Brookside Baby
Showing posts with label Luisa A. Igloria. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Luisa A. Igloria. Show all posts
Sunday, January 23, 2022
Bounty from the post office
Friday, April 3, 2020
Missing the secret garden
(Take 2, after losing my original draft)
I've been revisiting photo files from the year 2015. The year was personally memorable because I was taken ill for quite a while and confined at length at The Medical City.
When I returned to the world that was still spinning at its usual pace despite my prolonged depressive episode, I wasn't allowed to go out of the house unless I was chaperoned. My usual companion and chokaran then was Macky, the yaya of my then four-year old grandchild Kai. (While Macky, short for Mackenzie, kept me company, my mother, who has since passed on, and my daughter Kimi minded Kai who was pulled out of school in Baguio to be with me.)
So being housebound or being under strict house arrest is nothing new to me. When I was allowed a little freedom of movement, Macky accompanied me to the lecture of balikbayan poet Luisa A. Igloria at De La Salle University. Not only was the lecture substantive that I was able to compose an article out of Dr. Igloria's lecture notes, the event was well organized by Shirley O. Lua of DLSU. I remember the savory adobo served.
So my new life, post-hospitalization, revolved around weekend trips to Baguio and weekdays spent correcting my students' papers, preparing lessons, chasing after story sources (life of a freelancer).
Rolly in a huddle with his UP Baguio colleagues Del Tolentino (partly hidden) and Rey Rimando
It was around this time when my husband Rolly Fernandez thought of converting an idle patch in our Baguio property into what we called "a secret garden" dedicated to Kai. He had a truck haul in the pebbles, which were scattered and arranged neatly on the ground. He tamed the wildness by planting shrubs and flowering bushes. Then he invited our friend Rey Rimando, a retired math prof at UP Baguio and full-time gardener in La Union, for a visit.
Rey being Rey, he had opinions on everything from the foot path to the watering system. He offered advice on what plants thrived in the shade and what liked the sun. Rolly nodded, but knowing him, I knew he was separating chaff from the grain.
Name that wildflower.
Since then, the garden became the final stop where Kai and I parked ourselves after our morning walks in the neighborhood. Her paternal grandparents presented her with a garden set complete with a parasol. While we chattered and took pictures of the flowers, Rolly would join us with his second or third mug of coffee. We had Baguio's immense blue, blue sky for our roof.
Kai stops to pose for a picture at a neighbor's garden.
I miss the little garden and the refuge it offered. As I encode these words, I'm pale from want of sun and Vitamin D. Once the lockdown is lifted, you know which direction I'm headed for: my true North.
Meanwhile, there is comfort in the verse of Nobel laureate Czeslaw Milosz:
My generation was lost. Cities too. And nations.
But all this a little later. Meanwhile, in the window, a swallow
#LockdownDiaries
I've been revisiting photo files from the year 2015. The year was personally memorable because I was taken ill for quite a while and confined at length at The Medical City.
When I returned to the world that was still spinning at its usual pace despite my prolonged depressive episode, I wasn't allowed to go out of the house unless I was chaperoned. My usual companion and chokaran then was Macky, the yaya of my then four-year old grandchild Kai. (While Macky, short for Mackenzie, kept me company, my mother, who has since passed on, and my daughter Kimi minded Kai who was pulled out of school in Baguio to be with me.)
So being housebound or being under strict house arrest is nothing new to me. When I was allowed a little freedom of movement, Macky accompanied me to the lecture of balikbayan poet Luisa A. Igloria at De La Salle University. Not only was the lecture substantive that I was able to compose an article out of Dr. Igloria's lecture notes, the event was well organized by Shirley O. Lua of DLSU. I remember the savory adobo served.
So my new life, post-hospitalization, revolved around weekend trips to Baguio and weekdays spent correcting my students' papers, preparing lessons, chasing after story sources (life of a freelancer).
It was around this time when my husband Rolly Fernandez thought of converting an idle patch in our Baguio property into what we called "a secret garden" dedicated to Kai. He had a truck haul in the pebbles, which were scattered and arranged neatly on the ground. He tamed the wildness by planting shrubs and flowering bushes. Then he invited our friend Rey Rimando, a retired math prof at UP Baguio and full-time gardener in La Union, for a visit.
Rey being Rey, he had opinions on everything from the foot path to the watering system. He offered advice on what plants thrived in the shade and what liked the sun. Rolly nodded, but knowing him, I knew he was separating chaff from the grain.
Since then, the garden became the final stop where Kai and I parked ourselves after our morning walks in the neighborhood. Her paternal grandparents presented her with a garden set complete with a parasol. While we chattered and took pictures of the flowers, Rolly would join us with his second or third mug of coffee. We had Baguio's immense blue, blue sky for our roof.
I miss the little garden and the refuge it offered. As I encode these words, I'm pale from want of sun and Vitamin D. Once the lockdown is lifted, you know which direction I'm headed for: my true North.
Meanwhile, there is comfort in the verse of Nobel laureate Czeslaw Milosz:
My generation was lost. Cities too. And nations.
But all this a little later. Meanwhile, in the window, a swallow
#LockdownDiaries
Thursday, June 5, 2014
'Fleece like pilled blankets' - Igloria
Serendipity again. Poet Luisa A. Igloria's poem for today in Via Negativa is called "The Secret Lives of Clouds." It reads in full:
Linings of ice, chokers of hail.
Fleece like pilled blankets.
This is all you see, not
the camisole and sling-
back shoes, the chandelier
earrings strewn at the foot
of the unmade bed.
Earlier today, I took photos of the sky over our heads, my grandchild's and mine. She brought my attention to their shapes and also to an airplane moving, so miniscule in the distance, so far away I couldn't record its image. The sharpness of Kai's eyesight never fails to amaze me.
Photos by Babeth Lolarga
Linings of ice, chokers of hail.
Fleece like pilled blankets.
This is all you see, not
the camisole and sling-
back shoes, the chandelier
earrings strewn at the foot
of the unmade bed.
Earlier today, I took photos of the sky over our heads, my grandchild's and mine. She brought my attention to their shapes and also to an airplane moving, so miniscule in the distance, so far away I couldn't record its image. The sharpness of Kai's eyesight never fails to amaze me.
Wednesday, January 15, 2014
Letting in joy slowly
"In a way grief is sticky like that, and when you have opened the can it’s as if you have to keep going until you reach the bottom, until there is nothing left and your teaspoon hits metal and the sound lets you know there isn’t any more."- Luisa A. Igloria, "By Ear," http://www.vianegativa.us/, Jan. 12, 2014
Twenty-two years have gone since Dad died on Jan. 12. "Expired" was the word the orderly used at the Philippine Heart Center when I reached the Intensive Care Unit to find him gone. He visits me in dreams now and then, but I am aware that it is not him. It's more of what he represented to me. When I look at his picture or just leaf through the diary he had left my eldest child Kimi, the hot tears fill my eyes rapidly. I recover just as fast and remind myself to hold on to the good the way he did with all his imperfections.
It's the same with friends who had leaped out of their bodies too soon, too soon for us who hold them dear. But no use hanging on because it would delay their upward journey.
On Dad's anniversary of rebirth to eternal life, my siblings, nephews, nieces, etc., spent some hours at Loyola Memorial Park Marikina that cool Sunday. I observed, in my own way, Dad's anniversary and Jerry Araos's babang luksa (the latter's departure date was Dec. 23, 2012).
Melen, Jerry's widow, invited me to take a walk on a traffic-free avenue with her grandkids, she holding on to the hand of Amarra, I bringing along my small camera to record some moments.
The rest of the day was unplanned and relaxed, as every Sunday ought to be observed and celebrated. The next day I shared a photo of Jerry and Melen taken at their former home at the UP Diliman campus. She said it was their last picture together.
I thanked her in writing, and she wrote back to say she loved how we closed Ama's (Jerry's) anniversary through a leisurely walk, enjoying his favorite lechon lugaw and pancit molo, and "Ravel'ling," a reference to a YouTube video featuring the great Maya Plisetskaya, then 50 years old, dancing to Ravel's "Bolero." Jerry had his own choreography of "Bolero" that a graceful daughter used to dance for visitors in the 1980s.
Someone once told the bereft not to impede a soul's journey by clinging on to the deceased. But thinking and speaking of them fondly help their pilgrim souls' progress.
Lalu (for Lola) Melen with grandchildren Alejandro and Amarra in the car that brought us to the safe walking and running zone
The family visiting one of the spots developed by Jerry, the passionate gardener
Night comes and Amarra continues to admire her Tita Mira Araos-Mariano's Christmas card while another Lola looks on.
Photos by Melen Araos and Babeth Lolarga
Twenty-two years have gone since Dad died on Jan. 12. "Expired" was the word the orderly used at the Philippine Heart Center when I reached the Intensive Care Unit to find him gone. He visits me in dreams now and then, but I am aware that it is not him. It's more of what he represented to me. When I look at his picture or just leaf through the diary he had left my eldest child Kimi, the hot tears fill my eyes rapidly. I recover just as fast and remind myself to hold on to the good the way he did with all his imperfections.
It's the same with friends who had leaped out of their bodies too soon, too soon for us who hold them dear. But no use hanging on because it would delay their upward journey.
On Dad's anniversary of rebirth to eternal life, my siblings, nephews, nieces, etc., spent some hours at Loyola Memorial Park Marikina that cool Sunday. I observed, in my own way, Dad's anniversary and Jerry Araos's babang luksa (the latter's departure date was Dec. 23, 2012).
Melen, Jerry's widow, invited me to take a walk on a traffic-free avenue with her grandkids, she holding on to the hand of Amarra, I bringing along my small camera to record some moments.
The rest of the day was unplanned and relaxed, as every Sunday ought to be observed and celebrated. The next day I shared a photo of Jerry and Melen taken at their former home at the UP Diliman campus. She said it was their last picture together.
I thanked her in writing, and she wrote back to say she loved how we closed Ama's (Jerry's) anniversary through a leisurely walk, enjoying his favorite lechon lugaw and pancit molo, and "Ravel'ling," a reference to a YouTube video featuring the great Maya Plisetskaya, then 50 years old, dancing to Ravel's "Bolero." Jerry had his own choreography of "Bolero" that a graceful daughter used to dance for visitors in the 1980s.
Someone once told the bereft not to impede a soul's journey by clinging on to the deceased. But thinking and speaking of them fondly help their pilgrim souls' progress.
Photos by Melen Araos and Babeth Lolarga
Friday, November 1, 2013
A Poem A Day Keeps Writer’s Block Away
This profile of Luisa A. Igloria appeared originally in Positively Filipino, an online magazine, Oct. 15, 2013.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Poet Luisa A. Igloria’s twelfth book, The Saints of the Streets (UST Publishing House) is hardly a quarter of a year off the press, and it is already getting noticed by her fellow poets here and abroad.
Writer Brian Ascalon Roley and poet Luisa Igloria
Dave Bonta, editor-publisher of the www.vianegativa.us, wrote, “I am humbled by the role that The Morning Porch and Via Negativa have played in eliciting this extraordinary creative outpouring from one of our (and the Philippines’) most talented and hardest working contemporary poets.”
Igloria, a professor of English and creative writing and director of the MFA Creative Writing Program at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, wrote in Facebook, “Am I ‘living a life devoted to poetry?’ I don't know what’s meant by that. All I know is we do it one day at a time...The heart aches, the belly pines, the mouth wants love, the hands want to rest on the pillow and every hair wishes to be a joy that's counted; the body is brave, the body is anxious, the mind is tired of fighting. The house wants heat, the house wants to fill, certainly with something more than suffering.”
As of latest count, her poem-a-day practice has covered 1,043 days or two years, ten months and eight days. She began this on November 20, 2010. Her poems are archived on Bonta’s website.
She said, “I'm extremely grateful that he shares space there with me. I’ve come to love what has become my daily writing discipline. I didn’t plan to do this. I was merely responding to the frustrations of not being able to find enough time to write in my busy day to day amid the demands of home life, teaching, running an MFA program. I get grumpy when I can’t get to my writing. I had to find a way to once and for all conquer the demons of procrastination.”
Igloria's newest book The Saints of the Streets
The fact that she continues to write poems daily makes her claim, “I no longer believe in writer’s block.” She doesn’t set a particular time of day to write, saying, “When it feels like I can take at least a half an hour to 45 minutes, I drop into that space. These days, we are back to school (the fall semester began in August) so I’m doing a lot of my writing at night. In the summer I could spread out those times more through the day.”
The minimum time she has spent composing a poem is 30 minutes. She says, “If I can go beyond that and have nothing else begging for attention that I must do, then I keep going. If not, I'll take the 30 minutes. I can usually finish a poem within 30 minutes.”
Asked if she needs silence to write, or if she listens to music to prompt her, the author of seven other poetry books (Cartography, Encanto, In the Garden of the Three Islands, Blood Sacrifice, Songs for the Beginning of the Millennium, Trill & Mordent and Juan Luna’s Revolver, the last winner of the 2009 Ernest Sandeen Prize Series in Poetry and published by the University of Notre Dame Press, answered, “I’m tolerant of outside noise. The only caveat is that no one else can bother me while I'm writing. If I’m at home, that means I’m not going to answer the phone, I’m not going to answer a question about the dishes or dinner or tomorrow’s baon (bag lunch).”
She continued, “One of the things I’ve learned to develop from writing every day is to quickly process. I like writing in cafes with a large coffee on hand that I’ll nurse. But I can just as easily write at my desk, at the kitchen counter, in the car waiting for my daughter to come out of school, in the parking lot at my university. I’ve finished poem drafts on my phone and posted them to Via Negativa or my blog (www.luisaigloria.com) from there. I love the new little electronics and how portable they are. If I’m in a café, there’s usually some kind of music playing in the background. I like Argentinean tango.”
A Palanca Hall of Fame awardee for the many times she won first prize in various categories, Igloria admitted that the Internet makes her procrastinate. “I use Twitter, Facebook, my blog. Some of my favorite Internet ‘black holes’ are Amazon, Etsy (I love hand-crafted things). Lately, Zillow and Trulia—I’ve been bitten again by the dreamhouse bug. I also read Huffington Post, NPR.”
The best advice she has received and which she shares is: “Keep the fire burning in your bituka (gut). Listen to your inner voices despite what others are saying to the contrary. Don’t take no for an answer. Above all, love this thing you do.”
LETTER TO NOSTALGIA
City I once wore like a shawl
on my shoulders, the soft brown outlines
of your hills and valleys the first thing I saw
coming in at dawn on the lowland bus—
Where will I see again except in memory
such astonishing green, or the deep sapphire
of a sky outlining trees that push through sheer
outcroppings of rock? And it’s true, nothing
I’ve seen abroad holds a candle to this view:
early morning light glinting off rooftops,
the cry of bean curd vendors in the streets;
my children once, in their own youth, holding out
bowls by the gate for a taste of this sweet.
–Luisa A. Igloria, The Saints of Streets
Elizabeth Lolarga, a freelance writer-editor, teaches creative writing at the Community of Learners in San Juan City. Her essay collection, Catholic and Emancipated, is part of the UST Publishing House’s Personal Chronicles series. She is part of the Baguio Writers Group of which Luisa A. Igloria remains a founding member.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Poet Luisa A. Igloria’s twelfth book, The Saints of the Streets (UST Publishing House) is hardly a quarter of a year off the press, and it is already getting noticed by her fellow poets here and abroad.
Dave Bonta, editor-publisher of the www.vianegativa.us, wrote, “I am humbled by the role that The Morning Porch and Via Negativa have played in eliciting this extraordinary creative outpouring from one of our (and the Philippines’) most talented and hardest working contemporary poets.”
Igloria, a professor of English and creative writing and director of the MFA Creative Writing Program at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, wrote in Facebook, “Am I ‘living a life devoted to poetry?’ I don't know what’s meant by that. All I know is we do it one day at a time...The heart aches, the belly pines, the mouth wants love, the hands want to rest on the pillow and every hair wishes to be a joy that's counted; the body is brave, the body is anxious, the mind is tired of fighting. The house wants heat, the house wants to fill, certainly with something more than suffering.”
As of latest count, her poem-a-day practice has covered 1,043 days or two years, ten months and eight days. She began this on November 20, 2010. Her poems are archived on Bonta’s website.
She said, “I'm extremely grateful that he shares space there with me. I’ve come to love what has become my daily writing discipline. I didn’t plan to do this. I was merely responding to the frustrations of not being able to find enough time to write in my busy day to day amid the demands of home life, teaching, running an MFA program. I get grumpy when I can’t get to my writing. I had to find a way to once and for all conquer the demons of procrastination.”
Igloria's newest book The Saints of the Streets
The fact that she continues to write poems daily makes her claim, “I no longer believe in writer’s block.” She doesn’t set a particular time of day to write, saying, “When it feels like I can take at least a half an hour to 45 minutes, I drop into that space. These days, we are back to school (the fall semester began in August) so I’m doing a lot of my writing at night. In the summer I could spread out those times more through the day.”
The minimum time she has spent composing a poem is 30 minutes. She says, “If I can go beyond that and have nothing else begging for attention that I must do, then I keep going. If not, I'll take the 30 minutes. I can usually finish a poem within 30 minutes.”
Asked if she needs silence to write, or if she listens to music to prompt her, the author of seven other poetry books (Cartography, Encanto, In the Garden of the Three Islands, Blood Sacrifice, Songs for the Beginning of the Millennium, Trill & Mordent and Juan Luna’s Revolver, the last winner of the 2009 Ernest Sandeen Prize Series in Poetry and published by the University of Notre Dame Press, answered, “I’m tolerant of outside noise. The only caveat is that no one else can bother me while I'm writing. If I’m at home, that means I’m not going to answer the phone, I’m not going to answer a question about the dishes or dinner or tomorrow’s baon (bag lunch).”
She continued, “One of the things I’ve learned to develop from writing every day is to quickly process. I like writing in cafes with a large coffee on hand that I’ll nurse. But I can just as easily write at my desk, at the kitchen counter, in the car waiting for my daughter to come out of school, in the parking lot at my university. I’ve finished poem drafts on my phone and posted them to Via Negativa or my blog (www.luisaigloria.com) from there. I love the new little electronics and how portable they are. If I’m in a café, there’s usually some kind of music playing in the background. I like Argentinean tango.”
A Palanca Hall of Fame awardee for the many times she won first prize in various categories, Igloria admitted that the Internet makes her procrastinate. “I use Twitter, Facebook, my blog. Some of my favorite Internet ‘black holes’ are Amazon, Etsy (I love hand-crafted things). Lately, Zillow and Trulia—I’ve been bitten again by the dreamhouse bug. I also read Huffington Post, NPR.”
The best advice she has received and which she shares is: “Keep the fire burning in your bituka (gut). Listen to your inner voices despite what others are saying to the contrary. Don’t take no for an answer. Above all, love this thing you do.”
LETTER TO NOSTALGIA
City I once wore like a shawl
on my shoulders, the soft brown outlines
of your hills and valleys the first thing I saw
coming in at dawn on the lowland bus—
Where will I see again except in memory
such astonishing green, or the deep sapphire
of a sky outlining trees that push through sheer
outcroppings of rock? And it’s true, nothing
I’ve seen abroad holds a candle to this view:
early morning light glinting off rooftops,
the cry of bean curd vendors in the streets;
my children once, in their own youth, holding out
bowls by the gate for a taste of this sweet.
–Luisa A. Igloria, The Saints of Streets
Elizabeth Lolarga, a freelance writer-editor, teaches creative writing at the Community of Learners in San Juan City. Her essay collection, Catholic and Emancipated, is part of the UST Publishing House’s Personal Chronicles series. She is part of the Baguio Writers Group of which Luisa A. Igloria remains a founding member.
Sunday, May 13, 2012
Curated prompt: Luisa A. Igloria
http://www.lanternreview.com/blog/2012/05/11/curated-prompt-luisa-a-igloria-poetry-as-speculum/
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