Walk proud, Ida gurl

The little girl I used to carry at a Halloween party at a friend's home in UP Village in 1990 before our family moved up to Baguio

"Definition of good, emotionally-adept parenting: that the child grows up with no wish whatever to become a writer."

"Most of our childhood is stored not in photos, but in certain biscuits, lights of day, smells, textures of carpet."

Two quotes, all attributed to Alain de Botton, make me think of my two daughters who're beyond physical reach, except through their FB, Twitter or Instagram updates. The sisters are bonding in parts elsewhere while their mother reflects on times gone by and how swift the hands of time are moving to close that circle chuva la di la.

Maria Popova, another great curator of ideas like de Botton, shared through her blog, brainpickings.org, a letter that the poet Maya Angelou wrote to her younger self. Re-reading it for the fifth time today, I am struck at how her words have a force of truth that only mothers of daughters can relate to. I quote the letter in full by way of wishing  my younger of two girls all the best on her special day today:

You’re itching to be on your own. You don’t want anybody telling you what time you have to be in at night or how to raise your baby. You’re going to leave your mother’s big comfortable house and she won’t stop you, because she knows you too well.

But listen to what she says:

When you walk out of my door, don’t let anybody raise you — you’ve been raised.

You know right from wrong.

In every relationship you make, you’ll have to show readiness to adjust and make adaptations.

Remember, you can always come home.

You will go home again when the world knocks you down — or when you fall down in full view of the world. But only for two or three weeks at a time. Your mother will pamper you and feed you your favorite meal of red beans and rice. You’ll make a practice of going home so she can liberate you again — one of the greatest gifts, along with nurturing your courage, that she will give you.

Be courageous, but not foolhardy.

Walk proud as you are, 
Maya

And the girl whose fallback meal was Oreos dunked in a glass of milk when my home-cooked ones were wanting can now adjust to assorted situations in her new life. Ride 'em, cowgirl! 

Let us continue to praise the halo-halo

The mood darkened a little this morning upon my learning that the great phenomenal woman and poet that was Maya Angelou had departed yesterday--"flung up to heaven," as President Obama wrote in a statement on her passing.

Later, I perked up at the prospect of a reunion lunch (actually an excuse to enjoy halo-halo) with Chit Roces Santos, her Vergel, her tall-for-her-age grand-daughter Mona, who's missing a couple of front teeth, and the master of guffaws (he should patent them), Pablo Tariman.

Summer spells Milky Way halo-halo. My glass before it was emptied in, oh, 10 minutes.

Pablo and I like to listen to VOS expound on what's happening in the political arena, the lapses of media in reporting on what's truly going on (Pablo observes that there hasn't been a Woodward-Bernstein type of investigative reporting as far as the Napoles and other issues are concerned).

After we tucked in a healthy fish and veggie lunch, we proceeded to attack our glasses of summer's ice-cold jewels, the halo-halo. Chit though tried to fool herself into believing that going rice-less and ordering mais con hielo meant lower calories. Mona had a strawberry shake and wore a white moustache briefly that I wasn't able to capture on my camera.

Chit and I agree with our idol, Gilda Cordero Fernando, who wrote recently in her Sunday Inquirer column: "The queen of the coolers is, of course, the halo-halo. Whoever said it originated from the Japanese mongo con hielo must be deluded. Only a Filipino could have dreamed up a jeepney or a halo-halo."

Our smiles (especially Mona's and mine) read: "Orange you glad you traveled more than a mile for your halo-halo?" Not in orange are Vergel, Chit and Pablo.

Look for the sign.

Creative juices and how to make them flow

For writers, whether they are in journalism or in the literary arts, one source of creativity is the company of other writers.

Tim Tomlinson, co-founder of the New York Writers Workshop, shared this observation at "Read Lit District," the Third Philippine International Literary Festival, at the Ayala Museum in Makati City.
Speaking at the panel discussion on "Juices: Get Creativity Flowing," he said being with writers always "makes me want to write." He quoted Dr. Gemino Abad, poet- professor emeritus at the University of the Philippines Diliman, who earlier said, "The knowing is in the writing."

Tim Tomlinson

He shared how he got into the social media network Facebook to connect with his yoga group, but later found that it could also link him up "to people I haven't thought of in years." So for his workshops, using FB as some kind of model, he would ask participants to hurriedly write down 25 random things about themselves.

Tomlinson, a fictionist and editor of the webzine Ducts, said this exercise opened up the experimental end of literature, "the anti-narrative, the anti-story." Even with an exercise like that, he advised those who do it not to throw anything away. "Never give up. Mining the self--it's a great source of material. We're constantly drawing from our childhood. One way is to draw a map of the street where you grew up on."

He told beginning and mid-career writers that it's important "to guard your time for creativity." He said this time should be "inviolable," citing novelist and Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winner Toni Morrison who once said she got more things written when she began turning down dinner invitations.

Ken Spillman, author of several acclaimed novels for young readers, said he enjoyed following poets on another social network, Twitter, because "it helps me to be in a creative space." He also tried to practice mindfulness, "to be totally present in my work. Several things may be going on at the same time, but (a writer) should shut out everything. Trust yourself. My creative view is you do have the chance to become who you are."

Ken Spillman

He said, "The hardest part of writing is the sitting. Ideas are easy to come by, but books are not. You have to sit a long time before you have a book."

The oft-cited writer's block, he said, meant "having too much to say, too many ideas that it is hard to move forward." He recommended that when faced with a block, a writer does a seemingly random exercise like what Tomlinson earlier cited, then "get an entry point into a story. The human brain is in wild spaces. It gets easily distracted. You must learn to be wired, to be more aware of your surroundings." From that can emerge what he called "the wonder of you."

Spillman said the signs of creativity are when a person is able to bring a new process into something or associate one thing. He added, "Memory takes you to places that were significant to you in past times. It brings you back to yourself. There are  countless numbers of pathways that take us to the unexpected, the unwanted, even the unpleasant places. Making links is an essential part to being human. It takes a lot of practice to still the mind, to be ourselves, to be original."

He cited composer-musician Amadeus Mozart who wrote his father while he was a young man touring Europe that he was not really an original, that his ideas for his music came from everywhere and he hoped that he was creating something that sounded "Mozart-like."

Spillman also said, "If we know ideas have value, it is okay to express ourselves. But the hardest part is to sit, to hold on to the child or artist in each of us. Writing is like being a child again. You must use the gifts you have that you yourself alone have."

He quoted the great poet Maya Angelou who said one cannot use up creativity because the more you use it, the more one becomes creative.

In his introduction to the popular The Portable MFA in Creative Writing (Writer's Digest Books), Tomlinson quoted American literary agent Noah Lukeman about his opinion on the pursuit of a masters of fine arts degree in creative writing.

Lukeman said, "Take the $35,000-50,000 you're going to spend on the degree, buy yourself a good laptop and printer and a bundle of paper, and go off to a cabin and write. At the end of two years, the worst that can happen is you have nothing. Less than nothing is what you'll almost certainly have at the end of your MFA program, because, besides nothing, you'll have a mountain of debts."--Text and photos by Elizabeth Lolarga

First published by Vera Files / Yahoo Philippines, Nov. 22, 2012