Column: Who’s Preying on Whom?: Two Experiences

Who’s to blame for children not liking classical Filipino literature? Here are two viewpoints…

Reaction 1: Literature has to be experienced

By M. S. A. Sereno

When I first read Mga Ibong Mandaragit, I was 14, a high school senior with bad study habits, and even worse Filipino reading skills. Our teacher had given us a list of books and told us to write a report on one of them; I had rather shortsightedly chosen the longest, the one featuring “what happened after the Fili” and then had forgotten all about it until a day before the deadline. I spent an afternoon hacking through what felt like huge, thorny thickets of words and emerged from my room with a migraine pounding at what remained of my brain. Needless to say, I did not enjoy reading that book.

That experience doesn’t give me the right to pronounce judgment on “Mga Ibong Mandaragit,” of course. To be honest, I read the book too quickly to form a coherent, lasting impression, and now all I can recall is a sort of grudging resignation to the events unfolding throughout its pages and unrelenting dislike towards one of the main characters.

All I can say is that the author wrote well and his work can be read, difficult as it may be. And it was hard reading; I don’t doubt that if I had more time – say, several days or a week – I’d still have found it difficult. Many students probably feel the same way.

So while I disagree with her, I have a lot of sympathy – in the sense of shared experiences of pain – for Connie Veneracion, the author of The Birds of Prey and Batjay, a (by now) infamous article posted on her blog (<http://houseonahill.net/the-birds-of-prey-and-batjay/>).

In the article, Ms. Veneracion wrote about how difficult it was to read the book, then went on to tackle her issues with overly complex usage of language and elitism in literature.

She calls Mga Ibong Mandaragit “[a] case of substance muddled by incomprehensible form” and goes on to ask “What is so objectionable about the use of simple language in literature? Is literature naturally elitist and meant to be appreciated only by a few? Is it what makes it special? Is that what makes it good?”

Near the article’s ending, she writes, “Just what is the difference between [classic literature and popular literature] if not old age? Language evolves. Culture evolves. If we keep on defining literature based on the number of obsolete words used, literature will always be something for the enjoyment of men who like to shut themselves up in a room dissecting letters.”

Fighting words. (My knee-jerk reaction: “But… we don’t define literature based on the number of obsolete words! And… I’m not a man, nor do I dissect letters!”) Quite a few writers and bloggers responded: slamming Ms. Veneracion’s insistence on “quick and easy payoffs”; emphasizing the value of working hard to understand great literature; bemoaning the increasing inability, especially among the young, to read Filipino well; showing how important art is to life.

I was moved to tears by Exie Abola’s response, Preying on Ignorance, which appeared as a column and was also reposted on his blog at <http://dogberryexie.blogspot.com/2008/05/preying-on-ignorance.html>. He wrote: “While entertainment strokes our ego and makes us content with ourselves and the world we live in, art calls us to go beyond our comfort zone, to expand the limited spheres of our existence. It admonishes us to become more than who we already are. … Art disturbs us into living.” What a beautiful way to put it.

But the reactions, well-written and passionately argued as they were, left me wanting. It took me a while (a long while) to articulate precisely what I felt they lacked, and in that interval more blog posts were written, more comments posted. There were so many posts that reading all of them and sorting through the web of links and trackbacks took me several hours. But having gone through what I could find I still didn’t see something: a reaching out to people who didn’t like reading, an offer to help readers trapped in the mire of “philistinism” make their way out and begin learning, an answer to the question: “You say this is wrong – so what now?”

Putting myself in the shoes of someone who agreed with Ms. Veneracion – and that type of reader is not uncommon – reading the reactions would only make me more entrenched in my wrongly-held beliefs, more convinced of the strength of my position.

To that hypothetical me, people insulting Ms. Veneracion’s intelligence and/or ranting about stupidity (called for though it may be) would serve as more evidence, yet again, of the elitism of the Filipino literati. And no matter how beautifully written other posts on literature might be, they still wouldn’t reach me. How could they? I would read them without fully understanding their arguments, because I wouldn’t actually have experienced the beauty of literature – despite all assumptions to the contrary.

Elitism?

The original article is indeed as guilty of elitism as the literati it accuses: in its case a reverse elitism, a prejudice against difficult reading and books considered “high literature” (a concept still valid to most of the people who agreed with Ms. Veneracion).

However that does not diminish the fact that there really is elitism in the way many Filipinos view, read, and write literature. That there are people disgruntled with the current status quo – or at least their perception of it – should come as no surprise, and though some of them take it to extremes it doesn’t excuse the apparent lack of material written to change their perspectives, especially in light of the amount of effort that has gone into discrediting Ms. Veneracion.

What would have been a possible alternative? For starters, impassioned defenses of literature, the worth of art, and the Filipino language might have fared better had they been tempered with attempts to bridge the divide rather than widening it. We could say: deep and thoughtful reading is important too, enjoyable as dipping into junk food manga with titles like Perfect Girl Evolution and Kateikyo Hitman Reborn! might be. And look – some books are difficult, yes, nobody’s saying aren’t, but they aren’t impossible, and trying is certainly worth it. Trying to understand why is just as meaningful as knowing what. You don’t have to like something because critics and professors say it’s good; come to think of it, you don’t have to like something even if you think it’s good (for instance, though I think Haruki Murakami is a good writer I don’t like his work, for reasons entirely my own). You don’t have to like anything. But you could at least try – try to read, to understand, to form your own, informed, opinion.

I was dismayed to see a writer denigrate “simple” and “easy” literature in her reaction to Ms. Veneracion’s article. Not only is it entirely possible for a book to be both simple and complex, easy to read and thought-provoking, what sort of mindset is the putting down of “simple and easy writing” perpetuating? Wouldn’t this just reinforce the association, “incomprehensible = deep”? Wouldn’t this just encourage some writers to make their work as complex and linguistically obscure as they can, for the sake of appearing profound? Wouldn’t this just be off-putting and discouraging to many would-be readers?

It isn’t very effective to answer “If they’re put off, they should work harder” even though it may be true. I had a professor who, in the first day of class in a general education subject, filled the board with so many equations many of my classmates lost whatever drive or energy they had and just gave up on getting a good grade. He said he did this to highlight the seriousness of the subject. That may be so, but he probably should have said something about the importance of physics first, or maybe mentioned its applications to real life, the beauty and simplicity of its principles – little things, which might have been obvious to him but were totally new to his students – before stunning his audience into near-insensibility.

It’s true: we should work harder. We shouldn’t stop trying. We ought to challenge ourselves, to struggle, to learn. But our quest for understanding doesn’t involve looking down on those who are just beginning to learn (maybe even unwilling or unable to learn) or attempting to drag down people who’ve advanced to higher slopes and steeper ground. There’s no reason to draw anything downwards when there are still so many ways to go up.

Reaction 2: The rift between writer and reader

By M. R. R. Arcega

I confess it’s been ages since I last read Mga Ibong Mandaragit, and that was when it was required for high school. I didn’t retain any of it. That probably means I didn’t like it and wasn’t inspired in any way by it.

However, I don’t consider that my fault. I don’t consider it Amado Hernandez’s fault either. So whose fault is it?

I believe this is essentially what’s being discussed in one of the hottest topics in the Philippine blogosphere: who’s to blame for children not liking classical Filipino literature?

Somehow, this historically significant novel by Amado Hernandez became representative of every classical work turned out by Filipino authors, and indeed by every piece of “high literature” ever written. And Connie Veneracion, who brought it up in the first place, became the demon in the dark which everybody had to hunt down, because now she represents a lot of things that are wrong with the readership of the country.

I’m not going to say that not being able to appreciate classical literature should not be given attention as a national problem: it matters, and it definitely merits further discussion. But I do wonder if the discussion should proceed like this. Reading through the reactions, and through the offending column itself, one wonders if Connie Veneracion’s column truly deserved the ire it garnered, or if it just turned into an effigy because it’s high time for these issues to come to light.

Perhaps we needed something to demonize, to pour all our frustrations about literacy and literary appreciation onto, and this column just happened to come up at exactly the right time.

A different (we cannot exactly say “deeper,” as some of the reactions have in fact gone so far as to overanalyze particularly inflammatory sections) analysis of Miss Veneracion’s column would yield a genuine concern for the country’s educational standards. The classics are losing an audience among readers - especially young readers - with more contemporary tastes, and our educators are failing to address that loss.

Thanks to the opinions exchanged, it became clear that there IS resentment between readers and literary writers in the Philippines, and it has been brewing under the surface for ages. It’s certainly not a one-way street - some readers resent writers for feeling like they’re being deliberately alienated from the text and then made to feel inferior about it. But some writers also feel alienated from their intended readers because the latter don’t make an effort to understand their work - and even passionately discourage each other from doing so!

The thing is, this whole war appears to be going badly, as it’s now lending itself more to typecasting than to any sort of righteous indignation. If there was a rift between writers and readers before Ms. Veneracion’s article was written, it could well have grown after our respected literary bodies have turned it into something to be blindly despised.

Of course, this doesn’t mean many of the children who actually have to sit through Mga Ibong Mandaragit will be affected by this whole ordeal. A great many of them still 1) don’t have access to the Internet or 2) have difficulty comprehending old Tagalog, or both. The problem of why some classical required reading material in our schools comes across as incomprehensible is not solved - however, the problem of why people have a negative view of the classics is brought to light.

I believe no writer actually consciously makes oneself hard to understand. At the same time, no person who actually likes to read would outright say “That’s just one of those snobby intellectuals/dead writer dudes spewing nonsense again, don’t waste your time with that.” People generally want to understand and be understood - especially if it’s impressed upon them that something is Important, in the sense that they could not have been free Filipinos if it had not been written and published. Literacy is still prized in the Philippines both as a personal achievement and a tool for success.

I don’t side with Ms. Veneracion on this issue; I don’t even like the way she wrote her column. But I don’t doubt her dedication to literature. It’s clear enough from her words that the last thing she wants to do is to turn her children into illiterate louts, or indeed even to “anti-literary snob” louts. She does encourage reading, although she discourages being told what to read, and how to enjoy it — which is something I definitely endorse.

And I definitely don’t like how people contributed to the growth of the already massive rift between the people who earnestly work toward a deeper understanding of high literature (aka aspiring writers) and the people who simply wish it was easier to appreciate historically and culturally significant text, because it is difficult to achieve an immediate connection with it (aka “philistines”).

So, in attempting to answer the questions I asked earlier, I’m saying now that it’s nobody’s fault that I didn’t like the text. That doesn’t make me a bad Filipino, or make Ka Amado a bad writer, or even my literature teachers bad educators. But if I dislike all classical works just because I didn’t understand it, that’s different - there is definitely a problem.

As a reader, I found it particularly interesting that the default reaction of literary writers to being told “we don’t understand you and we don’t like it” would appear to be “you’re just not trying hard enough!” This in itself I think speaks of another deep-set problem: one of modern writers losing touch with their readership. And it would be disastrous for all of us - readers and writers alike - if this issue is not properly addressed, and soon.

On the other hand, as a writer, I find it exhilarating that some people - young people, especially - are revisiting Mga Ibong Mandaragit and making an honest effort to understand it, if only to see what the hoolaballoo is about. I hope this doesn’t stop at Ka Amado’s novel, suddenly controversial again after so many years - I hope young people are able to see that their appreciation and understanding of a text, especially of a classical text, is not limited to what they are handed out in class or on their textbooks.

However, I am also appalled that literary advocates needed to roast, spit and burn a fellow literary advocate alive just to prove a point.

May 24, 2008 | Filed Under Latest, Read or Die | 3 Comments

Column: The need for more libraries, or for better bookstores

The need for more libraries, or for better bookstores
Rebecca Arcega

Last year, I spent two months vacationing in Wellington, New Zealand and found myself having less control over my time than I’d hoped for.

Not having easy Internet access also left me out of the loop, so I wasn’t able to keep up with the online activities that inspired me to keep working on the Philippine Speculative Fiction blog (http://specfic.philsites.net)

Still, I found that there are some advantages to not being “wired.” One gets more time to think, for one. I think one of the many things about my trip was access to a public library. I was there at least twice a week, and in-between raiding my uncle’s private stash, I foraged in Upper Hutt and took home some titles that I was sure I wouldn’t easily find in the Philippines.

For me, the Upper Hutt Public Library was , quite simply, a little slice of heaven. It had been a while since I was last able to visit a decent library, about four years ago when I was doing research for a certain writing project, and I was able to enter the University of the Philippines Main Library again.

Every time I stepped through the doors of the Upper Hutt Library though, I was bombarded by conflicting emotions. One of them, I was surprised to find, was guilt. I kept thinking about certain people back home who would love the gorgeous selections. I made up my mind to email a friend about the extensive Dragonlance collection I saw, another friend about the newer Iain Banks titles, and someone else about the surprising number of Storm Constantine’s non-Wraeththu books. Hell, I even took pictures.

And I felt like I didn’t deserve to be there. I no longer set aside a sizeable amount of my earnings to books, and while I do love to read, I don’t dare call myself a bibliophile anymore.

Yet I was the one who had access to all those books.

It’s a more personal neurosis, I think - I wouldn’t ascribe it to a Pinoy trait, a “girl thing,” or anything so potentially explosive. I simply hate picking up a paperback at Powerbooks and sitting down to read it, because I feel like I’m depriving other more worthy readers of good seats.

I think things like: there’s a kid out there somewhere who needs to read more Rimbaud than I do; I’m just here rereading Un Saison en Enfer for the nth time on a whim. I’ve already read enough and it’s time for me to write; I shouldn’t take up too much space or too many hours. It made me wonder if my self-esteem issues are still within normal, or if I should start seeing a shrink.

Also, it made me think about how quite a few of the active literati in the Philippines can afford to have their own private libraries. I imagine that really good writers consciously know that they will never have read enough, and in their heart of hearts they are always on the lookout for the next textual high.

The question is, how many of our would-be writers can actually afford that high, and how many can’t?

Loving libraries

Growing up, I was a big fan of libraries. I lived within campus during my university years, so I could library-hop in my spare time. My favorites at the time were the UP Main Library (treasure trove!), the Engineering library, and the Fine Arts library. The last time I had to do research there as an alumna, I had to go through a rigorous (and IIRC, somewhat costly) process just to secure a “special” library card. I just don’t know if students from other schools would have an equally hard time.

But in high school, I used to live one hour away from my campus in Malolos, yet I braved the heat and the traffic during weekends just to be able to visit the town’s public library. Granted, I was very much the little nerd at the time: I grabbed at whatever meant access to books that I could read almost for free.

2007 Nobel Prize winner Doris Lessing once spoke of the need for good libraries, saying that “In order to write, in order to make literature, there must be a close connection with libraries, books, with the tradition.” We always hear talk of Pinoy writers needing to write more. But as a good friend once said and I never forgot: “The more I read, the more I want to write.” Some of us tend to notice it off the bat - our most productive times are when we are in the company of other artists, when we’re being forced to catch up with a reading list, when we’ve just experienced something awesome and we’re driven to share it with other people. In short, when we’re being inspired.

And in other countries, they have places where you can just walk in and be inspired, and you have no excuse not to be. When somebody says “I think you should read ‘Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell’ by Susanna Clarke,” you don’t have to shell out P600 just to take that godawful thick but hugely entertaining title home. You don’t have to commute 20 miles to the library at the metropolis or strain your eyes reading pirated ebooks (which are usually badly formatted and poorly spellchecked, by the way) just to catch up with the artists you admire.

We already have a fair number of great bookshops and publishing houses, but I’m wondering if they would ever be able to afford customer-friendlier sales schemes. At Dymock’s bookshop, you can even return a brand-new book within a certain number of days, and as long as it’s in excellent condition you can exchange it for another title - with adjustments duly made to the cost, of course! To be honest, I don’t know if our local bookshops operate with a similar principle, but I’d sure love to see something besides the traditional “No return, no exchange” policy.

Right now, I live near a mall. This mall has a National Bookstore outlet. I notice one specific teenage boy poring through the books in the Filipiniana section almost every time I visit. But every time I approach him to try and ask him about himself, he shies away, as if he’s expecting that I wanted the space to browse through the Filipiniana section for myself.

I can’t help but think this boy should be in a library, not sneaking around in a bookstore.

I don’t blame publishers for wanting to make money. I certainly don’t hate bookshops, especially ones that make it a point to stock not only bestsellers, but Really Good Books. All this helps in furthering literacy in the country. But you still have to ask what’s slowing us down, what’s making it harder for the rest of us to catch up.

Make no mistake here, I’m not nursing a resentment for people who have the means to buy the next bestseller hot off the shelves and think P200 for a hardcover is a great buy - for the record it’s a huge bargain, but I think I’ll wait for the paperback to go on sale. But I do want to call more attention to the rift that is being created by lack of access to information. Are we really asking to breed more novelists, when even local novels cost P500 a pop, our cost-effective presses can only produce a limited number of quality titles, and our benchmarks of modern literature are only available via Amazon.com? Are we serious about expecting people to become better writers, when it’s so difficult for them to even have an idea what good writing is?

Moreover, and just to be clear, what I’m saying is not “How can we guilt-trip the haves into slowing down for the have-nots?” but “How can we empower the have-nots so they can finally catch up?”

I’m aware that inequalities will persist. It doesn’t follow that just because we will have more and better libraries, we’ll be able to breed better writers - i.e., that people will actually go to those libraries, and read, and be inspired. It’s not that simple.

Still, if we’re serious about our dedication to literacy, and if we’re serious about wanting to pull our fellow writers up to global standards, we should at least acknowledge certain realities about the playing field. There’s “coddling” and there’s “helping,” and right now we’re still at that stage where we need all the help we can get.

May 6, 2008 | Filed Under Read or Die, Books, Reading | 4 Comments

LIRA poetry workshop now accepting applicants

The Linangan sa Imahen, Retorika, at Anyo (LIRA) is now accepting applicants for its annual poetry workshop, to be held from June to August 2008. From the LIRA website:

Bukas na pong muli ang LIRA sa mga nais magpatalâ upang lumahok sa taunang klinikang pampanulaan. Ang klinika po ay gaganapin mula 9:00 n.u hanggang 5:00 n.h. tuwing Sabado at Linggo, at magtatagal nang tatlong buwan, mula Hunyo hanggang Agosto.

Tulad po ng mga nakaraang taon, magpadala po ng isang pahinang bio-data na may 1×1 ID picture, kasama ang limang tula sa Filipino, sa liraworkshop@gmail.com, o ilagay ito sa pigeon hole ni Prof. Vim Nadera sa UP Institute of Creative Writing, 2/F Faculty Center, College of Arts and Letters, UP Diliman. Ang huling araw po ng pagpapatalâ ay ang ika-30 ng Abril, 2008.

April 8, 2008 | Filed Under Events | Leave a Comment

November 2007 reading list: Retellings

It’s… still November. I apologize for the extreme delay in posting this — real life got in the way. This month’s theme is (was?) stories retold, reinvented, reimagined. (Mostly myths…!) All descriptions are taken from the book blurbs unless otherwise noted.

The Ground Beneath Her Feet by Salman Rushdie. In this brilliant remaking of the myth of Orpheus, Salman Rushdie tells the love story of Vina Apsara, a beloved pop star, and Ormus Cama, an extraordinary songwriter and musician, who captivate and change the world through their music and their romance. Beginning in Bombay in the fifties, moving to vibrant London in the sixties, and frenzied New York for the last quarter century, the novel pulsates with a half century of music and celebrates the awesome power of rock ‘n’ roll.
Mia’s notes: Rushdie’s writing is always a lavish feast for the senses, and the way he layers symbols upon symbols, stories upon stories, is nothing short of magnificent. This is a fascinating remix of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth; if you have time, try contrasting it with Rainer Maria Rilke’s Sonnets to Orpheus. Available in a lot of local bookstores, in assorted covers (all gorgeous, by the way) and reprintings.

Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis., In this timeless tale of two mortal princesses–one beautiful and one unattractive–C.S. Lewis reworks the classical myth of Cupid and Psyche into an enduring piece of contemporary fiction. This is the story of Orual, Psyche’s embittered and ugly older sister, who possessively and harmfully loves Psyche. Much to Orual’s frustration, Psyche is loved by Cupid, the god of love himself, setting the troubled Orual on a path of moral development.
Mia’s notes: Lewis’s most beautiful book. It is written with great sensitivity and tenderness; rather than use the overt symbolism of the Narnia chronicles and the Space Trilogy, Lewis paints a subtle picture of love, longing, vision, and truth. It’s much better than the book blurb makes it sound, I promise It’s not one of Lewis’s most popular books, but it might be available locally — try A Different Bookstore.

Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami. Joining the rich literature of runaways, Kafka On The Shore follows the solitary, self-disciplined schoolboy Kafka Tamura as he hops a bus from Tokyo to the randomly chosen town of Takamatsu, reminding himself at each step that he has to be “the world’s toughest fifteen-year-old.” He finds a secluded private library in which to spend his days–continuing his impressive self-education–and is befriended by a clerk and the mysteriously remote head librarian, Miss Saeki, whom he fantasizes may be his long-lost mother. Meanwhile, in a second, wilder narrative spiral, an elderly Tokyo man named Nakata veers from his calm routine by murdering a stranger. An unforgettable character, beautifully delineated by Murakami, Nakata can speak with cats but cannot read or write, nor explain the forces drawing him toward Takamatsu and the other characters. (from Amazon.com)
Mia’s notes: Sophocles would love this. Assuming he’d survive the apoplectic fit. Out of all the books in the list, this is perhaps the easiest book to find; Murakami is pretty widely-read here, after all. Try Powerbooks or National Bookstore.

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. Mikhail Bulgakov’s masterpiece is an ironic parable on power and its corruption, on good and evil, and on human frailty and the strength of love. Featuring Satan, accompanied by a retinue that includes the largge, fast-talking, vodka-drinking black tom cat Behemoth, the beautiful Margarita, her beloved–a distraught writer known only as the Master–Pontius Pilate, and Jesus Christ, The Master and Margarita combines fable, fantasy, political satire, and slapstick comedy into a wildly entertaining and unforgettable tale that is commonly considered one of the greatest novels ever to come out of the Soviet Union.
Mia’s notes: Brilliant, crazy, strange, surprising. One can get drunk on this book — it’s an addictive, intense read. I have heard this book called “shocking” several times, and I can definitely see why; Bulgakov turns convention on its head with reckless abandon (the way he deals with the Jesus/Pontius Pilate storyline, for instance, is guaranteed to raise some eyebrows). Up until recently I saw this book only in used-book stalls and shops, but a few weeks ago I saw several copies at a National Bookstore branch.

The Once and Future King by T.H. White. The whole world knows and loves this book. It is the magical epic of King Arthur and his shining Camelot; of Merlyn and Owl and Guinevere; of beasts who talk and men who fly; of wizardry and war. It is the book of all things lost and wonderful and sad. It is the fantasy masterpiece by which all others are judged.
Mia’s notes: While I believe the book blurb is suffering from a bad case of hyperbole — for one thing, this book is not so much a magical epic as it is a tapestry of lives — I do agree that this is a powerful retelling of the Arthurian legend. The characters are so painfully human that when Camelot fell (as, of course, it must) I felt something in my heart, well, wrench. It even made me sympathize with Guinevere. Guinevere, of all people…! Like Kafka, this should be easy to find — look in the fantasy&science fiction aisles.

Bonus:

Not exactly re-tellings, but two fairy tale collections I should mention are The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye by A.S. Byatt and A Knot in the Grain and Other Stories by Robin McKinley. Byatt’s writing is very beautiful, and I loved the title story. As for Knot… it’s marketed as young adult literature, but I think you could easily do away with the “young adult” label because the stories are wonderful, bringing together well-rounded characters and fresh twists on the traditional fairy tale.

November 30, 2007 | Filed Under Latest | 3 Comments

Ang Bagong Libro exhibit: site remix

Just finished updating the Ang Bagong Libro exhibit site with a few page edits and a snazzy red template. We likes red, we does. Over the next few days the site will be updated with a new blog post, a gallery of book photos (!), and other interesting things.

This exhibit will be pretty exciting as it features book covers as works of art in themselves, not just colored pictures with a few lines of text slapped on. Something like theme interpretation meets book cover design meets l337 imagery. There’s a book wishlist on the site featuring a few recommended books. My favorites from the list are Ermita by F. Sionil Jose and El Filibusterismo by Jose Rizal; for books not on the list, I’d also like to see re-imagined covers for The Woman Who Had Two Navels by Nick Joaquin and Empire of Memory by Eric Gamalinda.

I reworked the previous Submission Guidelines page into two separate pages: Submissions, detailing the procedure for people who want to participate in the exhibit; and Artwork Guidelines, which deals with the artwork proper. Please note that we’re having “semi-open” submissions: we’re inviting some people to submit their work, but anyone who’s interested can send us an e-mail with a link to a portfolio/dA/art site and we may send you an invite as well.

I posted a couple of important dates on the site as well. December 14, 2007 is the deadline for all query submissions (calling all interested artists~!) while the deadliest deadline of all is January 11, 2008, which is when we hope to receive all artwork submissions for the exhibit. I’ll be sending out artist invitations this week.

Suggestions (re: people to invite, books for the wishlist, etc) are very welcome, and so are book photos. We’re coming up with a gallery not only of book covers, but of the books themselves in assorted settings — whether on a table in a cafe, half-buried in pillows and blankets, or propped up against other books on a library shelf. Please send any and all photos to ephemere@gmail.com (.jpg format, please, filesize less than 1MB).

November 5, 2007 | Filed Under Read or Die, Miscellany, Events | Leave a Comment

Physics and writing: notes and ideas

(Shortened version of a post at Miamor. Please note that I mention physics only because it’s something I can discuss, impromptu, without making a total fool of myself. I’ll post something for the other sciences eventually, I hope. This was supposed to be part of a series but talking about crackfic has broken my brain, so…)

Physics still hasn’t chosen to requite my undying love, but that doesn’t stop me from seeing such beauty and elegance in the concepts that the fundamental equations sometimes leave me breathless. That kind of beauty compels you to talk about it, to share your wonder with other people; in fact, in my freshman year some of my batchmates came up with plans for an anthology of fiction and poetry written by physics majors and/or about physics, just because we wanted to show other people how much we loved the subject and maybe get them to love it too.

The plans for that anthology, along with a hundred other projects we wanted to do, melted away when we came face to face with the hard reality of life as a physics major. I haven’t forgotten the desire to write physics stories, though. And as a reader, I want to read fiction with science that’s not only solid, but graceful; something that incorporates science into its structure in a natural way, with as much regard for the story and the imagery as for the correctness of the numbers and terms.

Some possible topics for physics are listed below. Please note that I’m listing the more basic disciplines, because I think it’s better to start with these, get a good grasp of the terminology and the principles, before moving on to more advanced topics. I don’t feel a story has to be about branes or M theory for it to feel like it’s on the cutting edge of science. I’ve seen people try and come away bleeding.

Relativity and astrophysics — Black holes, of course, from the concept of frozen stars to Hawking radiation to the bending of light. The twin “paradox” has been done to death, but some illustrations of the failure of simultaneity in special relativity would make for very interesting fiction. For general relativity, the fact that gravity affects time and not only space opens up new horizons of possibilities; aside from the more obvious differences in aging, even the frequency of light, EM waves, etc. is affected by gravity. I would like to see science fiction that incorporates dark matter and dark energy. Also, the concept of an “expanding universe” — what would you feel if you knew that little by little the galaxies and stars were moving further and further apart?

Electromagnetism — I’m not just talking about opposites attracting; I want to see current and flux and fields. The elusiveness of the magnetic monopole, the symmetry (or lack of it) in the equations for the electric and magnetic fields. The emergence of the speed of light…! A thousand thousand electrons streaming downward in an incandescent waterfall. (You see, current isn’t so much adding electrons to the system and moving them from one point to another but the movement of electrons that are already there. Think water when you turn on the tap.)

Quantum mechanics — Schrodinger’s cat? Been there, done that; besides, it was just a proposed Gedanken (thought experiment) that highlighted the sheer strangeness of quantum mechanics. Play, instead, with the fundamental concepts, like what deltaxdeltap implies in a physical sense, what life would be like if quantum effects could be observed with larger objects. How crazy would people have to be to survive in a world where doors and chairs and glasses changed positions all the time, where people could sometime walk through walls or fall through floors? And what would keep people from flying apart? Take a look at the physicists behind the theories. The Einstein-Bohr arguments. The Bohr-Heisenberg relationship! de Broglie! Bohm! Bell! –I think it’s necessary to really know this before moving on to quantum gravity (not to mention strings).

Fluid dynamics — When I was a freshman I thought this field was one of the more boring areas of physics, but the years that followed quickly proved me wrong. Fluids are used to model and stand in for so many things. In fluid dynamics, I did a tiny bit of research on the phenomenon of turbulence, a complete description of which remains one of the great unsolved problems of physics. Turbulence can be seen in fire, smoke, ocean water, rivers, air — that rapid, unpredictable mixing of curves and swirls leaping out of smooth flow. What I did was verify some equations for a model Dr. M was working on, which describes turbulence as a quantum kinetic phenomenon (very roughly, atoms leaping from the ground state to the excited state). One time when he was talking about his model of turbulence Dr. M mentioned ballerinas and dolphins. If only I could remember the context.

Classical mechanics — The first field of physics we encounter, classical mechanics is often dismissed as simple and too basic. But then again, think of rotating pendulums and three-body problems and the metaphors that arise. Think of inevitable attraction, friction, terminal velocity. There’s a point where a falling object can’t fall any faster, when acceleration due to gravity is offset by the resistance to the object’s fall. Think collisions. Think energy, the white heat of motion, the unbearable restlessness of existence. What would happen if everything stopped? Do we exist because we move?

Statistical mechanics and thermodynamics — We can talk about heat and absolute zero and how there’s no such thing as cold. What I’m terribly interested in at the moment, though, is probability theory, and in connection with that, the way statistical mechanics models very complex systems. Write about classics such as the Monty Hall problem, the possibilities and choices tied to going or staying, closed and open systems, daemons, gases. Statistical mechanics has to do with the behavior of a large thing made up of very very many small things, each going its own way, so I’ve found the light, easy grace of the field a fitting lens through which to look at human behavior.

…These are just some of my favorite physics+writing ideas. I’m a little distracted at the moment so if I left out some things or made mistakes, please feel free to comment or ask questions.

October 8, 2007 | Filed Under Miscellany, Reading | 3 Comments

Babaylan at Hibla

(mga tula para sa Lunes)

Babaylan
Ruth Elynia S. Mabanglo

Ibuka mo ang nakakuyom na palad
Ikaw, matagal nang itinago ng kasaysayan.

Bayaan mong makita ko ang sarili
Sa laraw ng iyong mata, kabarong

Hindi nangangailangan ng iba.
Kaytatag ng iyong mga paa,

Nakatanim ka sa kahapon
Ngunit hinugis ang bukas

Sa kilos na malayon
Ay, manggagamot, taga-aliw,

Tagakalinga, ina, ate, kapatid.
Ikaw ang nagturo sa aking bumilang,

Ang nagpayong talikdan
Buhay ng lupit at karahasan.

A, di lamang kasangga at kasangguni,
Kapangarap pa.

Iniwan kita sa kahihiyan
Ngunit sinundan mo ako’t sinuhayan .

Salamat Geleng, Pining, Nene, Tuding, Punay,
Terry, Mrs. Corcoro, Mrs. Mercado, Ate Caring, Nanay.

Salamat Nena, Dolly, Clemen, Tess, Diosa,
Puring, Amefil, Beni, Marj, Joyce, Lydia.

Salamat Connie, Joyce, at Erika,
Gayundin sa iyo Ester, Ruth at Maria

At muli, kay Maria, Birheng Maria,
Babaylan ko ngayon, bukas at noon pa.

–

I., III., at V. mula sa
Hibla
Elyrah Loyola Salanga

I.
Ang buhok ay di lamang buhok.
Sa pagbabantay mo sa kaniya
Mula sa pagiging buko sa mahamog na umaga
Hanggang sa pagiging palalong damo
Sa mainit na hapon,
Maiisip mo: paano ko ito papangalanan?
Felizidad kaya dahil siya’y matalik kong kaibigan
O Dolores, ang aking mortal na kaaway?
O ituring kong korona o kupya sa giyera?
Kanlungan kaya ng mga kuto’t lisa?

Sa ganitong mga pagbibinyag,
Ang buhok ay taguan,
Kanlungan ng mga tauhan, tagpuan at salaysay.

III.
Ang unang gupit ay mahalaga
Tulad ng aking unang hakbang,
Unang salita
At unang alaala.
Mga una sa buhay kong
Sumusulong, umuunlad
Lumalago tulad ng mga salitang
Nalimbag sa libro.
Mga salitang nagiging kataga.
Mga katagang nagiging idea.
Mga ideang nagiging imahen.
Mga imaheng nabubuhay,
Lumilikha ng maraming imahen,
Mga imaheng pumipiglas,
Humuhubog ng mga salaysay.

Tulad ng salaysay ng una kong gupit
Ay imahen, kuwento’t alaalang
Akin nang, naisuksok sa pagitan
Ng mga pahina ng mura kong isipan.

V.
Kapag walang giyerang binubuo,
Walang dagat na malalangoy,
Walang alaalang nasusuklay,
Walang salaysay na lumalaganap,
Ang buhok ay mananatili
Bilang buhok lamang.

October 8, 2007 | Filed Under Miscellany, Reading | 1 Comment

Poems for a rainy day

(Hopefully not poems about rain…?) I just came in from a very cold and wet street, and thought I’d share with you something warm.

Kindness
Naomi Shihab Nye

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes any sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and send you out in the day to mail letters and
purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

–

Another poem of hers I like very much is Wandering Around an Albuquerque Airport Terminal, which I’ve posted as part of an ongoing “daily poetry fix” on my blog.

Here’s another poem, which is really wonderful to read aloud:

–
The Harvest Bow
Seamus Heaney

As you plaited the harvest bow
You implicated the mellowed silence in you
In wheat that does not rust
But brightens as it tightens twist by twist
Into a knowable corona,
A throwaway love-knot of straw.

Hands that aged round ashplants and cane sticks
And lapped the spurs on a lifetime of game cocks
Harked to their gift and worked with fine intent
Until your fingers moved somnambulant:
I tell and finger it like braille,
Gleaning the unsaid off the palpable,

And if I spy into its golden loops
I see us walk between the railway slopes
Into an evening of long grass and midges,
Blue smoke straight up, old beds and ploughs in hedges,
An auction notice on an outhouse wall–
You with a harvest bow in your lapel,

Me with the fishing rod, already homesick
For the big lift of these evenings, as your stick
Whacking the tips off weeds and bushes
Beats out of time, and beats, but flushes
Nothing: that original townland
Still tongue-tied in the straw tied by your hand.

The end of art is peace
Could be the motto of this frail device
That I have pinned up on our deal dresser–
Like a drawn snare
Slipped lately by the spirit of the corn
Yet burnished by its passage, and still warm.

–

Please share yours in the comments! A note of caution, however: this blog’s spam filter may mistakenly mark comments with multiple links as spam, so go ahead and copy and paste the poem instead. To keep formatting use the <pre> </pre> tags; for italics and bold fonts, use the usual <i> </i> (or em) and <b> </b> (or strong).

October 1, 2007 | Filed Under Latest, Miscellany, Reading | 2 Comments

Eating the sinigang of words

Let us put aside all questions of national and personal identity for a while and talk about food. Yesterday I was having lunch at a restaurant when the idea of literature as food came to me. It might have been the cheese or the wine, but for a while I sat dumbfounded by the simplicity of it all. Fiction for eating. Why didn’t I think about that before?

Given this crazy starting point there are several parallels I can draw. I am sustained both by eating and by reading. Food nourishes the body and literature nourishes the brain. I prefer writing that is rich and imaginative and undaunted by boundaries, the same way I adore very dark chocolate rolled in chili powder. I also try to read works that mean something, though I will occasionally dip into pulp fiction just for fun; for food I have ‘regular’ food, rice and viands and vegetables, and — of course — junk food.

So if literature is food what are writers? Why, chefs. And again it is interesting to look at the comparisons.

Personally, I am as much a chef as a writer, meaning that while I cook often it is mostly for family and friends; I’m not a professional restaurant-trained chef, nor someone who bakes and sells brownies for a living. When it comes to writing I enjoy the pleasure inherent in working with words and playing with sound and meaning, I believe in writing for something, but I am not a professional and probably never will be. Just as I am someone who eats everyday, often surprising people with the quantity and range of my gastronomic adventures, I read a lot when I read, devouring statistical mechanics texts and autobiographical tragicomedies with equal gusto (if not speed). I love food. I love literature! It must be destiny.

There’s another thing. When I eat I prefer food with flavor. The same thing applies to what I read. Oh, and guess what? I like Filipino food and Filipino fiction.

Which brings us to recent discussions on Filipino speculative fiction. I for one don’t believe Italian dishes prepared by a Japanese chef are in any way Japanese, unless of course the chef changes the recipe or his way of cooking it to turn it into a fusion of both cuisines: changing the herbs used, for example, or maybe switching to blowfish instead of meat. By that same logic Ukrainian chefs can prepare Peking duck without having a drop of Chinese blood in them and the Azeri detectives so often mentioned in various blogs these past few days are perfectly free to roll all the sushi they want, Japanese purists be damned. They may not do it well but then that possibility applies to just about anything anyone cooks. Or writes.

So — no, being a Filipino does not automatically gift you the privilege of appending “Filipino” to anything you write, whether it’s quantum mechanics horror or a series of biographies of obscure seventeenth-century crackpots or futuristic plant porn. What about writing in Filipino? Well, that’s debatable. You might write in Tagalog or Hiligaynon about nymphomaniac lovers in Siberia trying to discover tabletop cold fusion, but that doesn’t guarantee its being Filipino. However, you will I hope grant me the point that language is a factor and in terms of a story being written in Filipino, it does have a positive correlation with whether the story feels Filipino or not. And feel, or flavor, or whatever you choose to call it, is very important. Dare I say it is a major determinant when it comes to Filipino speculative fiction as opposed to American or Indian speculative fiction? Oh, I do.

Some may protest that this is a terribly ambiguous pronouncement, but I’m sorry to say ambiguity is a fact not only of life but of art as well. Bear with my vagueness a little while longer so we can examine what flavor is made of. The ingredients, of course; the order in which they are cooked; the method of cooking; the chef. Yes, the chef. Not only taste preferences but also the personality and heart of the cook affect the whole process, and I’m not saying that just because of Ratatouille. Whenever you do something you are naturally involved in that action, and there is a piece of you (large or small, unconscious or deliberate) in every meal you cook, every story you write.

It is therefore somewhat strange to speak of writing “as a Filipino,” especially in the context of being limited as a writer, when there is little one can do but write as oneself; if I’m a Filipino, then I write and eat and live and die as a Filipino, don’t I? –Unless I attempt to shed my being Filipino and turn my back on this country and everything it represents (or maybe everything representing it), in which case whether I write as a Filipino or not is definitely not what I should be worried about. I don’t think we should spend much time worrying about whether we’re writing as Filipinos or as global citizens, whether we eat as gourmets or gourmands. We are who we are, and trying to write as someone else would be a denial of identity. The question is whether we have identities in the first place.

Another question: do writers have a responsibility to their readers? I should hope cooks feel obligated not to poison their customers, and they probably want to make the food as good as it can be — so yes, writers are obligated to write as well as they can, to the best of their knowledge, about their chosen subject. (Let us leave propaganda writers and fast food chains out of this.) Of course if you are cooking for people you love you will use the best ingredients you can, cook food that’s as healthy and delicious as possible, and try not to burn the house down. And if you are representing the country at an international cooking competition, if you are a chef for a restaurant serving Filipino food, I hope you will not cook baklava or sukiyaki or pizza unless you do it in such a markedly Filipino way (mango and kasoy baklava! pizza with dilis and carabao cheese!) that the judges and your customers will be impressed not only by your skill but by the richness and diversity of your culture.

It should go without saying that writing always has a purpose and writers are always responsible for what they write. If people hate a certain writer for her inaccurate and misinformed portrayal of the martial law years, don’t say it’s not her fault, don’t excuse her because she’s Filipino-American. She wrote what she did and readers responded. If you must call your writing Filipino horror or Filipino fantasy then be ready to stand by it when people are criticizing you on all fronts and attacking your yuki-onnas. Also, know your purpose. If you want to write crack fic go ahead, if you want to write rural American fiction, sure, go you. But if you’re trying to help establish speculative fiction as a branch of Filipino literature, you have a responsibility to your readers and to Filipino literature to think carefully about what you’re trying to do and decide how to use your writing to describe, narrate, or further the Filipino experience. Show us our faces.

This is getting a little oracular, so let’s go back to food. We all agree, I hope, that food has flavor. Well, sometimes we identify that flavor with a certain culture — I for one will never be able to eat fragrant basmati rice or lamb stewed in pomegranates without thinking of Persia — and that is what I would like to see in speculative fiction that calls itself Filipino. It doesn’t have to be set in the Philippines, it doesn’t have to be about streetchildren or the oppressed masses or OFWs, it doesn’t have to have Filipino characters. But when I read it I want to taste my country as I eat its words, I want to feel the Philippines sliding in sentences down my throat. Filipino fiction doesn’t have to be pure in the sense of being without other cultural influence: look at our food, we have made pansit our own, we have adopted menudo and turon. And changed them, altering them according to our tastes, so that they become unique to us and our cuisine.

The problem of cooking that kind of literature, I leave to the people in the kitchen.

–

Note: The title has been inspired by Robert Bly’s Eating the Honey of Words. Delicious book.

September 24, 2007 | Filed Under Latest, Miscellany, Reading | 6 Comments

Of multiplying books and other oddities

The more I lose books the more I gain them. It makes perfect sense in light of the fact that I am both someone who lives in a world of missing objects and an obsessive fangirl. So when one of my favorite books goes missing, I can’t stand waiting for it to show up again (as it inevitably does) — I rush to the nearest bookstore and buy it.

The first case of doubled books occurred with Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet. I had (still have, to be honest) an unreasonably overwhelming love for that book, since the first time I read it I was in mad unrequited love with someone I referred to in my mind as The Young Poet. I lent my copy to a friend, forgot I had lent it, panicked when I couldn’t find it, and promptly bought two copies (two, because there were two different covers). I managed to give one copy away, though, when my friend returned the original copy and I realized my mistake in time for my Young Poet’s birthday.

Currently I have two copies of Fitzgerald’s translation of The Iliad; I hid one in my brother’s closet so my shelf wouldn’t look too silly. The duplication, however, was not my fault but my brother’s, who refused to be contented with my copy and brought home a new Iliad the day after his old one went missing. When I asked him why he was so insistent on the Fitzgerald translation (as opposed to the one I had, Rouse’s translation), he said, “It’s more macho.” I guess you could say a lot of things about males and egos based on that statement, but then again speculating about what kind of guy feels incomplete without a book is much more interesting.

We used to have two (technically, three) copies of Edith Hamilton’s Mythology, because for a long long time it was my personal bedtime story book. If I couldn’t sleep I’d grab the book and read about Theseus and Perseus and Thetis and Metis and Ariadne and Arachne and… you know, all these people — until the sun came up. It didn’t guarantee me more sleep, but at least it was better than just staring at the ceiling in the dark. One time it fell under my bed while I was sleeping (this was during the time I slept curled up because of the pile of books sharing the bed with me) and after some keening and wailing I went out and got a new copy. When I wouldn’t share it with my brother he stomped off and bought one for himself. Come RoDCon we donated that copy because my brother had worn it to bits. More…
Read more

September 21, 2007 | Filed Under Reviews, Books, Reading | 2 Comments

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