Gracious goodbye, November

November, the month that goes by so fast, ends at midnight. What follows is holiday frenzy. The invitation to cinnamon tea and squash pie couldn't be ignored. It was our chance to pause and be grateful for everyday blessings like a spate of good weather and recovered health. Toottee Chanco Pacis set up this vignette of a turkey figurine flanked by two balls of squash harvested from her vegetable patch as if to say that the Americans don't have a monopoly on Thanksgiving. Thank you for that shared afternoon. Photo by Babeth Lolarga

Arlene Esperida and her ATC movement

Arlene Esperida is a Japan-based artist who I met at the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA) conference in Manila in '03, if my memory is having a good day. Somewhere in our house in Baguio is a painting of hers, mainly in orange, with biomorphic forms.

Since then, we rediscovered one another when I still had a Facebook account. Then we embarked on this small project of helping democratize art through artist trading cards or ATCs. I started one with the Baguio Aquarelle Society in '09 or thereabouts (excuse the occasional lapse in factual or episodic memory; rest assured the associative or long memory is intact). For a time I was using these cards as my business cards, although more pragmatic friends would say, how come I have to make these one-of-a-kind cards, usually practice paintings in small sizes before I enlarge them, into business cards? In short, impractical, probably they're gauging the effort in terms of use of paint, images, etc.

Well, visual artists and writers make heroic choices every day, that's all I can say. Meanwhile, Arlene and I have corresponded by postal mail; so have Gladys Lyn "Nini" Teves Lapuz and I in the same fashion off and on for many years now.

Meanwhile, I've rid myself of the collecting bug but not yet in terms of ATCs. They're defined by this site http://www.wikihow.com/Make-Artist-Trading-Cards as having begun "in the tradition of business cards, but with a personal, artistic twist. Most ATCs are created on paper, but they may also be any other medium that can be worked in a suitable size. ATCs are traditionally the size of baseball cards and other trading cards. They're a fun way to exchange your own one-of-a-kind artistic flair with other artists you meet. You can also use them as business cards."

I am sharing part of my loot (a couple that my former classmate Potchie Lazaro swapped with my works ended up with Jessica Zafra--I knew she'd like his kapre and tikbalang). I encourage art students, or anyone interested in reviving "snail mail", to put more fun into something handmade. We all spend much too much time in front of our laptops and Netbooks (unwittingly, we expose ourselves to these machines' radiation, too). So here's to ATCs and how they've revived art in small sizes, penmanship, trips to the post office, among other heroic everyday choices.

The actual sizes of these ATCs are sometimes even smaller than the images below. Thank you, Arlene, Jenny Cariño, Norman Chow, Toottee Chanco-Pacis, Nini Lapuz, Sinag de Leon and other fellow swappers and pen pals.

 

Glory Be, Gilda's at It Again

Her late-night text on a Tuesday didn't arrive. I have a habit of turning off my cell phone just before I sleep; it's something that annoys my eldest child who says, "What if there's an emergency?" Well, it's precisely for that reason I turn the thing off--it's usually bad news that comes in at a late hour. And if it's bad news, it can wait till morning.

It wasn't bad news that Gilda Cordero Fernando had sent me. It was just a request to come in at an earlier time. And being me, when I'm with my shadow, I usually am on time or ahead of the appointed time. So that Wednesday, I arrived at her gate promptly at 11 ("Huwag 10, baka may muta pa ako," she told me on the phone) loaded down with Benguet coffee, an art book, a cat book and a bag of Globake hopia which she loves despite her diabetes.

She was busy in her bed-cum-work room listing down the big paintings/collages she had finished in the past year. Gilda has always handwritten her stuff, even drafts of her essays, fiction, even lesser-known scripts. She has an email address, but someone else, usually a computer-literate help, opens it for her after you text her that you've sent some documents or photos she may like to look at. She can't for the life of her find QWERTY on a Remington or an old-fashioned personal computer. It has always been pen on yellow-ruled pad for her. When she cuts and pastes, she really does that: she cuts with a pair of scissors and pastes the paragraphs that have to be moved up or down with scotch tape.

That morning was no different. She sounded sungit when she turned to me, saying she would get lost in her listahan if she had me to entertain. I said, "No problem. I'll go to the kitchen and look for something to drink." (I hope my mother, who has a Facebook account, isn't reading this note. I wouldn't want her to think that she raised me to feel so at home in other people's houses that the first place I head for is the kitchen or the fridge.) Anyway, I was so confident that there would be a can of Coke 0 ready there so I had one to go with a packet of Skyflakes crackers. Being diabetic, too, I take five or six meals a day, spread out within a 17-hour period.

So when Gilda saw me fully concentrated on munching away at her desk, she told me, "Yah, I know the feeling." She was referring to hypoglycemia when we feel parched and ravenous as our blood sugar drops. "Don't eat too fast," she added, "we have nice hot choco and nice lunch." She returned to her chore.

I talked to her back. "Having a show?"

"Yah."

"Where?"

"Oh, the usual--SLAB." That's Silverlens 's sister gallery on Pasong Tamo, Makati.

Her framer was coming over at 2 p.m. to pick up the works, and she was listing their titles down, plus their sizes, I suppose, for the pre-exhibit preparations.

One of the help, whom I address Ning as I am unsure of her name, comes in to bring me hot chocolate with a separate platito of fresh green pinipig. Gilda knows what I like to drink in her house--homemade hot choco. And what I like to do there is just hang out in her room, taking in the myriad of objects that defines the dweller. Even when she pauses to take a leak or powder her face, going to her very own tatak Gilda bathroom, her presence lingers.

These past couple of days, we've been exchanging text messages about gouache, watercolor, best source of art supplies, the book I lent her, the difference between transparency and opacity.

You'd think you're talking to a classmate or a peer. But it's Gilda who never fails to put an element of mischief in a prosaic thing as an SMS.

I complained about my in-house critic, Rolly Fernandez, who pointed out after seeing the first coat of paint I put on my latest works. "Masyadong manipis ang pahid mo," he said. Annoyed, I decided to haul my unfinished works to my friend Toottee Chanco Pacis's greenhouse in Baguio so I could paint undistracted.

Gilda said hers was no different. Atty. Marcelo is still suggesting that she paint a bahay kubo for her subject.

Now, I don't know if I am better off with my critic.

Photos of Gilda's boudoir by Babeth

Food from 4 Foodies

Whenever we get together, we being art teacher Norman Chow, watercolorist-writer Baboo Mondoñedo, baker-theology instructor Toottee Chanco Pacis and me, talk is spiced by food on the table or food imagined. So it comes as no surprise that for our group show, "Produce from the Greenhouse," we are united by the subject of sustenance. We officially open our exhibition of acrylics, watercolors and pastels on Nov. 20, Saturday, at 4 p.m. at Cafe by the Ruins, homing zone of foodies from all over the archipelago. We can't assure that a lechon will be the buffet table's centerpiece, but a jolly good time will most certainly be had by all. 

Poster design by Jennifer Cariño

Dear Sweet Filthy World

The title of this blog entry is appropriated from a coming artist’s talk of Patricia Eustaquio, an artist I admire from a distance, at the Silverlens Gallery on Pasong Tamo extension, Makati City. The title of her show comes from an Elvis Costello song.


The “A” word (appropriation) is big these days in the art scene. Discussions have filled the cyber highway on just where does copying begin and plagiarism end.


Call this a stream of consciousness sort of exercise, but at 5 a.m. that can only be one’s state of mind.


March is usually called Women’s Month (which again brings to mind a spoof magazine Amadis Ma. Guerrero, old comrade in arts and letters, once got hold of in the pre-martial law ’70s: Imelda’s Monthly). I didn’t realize this month was about to end until I turned on my cell phone upon waking up at my usual time of 5a.m.


Jeez, talk about how time goes by. My observant daughter, a follower of this blog, once asked, “Have you given up your journal for your blog?”


“No,” came my quick answer. I explained how I’ve managed so far to keep both an online journal and a diary where I handwrite all sorts of stuff. The latter is unfiltered, unexpurgated; the blog, well, it’s where I put what is still permissible but otherwise unpublishable (mainly because entries like this one are too personal) in conventional media.


Last week went by so fast that, as I texted another old gal pal asking if I was ready to meet about another book project, rest these days takes the form of trips to the bathroom. I summed up to her my mental checklist of unfinished interview transcriptions, writing and editing assignments apart from two large-scale paintings I was working on when her message came in.


“Yep,” she texted back, “just like you to take on a work load fit for a pack of wild horses. But enjoy!”


The adrenaline rush has kept me going these two weeks that when my phone’s alarm clock went off at 5 a.m. on March 24, Wednesday, my automatic move was to turn over to my left side, forgetting that I was lying on the hardwood bench on someone else’s sala in Munoz, Nueva Ecija. Three hours before I had just emailed my copy of a report on Cecile Licad’s outreach concert there. I fell hard on the marble floor, natch, a rude awakening, literally.


I managed to catch the van in San Jose bound for Baguio. I thought I’d make good time if it left on the dot at six. What I didn’t know was vans like this one that double as public utility vehicles don’t push off until it’s filled to capacity. The long Calvary had begun as I waited. The driver told me to stay put and be patient; the bus to Baguio was not air-conditioned and the trip longer (about five to six hours) with lots of stops. Once on its way, the van could be in Baguio in, oh, an hour and a half, he said.


Well, the van did make it to Baguio in that span of time, but it left Nueva Ecija at half past 10 a.m. by which time I was sticky, filthy and weepy from half-despair, half-exhaustion.


Meanwhile, I kept in touch with my one kith-kin in Baguio (long-suffering partner of almost 26 years) and Baboo Mondonedo and Toottee Chanco Pacis, the women who pinch-hit for me in helping organize a merienda meeting with Sen. Pia Cayetano. The compañera senadora was city-hopping in Northern Luzon to promote breast and cervical cancer awareness and the women’s agenda that has marked her career in the legislature. Trust women to be efficiency experts and not to be shy about introducing themselves to the senator and taking over.


My old partner, no matter how grouchy he can be, is right on this score: no one is indispensable. I was resigned to just catching the tail-end of a women’s meeting.


By the time the van was about to turn right on Gov. Pack road, I screeched, “Para!” Got down with my luggage, hopped into a cab, got to a dark house (city-wide brownout, wow, perfect timing). But this was one occasion when a curse became a blessing. Brownout meant cold shower. That was what I had. And it couldn’t have been more welcome when one was feeling filthy physically and weepy psychologically, the last from self-imposed pressure.


The women gathered at Café by the Ruins were frank and to the point with their questions just as the senator was with her answers. She hit it off with them so well that she vowed that after the whole hullabaloo on May 10 is over, she’d return for a longer visit.


Carol Brady said after the merienda ended, “This is so refreshing. I’m glad I came. This meeting gives me hope that not all politics is dirty. Please tell Pia I hope and I pray that she continues to hold her own in the Senate.”


Afterwards, the rest of the week went by in a whirl of laughter, tears, colors, paint brushes, meals downed in a hurry, errands and duties in different parts of town from the taking down of paintings at the Baguio-Mt. Provinces Museum at the close of our latest Baguio Aquarelle Society exhibition to interviewing sources for another assignment on sustainable development. At each step, little acts of kindness meant the week could be made tolerable until duties were done away with.


After a dinner of reheated leftovers following an afternoon of painting in the company of my teacher Norman Chow and his son Chino, I did the last of my evening rituals: check my email for any urgent messages that need to be answered.


Lo and behold! Odette from the Population Center Foundation years was there, responding to my invite to a solo show next week.


She wrote, “Thank you for the invite. I hope to see you there! I remember you were just starting your art lessons when we went to Malabang, Lanao Del Sur in . . . does it surprise you that I can't remember when? I distinctly recall you picked a taro leaf from the path and drew it. Did you keep that one? I want that one.

“The lesson you taught me has stayed with me since: Pare everything down to the barest essentials.”

Thanks, too, Odette, I need to relearn that lesson again.


Photo of Patricia Eustaquio's installation by ARJAY BLANCO. Eustaquio's talk is set for April 17 at 3 p.m. at Silverlens Gallery, 2320 Pasong Tamo extension, Makati City.

Ahoy There, Women!

Saturday began at 3 a.m. when a cab picked me up, and we motored down to pick up friend Toottee Chanco Pacis’s assistant Carol (Toottee was scheduled to meet with a quilting instructor later in the morning and could not join us). It was smooth driving down EDSA all the way to the vast SM Mall of Asia by Manila Bay.

Jun Calamba, the experienced driver, found the Esplanade Sunset Strip despite the dark hour and the street lights that were not enough to illuminate the directional signs. We were guided by the line of cars and vans, women and men unloading tables and assorted events paraphernalia. This was it—the site of the Pinay in Action 2010 fun run that was to be led by runner 0001, Sen. Pia Cayetano.

Her staff were there. Like us, they were bright-eyed, bushy-tailed and excited. They set up our table under a white tent right beside the Giant Carousel. A cloth was whipped out to cover the table. It was too early to bring out the goods of the Benguet ladies who crocheted assorted items from creamer covers to giant gym bags.

So Carol and I watched, fascinated, as the runners, mostly women, arrived in droves and limbered up. When the sky lightened, Carol brought out sample goods, and we displayed them with at least one of each item from the luggage.

The day was a first for me in many ways. I’ve always patronized bazaars, but this was my first time to be a volunteer seller. No pay, no personal gain. Just a believer that women should have their own money as it empowers them to help their own families and make choices in their lives.

Toottee and I had come down from Baguio at our own expense, lugging down the goods at the back of her car last Wednesday. The night before, we had staged a pictorial at her house with good results. INQUIRER’s Tina Arce Dumlao of the Business section understood the Benguet women’s cause and hurried me up with my deadline. On Thursday, I composed my article in a friend’s café with Wifi after early coffee with Toottee. By noon, my piece was done, and I emailed it quickly to my editor. By afternoon, I used my leftover notes for a blog entry.

So Saturday, there we were—Carol and me, the novice tinderas. Sen. Cayetano stood out in the crowd although they wore uniform hot pink t-shirts. Comfortable with the description “feminist,” she told the runners to run for their health, for the cause of the indigent patients of cervical and breast cancer (thus, the color pink), for women’s rights, etc. And she spoke into the mic in a calm, measured way without resorting to motherhood statements.

That women’s rights, especially reproductive health, remain high on this young legislator’s agenda is proof that Pinays of my and Toottee’s generation cannot still say with the sweep of conviction to Carol and our daughters that we have indeed “come a long way, babies.”

Carol and I couldn’t be passive sellers. So after we decided she’d be bantay and treasurer, I called out to anyone who passed by our booth, “Towels from Benguet, come see the towels from Benguet.” At one point I placed hand and bigger towels along the length of my two arms and went from booth to booth, asking the other sellers and exhibitors to visit the Benguet women’s livelihood project booth and showing them our wares. Girl pal Ana Calimbas Santos also hopped from booth to booth, handing out flyers for her cause, the women's reproductive health website called SexandSensibility.com.

I think my kumare Gigi Duenas de Beaupre, self-confessed tiangge queen of the French West Indies, would’ve been proud of us. At the close of the run, when the sweaty participants crossed the finish line and lined up for the freebies from Nesvita, Summit Media and the other sponsors, they passed by our booth. Of course, the towels crocheted at the edges, were the best-sellers followed by the bedroom slippers, the bonnets and a tissue box holder. The lanky senator passed by everyone’s booth, thanking the women for their participation.

She dropped by our booth and as I explained what the project was all about, she smiled and said, “You know who loves to crochet in our family? My ninety-year-old lola! Help me choose something for her.” We brought out the purple and white Afghan throw and others in colors of green and ochre. She right away went for the purple, the color of women.

Meanwhile, Karen Kunawicz, who won for Best Runner in Costume, also came by and saw the square-toed bedroom slippers which I like to call footsies. “Wow!” she exclaimed, “Pirate slippers!” So she’ll be wearing them to be warm, I guess, on cold nights when the blessed rains fall.

When the tents folded up by past 9 a.m., Carol, who was visiting this large mall complex for the first time, got up, brought out her cell phone camera and with a skip in her heart, took shots of the now lighted up carousel and Manila Bay which, because she is a mountain girl, was seeing again for the first time in her young life.

Karen’s girl pirate banner says it all for us: “Women who behave rarely make history.”

Photo of Karen Kunawicz in pirate costume shared by fellow exhibitor SING DE LEON of Kababaihan Laban sa Karahasan (Kalakasan) and Women's Media Circle Foundation Inc.

Toottee and Laarni, Julia and Ana

Tuesday night my friend Toottee Chanco Pacis and I were in panic mode. While crochet trainor Teresita Coloma busied herself repairing products for selling at Sen. Pia Cayetano's Pinay in Action fun run exhibit scheduled this Saturday at the SM Mall of Asia, Toottee and I anxiously waited for freelance photographer Laarni Ilagan.

Laarni works fulltime for the Benguet Electric Cooperative (Beneco) and has been detailed outside Baguio City. She has been reliably documenting the activities of the Baguio Aquarelle Society and always says, "Any time, Ma'am Babeth, Ma'am Baboo (Mondonedo)" when we thank her for her free services.

So when the opportunity to write about the Tublay-La Trinidad women's crochet project came on that same Tuesday, Laarni was foremost on my mind. She called to say she had to do work from nine to five but would be available after five. Toottee thought of possible models for the ladies' products. "The mestizas!" she cried. She meant Julia "Laney" De Raedt and daughter Ana (Mika to us). Mother and child are part of our Greenhouse Christian Fellowship (Bible studies on Saturday evening at the Pacis greenhouse in Happy Homes, Baguio City).

The De Raedts showed up on time, but we didn't know Laarni's cell phone went dead and that she had lost her way. It was dark when she finally found the Pacis residence. She didn't have time to take deep breaths or drink a glass of water; I sort of art directed her, gave her an idea of the product shots we needed.

Nobody knows the havoc that goes on behind a pictorial. Laney and Mika had to go through Toottee's dresser for lipstick and blush. I flung open Toottee's aparador to air the Aghan throws and throw pillow cases.

Meanwhile, Oscar Pacis arrived from his Bauang, La Union, farm, and said, smilingly, on seeing all sorts of crochet products strewn in his living and dining rooms: "Am I in the right house?"

This morning, in Mandaluyong City, Toottee and I sat down for coffee to recall how the crochet project got started. No thanks to Typhoon Pepeng.

She said, "We practice transparency. This is not my one-woman show. The ladies involved run the project. They know how much is put in and how much they take home. They know the financial aspect because they do the purchasing themselves."

Toottee did a trial sales run at a Brent School Christmas bazaar. Sales were enough that she was able to give bonuses to the very active women in the project.

Not one to take credit, she said, "We have a self-sustaining project, but we will be remiss if we do not thank the original donors who started it all like Auring Bautista, her daughter Gemma, Prof. Victoria Rico Costina, Team Cafe, journalist Nonnette Bennett who has been supportive from Day One."

Toottee is studying the possibility of re-introducing other crafts like quilting in Baguio.

“What’s more,” Toottee said, “when the ladies of Benguet get their net profit, it’s
like they had invested in their own business, giving them fulfillment and adding to their self-worth.”

What wonderful things happen when women get together!

Photo by LAARNI ILAGAN

Pink Valentine

“I’m always thinking about food ,” so said Julia Child channeled by Meryl Streep in the movie “Julie/Julia,” my flavorite of the year. Food has been foremost, too, in my life since a round of reunions with various friends started last month.

I remember a subtle aperitif served at the weekend getaway home of Rina and Pie David in Cavite: Rina Darling. It was a husband’s tribute to a foodie wife—folded pita bread with cheese, ham/salami, tomatoes and not-so-secret herbs. We know Rina to be a diabetic, but at that potluck lunch of our media women’s group advocating health, Pie came up to her quietly and served her a small slice of a Red Ribbon cake brought by one of the “gurlz.” Rina acknowledged him with barely a nod and continued her animated peroration about sex education for children and the youth.

Last Tuesday over supper at Happy Homes, Baguio, with another gal pal, Toottee Chanco Pacis, she told me of one instance when her husband Oscar, who leads our Saturday Bible fellowship, reprimanded her. He spotted her eating leche flan, a no-no for her, also a diabetic. He said, “You’re killing yourself, Babes!” She smiled at him, continued daintily bringing teaspoonfuls of the Philippine jello into her mouth and said, “Babes, I might be actually prolonging my life by eating this. Think of the pleasure it gives me, the joy of its taste.” He let her be.

Yesterday my three-day retreat ended with lunch with two ICM nuns. We shared a healthy meal of dinengdeng and steamed fish. An hour later, my partner picked me up. Back at his office, he asked me to edit a news feature, to trim it down by a thousand characters. After the task/favor was done, he told me he’d treat me to dinner—anywhere I liked. I said, “Mann Hann,” since it was close to the lunar New Year and I had a sudden craving for Chinese food. My wish was granted, including a request for a dessert of frozen yogurt. Fat-free but not entirely sugar-free.

Indulgent spouses—couldn’t dream of a better Valentine.

Photo of a butter flower plucked from Rina Jimenez David’s garden by ANNA LEAH SARABIA

Here We Are Again

“Baguio Pay Laeng” is the title of the Baguio Aquarelle Society’s second exhibition opening on Feb. 8, this Sunday, at 4 p.m. at the Roman Ozaeta Wing of the Baguio Country. Club. It should be subtitled “The Passion of Baboo” because if it weren’t for Baboo Mondonedo’s leadership and love for the watercolor medium, we the members would be content in taking up the brush only when the spirit moves us.

But as Toottee Chanco-Pacis said, “I work best under pressure.” So that was how we found ourselves Wednesday afternoon with teacher Norman Chow supervising us—working on our paintings under pain of deadline but managing to enjoy ourselves.

I finished three watercolors that day and had them rushed for framing the next. Let’s see how our viewers take to our new set of odes to Baguio.

Here's "Toottee's Anthuriums," a still life I made based on one of thousands of objects in my friend's house. Photo by ELMER KRISTIAN DAUIGOY