Regrets

After several months of work on the The POC Review, the literary magazine or channel of Vibal Foundation's Philippine Online Chronicles website, I am no longer the editor of this project. Vibal and I have parted ways because of our differing views on how to go forward.

To those who submitted work that I approved for publication, Vibal Foundation will honor the decision. To those who submitted work but who have yet to hear from me, your work will be turned over to the new editor for consideration.

For inquiries, you may write to "thepocreview" at "thepoc.net" or "feedback" at "thepoc.net".

Thank you for joining me and Vibal Foundation in this effort. To you I offer my gratitude, and my apologies.

Two for the show

For the Art & Culture section of the Philippine Star, 12 April 2010. Photos by Hilda Abola.



The Gawad Buhay!—buhay for performing arts done live onstage—is alive and kicking. On March 26, the Philippine Legitimate Stage Artists Group, or Philstage, held its 2009 Gawad Buhay! Awards for the Performing Arts at the Cultural Center of the Philippines. Last year’s awards show, the first ever, was simple, even austere. This year’s show, still at the Little Theater, was a little longer, featuring more performances and awards in more categories. But most importantly, this second edition was better attended. As a result, the applause was louder, the laughter more boisterous, the good cheer more infectious. In my report last year, I said that I expected the next year’s awards show to generate a more enthusiastic response from the performing arts community. I was not let down.

The highlight of this year’s show? It’s hard to choose. Maybe it was Candice Adea and Angel Gabriel of Ballet Philippines performing Bam Damian’s “Excavation,” a modern, athletic piece that drew oohs and aahs then wild applause. (A show feels refreshingly different when your fellow viewers are themselves performers. They reacted strongly, sometimes wildly, without the diffidence typical of the theater-going crowd.)

Candice Adea and Angel Gabriel of Ballet Philippines wow the audience with their performance of Bam Damian’s “Excavation,” part of Masterworks and winner for Outstanding Choreography for a Dance Production.

Or perhaps it was the classy speech of Audie Gemora, who took home the trophy for Male Lead Performance in a Musical for his role in Repertory Philippines’s Sweeney Todd. Admitting he was skeptical when Philstage first conceived of the awards—Gemora sits on the board representing Trumpets—because he suspected they would only foment the division that marked the theater scene decades ago when he began his career. Sitting in the audience that night, seeing the happy crowd made up of people from different theater groups hanging out together, he realized his fears had been unfounded.

A personal highlight was Liesl Batucan’s teary thank-you’s as she accepted the trophy for Outstanding Female Featured Performance in a Musical. Last year, she was nominated for an award and lost, but you wouldn’t have noticed it by looking at her. She went up to me after the show and thanked me profusely for being a juror, then flounced about the room like a giddy child. This year she seemed just as gleeful during the show, then broke into happy tears as she went up the stage and held her trophy. She said she was glad not so much for herself but for the occasion, that her fellows in the trade were finally getting due recognition. That seemed to be the theme of the evening: gratitude that performing artists, always at a disadvantage because of the fleetingness of their craft, were getting the affirmation they rarely ever got.

One big happy family: the awardees and their friends enjoy themselves as they take the stage to mug for the many cameras in the audience.

It’s been a pleasure, and a wonderful privilege, to have served as a juror these past two years. I declined the board’s invitation to continue, not because of any issues I have with the organization or the awards, but because I’ve decided to pursue a different road. I will be editing an online literary magazine that will launch soon, a task that comes on top of my full-time work as an academic. I will no longer have time to watch many of these productions, and I thought it best to decline a role I would be unable to carry out.

My thanks to the Philstage board for having me as juror these past two years, as well as to the individual member-companies for their warmth and hospitality. My warmest congratulations to the winners of the latest batch of Gawad Buhay! awards, and may there be many more in the years to come.

The official announcement from Philstage:

Ballet Philippines dominates 2009 PHILSTAGE Gawad Buhay!

With seven major awards, Ballet Philippines’ Neo-Filipino emerged as the top winner in the 2009 Gawad Buhay!, the Philstage Awards for the Performing Arts, held on March 26, 2010 at the Cultural Center of the Philippines’s Tanghalang Aurelio Tolentino.

A dance trilogy that pays homage to Filipino heritage and cultural diversity, Neo-Filipino won the awards for outstanding dance production, ensemble performance in a dance production, female lead performance in dance (Candice Adea), male lead performance in dance (Ronelson Yadao), female featured performance in dance (Marian Faustino for “Amada”), male featured performance in dance (Lucky Vicentino for “Ulaging”), adaptation or translation (Alice Reyes for “Amada”), costume design (Gino Gonzales), and lighting design (Katsch Catoy).

Two musical productions by the Philippine Educational Theater Association (PETA) tied for second place with four awards each: Si Juan Tamad, ang Diyablo, at ang Limang Milyong Boto and Ismail at Isabel.

The two-hour program featured excerpts of nominated dance and musical productions performed by Ballet Manila, Ballet Philippines, Candice Adea, Joann Co, Sarah Abigail Cruz, Angel Gabriel, Victor Robinson III, and Richardson Yadao.

A distinguished achievement award called Natatanging Gawad Buhay! was also conferred on theater icons Zeneida Amador and Celeste Legaspi as well as corporate supporter Apon Philippines.

Celeste Legaspi receives a special award, the Natatanging Gawad Buhay!, for her long, illustrious career in theater.

Philstage is the country’s only organization of professional performing-arts companies with regular-season programming, repertory development, and performance pedagogy training. Its members include Ballet Manila; Ballet Philippines; Gantimpala Theater Foundation; Philippine Educational Theater Association, or PETA; Repertory Philippines; Tanghalang Pilipino; and Trumpets. The 2009 Gawad Buhay! jury is composed of Exie Abola, Walter Ang, Gilbert Cadiz, Ronald Elepaño III, Arvin Ello, Ralph Semino Galan, Rolando Inocencio, Glenn Sevilla Mas, Joy Parohinog, Geofferson Ting, and Basilio Esteban Villaruz.

The categories, winners, and other nominees:

Outstanding ensemble performance in a dance production: the cast of Masterworks (Ballet Philippines). Other nominees: the casts of Alamat: Si Sibol at si Gunaw (Ballet Manila) and Neo-Filipino (Ballet Philippines).

Outstanding ensemble performance in a musical: (tie) the casts of Si Juan Tamad, ang Diyablo, at ang Limang Milyong Boto (PETA) and Ismail at Isabel (PETA). Others: the cast of ZsaZsa Zaturnnah Ze Muzikal (Tanghalang Pilipino).

Joann Co and Victor Robinson III sing two songs from the year’s Outstanding Musical Production, PETA’s Si Juan Tamad, ang Diyablo, at ang Limang Milyong Boto.

Outstanding ensemble performance in a play: the cast of Madonna Brava ng Mindanao (Tanghalang Pilipino). Others: the casts of Mga Mansanas sa Disyerto (Tanghalang Pilipino) and Saan Ba Tayo Ihahatid ng Disyembre? (PETA).

Outstanding musical composition: Vincent de Jesus (Si Juan Tamad, ang Diyablo, at ang Limang Milyong Boto, PETA). Others: Vincent de Jesus (ZsaZsa Zaturnnah Ze Muzikal), Kalayo (Neo-Filipino), and Mebuyan (Madonna Brava ng Mindanao).

Outstanding musical direction: Gerard Salonga (Sweeney Todd, Repertory Philippines). Others: Jed Balsamo (Saan Ba Tayo Ihahatid ng Disyembre?), Vincent de Jesus (Si Juan Tamad, ang Diyablo, at ang Limang Milyong Boto), and Vincent de Jesus (ZsaZsa Zaturnnah Ze Muzikal).

Outstanding set design: Tuxqs Rutaquio (A Streetcar Named Desire / Flores Para Los Muertos, Tanghalang Pilipino). Others: Salvador Bernal (Saan Ba Tayo Ihahatid ng Disyembre?), Gino Gonzalez (Neo Filipino), Jonathan Janolo (Alamat: Si Sibol at Si Gunaw), Boni Juan (Ismail at Isabel), and Boni Juan (Si Juan Tamad, ang Diyablo, at ang Limang Milyong Boto).

Outstanding costume design: Gino Gonzales (Neo-Filipino, Ballet Philippines). Others: Michael Angelo Albay (Alamat: Si Sibol at si Gunaw), Gino Gonzales (Sweeney Todd), Boni Juan (Si Juan Tamad, ang Diyablo, at ang Limang Milyong Boto).

Outstanding lighting design: Katsch Catoy (Neo-Filipino, Ballet Philppines). Others: Martin Esteva (A Portrait of the Artist as Filipino, Repertory Philippines), Ian Torqueza (Saan Ba Tayo Ihahatid ng Disyembre?), Jimmy Villanueva (Alamat: Si Sibol at Si Gunaw), and Jonjon Villareal (Si Juan Tamad, ang Diyablo, at ang Limang Milyong Boto).

Outstanding sound design: Aries Alcayaga (Saan Ba Tayo Ihahatid ng Disyembre?, PETA). Others: Lamberto Avellana Jr (A Portrait of the Artist as Filipino) and Gie Bernardo (Ismail at Isabel).

Outstanding adaptation or translation: Alice Reyes (“Amada” in Neo-Filipino, Ballet Philippines). Others: Daisy Avellana (A Portrait of the Artist as Filipino), Liza Magtoto (Mga Mansanas sa Disyerto), and Don Pagusara (Madonna Brava ng Mindanao).

Outstanding libretto: Vince de Jesus (Si Juan Tamad, ang Diyablo, at ang Limang Milyong Boto, PETA).

Outstanding original script: Tony Perez (Saan Ba Tayo Ihahatid ng Disyembre?, PETA). Others: Vincent De Jesus (Si Juan Tamad, ang Diyablo, at ang Limang Milyong Boto) and Rody Vera (Ismail at Isabel).

Outstanding choreography for a play or musical: Carlon Matobato (Ismail at Isabel, PETA). Others: Dudz Terana, Phil Noble, and Carlon Matobato (Si Juan Tamad, ang Diyablo, at ang Limang Milyong Boto).

Outstanding choreography for a dance production: Augustus Damian III (“Evacuation” in Masterworks, Ballet Philippines). Others: Alice Reyes (“Amada” in Neo-Filipino and Edna Vida (“Ensalada” in Masterworks).

Outstanding male featured performance in dance: Lucky Vicentino (Neo-Filipino, Ballet Philippines).

Outstanding female featured performance in dance: Marian Faustino (Neo-Filipino, Ballet Philippines).

Outstanding male featured performance in a musical: Marvin Ong (Sweeney Todd, Repertory Philippines). Others: Miguel Faustman (The Fantasticks, Repertory Philippines) and Franco Laurel (Sweeney Todd).

Marvin Ong, who took home the trophy for Outstanding Male Featured Performance in a Musical, sings “Not While I’m Around” from Repertory Philippines’s Sweeney Todd.

Outstanding female featured performance in a musical: Liesl Batucan (Sweeney Todd, Repertory Philippines). Others: Kyla Rivera (I Love You Because, Repertory Philippines).

Outstanding male featured performance in a play: Dido dela Paz (A Portrait of the Artist as Filipino, Repertory Philippines). Others: Chrome Cosio (Madonna Brava ng Mindanao) and Jonathan Tadioan (Flores Para Los Muertos).

Outstanding female featured performance in a play: Peewee O’Hara (Apples from the Desert / Mga Mansanas sa Disyerto, Tanghalang Pilipino). Others: Mailes Kanapi (A Stretcar Named Desire).

Outstanding male lead performance in dance: Ronelson Yadao (Neo-Filipino, Ballet Philippines). Others: Francis Cascano (Alamat: Si Sibol at Si Gunaw) and Biag Gaongen (Neo-Filipino).

Outstanding female lead performance in dance: Candice Adea (Neo-Filipino, Ballet Philippines). Others: Lisa Macuja Elizalde (Don Quixote, Ballet Manila) and Yanti Marduli (Alamat: Si Sibol at Si Gunaw).

Outstanding male lead performance in a musical: Audie Gemora (Sweeney Todd, Repertory Philippines). Others: Nar Cabico (ZsaZsa Zaturnah Ze Muzikal) and Joey Paras (ZsaZsa Zaturnah Ze Muzikal).

Outstanding female lead performance in a musical: Mechu Lauchengco-Yulo (Sweeney Todd, Repertory Philippines). Others: Caisa Borromeo (I Love You Because) and Eula Valdes (Zsazsa Zaturnnah Ze Muzikal).

Outstanding male lead performance in a play: Lex Marcos (Saan Ba Tayo Ihahatid ng Disyembre?, PETA). Others: Juliene Mendoza (Saan Ba Tayo Ihahatid ng Disyembre?) and Jack Yabut (Saan Ba Tayo Ihahatid ng Disyembre?).

Outstanding female lead performance in a play: Shamaine Centenera Buencamino (Madonna Brava ng Mindanao, Tanghalang Pilipino). Others: Liesl Batucan (A Portrait of the Artist as Filipino), Ana Abad Santos-Bitong (A Portrait of the Artist as Filipino), Ana Abad Santos-Bitong (A Streetcar Named Desire), and Sherry Lara (Apples from the Desert / Mga Mansanas sa Disyerto).

Outstanding stage direction: Nonon Padilla (Saan Ba Tayo Ihahatid ng Disyembre?, PETA). Others: Jose Mari Avellana (A Portrait of the Artist as Filipino), Teresa Jamias (Apples from the Desert / Mga Mansanas sa Disyerto), Maribel Legarda (Ismail at Isabel), and Phil Noble (Si Juan Tamad, ang Diyablo, at ang Limang Milyong Boto).

Outstanding dance production: Masterworks, Ballet Philippines. Others: Alamat: Si Sibol at Si Gunaw and Neo-Filipino.

Outstanding musical production: Si Juan Tamad, ang Diyablo, at ang Limang Milyong Boto, PETA. Others: Ismail at Isabel and ZsaZsa Zaturnnah Ze Muzikal.

Outstanding play production: Saan Ba Tayo Ihahatid ng Disyembre?, PETA. Others: A Portrait of the Artist as Filipino, Madonna Brava ng Mindanao, and Apples from the Desert / Mga Mansanas sa Disyerto.

The need for validation: thoughts on the LS Awards for the Arts

On Wednesday, March 10, I attended the awarding ceremonies of the Ateneo Loyola Schools Awards for the Arts. The awards, now in their seventeenth year, are given to graduating students who have distinguished themselves in the different fields of artistic endeavor. Typically the recipients represent theater arts, music, dance, visual arts, photography, videomaking, and creative writing. This year was particularly important to me: one of the awardees was a student of mine in her freshman year.

She had stood out in a group full of achievers (it was a merit English class, an honors class of sorts). When the schoolyear was done, our composition and literature courses over, she expressed the desire to pursue the writing of poetry. But there was a hitch. She comes from a Chinese–Filipino family. She is a Management major. She told me that her career had been mapped out for her when she was much younger, and that when she broached the idea of moving over to the Creative Writing program to her parents, she got the cold shoulder.

So she stayed in Management but wrote poetry anyway. She took a minor in Literature in our English Department and went to writing workshops. She joined the staff of Heights, the school’s literary magazine. She kept writing. In a few weeks, she will graduate with honors. And a few nights ago, she received a trophy for her achievement in poetry.

As the program ended in the early evening, I stood among the crowd watching the awardees come to the stage of the Science Education Complex’s Escaler Hall to have their pictures taken with university officials and faculty (the president, the VP of the Loyola Schools, the selection committee’s members, among others). I looked around and saw that in the darkness with me, looking at the brightly lit stage at these wonderfully talented students and the representatives of the school that had just honored them, were the parents of the awardees. They had come here, invited by the school, to see their children celebrated, and see them receive their trophies from no less than the university’s president, Father Ben Nebres, and the vice president of the Loyola Schools, Dr. Achoot Cuyegkeng.

And that, I thought, as we milled about outside the lecture hall and made our way to the reception, might be the most important thing these awards do: validate the striving of these students. I suspect some of them, perhaps many, labor at their art without the approval of their families. If they don’t have to deal with outright hostility, I would guess they deal with, at best, indifference. Perhaps the kids leave their parents in the dark.

And of course, our world doesn’t care much for them and what they do. “Did you know what your daughter told me?” a writer-friend’s husband told her once. She had left the corporate world to be a painter and writer; she and the husband had separated. “She wants to be a writer!” he said, twisting the last word as if it were the most ridiculous thing in the world to be. I remembered that the parents of one of the awardees for theater arts hardly ever watched her shows, or so a friend of hers told me. I’ve seen her perform a few times; she’s terrific. It wouldn’t surprise me if most of the students on the stage that night had similar stories to tell.

Wednesday night I saw what might be the best thing the school can do for these budding artists: have their parents see them being exalted for their art by the school’s highest officials. By doing this, the school shows their parents that the path their children have chosen, no matter what others may say about it, no matter what they used to think about it, is an honorable one.

That student of mine brought along her parents, and after seeing the school honor her for her poetry, perhaps they will be just a little less cold to the idea of her being an artist. One day they may accept it, and, who knows, a long time from now, they may honor her for it, too.

* * * * *

A photo of the awardees c/o Tricia Gosingtian, who was honored for photography, is here. Father Nebres, university president, is on the extreme right. In the front row, left to right, are Dr. Marlu Vilches, dean of the School of Humanities; Dr. Beni Santos, director of the Fine Arts Program and herself a recipient of a special award that night; and Dr. Achoot Cuyegkeng, VP of the Loyola Schools. On the extreme left in the second row is Dr. Toby Dayrit, dean of the School of Science and Engineering.

“Women aren’t the problem. They’re the solution”

When I was still a copyeditor at a business-economics research institute in the mid-1990s, I read an article in The Economist that looked at countries around the world in various stages of development and which asked why they were as developed (or underdeveloped) as they were. I still remember the startling (for me) and startlingly simple path to development the piece found: send your women to school. Apparently, the more educated women are (and by extension, the better their state in society), the more developed that country was and could be.

That insight came back to me again when I came across this article in the New York Times (from August 2009) on the plight of women around the world. The writers point to a growing realization that "focusing on women and girls is the most effective way to fight global poverty and extremism. . . . Women and girls aren't the problem; they're the solution." Indeed they are.

The Women’s Crusade

Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn
The New York Times / August 17, 2009

IN THE 19TH CENTURY, the paramount moral challenge was slavery. In the 20th century, it was totalitarianism. In this century, it is the brutality inflicted on so many women and girls around the globe: sex trafficking, acid attacks, bride burnings and mass rape.

Yet if the injustices that women in poor countries suffer are of paramount importance, in an economic and geopolitical sense the opportunity they represent is even greater. “Women hold up half the sky,” in the words of a Chinese saying, yet that’s mostly an aspiration: in a large slice of the world, girls are uneducated and women marginalized, and it’s not an accident that those same countries are disproportionately mired in poverty and riven by fundamentalism and chaos. There’s a growing recognition among everyone from the World Bank to the U.S. military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff to aid organizations like CARE that focusing on women and girls is the most effective way to fight global poverty and extremism. That’s why foreign aid is increasingly directed to women. The world is awakening to a powerful truth: Women and girls aren’t the problem; they’re the solution. . . .

The rest of the piece is here.

The pleasure principle

For the Sunday Lifestyle section of the Philippine Star, 20 September 2009.

This was intended for Art & Culture, but my editors decided to run it today in a section devoted to books and reading. The published version features minor paragraphing and stylistic changes. This article is one in a short series on reading I said I would try to write more than a year ago. I've finally managed to finish the first piece. I'll get to the other two, but I can't say when I'll be able to deliver them.

The photo is from book/daddy.

It’s the first semester of another schoolyear, which means I am trying to get my students to read. And just as in previous years, getting them to enjoy reading feels like engaging in something like mortal combat.

By the time they arrive in my classroom these teenagers (mostly 17-year-olds) have been forced to read literature the whole time they’ve been in school, more than ten years for most. They’ve become quite familiar with the pressure to read “serious” and “important” things, have been made to read many so-called classics (or exemplars of “high” literature), have been forced to read stories and poems and plays on serious and lofty subjects. Many of them have come to resent this. At the start of the semester I asked them if there’s a difference between what they choose to read on their own and what they are made to read in school. The answer this time was the same one I always get: the two are dramatically different.

I dwell on the experience of reading in school because I suspect many of us form our most important impressions of books and reading in our school days. If we remember the experience of reading with fondness, chances are we become enthusiastic life-long readers. (A handful are even crazy enough to become lit teachers.) If our memories of it are tinged with distaste, we probably won’t read much beyond light and entertaining fare.

Why the divergence between what students are assigned to read and what they choose for themselves? An obvious culprit is school itself. Something in the very nature of the school as a learning institution seems to work against the nurturing of pleasure in the reading experience. For one thing, students are forced to read what the school makes them, and how many of us attend to requirements with the same enthusiasm we do to things we do on our own? Too often students go to their books with glum resignation, not glee. Second, students know they will be tested on their reading; the eventual exam or paper hovers in the horizon of their minds, tingeing their reading with the real possibility of failure. Third, students often are made to read things they would not choose for themselves, readings probably more difficult than what they are used to. The “classics” still form a large part of literature curriculums across the land, and the experience of knocking heads with Shakespeare or Balagtas, James Joyce or Nick Joaquin can be a frustrating one. If students have the added misfortune of having a disagreeable teacher who makes reading feel like drudgery, their fates as future non-readers are sealed. No wonder they turn elsewhere for pleasure.

Let’s be clear: there’s nothing wrong with pleasure. I think one thing we teachers of reading have neglected to do is make the encounter with the written word a pleasurable one. We emphasize learning, we train them in textual analysis, and we reinforce this with testing. Well and good. Except understanding a text is not the same as enjoying it. In the extreme, we may actually foster the former by sacrificing the latter. The fact of grades compounds the problem: at the end of the day we need to hand out numbers or letters, our appraisal of student performance. Grades are measures, and what can we measure? Understanding, yes; analysis, yes; enjoyment, no. Reading comprehension can be measured, but appreciation of a book’s beauty and depth of insight can’t. Grades are a necessary evil that can get in the way. And if students learn that grades are the be-all and end-all of education, then what will they care how beautiful a book is?

It’s hard enough getting students to enjoy reading in school without outside distractions; what makes things worse is that the array of pleasures available to today’s student — and today’s adult, for that matter — are multifarious to a degree never seen before. The quick thrills easily available to them, accessed through increasingly sophisticated technological devices, make the act of sitting still with a book seem awfully dull. A friend who goes to Boracay every New Year’s told me that five years ago, many people would lounge around with a book; this year they toted laptops and other gadgets and spent their time on Facebook.

Beyond school and the seductive glitter of entertainment technology lies a third, and perhaps most insidious, culprit: a culture that does not value intellectual work. The culture that produces and nurtures our children is one that looks down on work requiring any degree of intellectual engagement. Celebrity is valorized, but intelligence is not. We gaze at the beautiful, listen to the glib; we don’t care for the thoughtful or profound. Our movie stars and pop singers become famous, but our thinkers, those commentators and artists with astute insights into political or cultural matters, do not. Everywhere our young look they find that surface sheen, not substance, is prized and rewarded. They take their cue.

What do we do then about the problem of reading? One thing we — teachers, parents, and everyone else concerned about reading — need to do is put pleasure back in the reading experience. Or rather, we need to validate it. We need to tell our students, children, each other, ourselves, that it’s fine to read primarily for pleasure. I know my students already do. “Read for pleasure” is advice I don’t need to give them, because they already believe it. One of the common gripes we teachers of literature make about our students is that they don’t read, but I’ve found that it’s not true. At the start of every schoolyear I give out, in all my firstyear lit classes, a survey sheet in which I ask what they like to read. I’ve found that they do read. It’s just that their tastes tend to be narrow. Some read only light fantasy. Others read only chick-lit. Still others read only manga (Japanese illustrated fiction, very much like comic books). This year the Twilight books were a frequent answer. They don’t need me to tell them to read for pleasure. What they need from me is to say it’s okay to admit it.

What they also need from me — and this is more important — is to expand their definition of pleasure. The problem is not that we value pleasure so much, it’s that we define it too narrowly. Most perniciously, we think that pleasure should come easily. If something is supposed to be fun, it shouldn’t have to make us work. It definitely shouldn’t have to make us think. And because we get our pleasures so easily now, we demand that they always be easy.

But pleasure comes in degrees and in wide varieties. There is the pleasure of figuring out “whodunit” (as any reader of Agatha Christie or Raymond Chandler knows). There is the pleasure of trying to solve puzzles (as Dan Brown fans do). There is the giddiness of a romance novel, the fright of horror. But how about the pleasures we overlook? The pleasure of beauty, in language and in craft. The pleasure of characters rendered as if they were real people, of places vividly evoked. The pleasure of plumbing singular experiences, even sad and painful ones, of sharing the lives of the sorrowful, the lonely, the damned. There is the pleasure of insight, of ideas. The pleasure of contemplating the unfathomable evil and goodness in the human heart. But these pleasures often take some experience to arrive at, and some effort too.

Maybe that’s the most important thing I can do as a literature teacher: expand the sphere of pleasure. Get my students to try new works, new authors, new genres — new being what they would never choose for themselves. And if they make the discovery that beyond their previously narrow roads are many things wonderful and extraordinary, within reach if they would only take the time and effort, then perhaps they may turn into life-long readers who aren’t content to return again and again to familiar ground but who seek out new realms in which to venture. “The poem refreshes the world,” Wallace Stevens said. The book does too, its pleasures both common and sublime available to those able and willing to enter it.

Excuse me while I pull up my bra

For section ‘M’ of the Philippine Star, 16 September 2009.



This is how it went: I’m sitting in my cubicle with a senior, a girl of twenty-one years who is two months away from graduation. She’s sitting a few feet in front of me. We are having consultations, and the discussion is going well. I tell her how dramatically she, a creative writing major, has improved throughout the year that I have been advising her. As our fifteen-minute conversation is about to end, she does something I haven’t been able to forget since: she raises both hands from her lap, brings them near her blouse’s neckline (which hangs neither too high nor too low on her chest), then takes her thumbs and plunges them behind and beneath the hem of her blouse and, presumably, beneath the cups of her bra. With bra and blouse firmly pinched, she gives them a good tug upward. After it is over — it couldn’t have taken more than a second — she brings her hands back to her lap, then makes a casual gesture here and there to continue our conversation.

I sit there aghast, but she makes no sign that she has done something you don’t do in polite company. I fumble for words, then decide that it’s better not to remark on it at all. (Because, really, what do say after that?) After she is gone I go over to some female colleagues and ask them if what she did — I imitate the girl’s tugging motion — is normal. They smirk and giggle fizzily, like shaken soda bottles. She did that right in front of you? they ask. Yup, I say, just like that, without warning or apology. It was nothing to her. They give a look that says, what do you expect with kids these days? Over at lunch, in the company of other colleagues, I ask the same question, repeat the gesture. They react the same way — with surprise, dismay, and plenty of rueful laughter. Kids these days, they sigh, throwing their hands up.

I wonder: Is this a generational thing? I decide to investigate further. At a family gathering soon afterwards, I approach a cousin in her early twenties. I do what I now call the bra-tug. She shrugs and gives me a look that says, That’s it? What’s the big deal?

There’s another habit that I’ve found annoying: My wife and I are sitting in a theater. We arrived early and got aisle seats. To our left is a group of twentysomethings, one of whom stands and walks in our direction. When he gets right next to us, he hovers above us, gives us an expectant look and a thin smile but says nothing. We turn our legs to the side and let him through. He passes, again without a word. Later, when he returns, he does the same thing: stands wordlessly beside us, expecting us to let him through without a verbal prompt. We let him. I say to my wife, “Whatever happened to ‘Excuse me’?”

But I wonder: is he being rude? Or are my expectations just not aligned with his? Maybe many of his generation do it the way he does. After all, the same thing happens in queues. Someone wants to pass through the line to somewhere else, and they stand there right beside you without saying a word, hoping you move aside so they can walk through. “Excuse me” is passé, except I didn’t get the memo. (Such memos never seem to get to my desk anymore.)

And then there’s something I see in my very own classrooms: yawning. I remember being told growing up that it was rude to yawn in front of others, so if you felt one coming on, you hid your yawn with your hand or turned away. No way would you yawn right in someone’s face. Yet this semester I’ve already seen students sitting in the first row give me big, full-frontal, mouths-wide-open, head-tipped-back yawns while I’m standing in front in the middle of a sentence. I think they’re being rude.

Or am I just being prissy? (And defensive, too — my classes aren’t that boring, are they?) Could I be overreacting, making a mountain out of a mannerly molehill? Or am I on to something real? Have I put my finger on an important characteristic of this younger generation, one they aren’t aware of but which sticks out to me like someone picking his nose in the middle of a crowded room?

And then there’s the matter of texting. If I send my parents a text message, I know that they will acknowledge it with a reply, even if just an “OK.” If they text me, they expect as much of me. My siblings are the same; send them a message, and they let you know they got it. My students, though, are not. I send a message — maybe I’m sick and can’t come to class, or I’m running a few minutes late — and very few, if any, reply.

I’ve got a theory: these habits are a sign of a blithe uncouthness afflicting our young. They simply don’t value manners the way older generations did and still do. They are less sensitive to how their actions will be seen by others. In the age of the Daily Me, that apt term for the ego-stroking echo chamber we make for ourselves in these gadget-infested times, this should be no surprise. As we become better at surrounding ourselves with experiences that please us and at keeping away those that won’t (only the music we like on our iPods, only our friends as contacts on Facebook), we become far less attuned to the feelings of others. Especially to feelings of disapprobation. To those on the outside of such a cocoon, the person inside looks indifferent and apathetic, not to mention underskilled in the art of living with others. And who else would be more accustomed to living in such cushy virtual aeries than our technology-besotted youngsters?

But then again, all this could be hasty generalizing, my quick willingness to attribute the faults of a handful to an entire age group. Besides, rude and polite are terms made meaningful by context. We might want to think that these are objective qualities, but they depend on what people expect of each other, and expectations change over time, over generations. One example: The written invitation has become passé in the age of text messaging, but don’t tell that to my folks. They still prefer invites that you pull out of envelopes, that you can slip into your book to mark your place, that burn when lit. For my part, you need only text me if you want me at your party. I won’t think you’re rude.

Expectations depend on where you are, too. Just as I was explaining this theory of mine to another friend, cleverly linking the uncouthness of the young with a general degradation of good manners and hospitality in our society, she stopped me cold when she said, “But that’s only in the city.” Older and far wiser than me, she explained that people who lived outside the confines of our snarling cities still display the civility and kindness that is disappearing here. And since I’ve lived most of my life in the belly of the rude urban beast, I never noticed.

Ultimately, maybe I am making too much of all this. I think of my parents again. I love them, but sometimes I think they’re fussy old coots. It could be that I’m turning into one, too. Maybe the best thing to do is to shut up and accept this generation for what it is, full-throated yawns and all. Besides, things could be worse. Years from now kids might be fixing their wedgies in public and think nothing of it. (I hope to God I’m retired by then.)

And come to think of it, maybe it’s best that the girl who tugged at her bra right in front of me did so without any fuss. That showed a kind of grace, didn’t it? Imagine if she’d said, before doing so, “Excuse me while I pull up my bra.” Now how would I have reacted then? Some things should be done quickly and quietly, no? I’m sure the flabbergasted witnesses among us will be most grateful.

And now for something completely different 12

Only those who were around in the 1980s when MC Hammer was a star (but not for very long) will get a real kick out of this video. A flash mob of dancers wearing "hammer" pants invades a posh garment store on Sunset Boulevard selling skinny jeans. Hammer time lives!



And in case you want more, here are Darth Vader and his stormtroopers grooving to the same tune. (Chicks might dig Han Solo, but tell me, can he dance?)

Marking time

For section ‘M’ of the Philippine Star, 26 August 2009.

My editors changed the title of my piece, but I'm posting it here with the original title, which I much prefer.



Last year my fortieth birthday came and went, and just a few weeks ago my forty-first birthday whizzed past too. So far I am happy to report that I have not gone out and bought a shiny new saxophone or an expensive sports car, or hooked up with a skinny 22-year-old model.

I remember welcoming the arrival of the year in which I officially would become a fortysomething with the enthusiasm one reserves for visits to the dentist or to one’s in-laws, or to one’s dentist who also happens to be an in-law. In my mind I was okay with the arrival of the big Four-O. But as the weeks went by and the fateful day approached, I became increasingly anxious. What exactly was bugging me? I thought I had made my peace with one’s inexorable march toward old age (assuming I got there in one piece) and ultimately oblivion. Friends tried to console me. “Fifty is the new forty,” one said, which only made me anxious about one more thing, the big Five-O that loomed in the distance. “You don’t look a day over thirty-seven,” chuckled another, which should have been funny because it’s something I might have said. Nothing made me feel better.

My wife, sensing the arrival of one of my dark moods (during which I am absolutely no fun to be around), suggested a trip out of town. So just a few minutes after the clock had struck twelve on the inevitable day, we were on an express bus to Baguio, and I was trying in vain to get some sleep. We arrived at five in the morning, and I’d forgotten how cold it could be up in this mountain city. One’s amorphous angst is easily overcome by whip-slappingly cold air.

One of the images from that day that has stayed with me: sitting in a restaurant on Session Road looking out a window at a hazy, rainswept afternoon while the smell of bangus sinigang and sizzling pusit filled my nostrils. It was a Saturday in the middle of August. For someone who hadn’t been to Baguio in years, and whose trips always coincided with summer, the wet weather felt strange, as if I had walked into a house a day too late for a party. I wondered, as we ate our hot lunch in the middle of the afternoon (we napped from mid-morning till past noon), if this—the rain, the overcast sky, the sight of people huddled under the awning just outside the window to keep dry—meant anything.

In the weeks before this year’s Taboan, the first international Philippine writers festival held this past February, I remarked to a colleague how anxious I was at being invited to join a panel of writer-critics. I rattled off the names of the other panelists, saying I didn’t deserve to be in their company. “Exie,” she said, “you have to accept the fact that you’re no longer a young, up-and-coming writer.” I couldn’t think up a retort, but later I thought of what I should have replied: I’m a middle-aged writer who hasn’t quite arrived.

I suppose it’s a matter of course for us to mark these moments in our lives. A plump round number is convenient—forty, fifty, sixty—and we stop for a moment to take it all in, to take stock of our lives, glance backward and peer up the shadowy road ahead, wondering what lies beyond what we can see. For writers, it’s even become customary to turn such musings into a reflective poem or essay. The poet Donald Justice writes, in “Men at Forty,” lines that began resonating with me a few years ago: “Men at forty / learn to close softly / the doors to rooms / they will not be going back to.” What doors to which rooms have I closed softly, knowing I will not be returning to them?

Billy Collins mocks the practice in his poem “On Turning Ten,” in which the preternaturally self-aware persona says: “This is the beginning of sadness, I say to myself, / as I walk through the universe in my sneakers. / It is time to say goodbye to imaginary friends, / time to turn the first big number.” Such introspective gloom from a boy wearing sneakers! Funnily, the voice in that poem sounded like mine, when I was a teenager.

There is no drama to this, and the turn in this road is just one of many, just as a birthday is one of many days on a calendar, no different from the rest except that it happened to be when you came into this world. It would be great if each birthday, and the round ones especially, would coincide with some momentous event in our lives, something we can’t help but celebrate, something worthy of a fireworks display. But our experience tells us that such a thought is romantic. Our lives pass by in small waves, often too small for us to notice, though occasionally a far larger one comes by and rocks our little boats. Then the water settles, and it goes on lapping us gently but inexorably forward. When we notice, we see that we have moved on; there is no going back.

Later that day we heard mass at the Baguio cathedral then went looking for an Internet café. Early that evening I was checking my email and replying to birthday greetings. Afterwards we went to a bar and had a beer, then went back to our quaint hotel and watched a History Channel show on the Great Wall of China before going to sleep.

That was last year. This year we didn’t go out of town. We simply had lunch in a restaurant at a nearby mall, had coffee, then went to a bookstore. Then we went home to catch the Ateneo–La Salle basketball game on TV. (My team won handily.) I turned on my computer to find my Facebook page overflowing with greetings. That night I prepared for school the next day.

Again I wondered if it all meant anything. Now, more than a week later, maybe this is what I can take away from it all: I am in good health. I share a house with a woman I love and who loves me and who cares deeply about how I am doing. Just this past weekend I had lunch with my family; my parents had just celebrated their 46th wedding anniversary. My two siblings who are married brought their beautiful kids along, and we ate some really good Pinoy food. We talked about movies and TV shows we’d watched, how my youngest brother and his girlfriend were doing in their new apartment, how my older brother was putting on weight. It didn’t rain too hard that day. That night I prepared for school, work that I’ve found to be fulfilling and meaningful (when it doesn’t make me want to tear my hair out).

In other words, I live a charmed life. There, I feel better already. I have everything I need, and I think I’ll be fine. An electric guitar would be nice, though.

“We have a word for it—sayang”

Here's a New York Times piece on how Filipinos realize, in the wake of Cory Aquino's death, that little has changed in the country since the People Power revolution of 1986.

Filipinos Lament How Far They Haven’t Come

By Seth Mydans
The New York Times / August 20, 2009
News Analysis

MANILA — When former President Corazon C. Aquino died this month, Filipinos filled the streets in mourning and in celebration of the golden moment in 1986 when she led them in a peaceful uprising that some called a revolution.

The nation’s dictator, Ferdinand E. Marcos, had fled as masses of people faced down his tanks, and democracy was restored after 20 years of repressive rule. Mrs. Aquino, the opposition leader who became president, ushered in wide-ranging political reforms.

But the weeks since Mrs. Aquino’s death at the age of 76 have been a period of self-examination and self-doubt among many Filipinos, as they consider how little has really changed since then.

“The legacy is the mess we are in,” said F. Sionil Jose, 84, the nation’s most prominent novelist, pointing to continuing poverty, inequality and political disarray as evidence that the nation failed to capitalize on its moment of possibility.

“We have a word for it — sayang — ‘what a waste,’ ” he said.

In schools, coffeehouses, rice fields, churches and offices around Manila and in the countryside, there seemed to be a shared sense that the people of the Philippines had failed themselves. . . .

The rest of this sobering piece is here.

(Hat tip to Gibbs Cadiz.)

“This unbearable distance between us”

As a followup to that Penguin ad campaign for reading, here's another lovely one, this time a TV commercial. (I'm sure I got this from among one of many online contacts, but I've forgotten who. My apologies.)