Vegetarian siopao! Two office mates brought these to the office. I bought two for P50. They are awesome.
Speaking of awesome, check out these two short stories I recently discovered online:
Things You Don’t Know by Ian Rosales Casocot
The Depressed Person by David Foster Wallace
Howee Pinoy non-fic. :)
The Kobayashi Maru of Love by Carljoe Javier
Oh to be the writer’s (former) other. I suppose the ex (“Cha”) mentioned in this collection of essays understood what she was getting into when she first started dating author Carljoe: she would be written about, turned into a muse and exalted during moments of glory, and destroyed after that final act of departure.
But fear not, “Cha” and friends of “Cha” – she isn’t murdered here. She is alluded to, cried over, pined for (sometimes), but this book, ultimately, isn’t about her. It’s about Carljoe. The object of the (Kobayashi Maru) game is not to malign the girl, but to let her go.
The book is divided into three parts. Part I, two essays written while C and C were still together, was the book that never came to be. Carljoe said in his preface that he originally wanted to write a book about his relationship, but alas, the relationship ended in a break-up. We will not be told what happened exactly, but there are references to “infidelity”.
Part II are seven short essays written (presumably) a week after the break-up. The pain is here. Heavy stuff. But Part III shows Carljoe escaping the shackles and the hurt of that week, trying to pick up girls in bookstores, dancing with metrosexuals, etc.
(Venson Evangelista, a trader burned to death in January, was a high school friend of Carljoe’s and is mentioned in one of the essays. It was rattling, saddening, to see his name.)
It’s a fun read, bright and breezy. This is a self-published book, so it might be hard to find. I bought my copy in Sputnik in Cubao X, but you can go message Carljoe on his FB here to ask how you can buy his book.
And you know what? He’s now “in a relationship”.
Showbiz Lengua by Jose F. Lacaba
I write, I love language, I love its sounds and how it flows, but I am no grammarian, I am no lexicographer, I am no Lenguador, so this book is an absolute treat for me. Lacaba (or Sir Pete – he was my professor in Feature Writing) in this book primarily dissects the origin and meaning of words used in showbiz, but he loves giving random word trivia as well. For example, I didn’t know that siyam-siyam (Inabot na ng siyam-siyam ang hearing.) refers to typhoons that take days – almost as long as a novena (novem – nine) – before leaving. And did you know that the word “awit” went through a semantic change via “generalization”? Originally, in literature, an “awit” is a form with four lines per stanza and 12 syllables per line and with one rhyme scheme, like Leron leron sinta puno ng papaya/Dala-dala’y buslo sisidlan ng bunga etc. But awit later on became synonymous to song, any song at all, regardless of metric count.
I learned a lot from this book.
The Mighty Reading List!
Saturday
Feast for Crows
The Kobayashi Maru of Love
Showbiz Lengua
PGS Horror issue
Floating Dragon
El Bimbo Variations
The Tesseract
The Dispossessed
100 Bullets
Our Story Begins
Recall that I’ve written a recap of sorts of the Kritika Kultura soft launch. Check out these other links:
1) Adam David tries to articulate/define/pinpoint what the “new” is in Pinoy writing. He mentions the “Pinoy strain of Postmodernism” which could possibly be dubbed the “New New Romanticism”, which sounds just about right to me.
Read:
It could also be the country’s general Romantic Catholic aesthetic rearing its big red head, the Modern Pinoy Writer’s undying deference to the Sublime/Padrino/Matrona, to the Modern Pinoy Writer’s undying worship of Artifice: so, instead of it being a departure in the way the Postmodern is in the West, maybe it’s actually more a mutation of the Romantic Tradition, ie, the Old reregarded with rose- and sapphire-tinted spectacles. So maybe, the truer taxonomical claim would be that the antho is an exhibit of New New Romanticism.
And really, it does make sense. Despite the many experimentations of new Filipino writers in their prose and poetry, we can still smell a whiff of the sublime, the soul, the soaring spirit, and all manners of the awe-inspiring ek-ek we identify with Romanticism in their work.
But maybe the editors will have a deeper exploration of this thesis in their upcoming intro to the anthology.
2) Adam has also uploaded mp3 copies of the KK soft launch. Download them and listen to the roundtable talks and the poetry readings.
On Feb. 14 a little boy came over and handed me an apple tart from Rowena‘s.
The tart made me want to go back to Tagaytay already. Yum.
We were wary of the traffic, so we initially planned to go to QC, have food delivered from TGI Friday’s, and watch some shows while waiting for the food. But traffic was (surprisingly) light for Valentine’s Day, so we decided to dine at Mom and Tina’s. Jaykie’s treat!
Have you ever been? We’ve been to this restaurant several times. They have good food (soup, pasta, steak, sandwiches), and even better desserts. We go to the one on E. Rodriguez in Pasig, but there’s one now in Makati (G/F Unit 104, Tropical Palms Condominum, Dela Rosa St., Legaspi Village).
I had chicken and chips!
I always order their walnut tortes, but that night I tried their Baked Oreo Cheesecake. Our Awesome Planet swears by it.
Best. Oreo. Cheesecake. Ever.
Seriously. I’ll order this again next time.
And I only had the solo portion.
Before we headed out, the woman behind the counter (Jaykie wonders now if it was the Mom in Mom and Tina’s) stopped us and said we had a Valentine’s gift from them.
Yay free cupcake!
It was good. :)
P.S.
Let’s talk some more about food! Read Jaykie’s culinary adventures on V-Day.
I’ve been out of school since I graduated in 2007, and I have never written a serious paper since then. I no longer know how to write/talk about literature the way literary majors do. The way I used to do, perhaps (I was a Journalism major but I took a lot of creative writing electives and enjoyed the discourse). I was able to follow the discussions of editors Mark Anthony Cayanan, Conchitina Cruz, and Adam David, but I felt like an outsider, a gatecrasher (even though I’ll have a poem in the anthology).
But let me try:
The editors mentioned in the roundtable discussion(s) that the “new” in Philippine literature (or at least in the contributions) follows the practices of Western modernism. Modernism is a break from tradition. It is a movement away from Romanticism, with its focus on the “soul” and the “soaring spirit” and all that is awe-inspiring. When I think “modernist literature” I think “fragmentation”, I think “pessimism”, a marked disillusionment. (Understandable, since Modernism came to the fore after the first World War.) I think James Joyce and Virginia Woolf and Ernest Hemingway, I think despair and alienation and experimentation with literary rules and accepted forms. Modernist literature champions the “I”, the individual.
It sounds like the “new” in Philippine literature is the same old “same old”, but I am very interested to read this anthology. We mentioned experimentation with form, so look at this poem:
The soft launch featured several readings, but alas, I can be a poor listener if I don’t have the text in front of me (esp. if it’s a long text, as is the case with “The Story of Love” by Alyza Taguilaso, who read a section of her poem in a very soft voice, “Between what we know as finite and the person in your mouth” by Carlos Quijon, Jr., and “Invisible Islands, or Theses on Philippine Disappearance” by J. Pilapil Jacobo), so I was only able to fully appreciate Petra Magno’s “In all the pleasance of your seriousness”, John Revo Ocampo’s “Problem Solving”, and Anna Oposa’s “Facebook Makes and Breaks Relationships”. I enjoyed Anna’s spirited reading of her piece. Tamang energy lang para sa subject matter.
I sat beside fellow contributor Tin Lao! Good thing I saw someone I knew, or I would have felt incredibly out-of-place hehe. I also met her daughter Sinta, who also had purple frames for her glasses.
It was nice to say hi to Mark, Adam, Chingbee (who never seems to age – can poetry make you wrinkle-free? lol) and Christian (who’s going to be in the antho as well, congrats!). Too bad I had to leave early.
One of the contributors (Arlene? Arlyn?) came up to me after the event and said she liked one of my poems, which of course made me blush happy. (Arlene, Arlyn, if you’re reading this – thank you.)
Late posting! The World SF News Blog has reprinted my story, “Sand, Crushed Shells, Chicken Feathers” for its Tuesday Fiction section. This story originally appeared in Philippines Free Press.
The World SF blog is manned by Lavie Tidhar and Charles Tan.
Okay one of the editors just confirmed it with me so:
I’m going to have a poem in the Kritika Kultura Anthology of New Philippine Writing. Thank you to editors Chingbee, Adam, and Mark for the comments and edits.
There’s going to be a soft launch on Friday! Come to the event and let’s say hi (awkwardly) to each other!
From Adam David, on Facebook:
SOFT LAUNCH OF THE KRITIKA KULTURA ANTHOLOGY OF NEW PHILIPPINE WRITING IN ENGLISH
A Satellite Activity for Taboan 2011: The 3rd Philippine International Writers Festival
Natividad Galang Fajardo Conference Room
Dela Costa Hall, Ateneo de Manila University
11 February 2011, 4:30-6:30 PM
PROGRAM
WELCOME REMARKS
Dr. Marianne Rachel Perfecto, Chair, Department of English
READINGS BY SELECTED AUTHORS
“The Story of Love” by Alyza Taguilaso
“Between what we know as finite and the person in your mouth” by Carlos Quijon, Jr.
INTRODUCTION TO THE ISSUE EDITORS
Ivery de Pano, Managing Editor, Kritika Kultura
ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION, PART 1
Mark Anthony Cayanan
Conchitina Cruz
Adam David
READINGS BY SELECTED AUTHORS
“In all the pleasance of your seriousness” by Petra Magno
“Invisible Islands, or Theses on Philippine Disappearance” by J. Pilapil Jacobo
ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION, PART 2
READINGS BY SELECTED AUTHORS
“Problem Solving” by John Revo Ocampo
“Facebook Makes and Breaks Relationships” by Anna Oposa
Q & A
Isabela Cuerva
MASTER OF CEREMONIES
Eliza Victoria 