I went to Makati last night to give some stuff to Lyra: her backpack (helped me in traversing Japanese countryside) and a Christmas gift from Jhana. The commute from my little home should be lighter than most of the working class from the North (since I live in the strategic center of the Metro) but every time I decide to use the main artery called EDSA, it feels like I am embarking in a long concrete jungle trek just to get to the Ayala Triangle. Ever since the pandemic lockdowns, I have zero idea on the ways of the commute along the Makati Central Business District; it has become a sea of SUVs and lots of crawling kamote riders at the seams, like a mix of US and Vietnam warring the roads of Paseo and Buendia and other one-way avenues like HV Dela Costa.
Seeing the OG Phil Stock Exchange in Makati is unpleasant. Andaming tent! Nawala ang bisa ng pagkakalikha sa kanya bilang malawak na open space dahil lang sa hindi ko tukoy na event. The mini-enclave is hospital-white coded. Hindi ko alam kung may laboratory ba ng MPOX sa loob, o may kasal, o sadyang gawa-gawang pook-kainan ng mga burgis. I told Lyra to meet me in Paseo Center instead, a little waypoint of corporate employees for their lunch breaks and meriendas. I remember this building in my college years as I traverse the same business district looking for respondents in our Tacsiapo feasibility study, its thesis being “the main community to address stress and anger management,” a transgressive buzzword before the surge of the call centers and financial BPOs in the Pinoy business landscape.
I sat inside the Pho Hoa, addressing the need for protein and carbohydrates. My body wanted a replenishment from the trek. And on that trek I realized that I was building a fan fiction: a delulu lore of being an International banker. With the experience of policy papers, I’ve become the passenger princess while this specific bias is my driver. We tagged this as a “Cultural Meeting”, but it’s a one-on-one fan meet. A curated conversation with this specific musician who graduated in my university, reshaped the OPM landscape via PPOP, and him seeking funding with the vision of “Iaangat ang ekonomiya sa pamamagitan ng mga nililikhang musika at katha.” And this scenario is strategically placed in EDSA corner Ortigas Ave, when I randomly sighed “heto na naman si Edsang Cajabaan” while mulling over the ways we can channel his vision into a 25-year Official Development Assistance.
Suddenly, I opened my organizer and added this specific prompt as the fourth item of my to-do list for submissions.
Thanks to Lyra and her husband’s SUV, we have combated the traffic and she drop me off to my next event place in Kalayaan. In Hoseik Manila, I met Justine alone in the farthest bench, an hour before the event starts. He mentioned about the Vivo brothers, mute and waiting on the opposite side. I’d have to bank in my affiliation as the book club moderator and say hello. Pero, hindi ko makilala ang mga tao dahil wala akong salamin, at madilim — ano bang meron sa bar na ito kundi dim lighting? Kung hindi ko pa tatanungin yung mga nakaupo, hindi pa sila maghe-hello. Buti na lang pala at extrovert ako. Bulag nga lang.
Ang cool lang ni sir Nal (tawagin ko na ba syang boss Vivo? Kasi naman, parating tawag sa akin nun ay Ms. Ella). We talked about the direction of this writers org for Pasig City, and how we can tackle and move the community from its annual writing workshops to quarterly folios, and widen its reach to the aspiring young writers via literary engagements. Also, I told him that I intentionally invited him with the other younger writers who can sit with those aligned with the academe and public institutions, as I desire to make a workshop bring out a new way of storytelling: employing mobilities, newer vernaculars and inclusivity in code-switching. He had high hopes, as this will be his first formal workshop as a panelist in a roster of multiple fellows in various genres. He jested that if I winged the 2025 summer workshop and be able to introduce a new philosophy contrasting today’s academic landscape, “tinalo mo pa ang UP Writers workshop!”
With our exchange of ideas and sentiments on current Pinoy literary landscape and its readership (and patronage?), magkakaroon na kami ng bagong episode sa Book Talakayan podcast. Sayang hindi ko nai-record ang lahat ng ito. Isa pa, super busy na ng aming creative director (kaya matagal nang hiatus ang nasa spotify).
He nudged me to ask questions to Ricky Lee, being the main guest for that night’s event of spoken word poetry and sparking the interest and honing the craft, but I became hesitant, responding with, “Sa book club na lang, mas friendly pa sa mga basher na katulad ko.” We listened as the National Artist repeats his lores of script-writing and storytelling. A student asked and sir Ricky answered, “Ilabas mo lang yan, isuka mo yang mga naiisip mo. Saka na ang pagpapaganda; ang mahalaga, naisulat mo.” Vivo chimed in and he echoed the same sentiment, saying that even though some academics say that you are introducing a different idea to the world, as long as you release a craft, you can feel relief. You can feel whole again.
Our conversations jumped from opinions of the pinoy creative writing from our younger years, and how to introduce a new ethos with the insertion of short media, infusion of music and film / tv series, and how to execute movements in the prose. Special mention: Bebang’s REELiterature, building bookish features and creative nonfiction entries via facebook videos. As usual, I cannot help but share my reading experiences with the long forms and how it influenced my way of writing stories through the “Creative Nonfiction slant”, its art of restraint and its slow movement as a haven to create a first-person view of things from a higher elevation. I told him that it takes a huge toll on my stamina, as I do not rage-write, a polar opposite of his writing rhythms and the birth of the Dreamland trilogy. He candidly shared about his one-on-one mentorship with the students taking thesis on the MA Creative Writing, and he often asked the young, “Tinuturuan ba kayo ng iba pang istilo ng pagsusulat?” and more often than not, the latter would answer in the same manner as my reading experience: building a universe ala-Noli, but nothing is happening, prose is becoming slow-burning, with a high risk of crash-and-burn at the latter part of the work. Worse, it becomes stagnant.
I asked if he has a life-hack on making people move in his stories, and his insight that I picked in his anecdotes was about the auditory engagement. Almost after he mentioned about earworms being an organic element to a song, a poet shared his story on writing 80 pages that looked like a film script but actually a short story, his voice echoed as sharp as the violet laser light in the dimmed space. Out of curiousity, I stood and looked for the man but Vivo stopped me saying, “Huwag mong hanapin, pakinggan mo lang. Umupo ka lang at pakinggan.” I wasn’t attentively listening to whatever the man said, but I was actively noting the timbre, the assertive tone, and his sub-woofing vocal range in the microphone. That poet can be a voice artist dubbing Sid Lucero, taglish-ing the conflict of his quick-witted mind versus the typing skills, the ideas quickly falting and not plotting properly into the paper.
I guess that little snippet gave me an idea to engage in other forms of art and channel the same velocity to the drafts I am creating for my submissions. Perhaps this time around, I can channel the writing rage, and rather than just dumping quotations and conversations of the characters, I can do a drill of thrashing the craft with multitudes of verbs and adjust my scenarios to a spree, engaging a third-person point of view and work it like a camera lens, its level as grounded and with the world. It does take a lot of unlearning from the slow-burns and musings.
Little breaks happened after the talks and guests of the spoken word segments, some picture taking here and there, and before the Vivo brothers exit the scene, we have our picture taken.
Yung tinapik ko lang si sir Ricky Lee tas sabi ko, “Sir dali, pa-picture po tayo, sayang naman.” HAHAHA! Tapos biglang kinalabit ko si Alfonso Manalastas para kuhaan kami ng picture.
Napakabait ng mga tao sa resident basher ng Pinoy Reads Pinoy Books.
Sa lahat ng naging hanash namin sa event, bigla kong naisip ang magiging isa sa vision ng baby project na AGOS (Adhika ng Giting sa Obra at Sining) ng Pasig: Ang pagkakaroon ng kanlungan at bagtasan ng mga manunulat at mambabasa mula sa samu’t-saring strata ng Kapasigan, at tagapagpadaloy ng mga katha sa mga mamamayang hirap sa paghahanap ng ikukunsumong sining. Isa siyang magiging malaking waypoint (Genshin Impact reference) na magmamapa ng bagong paraan ng pagkukwento at pagbabanghay sa boses na progresibo.
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