Iwa Wilwayco at GP 3/25

ERRATUM: Tomorrow's WOP Writers in Conversation will feature Norman Wilwayco, interviewed by Mikael de Lara Co.

MONTHLY PERIOD: WRITERS IN CONVERSATION

NORMAN WILWAYCO AND JUN CRUZ REYES

MARCH 25, 2009, BAR OPENS 7PM

Current WOP resident MARTHA ATIENZA takes a back seat as she gives way to ANDREA TÉRAN’S Monthly Period: Writers in Conversation featuring activist from the gutter NORMAN WILWAYCO and venerable Pilipino novelist/academe JUN CRUZ REYES.

Norman Wilwayco delivers drugs, sex, (more sex,) and rock-and-roll, as he and fellow multi-awarded writer Jun Cruz Reyes dissect the Palanca-award winning novel Mondomanila in yet another edition of Monthly Period: Writers in Conversation. The conversation will also focus on Wilwayco’s writing genius after taking the revolutionary road and eventually bagging the grand prize for his recent novel Gerilya in the 2008 Palanca Awards. Risking hosting chores during this volatile and mind-crashing evening is WOP program director Donna Miranda.

Norman Wilwayco, aside from being a multiple Palanca award winner plays bass for a rock and roll band, writes for Filmless Films, and designs websites (Radioactive Sago Project.) He used to write for the popular television show Batibot and has contributed articles to Liwayway, Manila Times and Inquirer. Jun Cruz Reyes, multi-awarded writer and outstanding faculty, is Assistant Professor in the Department of Filipino and Philippine Literature of the UP-Diliman College of Arts and letters. He won the First Prize in the 1998 National Centennial Literary Contest for his novelEtsa-Puwera, and the National Book Award from the Manila Critics Circle in 2000.

I want a fight.

Why the hell not, and why not here?

So I have this thing, this medical thing which leads to a series of events, both now past, and future. One of those now past events is me getting a healthcare plan which approximately cost me 14k for the year. Versus yet-unforeseen costs, this is good, right? Harsh buzzing sound. No.

Because these healthcare people live for the fine print. They positively live on those shitty things. So now, I discover that my healthcare won't be covering my whole medical thing. Because of a technicality, where my diagnosis came two weeks early. Can you believe this? Healthcare is a matter of convenience now? And theirs alone, at that.

Now I want my money back. Now, I want a fight. Now, I want to say, if you're not going to give me my money's worth, then don't get my money. If you want to just get money from healthy people so you won't have to shell out a dime, then fucking do every single fucking test there is and tell them they're not eligible, then don't get their money. But you don't. And you want to know what I know why this is? Because you can see your sales plummeting, don't you? Well boo and two fucking hoos.

Now let me tell you: Bullshit. This how-things-are-done, shrug-them-off-and smile approach is bullshit. And that thing's bound to piss someone off. And it will lead to a fight. And I will fight. Because these things shouldn't go on uncontested. Because, corny as it fucking sounds, this is true: they get away with it because we do nothing.

And I will do something. And it's not just me. THIS, you can take to the fucking bank.

Magda-drama ako. You've been warned.

The sun was just setting, but bright enough still; the summer to sear your eyes, the blue bluer not for Ateneo, but because it was a clear, clear day and the gold of the setting sun made everything brighter, somehow, fresher: like the stark contrast of sudden light in darkness. One thing was clear to me: I don't belong there anymore. I was no longer student, teacher, of the academe. Of that place. And I miss it.

Watching L.'s class go through powerpoint reports, performing in front of their classmates and teacher and me, or giggling inappropriately to combat stage fright, or picking up where the partner trailed off because one knows the answer, I envied them. The students, the teacher, the ID that was still valid and that said, I am a part of this.

I don't miss being a student--the deadlines, the pressure of March, the exams--, and I don't (for now) want to be a teacher again. But I walked from the Library up to the CTC building, and I am a stranger to the place. I quickened my steps because I didn't want to meet anybody and have them ask why I was there. I saw a Librarian I had dealings with many times as a student, he was going down the steps perhaps to the smocket (I've seen him there, too), and he didn't recognize me. I worried a guard would stop me and ask for an ID. I missed the place, and it wasn't mine anymore. I have my memories of it, but it had none of me.

I left Ateneo--or the academe for that matter--because I wanted... What? Experience, I guess, and truth, and reality. But as my meeting earlier in the day illustrated, the real world deals mostly in denial, and non-responsibility, and questions that are not the point. At a certain part in that afternoon, I looked out the window, and saw the steel beams on the SEC C 3rd floor afire in reddish gold from the sun. I stole out the room for a quick minute to see if I could catch it set, but I was blocked by trees and concrete. I rushed out of the room to catch a sun that sets on the same bay everyday where I work, the same sun that sets in fiery red-gold, right in the middle of my street when I'm walking home on the weekends. What made me think this one, today, would be different?

In the middle of the class, L. handed me a copy of the poems of his student the physics major, and they were brilliant. Quiet, but firm, gritty, but not brittle; a little awkward, but plenty certain. Certain of his world, and the world before him.

I imagine he doesn't question his place, or the sun for that matter. Instead, he says, Let there be, and it is.