Girlfriends' night

I've traveled miles to attend First Draft meetings, and even arrived once from an overseas trip, woozy from jet lag but still able to listen to my wise elders with some mindfulness.

Karina Bolasco and I are the "babies" in this group of women who write and like to share their works by reading them aloud for critique. I write "babies" because after me, the next lady is in her mid-60s. The eldest is forever 84.

We used to meet six times a year, but that petered out when each got involved in this or that. But the raison d'être for a group like this has been met--we're all engaged in and committed to writing. And we write not for livelihood reasons alone. To use another friend's term, writing has become a "lovelihood".

Rita Ledesma had been our gracious Christmas host for many years. December is when she brings out her best china, the best cuisine and desserts that she has tasted and now wants to share this delight with us. We exchange gifts (an option) and have a non-negotiable bunutan or mini raffle. This year we missed the company of Mariel Francisco, Melinda de Jesus and Lorna Kalaw Tirol, all fulfilling family duties. I know there's a next time with them.

If my pictures are fuzzy, maybe it's because I look at these women through the eyes of love.

Karina Bolasco and Gilda Cordero Fernando

Chit Roces Santos, Edna Manlapaz and Fe Arriola

Fe and Rita Ledesma

Hats on!

It was time for old girlfriends to meet again on the last Thursday of April.This  happens four or five times a year, six on a good year.

Even if the distance from the mountain home to Manila amounts to 250 kilometers and some, I try with all my might to be present. (Do I hear grumbling from one end in the north? Nah! My partner in life knows that sending me off to attend ladies' lunches and suppers plus official work-related meetings is cheaper than two hours of decadent luxury in a spa, the full body treatment and some. Sitting around a table discussing manuscripts, projects and acting on them can be more rejuvenating, I've learned.)

First Draft is agreed that when it's Gilda's turn to pick a spot, you can be sure the ambiance is better than good, the food fit for the gods (sorry, blasphemy unintended).

Gilda introduces Jetro to the group.

Clockwise: Karina, Mariel, Lorna, Edna, Rita, Fe, Babeth and Gilda. 

We got the royal treatment all the way, even if I arrived in my summer shorts and Hawaiian shirt and barefoot (footwear is left outside the door). Jetro Rafael is the cook-proprietor of Van Gogh is Bipolar which is his home by day and restaurant by appointment by evening (it can only accommodate 12 persons; with eight of us there, that left only two other tables for the other diners who were separated from us by a beaded curtain)

He had small clip-on hats or hairbands for each of us. For awhile I was wearing out-of-season reindeer antlers, but they kept on hitting the low-hanging mobiles so Jetro lent me a dainty black feathered head-dress, which can't hold on to the little head of hair I have so I pinned it on my breast pocket.

Queenly Lorna with a sword-like shaft of light protecting her from behind.

Karina

Edna

Mariel

Rita

 Jetro I've met at his former tea laboratory at 10a Alabama in Cubao, Quezon City. We share and own our condition of bipolar disorder (manic depressive in the days of old). So Gilda's confirmation of our meeting's venue went something like "Van Gogh is Bipolar Like You." She isn't queen of sass for nothing.

Woman reading

That evening she read a fine piece whose title I dare not disclose for fear the others will pounce on me for disclosing our six-month-long project in the making. I used to do what Edna called "beadle duties" for the group, mainly recording attendance, even the menu (compulsive note-taker that I am), reminding members when the next meeting is or whose birthday is forthcoming.

It can be daunting, if you have 10 women who all have families to attend to, whose activities range from business, counseling, advocacy work in safeguarding press freedom and the environment to professional writing, editing and painting, etc. Getting ourselves to agree on a meeting date, time and place, then making adjustments, almost became a tertiary job for me. After seven years, someone had to take over.So beadle duty has been rotated among the others.

Where was I? The hats! Oh, that was Jetro's welcome touch followed by a welcome drink called Courtney Love's Potion (his dishes and drinks come with names of people who have our condition). If by strange fortune, you fall in love love with 'em food and drinks, they're not on the menu; Jetro cannot repeat them for you. He likes a creative challenge when doing his marketing, in choosing what is available and agreeable in different sources and in kitchen prep, cooking and plating. If this cook were a musician, he does improvisational jazz.

Courtney Love's Potion. Karina and Mariel look at Jetro's photos.

Where was I again? The Potion! It's made of fresh fruit extracts with wild honey. He paused when he presented our individual appetizers and tried to think of a name for it. Gilda piped in: "Babeth." And Babeth is dried pastrami with German white cheese and basil and lotsa pepper. How can Babeth be less than yummy?

Ain't it a dish? And it's called Babeth.

A "gigolo server", also a volunteer, not a paid waiter, came to serve us Virginia Woolf's Tears whose chemical components are supposed to inhibit anger and other negative emotions. It was a hearty wild turkey soup with banana chips and edible flowers.

For the main course, we had a choice of a Happy (emperor's fish with black rice) or a Chill Dish (slow-roasted, mouth-watering chicken). Most of us went for happy, but the chillers generously shared a small portion of their meat-based dish so we got a taste of what we would've missed out on.

Melting carabao's milk sorbet with nuts and a piece of fruit. I mixed this with the shot of dark chocolate on the right and ended up with milk chocolate. Mmmmmm!

The dessert to cap the evening: another came with a choice of wholesome (ice cream made out of fresh carabao's milk) or sinful (black chocolate in a shot glass to be consumed with amber-colored liqueur in a beaker). Have I already written that Jetro's presentation is a work of art each time? If I have, pinch me for repeating myself, but it comes with age, and we're women of a certain interesting age.

It was a lovely way to spend an evening, a way to mark First Draft's 10th year, with  individual women continuing their journey to become themselves...and something else. On evenings like these, even if we missed the company of Chit and Melinda, we feel like the komiks heroine Darna, soaring high and pregnant with ideas.

Photos, except for the topmost illustration found in the Web and the group shot by Jetro, were taken by Babeth Lolarga. Excuse the fuzziness--tried composing pictures only with available light. Van Gogh Is Bipolar is in the inner courtyard at 154 Maginhawa street, Sikatuna Village, Quezon City.

The comfort of women

These pre-Typhoon Sendong Christmas party photos just arrived in my inbox this evening. Suddenly, that eighth of December, end-of-the-year get-together of women friends who write and call themselves members of First Draft, has an innocent quality.

Here we look not yet harassed and put upon by holiday obligations and yearend work and family commitments that have to be accommodated in a month where one's calendar fills up so quickly.

Here we are before 'Sendong' got us into a cautiously celebratory mode of thinking and doing.

Love the reflection of glassware on Fe's chin. That's Rita, host of our annual Christmas dinner, with beaming Edna beside her.

We can't all fit in so the designated photographer takes shots of the group two or three women at a time around a table with a glorious setting of a dozen white orchids.

BFFs Mariel and Gilda

Remember that pop song from the '60s: "Si Aida, si Lorna at si Fe?" Well, our version is for this foursome (from left): "Si Rita, si Edna, si Lorna at si Melinda."

Capping the evening is this final group shot after an afternoon spent catching up, exchanging gifts, reading works aloud (including a funny essay by a New Yorker writer we all admire, E.B. White) and trying two kinds of dessert, with and without sugar following a meatless, save for chicken, supper.

God bless us, everyone!

Hangad's songs for your secret, sacred time

From the inbox today came this announcement. The soon-to-be launched CD is worth listening to. Or worth the look-see when the album is launched on two days in September at different venues. I've seen these earnest kids perform five or so years ago when the mom of one of the members, Lorna Kalaw Tirol, brought in Hangad to serenade Karina Bolasco who had turned golden girl. Members of First Draft were there to celebrate the occasion with her with the usual dining, reading and sharing. That meeting remains fresh in my memory because there was live choral music for a change.

____________________

They don’t call themselves a choir or even a singing group. They are a group of young people, most of them professionals and a few college students, who sing to glorify God and to draw people closer to Him. They call themselves Hangad.

Next month, Hangad will mark its 20th anniversary with the release of a new album that explores and celebrates prayer as a deeply personal, one-on-one communication with God.

The CD, the group’s eighth, is titled This Time with You. It contains 16 songs, 15 of them original compositions by the members, that span a broad range of themes, emotions and musical styles, including a mix of a capella vocals and various instruments (piano, guitar, flute, saxophone and strings).

Renato Lucas, the celebrated principal cellist of the Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra, performs a solo.

The album will be launched at two free concerts on Sept. 3 at 2 p.m. at the Chapel of the Eucharistic Lord, SM Megamall, Mandaluyong City, and on Sept. 10 at 7 p.m. at the Santo Nino de Paz Chapel in Greenbelt, Ayala Center, Makati City.

Accompanying the album is a words and music book containing reflections and prayers written by Hangad members, and the complete vocal scores of the songs on the CD.

This new album recalls Hangad’s origins as a choir for Days with the Lord retreats at the Ateneo High School in 1991. Since then, the group has produced five music videos besides its eight CDs and has performed in numerous inspirational and fund-raising concerts around the country and in the United States.

In 2006, Hangad won the Awit Award for best inspirational/religious song for “Pieta: Oyayi sa Paanan ni Hesus” in the album titled Easter Journey.

This Time with You is a joint production of Hangad and the Jesuit Communications Foundation.

For more information, readers may check out Hangad on Facebook or visit its website, www.hangad.com, or write to mail@hangad.com.

Summer at the Prado

"Seeing how beauty and functionality have been coaxed out of chaos, perhaps accounts for the sense of magic that one feels for Prado Farm." —Mariel Francisco

That quote about Prado Farm can come no less than from an Angelena and a Pampaguena like Mariel, one of the members of First Draft, a loose group of women writers (not a group of loose women writers, we're way past expiry date on that one).

For the first time in the lusty month of May, we managed to get ourselves out of our respective comfort zones in Metro Manila and go on our first out-of-town trip to the new Prado Farm of the Gutierrez family in Lubao, Pampanga. We went in a two-vehicle convoy. Except for the skinny Maginnys in the group like Lorna and Edna, the rest of us needed good space for our behinds.

Weeks before as plans were set in motion, I emailed the group how excited I was to be able to announce I was off to the Prado (even if it's not the famous museum in Spain).

And Prado it was, on a summer day, to try its organic lechon (yes, there is such a thing since the pig, when alive, is fed arugula leaves) with a duck inside its belly. Chit, who has the Roces funny bone, couldn't be stopped from imagining aloud from what orifice the duck found its way into to reach the pig's belly.

Reading our manuscripts aloud after that rich repast meant cracking watermelon seeds, nibbling on arrowroot biscuits or, in my case, getting my mouth all juiced up from passion fruits.
Thank you, Lorna, for lending your digicam to record another moment in time when writing, reading and eating never felt gooder than good.

For that unique Prado experience, email pradofarms@gmail.com or text/call mobile 9209-831-329.

Ruing My Zipping All Over Town Days

I woke up Thursday morning last week with a runny nose and a heavy head. I recognized the symptoms: the common cold has again set in, and its commonness, to mean regularity in visit, has shown cracks in my imagined invincible shield.

In Baguio, this minor discomfort is easily licked by an old family "recipe" shared by Padma Perez: a healing foot bath that calls for lots of lemon juice squeezed into a pail and mixed with pounded ginger. Pour hot water. Add drops of lavender oil (optional). Then soak your feet until water cools (depends on how hot you can stand it). While soaking, wrap yourself with a blanket. After the soak (or when the water cools), dry your feet, and go to sleep.

Simple but hard to duplicate in Manila where I step out of the shower, towel my body dry, then quickly begin to feel the beads of sweat forming on my forehead and around my neck.

A cold is inconvenient because it has become expensive to treat, and my doctor is perplexed why it has become a regular visitor in my life. She has ruled out dengue or a viral cause. She listens to my lungs, pronounces them clear so pneumonia is ruled out,too,but she's not taking chances so yesterday, she sent me down the lab for my second x-ray this year.Ohh, all that radiation, and it doesn't show on my face.

A cold is inconvenient because I wind up breaking appointments due to body malaise and weakness. Worse part is when I cancel plans in my cultural calendar of sorts. I like sharing in my friends' triumphs, watching them get acknowledged as another book is published or a life's career recognized.

Wednesday I watched an emotional Mario Miclat go up before the mike at the Shang to thank his family and circle of friends who saw him through the writing of his novel, Secret of the Eighteen Mansions. Although classified as historical fiction, it raises the curtain on the weaknesses and mistakes of the Maoist underground movement and reveals the top Party members' frailties. Many characters are thinly disguised, including the Chairman who goes by the initials AG (short for his nom de guerre Amado Guerrero, no doubt). Many friends feared for Mario's safety and the Chaiman's capacity to exact vengeance as they read pages of his draft but cheered him to go on as the time was ripe for these revelations. Now if AG makes patol to a work of fiction, he's even more deluded than we think.

Thursday was Edna Zapanta Manlapaz's turn to be feted. A beloved teacher at the Ateneo, she is one of two professors (the other being Soledad Reyes) who had the vision to see the need for and value of archival space for women writers' documents(expanded to include visual artists later) through the university's Library of Women's Writings.

Tuesday before that, Edna had hosted our bi-monthly First Draft dinner meeting at her La Vista Home. I was uncharacteristically late as I had just motored from Makati where another batch of girlfriends parted after a long, gossipy lunch. Gilda Fernando threatened in her text to finish all the sugar-free desserts if I didn't show up.

Edna always knows how to prepare an elegant table and a good spread from lemon coolers to just desserts. I missed Rita Ledesma's reading of her essay, accompanied by Lorna Kalaw Tirol's singing of song phrases from the manuscript. But Lorna was prepared for an encore to cap the evening. When she asked us what song we wanted to hear, Fe Arriola piped up, "Alfie."

And so the theme from the movie "Alfie" was in my head to console me on the afternoon I missed the festscrift for Edna. As sure as I believe, there's a heaven above, and this cold will be whipped before I miss out on any more vital cultural fare.

Photo by the blogger shows Lorna Kalaw Tirol (right) and other members of First Draft, Fe Arriola, Mariel Francisco and Karina Bolasco.

Perfect Timing

On July 26, 1984, a singing quartet serenaded a newly married couple, one Babeth Lolarga and one Rolly Fernandez, at their reception at Nielsen Tower on Makati Ave. The musicians just rendered two songs: "Bayan Ko," which moved their godfather Armando J. Malay to stand up and raise a clenched fist all throughout the singing, and "Tie a Yellow Ribbon 'Round the Old Oak Tree," a lighthearted ditty that took the edge off the first song.

Forward to the same day and month 25 years later. There were more than 25 songs sung that evening at Cafe Juanita. Days before, the fretful newsman in Fernandez worried that GMA might just spoil everybody's plans, including ours, by declaring a state of emergency at her hopefully last SONA. His fear never came to pass. But six days later, the death of Mrs. Aquino began galvanizing Filipinos again to unite against injustice, corruption and the assorted excesses of GMA. And once again I see yellow ribbons wherever I turn--around pine trees, at the Volante Pizza parlor's posts, etc.,--and the cheesy song about receiving a letter telling me I'll soon be free is so very in again.

One of our anniversary singers, journalist Vergel O. Santos, once winked at our First Draft group of women writers, saying: "Don't you just think that getting married is all about perfect timing?

These poems from Edel Garcellano's blog www.theworksofedelgarcellano.wordpress.com do not quite follow the line cuts he did. My stubborn computer refuses to follow the cuts and stanzas that Edel used to fashion these three verses. So they appear here like prose poems (sorry about that, Edel):

7.

A.
Anniversary

In a cafe, 
they are all smiles
 as she confides 
over the microphone
 she & her groom 
leave well enough 
each other alone – 
neither too near
 nor too far –
 unlike igneous rocks 
that upon close contact 
spark a fire.
 Goethe’s
elective affinity of desire? 
This: 
the secret of the feast
 that stood the text 
of their own conjugal times.
 & If the merrymaking 
among friends,
 who open doors
 for the bride’s flair,
 tells a story 
for all to learn,
it must have been
 Solomonic 
for a bonding
 to steer clear
 of short-lived passion,
embracing instead
 the cool danger
 of reason.
 Gold medal
 for him 
visible with ascetic grin?
 Applause for her 
who collates goodwill
 of kith & kin?
 A toast to hearts 
who beam
 at the fairy tale
 rendition 
worked out 
with delicate precision.

B.

At 11pm 
the celebration 
was almost 
done
 but the singers 
were still belting out 
nostalgia 
as if they had 
just begun
 to feel the heat
 of fun.
 Outside Cafe Juanita
 of post American
 Tertulia,
vibrant 
with old world air
 & yellow lights
 from lamps 
wrapped by 
silk gowns,
the rain had stopped,
emitting a scent
of late-night 
cool.
& after the formal
 settling of the bill,
 rearranging of chairs,
plucking of wine bottles 
off the tipsy tables, 
the couple 
would drive home
 a few blocks away, 
as if overwhelmed
 by love’s 
strange declaration.

C.

They came,
singly or in packs, 
to be with the couple
 despite the heavy 
rain.
 They, who stood 
through thick & thin 
of accounted years:
 laughed at the same
 tried jokes;
 exchanged warm toasts;
 heard the chorus
 of ersatz troubadours 
that drew 
the night to a close.
What is there
 to expect 
after the celebration 
of beatitudes?
 Another 25 years
 of magical struggle
 & passionate hope.

Photo by ANNA LEAH SARABIA.

That’s What Friends Are For

I could almost hear Dionne Warwicke singing that hit while friends Auring Bautista, Vickie Rico-Costina and Chit Roces “opened” the painting exhibition “Cats in My Fruit Salad” at Café by the Ruins Monday.

It also felt like I was alive, listening to eulogies at my own wake.

Here’s Chit’s little speech:

For love of you, Babeth, Vergel and I are here on this grand occasion, when once again, the writer demonstrates she is a painter, too, ignoring the warning from our mentor and our idol, Gilda Cordero Fernando who sent you this message:

Dear Babeth, you are really a good writer so why do you want to be a good painter? It’s bad for the health to be a good painter. Mas okay tayo as we are. You paint an eggplant or an apple as though you created the idea yourself – from the etheric soup, no similarity to reality. Aren’t you glad some people can’t stand us?

Gilda handpicked nine of her writer-friends to form a group called First Draft. Babeth and I are privileged to be part of it. And for over five years now, we have been meeting every other month in each other’s home or a nice restaurant where we enjoy a good meal and read our “homework,” the draft of an essay or something, to one another for friendly critiquing. Babeth makes it a point to come down for our meetings, and so we thought it would be a nice gesture if we all came up for this occasion, but circumstances kept everyone except me from coming – my husband, Vergel, was not hard to convince to come along. But the girls send their greetings:

From Fe (Peng) Arriola: Kudos on your new creative endeavor. May you one day reach the stature when like Gilda you would say ‘Award na naman?

From Mariel Francisco: Mabuhay ka! Your inner and outer beauty, your wit and humor radiate in your art. A big hug!

From Karina Bolasco, sending her message from Tokyo: Congratulations and very good wishes! Continue expressing your poetry in strokes and colors.

From Lorna Kalaw Tirol: I am endlessly amazed by the diversity and breadth of your talents and your generosity in sharing them with others less gifted.

From Rita Ledesma: Babeth, writer-painter, what a great artist you have become! Congratulations!

From Edna Z. Manlapaz: Go, Girl, go!

We would all have been here. We would have stayed at Edna’s condo. We even had visions of a pajama party and lots of fun, although most likely matutulog lang tayong lahat.

Babeth is second to Gilda as the most published in the Inquirer, although I probably have more articles submitted but still waiting for precious deserved space.

I usually read Babeth’s articles to my editor-husband. Invariably he points out to me her eye for detail, how she has put in all the elements of a good story, how she doesn’t say more than she needs to, and then concludes, ”Nag-reporter kasi si Babeth.”

So why do writers like you and Gilda and, for that matter, Vergel, who himself sketches and caricatures, digress from writing. But looking at your art, I see that you are still telling a story – “Nagkukwento pa rin kayo” – but what comes through is your sense of humor and your almost irreverent view of life, more subjective and personal. You have been set free from the disciplines of writing.

I have asked Vergel, and he says, simply, without attaching any philosophy to it, ”Because some of us can”.

Well, Babeth, you have shown us you definitely can, and just did. Congratulations!

Photo by EV ESPIRITU

Writing for Their Lives

One of the nice things about First Draft, women friends writing as if their lives depended on it, is the giving of presents whenever a member’s birthday falls within the range of the bimonthly meeting. The pleasure of being a recipient of their generosity can only be matched by the glee (and greed) of a child tearing the wrappers off her Christmas gifts.

As we take our seats at a reserved area in Greenbelt 3’s Bizu, Rita hands over to me a small bag with the subtle scent of mainly handmade bars of bath soap wafting from it, Peng an embossed envelop in old rose with the propitious figure of the Hindu god Ganesh (inside is a tiny packet of powder sheets—quite convenient compared to the old-fashioned pressed powder housed in a compact with mirror), Lorna a slight, squarish book (Elizabeth Spires’ The Mouse of Amherst) wrapped in yellow Japanese paper and Chit a mini hibiscus-shaped bookmark. Edna, whose birthday is coming up at the time of the get-together, gets her fair share of loot, too.

The gracious gestures are like a ritual served straight up from Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort and Joy. We miss the three members who suddenly cannot make it: Gilda, whose driver announces that the car is about to run out of gas in Loyola Heights, Quezon City, necessitating a trip back to home base on Panay Ave., Melinda, who is stuck at her office, and Karina whose flight back from Cebu is delayed.

There are two high points in these meetings: an aural feast (the reading of our works) and the actual feasting.

Before we head for home, Mariel invites me to try the soft-serve yogurt at her daughter’s ice cream house on Joya Drive at the Rockwell Center area. It is an occasion for us to send good vibes to Gilda, who is again complaining of chest pains, and to be critical of our essays (as if the Bizu meeting isn’t enough).

Nearly a month has passed since all this happened. I can still see the plush purple and yellow banquettes of the café-patisserie, savor the sour aftertaste of the yogurt as it goes down my throat, hear everyone exhort Peng to catch the movie musical Mamma Mia! and exchange stories about magic Meryl and her bravura performance of “The Winner Takes It All.”

I cannot wait until our next meeting in September when, apart from reading our required homework, we transform into dancing queens. Drawing by CLAIRE A. NIVOLA from The Mouse of Amherst