Someone dies laughing
Another AILAP workshop ends. And I am, once again, left with the deep pleasure of having met young writers, whose passion for words, and whose dedication to the imagination, make me realize that I am not-so-different in the world. The years do not take away any of this "crazy" love for what-is-false. I know I'll see you guys again. :-) Inuman na!
posted by slowmotion @ 1:49 PM
4 comments
4 Comments:
yes, lar. before i met my dumaguete friends you included, i would feel always 'different' and feel sad about it. but now i know better. it's something not to be sad about.
see you around too, Sir. miss ko na agad ang mga workshop people. :D
-mitch
hi dar! Yes, being face-to-face with ones insanity can have its own little feasts of joy.
Mitch! Hay, ang hirap bumalik sa mundo after a workshop. All the time. Sucks.
Hey you! Interpellation Note: This Is A Long One
Hullo Larry! I'm rather amused that you found that other, Other blog. You say I'm everywhere on the net? Not quite; you, my friend, are just a good finder. Although I had interpellated (hehe) you among the multiply crowd, your comment on LJ was a pleasant surprise. (Funnily enough, I'm currently doing a literary criticism on a Canadian native novel with regards to the interpellation of hybrid identities... does that sound enough pretentious BS or should I cancel my order for a "What The Foucault?!?!" t-shirt? :D)
>>Hi frances, I never got to reply to the wonderful comment that you left in my blog weeks ago in response to my column. The days have been wordless. I am continually left in awe at how much and how often you can (and insist on) words giving shape to your days. Nothing but blank pages here...
I have read your blog from the start to the ongoing posts so I doubt all the pages are blank. One kuya once said that happy people tend not the think nor write in excess (haha, what does that say about me?) So if the reasons for the wordlessness are happiness- the day to day- the everyday complacency that grows so familiar that it eludes wording- then I'd say it's a fair trade. Some things don't need to be written anymore, and you move on. Wasn't it you who wrote, "Words are tricky. Just when you think you're over them, they lean over and kiss you"? Hahaha.
>>Hope the words are hugging you back. (Cold cold heartless creatures sometimes!)
I remember Lourd de Veyra was once interviewed in a talkshow (I think it was Mel and Jay, hehe) and they asked him why there are math prodigies, piano prodigies, but then why are there no literary prodigies? And Lourd, the patron saint of long hair, said, "Because you have to live before you can write." Or something to that effect, except it probably sounded more eloquent and edgy just because it's Lourd de Veyra, haha.
In the afterword of Ramon Sunico's Bruise, he wrote, "Words fail." Yes, well, there's that too. Words fail- that's something I've had to learn, and learn hard. Sometimes words fail to express the good, the thanks, the graces...and then there's "words fail, period". Some somber event we're trying to sink. Or the first heartbreak, the series of them, rips whole universes on its way. Or was it John Labella who wrote about Danton Remoto's hands, how it ended on eyes that shut away to a blank page? Sometimes there are no words. Or there are words but for some time now I've flinched at stories- especially the ones I believe in.
Trevor Carolan once attended a poetry reading of Allen Ginsberg way back in 1978, and as a young writer then, Trev asked Ginsberg for advice on how to become a writer. And Ginsberg said, "“Forget about ambition. Just write for yourself and for your friends and anyone who’ll listen. Forget about ambition. It’s better to be a loser.”
Well I don't know about writing and writers, but I think I'm learning my best on how to be a loser.:D
What did you do when you were my age?
I'm not really prolific (if I had the luxury, I would take pleasure in writing slowly and sparingly), except I have to write, living halfway around the world as I do. There's a gapingvoid.com cartoon that says, "Everything he wrote was a love letter in disguise." It's like that; everything I post in there is a letter in disguise to my friends. Most of them fellow Benedictines like you, some from STC. Even friends here in Vancouver, ten blocks or so away, who might as well be worlds away. I write because there's no one to talk to. Everybody's too busy. How to make someone else understand? It's a strange limestone geography of loneliness, and the warming stones ply straight to the marrow. I'm losing people faster than I can type, so I can't wait for metaphors. You just write like a soldier's housewife way back in the day, writing letters not knowing if anything reaches, or even if there's anybody alive at the end, but you write anyway, and you wait for something to catch or come back every day.
Januar once asked me, Kamustang kalibutan?, and I answered "Lingaw-lingaw, mingaw-mingaw." Yep, that's it. Half of it's so damn funny and the other half's so damn lonely. I always compared it to waking up in a house that burned down in one's sleep, and finding the warm slippers still safe beside the bed. Lonely lonely lonely: grace is the way spinsters handle their disappointments...I'm beginning to sound like Januar.;_; I don't know if that's a good sign or not. I jest. Much kudos to Januar and his newfound 30-something loneliness. I told him how I will learn to love the academic work that is done, pretentious BS that it is, simply because it's there for me on Friday nights. And then we both cut to a good reading of W.D. Snodgrass's "April Inventory" as if that makes everything alright. I don't know, does it?
Funny, but I distinctly remember being 14 years old and meeting Uncle Myke for the first time, and I remember he told me to be anything- anything!- but a writer. At least not to make it a career; be a doctor or a lawyer or a streetsweeper instead. And Januar says that I don't need to learn from the institutions. Things being the way they are, I find myself doing- gasp!- literary criticism. Nothing exciting, but it gives me something to do. To get to creative writing, I have to transfer to a whole other faculty. Weird. You never know, maybe I could end up in your creative writing class someday Lar, haha.:D
>>And having finally found the author (the one!) that takes my breath away. Long years one waits for this: when one says yes. And one feels that there is reason to diversion, to procrastination. That it does provide space for the surprise that is.... yes, a new way, a new shape of speaking and thinking. Geoff Dyer: author of "The Ongoing Moment". A collection of essays on photography.
I hugged the book in the mall today. hahaha
Ah, usapang Dawan.:D I don't doubt you hug books, my friend, I take mine to bed with me (or, if they're nice, coccooning on the couch with a sheaf would do), although I haven't met The One in my readings. I can wait; there are plenty of books in the library. But lucky you! Natural high, no? May Geoff Dyer bring you many hold- your- breath- and- slowly- exhale moments, and may every reading reveal something new even after you've comfortably settled in to recite his lines from time to time. You read, and then you write, read and write- a give and take cycle! Pockets of warmth to you, Larry, and much much hugs.
Frances the mongrel
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