Naga: Home: Coming: Ra-Ra-Ra

June 7, 2008; June 13, 2008; June 15, 2008

There’s a 20-year-old named Pancho Alvarez I met in Happy Monday. I found out that he’s from Naga. When I met him, I asked, “You write?” It seems he paints more. He was going to exhibit some of his paintings at the same time organizing a poetry reading in Lolo’s Bar in Avenue Square in Naga City which was supposed to be on May 30 but was moved to June 7. “Ate, please come,” he said.

Long weekend: I should come home. I came home also to see what my fellow Bicolano writers are writing nowadays, excited. I told Nanay about it and she said to me before I left, “You should read.” I smiled, “Nyak! We’ll see.”

Joey and I left Manila at 9 am on June 7 to drive down to Naga and arrived home at 5:30 pm. I ran out of the car, calling Yan-Yan’s name and “I’m home! I’m home!” She was sitting outside with Dom, waiting for me. We hugged each other and she kept on saying, “I missed you! I missed you!” Then the pamangkids came out--- Biboy first, “Inay!” I hugged him and carried him and PaoPao came out too, “Inay!” I was carrying them both, kissing their cheeks on and on to Yan-Yan’s “Uy, matres mo!”

We opened pasalubongs and talked. Yan-Yan had a class at 6:00 pm, Philosophy 1, she said. She was telling us about how her teacher was asking them “What are useless things and what are the useless things?” Joey laughed and said to her, “Yan, dalawa lang sagot diyan. Sagutin mo yun prof mo ng Sir, semantics lang yan! and Sir, perception mo lang yan!” We laughed and talked as the yayas set the table for supper which Dom had cooked. I asked them what they have been reading.

Yan-Yan said, “Why don’t you teach here?”

I said, “Maybe in University of Nueva Caceres…I hear Ateneo de Naga is not too open about getting teachers who graduated from UP. Would you want me to be your English teacher?”

She laughed, “Ayoko!” Dom seconded her sentiment.

They know that I’m a very demanding teacher: being strict is just one of my golden faults. My students nowadays should be thankful that they’re only required to write one essay per week instead of everyday. And most of them said, “Now we’re beginning to get poetry.” Yeah, exposure is practice that leads to eventually understanding what seems to be boring gibberish. Not liking it is part of the process.

I then sent Pancho Alavarez a message, “We’ll just wash up and then go there.” He replied, “Take your time, Ate.” Later on he quipped, “So I can drop the ‘Ate’?”

What do you think? See, two of my former students who became my friends call me “Teach” since they dropped the “Ma’am” because they feel that calling me by name is just not right even if we’re friends. The way Sasha Martinez called me “Ma’am” or Martin Villanueva still calls me sometimes.

POETRY READING IN LOLO’S BAR in Naga City DUBBED “Green Papaya”.

I.

I winced, wishing that it was called something else. After all, in Manila there’s already the Green Papaya readings organized by Andrea Terran. To them it was new. To us who knew: where’s the originality, man? You will be charged “Xerox” and we don’t want that.

Pancho Alvarez did explain to the audience that it was Green Papaya because it was nutritious, delicious, young et cetera. I was thinking: why wasn’t some other vegetable or fruit like gabi or libas or pili or sili or anything obviously Bicol used? Besides, while growing up in Bicol we were told that papaya is an intrinsic part of the diet of seminarians. Oh yes, Bicol has so many seminaries.

And papaya deadens the libido, the elders said, therefore the seminarians need it.

Everybody knew that, everybody older, it seemed.

II.

There, Pancho introduced Joey and me to Jose Jason Chancoco from Iriga City who went to Ateneo de Naga high school. Introduced, he said he had wondered about my surname and said “Ah!” when I said, “You’re batchmates with my brother.” He then asked if I were the one who drove them home one night after their batch’s after-Christmas-before-New-Year parties years ago when they were still in college.

I don’t remember him but I said, “Yeah. At that time only I and TJ drove.” And Dad trusted my driving more because TJ would usually get one of the cars scratched or more even when just parking. He even managed once to drive our red Volkswagen “Buging” before into a ditch which he thought he could fish out with the help of Dad’s driver without Dad’s knowing. He has aged in driving: safer, more defensive, and is sometimes like most drivers who wished they never learned how to drive because they end up as “family driver”.

Jason said something like, “Astig nga pero weird kasi lahat kami lalaki doon sa kotse peron yun nagdradrive babae.” Yeah, in Bicol, when you’re a female driver then you’re kind of macho or a bad-ass and if you smoked too then you’re a very bad girl.

Jason Chancoco looks older than I do. When I saw him, I thought that he had the same look as my Marxist Brother Mario when he was younger: hard life, on with your revolution.

His is Bicolano Literature.

In Philippine Literary Criticism, Bicolano Literature is at its dying gasps. Some say it’s already dead. Hell, even Virgilio Almario said to me and the rest of our Filipino class years ago that Ibalon is not an epikong bayan because nobody alive remembers it orally.

III.

Jason and I shared to Joey that in our time there were really not many bars much more the whole Magsasysay Avenue stretch of bars now. So when people (especially those who were going to college in Manila exposed to the evil of bars) wanted to party with high school friends on semester or holiday breaks they would have house parties.

TJ started housing his Ateneo class parties on December 27 or 28 in our home from 1997 or 1998 onwards and stopped when the bars in Magsaysay Avenue started sprouting like mushrooms around 2000 or 2001.

IV.

Where were the writers or poets? I wanted to meet them and ask questions but many didn’t show up because (despite Pancho’s going around announcing and inviting even via radio stations):

1. The established Bicolano writers most likely didn’t know the very young Pancho Alvarez. They could be just thinking him an “upstart” who went to school in Manila and now therefore thinks he knows better than they do when it comes to doing the things they do.

2. Or maybe it’s “regionalism” closing ranks.

3. It seemed there are three writing collectives in Bicol who preferred doing things their own individual ways and it seemed they had differences in politics or maybe even poetics.

4. As much as they did poetry readings now and then, there wasn’t a consistent audience for it yet.

Can we just all cooperate so that I can do more ra-ra-ra for “Uragun” you?

V.

Ryan Sumayao, a student of Literature from Ateneo de Naga University (also a slasher, obviously gay)

read two Neil Garcia and one Aldwin Javier poems from Ladlad 3

(and plugged propaganda)

heterosexual-majority of audience squirmed amid all the lyrical shock-effect of “gay sex”.

To whom I quipped in front of the audience, “Bat di mo na lang binasa yun sucking cock is a delicate thing ni Danton Remoto?”

So that heterosexual-majority of audience would die from shock. *Evil laugh*

He answered, “Yun nasa Ladlad 2”.

Uuuuy, Naga is into Ladlad 3 while Dumaguete is into Ladlad 2. Maybe Sulu or Batanes is into Ladlad 1.

April, a college student from Ateneo De Naga University

read Ronald Baitan’s poem from “Ladlad 3”

(plugged propaganda)

Heterosexual-majority of audience concluded that she is a lesbian.

I wondered then if the two students have other influential reading materials besides Ladlad 3.

Ma’am Balane, a teacher from Ateneo de Naga University

read Jose Garcia Villa’s “I Can Hear No More Love’s” which has always been tricky to read aloud.

I am thankful that Professor Lito Santos (may he rest in peace) made us read Villa’s 55 poems.

I wondered what books in Philippine Literature in English are in the Ateneo de Naga University Library.

Jose Jason Chancoco

read and I said “Finally! I’m learning something new!”

Dugsung is the Bikolano version of Awit (which has the metrikong romanse), rhyme scheme is ABCDBAA.

Banog is an enchanted ant (which I will likely use in a future short story). In my vocabulary, banog means “to beat up someone”. If I spelled it wrongly, please tell me.

Ariwaga is the Bikolano version of “Sawikain” which has a four-syllable meter.

read three original works in Bikol “Ayuda” (Help), “Sakyada” (I forgot what this means, so please tell me) and “Simbag”(Answer/Reply) and one sestina in Filipino “Pilosopiya”.

Audience impact: there was an impact.

For more of his texts, please visit www.hagbayon.wordpress.com or www.gcast.com/u/hagbayon.

Pancho Alvarez

read the synopsis of mEAT, something he’s working on with Fidelis Tan (of Heights) about futuristic Philippines. And most of the audience said: fuck do we care.

read Joel Toledo’s “The Same Old Figurative”, introducing it by introducing who Joel Toledo is. And most of the audience said: Whoever that awarded Poncho Pilato is, fuck do we care. By the way, some say that Joel Toledo has a formula in writing poetry. Guess what that is?

read Martin Villanueva’s “Alone” and I thought Now I finally get to listen to his poetry which he hasn’t really shared and I thought The imagery is good, solid and I like the compactness of the poem. Guess what most of the audience said?

read Pancho Villanueva’s “Pointilism” and yeah, most of the audience said? What the audience would have found more interesting was his once ties with Naga. If that were mentioned, the audience’s ears would have listened more. By the way, Pancho Villanueva can speak, spell and understand Bikol.

said, “My friends from Manila couldn’t come so they just sent their poems.”

And most likely I will gain hate-whatever not just in Manila now but in Bicol, too… I’m shivering like the hyena to “Mu-fa-saaaaah” in Lion King.

AFTER

VI.

I told Pancho Alvarez:

Poetry readings in Naga is a cool idea and you have our support. If it’s on a Saturday, I would likely come with friends as much as I can.

So, what’s your purpose?

Really, from what I understand of the program perhaps people should have read English poems/text excerpts of dead or alive Bicolano writers in English from anthologies where they are included. You would be amazed at how many are Bicolanos and most Bicolanos don’t even know this unless they’re in the Senior Citizen or dead category.

Bicolanos are in the literary history of Philippine Literature in English since its birth in 1905: we don’t have to carve our space anymore because it’s already there so we just have to propagate from there. Because, really, what most Bicolanos will care about is to continue growing Bicolano “Uragun” talent to be recognized on the National and International level.

The ones I know of who are alive and supposedly recognizable on the National level nowadays are: Carlos Aureus, Marne Kilates, Mary Ann Moll and Rizalde Manrique. Personal history:

1. Sir Auerus was twice my professor and sometimes adviser in writing (who is famous for telling students “You don’t have the talent” upon reading submitted texts or “Itago mo muna poetry mo please sa aparador ng nine years tapos balikan mo. In the meantime don’t write poetry”.
2. Ms. Moll is my second sister’s batchmate in high school. I don’t know her personally but I read her blog now and then.
3. Manoy Rizalde’s family is acquainted with our family (and I have yet to read something recently published on the National level from the latter two).
4. As for Sir Marne, I embarrass him when I instinctively clasp his hand to my forehead for a mano whenever I see him. He would usually laugh, “Ikaw talaga!”

So handshake it is nowadays or a half-bow-of-the-head-with-a-smiling-“Sir”. Did you know that in etiquette a man is not supposed to offer a handshake to a woman unless the woman offers her hand?

Did you even know that the Candano in the writing-names Douglas and Catherine Candano roots from Albay? They grew up in Manila though so almost if not zero ties with Bicol culture.

Douglas is too busy that’s why he manages to only write one short story per year recently. And really, Douglas has laughingly confessed that he is biologically tone-deaf that’s why he doesn’t use much dialogue in his stories though he’s working on going beyond that limitation. [Dialogue, of course, requires different tones and you can’t have characters talking like each other or the narrator or the author.] We found this out when I was asking him and Joey to listen to one set (and to tell me what they thought) in Route 196 last June 4 and Douglas said that to his ear it was all flat-line. We three laughed.

Two or three fellows from the Ateneo National Writers Workshop last year are from Bicol, too, by the way. Talent for writing is in Bicolandia’s blood.

We just need to provide an opportunity and a venue in Bicol to nurture it, like let’s say a writing workshop for high school and college students. Make a proposal and the National Commission for Culture and Arts will likely grant it. Writers like Marne Kilates, Dean Alfar and even Dr. Marjorie Evasco have expressed their willingness to come and share what they know in writing (given the right schedule). Of course I’ll volunteer Joey Nacino and whoever else I could. Someone based in Naga or anywhere in Bicol has to do this proposal.

As for me, 99.9% of Bicolanos don’t even know who I am or that I write. What most would know is a citation from a blog entry of Manoy Rizalde because Ma told him when she saw him that I got a fellowship for the Dumaguete workshop. He remembers me the way I was when I was in nursery or Grade 2. Besides, I’m not prolific enough in print publications.

And it even made Jason Chancoco blink *Nagsusulat pala hermana ni TJ* when Pancho introduced me via “published in yadayada”. And to him, Joey was just my boyfriend. I showed the audience, “Dios marhay na banggui po sa indo! Tada! Bicolano po ako!”

They thought that I, like Joey, was “Manila” guests/non-writing/friends of organizer. Joey had invited everyone to submit for Philippine Speculative Fiction Volume 4 and the Neil Gaiman/Philippine Graphic/Fiction Awards because he said that he has heard that Bicolano hands are talented hands.

I told Joey, “See? People here won’t give a fuck if you’re someone important or awarded or whatnot (unless you’re a politician or a celebrity) because you’re not from here therefore they don’t know you.”

Of course I had read something-- a courtesy to the organizer and support of the program-- in English. I laughed to the audience, “Blame it on Colegio de Sta. Isabel and their English drive in the 1980s. It was then that I began forgetting Bikol and Rinkonada.”

I wonder--- given the way I looked and talked—how they would have reacted if I said “I graduated from Camarines Sur National High School” the public school where generally the sons and daughters of those who cannot afford private school tuition like vendors, farmers, helpers, the poor went to school and mostly couldn’t communicate well in English.

Give me a couple of more years and I think I can write in Rinkonada and Bikol then---

---because I don’t have Ma with me here anymore to help me, the way she helped me (with the help of Auntie Jean Llorin of Abanse Pinay) with the Bicolano details I included in my first published short story in Philippine Free Press in 2006 (because I didn’t even know terms like palo-palo or zaguan). I’m still trying to remember and study what words mean and how to write in my native languages (so of course my syntax sucks and my spelling’s worse) because I communicate in English.

And during the socials after, Pancho’s Tito asked me, “How are you related to the family in…?” Dad’s centro teachers/rich family history. Then later when he found out my middle name, “Ah! So…ka pala!” Ma’s barrio teachers/landed family history. It all becomes a matter of my identity being established and accepted because of parientes (relatives) therefore I’m Bicolano after all.

It’s just like that and I wished I listened more when Ma was telling me about which was who from where. Ma just about knows and can trace everyone’s parientes in the Naga and Rinconada area and family histories including who once or still owned which or who owed success to whom.

I missed Ma and Dad more: they shielded me from this six degrees of identification.

I once more, as always, felt that I didn’t belong in Bicol. I have changed too much in the process of imbibing Manila and other places like Hell.

Back in Manila I told Joey, “If I stayed there I wouldn’t have been able to write what I write. I wouldn’t have been able to think the way I think. I wouldn’t be who I am. I would be forced to conform to their standards and I would be buried in boxes I don’t want to be in. And that makes me sad because it’s supposed to be my home. And it goddamn fucks me up that I don’t even know anymore most of what the words in the languages I grew up in mean.”

It’s all English for me and I have yet to consistently manipulate the English language to mean what being Myself/Filipino/Bicolana means. Or as one atom in my brain language said in one of my graduate studies academic papers in 2006:

…How could they faithfully translate and express the sensibilities of the poem if they themselves area alien to the underlying cultural, social, historical and political thought of these poems?

In Philippine Literature, the same problem is shown by a collection of Bikol poems edited by Maria Lilia F. Realubit. Though the editor is a Bikolana, most of the translation of the Bikol poems into English proved inaccurate. The translation was literal and did not successfully translate the thought, feelings, imagery, tone, and values that were evident in the original poems.

In this case, perhaps it was better to have left the poems in the original language. (But then again, for the poems to be understood and appreciated by everyone in the country or abroad, it had to be translated into English.) Perhaps the problem is that the editor/translators couldn’t find the right turn of English words and phrases to capture the Bikolano sensibilities.

In the final reading, the poems in Bikol meant one thing and the translations in English meant another thing that is not exactly “Bikol”.

So we return once more to the use of English in poetry. Hau, though not in critique of poetry but in her critique of Hagedorn’s Dogeaters, exemplifies the pitfalls of such endeavors. [Legasto, 116] Instead of presenting Filipino postcolonial culture and sensibilities, she stated that what Hagedorn did was to subscribe to the identity and perception of ourselves dictated by the West.

In one way or another, majority of the literature produced in Philippine Literature in English does the same. This is inevitable if the standards of Literature by which we subscribe are still dominantly Western and which do not support postcolonial thought. This is why it is imperative to subscribe to the postcolonial agenda. This is why we need to make use of Postcolonial English, to naturalize English.

The challenge then is for writers in English to write in Postcolonial English.

I told Joey that I also feel that I don’t belong here in Manila even though I’ve been living here for 12 years already because I have Bicol in me. I know I’m very much different from people here because I grew up with Bicolano values liberated by Liberal/General Education thanks to the University of the Philippines and life.

So where’s my place?

I’m making my own home in words, this, writing.

INTO BANDS

VII.

After the reading, I went to Wharf in Elias Angeles Street with Joey and Jason to check out the bands, hoping that I could catch Black Gulaman which Dom said was good. [Of course I had to check out the bands because I prefer to know where I could listen to gigs wherever I am]. 50 pesos for entrance with one free drink. I laughed, “Sulit!” There seemed to be a contest that night.

Wharf is located in a building that used to house a B-Movie house that metamorphosed into bowling lanes and I don’t know what it is now. I was too exhausted to really look.

When we arrived it was the 4^th band “14^th Curse” (or was it Curs) playing. Their sound was mostly pop-punk to me: think 411 or Blink 182.

The hosts were talking in Tagalog: WHY?

The probably in her early 20s female host was wearing shorts so reminiscent of those mommy-shorts in the ‘80s and ‘90s: WHY?

The next band was “Chillicon” and they were all wearing white. The sound: think Slapshock, Korn, Keso and Linkin Park. Coordinated body slamming, too. * UPAO*DANGEROUS BOY BAND*

Then it was “Breeds of Plain” or “Bridge of Plain”--- not sure, couldn’t really hear. They did Wolfgang covers. Their original songs sound: Karl Roy and POT. Love the old school funk riffs.

And finally the band that the group of 19-year-old students from Naga College Foundation on the table beside ours were waiting for: “Pentacle”. An all-girl underground band. Their sound: think of the Canadian band “Kitty” and their *UPAO*IT’S THE DEVIL!* songs. The students said that they had the permission of their parents to stay out that late and spend Mommy and Daddy’s money in that place listening to what parents would usually call “noise” or “addict music”, by the way.

After which we left because it was really late, I was almost deaf and dizzy because iced tea and Red Horse on exhaustion don’t mix well after all.

And while I was taking down notes, one or two or three strangers just had to ask why, Ate? If I shrugged or said “Wala lang” that’s as good as saying “Pakialam mo ba!” Would they have accepted “It’s just something I do” when it’s something that people generally just don’t do there even for the heck of it?

So to be respectfully left alone to take down notes, I said, “PULP.”

I was left respectfully alone to take down notes.

It’s just like that.

And this is why I’m picky about people and texts as I said to Twiggy in the course of our 40-minute-long-distance-call last night: a beautiful brain is required, so is a beautiful sensibility, and especially a beautiful soul wherein being nice is not a requirement therefore so is closely interacting with individuals or collectives who do not think on the critical level. Unless it’s a job to do so.

Twiggy had laughed “I missed you!” when I would use phrases like “yun? isaksak nun sa baga niya language and craft niya at baka sakaling may lumabas na insight sa lungs niya” or “putragis”. I wonder how Twiggy would react to “pekeng pekpek na boses”.

And by the way “DICKLIT” in Philippine Literature in English has now one clear criterion (among many that would soon be articulated) according to laughing speculative-fiction-flag-bearer-exploring-Domestic-Realism Dean Alfar: action-adventure-via-testosterone. It seems one of the prime writers in this category is… Joey.

I’ll likely write a story under DICKLIT with a female protagonist who has a detachable penis or has way too much body hair because of too much testosterone in her hormones therefore vents out her hairy hormonal issues by kicking bad asses. Or maybe make the protagonist a male transvestite.

Protagonist can do kung-fu and utters classic lines like “Can’t teach you my kung-fu…You a bastad!” or “Hidden Manchurugi style! Kacha!” Or I can make protagonist do arnis de mano instead and say “Dito na me. Wer na you? Pak yu! Pak yu!”

All these for the love of literature in this country…So, really, pukenam shet to the writers who “I just want to write” without insights or without even attempting to develop poetics.

And to the college students who may be reading this: find out what is, how to write, and practice writing a report, reaction, position, concept, and research paper! Read the immortal Reading Into Writing II by Dadufalza because it is still an applicable textbook.

*ROAR*

Write ON!

I love my country!

Ra-Ra-Ra!