Baboo is home now

While revisiting Baboo Mondoñedo book Stepping Stones, I was struck by her own sense of urgency as she lived out her days wearing the different hats she was comfortable with: "mother and grandmother, a writer, a bridge, a creator, a midwife, a comic, a child, an artist, and an activist. At any turn, I may be asked to do what is called for at the moment."

She earlier asked, "Why is it that I feel a sense of urgency? Why do I feel like time is coming and going too quickly?" What later follows is a closing sentence that can make one's skin crawl at her foresight of what is to come: "I will know what it is I need to do when the time comes."

Two days after her death that has sent people reeling from shock, Baboo has become bigger than life, still a bridge and midwife, now an intercessor, too, for requests and petitions to the Almighty Source. Her friend Perla Macapinlac, ICM, said at yesterday's rites before the body's cremation that now that Baboo has crossed over, those who she left behind can still be assured, if they have faith, that she will always be at their side.

At the wake for Baguio Writers Group founding member Napoleon Javier this summer, Merci Javier Dulawan, Baboo and I shared a long bench with the new widow Linda in front of us. I'm glad I told Baboo what my favorite piece in her book was (sometimes among our regrets when someone dies is if we don't tell him/her something we should have, especially if it is something good): her recollection of her marriage, the breakup, decades of living apart and how she returned to take care of her husband Eduardo Echauz when he suffered a stroke. They became friends anew, went out for dimsum or pasta, visited places that were friendly to the disabled. When he died, she realized that "there is truth to the marriage vow of 'Till death do us part.'"

Only death separates us from you, Baboo. And, as Rudi Tabora quoted you as saying recently and portentously, "You only die once. So live well." Indeed we will until we meet again some sunny day and in full color.


Photo self-timed by EV Espiritu

What else will we play next?

These served as my welcome remarks at the opening of "Sampayan Blues," my ninth solo exhibition at the Sanctuary Gallery inside the Maryknoll Ecological Sanctuary on North Santo Tomas Road, Campo Sioco, Baguio. The show of paintings and installation ends on Nov. 24. Come visit!

Kept it place by clothespins are the paintings "The Laughing Matryoshkas" and "Be Salt, Be Light, Be Seamstress, Be Doll."

The untitled installation in the middle of the gallery and surrounded by 18 paintings

Portrait of the artist by EV Espiritu and floating above an old wash basin and borne aloft by chipboard "bubbles"

EV Espiritu should have another solo show after his "Soul Catcher" photo exhibit from several years back. He's got one wild mind. Here he poses with the mobile that he had conceived and helped execute.

My collaborations with grandchild Kai who, when she entered the gallery, recognized her figures and announced, "That's my work!" From top: "BFFs in Flower Field" and "Oval and Round"

Good afternoon. Let me thank Maryknoll Ecological Sanctuary, its genial and caring staff led by Olive Gregorio, curator Erlyn Ruth Alcantara for allowing us to turn this gallery space into our playground for a month.

Thank you, old comrade in arts and media EV Espiritu, my collaborating artist alongside Maryknoll’s Clem Delim, who is a quiet joy to work with. Yasmin Almonte, the Sarabia sisters Anna Leah and Wawie I thank for gifts of space so I can paint with no other concern except to breathe and paint.

Thank you Baboo Mondoñedo, Merci Javier Dulawan and Ben Tapang for choosing either the most barbed or kindest words for me. All of you who came today despite gray clouds, threatening rain and a bout of sampayan blues, thank you.

What else will we play next? This is the question my four-year-old friend and grandchild Kai asks when we’re done with an activity. It’s a question adults like us must also reinstate in our lives to put the element of play in things we do.

When I was painting “Storm Surge” in the aftermath of super-typhoon Yolanda, I couldn’t paint continuously and with joyous abandon. There was toxic anger in my heart at the way a national crisis/calamity was being handled. I put away my brushes, rolled up the canvas and as for the tiny tubes of acrylic, they dried up.

Until one day I found myself stuck up while writing another hanapbuhay article. Restless, I had to channel my fretfulness into something constructive lest I harm myself from frustration. That’s how I found myself returning to “Storm Surge” after it lay idle for a year. I recaptured the elusive lightheartedness that used to accompany a brushstroke.

Each visit to Baguio had me bearing witness to the ease with which Kai applied herself in her painting, coloring and drawing. Absolutely no self-consciousness about what others would think or say. I like to think I am now apprentice to this master.

Enjoy the show, and thanks again for coming and banishing the blues from my sampayan. May your own clotheslines be often visited by playful birds and butterflies, the scent of flowers, blasts of wind, rays of sunshine and just the occasional rain. Bless you!

From the ruins something grows

Its official name is Cafe by the Ruins Dua ("dua" to mean "two" in Iluko). And it opens Nov. 29 on upper Session Road.

The Baguio institution on Chuntug street is, at long last, branching out. It is 26 years old, after all, outlasting flash-in-the-pan cafes, luncheonettes and similar eating spots. It has made a name for fully using what's in season, what's available in the nearby public market and what can be sourced from neighboring provinces, including children's clay palayok with which to serve the new lamb kebabs with yogurt and peanut sauce. (The lambs are raised in a farm in Tarlac.)

It is not out of whimsy that the menu changes three times a year--it adapts to what the market has in abundance. The slow movers are removed from the line-up, some favorites that had been deleted make a comeback, and if you don't find something that you liked from a past visit in the current menu, the cook can accommodate your craving.

Tall glass of Jamaica soda on the left, its mouth crusty with sparkly salt. It'll be in the new menu of the main cafe and Dua. The bloody red juice is extracted from the hibiscus. The flowers' original seeds were brought to Baguio by Filipino ICM nuns once stationed in Jamaica. Beside the refreshing soda is a bowl of cucumber soup with a chicken patty inserted in the hollowed-out part.

To hear two of the cafe partners, Adelaida Lim and Baboo Mondoñedo, and the second-generation managers, Tann Arvisu and Feliz "Fifi" Perez, tell it, Dua doesn't mean more of the same. Laida says the expansion is overdue what with the saucepans, pots and kitchen staff bumping into one another at peak hours.

Even the idea of a peak season (summer, specifically Holy Week, and December) no longer holds, if climate change should even be thanked for it at all. During its early years the cafe would be closed for renovations and repairs in August. This year, however, August was not too full of gusts of wind and rain. Baguio experienced a deluge of long weekenders who came up for just two good reasons: to eat and to sleep.

Fifi remembers a customer making a reservation for 20 people. No problem there. But when the next request came, it became complicated: "Can we all be sitting together?" Those familiar with the main cafe know that one of its distinctive qualities is its heterogeneous floor layout; last year a mezzanine was even added. Customers are never turned away; some willingly wait for as long as two hours to be seated. Thanks to SMS, too, they can go elsewhere, then return when a text reminds them that their table is available.

Dua will remedy the situation further. It will have space for big groups or for functions (meetings, seminars and workshops), a larger kitchen area to meet the demand for the cafe's baked products and for a deli-pasalubong corner that also includes take-out food ideal for condo residents or working couples who just need to reheat it. A proper gallery, too, now that the main cafe, through constant renovations, has lost many walls that used to have changeable exhibitions.

What to watch out for in that deli: the bottled beetroot atchara that packs a wallop. During a tastings session, Baboo suggested that the smoked lamb sausages be paired with something pickled instead of a sawsawan of vinegar. Laida called forth the beetroot atchara from the kitchen. Fifi and Tann opined that the sausages were a bit dry and have to be juicier for kids to relish them. Laida's solution: add beef fat.

Trial, error, perfection: a recipe for something that lasts. A heartfelt welcome indeed to what promises to be Dua's feast for the senses.

Camote chips served hot, then sprinkled with coco sugar on top. They do look healthier than when served as caramelized fries. Nevertheless, you can still hear the "M's" resound in "yum" ten chips later. Photos by Babeth Lolarga

Here's to the kitchen and the color purple

I met another purple lady at the recent Love Food Love Words cooking and writing workshop of the Baguio Writers Group (BWG) at Iggy's Inn.

Dr. Kristin Bagasin of Cavite earlier confessed that all she could do in the kitchen was toss a salad, but our resource persons in cooking, sisters-in-law Auring and Leonie Bautista, showed that anybody can if filled with the desire to learn how to feed oneself well. Lessons on so much on so little.

It was around the second day of the workshop when we noticed how Kristin always came outfitted in different shades of purple (scarf, blouse, pants, wristband) and wrote her compositions using a fountain pen with purple ink. She had heard about the workshop from the Foundation Pen Network. (Thank you, Joseph Uy, for plugging the BWG activity to your fellow fountain pen enthusiasts.)

Before we knew it, during breaks between cooking and writing, Kristin was holding an impromptu calligraphy sub-workshop and emailing us free PDFs of beginners' guide to calligraphy.

It did feel good to write with one's hand, to feel the words gushing out or sputtering when holding on to an elusive memory, all these amid a well-lit setting with orchids around us to pleasantly distract the eyes.

Here's to you, Kristin and the color purple.

Kristin recalls how peeling a chico while alone in a kitchen left her marked for life.

Air-dependent beauty hanging by a window

This first workshop on food and words proved how the kitchen is the home's heart and soul once early memories are stirred. Hope it gives rise to a series of similar workshops that will be possible with future sponsorships. First row, from left: Baboo Mondoñedo, Auring Bautista, Babeth. Standing: Regina Newport, Ben Tapang, Mark Manalang, Doc Kristin, Chris Flores, Jenny Cariño, Merci Javier Dulawan and Leilani Chavez.

"For life is more than food, and the body more than clothes. Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to your life? Since you cannot do this very little thing, why do you worry about the rest? And do not set your heart on what you will eat or drink; do not worry about it. But seek his kingdom, and these things will be given to you as well."- Luke 12:23, 25, 26, 29, 31 NIV

Love Food, Love Words

Julia Child it was who wrote, "No one is born a great cook, one learns by doing."

Whether it's cooking (for which I confess to be a 1.9 on a scale or 10) or writing (for which I would still rate myself that same 1.9--beginner's mind always--got you there!), one must keep doing it. No, I'm not plugging Nike but even that brand got it right.

That is why Baguio Writers Group enjoys doing workshops. Fun and learning fall in love while working with our hands, including taking down notes and doing exercises alone or together, whether chopping onions or chopping lines into stanzas.

So here we go. This e-vite is designed by BWG's VP Jenny Cariño.

Observing ourselves and others

The creative journal team of Merci Dulawan Javier, Baboo Mondoñedo, myself and hopefully Jenny Cariño, too, is preparing for our second workshop, when it will be, the winds will tell us. Fore sure it will be a sisterhood (all-women) venture/adventure. It comes after the productive first leg, "Journey to Self: A Creative Journal Workshop," conducted with some help from the Baguio Writers Group, in November last year.

I'm re-posting some photos taken by our secretariat head Sacha Weygan who documented a workshop that combined explorations in art and writing. The activities were geared towards a greater understanding of the self, issues in life, work and personal relationships.

I can't wait for the next workshop to happen. Meanwhile, patience and study. Thank you, newly wed Sacha, for these memories.

I had to post these after reading a paragraph from the book An Extraordinary Theory of Objects: A Memoir of an Outsider in Paris by Stephanie LaCava (Harper Perennial Edition, 2013).

She wrote in this collection of illustrated essays: "...challenge sadness with words and a belief that what you experience isn't what is simply handed to you. Maturity means allowing for change and ephemeral feelings. It took a study of objects for me to see that if we are patient and gentle in observing ourselves and others, we will find connection. This has been the greatest comfort of all."

Baboo shares how her writing and art journey has healed her and altered her view of the world.

Merci narrates how painting eventually got incorporated in her life of writing, teaching and translation work while junior facilitator Jenny listens.

Full circle for blogger: from doodles and cray pas drawings in grade and high school to lingering in journalism and the world of words, then onward to a second BA in fine arts

Jenny on growing up in the Aguilar-Cariño household where art, music and writing were everyday activities

Grandmother Roxanne dela Cuesta and grand-daughter Natalya Tantuico work on their respective watercolors.

Journalist Avie Olarte in deep concentration

Baguio's Tita Auring (Bautista) at work and looking like she's having fun.

Al Vicente, retired ambassador, realizes that yes, he can!

Ichay Bulaong turns her scarf or paper round and round as she creates texture with oil pastel, a dry media technique known as frottage.

Ka Willie Villarama creates whirls.

Miyen Versoza moves to her second or third painting.

Watercolors laid out to dry

Rituals for everyday enchantment and earth healing

The exchange of letters between friends, who may be siblings from lifetimes ago or maybe just fellow travelers in this life, has been most intense, interesting and educational (for this newbie in all things my child's mind cannot fully grasp).

While I struggled with some issues, some dealing with personal health, some with a fleeting sense of helplessness over how one can be of use and of help in the relief and rehab efforts after ST Yolanda's massive destruction, I received by serendity this ancient prayer-ritual researched by the poet Auggusta de Almeidda, always Chikki to me.

This prayer-ritual was formulated from decades of search/research into ancient, pre-Hispanic spirituality, paralleling Chikki's own spiritual path-seeking. I had asked her permission, and she had given it, if I could use this prayer ritual for the recent Baguio Writers Group's "Journey to Self: A Creative Journal Workshop" at the ICM House of Prayer. This workshop, co-facilitated by Merci Javier Dulawan, Baboo Mondoñedo and this typist, will be echoed elsewhere in the next year.

It closed a busy Saturday, post-Yolanda, when the survivors/orphans of Yolanda, and we all count ourselves among them, needed to pause, to ask forgiveness from Gaia the Mother who has been acting up in ways that continue to befuddle "head" persons (scientists, civil society, especially climate change activists, jaded media people alongside spin doctors, politicians, political analysts, believers in the materialist philosophy discourse).

But many spiritual seekers, even Chikki in her sick bed, remain calm and aren't surprised anymore by what is unfolding for and in this country that sits right smack on the Ring of Fire.

I will stop here before I get into a spirited argument on why the universe, the Source, the One allows for strong quakes, tsunamis, super typhoons that have the intensity of atomic and hydrogen bombs whose explosions in the past really pierced the heavens as though manmade (stress on "man") power taunted who or what is up there.

Here are the instructions for begging forgiveness and at the same time requesting for more strength "to walk the good" from the Triune God (the Father, Son and Holy Spirit) and Inang Kalikasan:

Hold on to the Divine Mother. You can keep calling Archangel Raphael. Or keep invoking like a mantra the names of the Triune God: MABUHAY PATNUBAY PAGIBIG PAGPAPALA. OR MABUHAY APO REYNA YOLANDA.

Repetitions of the Holy Names will up your frequency and get you out of the low-frequency emotional depression.

Also cover yourself up well. Go to a big tree, narra, pine, sampaloc if you can find one, but NEVER acacia or rubber tree. Stay away from memorial parks or cemeteries. Face the tree and ask the Universe, the Mother, Mother Nature for a healing from what you suffer. Now close your eyes still facing but not touching the tree. Now breathe deeply the good positive vibes of the universe. Then proceed to the tree with open palms pointing upwards, and exhale slowly or drastically, up to you, the pent-up sadness, negative emotions in yourself. Bring them all out.

Now remove your hands from the tree. Breathe in again and exhale again. You can do this any number of times and any number of frequency but only well before dusk or 6 p.m.

Please remember that death is an illusion. Those who died are now better cared for in the spirit world where their physical sufferings are only of the past.

"What is said in the garden stays in the garden."

Among the calming foliage she sits and reflects.

Touching

Reading the instructions closely to understand the intentions to be uttered and the gesture to accompany them.

Shielded by shrubbery, she sends up her prayers.

Palms up, a grandmother pleads.

"When two or three are gathered in His/Her name..."

Miyen renders in watercolor her healing tree and God's gifts to her.

Detail of Miyen's tree


All photos of workshop participants by Sacha Weygan; those of Miyen's watercolors by the blogger

3 grannies and a journal writing workshop in Baguio

Journal writing workshop in Baguio

Merci Javier Dulawan and her grandchildren

 Baboo Mondoñedo and Ines

Babeth and her Kai/Butones

How to stage a surprise party in less than 2 weeks

...which was all the time I needed to work my phone and find out if my friends in Manila and Baguio could help me spring another surprise (the last was in 2009 at our silver wedding anniversary) on 63-year-old Rolly Fernandez. Ninety-eight percent of those I texted were game, the rest had other commitments that they couldn't get out of. The odds were in the birthday boy's favor.

My fellow conspirators had a credible cover: a Sunday meeting of the Baguio Writers Group combined with a thanksgiving lunch after BWG was conferred the Gawad Pedro Bucaneg by the Unyon ng mga Manunulat ng Pilipinas (we did meet yesterday after the party spirit settled down over coffee to talk about future activities; the meeting wasn't just a clever diversion ploy).

The guests were game for the "roasting" of the diamond jubilarian. His quirks/habits, particularly the way he takes his job/s over-seriously (as journalism professor before he retired last year and as a working journalist), were uncovered by "grillers" Anna Leah Sarabia, former student Avigail Olarte (she said she and her female classmates from Batch 2000 were all sick with the Electra complex when they dealt with their teacher), Upsilon senior brod Des Bautista and Linc Drilon. Heckling from the sidelines was Rolly's UP Baguio colleague Del Tolentino. Maryland-based Baguio boy Benjie Abellera sent his message by email. Thank you again, fellow grand schemers, dreamers and heart-breakers. 

Well, for those who didn't make it, here are the photos from Anna's and my cameras that say, "Wish you were there!"

The yogurt-fed, organically raised roast suckling pig  was supposed to have been Rolly's offering to the BWG folks. He later realized it was also his gift to himself.

Our daughter Kimi picks Mario's key lime pie instead of a birthday cake. Good choice because everyone loves its lemon-y taste (pampaalis suya).

Early arrivals Oscar Pacis, who leads a Saturday Bible fellowship at his home with wife Toottee (seated rightmost), Anna Leah, who came all the way from Tagaytay, BWG vice president Jenny Cariño and Auring Bautista who made a lovely fish ceviche.

Linc Drilon with our youngest daughter, who also pulls her own surprise by coming home from abroad while awaiting a new work permit, and Kai of the tantalizing eyes

Scholars Del Tolentino and Ben Tapang bring in some booze. Therese Jison and Heiner Maulbecker bring up the rear, the apple pies and ice cream following them.

The girls at Green Valley (from left): Ida, Kai, Kimi, Luchie Maranan, BWG treasurer Merci Javier Dulawan and Anna Leah

Linc croons "Moon River" while Guido
Canero plays the violin.

Guido's solo of The Beatles' "Yesterday"

Mira Abaño accompanies herself in her cover of "Keep Breathing," her advice to many senior citizens in the audience.

Jenny Cariño heats up the afternoon with her "Volcano."

Avie Olarte speaks in behalf of UPB Journalism Batch Class 2000 whose members often wondered where Rolly got his perkiness for a 7 a.m. class. It must've been the beer from the night before.

Des Bautista (left) regales guests with anecdotes about how he, his family and circle of friends initiated younger fraternity brod Rolly into Baguio life. 

Scholars Ben and Del listen by the foot of the stairs. Ben tells Rolly that his made-to-order bulol buffet table is too Caucasian-looking with its tall nose and pointed chin.

Baboo Mondoñedo arrives in time for the BWG meeting with a box of Cafe by the Ruins ensaymada to go with the coffee. By quiet consensus no liquor allowed during said meeting. 

After his roasting, Rolly responds with the story of how 1992, the year our family moved to Baguio, remains the best year of his life. Born to parents from Cavite, he now calls himself a Baguio boy through and though.

They all laugh at what Rolly is saying.