Everything else goes away…
Well, NOT everything.
There’s still life as holy fucking shit that makes me scream.
Like last Tuesday, I screamed “QUIET!” Then quietly to the blessed silence, “Really, what’s the matter with your mouths? They don’t stop chattering. Are you afraid of being silent and listening to what’s in your head” First official scream: I felt Laryngitis about to come for a visit soon.
There’s still life as holy fucking shit that makes me laugh.
Like Last Thursday, somebody blurted something (inappropriate) out and immediately said, “Sorry, Miss! Sorry! Brain-fart!” while slapping his forehead. I could not help but laugh and ask, “Where did you learn the term brain fart?” He smiled, “From you.” I blinked and laughed some more.
Like two Sundays ago, as I watched the 4J family boys throw each other clothed into Jay Duran’s house pool, all laughing to variations of Teka, yun cellphone! Teka, yun susi ng kotse! Teka, yun sapatos ko! Gago! 40 000 yan!
There’s still life as holy fucking shit that makes me smile.
Like talking to God. No kidding: I have God in my phonebook. I kid atheists not. “I don’t know about you but I talk to God.” And I would show them my phone, “See? God sent a message.” Or someone would hand me my phone and say, “Yo bitch, God’s calling.”
And this time, I said to God, “Talk to me for a while. The rain’s put me in an introspective mood.”
God said, “Very well. What’s on your mind?”
I said, “…Contemplating marriage.”
God said, “…And yes it’s about time you got married. Or as they say, allow someone to try to tame you. Good luck with that.”
There’s still life as holy fucking shit that makes me cry (almost).
Like when my saintly boyfriend turns into an asshole. Or when I’m really exasperated. Or when I was thanked for a loved birthday gift. Or when I was asked, “Why do you care?” The last almost made me bawl but I just mumbled, “Because what came for you just goes to sleep and then it will come back again and I will lose you.”
Like when I woke up to a back rub then a hug and I said, “Egg…You’re home.”
Like when I ran out of the car squealing (startling the airport security guards into “o!”) and flying into Dad’s hug, shrieking like a kid, “Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!” Then my, “Ang payat mo. Wala ka ng tiyan!” Then, “Dad, amoy States ka ah.”
Like when I received an advanced birthday gift from Ma, Adelaine Yen Mah’s “Falling Leaves”, and her written note: I saw this book at the Borders. I started to read it and found it’s a beautiful story, so we bought it for you. Just go on with your writing. It’s beyond our wildest dreams that you will be a published writer, many times. Go for your dreams.
And when the short fiction mojo comes to play
Everything else goes away:
I don’t write anything else because I don’t fuck around with this craft since among all the forms it is short fiction that I had to learn.
In 2000, I knew nothing about how to write short stories. Mr. Sci-Fi-Teacher-In-Short-Fic was problematic, “What’s your background?”
I answered, “Poetry.”
He said, “I figured as much. Let’s try flash fiction first. It will only take you two pages.”
And flash fiction at that time was not considered legitimate short fiction in Philippine Literature in English. Neither is fan-fiction. Or science-fiction. Or anything under the banner of Speculative Fiction. It was all about Realism, social or anti-social.
It took three years for me to comply with the minimum of the requirements in short fiction and that is minimum 10 pages, font size 12, Times New Roman/Arial, double-spaced, 1” margin all sides, short bond paper.
If you can’t write 10 pages, you can’t write: that’s a non-negotiable clause.
By that time, Carljoe Javier and I were about to do our theses. I had asked him, “Are you hitting the minimum?”
He had answered, “Still at 8 pages.”
The other elemental requirements were also still problematic and would be pointed out during bitch-slappings i.e. workshops. And the most problematic of all was the introduction for the thesis which was what Research was all about.
Research-TASK: formulate your poetics that will be shown by your creative work. It took one semester to do the research and another semester to write the paper (with a requirement of a minimum 10-reference-bibliography).
Research-Task-PRODUCT: “Writing A New Passage: The Alien Child and Feral Woman Archetypes in Philippine Short Fiction in English.”
The idea was that an Alien Child grows up to be a Feral Woman. The task was to locate both individually and then the passage from Alien Childhood into Feral Womanhood in short fiction published in Philippine Literature in English. Both were shown by the short fiction of Kerima Polotan and Ninotchka Rosca. The framework for the archetypes, by the way, came from Cristina Pinkola Estes.
The YOU’RE-FUCKED-FACTOR: Somewhere along the way in writing your creative work--- a collection of ten short stories--- you realize that what you’re writing does not fit your introduction. Either you change the introduction or your creative work. Either way, you’re fucked.
The YOU’RE-SO-FUCKED-FACTOR: You can’t write anything creative because you did not just make friends with Literary Theory and Criticism but actually married the damn thing.
To AVOID-YOU’RE-FUCKED: You have to plot your creative work already while figuring out your poetics and writing your introduction. In short, an amicable divorce between a warring fucked-up couple.
The FUCK-YOU-ALL: a grade of 1.0 in Thesis.
The THANK-YOU-ALL: good reviews for my published short fiction in the past two years.
And the only way anyone who wishes to write Creative Nonfiction can write CNF as defined by Cristina Pantoja
Everything else becomes play:
Re:VIEWS
Dear Balagtasan,
Vim Nadera and two other poets in Filipino whose names I (apologize) don’t recall indulged in a BABAERO-NGA-BA-SI-ANGELO-SUAREZ-BALAGTASAN in Green Papaya (Kamuning) last August 6.
In my head: Randy Santiago’s Ba-ba-ba-ero…Ba-ba-ba-ero…Ba-ba-ba-ero raw ako…Sinong may sabi…
And Angelo Suarez laughingly said, “Wala akong kinalaman diyan!”
For real: Is he or is he not a babaero?
Fuck do I care.
Dear O OG A Y,
Adam David had presented his erasures of Paolo Manalo’s “JOLOGRAPHY” in Green Papaya last August 6, too.
With the erasures, yeah, “JOLOGRAPHY” is so…gay.
Intelligible, too.
I laughed my ass off.
Dear Blurbs,
On August 4 2006, Joel Toledo’s Chiaroscuro was launched in Mag:net Katipunan. Among the readers who said before reading Joel-Toledo-Poems:
Butch Dalisay, “Kaya gutso ko mga
Neil Garcia, “There’s always this tension between the specific and universal.”
Marne Kilates, “Lahat ng posibilidad kinukuha ng bawat salita.”
[Gemino H. Abad read “The Wild” and I couldn’t help but think of Gollum. In the back, I giggled, “Sir, pa-isa lang naman oh. Please say “my preciousssss.”]
Cris Lacaba, “Ang (brrr-grrr-face: putang inang) ulan nga naman oh. Bumubuhos kung kelan ka lilipat ng sasakyan.”
And even if some disagreed with how El Pinoy Matador read “Para Los Muertos”, I found it effective since it broke the emerging tone of the readings. I believe in Lyric Poetry we call that the distortions: something that inhibits the listener/reader from a monotone-induced-trance or sleep.
Enough said.
Otherwise, I will get hate-vibes again.
Dear Chiaroscuro,
Adam and I were talking about you and we love your narrative form. It’s been a while since someone actively used the narrative form in poetry. We love stories. I said to Adam, “The last time na dominant na ganyan nabasa ko si Cirilo Bautista pa ata eh.”
Adam said, “Eh! Cirilo Bautista?!”
I asked, “Baket? Nabasa mo na ba lahat na sulat ni Cirilo Bautista?!”
Adam said, “Sabagay.”
And then because we’re unholy spawns, we started kidding around about you. I said, “The forms are really fluid. This can be seen in one perspective as a short story collection written in poetic form. Or even creative nonfiction.”
I have read you so many times.
I’m still waiting for one of several to call me.
It will come.
Dear 115-every-week,
I’m reading the Book of Fantasy (edited by Borges, Ocampo, Casares ; introduced by Le Guin) now and I found one of the stories interesting. It’s “Enoch Soames” written by Max Beerbohm writer, humorist, caricaturist died 1956.
I had read little of Shelley, but ‘Of course,’ I murmured, ‘he’s very uneven.’
‘I should have thought evenness was just what was wrong with him. A deadly evenness. That’s why I read him here. The noise of this place breaks the rhythm. He’s tolerable here.’ Soames took up the book and glanced through the pages. He laughed. Soames’ laugh was a short, single and mirthless sound from the throat, unaccompanied by any movement of the face or brightening of the eyes. ’What a period!’ he uttered, laying the book down. And ’What a country!’ he added.
Dear thank-you-for-the-criticism-next-time-email-me-please,
Critics like me don’t give a fuck about the “process” of the writer. What we’re after is the product.
Critics of poetry readings like me work with a very specific constraint: we listen and we hear what is being orally communicated. Of course there are a lot of distractions in the span of a two-minute-or-longer-reading: the chatter, the noise, the booze, and especially the reading of the one on stage. We don’t ask for printed copies: it defeats the whole purpose of listening to the reading.
Rhythm of speech deficiencies or faults in stress, intonation, blending of sounds and phrasing of lines affect the reception of the intended meaning of the words. For example, if a text is presented orally and emphasis is dominantly placed on one vowel sound like -ee at the end of each line for more than 10 seconds, the rest resounds as a deafening flat-line.
Critics of poetry readings like me also work with Caudwell’s Theory of Identification (among other things) in the awarding of aesthetic value on a reading/text. I hear enough rants about how life is fucking shit in this country from everybody everyday. That’s nothing new and once more we’re looking for original articulation. We’re looking for Brecht’s songs about dark times with Bloch’s hope that is authentic therefore believable.
Critics like me are also anal about “word choice”. Try going to any South Central in any state in
Critics like me also pay attention to the thought of texts that think they’re identifying what a Filipino is from the Filipino eyes when in fact they’re subscribing to and propagating the ontological “other’s” definition. I won’t bother to explain: Twiggy would have more luck explaining the Internet to an ant. Go figure.
Critics of literature like me especially detest the whole “You didn’t get it” sentiment of authors when their creative works are not loved. We also despise it when authors dictate to the reader/listener how his/her text should be apprehended post-reading, post-publication, post-facto. We can all adopt T.S. Elliot’s view regarding views: Whatever you read, I meant it.
Critics like me especially appreciate being asked to beta-read/workshop a text with something courteous like “May/Can I ask you to read it?” instead of text being shoved before our eyes, demanding to be read.
Critics like me adore authors with a sense of Pink-With-Elephant-Skin-humor.
And critics like me had and still do forsake friendships that command “email your comments directly to me about my work that was presented publicly”.
I did read once what was presented in my Puss-In-Boots comment box.
(I couldn’t help it: it was in the way of the rest of the comment).
I do understand where it might have been misconstrued.
Still, I did not bother to criticize it.
After all, the oral reading’s done.
Sincerely,
Porcupine-in-Stilettos
There are people praying
“Please let the short fiction mojo come out to play everyday with her
for the rest of her freaking life.”
But see, there’s also my Creative Nonfiction.
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