A Post-Mortem, sort of

I meant to text this message to everyone, but I'm a cheapskate. A lazy cheapskate. But, here it is:

The reading at Green Papaya last night was great. I'm no shutterbug and my phone is cheap-without-camera-a-snatcher-will-not-steal--so I cannot provide any evidence, your honor. But I had a fucking great time. And I think everybody had a fucking great time. So thank you, thank you to all who came, who saw, who read, who clapped, who laughed, and who cried. Hahaha.

Ngyar. Just spreading the love.

Three by Me

1
Hola! Inviting everyone to the poetry reading at Green Papaya on Wednesday, 30 January at 8PM. This reading is part of Green Papaya's Wednesdays-I'm-n-Love Open Platform. Readers are:

1. Mikael Co

2. Adam David

3. Mia Tijam

4. Conchitina Cruz

5. Joel Toledo

6. Angelo Suarez
7. Hussein Macarambon

8. Kash Avena

9. Corin Arenas

... and others, I hope. Haha. We're trying out a themed reading this time, and because it's (still) January, it'll be on new year's resolutions. Haha. Anyway, please come. Open mic readers most welcome, themed or otherwise.

2
Couple of weeks ago, my mom was here in Manila and we had dinner with my dad's half sister, and his half-brother and his wife. It was fun getting to know them, and more importantly, hearing stories about the grandfather I never met. It was amazing to get a picture of this man, whose surname I still carry, from people I hardly know--when my dad himself has so little of his own stories to tell. My grandfather, it turns out, was an hacienda administrator, a job which allowed him to travel--and have different families--all over the country. He had--as far as we know, anyway--a total of 11 children, the youngest only 6 or 8 years older than I am. And with my dad being the youngest of his first three children, my grandfather actually has grandchildren older than the youngest of his children. Haha. Amazing, I tell you.

3
That surname I carry, by the way, has been recently changed to Peram, as I've told in a different post. Thing is, my youngest sister--the one who looks completely different from me--had food delivered from McDo last night. The food came with the receipt addressed to an S. Peram. Whew! And here I was, starting to think I was living with a complete stranger.

*****
Bonus
A quiz:

The stories in this blog are:
(a) true
(b) false
(c) somewhere in between
(d) can be used against the author


"Finally the tables are starting to turn. Talkin' about a revolution." Bow

Three by Heaney

Blackberry Picking
for Philip Hosbaum

Late August, given heavy rains and sun
For a full week, the blackberries would ripen.
At first, just one, a glossy purple clot
Among others, red, green, hard as a knot.
You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet
Like thickened wine: summer’s blood was in it
Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for
Picking. Then the red ones inked up and that hunger
Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam pots
Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots.
Round hayfields, cornfields and potato drills
We trekked and picked until the cans were full,
Until the tinkling bottom had been covered
With green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned
Like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered
With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard’s.

We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre
But when the batch was filled we found a fur,
A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache.
The juice was stinking too. Once of the bush
The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour.
I always felt like crying. It wasn’t fair
That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot.
Each year I hoped they’d keep, knew they would not.


Personal Helicon
for Michael Longley

As a child, they could not keep me from wells
And old pumps with buckets and windlasses.
I loved the dark drop, the trapped sky, the smells
Of waterweed, fungus and dank moss.

One, in a brickyard, with a rotted board top.
I savoured the rich crash when a bucket
Plummeted down at the end of a rope.
So deep you saw no reflection in it.

A shallow one under a dry stone ditch
Fructified like any aquarium.
When you dragged out long roots from the soft mulch
A white face hovered over the bottom.

Others had echoes, gave back your own call
With a clean new music in it. And one
Was scaresome, for there, out of ferns and tall
Foxgloves, a rat slapped across my reflection.

Now, to pry into roots, to finger slime,
To stare, big-eyed Narcissus, into some spring
Is beneath all adult dignity. I rhyme
To see myself, to set the darkness echoing.


The Peninsula

When you have nothing more to say, just drive
For a day all around the peninsula.
The sky is tall as over a runway,
The land without marks, so you will not arrive

But pass through, though always skirting landfall.
At dusk, horizons drink down sea and hill,
The ploughed field swallows the whitewashed gable
And you’re in the dark again. Now recall

The glazed foreshore and silhouetted log,
That rock where breakers shredded into rags,
The leggy birds stilted on their own legs,
Islands riding themselves out into the fog,

And drive back home, still with nothing to say
Except that now you will uncode all landscapes
By this: things founded clean on their own shapes,
Water and ground in their extremity.


aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa--Poems by Seamus Heaney


*****
Wednesdays-I'm-n-Love. Poetry reading at Green Papaya on Wednesday, January 30th, around 8PM. Calling everybody who'd like to read--I don't want to limit the people I invite to the ones in my phonebook! Please text me if you want to read, or use the comments section. I will think up a list of readers, too. Sorry, I'm still on vacation mode (read: tamad). But let me know if you're interested!

*****
Anyway, tatlong kuwento.

1 So I went home to Iloilo for vacation. And to a talking-to courtesy of the parents--which I deserved, but for some parts. I will not talk of the deserved part--too embarrassing, I think, and circles back to the undeserved anger, anyway. My dad asked me why, after all these years--27 of them, I think he meant--did I just realize I wanted to pursue writing? What could I say? I could blame Pisay and its contract (and reduce the number of years of culpability by 12), or I could blame him for talking physics to me when I was a kid. But 27 seems like a good age as any to stop blaming outside forces for my choices. Still, it sucks to realize how much you still want parental approval--defiant 27 or otherwise--and realize you might never get it back.

2 My sister recently received her chem GRE results, with a whopping 97th percentile score. She also attended a chemistry conference complete with Nobel laureates a week ago. I, on the other hand, recently bought 5 poetry books at amazing prices, just firmly decided to get my MA in Creative Writing, and replaced a leaking faucet in my apartment with my own lil hands (plus a wrench, teflon tape, and a lot of swearing, but so what). Does she want to exchange places with me? I don't think so. Thing is, neither do I. Isn't it enough to know that?

3 My other sister, I recently grounded. So no partying for her until end of the semester. Who am I to impose this? And to think I took all precautions to avoid being a mom before I was ready. Turns out I didn't have to.

*****
So now what?

Nights out in the school yard

Well, sure I wanted to write more, but I just couldn’t—Reminds me of that idiot on The Simpsons Movie, complete with hick accent—“I cain’t. I simply cain’t.”

Besides, A. and I spent a couple of days on the beach, a little break away from the families between Christmas and New Year, which should be a requirement during the holidays. So I’m still sane, and tan to boot. Woohoo.

But. I hate it that I left off 2007 in such a silent, so-much drama note, when it really didn’t deserve it. The year ended well, despite… stuff. And as I’ve been telling myself lately, maybe the secret to having a good year is making it a good year. Versus, well, you know, waiting for it to happen.

So I’m really tempted to write down some resolutions. This new-year thing just calls for it, no? But, really, what would you care? And believe me, I’m an expert at starting something and not finishing it. So maybe it’s better not to present you with proof of something I’ll quit sooner or later.

But see, see? This is what I’ve been telling myself to quit. This pretending everything’s funny, fine, honky dory all the time. I’ve been playing this role too long, and now I can’t seem to shake it off. I am not a suffering artist. I am not suffering, period. I am not as cool as I’d like you to think I am. Matter of fact, I may not even be cool at all. I look awful in eyeglasses, and even though I’m comfortably wearing a pair now, I’ll probably never go out in public wearing them. And when Jonny Lang comes into the second stanza of his “Midnight Train” duet with Buddy Guy with that rough voice of his—I get the shivers, literally. God. I want to write, and I want it more than anything right now, but I can easily imagine some things too, that I’d gladly give it up for. See?

And it still bothers me that time renders everything relative. This might all be bullshit 10 years from now. Or in 6 months. Or tomorrow. So what does it all matter?

Which kinda nicely circles back to my initial point about making a good year.

I guess those are just some of the things I needed to get out of my system. Off the top of my head.

Okay, enough—to early in the morning and too early in the year, and I’m in Iloilo, which I found out recently is the City of Love. It’s too much, for my here and now. Look me up when I get back to QC, inom tayo.

Anyway, here’s a great song that doesn’t have to mean anything. (Since M. beat me to “The Origin of Love”. Hehe) Just to round everything up.

Found Out About You
Gin Blossoms

All last summer in case you don’t recall
I was yours and you were mine forget it all
Is there a line that I could write
Sad enough to make you cry
All the lines you wrote to me were lies
The months roll past the love that you struck dead
Did you love me only in my head?
Things you said and did to me
Seemed to come so easily
The love I thought I’d won you give for free
Whispers at the bus stop
I heard about nights out in the school yard
I found out about you
Rumors follow everywhere you go
Like when you left and I was last to know
You’re famous now and there’s no doubt
In all the places you hang out
They know your name and know what you’re about
Whispers at the bus stop
I heard about nights out in the school yard
I found out about you
Street lights blink on through the car window
I get the time too often on AM radio
You know its all I think about
I write your name drive past your house
Your boyfriends over I watch your light go out
Whispers at the bus stop
I heard about nights out in the school yard
I found out about you