Mila Aguilar's novel

Amazon.com describes Mila Aguilar's novel thus: "A spoiled youngest daughter, M plunges headlong into the Philippine underground in the darkest years of martial law under the Marcos dictatorship. Then she discovers God.This book is a confessional. It is a novel of repentance, a novel of continuous and contiguous epiphanies, a novel celebrating life and death to self.A few months after finishing the novel, the author contracted cancer of the uterus. Would reading it reveal the complex reasons why?" 

To find out and to purchase the novel in its Kindle edition, visit www.amazon.com  The cover was designed by Grace de Jesus Sievert. Grace also designed the cover of Mila's book of 101 poems, Chronicle of a Life Foretold (available in print edition at Popular Bookstore on Morato and Timog avenues, Quezon City, and Solidaridad Bookshop on P. Faura, Ermita, Manila).

'Her pigeons now search the sky'

The quote is a paraphrase from one of Mila Aguilar's best-known poems, "Why Cage Pigeons?" It was written around the time she was a political prisoner under the Marcos dictatorship. If I remember the context of the poem right, she had given her son a pigeon for a pet, and he had asked her that question, "Why cage pigeons?"

Her latest collection of poems Chronicle of a Life Foretold, whose cover was designed by someone both dear to the poet and me, Grace de Jesus-Sievert, is now available at Popular Bookstore on Morato and Timog avenues, Quezon City.

Felicitations, Mila!

A Food Journal of a Sort

Reading Julia Child’s My Years in France early in the year prodded me to begin a food journal just to keep track if I’m staying on the safe side and not over-indulging when the season for that has passed.

I once wondered aloud what is it about my kids’ generation. It is almost SOP for them to take pictures of the food set before them before they dig in. Good friend Gou de Jesus surmised people like us prefer to chew on the thought, that is, savor food first, then reconstruct the flavor, texture, presentation, etc., with words. We liked to have our memory do the work, not the digicam.

Which is why I don’t have food pics for this remembrance of a recent repast I had on the first Sunday of this year, the Feast of the Three Kings.

My other gourmand friend Cynthia Alberto Diaz and I have kept a January tradition of visiting the Sieverts (painters Federico and Grace, their son, our godson Gabriel). At their former residence in Baesa, Quezon City, we used to pile on mismatched dishes and drink and be jolly till way past Gabriel’s bedtime. Now that they live with Grace’s mother somewhere near Project 6, we felt we had to be more subdued.

My box of empanada matched Cyn’s pansit Malabon and pichi-pichi. Grace prepared something I had craved for all year round, ginataang halo-halo. We set the modest feast in their backyard, by the tool shed and not far from the coop of Gabriel’s hen.

Federico brought out a bottle of red wine and set it before Cyn. And we “talked stories” all afternoon long while I made repeated trips to the makeshift buffet table, refilling my bowl of ginataan until I had to unbutton my pants so I could breathe and sigh the sigh of the satiated.

The secret, Cyn and Federico agreed, was not only to have all the cubed ingredients present in the pot (ube, langka, saba, kamote, bilo-bilo, sago and coconut milk) but to let the whole mix boil slowly until it is of a thick, sticky consistency. Malapot is the word for it.

Cyn, the true-blue Navotas girl, had a forkful of pansit and quickly noted it lacked salt. A bottle of patis was brought out to remedy the situation.

Then Federico brought out his presents for us. Lo and behold, colorful paper mobiles with twirling tails and doily-like cutouts. So colorful and reminiscent of the southern sarimanok. They were each attached to a string so we could hang them. Somewhere below was a separate rectangular paper with a cut-out of the name Jesus; behind it was an abstract cut-out of a fish. I’ve always addressed Grace “Grace of Jesus” when we were colleagues at a media office. (De Jesus is her maiden name.)

Federico also handed us a bookmark—just a length of white paper with two diagonal red ribbons pasted on one side. He said, “If you have faith, you will find him.” I raised my bookmark against the light, and there it was: the name Jesus.

Photo shows one of Federico's birds in the making (from his Facebook profile)

Proceeds from a Long Laughing Break

Upon learning that I was spending half of summer in seething Manila, Cynthia Alberto Diaz, my ex-colleague at the now defunct Raya Media Services Inc., rounded up the usual suspects for a long overdue luncheon reunion yesterday at Pot and Noodle Restaurant on the fourth floor of SM Megamall. The others who confirmed attendance were our drinking mates at John Michael's, a restaurant at the original EDSA Central.

Few wanted to try out another ex-Raya officemate Joel Sarmenta's place on Morato Avenue, Quezon City, which they found too far (he is now in the marketing department of a food chain after a colorful career as history teacher at the Philippine High School for the Arts, University of Asia and the Pacific, St. Paul College, then onto more marketing duties for an insurance firm, a motorcycle manufacturer, among others).

It is not for anything that my life partner likes to call me and my friends put together "Baltic and Company."

My first stop once the glass doors of the mall opened at 10 a.m. was at the Pain and Rehab Care for my fifth physical therapy session to lessen the tenderness in my sprained left ankle and the shooting pains in my right knew joint (signs of wear and tear or degenerative conditions as I move ever farther from five-oh and closer to 60). As the therapist counted while I wrote the alphabet in the air with my pointed left toes, my cell phone pinged. Pablo Tariman announced that he was at the Chinese resto already, waiting. Give me a few minutes, I told him, to wind up my rehab session. He texted back: "In that case, I shall do my yoga."

I managed to walk with a cane to the fourth floor where Cynthia and painter Grace de Jesus Sievert, former Raya graphic artist, were already seated by a long table. Fellow freelancer Pablo was sipping hot tea, an image I still find incongruous to this minute, at a separate table. Apparently, they failed to recognize each other--that was how long they hadn't seen one another.

I ordered the jellyfish with century eggs and a bottle of San Mig Lite for Pablo and me. He didn't need to be persuaded to change his drink.

We weren't done knocking off our second bottle when the hooting and laughing began. Amadis Ma. Guerrero waltzed in, barely catching his breath to say, "I only have five hundred pesos in my wallet. Two hundred is my share for this lunch. Two hundred for the Aeta children. Leave me one hundred so I can have transportation money to collect my contributor's fee from Inquirer and go home." (A few days before the reunion, I had asked my friends to bring donations of old/unused children's clothes, old/new children's books, toiletries like shampoo, soap and toothpaste for 38 Aeta school kids in Dinalupihan, Bataan, where I am set to go to do outreach work with a friend and our daughters, but that's another story.) Forthwith, I fished out P100 from my wallet and handed it to Amadis. His P500 went to Jo Ladisla, the efficient executive assistant from our Raya days, who was appointed treasurer for that afternoon.

Then in came Bob Navarro, Joel and finally Rustie Otico. By this time the noise emanating from our table was making heads turn, especially when Pablo let out his signature laughter which we could only blame on natural exuberance.

Finally when the bill arrived after that long, lingering meal and drinking, there was enough change added to the common pot. Before I knew it, we managed to raise in one afternoon P1,460 for the Aeta children's cause.

Amadis quickly advised me to spend the money not on something "luxurious" like shampoo but on a basic staple like food...or maybe soap. He approved of the last item. And off to the supermarket I went late that afternoon for some serious shopping with the memory of friends having that long overdue "laughing break." This kind of break, I'm proud to say, I instituted at the old Raya office in Paranaque. Whenever I felt stressed out from pounding on my typewriter in the early 1980s, I'd go to the table of our circulation manager Jose "Ping" de la Paz, who'd cheer me up with one corny joke after another until a joke found its mark, and I'd be filled with an incredible lightness of being.

Next outreach is scheduled on June 12 . Please reach out to the children of Dinalupihan. Drop-off points for donations are these addresses: 3 Santa Clara Street, Barangay Kapitolyo, Pasig City, or 47 Mahabagin Street, Teachers Village East, Quezon City.