fooled into thinking that some more bills remained in his wallet by those

folded sheets of paper. His panic subsided into fear, but even then he tried to

get hold of himself. He must not be put off by this. There must be some way-

Well, he could get into a jeepney, just the same, and alight nonchalantly later

as though he paid for his fare. If the driver demanded his fare, he could put

on an aggrieved face and say the driver must be mistaken, he had already

pain, then he could stride off with a show of indignation. Perhaps, the driver

would even apologize to him...but how couldhe really attempt it? Suppose he

bungled it, suppose he could not act convincingly, suppose the driver insisted

that he has not paid? No, it was dangerous. He could not do it. He could take

a taxi and pay the driver at home, but this was out of the question. Taxis in

this place, and at this time of the evening were as rare as pearls in a bucket

of oysters. No, he had to take a jeep. If only, his hand holding his

handkerchief stopped midway to his perspiring forehead, He experienced a

surge of hope. Yes, why did he not think of it before? Pete. He must still be in

the bar. He had to be. He would not object to a loan of, say, one peso. Lazaro

turned around abruptly, almost knocking down a small boy, and pushed his

way out of the crowd. Pete, he had to be there. Running, in spite of his

drenched coat that stuck to his back, and in spite of the slight, dizziness

caused by the liquor he had taken earlier, his legs covered the cement steps

of the over pass three at the time, so that when he reached the top of the

steps he was puffing. Still he ran getting down the last flight of steps , he ran

down the sidewalk, barely aware of the newsboys and newsstands and the

ticket seller, he ran past the record shop and the blareof a phonograph player

exuding the sounds of the latest pop song, he ran and ran and ran. The

doorman had barely the time to open the hotel door for him and bring out his

customary smile.He watched in puzzlement as Lazaro barged in and crossed

the lobby for the cocktail lounge. The doorman shook his head. Lazaro was

shaking in excitement and fear, or in a fearful excitement, running along the

corridor and avoiding looking at himself in the giant mirror. Reaching the

door of the lounge, he stopped and tried to get hold of himself . He passed his

fingers over his hair , arranged a lock of hair that had fallen over his

forehead, adjusted his coat , wipe his face with his handkerchief . After

achieving a semblance of composure thus, he entered the room. He gave the

interior a careful survey; there were more people now occupying the stools of

the counter; a man and a woman sat in animated conversation near the right

wall where the tables were lighted by the subdued discreet glow of small

electric lamps; clinking of glasses punctuated the formal atmosphere . But

his eyes encountered no human form that belonged to Pete . His heart

beating fast, he strode to the counter.

‘the usual , sir?’ the barman said.

‘not this time , Joe.’ Lazaro said. ‘but tell me, is Pete still around?’

‘Pete?’ The barman raised his brows

‘I mean Mr. Salgado. Attorney Salgedo.’

‘Ah, I’m afraid not , Sir. He left a few minutes after you did’

‘Damn it,’ Lazaro said under his breath.

‘Sir?’

‘No, nothing, thanks jus the same.’

Slowly, crestfallen, he moved out of the room. His legs were lead, and the

heaviness spread up to his lungs and head. He could not believe this was

happening to him. It was preposterous. He- Lazaro Corpus...He gave the

doorman a forced smile as the latter opened the door for him . Outside, he

paused by the hotel steps and stared absent-mindedly at the neon lights

blazing their messages on top of the opposite buildings. On the top of his

building , the image of a beverage bottle changed colors-now red, now blue,

announcing in unmistakable terms that it was a nation’s number one drink.

Lazaro sighed, put his hands deep in his pockets, gazed at the sidewalk. He

was about to walk uncertainly into the night when a glint of metal caught his

eyes. The thin hand holding the metal box was familiar to him. Lazaro

thought for a while and a smile flitted across his face. He approached the

beggar who extended his box to him. The box was already half-filled with

coins, Lazaro noticed.

‘You remember me, don’t you?’ Lazaro said.

The beggar smiled

‘Im glad you do. You see- ‘ Lazaro did not know how to put it. ; You see...you

know I always drop something in your box whenever I pass by, always.’

The beggar continued to smile.

‘Damn it, can’t you talk?’ Lazaro almost shouted.

The neggar’s eyes widened in fear, but he managed to open his mouth and

point out his tongue, at the same time shaking his head.

‘Oh, so you can’ speak. Well, as I was saying, I’ve always been kind to you .

This afternoon, I-well-I didn’t know it but I-we;;-I spent all my money-‘

Lazaro felt uneasy talking to the beggar. He quickly looked around to see if

anyone was watching him. A few people passed by hardly glancing at them.

‘You see,’ Lazaro said turning to the man again. The beggar stood pressed

against the wall of the hotel and stared with uncomprehending eyes at

Lazaro. The beggar had ceased smiling. ‘You see, I’ve spent all my money

and discovered it too late that I have none left to get home. That can happen

to anyone, can’t it ?Sometimes no forgets, no?’

The beggar held his box close to his chest. He kept staring at Lazaro.

‘It can happen to anyone.’ Lazaro continued. ‘Damn it, it happened to me

today. You realize I’m in a fix. Pete-Pete, my friend- has gone home and

there’s no one I could-‘ Lazaro winced, embarrassed at having to explain

such personal details to this unknown creature before him. ‘ What I mean is,

could you – could you give me back the twent-five centavos I dropped in your

box this afternoon?’

There was a blanked expression on the beggar’s face.

‘Just twenty-five centavos, man, that’s all I’m asking of you . Surely you

won;t refuse me that? Just twenty-five centavos.’

The beggar hugged his metal box and pressed closer to the wall. It was

absurd, surely this gentleman was trying to play a joke on him- this

gentleman was drunk. With pleading eyes he looked at Lazaro. Please, the

eyes, said, please leave me alone. I’m just a poor man, I can’t understand.

Lazaro became irritated at the beggar’s reluctance.

‘Look.’ he said, trying to conceal his annoyance, ‘ let’s consider this a loan,

see? Give me twenty-five centavos and first thing tomorrow I’ll give fifty,

even a peso, all right?’

The beggarshrank against the wall . The joke was going too far. If only a

policeman would come around...

‘Damn it, man,’ Lazaro finally shouted, and the beggar shrank further in fear,

‘can’t you understand? I need twenty-five centavos . Do you want me to rob

you out of it?’

The beggar’s eyes shone in terror and his lips quivered as though he wanted

to say something. Confused by Lazaro’s anger, and wanting to avoid another

outburst from the man, with shaking hands the beggar extended his box to

Lazaro. Lazaro smiled and picked up the twenty-five centavos coin from the

box. Then he walked away as fast as he could , grasping the coin firmly in his

palm. He climbed up the overpass and did not look back, for he was afraid he

would see the beggar following himwith his eyes. Lazaro slipped the coin into

his coat pocket and reaching the top of the over pass, he suddenly felt file

laughing out loud; and he did, but the sound came out in short muffled

ejaculations, staringstrong from the stomach and weakening at the throat,

much like a sob.

FOR NATIONAL ARTIST FOR LITERATURE 2005

2005-02-26T13:26:00.000-08:00

Letter of Nomination to the Order of National Artist

The National Artist Secretariat
Office of the Deputy Executive Director
National Commission for Culture and the Arts
633 General Luna Street, Intramuros
1000 Manila

The National Artist Secretariat:

We are hereby nominating Dr. Cirilo F. Bautista as National Artist for Literature of 2005.

Dr. Cirilo F. Bautista, described as a genius in language and imagination by National Artist for Literature (1973) Jose Garcia Villa, is a prolific poet, fictionist, essayist, literary critic and theorist,
columnist and educator.

His published books include:
- The Cave
and Other Poems (1968),
- The Archipelago (1970),
- Charts (1973),
- Telex
Moon (1981),
- Sugat ng Salita (1985),
- Stories (1990),
- Breaking Signs
(1990),
- Kirot Ng Kataga (1995),
- Words And Battlefields: A Theoria On
The Poem (1998),
- Sunlight On Broken Stones (2000),
- The Estrella D.
Alfon Anthology Vol. I - Short Stories (2000),
- The Trilogy Of Saint
Lazarus (2001),
- Bullets And Roses: The Poetry Of Amado V. Hernandez / A
Bilingual Edition (translated Into English And With A Critical
Introduction) (2002),
- Tinik Sa Dila: Isang Katipunan Ng Mga Tula (2003)
and
- Galaw ng Asoge (2004)

His works have been reprinted in Romania, Bulgaria, the United States, Hong Kong, China, Holland, Germany, and Malaysia. His epic poem Sunlight on Broken Stones won First Prize in the Epic Category of the Literary Contest sponsored by the National Centennial Commission in 1998.

We, the undersigned, respectfully recommend that you invest his contribution to Philippine literature with the acknowledged grandeur of the National Artist for Literature of 2005.

Thank you for your consideration of this nomination.

Very truly yours,

Villafania, Santiago
Moldez, Raul
Chancoco, Jose Jason L
Ancheta, Angelo

Welcome to CIRILO F. BAUTISTA Blogsite

2004-11-13T13:34:00.000-08:00

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