Para Isabel

The 20th of March, decreed in some calendars as International Day of Happiness, opened for me at almost 3 a.m., the time of deepest slumber for a lot of people. I thought I was just hungry because I had skipped dinner last night.

My restlessness led me to turn on the computer and to my chagrin, I saw the face of the Leader in a pre-dawn press conference announcing stricter LGU compliance of presidential directives.

I couldn't return to the peace of sleep as I heard this Rambling Man (Ernesto V. Enrique's most apt description of him) go on so I visited the author Isabel Allende's website. I found two photos of her, as a young writer with ciggy in hand and face averted from her typewriter. It reminded me of a younger me when I was all angst and anxiety over the paucity of my writerly output.

A young Isabel Allende at her typewriter

Isabel, see how familiar I am with her, has 23 books so far to her name. I have read eight of them, Paula being my favorite followed by Aphrodite: A Memoir of the Senses. In comparison to my idol, I have written just four books, Catholic and Emancipated (personal essays), The First Eye, dangling doll: poems of laughter & desperation and Big Mama Sez: Poems Old & New, the last three in limited editions of 200 copies or less. I have a fifth manuscript (also poetry), Moon Hanging Low Over My Window, awaiting publication when things finally go back to some kind of normal.

But the Numero Uno fan of Isabel in the family is my husband Rolly Fernandez. At our long stop at The Last Bookstore in Los Angeles in November last year, he loaded up his shopping cart with all of Isabel's books that he had not yet read. And because of the prodigious-ness of the author, he piled up softbound and hardbound copies alike. That's the bibliomaniac in the family at work.

The second photo of Isabel also reminded me of an older me--less uptight, less self-focused, still introverted but capable of throwing open my arms to embrace a new day. Remember that this Chilean author knew what it was like to live under an authoritarian regime that killed her uncle and godfather, the democratically elected Salvador Allende.

Allende today

Now I am the one who's rambling. Her injunction to "write what should not be forgotten" is what is keeping me busy and buzzing these days despite the lockdown that has prevented my physical movements. In the recent past, my work as a freelance journalist enabled me to freely seek out sources for stories or events to cover. I have started this, my own version of the #LockdownDiaries.

Ahhh, on this day set aside for happiness, I salute you, Isabel, for your great capacity for joy despite irreversible losses of loved ones in your life. We should emulate someone like her.

The world and its woundedness

"The morning air is all awash with angels."
~ Richard Purdy Wilbur

While my doctor brother Dennis was dressing my knee wound this morning, I had a brief time to ponder on the world's woundedness wrought by Covid19.

(BTW, my stitches have dried and no longer require waterproof bandaging. Dennis sprayed a medical disinfectant, applied some ointment and instructed me to tape Band-aids on the top and bottom parts of the vertical line of stitches. I'm a cooperative patient and after doing as told, I walked within the house a bit, trying on my newly liberated knee. It felt grand!)

I also thought of the opening lines from W.H. Auden's "Musee des Beaux Arts": "About suffering they were never wrong, / The Old Masters: How well they understood / Its human position: how it takes place / While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along..."

We spent hours pouring over and discussing that ekphrastic poem in the comparative literature class of Dr. Gemino H Abad in the mid-'70s at UP Diliman. I remember thinking then how a Master like Auden could pull off a stunt like that--open a poem with a prosaic, almost forgettable observation. It led me to think that one doesn't have to always have a lyrical first line.

When super-typhoon Yolanda walloped Southern Philippines, particularly Leyte, in November 2013, poets were also called upon to do their own brand of "relief work" with the composition and immediate publication (uploading online) of poetry that soothed or raised a protest against what was perceived as a slow response from the powers that be.

That calamity enabled me to concentrate on renewed versifying, something the Bard of Pasig Pablo Tariman is doing in the time of today's plague. I wrote "Plane Manifest," partly inspired by Auden and taking off from a photo of a surviving father rescued and evacuated from Tacloban. His farmer's demeanor belied the dark color of years spent under the sun, his eyes a-brim with tears as they grieved for loved ones who didn't make it. The estimate then was 10,000 people dead.

I posted my relief response in FB and when the call for an instant visual and literary anthology called "Surges" was made by Rossana Golez and Joel Garduce, I was prepared with my submissions. Here is that poem in its entirety.

Plane Manifest

in the quieter network
where i get my news feed
for the day
where members
aren't so overwrought
and telling others
what to do
what to think
in a calamitous country

this image
and description
of a man
spoke for all
who had lost
someone
(never mind the some things
that are always replaceable
in some ways)

but to lose someone?
or maybe three four
six seven eight?
and see them
on some broken pavement
laid out straight?

the horror the horror

the awareness
that here he was
left with this one life
and some clothes on his back

haunted perhaps
by the thought
that he would've
given it all up
for a wife
a child not yet fully weaned
a mother who raised him up
to be as hardworking as she

he trembles
while seated
in this freight plane
of human cargo
flying him where?
to what sort of new life
in some strange place
will he rebuild
without those he knew
and touched as

love
made
manifest?

Truly, we are called whether it's in a time of crisis or a time of increasingly elusive peace and wellness in the world. To paraphrase the filmmaker Stanley Kubrick, the darkness is vast so we are all called upon to supply our own unique light.

All the things I miss during this state of siege

How wonderful to get back to old-fashioned correspondence using pen, carefully selected sheets of paper and stamps! But times dictate against the sanitary aspect of this practice--the handling and delivery of postal mail.

So I will just journal religiously and hope that in this meditative practice, I expunge the anger I feel for the state of siege we find ourselves in. Anger also focused at an inept Leader who's hellbent on locking us down. Are we handing over our basic human rights to movement and peaceful assembly, even to observe one's faith, just like that? I can't even take a leisurely walk in the neighborhood with my walker or cane to flex and un-flex my new knee and breathe fresh air without fear of being accosted for aimless loitering.

Over breakfast, my siblings spoke how we're experiencing World War III but with an invisible enemy. Our grandchildren's formal education has been disrupted. Thank heavens for small graces like Robert Alejandro's almost daily online drawing and crafts sessions. We just pray that each time he goes online, the wifi signal is strong. I tried something different while drawing a unicorn yesterday--I turned the volume of his talking down, then played my YouTube mix featuring pianist Dame Mitsuko Uchida playing a series of Mozart concertos. Pablo Tariman, in an earlier incarnation, has interviewed this exceptional artist, one of the world's best interpreters of Mozart.

Last night, while tossing and turning, I scrolled down my FB feed and found recent videos of tenor Mher U. Nival and pianist Ma Elnora Halili uploaded--in fine performance states, singing and playing their blues away. Mher was scheduled for a song recital near the end of this month at Manila Pianos Makati in Magallanes, but that has been cancelled along with other events there. Elnora, if I'm correct (do correct me), played movie themes, including "Windmills of Your Mind" from The Thomas Crown Affair. For some reason, I can't share the videos of Mher on my wall, but Elnora's is there for your delectation.

I miss the simple act of pushing a grocery cart in the once near-empty aisles of Unimart Estancia. Usually, I just put in a container of Pastelleria de Mallorca's argellanas and barquillos, packets of dried green mangoes or Cebu's rosquillo biscuits. I don't know if these simple pleasures of the tongue are still available. Last time we were at that mall was March 8 when I hosted a gratitude lunch for my siblings who took turns visiting or acting as watchers during my five-day stay at the hospital. We even brought our pug Bruno for the occasion, and he sat in his stroller quietly observing us chewing and talking at the same time.

In a few weeks, my Baguio-based grandchild Kai Mykonos is turning nine, and I won't be by her side as she celebrates, in quiet family fashion, that milestone. Baguio, which was brought nearer by Scitex and Tplex in recent years, has become nearly unreachable with bus lines stopping their North-bound services temporarily during what I call this state of siege.

Unlike Pablo, who has turned to the poetic muse the past weeks, I cannot find it in me to discover morsels of lyricism in the unusual silence we face these days, mine broken by Mitsuko Uchida or Martha Argerich to keep me sane. I keep running my hands through my hair, not touching my face, and wondering if there's still reason to return to article, or what we call livelihood, writing. Like many freelancers, I belong to the "isang kahig, isang tuka" group--no output, no pay. As Pablo said, we don't earn from poetry, and we just must keep moving on no matter the oppressive circumstances.

I brought down from Baguio books to read and review, now piled up beside my bed. Today, I must pull up my large panties, be brave, soldier on and wrestle down the muse of writing. Good luck to us all!

A girl and her dog

This morning Satchi, our golden retriever, came bounding up the stairs. I called out her name, and she entered our bedroom instead of heading for the balcony which is where she stays most of the day after her walks.

She slobbered all over my husband Rolly's face as he was snoozing. She refused the treat that my daughter Kimi was trying to entice her with.

This seven-month old golden is, most of all, Kai's best pal. Apart from walks, they chase one another or Kai talks to her in a commanding voice to make the dog obey. The latter doesn't seem to work yet because it provokes Satchi to get more excited and jump all over my apo. They're a happy sight to behold.

Last Saturday, as Kai and her father took Satchi for her morning walk, she loosened herself from her lease and ran all over the village park, the little girl giving chase and breaking into tears, thinking the dog might get lost.

Satchi found her way home alone and waited for the gate to open. Kai cried more tears of relief.

All in a day. With Satchi, our lives are complete.

Photo by KIMI FERNANDEZ

Sunday feels

As soon as I saw the Facebook announcement that Robert Alejandro was going to conduct an online drawing class, I prepared my Mercury Drugstore journal and Pilot Hi-tecpoint V10Grip for the purpose of being a student before the master again.

Our teacher's pacing was just right so this always newbie-at-things was able to catch up. I didn't feel conscious, unlike in Fine Arts school when we would do live drawing in class and I felt the most inferior to classmates who had been doodling since they were in diapers.

Here are the results of my first drawing class with Master Robert. Photos were taken by my sister Ellen Suzy Lolarga, my companion every time I'd go to the Medical City for physical therapy and rehab of my new knee.

Interesting thing about the just concluded class: I didn't notice the pain of my stitches because I was fully concentrated on letting the lines flow.

Thank you, Robert, for sharing your enormous gifts. God continue to bless you more! And yes, anyone can draw.

Meanwhile, tada!!!

Tuldok the dinosaur

Patty the Pangolin. I failed to add the baby pangolin on its back because I had to go to the toilet mid-lesson.

Pablo Tariman, Joseph Uy, here we are all dressed for the audience-less opera veerus.