Throwback Thursday: Darling Mrs. E (and her SV)

Iconic: Nieves Benito Epistola and SV Espitola, professors who professed at the University of the Philippines and in the university of good living Photo from the UP Alumni Relations Archives

The following were remarks that I had read at the eulogy for Mrs. E in September 2002 at the Delaney Hall of the UP Chapel of the Holy Sacrifice.

It is Mrs. E's birthday today.

~~~~~~

My Mrs. E

"Your UP education won't be complete unless you sign up in one of of Mrs. Epistola's classes." This was the advice my older first cousin, Henry Romero, gave when I was a college freshman. He had been Mrs. E's student in a GE subject.

There was a special light in his eyes when he talked about her. My curiosity grew when he told me that she loved the poems of e.e. cummings.

I heeded his suggestion and took Stylistics in 1975 as an elective under her. She was 49 years old then. I am 47 now. But at that time hers was a waistline to die for!

She dressed in what's called today as "smart casual," and when the occasion called for it, she could also be elegant in an Oleg Cassini frock. She cut a statuesque figure in front of the class. She walked briskly on and off campus, arms swinging freely. And she spoke in a distinctively resonant alto.

I could write a poem about her dimples along, how they danced and deepened when she was pleased with something, someone or some cat that brushed past her long, marble-white legs.

The following semester I just couldn't have enough of her so I audited her next Stylistics class. That was around the time she became more than a teacher. I found a patient friend with a gift of listening to my incoherent babblings.

Way before I had a boyfriend, before anyone was crazy enough to propose marriage to me, I had already asked her to be my ninang sa kasal. She said yes, even if she knew there was no guy in my life. In that sense, we were both optimists.

I once told Amadis Ma. Guerrero, my colleague and comrade in arts and letters, that Nieves and SV Epistola were the only couple who I considered an argument for the institution of marriage.

Amadis agreed, adding that Mrs. E was the perfect foil for SV, the great alaskador. SV would mask his affection for friends with a string of barbs and put-downs. With Mrs. E, there was no such mask.

Amadis, who she called Le Cheri Guerrier, and I benefited from her overflowing warmth and generosity. She wrote the introductions to our respective books. Speaking for myself, I honestly believe that her introduction outshone my 38 poems!

Mrs. E loved people. This love was returned in full measure, especially by her students, former students and the members of that lucky circle, her proteges.

Of her proteges, including those who aren't here like Lily Chua O'Connor and Gigi Dueñas de Beaupre, Mrs. E said last year, with Frankie and Tessie Jose as witnesses in her room at the Philippine General Hospital: "I made free spirits out of them!"

Unmindful of the intravenous drip attached to her, she declared this with her head proudly tilted back, her chin up.

Yes, she was generous with her time and material resources. She never gave things away piecemeal. I remember she gave me not just a bundle of cherries but a big big bag of moist, succulent cherries.

Last Christmas, she gave me not just a pair of earring but 10 pairs of dangling earrings. I would like to assure her surviving sisters, nieces and grand-nieces that those earrings are fancy and won't get anything at the nearest pawnshop.

More than the earrings, I treasure the note that came with it. She wrote: "Here's a Christmas pamana for you, Babeth. You can't imagine ever how much you've made me feel so blessed and full of grace."

Well, Mrs. E, the feeling is mutual.

She always signed these little notes with a smiley face after her initials. Those notes were poems in themselves. Language, after all, was her favorite tool and toy.

I still keep in an old diary another note from her that she wrote when my hair was longer, and I just had it curled. Her message ran: "Now that your hair is a folded flower, the quiet of peace is in your feet."

She did everything well. She cooked well, taught extremely well, praised well, even criticized well. She dissected one of my early short stories, found it wanting and told me point by point how I could revise it. (Note: The short story was published 10 years after she had written her marginal notes and I had found the time to revise it. It was published in two installments in the Weekly Mirror Magazine when Emmie Velarde was its editor and Nick Joaquin, its literary editor.)

Ang sarap-sarap talaga magmahal ni Mrs. E!

And I truly feel the loss of SV, Odette, Arline, the rest of the sisters, Citas Diaz and other in-laws, nieces and nephews on both the Benito and Epistola sides. Your loss equals ours, if that is consolation enough.

To quote from Shakespeare, "Whence comes another?"

Not in this lifetime!

Joy T. Dayrit, whole and entire

"Gifted" is an understatement in describing the scope of Joy T. Dayrit's works. She was a writer of short stories and poetry, a painter, a children's art teacher and friend to many writers and artists. She was an admirable woman for whom a disability was no cause for diminishing her zest for life.

The Ateneo Library of Women's Writings (ALIWW) and the Ateneo de Manila University Press launched Light, her selected stories, in a slim, elegantly designed book in a color brighter than celadon green. 

Portrait of Joy Dayrit by Elaine Nuvas

 Edna Zapanta Manlapaz, book editor and ALIWW founder, remembered Josephine Teodoro Dayrit, who used the professional name "Joy T. Dayrit," as a meticulous writer who would submit to the latter's class several drafts of the same work in graduate school. Manlapaz would be stumped to look for what was outstandingly new about it. She'd read the latest draft line by line until she discovered that an adjective was deleted, and that discovery would make Dayrit smile.

The writer-painter's chair and cane served as subject for a series of paintings.

This meticulousness informed even her art. A fine example is the series "My Chair/30 Times" wherein she painted 30 versions of her chair and cane as subject. Somehow, it reminded one of Wallace Stevens's famous poem "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird."

 As Manlapaz said, it was quintessentially Dayrit to do repetitions with variations (the hallmark of a distinct style), perhaps with an eye to perfection. It also proves that anything can feed the imagination of a disciplined writer and painter which Dayrit was.

Quite telling in her story "A Quiet Infidelity" is how a persevering priest and a successful accountant, once childhood sweethearts, tame their ardor with just a chaste kiss exchanged between them.

In "Roda," the title character chides friend Greg for working hard to make a name for himself in a business office, for always being hurried and not setting aside time to relax and to enjoy his friends' company. This story serves as postlude to an earlier one where Roda's life is cut short by a sudden illness and Greg appears as one of the mourners.

There are no highly dramatic, emotionally draining and tear-jerking scenes. Dayrit's prose is clean and spare that one is almost tempted to call it "Hemingwayesque". But that would make her turn in her grave for in one of her journals, she bristled at a comment made by National Artist Nick Joaquin who during a meeting with women writers, said aloud how they could write if they were pregnant or busy raising small children.

This is where ALIWW's mission comes in: restoring Dayrit to her place in the literary canon. After all, she won literary prizes from the Palanca Memorial Awards and Focus Philippines literary content apart from her stories passing the astute editorial eye of Joaquin himself and getting published in the pre-martial law Philippines Free Press.

Her reflection on a new typewriter ribbon

At the ALIWW exhibit that pays tribute to the writer-painter, the space is made out like Dayrit's private office and library. On the walls are paintings large and small, especially selected by her dear friend Roberto Chabet, the esteemed father of Philippine contemporary art. The look of her desk is recreated with a word bank (a wooden box) near her electric typewriter which, one assumes, she utilized to get what's known as "writing prompts" to get her started.

Good friends: Roberto Chabet clowns around while Dayrit smiles, unaware.

 Her eyeglasses are there, as though she had just taken them off to stand up, stretch, step out to take a snack or go to the toilet, leaving a sheet of newsprint paper fed in the typewriter with a playful reflection on what it's like to have a dual-colored typewriter ribbon. It reads: "My new typewriter ribbon is black and red. I had wanted only black, but that was out of stock. So black and red it is. If you go with the flow, it could be fun."

Mobiles for children's enjoyment

 This fun-loving side of her is reflected in the colorful mobiles hanging from the inside of an open antique closet. These heart-shaped mobiles painted back to back were meant for her grand-nephews and grand-nieces to play with.

Underneath the glass-topped tables are photos of Dayrit from childhood to adulthood. In almost all of them is her bright, brave smile, even as she was being fitted with leg braces. Manlapaz quoted the late Kerima Polotan who once told sculptor Julie Lluch, "When Joy enters a room, she lights it up."

Some of her box paintings and her favorite books, including The Little Prince

 In her journals, Dayrit wondered what her true calling was: writer or painter? One day, she quit agonizing when she realized that she was happy being both, that she did not need to fragment herself, that words and images were what defined her.

The ALIWW exhibit, which runs till Aug. 31, has been visited by droves of freshmen since the schoolyear started. It bodes well. Dayrit's writings and art are alive.--Text and photos by Elizabeth Lolarga

First published by Vera Files/Yahoo Philippines, July 13, 2012

Fresh spring in Dario Noche’s step

After decades of doing editorial illustrations and cartoons. Dario Noche is setting his sights higher as a visual artist.

In his recently concluded show at the Conspiracy Bar on Visayas Ave., Quezon City, he reminded viewers of the body of works he has come up with in his long years in journalism. He had roughly 40 black and white illustrations and 15 in color in the exhibit, including original artwork from his Asiaweek stint.

Dario Noche

 In his heyday, he designed or redesigned publications some of which are in the annals of journalism history: Initiatives in Population, Manila Women’s Wear, Moptop, the weekly magazine Oh!, What’s Up cultural magazine, Standard Express, Jingle magazine when it morphed into Twinkle and The Manila Standard Today.

His interest in the visual arts was stirred as a boy in the province walking home from school and stopping at a place for more than an hour to look at a man working on the billboards of a movie house.

Noche recalls, “In the olden days, movie promotion was done this way. I was greatly impressed. They were to me huge murals. I was hooked. From then on, every blank paper in the house became my canvas. There was no artist gene in the family; I was the first aberration.”

He started as an architecture student at Mapua Institute of Technology but realized he couldn’t bear the math and shifted to fine arts at Feati University where his professors were mostly from the old Manila Chronicle.
Liborio “Gat” Gatbonton liked Noche’s work and recommended him as illustrator at Philippines Free Press. Although still unfinished with college credits, he was accepted.

He rues, “It was THE magazine at that time. It may have been sudden for me, but I managed. I was in the midst of the cream of Philippine journalism: Teodoro Locsin Sr., Nick Joaquin, Greg Brillantes, Kerima Polotan, Napoleon Rama, Jose Lacaba, Lorna Kalaw, Ricky Lee, J. Ser Sahagun, Danny Dalena, Alex Ngo. Most of them were very considerate. I fitted in snugly.”

He continues, “It was a time of turmoil then, internationally and right in our place of work. An unsettled labor dispute gave birth to Nick Joaquin’s Asia-Philippines Leader magazine that readily trounced Free Press.  It was from this group of professionals that I inherited the bane that few managed to ingest: coffee, cigarette, and beer. With Nick around, beer was never lacking.”

Asiaweek cover illustration by Noche

 His years in journalism have been instructive. He says, “I hated the drudgery, the nine to five inhibition of the work, the flying egos. But in no other place else was my intellectual hunger sated. I learned grammar while poring over heavily edited manuscripts that were handed to me for layout. Listening to editors’ informal discussions, you had not only a glimpse of them but also learned vast literary knowledge and secrets. All these rubbed off on me, and I’m forever grateful.”

He put aside a cherished dream to be a full-time painter. Now retired from journalism, he says, “I am psyching myself up to become a painter. Earning a living is still a paramount concern. Painting was always on the back burner. My stay in the paper made me realize I was in the wrong profession, but I must admit it wasn’t a complete waste of time.”

Today he joins sketching sessions to hone his grasp of the human anatomy. His intention is to specialize in historical painting or illustration.

He explains why he is concentrating on historical paintings as his niche, “I am a First Quarter Storm participant. This awakening profoundly affected my thinking.  Former Third World countries, now recently developed nations, achieved their economic status because they have a deep sense of nationhood, culture, traditions and values. These nurtured and propelled them to impossible achievements.”

Noche bewails that “our youth today don’t have that. They grew up with wrong goals and values. Our educational and cultural system is wanting or doesn’t have a clear goal. I gave up on the older generation to ever deliver us. Maybe I figured re-educating the youth or the few remaining open-minded elders through historical paintings or illustrations can help inculcate and waken the right values hidden in our past.”

Noche's illustration of Aung San Suu Kyi meeting Hillary Clinton originally published in Asiaweek

 His illustration skills were also honed during his Asiaweek and Straits Times years in the 1990s. After joining many group shows in photography, illustration, graphic design and painting, he will explore sculpture through bas reliefs of historical events.

To do all that, Noche at 62 practices what he calls “moderation, restraint, physical and mental activity. Occasionally, I do weights to stay trim. I walk the short distance going home or to the market.”

He quips, “I’ve seen too many decrepit old men and some few hardy old men. I know what I will be when my time comes.”--Elizabeth Lolarga

First published by Vera Files/ Yahoo Philippines, May 16, 2012

Bato-bato sa Langit

Poet Edel Garcellano never fails to astonish me. His words, arranged into tight, compact verses, unfailingly find their target, traveling fast like an assassin's bullet. We, the lesser gifted, just blog.

His latest posting shows how some people are blinded by titles like National Artist/National Intellectual. They forget that artists (I use the generic term to include visual, literary and performing artists) have a history of being the conscience of society. And now this NA the poet is referring to has a security guard to protect a little perk like parking space?

There is one NA I shan't forget. How many times have I come across Nick Joaquin walking like any pedestrian on the shaded path of the original EDSA Central? Leo Benesa also wrote a short poem about seeing Joaquin alighting from or getting on board a public jeepney at Gabby's in Mandaluyong City. Wish Nick would haunt this other car-riding NA.

20.
Parking
The guard
was courteous but firm:
please park elsewhere–
slot is for a National Artist
whose credentials include
keynoting progressive causes,
serving the people.
The state generously allows
balding dignitaries
who have been honored
as creative treasure
space for their
genteel habitude.
But what gross entitlement
is this
for dissenters
against neo-fascist rule?
The ploy is real,
disarming radical discourse.
For blind he is
to the irony
consequent of his NCCA
consecration…
Down with injustice!
& earn a seat
on the platform
rising over a crowd
in hysterics
over radical agendum?
In Russia,
commissars
have their dacha
& state sinecure.
Do we repeat
the reign
of Stalinist repertoire?
--Edel Garcellano, www.theworksofedelgarcellano.wordpress.com