The Adamson Chronicle (H)UNOS 2015

Volume 2

Disenyo ng Pabalat at Debuho Thea Bettina L. Fuentebella Mark Joshua D. Basalo Reserbado ang lahat ng karapatan, kasama na ang karapatan sa reproduksiyon at paggamit sa anumang anyo at paraan maliban kung may pahintulot mula sa may hawak ng karapatang-ari. (c) 2015

Editor’s Note Dear Klasmeyts, First of all, ayokong mag-Ingles sa unang first time kong Editor’s Note.

Sorry kung mali-mali ang pambungad ko. Ganito talaga ako kapag kinakabahan o kapag walang pagsidlan ng tuwa. Nagkataong magkahalo kong nararamdaman ang mga damdaming iyon ng isinusulat ko ito. Bukod sa gusto kong ipaalam sa buong Unibersidad na binabalak ko nang iwasan ang pag-inom ng kape at paninigarilyo dahil nagiging nerbyoso na ako, nais kong ipahayag sa mga mambabasa ang pambihirang karanasan ko sa pagtayo bilang patnugot ng Literary Folio ng The Adamson Chronicle. Ang (H)unos.

Kinakabahan ako sa naging proseso ng paglalathala nitong kalipunan ng mga sulatin ng mga Adamsonian. Una dahil tungkol ito sa pagsulat, hindi nakakapagpa-pogi o nakakapagpa-ganda. Ikalawa ay dahil naalala ko noong 2nd year pa lamang ako, anim na taon na ang nakakalipas, (teka huwag kayong magulat dahil 4-year course ang Mass Comm at 9 years ko lang kinukuha ang mga ganyang kurso) kinailangan kong maghanap ng limampung kasamang mahilig magsulat upang makabuo ng isang organisayon. Sa awa ng Diyos, ako at ang sarili ko lang ang nahanap ko.

Hindi nabuo ang org. Kinabahan ako dahil baka maulit na naman iyon sa planong pagbuo ng (H)unos. Baka wala na naman kasing sumali. Sa totoong awa ng Diyos, maraming Adamsonian ang nagpadala ng kanilang mga akda.

Mag-aaral, guro, alumni, maging dropped-out at retired na estudyante at propesor ang nagnais makibahagi sa (H)unos. Ngayon ko napatunayan na hindi lang sa mga pangunahing unibersidad buhay ang pagsulat. Naniniwala na akong dumadaloy din ito sa dugo ng mga Adamsonian.

Wala namang paglagyan ang tuwa ko nang matanggap ko ang mga akda para sa (H)unos. Sa wakas, magkakasilbi ako bilang Literary Editor. Sa lahat kasi ng patnugot ng The Adamson Chronicle, ako ang pinaka-busy sa hindipagiging-busy. Naiinggit kasi ako sa tuwing may ini-edit ang mga kasama ko tuwing maglalabas kami ng isyu. Pero may higit na nakakapagpasaya sa akin. Yun ay yung may mga nais magsulat; at higit sa lahat may mga gustong magbasa. Kayo.

Ang pagtawid sa kalye ng San Marcelino ay bahagi na ng pang-araw-araw na gawain ng mga taga-Adamson. At kung kakapain natin sa kalyo sa ating

mga paa, ito ay simbolo ng ating hirap-sarap na pananatili sa mahal nating Unibersidad. Sa umpisa darating tayo sa kalye, tinatanaw at hahanap kung ano ang nasa kabilang bahagi. Habang naghihintay at pinag-aaralan kung paano tatawid, may mga makikilalang makakasabay sa pagtawid. Sa ating pagtawid, may mga balakid at suliranin. At sa huli, darating tayo sa kabilang bahagi, at iiwan natin ang lahat ng tao at suliranin sa kalye. Iiwan natin ang Unibersidad at ang San Marcelino. Subalit, kahit gradweyt na tayo at tapos na sa pagtawid sa San Marcelino, mag-iiwan at magdadala ang bawat isa sa atin ng mga gunita. Ang mga karanasan, pasakit, lungkot, ligaya, tagumpay, kabiguan‌. lahat ay dala-dala natin.

Bago kami makatawid sa kabilang bahagi ng San Marcelino, itong aming mga sulatin ay iiwanan at ibabahagi namin sa inyo. Itong (H)unos. At kayong mga mambabasa, mga Klasmeyts, kayo ang bitbit namin sa pagtawid sa kalye ng San Marcelino. Ngayong nakalimbag na ito, ang minsan ninyong pagbasa sa aming kaisipan at damdamin ay habambuhay naming aalalahanin. Ito ang aking una’t huling handog na (H)unos bilang Literary Editor ng The Adamson Chronicle, at ito na rin ang huling beses akong mag-iingles.

I promise.

No, Luke Skywalker (Karl Santos) Patnugot Pampanitikan ng The Adamson Chronicle

Nilalaman |mga tula Walang nangyayaring krimen at iba pang tula Mikael Rabara Gallego Isang takipsilim sa piling ng katipan

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Ang salarin

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3 poems Kai Roleta Sal Paradise

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Ltur-lefr

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There’s Nothing Like

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Mga tula Edwin Don Padrilanan bakit pumupula ang langit at kulay rosas ang paligid?

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tula

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paglangoy

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alay

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Image in words Jan Kiethan B. Suen ANG PAGTALIKOD

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The Fire-folk in the Sky

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Supernova Waltz Jumarvin R. Ridulfa Nebula

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Nouveau

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Mga Lunas sa Personal na Gunita at Galimgim Karl Isaac M. Santos Bago Ako Matulog

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Dormitoryo

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Mga Sanay sa Tag-ulan

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Gunita

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Mga Suliranin ng Isang Estudyante

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Woohoo

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Ikaw at ang Mendiola

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Kung Malayo Ka

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Kung Paano Mag-isa

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Tatlo sa Alon Radney O. Ranario Paghahanap

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Pawis at Perlas

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Alon

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The Girl Over There Justin Sabandeja

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Akong Pinaglihi sa Sama ng Loob Floyd Scott Tiogangco

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Re(c)to Ailyn O. Amado

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How Will I End the World Thea Fuentebella

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|maikling kwento Ped Xing Ivy Pedida

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Whistle Ivy Pedida

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The Unbearable Smallness of Being JB Lazarte

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Taguan Karl Isaac M. Santos

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The Misadventure of the Adventurer in the Bermuda Triangle

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Karl Isaac M. Santos |mga sanaysay The Things We are Not Ailyn O. Amado

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San Marce Ailyn O. Amado

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Ang Aking Pag-alis at Kanilang Pagbabalik Don Emmanuel Nolasco

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Thoughts Lost and Found (A series of vignettes: volume 1) Roma Estrada

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A Letter to Mr. Mario Vargas Llosa Mary Anne N. Boribor

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Natalee M. Rodeo

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Mga Tula

Walang nangyayaring krimen at iba pang tula Mikael Rabara Gallego

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Isang takipsilim sa piling ng katipan i.

May dumaraang libing.

Walang katahimikan ang yapak ng mga nakikipaglibing.

Sa kama, nagtitirik siya ng kandila Sa katawan ng katipan. ii.

Bukas na bintana.

Di maabot ng kaniyang tanaw ang alingawngaw Ng lumang simboryo. iii.

Itim Ang damdamin ng libog.

Ang bigong mangingibig ng nagdadalamhating daigdig.

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Ang Salarin Sa kanyang pagpikit nagaganap ang ritwal: Ang ganap na pagyakap niya sa lawas Ng kawalan. Pagtangi sa itinatangi niyang birhen: Nasa silid, himbing na natutulog Sa ulap na kama. Kumot ang haraya— Nakamasid ang sidhi.

“Ikaw,” ang bulong niya sa sarili, Ang itim na damdamin ng aking panagimpan.”

Dahan-dahan siyang lumapit, tahimik Na umupo sa tabi ng higaan. Nakahigang sanghaya, Aninaw sa katawan ng birhen ang himanglaw.

“Ikaw,” ang bulong niya sa sarili, Ang nagngangalit na pangitain ng aking pandama.”

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Anil-il sa panganorin. Asong ulol Sa halimuyak ng hasmin. O anong higpit Mayroon ang grabedad sa lunggati?

Natutuyo ang labi niya sa marahang dampi Sa labi ng birhen. May lambing ng lumbay Ang pagtatapat: Nagsasayaw na apoy Ang pasmadong kamay. Naalimpungatan ang birhen.

Nanlaban. Sinong pangahas ang nais umangkin sa akin?

Walang nangyayaring Krimen sa halik sa batok ng pangitain: Ang mabigo ng paulit-ulit sa dahas ng pagkauhaw, Sa itim na apoy at punit na puting ulap sa panganorin.

“Ako,” ang sabi niya sa birhen, “Ang bigong mangingibig ng nagdadalamhating daigdig.”

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3 Poems Kai Roleta

Sal Paradise Let’s play our hearts out.

Let’s complain about the ache in our back.

Let’s compare our bruises and blisters.

Let’s fall in-love like a one-night-stand.

Let’s talk deep and never see each other again.

Let’s stain and rip our clothes.

Let’s knock down whiskey and be animals.

Let’s pack and un-pack our nights after nights.

Let’s squash ourselves if we don’t fit.

Let’s request the 90’s on the dance floor and let people look at us.

Let’s be insane. (Because we are.)

Let’s fall asleep with our make-ups on.

Because we’re just going to wake up and do it again next day.

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Ltur-lefr Her hobby is killing her soul Every night you’ll hear her howl Chomping pills in her dark room You can hear her, repeating his ‘In Bloom’ She might have never controlled herself When her veins started to tighten up her neck, Threw punches to her self, Waited for her face to break.

“Will you wreck or mend me? I like it both But don’t leave me.”

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There’s Nothing Like There’s nothing like being On the road.

Everyday you’re awakened By the screaming sunlight In a strange hotel Room.

And you realize you don’t Know where you are.

And quite often you’re Still be fully nude.

Then you roll in the Van and hold hands And head to the next town.

Through storms, Humid, empty roads, Endless kisses, catch-up sex and naps.

There’s nothing like Tracking down the best Food stops, listening free

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To record stores, dressing Up in fancy shops, and Smoking and drinking vodka All the way.

And there’s nothing like Arriving at an apartment You’re sharing with, in The middle of nowhere, Setting up your system And coordinating your Self.

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Mga Tula Edwin Don Padrilanan

bakit pumupula ang langit at kulay rosas ang paligid? bakit muling pumupula ang langit at kulay rosas ang paligid? ang tila sanlaksang tanong na inihiyaw ko sa kalawakan ng kawalan. bakit sa kabila ng natapos kong alimpuyo ay sumisikad ang dibdib na tila'y digma ang sa puso'y nagpapaalab? isang pakikibaka na naman ba ang sa aki'y tumatambad o isang ilusyong itanggi ang kairalan at saysay? bakit nga ba muling pumupula ang langit at kulay rosas ang paligid? bakit ba ako parang bubuyog na sa iyong kaharian ay nambubulabog?

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kasunod ng isang paghithit ng hangin ay pagkabilaok dito sa iyong pagdaan. ito ba ang nagpapapula ng aking paligid at ang iyong katahimikan ay kulay rosas sa kanyang paghimlay sa bibig mong aking pinagninilayan? marahil bukas, ang pagpula ng langit ay maipapaliwanag ng mga salitang maibubulong ko sa hangin at kilos na isisigaw sa nagkukulay rosas na paligid. bukas‌..

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tula sa iyo, wari ko, magsisimula ang lahat. sa iyo, tingin ko, gagalaw ang dapat. sa iyo, alam ko, magbabago ng kagyat. sa pagtiklop ng araw at paglatag ng dilim, humuhugot ako ng talim sa paghihintay ng liwayway. dumaan ka’t dili ako’y ‘di mapakali sa pagbuntunghiningang nangangako ng kandili. ay sus, huwag namang ipako sa wala ang matang ‘di madaling magtiwala. naman, naman. haplos mong hindi madampian ang balat kong hinayaan sana naman ay masaksihan. sa pag-aabang ng oras na nakikiraan sa aking kairalan, ikaw kaya’y maalayan? idlip ng mortal, pag-iipon ng dangal upang hindi mabilaukan sa iyong pagdaan. sa iyo, ang lahat ay magaganap.

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paglangoy gusto kong lumangoy patungo sa iyo, ngayon din habang nakapagkit ang iyong titig sa akin. pagdating ko riyan, sisisid ako sa iyong labi, sa iyong leeg, sa iyong balikat. mga braso’t kamay at mga daliri pati ang bawat pagitang nagdudugtong at naghihiwalay sa kanila. sisisid ako sa malalim. sa iyong dibdib, tiyan, tagiliran, sa pusod, sa singit, sa hita’t alak-alakan, sa binti hanggang paa’t talampakan. at sisisirin ko rin ang pinakamalalim mong abyss. kahit ikalunod ko ito.

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alay marahil, kahapon ay tinanaw mo ang lipas na karugtong ng kasalukuyang nag-aalimpuyo; naaalala mo, tiyak ang mga liko’t ikot at hirap ng paghugot ng hininga sa mahaba-habang lakbayin. lumaro rin siguro sa iyong gunita ang mga kilalang ngiti’t halakhak na ngayo’y hinahanap-hanap mo dahil ang iba’y wala na, lumayo at naghubad na ng ating diwa. sige lang, palinawin mo sa iyong diwa ang mga eksenang naroroon ang mga pamilyar na kaluluwang nagtutulong-tulong, nagkukunot ng noo’t nagpapatulo ng katakut-takot na pawis, nagbuwis na ng buhay at nabawasan na ng ilang bahagi ng katawan upang maitayo ang kapangyarihan ng mamamayan at maisulong ang dakilang digma. sumasagi rin ba ang mga alaala ng mga pulong, pag-aaral, talakaya’t pagsisiyasat? ang mga tunggalian at suliranin na kinaharap? ‘di ba’t lumuha ka na? at hanggang ngayon naman , ‘di ba?

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Historikal ang mga iyak, ang padron nito’y humahalo sa mga pagsulong, pag-atras, paglakas, paghina, pagkakamali’t pagwawasto. ‘di ba’t wastong lumingon sa nakaraan at matatag na humarap sa napakahirap na patutunguhan, habang nagsisikhay sa rebolusyo’t nagpapanday? lipas na nga ang kahapon, lalo na nating papag-alimpuyuin ang kasalukuyan….

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Image in words Jan Kiethan B. Suen

ANG PAGTALIKOD Sumibad sa manipis na hangin ang mga salitang “Ayoko na” mula sa ‘yong bibig. Sinabayan Ng pagtalikod at ng maalinsangang panahon Ang pagdating ng malamig, maginaw na hapon.

Hanging-humahagibis ang ‘yong mga hakbang, Patawid sa daan, tungo sa landas Ng lumalamlam, namamanhid na dako palayo.

Iniluwa ng kabiguan ang mga luhang Nangagsisi-unahan sa ‘king mga mata.

Katawan ko’y parang toge na napasandal Sa abot-langit na Acacia sa gilid ng daan.

Tila pagsuko ng supil na loob, iniisip na Ang puso mo’y balat sana ng puno na Lalambot kung mahahamugan.

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Hindi talos ang kisap-matang pagpalit Ng panahon tulad ng ‘yong paglisan.

Ang maghapong init ng araw ay sinipsip Ang sustansya sa namamasang balat ng puno.

Damdami’y nanunuyot, gumagaspang sa laman Na dati’y mahigpit kong niyayapos.

Ang huling salita’y mga tinik na matutulis.

Kumukulubot ang mga paninindigan, Lumulutong ang mga pang-unawa Na madaling matuklap, maputol, madurog.

Nagkakabitak-bitak, parang tigang na lupa Sa katatapos lang na tag-araw, Ang pangako mong ako’y kasama Hanggang sa pagtanda. Nag-iiwan ng itim na pekas At mantsa ang malagkit na dagta Na tumutulo mula sa hiwa Ng matagal mo nang pag-aasam ng init ng iba.

Dalisay pa rin kaya ang pag-ibig kahit ako’y nahahapo at kusang napaparam?

Napalitan ang mga galos buhat Sa mga mapanibughong damdaming ‘Sing ginaw ng pumalit na tag-lamig.

Subalit kung ika’y lilingon, hahakbang pabalik…

Nakahanda akong sambitin: “Ayoko na rin.”

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The Fire-folk in the Sky i.

Midnight, When dark clouds Cover the full moon, I see your massive, luminous Sphere of plasma held together By your own gravity; Like a fire-folk sitting in the air, Like an airy abele aflame. ii.

I wish, You sustain your visible Electromagnetic radiation That traverses in the outer space, Radiates into the atmosphere Of our world.

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iii.

Your sheer distance Sinks courage in this mortal heart.

Now that the full moon lights up the ample sky, You appear as a fixed, luminous point. iv.

I realize you’re made of atoms Filled with so much space, Mostly made of nothing.

This is how I must think of you: (Or I wish!)

You mean nothing to me.

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Supernova Waltz Jumarvin Ridulfa

Nebula I look at the stars thinking How fortunate the human race is; That these cosmic entities are nothing But just spheroidal, Gaseous bodies of spectacle.

Not individuals who could understand How perfectly distinct you are.

For if they were, They would stop producing energy By means of nuclear fusion reactions So as to descend into our planet, Only into our planet, As I do to you.

Yet man was so undeniably clever That something so scientific Was turned into an astrological phenomenon Where the positioning of thousand Self-luminous celestial bodies Were believed to influence More than just our future.

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And so if I am to concede in A life where stars dictated my every move, Am I foolish, insane even, to wish – For our stars to collide into oblivion And explode into nothingness?

Hoping that astronomy would be able to explain A connection between those stars And our affinity In turn, ending my frustration As to how I am still longing For your affection and your warmth, When our stars Are already nowhere to be found Across the universe.

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Nouveau They say once you meet the light of your life, there will be an almost complete absence of everything There will be no synchronized flying of doves across the blue sky, dancing through air whilst in style There will be no fireworks, like it’s a cold January midnight and suddenly you’re jumping beneath the smoke and ecstasy There will be no romantic music, playing while you’re pulling on your last cigarette stick There will be no hurricane, or strong winds, or tsunami in the bay There will be no unexplainable chaos,

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just like how the movies define disaster, where your clumsiness triumphs over, abruptly, making you accidentally pour latte on her exquisite dress, and you both stare at each other, all in the middle of that mess They say once you meet the light of your life, there will just be you, and her, and silence – apart from the sound of your heart beating, endlessly

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Mga Lunas sa Personal na Gunita at Galimgim Karl Isaac M. Santos

Bago Ako Matulog Kinukumpol maigi ang unang Hihimlayan ng ngalay kong ulo.

Sinisiguro kong malambot, Mabango ang sasalo sa sisidlan Ng inaantok na alaala natin.

Dinadama ng aking mga daliri Ang paghagod sa kumot na bitin; Pilit na pinagkakasya ang sarili Sa umiksing kumot ng lambing.

Ngayong isa nang malambot Na kawalan ang aking tulugan, Pinaaagos ng malamig na umagang Naghihintay ang damdaming Pumapatak na lang sa unan, Bago ako matulog.

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Dormitoryo Hindi ko ninais ang magpakalayu-layo.

Talagang malayu-layo lang ang paaralan.

Hindi ko na kasi kaya pa ang tumayu-tayo sa bus, sa trapik ng araw-araw.

Kaya sinumulan kong maghakut-hakot ng damit, pantalon, gamit, at mga alaala.

Lumipat sa bahay na walang kasiguraduhan kung may tubig, kuryente, kaibigan.

Basta yung medyo mura-mura ng konti, kahit pa mukha lang bahay-bahayan.

Ika nga ng iba, kalimutan mo ang alinlangan kung gusto mong umuwi nang may pinag-aralan.

Kaya hindi na ako nagpatumpik-tumpik pa, Kinagat na ang dalawang libong upa, Tutal kasama na daw ang tubig, kuryente, katol, at pangungulila.

Sa ngayon, maayos naman ang lagay ko dito sa luma’t aalug-alog na dormitoryo.

Subalit ngayong bakasyon, Nananabik akong umuwi Kahit wala naman talaga akong pamilya.

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Mga Sanay sa Tag-ulan Kapag sumisipol na ang hangin, Bawat damo sa luntiang parang Ay nagsisisayaw sa saliw Ng bulong-bulungang lihim Ng ulap at lupa.

Magsisitago ang mga tigre’t liyon Sa namamasa’t madilim na lungga; At magsisilabas ang mga palakang Nagsisipagkandirit – Mga sanay na sanay sa baha, Banlik, at putik.

Kung bibigay na sa hinanakit At sama ng loob ang langit, Nawawala ang mga ungol At angil ng tapang Nilang mga hari ng sementadong gubat.

Marapat lang palakasin ang ingay Ng mga mapagpursiging palaka – Silang mga sadlak sa dungis At alikabok ng dalita.

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Gunita Kung muling dalawin ng kirot Ng paglisan at pag-iisa, Isiping gamot ang limot.

Sa nagising, lumang gunita.

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Mga Suliranin ng Isang Estudyante Padre, trapik na naman sa Quiapo, May banggaan sa kanto, Hanggang tuhod na naman ang tubig sa Taft.

Huli na naman ako sa klase, Lagot na naman ako Dahil sarado na naman ang pinto Ni senyoritong galante Sagradong-sagrado At sermong edukado.

Padre, sa totoo lang tanggap ko naman ang lahat Na hindi lang kaming mahihirap ang nasa loob Nitong silid-aralang maalinsangan Kahit may air-con.

Mainit ito para sa amin nina Tonton, Isko, at Sabel.

Subalit impyerno na raw ito Para kina Leonor, Jared at Steven.

Mahirap bigkasin ang ‘ngalan nila Kapag ganitong tumutulo sa leeg ang pawis.

Padre, naiipit na ho ako sa paligsahan Ng mga kaklase kong matatalinong tamad At ng mga sipsip na masisipag.

Paano na akong humihiling lang Ng kahit anong numero, Maliban sa sinusumpa kong singko?

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Padre, patawarin po ninyo ako Kung mabubulilyaso na naman Ang ipinangako sa liham Na magbabayad ako Ng ginintuang matrikula.

Lumublob na naman kasi ang sakahan ni Itay Sa ibinuhos sa amin ng ulap.

Makasalanan nga ata talaga kami, Kaya hindi lang ang may-ari ng lupa Ang nagngangalit, pati na rin ang langit.

Makakuha pa rin sana ako Ng kaligtasan kong pagsusulit.

Padre, ganito ho ba talaga?

Pati yung klasmeyt kong seksi Na may makitid na ulo ay suliranin ko?

Isinauli kasi niya ang regalo kong Bimpo mula Pampanga, At yung kalamay ng Laguna.

Naubos ang baon ko masuyo lang Siya nang husto. Alam niyo naman Matindi umibig ang probinsyanong tulad ko.

Kung tutuusin, magiging madali lang sana Kung ‘Kumpadre’ ko kayong matatawag, Padre. ‘Di ko na sana kailangang mangumpisal sa tig-pipisong dilaw na papel.

Gusto ko lang pagbigyan ang hiling ni tatay, Makapagtapos sana ako, kahit dasal lang Ang nakabisado ko.

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Woohoo I know a girl I see her head There is something Inside, and it is in swirl.

Her ear has pearl, She likes her bed That has nothing Besides her bed sheet in twirl.

She speaks of Woohoo She sounds like Woohoo And every time she does My heart sings Woohoo!

Woohoo!

I know a pill, It’s white and round That brings out what I hide: She’s my Rivotril.

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I feel a thrill When she’s around “It’s love, so what?”

That is really what I feel.

She speaks of Woohoo We dance like Woohoo And every time we do, My heart goes Woohoo!

Woohoo!

We jump like turtles Fly like beetles Walk like Buddha Eat naked tuna Get drunk and fight, Then kiss at the wrong side of the street.

We love doing crazy things called Woohoo.

That’s why I write this song with lots of “Woohoo!”

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Ikaw at ang Mendiola Mahal, naaalala mo pa ba?

Dito mo unang binigkas Na di mo palalampasin Ang araw Na di nalalaman Ang pangalan ko.

Dito sa Mendiola Kung saan tayo unang nagtagpo, Nakaputim-puti ako At ikaw, pulam-pulang May bahid ng himagsik.

Dito mo rin unang Ibinandera

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Ang ‘yong pagtingin, Iwinagayway Ang damdaming gigil.

Ngayon, narito ako sa Mendiola Habang lumulubog ang araw.

Luksang-itim ang damit At may karatula sa dibdib.

Inaapuhap sa alaala Ang mga titik ng ngalan mo.

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Kung Malayo Ka Kung malayo ka, Ang bawat tikatik at patak Ng nangangambang ulan, ang katahimikan, Naririnig Lumalapit sa akin Ang kaluskos at bugso, Ulan sa damdamin, lulan ang iyong Alaala Lunod sa’yong pag-ibig, Ang hunos na Di ninanais tumila pa, Ang kalungkutan, Walang humpay sa pagbuhos, Kung malayo ka *Basahin mula sa huli

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Kung Paano Mag-isa Tahimik ang paligid kapag mag-isa, Naririnig ko lahat maging ang paghigop sa papalamig at maputlang kapeng Sana’y magpainit sa lumalamig nating pagtatabi.

Ramdam ko ang inyong init, subalit nananaig ang lamig ng ‘di pagtitinginan at di pagpapansinan.

Hinahanap sa ‘sang dipa nating agwat ang saya ng dati nating lambingan.

Mas marami ang mga salitang nais bawiin kaysa sa mga damdaming nais sabihin.

Kapag naburyo na sa pagsasamang tahimik, Nagkakapaan kung sino ang unang iimik, Saka lalabas ang mga hinanakit Na nakahalo sa mga sigaw at bulyaw.

Kailangan pala ng malakas na tinig Upang magkarinigan ang mga damdaming malayo sa isa’t isa; Kahit magkalapit at magkadikit ang ating ulo’t bisig.

Hinahanap ka, kahit pa kaharap ka, Ganito pala ang mag-isa habang kasama ka.

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Tatlo sa Alon Radney O. Ranario

Paghahanap Hinahanap ko ang init ng silahis ng araw Na naglalagos sa siwang ng sawali’t kawayan; Hinahanap ang tinis ng tilaok ng tandang At pagaspas ng dahon ng saging at niyog; Hinahanap ang salubong na halik sa talampakan Ng damo sa parang na hitik sa hamog; Hinahanap ang kirot sa balahibo’t balat Kung tirik ang mata ng ulap; Hinahanap ang babahagyang apuhap ng hangin Sa pusod ng laot o paanan ng baybayin; Hinahanap ang sagwan at lambat o bingwit, Ang matiyagang pag-antabay sa mga huli’t pumupusag; Hinahanap ang himas ng alon sa piliw, Sa pagal na bisig na humamon sa alat; Hinahanap ang makupad na buwan Na namimintog sa wisik at saboy na liwanag: Kabihasnang nawaglit itong sa ulirat hinahanap Ng inalong kamusmusan sa pampang ng siyudad.

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Pawis at Perlas Nagbubuwis tayo ng pawis Sa ilang pilas ng kataga, nag-aambag ng pilas ng buhay na tagni rin ng mga pilas na sinikap buuin.

Tuwina, buo ang pagsisikap Sa pagtatagni Kahit marahang napipilas ang sarili tulad ng mga pahinang matapos bunuin, pagpawisan, ay nilukot na lungkot na kuyom ng palad.

Nakamamangha kung paanong sa palad ikinukuyom ang lungkot gayong pilas ito ng sarili at hiningang itinagni sa pagitan ng mga puwang ng pagsisikap at pagbuo.

Madalas ang pagkakataong binubuno natin ang lungkot na tila asul at itim na nakalatag at ikinikislot ng alon habang sinasagwan ng dibdib at kuyom na palad ang panimdim sa pagtatagni.

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Pero nakamamangha kung paanong dumaratal sa piliw ang lahat na pinong bula sa pinong bahangin, upang humalik sa bato at talampakan, yumapos sa pampang.

Tuwina, binubuo ng pagsisikap ang pagtatagni na pumipilas sa lungkot na pilas ngayon ng buhay.

Perlas ang pawis sa kislot ng kataga.

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Alon May along kung dumahunog ay nagkikimkim ng tubig sa dibdib.

Kapag umusad, palihim.

Pigil at masinop sa paglalatag ng sarili.

Pagdaka’y mamumulagat ka na lamang kung sa paglakad ay may matisod kang uka o bakas, lalim sa buhangin.

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The Girl Over There Justin Sabandeja She’s with her book Resting with folded knees She’s in her chucks Focused on the pages She’s in her jeans Biting down her nails She’s with her beanie Now with dilating eyes She’s with her blouse Now laughing loud on her bounded grass But she wonders Where she is

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Akong Pinaglihi sa Sama ng Loob Floyd Scott Tiogangco Pinaglihi raw ako sa sama ng loob Tukso ng mga kalarong Taympers naman ang sambit Kapag sila ay nakalabit Sa larong – “langit lupa, impyerno”.

Pinaglihi raw ako sa sama ng loob Bulalas ni itay matapos ko Matabig ang iniinom na colt 45 At maglawa sa ilalim ng mesa.

Pinaglihi raw ako sa sama ng loob Hindi totoo yan sabi ni Inay Hindi ka sa sama ng loob pinaglihi Kundi sa problema at panghi.

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Re(c)to Ailyn O. Amado Pare-pareho ang mga lalaki, Susuyuin ka, panandalian “I love you.” Sa text, date sa liwasan “Happiest man on earth” ‘ka nila Pag kayo’y nagkatuluyan Pero matapos ang tatlong buwan Ng bangayan, selos, at iyakan “It’s not you, it’s me.”

Ang linyang bibitawan Pare-pareho ang mga lalaki.

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Reto sa Recto Pang-tatlong eyeball ng buwan Mga barkadang ‘di napapagod Na hanapan ako ng “perfect man�

Kalokohan pag aking naaalala Mga panahong naniwala sa magic Pare-pareho lang naman kasi Ang mga lalaki, paasang lintik!

Reto sa Recto Matapos ang siyam na buwan.

Kolorete sa mga matang pikit, Pula sa mga labing pilit, Kulay na kailangan Sa dilim na pinasukan.

Kahit anong sideline, Pinapatos Ng katawang laspag.

Kakayurin Pambili ng gatas.

Reto sa Recto Dahil mainstream sa Ermita.

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How Will I End the World Thea Fuentebella

BRIGHT pink, cotton candy clouds And a thousand rainbows in the sky; Bits of land will slowly rise Forcing people to fly THE END: It will begin this way A calm-vague-chaos interlude Like ballet Though more soulful and less tu-tu The waters will rise and magma will crawl AND MAKE GARDEN SALADS OF US ALL A magnificent and beautiful sight Though death comes tasteless and swift in plight THE DEBRIS, resembling huge chocolate chunks, Stampede down with the candy hailstorm.

They make insects out of fallen tree trunks Squashing cars and humans and more

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PEOPLE WILL JUST BE PEOPLE then, No criminal nor hero nor savage nor king But those faithless will pray again But be held responsible for nothing And as it nears its actual end, The world will turn into its most glorious form THAT WILL MAKE NATIONS SING in chorus, “I LOVE ALL HUMANS, boom ti-ya ya boom ti-ya ya And have lived to see it end, Hallelujah” Soon there will be ETERNAL SILENCE But with the dying echoes of cries If only NATURE is as humorous as I, The world will end with everyone laughing.

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Maikling Kwento

Ped Xing

Isinulat ni Ivy Pedida Siguro masyado nang nababad ang utak niya kaka-Facebook. Malamang sa malamang para makalusot ay ibubunton niya ang sisi kay Mark. Mother of Hardrives, bakit ba kasi naimbento ang social networking sites! Sinisigurado niyang natutulog siya nang maaga, pero parang naka-program ang utak niyang gumising ng alas-tres at hindi na bumalik pa sa malalim na pagkakahimbing.

Masisisi mo ba ang isang insomniac na tulad niya kung ang tanging takbuhan niya para makatulog muli ay ang malamlam na ilaw ng laptop at high speed internet connection? Pero traydor ang mundo, ang inaasahan niyang sleeping pill ay parang kapeng sumusuntok sa utak niyang hindi makapili kung mananatiling gising o tulog. Nakatilaok na ang lahat ng manok ng kapitbahay ay hindi pa niya naipipikit ang mugtong mga mata.

Magbasa ka na lang, usig ng girlfriend niya nang minsa’y maikuwento niya ang kawalan ng tulog. Sabay naglabas ng isang librong ikinatha ng kung sino at ibinigay sa kanya. Kakatapos lang basahin ni Jenny ang libro, maganda daw ang pagkakasulat. Tinaggap na lang niya ang librong ipinahiram ng kasintahan. Kung siya ang tatanungin, ang tanging interesanteng bagay lang sa libro ay ang pangalan ng may katha nito. Kung sa tumblr term pa eh, rad ito, short for radical. Minsan nga mapalitan ang pangalan niya ng isa sa kulay ng rainbow, baka sakaling maging radical din ang buhay niya.

Malayo layo din ang binabiyahe niya bago makarating sa klase. Kung anong ispiritu ang sumapi sa kanya para mapagdesisyunang pumasok sa unibersidad na parang end of the world na ang layo hindi niya matanto. Pero ayos lang.

Kung hindi niya ginawa ang desisyong iyon ay baka hindi sila nagkakilala ni Jenny. Malaking bagay ang makilala si Jenny, isang incentive ang makita siya mula Lunes hanggang Biyernes. Sulit ang pakikipagsagupaan niya sa jeep at LRT. Madalas, dahil puyat ay lutang siyang naglalakad sa mahaba-habang walkway, kasabay ng mga kapwa estudyanteng parang zombie. Mekanikal at bilang ang galaw at kilos, dala na rin siguro ng araw-araw na pagdaan dito. Noong una parang walang katapusan ang daan, pero naglaon ay parang ilang hakbang na lang ito. Sanayan na lang ang lahat.

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Nakakalungkot, wala na ang thrill hindi katulad noong first year ka at wala ka pang gaanong experience sa pagtansiya kung gaano mo kabilis matatakbo ang walkway. Kapag apat na taon ka nang dumadaan sa parehong daan apat na araw sa isang linggo at apat na linggo sa isang buwan alam mo na kung may pag-asa ka pang ihabol ang pinagpuyatang paper, realistic kung may sisigaw ng run Forrest, run! sa likod mo o maghahanap ka ng mas matinong excuse kaysa sa traffic.

Wala siyang planong malaman kung saang lupalop nakatayo ang eskuwelahang pinapasukan, pero dahil naka print sa I.D. ay hindi niya sinasadyang malaman din ito kalaunan. Minsan tinanong siya ni Popot kung bakit San Marcelino ang pangalan ng lugar na pinapasukan ni Kuya.

Wala akong ideya, pero tunog banal. Santo yata si San Marcelino biro niya.

Katulad noong pangalan ni Marcelino dagdag ng kapatid, isang cartoon na bata na may hawak na alak at tinapay ang kumaway sa kanilang imahinasyon.

Nang matapos ni John ang paghiyaw sa kanyang tenga ay narating niya ang dulo ng walkway. Madalas ay nagngangalit ang araw sa oras na iyon, pero makulimlim ang langit, parang uulan. Kahit kanino siya makipagpustahan ay mananalo siya kung baha lang sa Taft ang pag-uusapan. Siguradong iyon ang sasalubong sa kanya pagkatapos ng klase. Isang pre-determined casualty.

Bumirit pa si Paul kung paano niya susundan ang araw. How fitting, sarkastikong sagot niya sa kanyang buhay na subconscious, gamit ang British accent na hindi naman niya kayang gawin sa totoong buhay. Nagkumpol ang mga estudyante sa tapat ng pedestrian, may ibang personipikasyon ng tapang na naglakad habang berde pa lang ang traffic light. Binugahan ni Manong Guard ang kanyang pito bago pa man namula ang traffic light, at sanlakasang nilusob nila ang eskuwelahan, mga batang gusto, napilitan at trip mag-aral, mga batang isang diploma lang ang katapat ay maituturing nang matatanda.

Natanaw niya si Jenny na nakatayo sa kabila, nakangiti, marahil nauna na siyang nakita. Isinuot niya ang pinakamagandang ngiting baon niya nang araw na iyon at pansamantalang pinigilan si Paul sa kanyang litanya.

Nabasa mo na?

Oo, ang ganda nga noong libro. Nakatulog ako kagabi kakabasa.

Salamat sa quotes at plot summary ng goodreads.

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Whistle

Isinulat ni Ivy Pedida There was this blind curve in my way to school, that kind where the vehicles on the opposite pop out like a Jack in the Box, so swiftly that one has to slow down just to make sure they would not collide with the vehicle approaching at the adjacent lane.

Every day on my way to school I used to ride a tricycle, and I chose to perch myself precariously beside the driver, and that’s where I first met him.

No one knew his name, even if the drivers had affectionately called him Manong, because he rarely spoke. I doubt if he can, or he long ago figured out, the hell with speaking. I can do well with my hands than my mouth; better rest my tongue in peace. So instead of words, he used to groan out load and smile a lot, gums pink and large tooth gaps that could offer you a sneaky glance on what was down his throat. Syncing with his skinny arms flapping under his frayed shirt, he used a lot of movements to supervise the whole traffic of that small and dangerous blind curve. In return drivers would give him meager coins, sometimes leftovers. The generous ones give him bills and food.

As if his movements weren’t enough to replace his words, he always carried with him, securely tied around his neck, a red whistle. It wasn’t hard to notice, it being red and all. It was a shiny thing, a striking contrast to the gray grimy shirt he was sporting, as if every day before he takes his place in the middle of that blind curve he would diligently polish the whistle.

When I had the chance of observing it closely, my ride stopping due to traffic, I figured out someone from the Baranggay must’ve given him the whistle. I saw Tanods wearing the same red whistles around their necks. Come to think of it, our city’s official color is red. Good riddance it wasn’t pink.

If there was a monitored attendance on the blind curve, he would be the tardy student. Sometimes he would be there for weeks, sometimes he mysteriously disappears, only to return the next day, his whistle between his chapped lips, bones covered with skin flapping vigorously, muffled noises issuing from his throat, grinning at jeepney drivers to stop, wait, a large sixteen wheeler is approaching, now you can go, drive safely please, thank you very much.

Although he never stays, the blind curve was almost a lonely spot without his skinny frame gracing the middle of the road, and his presence meant safety, almost, like he was some sort of guardian angel watching over us, or as the

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drivers liked to put it whenever traffic gave them permission to talk to him, some underpaid, unappreciated traffic enforcer. The last of what I saw of him was actually the first time I perhaps, watched Death flit before my eyes.

The blind curve was eerily empty, save for a couple of tricycles and four wheel trucks. I was in my usual place forced to sit beside a lady prattling on the phone. The driver, as usual, upon approaching the blind curve, drove in a calculated slow pace. A large white truck appeared behind us and honked noisily, but our driver kept his pace, cursed openly about how ignorant some drivers are, and continued his task of delivering us safely. The truck, on the other hand, steered on the left and in blind hurry overtook us. It was normal up to that point, until our tricycle stopped and we all watched, transfixed, as the white truck suddenly lost control like a great white drunk metal and started veering from right to left.

Did I mention that blocks away from the blind curve was a high bridge? That’s where the white truck was heading, and we expected it to jump out of the solid concrete barrier and go straight down the large creek.

My eyes were fixed on Manong, his red whistle between his lips, his feet firmly rooted on the middle of the road.

I remember hearing yells, but what stood out vividly was that image of his skinny arms waving, as if trying to stop the white truck like it was a normal day. He remained on his spot, despite the yells from the by-standers, and he yelled something we never had time to comprehend and the truck crashed on a gate wall, steps away from the bridge.

He looked at the truck, mouth slack, whistle abandoned on his neck. Onlookers immediately went to the truck and helped the victims. Our tricycle went on and stopped to have its share of the gossip, our driver yelling how right he was.

I saw his face. It told me things that words cannot do.

It was a face betrayed. The blind curve was his territory. When Manong whistled and told the vehicles to stop, they stop, when he told them to go, they go. When he told them to wait, they wait. He and his whistle was a power to reckon in the blind curve.

The white truck broke that unspoken power.

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The Unbearable Smallness of Being Isinulat ni JB Lazarte

She just loves them, those onions. Every morning I see her with those lightning-fast hands working with the little knife to peel off the flaky, dry outer skin until nothing’s left but the soft core. I watch and think, in the way she relishes them, those pink bulbs must be ambrosial. I never ask her, not even once, about how the onions taste. Normal people eat pan de sal. The kids on my street drink taho. The merry housewives wait for the puto vendor at the crack of dawn. But she defies them all by sitting in her front porch and eating her onions. I know this because I see her every morning. She’s part of my daily misery.

Her name’s Rose, an old maid with a face one would call “masculine.”

Recently, there’s news she won’t be lonely for long. Her cousin, who had been working as a domestic helper in Norway, met and married a Norwegian. Now, this cousin had arranged to share her kind of fortune with Rose, somehow managing to find the right fool. Another Norwegian, they say, is coming over to meet Rose and whisk her off to his castle in the fjords.

I had been telling my father this bit of story before I discovered the stack of unpaid utility bills, before I noticed the calendar devoid of clients’ bookings. This is our photography studio, my father the “ace photographer.”

This is where I’ve spent every last centavo of my savings for the past three years, hoping our digital equipment, “the cutting edge in digital imaging,” will drive the competition out of business. But the flood of customers never came; when they do come, they come in hesitant trickles. I tell my father the studio’s supposedly my Last Great Enterprise, that it hurts me seeing it crumble to the ground. He returns my stare with that trapped look in his eyes and says, “What do you expect me to do? What – do you – expect – me – to do?”

This is my father, Delfin Salgado Senior. He is 58 years old, but has the naïveté and fears of a child. Before the idea of spending my savings on a photo studio came to twitch in my brain, my father was leonine, a can-do man in my eyes. But such bravado fizzled out when it became clear we missed the mark. I began blaming him, but he’s blaming our expensive equipment.

I blame his awkward presentations that turn customers off, but he blames our photo studio’s low traffic location. Right now, I’m blaming him for the unpaid bills—from the power company, the telephone company, the building administrator for the rental fee—but right now he’s blaming me for coming up with the idea of a studio in the first place. “If it were not for your impulsive

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decision, we wouldn’t be facing all these troubles.”

This is great, I think. A thought flashes in my brain, that of Oedipus murdering his father. Here he is, the man I have been trying to save from the subsequent iniquities of a pink slip issued so unjustly (he was fired from Lumens Studio eight years ago), the father whose old glory as a fashion photographer I have been trying to resurrect, here he is, blaming me for trying—and failing—to save him. This is what I get for losing my three-year savings to a dismal business decision I made in his name. So I scream, “Okay, just shut up!”

“What?” His hooded, puffy eyes throw dagger stares at me. “Are you blaming me?”

“Just shut up,” I repeat, avoiding his gaze. And I see, in the way the muscles in his jaws contract and relax, in the way the carotids bulge on his neck, that he is gritting his teeth. I think someday he’ll lose all of them, those teeth, from all the middle-age angst, all the bitterness, all the rage kept inside. I crumple all the bills and storm outside and sulk by the roadside. I stand around and try to chat with the sidewalk vendors but my smile, my conversation feels so fake it hurts me even more. The cigarette vendor, an old man with one leg, offers me an extra stool and I sit on it and pretend I’m fine. Yeah, I’m fine. The morning’s lovely and I’m feeling so fine maybe I can kiss my own ass. And I think about Rose and her onions and her complacent little smile and her dirty white dog that always sits beside her. I think about the good fortune that visits other people and how I used to imagine my own future in terms of nice possibilities. The future. As the present gets worse, the more the future feels like some joke you keep to yourself because it’s closer to reality now and it’s no longer funny.

Later, I slip back inside and find my father quietly smoothening out the bills I had crumpled. He doesn’t look at me. He gazes into the Meralco bill with the solemnity of a monk. Suddenly, a strong sense of utter desolation seizes me. He looks so old, so tired. And suddenly, I feel very lonely, as if the space enclosed by these four walls is nothing but a wasteland where the two of us are left to die and rot under the shifting sand. You should fight back, seethe with anger, I want to tell him. You should never be content with what fate seems to be giving you. Slash back, hack, parry like a true warrior, I want to tell him. Please be strong, I want to beg him. But all I see is weakness, acceptance of defeat, bitter ashes in my mouth.

“What can I do?” my father now mumbles, folding the bills as if they were sacred parchment. “No one’s coming in to hire us. No one.”

The fruitless days are followed by catatonic nights before the TV. I

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sit on the couch, the TV’s phosphor glow limning my numb face, and I feel like I’m something pickled. I’m already dead but cannot decay. I’m a twitching brain in a dead body that refuses to rot. The seconds become eons and they stretch to eternity. My father is in his room watching TV. I hear him laughing, probably over some stupid show. I channel surf and try to find the funny show he must have been watching, but I find nothing but an endless procession of telenovelas. Garbage on TV, and somehow the superficiality of it all is enough to inspire some sick, desperate laughter from the deepest, most cynical part of me. In a small moment, I understand my father. I understand his desperation because it mirrors mine. But the understanding doesn’t last. It is so small against the tidal waves of my resentment. It is easily swallowed up by this sense of darkness that has taken solid root within me.

This is our kind of life. When I play billiards with Ramon, I grit my teeth because I see myself as the white ball hitting the sides and never hitting what it should. I get really thirsty and I gulp down the beer—one bottle, two bottles, five, seven—but the beer never quenches my thirst because it’s my heart that’s thirsty, that’s longing for the point of all this. Ramon says, that’s your last bottle, Jun, or you’ll have to sleep on the sidewalk because I won’t carry you home. I laugh, but my laughter reminds me of my father’s—sick, desperate, reverberating with the hollowness of permanent defeat. Go to hell, Mon, I say and proceed in stammering out some flimsy excuse, but I hear my father speaking through me: What do you expect me to do? What – do you – expect me – to do?

This is our day and age. Sons hating their fathers. Daughters hating their mothers. This is the kind of mess I live in. And it has been keeping me awake at night. Ramon says I should drink lots of milk before bedtime. I dutifully guzzle down liters of milk, but I still can’t sleep. In my room, the silence is so loud I can’t even close my eyes. The incandescent bulb is so yellow and bright that even after I turn it off I still see it in my head, brightly shining like some midnight sun, throbbing and throbbing like an alarm blaring “Intruder Alert! Intruder Alert!” It goes on until all the roosters in the world begin their shrill announcement of a new day. I then crawl out and see Rose across the narrow street, four purple onions lined up neatly in front of her, knife ready in her hand, her dirty white dog staring by so solemnly. [][][] I don’t sleep, anymore. I go to the studio and pretend we’re running a business.

My father always stands by the window, looking out and waiting for the client,

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the customer who never comes. He doesn’t even speak, but I see in his face the immeasurable burden of all such unanswered hope. Our state-of-the-art equipment and tools are still in their usual places: the digital camera on the tripod, the studio lights, the softbox, they are like wax figures in a forgotten museum. When a single customer arrives later in the day to have her portrait taken, we are so happy our hands are trembling with excitement. We chat with the customer about the merits of digital technology. Here, you don’t need film for this Olympus Digital Camera. You only need your moment. We can make it as perfect as it can be. We can have multiple shots from many possible angles at no extra cost, then you choose the one that you like most. And the big clincher: you don’t have to waste an hour for your photos. It only takes a couple of minutes, you see. Plug the camera into the digital printer; do you hear the soft purr from within? It’s those millions of pixels being transferred onto paper. Three minutes tops. We are the only shop that offers this thing in this area. It’s like magic, isn’t it? The customer politely nods, but it’s obvious she’s lost in all the technical mumbo-jumbo.

This is the start, my father says. Business is picking up. And he even whistles, proof that for the moment, he’s happy. But nobody else will come. And we lapse again into silence. We cease speaking again, mutually embarrassed with each other’s presence in a place that ceaselessly reminds us of our failure.

Find a job again, Ramon says. He chuckles. Find a job and save your ass and redeem your father’s soul. It’s time to face the music, Jun. No, I say. This is going to work. There’s still a chance.

Ramon makes circles of smoke with his Marlboro Red. I don’t smoke and I tell him it annoys me. Ramon snickers and ducks his fingers into the bowl of fried peanuts. He throws the peanuts up in the air one at a time, and then catches it in his mouth. He never makes a miss, and he’s proud of it. It’s almost like a talent.

I still believe in the long view, I say. It’s only a matter of time. Digital imaging is the next wave, Mon. And I think it’s a good thing we’re already here, ready to capture it.

Ramon’s face gleams red under the neon light. He looks like some walking cliché of what a devil should look like, minus the requisite goatee and implements of torture. How long do you think will it take, he asks. A couple of months, a couple of years? Look at them down there, he nods toward the street.

Look at them, look at this place. This part of the world is still in the thick of slumber, Jun. And even if they wake up they will resist your next wave because they will not understand it. All you have here are thieves and ignoramuses

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and fools. Fools like us.

I want to believe you, I tell him. But I’m desperate. You know what’s on the mind of somebody facing a firing squad? You know what the doomed one is thinking in his final moments? Hope. Good old-fashioned hope for a way out.

Corny, Ramon says and takes a swig of the beer. He asks the waitress for the list of songs for the videoke. He chooses a Frank Sinatra. After some fellow finishes singing The Teeth’s “Laklak,” Ramon snatches up the microphone and begins belting out his number. This town, is a lonely town, not the only town, like-a this town! This town, is a make-you town, or a breakyou town, and bring-you-down town…

Not bad, I think. Not bad. The waitress hands me the song list and gives me a wink. I catch a whiff of her perfumed armpits. Classic Johnson’s Baby Powder. The same one my mother used to wear many, many years ago, long before the cancer. [][][] It is strange. After I told Ramon I’m still hoping, I became more and more embarrassed to talk about the studio’s affairs. As if I’m compelled to stand by my declaration of hope, no matter what. The next time he asks me about it, I just shrug. I obfuscate. I don’t tell him the studio’s still crashing and burning.

That if it were a dying human body, we’re already past the point where it’s still useful to defibrillate and possible to resuscitate. The next time he asks, I deftly shift the topic to other sundry things. I tell him Rose is finally leaving for Norway. “Who’s Rose?” Our neighbor, I explain, who loves eating fresh onions in the morning. “Onions? You’re kidding?” No, I’m not, I say. The entire length of our street is abuzz with excitement. Some Viking descendant has been visiting her in the past week, some six-footer blond who speaks English in a halting and guttural way he sounds like a barking dog. And Rose has broken her usual routine to accommodate this radical change in her life. I see her sporting a new hairstyle, her face gleaming pink from the new astringent she must have begun using. I hear her laughing more often with the neighborhood gossip, chatting about all things Norwegian—the food they eat, their magnificent fjords, the cobble-stoned streets, the beautiful people.

And if you’ll notice the bright gleam in her eyes, you’ll realize she’s already in Norway, sunning by the pool in her mansion on the verdant hills, making tender, cautious love with her new, middle-aged husband.

Ramon laughs like crazy with every malicious detail I give him,

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and it inspires me to embellish my story a bit more. Now I’m making these dirty little gestures with my fingers, suggesting the act of copulation without sufficient lubrication. You are disgusting! He screams, baring all his stained front teeth. I laugh with him and drink my beer and laugh even more. It’s a good moment.

But it’s the same story everyday. The studio is a tin can and we are rats trapped in it. My father stands by the window, looking out. He looks like a child forced to stay indoors during a rain. I get so sleepy in the day. I don’t even remember when and where I doze off. I just wake up on the couch. I wake up in the dark storeroom. I wake up on the reception table. Sometimes I wake up in the gallery, surrounded by the portraits of Maricel Laxa, Tweetie De Leon, Apples Aberin and all those other glamorous women who used to cavort, smile and flirt before my father’s lens. I look around me and see my father still standing by the window, looking out, waiting and hoping. The sight of him makes me so sad for a moment I think of opening the drawer and taking out the paltik revolver we’ve been keeping there for self-defense and shooting my head.

In the night, I channel surf and hunt the TV show that has been making my father giggle and laugh in his room. But I keep finding the same sad garbage on TV. Judy Ann Santos gives an ugly goon a fantastic uppercut.

The goon rolls over and just dies. Claudine Barretto acts like a fish, swims like a fish, but stinks in the same human way all soap stars stink. Here’s reality TV: kids dragged out of their playgrounds to slug one another in an acting contest. Everybody and her mother want to be the next superstar. Andy Warhol predicted that in the very near future, everybody’s going to get at least 15 minutes of fame in their lifetime. I wonder if it’s reassurance or veiled threat. Oh, here’s Dingdong Dantes, trying to look cute even as he agonizes over choosing who he really wants to screw. Even the news programs stink of the same vicious cycle of politics and poverty, the endless loves and hates of demagogues and the Great Unwashed, the cacophonous sales pitch of merchants of flesh and soul. What in hell’s funny in all this crap? What in hell’s making my father giggle and laugh the way he does in his room?

I drink milk. Liters of it. Ramon says it has to be taken slowly to avoid the ugly symptoms of lactose intolerance. I sip it, I gulp it, I sip it, I gulp it. And what do you know, the pitcher’s suddenly empty. Yet, I still don’t hear the sweet call of slumber. In fact, I will never hear it. My nights, later I’ll realize, are doomed with painful, guilt-ridden wakefulness. I stare at the ceiling and think about Rose and her good fortune. She’s going to Norway, she definitely is. Me, I’ll probably rot in this small town and spend my whole

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life aching over nothing but small stuff. Small fucking stuff. I can’t swallow the fact of it, I can’t. My God, I can’t. I always think of the long view, only the grand things, only the stuff that will really matter. But all I actually have in my hands is nothing but the smallness of my life. The rest—the long view, the grand things—remains out of my grasp, its truth nothing but the vapor of delusion. [][][] I don’t remember when I had actually dozed off. The first thing I see is the incandescent bulb, still on but whose brightness is now second only to the blinding light of the morning. I walk around the house and find it empty. I go to the studio only to find my father slumped in a small corner, his gray hair in a sorry mess, his eyes red and teary. He looks like a thousand years old. When he sees me, he winces. It’s all gone, all gone, he mutters. It’s all gone.

“What happened?” I ask, afraid of the answer. His broken face breaks my heart. In the past few years, my father’s face has always betrayed the hopeless look of somebody who’s perpetually on the verge of tumbling down a cliff. But this is the first time I’ve seen him so completely shattered, even worse than when we watched my mother on her deathbed.

I look around me and suddenly my heart leaps in my chest. Suddenly an invisible hand chokes me. Suddenly it strikes me full in the face. The digital camera is gone. The tripod, the softbox, the printer, every expensive equipment is no longer in its place. Scattered on the floor are the shards from the shattered window. And in the small corner, stripped of all dignity, all pride, all hope, my father keeps repeating the mantra of the defeated: it’s all gone, all gone, all gone, all gone…

My first impulse is to throw my arms around him and tell him it’s all right. But my old temper easily races past me. My carotids throbbing, I explode. I kick and bash and scream at no one in particular. I cry and my cry is guttural, like coming from a great beast that has been fatally wounded. My world begins swirling, as though I’m astride an out-of-control carousel horse.

And in the blurry distance, in the corner that grows smaller and smaller, is my old father cowering and sobbing like a child, my old father with a face crumbling in a thousand little jagged pieces. [][][] “What in hell’s happened to you?” Ramon asks, but I guess not that he really

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wants to know. I drag him to the videoke bar across the street. He follows me, maybe because he thinks I’m drunk. Maybe because I walk like I’m drunk. My eyes are bloodshot, my knuckles are bleeding, there’s a slur in my speech like I’m drunk. But I’m not drunk, no Sir, I’m not. My world is just swirling faster and faster, fragments of my life swirling past me in a hazy blur. Oh, there’s that waitress again with that list of songs she sticks in her armpit. (Swirling faster and faster) Oh, there’s Ramon counting the empty beer bottles and chuckling and shaking his head and muttering, No, no, no, this is enough, Jun! (Swirling faster and faster) Oh, there I am, there I am, that’s me stabbing the microphone in the air, sashaying like a coconut tree in a storm, bleating like a wounded goat Frank Sinatra’s This town, is a use-you town, an abuseyou town, until-you’re-down town!… This town, is a losin’ town, it’s a miserable town, it’s a nowhere town.

Oh, it’s fun. It’s a lot of fun. But I take it a little further. I tell Ramon that I’m already dead, that if he actually sees me, maybe he has a third eye.

Don’t give me that stupid look, Ramon, my friend. I’m not crazy! I’m really dead. I’m really so fucking dead. And you know what, I’m not the only one.

Many people in this place are also dead and dying but they don’t know it, or won’t admit to it. Because you know what, my friend, I’m the only one here who’s so fucking honest. And I consider it an achievement, Ramon, this complete honesty. It’s the source of my goddamn pride. Haha! Yeah, that’s a good one. I’m a proud man, so proud that I won’t kneel in the face of my own smallness. So proud that even if this whole planet explodes, I’ll still be swaying here and singing, This fuckin’ town, is a use-you town, an abuse-you town, until-you’re-fuckin’ down town…

And it swirls faster and faster. At the next stop, I find myself in my house, in my rundown living room, staring at the clock and wondering where my father is. I watch the minute hand go around dozens of times. Where is my father? I rush to his room but find it empty. My world swirls fast and suddenly I’m back in the studio, the glass shards on the floor slicing my bare feet. But the studio greets me with an emptiness so thick you can cut through it with a knife. But my father is not there, only the broken window and the barren spaces where our expensive digital equipment used to sit like little gods on sacred pedestals.

The world swirls, and suddenly I find myself back in my father’s room. The 14-inch TV sits in the middle of the room, dead. I push a button, turn dials, tap it, kick the goddamn thing, but it remains dead. The TV remains dead and slowly it dawns on me that my father’s TV has been dead for ages. I sit on the bed wondering what in hell’s happening. On the bedside

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table, I notice the worn, crimson box of our old family photo album I haven’t seen for many years. I reach out for it, fumble in opening it, and when at last the yellowed images unravel themselves in the dim light, the swirling in my world abruptly stops and silence descends all around me like a thick blanket.

My hands tremble. I slowly turn the pages and thirty-year-old memories come leaping out with such entrancing suddenness. Here is the trio of us at the Manila Zoo, feeding the giraffe with peanuts. Here I am, a roundfaced toddler in a Voltes V shirt and George Harrison haircut, a cone of ice cream melting in my left hand; I see the long-forgotten smile of innocence, the kind I used to wear long before I knew boredom and disappointment and interminable sadness. Here is my mother holding my hand, she is 31, wearing the lovely, happy face that was the sun in our lives many years before the cancer, the tear-drenched nights, the long-drawn-out death. And here he is, my father, all teeth, his full curly hair still black and glossy, an arm lovingly draped over my mother’s shoulder and the only one who’s looking at the camera.

Slowly, the truth boomerangs and comes back to me in a full circle.

Slowly, I realize why he’s been laughing and giggling in this room all those miserable nights. He’s been laughing because all those people he had treasured in his heart are no longer beside him. He’s been laughing because he knows almost everything in our lives has been a terrible joke: the incurable disease, the pointless days, the futility of our dreams. He’s been laughing because he knows that as long as he’s in the refuge of this drab, little room, he can always retreat to that time and place and moment and desperately hold on to memory and little else.

In the subsequent days and months of his disappearance, I comb the city’s streets looking for him, try to pick out his hunched figure among the rush hour mob, see his wizened face among the hundreds of faces that float through the neon glow in their inscrutable insipidness. With the little lamp of hope in my hand, I walk among the dead, among the dying, among the dried out corpses that traverse the asphalt roads that lead to anywhere and nowhere. I utter his name solemnly, sometimes desperately, as if in prayer: Have you seen this man? His name’s Delfin Salgado Senior. A nice fellow, he is.

A little timid, a little sad in the eyes, a little defeated in his countenance. But he’s amazing. He’s the best photographer in the world, you know. Hahaha! I’m not kidding. He really is! You see all those women who grace the covers of all those sleek fashion magazines? You usually find his name somewhere around the magazine cover. But you know, that was years ago…. Millions of years ago…

Please call me if you see him. Let me give you my number…

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In the night, I retire to my father’s little room and open the worn, crimson box that had sheltered the core of his secrets. In that dense, silent darkness, I retreat to the sunny, halcyon days of my childhood, back in those places where it was always warm and bright, where the air was redolent with the scent of Johnson’s Baby Powder, where the melting ice cream in my hand always felt so right, always felt like some special privilege bestowed on me.

In the mornings following his disappearance, I go out in our front porch, my little knife in hand, and peel off the outer, dried skin of a dozen white onions, each the size of a child’s clenched fist. I do it very carefully until I reach the soft, succulent inner core. I gaze across the narrow street and see Rose’s porch now empty and thick with dust.

There are moments when I remember the future, when I remember how I used to think of it in terms of nice things. There are moments when I think I’m hearing the ghosts of sounds and voices that used to inhabit this old house. There are moments when I wonder and wonder and wonder, then I stifle all my questions and bury them under the subsoil of my waking life. And whenever Ramon passes by and sees me and gives me that sorry look, I return his stare with sick, desperate laughter. I hold an onion to his face to prove my point. I’m not crying, Mon, no I’m not. It’s the onions’ goddamn fumes that’s stinging my eyes, I say, giggling like I’m drunk, laughing like crazy. Believe me, it’s the goddamn onions.

-End-

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Taguan

Karl Isaac M. Santos

‘Pagbilang ko ng sampu nakatago na kana!’

‘Isa!’ Naalala kong parati tayong kinagagalitan ni nanay tuwing inaabot tayo ng dapit-hapon sa paglalaro ng Taguan matapos ang iskwela.

‘Dalawa!’

Pakiramdam ko ang lawak ng Tacloban kapag ako na ang taya. Ang hirap mo hanapin. Palibhasa’y kakulay ng mga halaman sa gubat ang paldang madalas mong suot.

‘Tatlo!’

Tayong dalawa ang pinakamalayo ang bahay, kaya tayo rin madalas ang natitirang nagtataguan. Di ba’t ayaw mo pa umuwi hangga’t hindi pumupusyaw ang sinag ng araw na tumatagos sa bawat dahon ng mga puno sa daan pauwi.

‘Apat!’

Mabuti na lang at halos kabisado ko na ang mga pwestong paborito mong pagtaguan. Gusto mo ang mga matataas na kawayan, niyog, at mababangong halaman.

‘Lima!’

Hindi ko alam kung bakit mas gusto kong ako ang taya, at ikaw ang hinahanap ko. Gustong-gusto kong hinahanap ang mahaba mong buhok, patpating katawan, at ngiti na mas una kong napapansin kapag nakikita na kita.

‘Anim!’

Biglang nawalan ng pasok. Umulan at humangin ng ubod ng lakas.

Kinakalmot ng hangin ang lahat ng bagay na madaanan nito. Sa isip ko, mas madali kitang mahahanap dahil nagbagsakan na ang mga punong pinag tataguan mo kapag nakapaglaro muli tayo.

‘Pito!’

Di namin inasahan na ganoon kalakas ang bagyo. Nasira ang taniman ni Tatay. Nagmistulang kumpol ng dayami ang kubong inaalagaan ni Nanay.

Nawala ang iskwela, nawala ka rin katulad ng iba nating kalaro ng taguan.

‘Walo!’

Nakita ko ang Nanay mo. Humahagulgol at iniisa-isa ang bawat bangkay na nakahilera sa kalye. Hinahanap ka niya. Ang sabi ko nama’y hindi ko alam kung saan ka nagtatago ngayon.

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‘Siyam’ Alas diyes ng gabi. Umaambon. Maputik. Madilim. Mabuti at gumawa ng gasera si Tatay. Sa di kalayuan una kitang nakita. Sinundan kita nung tumakbo ka. Pasulpot-sulpot ka. Mas mahirap pala maglaro ng taguan kung gabi talaga ito lalaruin. Huminto ka sa tapat ng nabuwal na puno ng Niyog.

‘Sampu!’

Game! Unti-unti na kitang nakikita. Una kong nakita ang iyong kamay.

Sumunod ang iyong balikat at tuhod.

Naghukay pa ako nang naghukay para makuha ka sa iyong pinagtataguan.

Ang tigas at puros putik ang iyong katawan, kaya naman ipinasan na kita pauwi sa inyo.

Iyon na pala ang huli mong pakikipagtaguan sa akin.

(Alay sa mga biktima ng bagyong Yolanda)

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The Misadventure of the Adventurer in the Bermuda Triangle This story won 6th place in Caribbean Footwear Writing Contest at the University of Santo Tomas, 2014 Karl Isaac M. Santos Oh God! I lost one pair of my Caribbean Flip-flops in the sea and it was drawn to the Bermuda Triangle! How was I supposed to find it? I heard planes and ships disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle. Some Astrophysicist believed it was connected to another universe, and some said it was a portal to the unknown. Perhaps a parallel universe! But, whatever the truth behind that triangle, I had to find my Caribbean. It was then my adventure began. It was a windy night. The sail of my improvised raft with wigwam was waving drastically. I brought water and food, especially my favourite apple jam. The waves of the Atlantic Ocean were furious, as though they were ready to smash every vessel in the ocean. I was not a real sailor; I was really terrified when I lost my lantern when a huge wave bumped into my scrawny raft. But luckily, I saw another raft few yards away from my location. I shouted help, and made noise for them to find me. Two boys answered my call. “Hey what’s the matter?” said the young boy with a clear voice. “We ain’t no pirates! Do not be afraid!” said the other boy with a husky voice. They drifted closer to my raft and raised their light. It was Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn! They said they were fishing for Jim’s family. They gave me their spare lantern. They said I should write and tell them about my adventure as soon as I get back. I shook hands with them and gave my appreciation. I met the two brave, funny boys plus I got a new lantern: not bad.

I sailed again. The waves became more violent and the rain started to fall heavily.

I was few meters away from the Bermuda Triangle, when my sail was torn by

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the wind. I could see the portal! It was shining and twirling! My raft was not moving without its sail and I was getting seasick. I heard a rumbling sound and the wave suddenly stopped my raft, stooped, still. It was as though there’s a vacuum under my raft. I was so afraid so I held tighter to the wigwam. Then a gigantic ship arose from the deep ocean! It pushed my raft to the portal immediately. It was the Nautilus. I saw Captain Nemo waving from the deck of the ship.

I was awakened by a noise in the shore. “Oink! Oink! Oink!” The three pigs ran away and hid behind a coconut tree when I budged. My raft was wrecked and I didn’t know where I was. I asked them not to be afraid. I said I was looking for my Caribbean slipper and I needed help. “Oink! Oink! Oink!”

They cried while pointing at their house. They were inviting me to their house, so I hurriedly followed them. They showed me a flip-flop made in wolf ’s skin, and I said it was not mine. “Oink! Oink! Oink!” they were pointing to another house, it was Goldilocks’ house. I took their “Oink” advice, and went to Goldilocks’ house. I knocked softly. I saw three bears when the door opened.

I said the same, I was looking for my flip-flop, and they nodded. They showed me three flip-flops with different sizes. One was large, the other was medium, and the last was small; not one was mine so I left and went to the nearby hill.

I saw Jack and Jill and I asked them about my flip-flop and they said there’s a slipper floating in the well. I got excited so we went to the well. But, to my disappointment it wasn’t mine. I walked on the hill until I came to a high wall.

Sitting at the top was egg man, it was Humpty Dumpty. I asked him if he could help me find my slipper. He stood up pointing to the north. He said, “There is a small house in the woods. Your slipper might be in that house!” I thanked him and said take care of himself as he was sitting on the wall, nobody wanted to see him fall.

I went to the house on the woods. It was small but sturdy. I knocked on the wooden door but I got no answer. I called out and said I was just looking for my slipper. A lovely voice answered from the inside, “Are you not a witch? You don’t have any poisonous apple?” I said I’m not a witch and she has nothing to fear. It was Snow White who opened the door. She said sorry for not opening the door immediately, she said she was just following the advice of her prince.

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I asked for my missing pair of slippers. She said the dwarfs found a slipper in the mines and it might be the one I was looking for. But luck was not on my side. It was a wooden slipper. She said I should go to Cinderella’s castle and ask her for help because she owns thousand slippers. As a token of appreciation, I gave him a bottle of apple jam, and then I left.

The huge castle had iron gates. Sculptures and fountains were everywhere.

Guards and maids were making rounds in the castle. Everyone was busy.

Cinderella called out my name, and I was surprised. She said she knew everyone inside her castle. She invited me inside the ballroom where a glamorous party was happening. With the Prince’s permission, Cinderella and I danced while talking about my missing slipper. She said all her slippers were made of glass, but she got one that is made of something else. It was a gift from her prince. I asked if I could see her special slipper, but she said she would only allow me to see it if I dance with one of her stepsisters. It was just a dance so I took her offer. But I was surprised to see her sister! She was not as beautiful as Cinderella, and she danced horribly. Stepping on my foot in every minute. But suddenly the clock rang! To my surprise, her sister grabbed and attempted to kiss me! Her lips where just inches away from mine! I fought and tried to escape from her grip but she was too strong! When her lips were about to touch my lips, I woke up. It was not the castle’s bell at all; it was my alarm that saved me from a terrible kiss.

It was just a dream but it was a great adventure. I immediately thought about my Caribbean slippers. The other one was missing! My heart was pounding when I looked inside my blanket. I was wearing the other pair of my Caribbean Slippers. It was not missing; I just fell asleep wearing my comfortable flip-flop.

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Mga Sanaysay

The Things We are Not Ailyn O. Amado No, baby, our love is finite. And the things we are not makes me appreciate the things we are.

We are the dysfunctional dancing lights of the city carnival’s Ferris wheel –either lit up stagnantly or turned off permanently, either way altering the beauty of a system, the smiles of fascination, and the purpose we thought we were bound to fulfill together.

But we are no mechanism. Our meeting wasn’t blueprinted. Our shallow breathing synced to the wild beat of our hearts is unlike the monotony of engine sounds, our flesh automatically intertwined with the mere touch of your thumb on my cheek is unlike nuts and bolts that still need to be tightened to lock, and because we are not mechanisms, our time together can’t be extended like wires. Unpredictable but always hoping to last the day, we revel in the harmony of desire and temporariness.

We are the victims of a car crash on a crowded avenue –reaching out for voluntary help but not pity from passersby, suffering from mild bruises while internally bleeding, and waiting for the flash of significant memories right before our eyes.

But we are no drivers. We were the ones ran over by the vehicle, the bigger things in life we have no control of. Our short-lived romance wasn’t healthinsured of the tragedy of losing ourselves after losing one another. But we still try to look for any evidence of togetherness that we can bring with us to the afterlife, only in vain, thus we die with eyes wide open.

We are the blank page after the dedication page of a novel –the pause after the revelation of purpose, the rich emptiness, and the prologue to every conflict and denouement.

But we are no page-turners. We hang-on to our lifeless relationship after the marrow in us, the meaning in us, gets sucked out. The belief that “Detaching from what happens next will help us avoid reaching the end” is the reason why

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we are uninterested with beautiful words and lies, because that’s what fiction basically is: beautiful words and lies. And legends say people who don’t like to read are foolish. I couldn’t agree more. Staying with this love is.

Lastly, we are Avenida –eyed by faceless bus passengers going to the place as cold as our feet, to the place where sweat is not as visible as tears, and to the place where only the smell of Pine trees can prove that our hallucinations of past lovemaking are indeed real.

But we are not the destination. We are the failed attempt to reach it. We are the terminal, the stagnant queue holding the last tickets, the place where people gather and the same place where people decide to depart. Even if we know that some go back but none choose to stay, one of us still sits beside an empty blue chair in the waiting area, wondering about the bus’s late arrival.

While the smell of iron hanging in the air, or maybe just inside the lungs, the numbness enveloping the hammering sounds of pain through the skull, and the slow-motion steps toward the commotion, let one of us focus on the flash of significant memories right before our eyes.

Yes, baby, our love is finite. And things we are not, marred by weariness, flaws, and mortality, are also the things we are. We are both everything and nothing, two bodies as one to return to be two again, either way if not always, then once beautiful, oh beautiful.

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San Marce Ailyn O. Amado Writers are the saddest people in the world, next to clowns.

That’s just me by the way. No fancy statistics, no nothing. Ernest Hemingway, Virginia Woolf, and Anne Sexton, all commiting suicide? Need I say more? But really, I just had this thought after a rough day (imagine not being able to review for the hardest subject’s final exam, receiving random BS treatment from schoolmates, last minute ditching from a guy who asked you out, getting multiple calls from another guy who seemed to never get tired of asking you out, and some drizzling late at night for dramatic emphasis), which now sounds an understatement, and the first thing that came to my mind was to write it down, write everything down. No idea of texting friends, or spending some time alone in a donut shop, or drinking watered-down

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tequila with strangers. No feel good stuff –just my friend pen, my spare time commuting home, and my still rough day.

The good and bad thing about writing is that it immortalizes memories.

Once you jot down your feelings, there will always be a possibility, no matter how slim, to refresh your senses if ever you come across the same feelings. If writing immortalizes, then reading time-travels. And that makes writing and reading the most tiring combination: infinite traveling in infinite circles.

But letting people read what you have written is a different story. As a writer, letting someone read your pieces is almost like letting them through your skin, welcoming them to your soul which you thought was non-existent, and showing-off the merrymaking of reality and what’s novel to their eyes yet still reality to yours. Selling your art to the masses makes it vulnerable, prone to speculating eyes and ignorant fans. All the criticisms will trigger you to be defensive at first, and all the praises will feel empty at the end. Because you will realize that your work was given so many interpretations but none exactly fits how you define the memories you have chosen to immortalize. And when you, as a writer, thought that letting others take a peek in your innermost being through your words is the only way to scream for help, to beg for a way out, to make someone understand... they just don’t. Readers understand how they want to understand, not how you want them to. And that’s just sad.

As a neophyte in the literary world, here’s an unconventional advice: “Write before you read.” I know how many greats have said that in order to write, you must read a lot of good books first and learn from these before finding your unique writing style. But doing it the other way around makes you the subject of your own frailty, and the foolishness of your first eight attempts to deliver through writing is just beautifully raw. Your grammatical errors are almost tangible you can feel the complexities under your palm, almost real you can breathe your own need to be listened to as if it were air.

This is a way to comprehend the privilege really great writers give to humanity when they make their works available to our yet-to-be-deserving breed. This is a way to appreciate the bold moves legends do and did to propagate literary literacy. They strip themselves off fame and introduce themselves as people still trying to let go of once-worthy-to-immortalize memories and move on from the cycle of re-living them.

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Writing in itself is a paradox. Writing signifies freedom but most writers still cannot break free.

Reading, on the other hand, is also about branding. The books you read don’t actually tell how smart you are. (You can now stop fake-researching what Einstein missed while formulating E=mc2). If you ask me, the books you read represents two things: 1) Where you are 2) Where you want to be. First, you read books not just because of its fancy jackets; you read the books you read because you can see yourself in them. It may be in the character of the damsel in distress, in the story of being a detective, or in deeper terms, in the author himself/herself. Readers, like writers, want to be understood. And in discovering something close to who we are, us, as readers, find refuge. Second, reading signifies learning. We read materials whose virtues we unconsciously follow. Sylvia Plath read and loved the poems of Dylan Thomas “more than her own life”. Look where it got her. (Don’t say suicide. That’s just rude.) She’s a literary legend now; thank you very much. That’s how powerful the thirst on reading can brand you.

I was branded by San Marcelino. I never appreciated the genes, the writing awards, nor my bedtime storybooks until I became a college student when I took them in. I have met people whom I treated as mentors not because they understood me, but because they didn’t even bother trying. And in a good way, that comes without judgment.

This is the memory I have chosen to immortalize: That during my stay in this University, I kept on trying to be full while knowing all along that I rather be starving for the rest of my life.

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Ang Aking Pag-alis at Kanilang Pagbabalik Don Emmanuel Nolasco Tuwing dadaan ako sa Falcon Bridge para makatawid papunta sa CS Building madalas kong nakakasalubong ‘yung mga dating estudyante ko. Babati sila o kaya ay tatawagin ako.

Sir! Musta po? Sasagot naman ako na: Ok lang, ganun pa din, sabay apir o kaya tapik sa balikat. Habang naglalakad, pinipilit kong alalahanin kung sa anong subject ko sila naging estudyante, anong sem at sino ang mga kaklase nila. Minsa’y mahirap pagkasyahin sa utak lahat ng pangalan nila kaya ‘yung iba mas kilala ko sa mukha o sa mga kalokohang ginawa nila sa klase. Para sa akin, ang mga pagbati at pangangamusta nila’y nangangahulugan na kahit paano’y may naituro ako at natuto sila. O siguro’y sadyang papansin lang ‘yung iba. Sa bawat klase, hindi mawawala ’yung mga nagpapasakit ng ulo ko at madalas mas natatandaan ko sila kesa sa mga ordinary good student. Pero may mga estudyanteng nakukuha ang respeto ko at sila ‘yung sa paglipas ng panahon ay nagiging kaibigan ko na rin.

May tatlong estudyante akong hindi ko na nakikita tuwing tatawid ako ng falcon bridge patungong CS Building. Natatandaan ko sila sapagkat nag-iwan sila ng alaala at aral sa akin bilang tao.

Una. Kinailangan niyang huminto dahil hindi na kayang suportahan ng kanyang magulang ang pag-aaral. Patapos pa lang ang second sem ay nababanggit na niya ang problema. Pinilit niyang gumawa ng paraan para kahit paano’y maitawid pa ang sarili. May mga options siya. Una, mag apply ng scholarship sa OSA para kahit paano’y makabawas sa babayarang tuition. Nakapagpasa siya ng application form pero hindi na rin niya maasahan. Kabado siya sa grade niya sa dalawang subjects, hindi aabot ang GWA niya. Pangalawa, mag-apply sa call center. Tinext niya ako nu’ng nag-job hunting sila ng isa

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niyang kaibigan sa Makati. Nagpaturo pa nga siyang gumawa ng resume para daw mas madaling matanggap. Pagkatapos ng ilang job interview, natanggap siya sa isang kompanya pero hindi niya rin pinasukan. Sa likod ng isip niya’y umaasa pa rin siya na magagawan ng paraan ng mga magulang na maisalba ang pag-aaral niya. Hindi niya sinipot ang orientation, ayaw daw ng nanay niya na magtrabaho siya. Nagtext siya ulit upang ikwento ang sama ng loob sa mga magulang, sinisisi niya ang mga ito sa problemang dinaranas niya.

Ramdam ko ‘yung lungkot at panghihinayang niya. May pangarap siya para sa pamilya pero lumalabo ang lahat sa kanya.

Hindi pa rin siya nawalan ng loob. Sinubukan niyang maghanap ng trabaho ulit. Mag-iipon siya para sa balanseng tuition at kahit paano’y pangdown payment. Sa isang fast food siya natanggap na hindi niya rin natagalan dahil sa hirap na hindi niya makaya. Matapos ang tatlong linggo, iniwan niya ang trabaho. Hindi niya pa rin tanggap na sa susunod na semestre ay hindi makakapasok. Pero kailangan niyang tanggapin. Kailangan niyang umasa. Na sa susunod na mga semestre ay makakabalik siya.

Ikalawa.

Siya ang una kong nakasagutan sa klase sa Art Appreciation. Nag-react siya nu’ng pinayagan ko na maipasa ang mga late na assignment. Tapos na raw ang deadline kaya dapat daw hindi ko na tanggapin. Akala ko’y nagbibiro siya.

Hindi pala. Nagpaliwanag ako sa klase pero hindi siya naresolba. Lumabas ako sa classroom na tila masama ang loob niya. Paglipas ng ilang araw ay nakasagutan ko ulit siya. May isang irregular student na pagkatapos ng isang buwan ay hindi nagpakita sa klase. Tinanong ko ang buong klase kung ayos lang sa kanila na tanggapin ko ang mga requirements niya kahit huli na. May deductions na lang ika ‘ko. Tulad ng inaasahan, nagtaas ng kamay ang estudyanteng ito upang sabihing ayaw niya na tanggapin ko ang mga requirements ng kaklaseng irreg. Hindi raw iyon patas. Siya raw ay nagpuyat, nahirapan at gumastos para makapagpasa sa tinakdang deadline. Marami pa siyang sinabi. Pero ang punto niya’y dumulo sa usapin ng disiplina at pagiging patas. Nakinig akong mabuti sa kanya at nagdesisyon na tanungin ang bawat isa sa section na iyon kung tatanggapin ko o hindi ang mga requirements.

Halos lahat ay pumayag maliban sa isa. Patuloy niyang nililintanya ang disiplina at pagiging patas. Habang nagpapaliwanag ako sa desisyon ko’y panay ang salita niya sa kanyang upuan. Tinapos ko ang klase sa pagpapaunawa sa

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responsibilidad at pagiging patas. Na minsa’y kailangan ng pang-unawa para sa mga bagay-bagay.

Lumipas ang mga araw at nalaman ko ang dahilan ng kanyang mga argumento.

Iskolar siya ng isang malaking kompanya ng langis. Doon nakasalalay ang pag-aaral niya. Kailangan niya ng mataas na grade para makapagpatuloy ng pag-aaral. Naging competitive siya sa puntong ang tingin niya sa mga kaklase ay kalaban sa usapin ng grades. Pero hindi nawala ang respeto ko sa kanya, bagkus, hinangaan ko ang dedikasyon nya at determinasyong makapag-aral. Nung huling nagkasalubong kami ay bumati siya, kinumusta ko at naikwento niya ang problema dahil sa mababang grade sa isang minor subject. Kinakabahan siya na baka hindi siya makapasa at tuluyang mawala ang scholarship. At sa paglaon ay mawalan na rin ng pagkakataon na maiahon sa hirap ang pamilya. Tinapik ko siya sa balikat at sinabing kayanin pa at magsumikap saka siya mabilis na lumakad palayo.

Pero sa huling balita ko, nawala ang scholarship niya at napilitang huminto.

Tatlo.

Engineering student. Dean’s lister. Unang beses kong maghandle ng section one, kaya’t medyo nanibago ako sa kanila. Seryoso. Masisipag. Determinado.

Sila yung tipo ng mga bata na marunong mag-reason out at alam ang sinasabi.

Nag stand-out ang batang ito dahil sa may sarili siyang mga opinyon na palaging naiiba sa karamihan ng mga kaklase niya. Hindi siya takot magtaas ng kamay kapag may gustong sabihin at ipahayag sa klase. Higit dun, may malalim siyang pag-unawa sa mga pangyayari sa ginagalawang lipunan. Kaya nag-eenjoy ako tuwing sila ang klase ko, narere-affirm rin sa sarili ko na may pag-asa pa ang bayan. Malayo ang mararating ng mga batang ito kaya’t sinubukan kong ipaunawa sa kanila ang halaga ng pag-unawa sa lipunan at maging sa pulitikang umiiral sa bansa. Na hindi lang sila magiging engineer kundi isang mamamayan ng bansa.

Huli ko silang nakasama nu’ng imbitahan nila ako sa swimming ng block nila.

Kasabay na rin ng debut ng isa nilang ka-block. Dahil bakasyon na rin naman ay sumama ako. Nag enjoy ako kahit medyo hindi ako makasabay sa trip nila.

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Nitong mga nakaraang araw tuwing nakakasalubong ko sila sa falcon bridge, hindi ko siya nakikita na kasa-kasama nila. Kahit sa classroom nila’y wala siya. Iniisip ko naman na nagkakataong wala siya kapag nakikita ko sila. Dahil nagtataka na rin ako, tinext ko ang isa nilang kaklase at doon ko nakumpirma na huminto daw muna para magtrabaho. Bigla ko na rin naalala na nagtext siya sa akin dati para gawing character reference sa kanyang resume. Pumayag naman ako. Pumasok siya sa isang call center company para makaipon at muling makabalik sa pag-aaral. Pinayo ko na rin sa kanya na mag-apply ng scholarship dahil qualified naman siya.

Nanghihinayang ako. Totoo nga bang may pantay na opurtunidad? Ilan pa kaya ang kagaya nilang nawala? At mawawala?

Matapos ang isang semestre, hindi ko na pala sila makikita. Huminto silang tatlo. Hindi ko na sila nakikitang kasama sa mga grupong kinabibilangan nila.

Nakakaramdam ako ng lungkot kapag naiisip ko ang dahilan kung bakit sila huminto. Alam ko sa sarili kong hindi nila gusto ang desisyon nila o ng mga magulang nila. Napilitan sila. Walang option. Siguradong hindi lang sila ang mga nawala, alam ko na mas marami pa sila. Silang may baong mga pangarap sa mga pamilya, silang nagpupursige at nagsusumikap pero kinailangang huminto para magpatuloy.

Anong nangyari sa tatlong estudyante ko?

After two years of teaching sa Adamson, kinailangan kong umalis dahil hindi ko natapos ‘yung MA ko na required para ma-permanent, mabigat ang mga paa kong umalis.

Umalis ako pero bumalik ang dalawa sa tatlong estudyante ko. Si dean’s lister ay nakakuha ng scholarship sa tulong ng isang alumna, ‘yung nag-apply sa call center naman ay nasusuportahan na ngayon ng mga magulang nya, yung nakakasagutan ko sa Art Appreciation, nawalan na ako ng balita.

Umalis ako. Nakabalik sila.

Nagbago rin ang pagtingin ng dalawa sa buhay, lumalim at kahit paano’y nabuksan sa mga katotohanang hindi maituturo sa loob ng silid-aralan.

Nakabalik sila. Umalis ako.

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Kung babaguhin ba ng LIKE at Comment Mo ang Sarili mo at ang Mundo Binago ng Facebook ang pagtingin natin sa mundo at sarili, binigyan tayo ng isang uri ng kalayaan na hindi natin na-experience sa penpal, landline (phonepal) at pakikipagtext. Kung dati naging bukambibig natin ang GM, textmates, missed call, dropped call at unlimited, heto tayo’t nag-eenjoy sa LIKE, COMMENT at SHARE. Kung ‘di ka pa kuntento pwede kang magtag mag-PM at mag-selfie. Nagkaroon ng ibang kahulugan ang pagtambay sa Internet. Nagkaroon ka ng kalayaang likhain ang sarili mo sa isang espasyong nasa kawalan.

Instant celebrity ka dahil sa dami ng likes ng profile picture mo, isama mo pa ang sumisikat na cover photo mo. Nag-aabang ka ng notification sa isang status na pinag-isipan mo kung papatok sa 4000 plus friends mo.

Sige ang scroll, browse at open in a new tab mo para makita kung ano na ang itsura nung elementary classmate mo na dati mong seatmate, nagulat ka dahil gumanda na siya at ang gwapo ng boyfriend. Isinara mo ang tab at tiningnan naman ang isang kaibigan mong nag-post ng mga biniling gadget kasama ang nanay nya, nakita mo ‘yung android phone na matagal mo nang gustong mabili. Sinara mo ulit ang tab. Browse ulit, nakita mo si highschool friend na nagkakape sa isang sikat na coffee shop kasama ang mga kaklase niya sa isang premiere university sa Manila. Agad mong sinara ang tab. Nakakaramdam ka ng inggit sa mga nakikita mo habang naghihintay ka ng bagong like o comment man lang sa bagong picture na pi-nost mo. Lumipas ang ilang minuto at tila walang pumapansin sa iyo.

Scroll down. Scroll down.

Bagong sapatos. Masarap na pagkain. In a relationship. Pusang inapi. Taong nang-api. Trapik sa Edsa. Korapsyon sa gobyerno. Gwapong kaklase. Reklamo sa buhay. Piktyur ng ulam at mukhang 360. Nagbebenta. Nagpapabenta.

Nagagalit. Nalulungkot. Naniningil.

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Bumabaha ng impormasyon. Ang daming impormasyon. Naiinip ka kahit may assignment ka na ipapasa bukas.

Nag-aabang ka ng LIKE kahit may quiz ka bukas.

Nakatitig ka sa wall mo kahit hindi ka pa kumakain.

Naiinip ka. Nag-aantay ka habang kanina ka pa tinatawag para maghapunan.

Pinalaya nga ba tayo ng Facebook o binigyan lang tayo ng kapangyarihang likhain at lokohin ang ating mga sarili? Binago nga ba ng social media ang buhay natin o tuluyang kinain nito maging ang pinaka-personal na bahagi ng ating mga sarili? Binigyan ng ibang kahulugan ang maraming bagay at kaganapang dati’y nalalasap natin.

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Thoughts Lost and Found (A series of vignettes: volume 1) Roma Estrada Getting away from the I have a distorted concept of time. everyday misestimations, I can mistake a book for the world and a few friends for the whole human race. I have an obsession with exactness that I never get any single thing exact. Once, I thought that the human body is too small for the universe and eternity too short to explain existence. Had I known human mind’s ability to create that which is higher than itself and a lifetime’s capacity to conceive a whole new history, much earlier, then I would have had rejoiced for being born. ***** Loving me is loving a cat because loving a cat is the true measure of unconditional love. And in theory, it can only be given by a mother—by MY mother, for that matter. A cat, basically, cannot do anything that will be of benefit for humans. Don’t mistake the rat as a display of concern.

Cats do it for their own amusement. They can neither bark nor bite a thief.

They couldn’t give milk or eggs nor can they give their meat. Neither can they take you from one place to another. All they do is walk in their fur and purr endlessly and look at you in their irresistibly hypnotic eyes when they get hungry. I couldn’t give anyone anything except my fear, my goals, my frustrations, and my happiness. I wish I could cook. I wish I could be more concerned. I wish I could make the other feel that he is cared for. *****

But how can I if I am only a cat? because role-playing is basically

The self gets lost role-playing what life is about. The first role a

human being plays is being that cute little creature that everyone gets terribly fond of. The littlest things are admired—even how hard you pull your father’s hair or how you soil the bed with your fluffy little poop. It won’t take long before you play that lone kid who just watches her classmates play from a

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distance. Or you can be that kid who pokes fun at your lone classmate. Either way, you still got a role to play. Then eventually you’re going to be that older sister whose hand-me-downs are hated, the friend who promises not to tell the secret but tells it anyway, the student who gets confused whether to excel or to take it easy, the lover who screws it up, the enemy in someone else’s story.

So how does the self get lost in this lifetime stage act? The self gets lost when one doesn’t see anything beyond the given roles, when there’s nothing to define oneself but one’s association to people, when one mistakenly owns other’s happiness as one’s own. ***** When you write,

There is something that feels confusing about time seems to go fast and slow at writing.

the same time.

Time seems to go slow when you pause and think about how things are best said and seems to go fast when you realize you haven’t written even half of what you mean. *****

Time for Productivity, Time for Creativity What is time but a huge blanket imagined to be separated by sleeping and waking?

Ever since, Economics has made people believe that time is the most indispensable resource used to achieve productivity where something has to be produced then sold and a service is to be rendered. This is the sense of time that has shaped even the greatest of minds. Time spent other than production is time wasted and a person not using time as so is devoid of fulfillment.

While it is true that time is a big help for economic success which inevitably entails progress, the other sense of time, probably among the other thousand senses of it, is never considered lest it deviates the mind of man from the most important thing, that is, production and earning. And this sense of

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time has something to do with the time spent by Fyodor Dostoevsky writing Crime and Punishment and the time spent by Benjamin Franklin studying the nature of electricity and the time spent by the Beatles composing ‘Imagine’ and the time spent by Leonardo Da Vinci painting the Mona Lisa.

How many more ‘products’ of significance shall be produced only if everyone is given this sense of time? ***** that is the question. And mid-twenties is ‘To consume or to create?’ the best time to ask such for this is a time of building dreams and finding real selves.

Asking the questions starts with getting overwhelmed with one’s newfound freedom (or just a sense of it). One then basks in indulgence, sucking all there is to life. Then to cut the enjoyment, something very essential has to be considered regarding the mortal life of man: Every day things are being created and things are being destroyed.

‘Destroy to create’ so they say. That would be the time when something divides the world invisibly: The Creators (and Destroyers) and the Consumers who do nothing but marvel at the endless cycle of Destruction and Creation. *****

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Two Letters to Mario Vargas Llosa

A Letter To Mario Vargas Llosa Mary Anne N. Boribor

Dear Mr. Mario Vargas Llosa, Dude, you’re a legend! Sounds rude, coming from a crappy writer (I mean, me) to a Nobel prize winner for his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual’s resistance, revolt, and defeat (and yes that is absolutely you). I was just speechless, like whoa and those were the only words that came out upon finishing a 10-pages essay of yours that I primarily thought to be containing incantations that will put readers on a deep sleep. So pardon me, Mister.

I am actually not that fond of reading non-fiction but I like fiction.

No, I love fiction. I love books. And it was indeed a privilege for me to read one of your literary pieces, Literature and Life. For me, it was a perfect defense of book lovers against people who don’t know the value of reading. It’s not that as if there’s a conflict or warfare between the two parties. I just mean that the essay is a compilation of reasons – reasons enough to justify a reader’s love for books which is merely understood by those people who can’t find delight in reading.

Here are some fragments of the essay that appealed to me: (a) Literature is one of the common denominators of human existence, through which human beings recognize themselves; (b) We experience life through fictions; and (c) The unreality and the lies of literature are also precious way of understanding the most profound truths of human reality. These truths are not always flattering; sometimes the reflection of ourselves that appears in the mirror of novels and poems is monstrous.

I agree that literature serves as the common ground for us. It’s where we discover that no matter how different we are – our race, culture, nationality, economic and social status, or whatever it is that mark our diversity, there would always be a common ground for us. And literature is the perfect avenue for us to discover that. It’s like a bridge is built between the gaps formed by differences when we discover that there are still things we both experience, things we believe and fight for, or things that set us into equilibrium which

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then make us realize that no one is really that superior or inferior to another.

I used to read and write blogs in the internet before about my experiences, my ideas, and opinions. It was a great feeling, a relief, to express myself through my blog. But it’s another thing when someone takes time to read it.

And a bonus when someone likes it or reblogs or shares it to others. It’s not like, “Wow! Others must have really liked it. I’m awesome”. It’s about feeling understood. Even though I don’t personally know those people and they don’t know me either, I know that they are in the same boat with me and they knew that I’m in the same boat with them.

One of the most awesome thing literature (reading) gives us, is the opportunity to escape reality- to jump from one world to another, to travel from the past to the future, to meet and befriend fictional characters as if they were real, to experience loss, to experience adventures, to travel, to live different lives. I’m seventeen but I love reading books for children and I’m pretty sure that I’m not alone in the habit. I was able to learn charms, spells, to be scared because of you-know-who, and enroll in Hogwarts without really receiving a letter signed by Albus Dumbledore. I’m near the legal age but I’m still waiting for that letter to arrive. I have also learned about Greek and Roman Mythology and have experienced being a demi-god and go to camp half-blood, Olympus, underworld, tartarus and have fought evil gods, titans and giants. I sometimes wonder if one of my parents is a god or a goddessI wish it’s Poseidon. I have also fought demons as a shadow-hunter, fought Mogadorians for Lorien, have trained dauntlessly, entered the hunger games, experience the Victorian era with Pip, and meet the witch and the lion. I’m still actually looking for the wardrobe that leads to Narnia. Books allowed me to experience all these. And these will never be “just stories”. These stories constitute a big part of me.

Sometimes when we read books, the books also read us. When we read, we also get the chance to compare ourselves with the characters in the story, we get to know ourselves, and we get to discover our intentions, motives, and personality. Sometimes we realize how a beast we could be to others. And I owe Albom, Coelho, Sparks, Hemingway, and the authors of the fictional books I read-specially the books to which the theme is about death or suicide, for giving me pictures of reality that is hidden in their vast imaginations that gave birth to fiction and for making me ask myself about it and give me new perspectives in viewing life.

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But Mr. Llosa, there are only a few people like me who have discovered the beauty of literature. More people nowadays are into science, into innovations. There’s nothing wrong with it but I can also see the negative effects – that it slowly kills culture; it kills the true, traditional, natural form of arts. Kids nowadays enjoy computer games more; visual arts made by the hands aren’t even that appreciated; some would always choose to watch movies than read books. Besides literature and arts, I’m also a fan of science technology. I’m even enrolled in an engineering course. And I’m afraid that one day, science would take over and literature would be no longer in the scene. I’m afraid that I wouldn’t be able to do something about it and worse, be part of the reason why the next generation would no longer hold books.

Yours Truly, A young reader who’s also sorry for the millions of people who can read, but have decided not to do so.

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A Letter To Mario Vargas Llosa Natalee M. Rodeo

Dear Mr. Mario Vargas Llosa, Good day! Like the thrill and eagerness of an infant uttering his first words, it is of great experience to be given this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to speak out my point of view by composing a letter to someone whose mind has raging ocean of excellent ideas and a plethora of incredibly written knowledge. As I was reading your piece, titled Literature and Life, I asked myself: “What is really the significance of literature in our lives?’’ What you gave me, Mr. Llosa, was not only information, but a sensation that awakened my sleeping soul and motivated my unraveled sentiment. You, Mr. Llosa, are not only one of the central writers in the Hispanic world, nor just an author.

You are a warrior of literature and your pen is the sword. The way you write every phrase, is like pointing a sword to your opponents while shouting, “Go! Go and change your lives! Be driven, inspired and encouraged by literature to be effective citizens of your nations and be able to make this world a conversant and progressive one!’’ Those who run away cowardly and those who face you with shame are us,your opponents.

I was reading halfway when my eyes met this prestigious name: Bill Gates. I wondered, “What has this ‘Microsoft man’ to do with literature?’’ I was intrigued when I learned what his greatest goal would be before he died: To put an end to paper, and, thus to books themselves which in his view, seem to belong to the past and not to fit in this modern world. I wanted to escape in my own labyrinth of silence and wished that I were there in the conference where he exactly mentioned those confrontations that built fire in me. Yet, I was here, looking at the paper which our professor handed to us. I was shouting, with my mouth wide open but no words ever came out of it. Who am I, by the way? By that time, I realized that I was not your opponent, Mr. Llosa. I came to think that I was the sword you always held in your hand and you were the one who pushed me to conquer those who try to defeat literature and replace it with a mask of a vagueness that, for most of us, we clearly cannot understand.

In the depth of my thinking, I was a prisoner trapped in a dungeon looking for someone who would be there shouting with me, even though no one can hear us but still, hoping for a small hole from which the light from heaven passes through. Someone who would hold my hand and say, ‘’little stranger, we have

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the same thought. I know how you feel and I am with you.’’ I have so many things to say, so many of them I cannot even fathom, for they are scattered stars that I cannot form into constellations. I knew I was not alone when you said that you would have booed Mr. Gates for declaring those ideas and that the screen can never replace paper when it comes to reading literature. You got it, sir. I was impressed, and I am grateful for I know that albeit we live in this contemporary generation, there will always be group of people who will remain grounded and appreciate things that most of the people ignore, even crumple, and throw in the midst of the blowing wind together with their shattered purposes. I will never stay beside Mr. Gates. We have to prove him wrong! What does he want? Burn all the books in exchange of tablets, smartphones, computers, etc.?! What was his reason? Oh yes, because if we continue to read, of course there will be destruction of forests caused by the paper industry and because of this there would be more chlorophyll in the atmosphere! Wow. Just, wow. How can be a productive endeavor cause such devastation in this world we live in? The problem is, we don’t rotate our heads 360 degrees, and we can’t. But that doesn’t mean we are not capable of looking at our right, left, front and back. We can always turn our bodies. What I’m trying to say is, try to take a glimpse of industrial factories, vehicles, the use of pesticides and the likes. Are they not the wreckers of this place we try to conserve?

Though I read books, (real books bought in bookstores) I must also admit that I try to read using my smartphone, the so-called e-book. And I must say, I am not satisfied with it. I had installed in my phone several applications that allowed me to read my favorite novels, but there is a great difference between scrolling the pages by swiping them, and being able to feel the smoothness of the paper as you go to another page. When I download e-books, I am easily bored, compared to when I focus my eyes and attention to reading an actual book. I know it’s weird, but, I love the smell of books. A smell that you cannot experience in gadgets. You see, when one buys a book, he has this feeling of being proud of himself because he works hard for it and sees that book as a gift to himself. Can you have a collection of novels just by downloading them from the internet? No. Real literature is an irreplaceable gift, a prized possession that you can’t have with just a blink of an eye.When I was at Booksale, I was looking for something worthy to read. The books that first met my eyes were books that were already published from the site which the whole world was blabbing about- Wattpad. I am not saying that I am against it, but I ask myself, ‘’What is happening to Philippine literature now?

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Is this what Filipinos are so proud of?’’ There are Diary Ng Panget, Talk Back and you’re Dead, She’s Dating the Gangster and countless of them I can’t even name because frankly speaking, they do not arouse any interest. Even though I don’t read books that are above average, I still know how to appreciate classic literature and even contemporary ones. I have read Great Expectations by Charles Dickens and Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. I have also read The Da Vinci Code which tested my faith in God and opened my eyes. I read too The Lovely Bones, the works of Nicholas Sparks, Even Now, The Twilight Saga and yes, Fifty Shades of Grey. I am not a politically-inclined reader but I add to my list The Reader’s Digest and Time magazine because my father, whenever he goes to a bookstore, always buys volumes. They keep me informed.

Before I watch any movie based on a novel, I make sure that I read the book first. As I read your piece, saying that once the book is closed, we return to real life and feel sad because we have just left a splendid place. And that the fantasy life of the novel is better, more beautiful and more diverse, more comprehensible and more perfect than the life we lead when we are awake. It is true. Reading novels is my get-away. You get to feel, experience, taste, see, imagine what it’s like to live in a world you never thought existed.

Every word expressed not just brings information but also new beginnings, chances, hope, love and inspiration. It is true that without literature, there would be no eroticism, no challenges, no exploration, no new discoveries, no happiness, and no life. Yes, literature is life. And the most important book in the history of the world, which is the Bible is literature, and Bible is life.

Literature can change our perspectives and the way we see things. Literature is not merely something you only read. It is literature that unifies us. And I believe that without literature, we wouldn’t be here. Without literature? We’d be nothing. And for that, thank you, Mr. Llosa. Thank you for writing this essay.

Yours truly, Natalee M. Rodeo

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Mga tala ukol sa mga may-akda Ailyn O. Amado (Associate/Features Editor, The Adamson Chronicle) Si Ai ay isang impokritang manunulat ng pag-ibig na hindi pa nararanasang umibig... ever. Ang split personality niyang si Marla Singer ay napapabilang sa 0.8217% ng daan-daang mga naging estudyante ni Ginoong Radney Ranario sa World Literature na ginantimpalaan ng semestral grade na flat one.

Edwin D. Padrilanan (Social Sciences Department, Adamson University) Si Prof. Padrilanan ay isang mountaineer na namulat sa pamantasan at mga kalye ng ka-Maynilaan bago muling nag-aral at nagpilit na magpanibagonghubog sa kasukalan ng mga kagubatan, katarikan ng mga kabundukan, at gayundin sa kalawakan ng mga kabukiran sa kanayunan. Kasalukuyan siyang nagsusunog ng kilay upang matapos ang kanyang PhD (Political Science) sa UST. Eman Nolasco Si Eman ay nagturo sa AdU noong taong 2011-2013 sa ilalim ng Social Sciences Department-CELA. Sa kasalukuyan ay nagtuturo ng mga Social Sciences subjects sa PUP at kabahagi ng Center for Creative Writing-PUP. Floyd Scott D. Tiogangco (Staff Writer, The Adamson Chronicle) Ivy June B. Pedida (Staff Writer, The Adamson Chronicle) Sinasayang ng alien na si Ivy ang oras niya sa anime habang tumatakas sa boring na reality sa pamamagitan ng daydreaming, pagpatol sa Monopoly, at pagkain ng pessimism. Pangarap niyang makamayan ang nag-iisang Flying Spaghetti Monster at Taong-ahas ng Robinson’s at maging presidente ng Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club balang araw.

Jan Kiethan B. Suen (News Editor, The Adamson Chronicle) Kasalukuyan siyang “naghahayop” sa The Adamson Chronicle. Bukod sa pagbuo ng imahe sa tula, hilig din niya ang pagkuha ng litrato sa paligid (at sa sarili). Pwede niyo siyang pagtripan sa mga account niya sa facebook, twitter, at ask.fm. Love niya ang mga Kiethilicious.

JB Lazarte (Alumnus, The Adamson Chronicle) Dating Literary Editor (1994-1996) at Editor-in-Chief (1996-1997) ng The Adamson Chronicle, siya ay nagwagi ng 2nd prize sa Philippine Free Press Annual Literary Awards noong 2006. Kalalabas lang ng Dream Boy, ang

pangalawa niyang nobela.

Jumarvin R. Ridulfa (Staff Writer, The Adamson Chronicle) Masipag, matalino, matipuno — ‘yan ang tatlong katangian na wala si Jumarvin Ridulfa. Kasalukuyan siyang nahuhumaling sa Warsan Shire poems at umasa sa mga bagay na walang kasiguraduhan.

Justin Sabandeja (2nd year., Political Science) Polsay, Second year sa umaga, third year sa hapon. Dalawampung taon nang hinahanap ang kanyang dakilang pagkakataon.

Kai Relota (2nd yr., Communication Arts) Si Kai ay isang part-time 2nd-yr Comm student at part-time grunge pixie na natutupok sa lagablab ng sariling poot at pag-ibig.

Karl Isaac M. Santos (Literary Editor, The Adamson Chronicle) Siyam na taon nag-aral ng Mass Communication para kumawala sa nowork, no-pay na sistema ng kapitalistang lipunan. Nagsawa sa buhaytambay kaya napiling makipag-ulayaw sa panitikan. Kasalukuyang Patnugot Pampanitikan ng The Adamson Chronicle, at tagapag-luto ng hapunan ng kanyang butihing asawa.

Mikael Rabara Gallego (Alumnus, The Adamson Chronicle) Si Mikael Rabara Gallego, di niya tunay na pangalan, ay kasapi ng Linangan sa Imahen, Retorika, at Anyo (LIRA). Nagtrabaho bilang book cover designer at layout artist sa isang malaking imprenta sa Quezon City at ngayo’y nagsisilbing tagabantay ng mga kimera at basilisko sa isang siyudad sa Norte.

Radney Ranario (Languages Department, Adamson University) Nagtapos ng AB/BSE English sa Philippine Normal University noong 1995; ng MFA (Creative Writing) sa De La Salle University noong 2010. Kalalabas lang ng Minsan Lang Sila Normal (PNU Press), ang una niyang aklat kasama ang iba pang manunulat mula sa PNU. Kasalukuyan siyang Adviser ng The Adamson Chronicle.

Roma Estrada (Alumna, The Adamson Chronicle) Si Roma Estrada ay kasalukuyang nagtuturo ng Panitikan sa Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Valenzuela.

Thea Bettina L. Fuentebella (Chief Illustrator, The Adamson Chronicle)

Editorial Staff 2014 - 2015

Franz Jared S. Enriquez Editor-in-Chief

Ailyn O. Amado

Associate/Features Editor

Gideon A. Betito Managing Editor

Jan Kiethan B. Suen News Editor

Daniel Chrysostom B. Mercado Sports Editor

Karl Isaac M. Santos Literary Editor

Aris Vincent V. Veridiano Layout Editor

Thea Bettina L. Fuentabella Chief Illustrator

Alan Christopher S. Oliva Chief Photographer

Ronnel Q. Dela Cruz Online Manager

Joseph A. Alcala. Joshua Benjamin T. Dacanay. Alexander L. Garcia.

Kacey D. Laudato. Patrick Dave B. Magpantay. Ivy June T. Pedida.

Jumarvin R. Ridulfa. Floyd Scott D. Tiogangco Staff Writers

Jabez M. Alcantara. Elben Joseph D. Camama. Aristeo B. Vasquez IV Layout Artists

Jn Yvan Nicole A. Condes. Rick Johnsen Dela Cruz. John Dhale A. Flores Photographers

Mark Joshua D. Basalo Illustrator

Prof. Radney O. Ranario Technical Adviser

www.adamsonchronicle.com www.facebook.com/TheAdamsonChronicle @ADUChronicle adamsonchronicle@gmail.com