It wasn't bad news that Gilda Cordero Fernando had sent me. It was just a request to come in at an earlier time. And being me, when I'm with my shadow, I usually am on time or ahead of the appointed time. So that Wednesday, I arrived at her gate promptly at 11 ("Huwag 10, baka may muta pa ako," she told me on the phone) loaded down with Benguet coffee, an art book, a cat book and a bag of Globake hopia which she loves despite her diabetes.
She was busy in her bed-cum-work room listing down the big paintings/collages she had finished in the past year. Gilda has always handwritten her stuff, even drafts of her essays, fiction, even lesser-known scripts. She has an email address, but someone else, usually a computer-literate help, opens it for her after you text her that you've sent some documents or photos she may like to look at. She can't for the life of her find QWERTY on a Remington or an old-fashioned personal computer. It has always been pen on yellow-ruled pad for her. When she cuts and pastes, she really does that: she cuts with a pair of scissors and pastes the paragraphs that have to be moved up or down with scotch tape.
That morning was no different. She sounded sungit when she turned to me, saying she would get lost in her listahan if she had me to entertain. I said, "No problem. I'll go to the kitchen and look for something to drink." (I hope my mother, who has a Facebook account, isn't reading this note. I wouldn't want her to think that she raised me to feel so at home in other people's houses that the first place I head for is the kitchen or the fridge.) Anyway, I was so confident that there would be a can of Coke 0 ready there so I had one to go with a packet of Skyflakes crackers. Being diabetic, too, I take five or six meals a day, spread out within a 17-hour period.
So when Gilda saw me fully concentrated on munching away at her desk, she told me, "Yah, I know the feeling." She was referring to hypoglycemia when we feel parched and ravenous as our blood sugar drops. "Don't eat too fast," she added, "we have nice hot choco and nice lunch." She returned to her chore.
I talked to her back. "Having a show?"
"Yah."
"Where?"
"Oh, the usual--SLAB." That's Silverlens 's sister gallery on Pasong Tamo, Makati.
Her framer was coming over at 2 p.m. to pick up the works, and she was listing their titles down, plus their sizes, I suppose, for the pre-exhibit preparations.
One of the help, whom I address Ning as I am unsure of her name, comes in to bring me hot chocolate with a separate platito of fresh green pinipig. Gilda knows what I like to drink in her house--homemade hot choco. And what I like to do there is just hang out in her room, taking in the myriad of objects that defines the dweller. Even when she pauses to take a leak or powder her face, going to her very own tatak Gilda bathroom, her presence lingers.
These past couple of days, we've been exchanging text messages about gouache, watercolor, best source of art supplies, the book I lent her, the difference between transparency and opacity.
You'd think you're talking to a classmate or a peer. But it's Gilda who never fails to put an element of mischief in a prosaic thing as an SMS.
I complained about my in-house critic, Rolly Fernandez, who pointed out after seeing the first coat of paint I put on my latest works. "Masyadong manipis ang pahid mo," he said. Annoyed, I decided to haul my unfinished works to my friend Toottee Chanco Pacis's greenhouse in Baguio so I could paint undistracted.
Gilda said hers was no different. Atty. Marcelo is still suggesting that she paint a bahay kubo for her subject.
Now, I don't know if I am better off with my critic.
Photos of Gilda's boudoir by Babeth
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