Gone Fishing

Click image for my obscenely amateurish video documentation of a catch.

***

Somewhere near, a family is praying for a happy home; it’s a new one actually, the foundation of which has been laid on the swampy grounds of Dagupan whence House Speaker Joe De Venecia can dig up memories of his youth. It’s true, yes; the public official with caricatured ears had spent many years in this place, though now gone are the last ripples of sixteenth century Spanish merchant ships, and now much fewer are the palm trees, the foreigners, the indigenous, and the overwhelmingly dense morass of mangroves.

But the provincial city is still the milkfish capital of the Philippines. This is why I am spending a good, slow hour by the fish pond of Uncle Fred (mother’s brother-in-law) with a rickety rod, bags of feeds, and a hard, fly-infested slice of spoilt bread. My cousin FJ claims that the fish love the scum; it’s what they feed on, this film of green dead, not very different –if I will now care to take note– from that which has condensed on the surface of the water, and perhaps on its floor, and which looks hardly as though it is this very ingredient that makes the catch –when fried or grilled– so divinely delicious.

How strange it is that we’re taking the time hooking and waiting and pulling and hooking again, given that several guests have already arrived at the new house, which is the first constructed along this rocky stretch of pebbles and gravel and dust rarely trampled on by modernly terrified vehicles. Auntie Josie also says the pink candles are ready to be lit for the blessing; they’re only waiting for the priest – as should we but also from under the roof, for the pond after all may be too long a walk.

The sun, however, is therapeutic. The sweat I give off of its heat is rejuvenating and the light that it glints off of the water is blinding. It’s not even the season yet for harvest. The wind of this Sunday noon is oppressively humid and the beers aren’t cold but I still think that if there is life elsewhere it won’t be nearly as facile and tender and infinite – not nearly, that is to say, like the lyrical motion of those creatures swimming below. To them, it's never well worth the pain when it ends, but it ends.

***


L: Cousin Eugene finds a net for the catch.


At the wet market; at the Caguioa fish pond in Dagupan.

Permeably

There was a drunken old man I saw last Sunday morning.

I was covering two sporting events along Roxas Boulevard –the 31st Milo run and The North Face’s “Run for Your Life” 100K Ultra-Marathon– and at the opposite side of the Manila Baywalk where the sun was not supposed to rise, I caught glimpse of the unsteady alcoholic. The shirtless, pot-bellied brown man, about sixty perhaps, wore a revolting moustache and goatee, some shabby whiskers on his rough face, though not quite a full beard yet, and I noticed he was holding on to a raggedy fold of blue cloth – lighter in shade than the wet denim shorts he had obviously urinated on. His eyes were half-closed. On his right hand he clutched the neck of an almost empty bottle of Tanduay Rhum, which in all likelihood was still full before dawn and which, perhaps, was not the first bottle from which he had been drinking. To stand upright was such a struggle for the man, as if he were carrying the weight of a terribly heavy misery, and I watched him lean against a shiny Civic parked in front of the Pearl of the Orient Hotel, inching slowly and tottering laboriously towards the shadows of a nearby shrubbery, as oblivious to the buzz of tens of thousands of runners rushing past as he was to the curious survey of this anonymous person by the concrete bench.

It was not an uncommon sight.

He was totally blasted, though, having taken more than five minutes to move on to the bronze SUV parked right next to the Civic. He kept wobbling, and wobbling, until finally his mighty weakness had taken all his strength; the man gave up, and he lay on the asphalt pavement that stunk of bitter newness, lay there a very long time. I wondered if he had a family, and if his wife was looking for him at such a time when he should be joining her and their children for a humble breakfast, but I let go of the thought and decided he was a lone fisherman. Or maybe he was one of those who proffered cigarette sticks and green mangoes along the promenade. Anyway he lay there motionlessly, eyes opened wider and in such a way that made me think he was powerlessly keeping watch over all the strangers before him.

That was almost a week ago.

I am now writing this an hour and a half past midnight, fresh from another alcohol experience in which I wasn’t the one having gotten drunk. When I agreed to meet F, my newly-promoted friend, at Tropezz Bar in Greenbelt, Makati, he cautioned me outright, “You might have to carry me home.” He was criminally correct. But I couldn’t have gone ahead with a clean conscience to finish the Nooteboom novel at home. But then I wasn’t in the mood for Cuervo, too, so I stationed myself at a nearby coffee bar while F celebrated with colleagues.

I waited about four hours before my friend finally called to tell me he was ready to be picked up. Walking with him out of the Friday night crowd and on to the taxi stop, I noticed –and with much enjoyment– that he had clipped a slice of lemon between the fingers of his left hand and was flinging his umbrella around like an epee. People were staring at us as he stepped into the front passenger seat, and I escorted him home with a devil-may-care sort of delight. During the trip, the serial lights of midnight traffic in Quirino Avenue were a kinetic blur.

When it was time to alight from the taxi, the driver pointed out to me that F, who was too drunk to have been conscious during the ride, had vomited all over his jacket and seat. On the passenger window were smudges of sweat from his forehead. As F went inside the house, I followed to fetch some used towels, a bottle of water, washing soap, and isopropyl alcohol. Then I stepped out again and wiped the vomit off of the upholstery. I apologetically gave the driver a hundred peso tip while laughing to myself a little.

Now there are things of which I may not speak, not always a model of sobriety myself. But binges can be grossly juvenile, whether you’re sixty or twenty-two and drinking martinis or cheap gin and with society or by yourself. Age –yes, age!– does not matter; nor does the rewards system upon which excessive drinking is often fatally founded. The problem is pretty much the same for everybody. And this is not, ordinarily, with the exception of me.

At this very quiet moment I am none the less very, very glad to be thinking clearly. Mr. Roy Blount, Jr., I agree with you that perhaps Dostoevsky has saved me tonight, when I ought only to observe, permeably, and take note of how lovely it is to be the one having a fine old time. Indeed.

Run for Cover

(The interviewee and interviewer, somewhere between Kilometer 90 and 100. By Nykko Santos.)

***

And so I trot to the University of the Philippines at Kilometer Zero of The North Face’s “Run for Your Life”, a 100-kilometer marathon-for-a-cause which I have been given the sadistic fortune of covering. (A hundred, yes; God I still can’t believe it was a brutal hundred.)

Under the murky shed of the university’s mountaineering club where everyone has gathered, the support cyclists are already going over their checklists and crumpled maps, giddy in their skin-tight yellow jerseys and feverish despite the late Saturday afternoon rain. The medics are zipping neon-colored First Aid kits, and the Kythe Foundation representatives have duly presented themselves at a wooden bench to receive what should be the early proceeds from the event, proceeds that will hopefully save the lives of impoverished Filipino children stricken with cancer. The younger runners and riders are flinging and tossing Frisbee discs to themselves, and one jokingly advises another not to worry, about the distance and wear and tear he means, that anyway “some people sell knees and ankles in Balintawak.” Those who know better, meanwhile, are stretching against the poster-embellished walls.

Such energetic bustle concentrated under this single roof is spirited with pre-hell camaraderie, and I feel just as if in the middle of a sporty Nat Geo production.

This is going to be one heck of an adventure, I tell myself. I wish to join in. Even though I am a journalist –an outside observer with a vile kind of confidence– and not actually an active participant, I still tell myself that I belong here. After all, I’ve recently withstood four and a half days’ worth of cigarette moratorium, and I’ve come here as a brazen contributor for Action and Fitness magazine. I’m wearing a Dry-Fit shirt, too, plus a week-old pair of Nike running shoes, not to mention a countenance that’s made to pronounce my eagerness and suddenly resurrected love for adventure.

Having jammed myself into the throng, a tape recorder in one hand and a press pass in another, I ask a friendly coordinator who the organizer is, and if there’s somewhere I can obtain a press release. On the second question he shakes his head. But immediately after this he points to a living, breathing advertisement of The North Face – blazingly stylish eyewear, blue utility backpack (from where a yellow bike helmet hangs), classic adventure mocha hat, high-intensity headlamp, breathable multi-trail shoes, black ankle straps, black knee pads, light moustache. (Under any other circumstance, my any other self would have made fun of him.) That’s your guy, the coordinator says, here, let me introduce you.

I pull out my silly corporate notebook from the depths of my shoulder bag. I also produce a business card, introducing myself as a part-time sports and travel writer and fulltime media practitioner. I offer a very wet though very firm handshake, and give off a very warm though very fake smile. Then I ask forgiveness for the ambush interview.

“Now, sir,” I begin, pressing the red Record button with a most professional sort of thumb action, “before I ask you what this crazy marathon is all about, can you kindly give me your name and your role in The North Face?”

“I’m Romi,” he answers. “Okay…Romi what?” I impatiently ask, whereupon he pronounces a French-sounding surname, the correct spelling of which I find rather difficult to decipher. I want to make sure he notices the inconvenience, so I scribble on my notebook something which looks as though I were a chicken writing with one of its feet.

“Garduce,” he says again, “Romi Garduce – that’s G-A-R-D-U-C-E.”

“Oh, I get it,” I mutter. Very French indeed; I think maybe I’ll use it for a short story in the near future. In the meantime I press him again: “May I ask for your exact title at The North Face?”

Before Romi is able to respond, Nykko the photographer grabs my shirt and pulls me aside. I wonder if his camera had run out of batteries this early, or if he needed again to go to the bathroom. And then he violently whispers to my ear, “Migs! That’s Romi, the Everest guy! Have you lost your mind?”

By “Everest guy”, I later find out, Nykko meant the mountain climber who last year graced the front pages of all major broadsheets for several consecutive weeks; who became the first-ever Filipino to climb one of the Seven Summits; who has planted the Philippine flag on the summit of such mountains as Kilimanjaro, Cho Oyu, Aconcagua, K2, Gokyo, and, of course, Everest; whose last mission was sponsored and documented by GMA Network, a local media heavyweight; and who, later this year or early next year, will attempt the steep climb to the peak of Mount Elbrus in Russia.

Somewhere within me, a pathetic fool cringes. My swagger disappears instantly, and in an attempt to save face I give Romi a friendly slap on the shoulder. So much for credibility, I think to myself. So much for credibility, Nykko must be thinking to himself. Then I wish I instead remained at home to prepare for next week’s creative writing workshop.

I manage a couple more questions while fearfully half-expecting Romi to tell me to go lick an ice lollipop. But he reveals himself, and effortlessly, to be the perfect diplomat, respecting the art of the interview and praising the hearts of the main runners. Later on, Nykko remarks, "His feet are still very much on the ground." And I agree. I suppose it really doesn't sound appropriate, but the Everest guy is still capable of excusing the truly pedestrian frustrated fictionists.

As We Smoked

There is a plethora of articles I carry inside the pockets of my pants. I carry these every time I leave the house. Collectively, they are responsible for adding about five pounds to my skinny frame. But these are, I say, pockets of miscellany which do not make me anywhere near as convenient and obliging as your average boy scout. The things are there because I have gotten used to them being there.

Herein are the things I always keep when I’m out: a prehistoric mobile phone (left pocket), a handkerchief (left pocket), a clanking collection of Philippine coins (left back pocket), crumpled coffee shop receipts (left back pocket), unused Wi-Fi Internet cards (right back pocket), a threadbare Louis Vuitton wallet made even more depressing by its meager contents (right back pocket), a business card holder (right pocket), a leather-strapped USB chain hanging from my belt, a decade-old Victorinox Swiss Army knife (for defense against street mongrels; right pocket), a fake Media ID (stuck in the wallet), and some few flakes of tobacco leaves (right pocket) which serve as ignoble remnants of where my Marlboros were once rumpled by commute and by the regular, awkward settlement on office furniture.

Ah – yes, I’ve quit smoking. It’s an achievement that’s quite fresh. I’ve no right to brag about it, which is what I am doing now, but the absence of cigarettes and my match is something –at least to me– rather noteworthy, as is the presence of 2 mg Nicorette gums (left breast pocket).

This development makes me nostalgic. Allow me then to indulge in my memories of a past life. You see, most of my friends are smokers either heavier or more social than I am, and I have learned that there’s a kind of courtesy among those equipped with tobacco to offer a stick, or a puff, to those who aren’t. Otherwise it would be like counting cash in front of a beggar.

Late last year, I was with a good friend –a smoker of the heavier kind– in his office, and it didn’t take me long to notice that at no point during our hour-long conversation did he light up a Marlboro, or his trademark archaic cigar. Had he run out? I was also alerted to the absence of the antique ashtray he usually placed on the table around which we conversed. I felt guilty and ill-mannered. “Here you go,” I stammered out, extending to him a wrinkled pack of Marlboro Reds as well as an expression of willingness to lend a lighter, if he hadn’t one. Although I knew he preferred Lights, he took one and lit it, probably telling himself that indeed, beggars can’t be choosers, especially if the beggar was looking for a nicotine fix. From there we resumed our talk.

As I sat like a frog, and he like a king, we exhaled away and let the white smoke around the dim room envelope us in a ceaseless silence.

The next time we saw each other was in an obscure coffee shop near my house. It was during the early part of the year. I was late for the rendezvous, with beads of sweat rolling down my forehead, underarms damp as the gods of weather and traffic decided to play around that day, and when I had climbed the stairs to catch my friend reading the dailies while looking fit to be tied, I immediately excused myself. “I’m sorry; I hate being late myself.”

“Want to step out into the veranda so you could smoke?” he asked, seemingly ignoring my apology. Perhaps he felt as though he never waited at all. “Okay,” I replied. “Let’s.” We took new seats which overlooked the traffic below and allowed the brittle winds to rattle his half-empty cup of latte. My friend, I saw, had an unlit cigarette stuck between his teeth, taking it off then putting it back again as though he were actually smoking. “You might need a match,” I assented, digging my right hand into the vaults of my denim jeans.

But he had kicked the habit. “It has been thirty days now,” he told me. “I’ve quit cold turkey after smoking for over two decades. I thought I’d need a cessation aid, like a gum or a patch, but decided against it.” I almost didn’t believe him; what a show-off he was being if I did! He brought the fresh end of the Marlboro back to his mouth, teasingly, and I asked, “Are you being masochistic or do you really still smoke?” It turned out that he had indeed quit. My friend was no longer a statistic, and in spite of this, he showed no signs at all of withdrawal: no fidgety gestures, no gnawing of the teeth, no involuntary twitching of the eyes – just a single stick of Marlboro to toy with. When I lighted, hesitantly, the first cigarette and then the next, I felt insolent, like a criminal puffing ‘hell fume in God’s clean air’. It did not help my disposition that the weather kept blowing the smoke right to his face.

A few weeks later, I once again caught up with my friend in his office. He offered a cigarette before I even got to say hello. The ashtray was back; so was the bitter, pleasant aroma that typically lingers around the dwellings or posts of smokers. I almost ventured to make an inquiry, but let it pass, though I did acknowledge the fact that I had a pack in my pocket and would, if he did not mind my refusal, expend on my own vices. He agreed.

In the course of our meeting, my friend smoked more than we talked, and followed the extinguishing of a stick with the lighting of another. He was chain-smoking like a pre-1983 Lucky Luke. But whatever it was he were doing to his alveoli we both made severe efforts to leave unspoken. His mood had become a mystery I could not divine, so I didn't attempt to. Eventually, it came to pass that his supply ran out, his pack of 20s, and that our inexorable conversation had no more topics to cover. We both rose to our feet and firmly shook hands. “It was good to see you. Goodbye.” “Thanks, and it was good to see you, too.” Before I took leave, however, and only out of learned courtesy, I presented him with a pack of Marlboro Reds with one filtered butt sticking out like sweet temptation. He looked up at me then finally obliged, and this was when I finally found the occasion to ask, “But I thought you had quit thirty days and more ago?”

He had ushered me to the door. I observed his face and saw that the corners of his eyes betrayed a kind of sadness. “Give me a break, will you?” he said with a smile and underneath it, a protest. “My wife is in the hospital.”

“Oh. What happened?”

“She has been diagnosed with cancer.”

“Lung cancer?”

He shook his head. “Ovarian. Stage four.”

We spoke no more, and from the lobby he watched me wait for the elevator. I stepped in, he went back to the office, and I imagined us both striking our lighters not five minutes later to spark the flames that don’t make us any less vulnerable to surprise, just a bit paralyzed. Smokers, I figured, never count the days.

Grump

The days of July spent at the office in Tomas Morato Avenue are marked by a concentration such as I have never had before. The amount of work to be done is the same; only the clients are different. So, too, remain the layered shirts which, in a kind of fashion not to be described as dapper, protect me from the air-conditioner temperatures and the cold air of late evenings. The rain showers are intermittent, but I rarely bring an umbrella, because if I do then I shall be equipped to go elsewhere. But I like better the romanticized idea of being quarantined inside the office –from eight to six, with several smoking breaks in between– and dread to expect calls that may bring me to the strangling space of such business districts as in Eastwood or Makati City, or Ortigas Center.

In the process of so doing, I have become a grump. At least that’s what people say. “Why are you being unapproachable?” they would ask. “You are such a corny person. Did you not have friends who hugged you when you were younger?” They ask lightly but inquire in earnest. My usual response, if I did manage one, would be something along the lines of “Forgive me; it’s all unintentional,” or “If I excuse myself as bipolar, would that be legitimate, or scary?” (If they begin to suspect I take lithium, then I only have myself to blame.) They say my tone is ill-tempered, but I am not so sure.

People often point to the lack of smiles I give or sense I make, or to my sudden disappearances felt while everyone else is joking around after an informal conference or playing Truth or Dare in a bar, around a table that reeks of beer and cigarette smoke. “Where were you?” Their gaze can be formidably terrifying. I’d say I was out for lunch, or had to check my plumbing, or was on the phone, or had been working on a press release the deadline of which was on the morrow. “Am I really hearing what I’m hearing? Dude – could you tell me why in perdition you’re listening to opera?” Why not, I’d counter, putting the headphones back on and sulking in my seat before they come up with a reasonable reply. “Kirby, what’s wrong with your friend? Why doesn’t this guy ever smile?” This will often put me on the quiet defensive, and I’ll smile a most appeasable yet vilely abashed smile. I seldom make graceful exits.

But I have, indeed, come to dislike talking excessively, or even sufficiently, and especially if I feel that the topics have breached matters outside of work. I am growing ever stauncher in my refusal to talk about family and coquetry, societies and sensibilities. I’d rather share my pleasure of having discovered such a thing as online karaoke. Strict efforts are also being made to edit my thoughts before they are blurted out. Many times I had made to speak, only to realize later on that I should have thought better of it (like when I promised I’d smoke only after each meal). Cultivation, as a good friend would say; I should start with manners, self-control, must learn to keep unhealthy passions at bay and practice my speech in a way that is both temperate and carefully formed. After all, the most fatal sin for a writer in a communications agency is miscommunication.

Something went wrong, though. Amid (and despite) what is, to me, the silent activity of duty, a general consensus has been reached: that I am the least sociable person in the workplace. I now feel like an enemy. Have I been diplomatic to a fault? Wanting to be enlightened, I recently asked a colleague if I really behave like I’d bite. “There seem to be invisible elements that prevent us from talking to you, some kind of serious, hostile aura, as if you never want to be talked to,” J said. “You’re always tucked away in your own little corner,” added S, “and I can’t help but think you’re simply brimming with angst, or manic depression. Or both. It’s difficult.” Angst and manic depression? But I am not Ernest Hemingway!

And so this past week, I’ve been taking the short walk on cobbled streets to a coffee shop in Bellagio Square, just to mull over how difficult I may have been. I am affected by other people’s opinions more than I’ll ever care to admit, you see, and if someone says my Café Americano is disgusting then I’ll think hard about it, then perhaps scamper across the bar to see if a sachet of sugar would spell the difference for him, or make a difference to me. A good dose of Equal may just sweeten my ‘aura’.

But then I learn to ease up, determine what not to compromise. The five-minute book reading after lunch is one. Nail-biting is another. And I will never take in stride any jokes about my real age (I’m really eighteen). So what? Many people have many quirks, making them different from another. If mine are translated as having the grumps, then I won’t –and, more importantly, can’t– do anything about it. And that’s irrespective of the weather.

Ilocandia, Pt. II

Sometimes I think I read too much and miss out the value of the spoken word. As the evening falls now, I remember what our tour guide Joe said earlier in the day when he had to take a leak. We had traveled deep into a thick barrio surrounded by brittle air and which land was dutifully lined with and covered by multicolored pebbles all obtained from quarrying, still not dry. From the back of our parked van, Joe took a bottle of juice and I, a can of beer. He declared, raising an index finger, “You may be doing it against the wall, but you’re not doing it against the law; but do it against the wind, old scout, and it shall come back to you.” “Were you a literature major then, sir?” I jokingly asked. “That was very Shakespearean, but it was actually pretty funny.” He replied, “No, I studied engineering,” and trod quickly into the shadows of a grey brick wall.

Like Joe, most of the locals here speak English as fluently as they do Ilocano, or Tagalog. They can carry, without any major difficulty, conversations with domestic tourists, as I believe I am, or with the foreigners, who, typically, would find a Filipina girlfriend in their first week or second upon arriving at any one of the islands. At times something might be lost in translation. But I believe nonetheless that in the deep consciousness of everyone is a vague knowledge that talk, or language, or voice, is misleading, and that it doesn’t always tell the whole story. Eavesdropping last night on a couple –an American, I believe, and his Ilocano sweetheart– who were staying in a room beside mine, I heard a male voice say, “You do want some spousal abuse, don’t you?” The girl giggled as though she were Nicole Eala reacting to the funniest, dirtiest joke ever aired on Love Radio.

I found, too, that as a testament to the minuteness of the place, everyone is related somehow or another to the local governor, the mayor, the provincial board, the city council, or the most popular dermatologist in town: they are distant cousins, or in-laws, or cronies, or residents of streets named after Ortega, Nisce, or Gulbuerto. In a collective undertone, these same people exchange whispers about when “the family” will exit the political arena, if they ever do.

“Have you been to Halo-Halo de Iloko?” Joe asked as we were deliberating on where to lunch. He said that the bistro was a can’t-miss, a surefire hit, a tourist spot in itself, and that everyone who visits La Union should visit Halo-Halo de Iloko, because the place was home to the finest local delicacies and the sweetest tropical desserts in the province. But we had been there the previous day, I pointed out; in its ambiguous light, I had even taken photographs of the wooden figurines with distorted faces and the posters of old women smoking tobacco and the other strange crafts which furnished the place.

So we ate instead at the Americanized Vegas Café in Fiesta Casino, where Joe sat in silence answering the day’s crossword puzzle. In the background we heard the distant, disordered noise of slot machines taking away the gamblers’ money. I ordered a chicken burger and a Coke and read Steinbeck until food was served. I think Joe had a sort of salad.

I should learn to keep quiet sometimes and just listen – listen, that is to say, in a way not unlike what I am doing now, listening to the angry rains and to the bowling games being played above the thick clouds.

Ilocandia

“There’s something laughable about this, the way the moon dashes through the clouds that blow.” – Philip Larkin

From where I stand I could hear the sound of waves breaking, then ebbing; see clearly the horizon where the dark sea and the darkening sky meet and the occasional white lightning ends; feel the cold whisper of the late afternoon breeze, the kind of which only forebodes rain and a starless night and perhaps a few draft beers, or wine and I’m sure as heck no cheese, all from the dimly-lit and severely hued bistro bar and which are to be drunk under thatched huts or dancing white parasols, in between minutes of idle chatter with strange expatriates from the West like Trevor the Australian decorator and Brian the English tobacco analyst, and with the Temptations softly bellowing “I’m Gonna Make You Love Me” from an old, old radio, but which is probably a Kenwood. It feels as though I am somewhere in Vietnam sometime after the war. But this is no longer morning, and I am only at Poro Point, the Northern Luzon headland that dips into the South China Sea and which encourages, almost fully, the slow loneliness of life in a small province like San Fernando where people drink all day, swim all morning, surf or play card games or chess all afternoon, forget diets, talk politics, and, finally, watch the sun set, just as I am doing now, spared of orange loveliness and warmth though the moment may be under the presently disagreeable weather. It shall be something of a comfort, I imagine, to meet the first raindrops with the surface of my skin, when they finally come falling.

Salsa

Allow me to hereby paraphrase an advice from a stalwart colleague whose truths overshadow his words, whose bon mots obstruct full justice to his eruditeness, and whose eruditeness does not…well, does not cast the most proper light on his magnanimity. He had dispensed the advice with his usual candor; now it’s a thought I have read over and over, printed out from the computer, posted on a flimsy corkboard in my bedroom to serve as a motivational reminder during evenings when the bitterness of decreased productivity in writing begins to gnaw the senses of mind and body and being. The words went like this:

“I agree to the very bottom of my soul that clear thinking is the product of clear writing, and that it takes time, multiple edits, and revisions. But there is no better therapy than writing; of the narrative kind like a public journal, one can give a good idea of who he really is – at least who he really is socially and externally. That social and external image is all a reader needs to know, but the author might know the author better, just a bit better, if he –the author– kept a journal, a private journal, a very private journal. Do you know the difference between a journal, a personal, private journal, and a diary?”

As a prophylactic measure –meant to address the palpable danger of not knowing myself better, a danger implied in the note above– I have Salsa. It’s my private journal, or my diary, if you will, obtained several months ago from a cramped bookstore concealed behind the university I went to, and of which the hard cover is designed with saturated illustrations of Mexican food and spices, ketchup and burritos, nachos and tequila bottles. A sort of rubber garter strap binds the logs and effectively secures the baloney contained therein.

In all respects, it is indeed ‘private’ – damning, of course, the fact that its author is one who has practiced public relations all his life and long before he even entered the profession. Salsa’s pages are running out like the chili sauce accompanying a burrito platter. Moreover, no one (with the exception, that is, of myself) shall find anything good or insightful in it: the jottings are, more than metaphorically speaking, some wild, wild, and free and bitter streams of an overwrought consciousness. A friend asked me a few days ago what “bizarre” things I do before I sleep. “I am corny,” I replied. “I have this diary, you see, and I consider it a fatal sin to neglect to write entries before I retire to sleep.”

But Salsa is a precious, albeit private, achievement. It is for me a perfect case of the end justifying the means. An early entry from about a month ago goes like this: “Recently I have been harboring great hatred against the papers. The reporters are out of control, glorifying showbiz and sensationalizing everything. What if it’s normal? They have been feeding us readers all kinds of tripe, regardless of whether or not we have an alternative opinion. So I say to the journalists and their indulgent subjects: 'I don’t give the tiniest rat’s ass about Ruffa Gutierrez, her domesticities, and her trip to Nevada…I’d rather read Philippine politics than absorb the crap you’ve been churning out, and if I say I want to read Philippine politics, that’s saying a lot.'”

Sometime ago, too, I wrote, “Presently, I am reading Vile Bodies, which is expectedly surprising and exceedingly hilarious. I wish I could write as savagely as Waugh and make fun of Manila’s bourgeoisie. I’d be detestable, too, like the author in his life, but at least I’d get to be published.”

Turning back the pages, to the date of my grandmother’s demise, another passage reads: “There may be nothing worse than death. Or they may be something, actually: the death of a loved one. Even worse perhaps is the death of a loved one’s memory…. grandmother never remembered my name when her conditions worsened. I felt like crying every single time she mistook me for someone else, felt much more like crying than when she died. If anything is truly heartbreaking, it must be the power of the mind squandering, drifting, disappearing into nothingness…the passing of the human mental faculty; for without reason, what will make us different from other animals? And so I weep for all whose reasons are deteriorating. Think about it: forgotten names, sporadic remembrance, spotless minds – these people live in solitude in all of solitude’s most tragic ways.”

From the above excerpts alone I have known myself better in three new ways: that I am convinced of the non-existence of literary journalists; that I am an impudent, loathsomely audacious snob; and that I treasure memory –of whosever, it doesn’t matter–, treasure memory more than a man’s limitations should ever be able to allow.

And so I write in Salsa. The events, as it were, I keep them chronicled. The thoughts I keep personal. And the memories I keep private, be it of mine and someone else, just so these are remembered in a rightful place before I drift to sleep and ease right into a world where its beings and their dreams –and its wilderness and their contradictions– are all vulnerable to being forgotten. When I wake, there will always be this fine old feeling, as of an author knowing an author somewhat a bit better.

Cicerone

(All photos, including those below, by Nykko Santos, who has put up his new online photo journal.)

***

The middle of last week was highlighted by a day-long immersion trip at the municipality of Angono in the city of Rizal, the so-called art capital of the Philippines, where scattered were a motley assortment of unheralded visual artistry and heritage sites. We drove to the modish Thunderbird Resorts for a photo shoot, but were more taken by the hotel’s convenient proximity to what no one stuck in Manila might ever discover: a breathtaking view of the lake, beside which were quiet –almost mute– fishing villages; the Petroglyphs Site Museum, where in 1965, National Artist Carlos “Botong” Fransisco stumbled upon a cave with Neolithic (3000 BC) engravings and which is now considered by UNESCO as one of the most endangered sites in the world (very Indiana Jones, archaeologically speaking); and imaginative figure painter Nemesio Miranda’s folkloric Arthouse. Touring the artist’s atelier and visual gallery, we learned that the place was also a venue for workshops, competitions, and exhibits – legitimizing its moniker as the town’s “School for the Arts”. We dined in the evening at the Nemiranda Art Café Grill & Restaurant. And I had a beer to sedate the dilettante in me, to ward off any manifestations of disproportionate impulsive excitement. That night I wasn’t able to sleep.

Before the weekend, I struck a brief yet very agreeable E-mail correspondence with Manila’s ultimate cicerone, Carlos Celdran. I asked him where I could find the “best little boutique bookseller” in Manila –the La Solidaridad, that is– because I was planning on spending the whole of Saturday acquiring a few good titles I was never able to unearth in any Powerbooks branch or ‘leading bookstore’. He gladly gave me the directions.

“But since you’re going to be in Manila anyway,” Carlos added, “go to Intramuros and check out the third floor of The Silahis Center (an emporium of arts, crafts, and antiques), where you’ll find Tradewinds Bookstore: great for Filipiniana stuff, and they have no idea how much anything costs.”

He was right. And I was more than thankful. I inserted Tradewinds in my itinerary, and it was where I first went, purchasing three very rare English-language books for a mere one hundred pesos: Lina Flor’s handwritten collection of light, humorous verses, Dilettante (it sells for thirty US dollars in online shops); Wilfrido Ma. Guerrero’s 4 Latest Plays; and a 1976 Regal Publishing copy of Boyhood in Monsoon Country by Maximo Ramos, considered the Dean of Philippine Lower Mythology. If I had had more in my wallet, it would have been a crazy spree. Still, with bigger change than expected, I bought a wooden “wet-and-wear” bracelet and a souvenir shirt with Philippine jeepneys on it. I felt like a tourist, and the feeling may have been accurate. I lingered about the cobblestone streets and quaint Spanish-era influences of the walled fortress long after I had finished two bottles of Sparkle –perhaps an hour just smoking and watching– and then finally stepped into a taxi on my way to the La Solidaridad.

The obscure bookstore, which was a stone’s throw from Robinson’s Galleria mall and located at the corner of Padre Faura and Adriatico streets, was better than advertised. That’s because it has never been advertised at all. The books were indeed expensive, although not more than what they should cost. I spent the rest of the afternoon in the maddened adventure of scouring the shelves, despite the realization that I was going to miss the grand Dunlop anniversary in Manila Hotel for which I wrote a painstaking script. But I only cared about that a little bit. A pretty curly-haired Caucasian, maybe an exchange student, joined me as she hunted for a couple of Penguin classics. We kept on sidestepping each other, muttering half-politely, "Oops, excuse me!" and "Oops, sorry!"

By the entrance, I noticed a magazine stand that displayed almost all of this year’s issues of The New Yorker, which cost 216 pesos each and which I believe will never, I mean never, be found elsewhere in the country. I didn’t get one due to financial constraints (next time, though!), but I did step out of the shop carrying three more titles: Lawrence’s Apocalypse; J. Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time; and a fresh copy of Sir Dean Francis Alfar’s Salamanca, which was awarded the 2005 Palanca Grand Prize for the Novel. There went my salary. For the next several weeks, I have therefore decided to be even less sociable than before. I will be uncompromisingly “booked”.

But not without first watching Transformers. Bruce Willis in what again?

***

Memories by Nykko Santos:

Thunderbird Resorts in Angono, Rizal.

A beautifully-lit evening.

Botong Fransisco's discovery: Neolithic carvings.

Nemesio Miranda's Arthouse.

Plaza Ibarra.

Not a cicerone.

Intramuros.

The walled fortress.