Nicolas Pichay and Khavn dela Cruz at Green Papaya 5/27

PAPAYAPOST

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WEDNESDAYS OPEN PLATFORM, MAY 27 / BAR OPENS 6PM

JED ESCUETA’S FORGOTTEN NUTS TURN INTO TREES runs until May 30, PIRATE SATELLITE of NU 107 spins for the evening

ANDREA TERAN’S MONTHLY PERIOD READING features NICOLAS PICHAY and KHAVN DE LA CRUZ IN CONVERSATION

DAVID GRIGGS’ NEW YORK LONDON PARIS ROME MANILA CITY JAIL runs until May 30

Those ready to fill-in the blank notecards lying on top of the table have gathered enough dust to stand for years of memory accumulation. Along with the phone call missed, deadline that has passed, and unsent postcards. Perpetual motion covers up the little god-like details sitting in the feverish bed of habit and comfortable metaphors. Is there indeed no time to stop and smell the flowers? Or the freshly pressed morning coffee waiting in the kitchen? Like the mythical hunter occupied with capturing the horizon to take back home, time is a slippery animal to conquer yet also a nomad equally fascinated with predictable monotony. And its faithful followers determined to outrun it, only to be disappointed perhaps or mesmerized by the prey. Frozen, stuck in a moment but oblivious to its eventual end.

End is far from near but we hear it approaching as Jed Escueta approaches the second half of his residency his photo installation Forgotten Nuts Turn Into Trees is still up for those who have failed to catch it the previous week. And because we like quiet evenings that mutate into crazy evening gatherings, Pirate Satellite of NU 107 joins us to spin the evening away. If you thought that was all, there’s more! Andrea Teran’s Monthly Period Reading returns all dressed up, prim and proper. Then maybe not. Tomorrow catch filmmaker-maverick-indie-man-of-the-world artist Khavn de la Cruz and award winning playwright Nicolas Pichay in conversation with each other as they wrestle the world of narrative, drama, cinema or even each other. See you, see you its another Wednesday to be in love!

The Wednesdays Open Platform residency is supported by Arts Network Asia www.artsnetworkasia.org

David Griggs's residency and exhibition is supported by Asialink and The Australian Embassy in the Philippines

GREEN PAPAYA ART PROJECTS

41 T. Gener Street (corner Kamuning Rd.), Quezon City Phone 0926 6635606

greenpapayaartprojects@gmail.com info@greenpapayaartprojects.org

www.greenpapayaartprojects.org / http://papayapost.blogspot.com

What we don't talk about when we talk about writing.

(Apologies to Raymond Carver, for paraphrasing his title.)

There are many things we don't talk about, when we talk about something; whether because we agree not to, or disagree and therefore don't.

I was once asked in a survey-of-sorts, "What do people not talk enough about?" And I had answered: the female, and how her biology does her in. I, at that time, was dealing with my own body and its little failures, specifically, and with feminism and its own failures, generally. Another person would have a completely different answer, I'm sure. (One male, at least, might think that all females talk about are their bodies.) But my point is, there are a multitude of things we don't talk about. There are things we dislike to talk about. There are some things we are embarrassed about. There are things we don't know. There are things we don't know we don't know. There are things we fear.

So we choose our battles, right? Yes. We arm ourselves with as much information as we can, and we talk about what is important to us, we fight for our positions; we say what we want to say.

This is not the case when we write.

Oh, there have been many talks on this. How the written work is like a child you let go into the world or something. How the author is dead. Formalism. The workshop setup. The inevitable. My own favorite is Resil Mojares' take on the written work as "artifact". Where the author is not just dead, but a million years ago. Artifact you happened to because you were looking, or you stumbled upon it. And working with what is in front of you because there might be nothing else, or digging further when you want it to tell you something. Or imagining the rest, because that's all it affords you.

I wrote a bad prayer-poem some time ago, where I remember hoping for "my life its own story, and my poems a life of their own." Despite the many failures of that particular work, this is my fervent hope, still. The word artifact, in itself, already contains this hope, this prayer, as in its original Latin arte factum, it means "made with skill." This is all the talk we are afforded when we write: Here is something I made with all the skills I possess. That's it . We cannot plead to its readers, Be kind, nor can we simply instruct it to get up on its feet once it has been trodded on. We have to gather the words, put them back together. Learn what we have to, hope for the best. Here is something I made with all the skills I possess. Over and over. Again and again.

There is another side to that hope, too: That once I let a piece of writing go, that I let it go absolutely. The letting go of a child analogy is perhaps too kind; it is rather a disowning. That poem or story, once let go, has no more to do with you except for the byline. That's all your relation to that work: that name. "The I is a dramatic I," according to Sterling Brown, and Adrienne Rich adds that "so, unless otherwise indicated, is the You." I is not I, and You is not You. Simple enough, yes? And yes, we talk about this. And in the disowning, there is no pleading or instructing You have nothing more to do with me, You are alone now. We know this.

Not enough, I say. Not enough like we talk about the author, not enough like we insist the I has to be Her, no other way. Not enough like we like our dose of chismis, of intriga. We know this, too.

I once read a poem about sex to group of writers where, after I had finished, some people started to chant, "Non-fiction! Non-fiction!" They were not clamoring for a non-fiction piece. At least, not in the way that indicated how they would've preferred the latter to my poetry. They were wanting more, along the lines of stories on sex, provided of course, that it was no longer "disguised" into poetry, or fiction. As if this is what we do: take apart, tear, mince up events in our lives sufficiently for "anonimity" and throw them together in a buket, like so much fodder. For the pigs. And these are the writers, I think to myself.

So yes, we talk about our works, our poetics, what we write about. We talk about why we write. There are a lot of things we talk about, when we talk about writing. Isn't it time we let our writing talk for itself?

the merry month of may

not for my neighbor, obviously. i'm speculating she or he recently broke up with someone. how do i know?

here's her/his soundtrack of late:

week 1: some Usher breakup song, from the album Confessions
week 2: How am I supposed to live without you? Michael Bolton
week 3: Just Once James Ingram

there's definitely a movement here: guilt, depression, regret. 2000s, 1990s, 1980s. my own movement has been this: amusement, pity (really now, Michael "the mullet" Bolton?!), and now, murder.

and i know it would be rather generous of me to try and understand her/his pain. but what about mine? going on week 4 now, and it's currently back to the same Usher song, the one where he screams, "Noooooo-oh-ooooh. No, no, no, no. No, no, no, no." over and over and over. (and so close too: i might have been forgiving if s/he hit the 70s. lots of good songs, the 70s.) and really, night after night after night now: her/his pain is literally mine.

i bet we're both asking the same question even: when will it stop???

if ever he hits the 70s (well, '69, actually), here's what i would suggest. for both our sakes:

Oh, a storm is threat'ning
My very life today
If I don't get some shelter
Oh yeah, I'm gonna fade away

War, children, it's just a shot away
It's just a shot away
War, children, it's just a shot away
It's just a shot away

Ooh, see the fire is sweepin'
Our very street today
Burns like a red coal carpet
Mad bull lost its way

War, children, it's just a shot away
It's just a shot away
War, children, it's just a shot away
It's just a shot away

Rape, murder!
It's just a shot away
It's just a shot away

Rape, murder!
It's just a shot away
It's just a shot away

Rape, murder!
It's just a shot away
It's just a shot away

The floods is threat'ning
My very life today
Gimme, gimme shelter
Or I'm gonna fade away

War, children, it's just a shot away
It's just a shot away
War, children, it's just a shot away
It's just a shot away

I tell you love, sister, it's just a kiss away
It's just a kiss away
It's just a kiss away
It's just a kiss away
It's just a kiss away
Kiss away, kiss away

--Gimme Shelter, The Rolling Stones

Once more with feeling: The world is just awesome!

Yes, yes, I am late, but I don't have TV (most of the time). I have been immersing myself in all the geek channels, and I've just discovered this:

I love, love, love Discovery Channel's "The world is just awesome" campaign. Brings out the E(nvitonmental) S(cience) major in me. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, but it's true! Deal with it. Hahaha.

"I love egyptian kings."

"I love the whole world!"

I love Bear Grylls.

I love Mike Rowe.

I love the Mythbusters.

I love Nat Geo, too.

I hate Animal Planet.

I wish I had cable TV.

I used to say, especially after I began to explore writing and the arts and (a little bit) regretting my science background, that BS stood for two things. I don't believe that now. After all, if science isn't the antithesis of bullshit, I don't know what is.

Sing it with me, "I love the whole world!" Boom de ya ya. Boom de ya ya.

A Letter Home

These paper walls

Someone had told me, was because Japan was prone

To earthquakes, and people had to deal

With shattering, the fall.

And how apt, I think now

These white sheets, the raised fibers

Like scars, the learned lessons.

The green of the tatami like leaves on the floor,

Except always fresh.

The whisper of sliding doors—

You remember. We couldn’t sleep once, Mang Jun going crazy, yelling at his TV. I knelt at the window to peek through the curtains but all I could see was a shifting blue light.

Our leaving like a sigh leaving

Our tired bodies before sleep.

Sometimes I dream about who lives now

In our old house. Here, spring to autumn

Everything is a-falling—

Sometimes I dream of how that light would flicker on his face, becoming green, yellow, blue. He is quiet then, in my dream, but the light shifts his expressions: pain, loneliness, the sigh, the anger.

Dead flowers, dead leaves.

Or how it could be empty

Light and shadow walking through its walls

All the silences between.

Those walls! I suddenly remember

The white-wash, the concrete cold and silent.

Those walls our country understands;

Sturdy like anything

That carries weight.

Response

Perhaps because I have been unknowingly baptized into the Catholic faith recently*, these are all about response. Mine, anyway.


Light, or years later
aaaaaaaEs en corto el amor, y es tan largo el olvido.
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa-- Pablo Neruda

Forgetting is only so long, Pablo
as it takes to forget.

Yet, if I regret my silence then
would you, that last sad poem?
and if this should have kept us
nights begrudging the stars their company,
the wind its infidelity--

What now, but certainty
of love and lament, their brevity,
and the fact of distance
between sight and star?
(Look now, how cold they are.)

Let the wind blow where it can feed
Time will take only the time it needs.


That Secret
aaaaaaaHow do they do it, those who make love
aaaaaaawith out love?
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa--Sharon Olds

Sex I've had, and more often good
But love I've held at arms' length.
My elbows unlock, I wish they would
That I might hold and be held if it meant
Even better sex, like the stories could
Tell--that is, if truth were their bent.
But older now, I can only conclude
These books, they've lied to us women.

Still a drink or two, of wine, I think
Will get me, at least, to your bed.
There's no need for the dance, or romance--
Some sheila (Or was it Sharon?)
Claimed the chase as pure religion--
Sex without love: I take what I can get
So don't worry about my rep.
That secret's out, and shouldn't be kept.


-----------------------------------------------------------
*
I was at Easter Mass, for the first time, last Sunday. I had no idea there would be a renewal of the the baptismal vows. Honestly, it felt like a mass wedding, with everyone saying I do all at the same time. And who was to know that the girl on the third pew has never (and I mean never) been baptized in the Catholic faith? in any faith for that matter? Well, that secret's out now.

I could've walked away, I know. But welcome is welcome. And it felt right, on both sides. I just feel silly, thinking all the people in the Church that day were my, well, kinakapatid or something. Haha.

And perhaps because the only place the holy water hit was my left hand, I can stop feeling guilty about wanting to write, and write about, all these things. Poetry, after all, is not a luxury, as another Lorde once said.

Weight without gravity

aaa1
There is no weight without gravity.
But matter and weight have come
To mean the same things:

What keeps our feet on the ground, what pulls
At clouds to return to sea, why we fear
The fall.

We have assigned them, too
To other things: meaning
and burden.

Weight no longer belongs to the body.

aaa2
My mother's weight keeps her pinned
To this hospital bed, chained
By our fears, by all she has to fight.

She is her body now more than ever.
The pressure of her hand in mine
A collection of mere molecules--

Matter acted upon by gravity.
And I waver at the edge of You and
This is not you, I tell her.

The weight of our worry pulls the water from her eyes.

aaa3
I do not fear the words dead, weight.
The part of my mother I wait to waken
Weighs nothing and means all.