Note: While de-cluttering, I found a piece of paper with this written on it. I wrote this in 1995 -- a sort of journal entry and a snippet of how I was back then. My maternal grandmother, Lola Auring who features in the post, died in 1999. My father suffered a stroke in 2000 from which he recovered and a second massive one a year later. Half of his body is paralyzed and he is bedridden now. In November 2011, he suffered a third massive stroke. He is still in coma now but his vital signs are stable and we are able to provide home care for him. On August 24, 2012 at around 5:00 PM, Tatay died.
Just Another Day, Today Kyn H. Firmalino November 1995
Specks of dust swirl with bright yellow light streaming in shafts through the window of our dining room. On a mid-November morning, it hardly rains. I can see the sky is clear, light blue interspersed with puffs of cotton candy-like white clouds.
Maya capras, those house wrens, chirp incessantly in crescendos while perched on the branches of our kamias tree outside. Some have dried grass straws in their beaks as one by one they fly to a corner of our window's awning. To the right side of our front yard, one sturdy coconut palm has grown tall. In the fourteen years we have been living here, its gait has slightly leaned with the elements.
Lola Auring, my grandmother, is calling me now. She always does at around this time. It is just past seven and she invites me to breakfast. My mother has just walked in from our kitchen. She also calls my attention as we both settle in our seats.
With us in the dining table are my six year old nephew, Oweng, and my five year old niece, Justyne. At around this time, my sister and my brother-in-law have already gone and are approximately halfway to where they work. My father, who retired from a long corporate career five years ago, has yet to return from his daily tennis tourneys with his neighborhood kumpares at our subdivision's sports center.
As it is typical in our traditional society, I live in an extended family. My elder sister and her family lives with us. My maternal grandmother also does. My mother's father died thirteen years ago.
Just now, my niece Justyne is asking me if the mayas always build their nests at this time of year. I can only answer, "I guess so but I'm not sure." Oweng, on the other hand, is being reprimanded by my mother for only eating pan de sal when there was rice and fried fish. She was telling him that he might get hungry before their mid-morning break at school. He answers back with, "Di ba sabi ni Jesus eat your bread araw-araw?" ("Didn't Jesus say to eat your bread everyday?") My mother and I look at each other while trying to suppress laughter as she gropes to explain to this six year old nephew of mine the difference between the Christian concepts of the spiritual and the material bread.
At quarter to eight, I am walking at the street in front of our house. Being connected with an applied linguistics services outfit, I do not have any regular working hours. What I do have is an output deadline. This suits me fine as I am able to do most of my work at home. Today, I am going to deliver the translations ordered by a client.
With his horn honking tutot, tutot the taho vendor passes me by while balancing on his shoulders two stainless steel vats hanging from each end of a thin bamboo rod. A small kid is waiting for him at the street's end. Two teenage boys in worn out shirts, shorts and rubber slippers are pushing a wooden cart. They shout, "Bote, dyaryo, garapa!" -- bottles, old newspapers, metal scraps -- enterprising young boys in the buy and sell business.
I remember my friend Juvy. We have spent countless conversations on the difficulty of earning a living here in our country and the hows and whys of many Filipinos who opt to seek financial remuneration elsewhere. She is now in South Korea. Ironic about the situation is, although she works there to earn so she can live a relatively happy life, she constantly feels sad in yearning to come back home.
I am now facing the main thoroughfare in our village. From where I am standing, I can see the thin film of smog hanging over where Manila is to the south of this suburb where we live. And so, while I am waiting for my jeepney ride by this curbside, I begin to think. Life here is hard, as it probably is elsewhere. But we make do with what we have. And although I barely have enough in my wallet even for my jeepney fare, I still have my family, my friends and myself. For those things that matter most in my life, these are more than enough.
I admit, I have searched your name in Facebook and visited your page. I have read your posts in anonymity hoping that I might have been remembered in some way. But your words and the spaces between them escape even one nuance to reference the fact that we were once friends. Your words only reflect a life devoid of our shared past.
I admit, I have been missing you since the last time I heard your voice at the end of the receiver excusing yourself not only from the call I made but from whatever connection we had. I admit, even if you call me an ass or a jerk, I would still consider you a friend. Even if you never really told me why after 15 years I suddenly was not yours, I would still consider you a friend.
But now I have to burn my end of our bridge with regret as I think it does not connect to anywhere anymore, although it can still be rebuilt. One of these days I might just get the urge to initiate contact once more since you really have not. For now, my pride has taken over the driver's seat. It is off to a direction not unlike yours -- it is on its way directly opposite yours. But who knows, we still share the same friends. There is every likelihood that our paths will cross. If that happens, I would go by feel and decide what to do right there and then. You see, despite my pride, I can never reject you as a friend. The most I can do is to archive you to memory.
For a while there, I and the mundane yet necessary things to do in life had a falling out of sorts. The indifference between us would have been just fine with me since I would rather have wanted to spend time on an extended vacation anyway. However, the last ATM I visited had started to bleep insufficient funds. This thoroughly snipped my mercurial wings and sent me crashing to the ground at that very instant. Now I'm wishing I had the unlimited resources so I would have the power to choose what I want to do rather than be encumbered by an endless checklist of what I must do. To LIFE who has put me in this circumstance, albeit a fluke (or is it all ME as the master of my own destiny?), touché to YOU (or to ME)!
On to a more colorful note, that last Baguio trip was, for the lack of a better descriptive term, "epic." We left early morning of Friday (29th May). It was raining halfway through the trip. By the time we were in the outskirts of the city, a thick blanket of fog was rolling in on us. But everybody was in high spirits. For crying out loud, we were laughing at even the most asinine of retorts. Well, the tears came a bit later after a clandestine escape at midnight in the falling rain and images of a dark, foggy winding road. Whodunnit? I'd rather not recycle the details of this story. As a very good friend said, this episode is better left DELETED. But for all its worth, and speaking among close friends who are privy to the facts, that was EPIC indeed! Let's do it again! I'm such a drama whore. Hahahaha... And, why not? That definitely spiced up our everyday lives. D'accord – Ach so? Notwithstanding, I so LOVE everyone of you guys!
The KABOOM part happened when we returned to Manila and at the very eve of my birthday, mind you. As this is an open secret to my clique of university and extended friends, all I can say is, para sa akin, it was a bonggang bonggang masigabong salubong of my birthday courtesy of my ever-caring and loving sistaz. Thank you one and all! Happy birthday to me...(and dare I say...) KABOOM! There it goes and yun lang po.
I finally found room for a breather and what better way to dawdle in it than to take on a point of passion, which is also my point of refuge. Writing is the eye of the storm around me. It calms and soothes me while ironically it also tides over the recharging of creative impulses.
It has been three months since I last wrote in this blog. Much of the reason for my absence of entries is rooted on earning an income. I, like I guess most of us, am godded over by the demand-economics of living. Work for me is a non-issue. I never considered graphic design as work because whatever requirements a client may have, I am but happy and willing to oblige. After all, it is one of my points of passion but only coming in at a very close second to writing. So, I am more inclined to think of graphic design as my income-generating skill and the entailing process as more of creative play than work.
Having said that, this is a snapshot of my schedule for the past week and from here on out: Syngenta – packaging & brochures; Croma Medic/ Bausch & Lomb/ Santen/ Thea/ Kimia Pharma – various collaterals & creatives; Cathay Pacific – Marco Polo Club Qtr. 4 country update & 2009 table planner; Eventking – Dinos Alive! Manila banners, streamers & photo op standee; Eventking & Smart Communications – Smart Buddy Pacquiao - De La Hoya creatives & collaterals; and a variety of small projects in between.
Lately, I have been fascinated by oriental iconography. This is due in part to one of my favorite Korean dramas, The Great King Sejong, on KBS World (check their website for local schedule listings). I am so caught by the Korean Hallyu (Wave). So, inspired by the traditional art of the Joseon dynasty, I rendered illustrations of stylized clouds and waves that I applied as textural background on the design studies I made for Cathay Pacific’s 2009 table planner.
Which reminds me, Ms. Anna and Ms. Lynette, I am working on the artwork & layout and I will be sending them to you for review shortly.
And now, it is nearly time for me to return to the drawing board. In the meantime, I leave you Foals and Pizzicato Five (P5). They are on continuous shuffle in my computer’s player at the moment and they keep me good company. Olympic Airways is from the Foals’ debut album, Antidotes. This freshman album of the Brit lads from Oxford was released just this March.
Olympic Airways - Foals
On the other hand, P5 has been in the Shibuya sugar-pop scene since the early 1990s. The track here, called Baby Love Child, was released in 1994. Both are part of my soundtracks to life. Take a listen and you will understand why.
Baby Love Child - Pizzicato Five
P.S.: Thanks to the great writer from Stratford-upon-Avon for coining “godded” hence entering the term in our literary lexicon. Regarding “Writing on Furlough Redux (once more),” I was planning to place a scan of Turkish Afterthoughts in here but I have lost my copy. I have yet to go to the journals & serials archive section of the National Library along T. M. Kalaw to get me another copy. Yes, I know, imagine the thought of trudging to a dingy mezzanine on the 3rd or 4th floor and searching hardbound yet threadbare serials on rickety shelves while barely-concerned, barely-there librarians chatter away. I love it! For all its state of disrepair, you’ve got to hand it to our National Library. It has got character. This sentiment is selfish, and I digress a bit, but I hope that place does not change. So, I will write the entry for the “Redux 2” as soon as I have the copy in hand. Happy returns to all and live well. Now, scoot back to your drawing boards!
There is a lot to say about weather and moods. It has been raining for the past few days and I cannot shake off moments of wistfulness. I thought, I might as well go with the flow and put Erlend Øye on my player.
I have always loved Øye's works. The lyrical tone of his vocals reminds me of two other favorites, Tracey Thorn of Everything But The Girl (EBTG, with Ben Watt) and Mutya Buena. The simplicity in vocal composition and delivery pierces the soul then lifts it to heights of insights about your life.
The track in this post is from his 2006 side-project with The Whitest Boy Alive. I am presupposing that his main band is Kings of Convenience with Eirik Bøe.
Listen to the Golden Cage. It is one of my favorite tracks in their Dreams album.
Then listen to this remix by DJ Fred Falke. It is as brilliant as the original. Falke took the opening chords and turned them into a hook that he looped into parts of this wonderful electronica-synth remix while seamlessly keeping the clear lyrical tone of Øye's vocals in the original.
On rainy days, I would rather just curl up in bed and listen to Erlend Øye singing.
Alone in my room at night with earphones on, I dance.
Life is tough but it is sweet. Obstacles may hinder my pace and push me offtrack at times but in moments like these, I turn to my soundtracks to life and dance.
Kings of Convenience, thanks for getting me back in groove.
So, recommencing on the last point in my previous post, these people are some of my creative writing heroes. With other icons in other genres of fiction that run the gamut from Saul Bellow, Chaim Potok, Ernest Hemingway, Isabel Allende to Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Anatole France, Thomas Hardy, Jane Austen and so much more, their works are my points of inspiration.
As a matter of self promotion, I too have been published for fiction and poetry – four times so far, twice for short story and the same number for poetry. Reading my very first foray onto printed text now is quite embarrassing. It was a poem entitled “Children of the Streets” and I think I was lucky it was published by the Philippines Free Press, a national weekly news magazine. I was paid something like Php400 for it, which was a considerable amount at that time. That was 1990. My thoughts on the poem now is that it is sophomoric, to say the least.
My second published piece was a short story entitled “Small Talk,” which also appeared in the Philippines Free Press, in its June 24, 1995 issue. This was when I discovered that I enjoyed writing narratives, weaving imagery and mixing metaphors. Here are some excerpts from “Small Talk”:
Shafts of light had drawn shadows of leaves on the asphalt road of that single strip of parking lot fringed by trees on opposite sides. A wind blew just then and brought a leaf storm of sorts as leaf after leaf fell and hurtled on the coarse surface of the road like being swept by an invisible broom…
…So, it was nearly evening when we left that room but we did not notice the time or that we had already come out of the building. Neither did we notice how many people there were, as there were many, waiting for a jeepney ride under the shed in front of the Faculty Center. We all but forgot the traffic at Philcoa or the roads outside the university. We only noticed the play of twilight in hues of glowing yellows, orange and light reds streaming through the canopies of a hundred little round leaves of the big acacia trees that lined the asphalt road of the avenue we faced while we lightly tossed around pleasant small talk between snatches of silence.
And so we left the university sometime between the warm fading lights of dusk and the swift procession of nightfall, a bit happy with each other and a bit contented with ourselves and, assessing it now from memory, a bit wiser.
The third one was a poem whose authorship I am proud to stake claim. I think poetry suits my writing as well because of my love for the alchemy of imagery and metaphors but constrained in a limited and precise lexicon.
This one I entitled “Turkish Afterthoughts.” No, I haven’t been to that part of the world. I wrote the poem after a friend traveled to Turkey for a vacation. We met for some coffee and tea when she got back. That’s when I heard her stories of that land straddling Europe and ancient Asia Minor. Her photo album helped too. I was able to write the poem in its published form in one sitting that night after we met.
(I have to take a break here again. Money beckons, I must comply. For my worth to subsist, I must not resist. With these words I momentarily leave you but I reckon, another redux of this topic is in order and will be in the works. I bid you adieu for now until my digits pound on the keys once more. Until then, dream and live the dream. Life is short. We must optimize living it while we are afforded the chance to do so. Albeit a cliché, this caveat is still a universal truth. Live well.)
Seven months hence, I finally brought myself to write again. Of all my life’s activities so far, I have a passion for two things. The second is graphic design. The first is writing.
I’ve realized this early on but I find myself preoccupied in earning my keep by way of my second passion. I’ve found a small but steady market for my talent in this that has kept me financially afloat. This affords me to buy my bread, and butter it as well.
On the other hand, my first love and passion has a huge market but with an equally enormous supply of talent. As in any industry, monetary returns are high for established writers regardless of the degree of talent. Lesser mortals in this universe of the written text must content themselves with the dregs.
This is more evident in my chosen genre – fiction. In recent memory, I’d consider JK Rowling as the most elite among those in the top tier. Although I considerably doubt any superlative adoration for her talent, I do like the tale and the characters she wove in her Harry Potter series. Albeit fiction with a hodgepodge of rehashed themes, I cannot deny that they are an engaging read. They have moments or sparks of creativity here and there. My only point is that she found a market and her niche, and built an empire. If it pleases her, she could now very well afford to hone her talent into a higher degree of skill.
If talent in creative writing is to be the basis then Gabriel Garcia Marquez, for one, would be leagues apart. His brilliance and stroke of genius has been defined by his singular commitment of magic realism to text in our day and age. This sublime marriage of the supernatural and fantastic with the mundane has not been etched in our literary consciousness since our ancestors earlier on recited and then later on read our folklores, myths, legends and epics.
Next on my list of modern fiction icons is JRR Tolkein for creating Middle Earth and commencing my ongoing amazement with fantasy. Then there is Stephen Donaldson for weaving text to craft Thomas Covenant. Orson Scott Card is at par for Alvin Maker and also for extending his reach to science fiction bringing Ender to word and hence to life. Of note in my list is Anne McCaffrey for transporting me to Pern and other planet types and, like Card, for introducing countless possibilities in and between fantasy and sci-fi writing.
(I have to take a client’s call. Please hold this point for a moment. I’ll resume in part 2 of this post.)
