We're moving on!

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It is with both a big sigh and a big smile that we will soon be leaving this blog--the only one among so many that I've had all these years and the only one that really got me going.

It is this blog that kept everything that I just wanted out of my brain, all the dirt and the unnecessary thoughts, and those overflowing from my cup that needed something to catch, lest they fall back into the earth unused. It is also the same blog that showered in the cries of my heart and perhaps it has gone deaf of my whinings.

But my heart could not contain as much this gladness that is raining down on me. Finally, after years and years of wanting and planning, we launch our own website. Perhaps in a way this is symbolic as it could be about how I am moving on with my life.

Close friends and I love to refer to me as a "Goldy Bear", but where have I been all these past years? "Hibernating!" But then I have awakened. And I come to rise with that slow and full stretching, a little nudging, a little wanting to go back to bed and curl up again...

But with the magnificent thoughts of the sun shining outside, of the fresh air, of the flowers and the trees, and all the fruits and nuts and honey that await, I am in the waking up of a lost consciousness, the momentous redemption of a lost pride, and the continuation of a journey that was commenced and halted for sometime, in order to claim the glory of a life that earlier in my youth I have deferred through the prostitution of desires. (Don't bother asking, my musings are carrying my words away from my thoughts today!)

Yes, I have already compromised a lot of "what could have beens", so today, we move on, to a whole new adventure of the Midnight Writer.

Set sail with me. Life goes on. Cheers!

WRITING YOUR OWN CENTER AWAY FROM THE CENTER by Abdon M. Balde Jr.

Short paper delivered during the Manila International Literary Arts Festival: LOL—Lit out Loud
Intercontinental Hotel, November 19-21, 2010
by Abdon M. Balde Jr.


When I was offered the chance to lecture here and was given only a title, I immediately accepted it. It is both a challenge and an opportunity.

A young writer once aspired for a position in the editorial staff of a technical magazine. The magazine was published by manufacturers of mechanical fittings. He was asked to write anything about, bolts, nuts and screws. He wrote a story about a patient in an  insane asylum who raped an attendant and escaped. The title of his article was “Nut Screws and Bolts”. The editors thought he had no mechanical aptitude.

I thought I could say anything from a title like “Writing Your Own Center Away From the Center.” Unfortunately, I have no aptitude nor flair for insanity, rape and flight.

Because this is a literary event I immediately remember Resil Mojares’ article about “Writing from the Margins.” Mojares defined the literary center as the place where one could locate 1) the central power, 2) the primacy of print, 3) the dominant languages and 4) the concentration of resources. Thus writers are either writing from the center or writing from the margins.

I was born in the Bikol Region—located over 500 kilometers from Manila, supposedly the center. I grew up in Bikol; I was educated there. I graduated a Civil Engineer long ago and far away from Manila. I spent more than 33 years of my life as a technical man in the construction industry, building roads and bridges, airports and dams and irrigation canals here and abroad. I supervised the construction of the King Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu, Nepal. I retired from construction in year 2000. In my “retarded” years. at the age of 55—without any training— I turned to writing, a preoccupation in this country with little economic returns.

Starting in 2001, I have published 8 books, and another is coming up in a couple of months. Of these, four are novels, four books containing over 160 stories and one book of essays on aging—and yet I am still not sure if I am writing from the center or from the margins.

My mother tongue is Bikol. During my corporate life I used to write in English. Now I write my novels and stories in the national language, Filipino, which for me is a borrowed language. However, my stories, poems and anecdotes are written in the three dialects of Bikol.

According to Mojares, there are three factors to consider in order to know if a writer is writing from the center or from the margins:

The first is LOCATION: Not simply one’s residence but “the place that has shaped the kind of person one is or has become, and the site one has consciously chosen to imaginatively locate oneself  in.” I live in Las Piñas, a part of Metro Manila. But when I write I always locate myself in Bikol. More than 80% of the settings of my stories and novels are in Bikol. So in this aspect I guess I am writing from the margins.

The second is the STANCE the writer takes. If one is confident and assured that what one writes is the living truth, then it could not be marginal, because “the truth realized in literature cannot be marginal.” I am definitely writing from the center.

The third factor has to do with ORIENTATION, not only where one stands but where or in what direction one is turned. According to Mojares, “So dominant is the center that a writer may start out from Davao but Manila is where he hopes to ‘arrive’.”

Now I am confused. I started from the center, writing and publishing in Manila, borrowing the dominant language and creating my network among writers of national stature.

However, during the writing of my third book, which was about legends surrounding Mayon Volcano, I went home, and it was as if I discovered my birthplace for the first time. I found confort in using my mother tongue, writing about my own people; about events that I knew when young. When in Bikol I find that my memories come easy and and are clearer. From then on I turned southwards—to Bikol, to the margins.

I have encouraged my province mates to write in their mother tongue and to publish their works in local magazines and in folios. We formed writers groups.  We organized literary events involving literary forms that are unique to the region, such as tigsik, rawitdawit and osipon.

For example my town of Oas, Albay has a population of barely 12,000 households spread in 53 barangays. Six years ago no one wrote in the Oasnon dialect. Every one thought it could not be written because of the many umlaut vowels, like abu, buku, ba’bu, bubuyuku. In 2004, I accidentally discovered a website called “For All Oasnon” at oasnon.com, set up by Cesar Redito, an Oasnon living in America. There were 6 contributors writing news about Oasnons living in the Los Angeles area. I joined them and started uploading my poems written in Oasnon dialect, using the German umlaut. From then on many Oasnon from other parts of the world started uploading stories of their experiences abroad, writing the vowels in the same form. Soon, the Oasnon living in Oas responded with stories of growing up in their barrios.

I grew up in a small barrio of rice farmers called Busac. In the early morning, men would walk out of their huts, and meet in a small bridge called kantarilya. Kantarilya is a bridge with railings on both sides; it spans a small stream. Men who have not washed their faces or brushed their teeth would meet there carrying cups of coffe or brewed ginger (salabat) and their fighting cocks. They would sit on the railings of the Kantarilya and tell stories while sipping their drinks, smoking and caressing their fighting cocks. When I was young I thought the men in our place caressed their cocks more often than their wives. Their fighting cocks, I mean. The stories that they tell were about their surroundings and their simple lives: Ang palayang sinalanta ng mga uod, na-tunggro na niyugan, naputol na saplad, saragateng natuklaw ng ahas, kung sino ang naka-score nang nakaraang gabi, ang numerong tumama sa jueteng, ang sinto-sintong nakahuli ng kalapating mababa ang lipad, ang palikerong natiklo sa akto ng asawa, ang pari na sumimple sa loob ng isang kabaret, ang kiri na nabuntis, ang batang mapurol ang ulo na natanggap mag-US Navy, ang magta-traysikel na nakajackpot ng maestra. The story-telling just go on and on and on, until the wives would fetch them for breakfast or for work. We call this “iristoryahan sa kantarilya”

We revived this “Iristoryahan sa Kantarilya” in the Oasnon website. We now have over 200 storytellers from many parts of the world sending their writings in digital form. They are writing stories, poems, memoir, history, news, and even songs about the town of Oas. Unwittingly we have given birth to what is slowly developing as an Oasnon literature.

If you ask me now where I am writing from, I would say that I am writing from my own comfort zone, writing the things that I know best, using the tools that I know best. It is not a fixed location. It is like a movable home. A place where, according to Robert Frost, if you have to go there they have to take you in. It is a place where I could pick my brain with unusual ease. It is like a pitstop in the gruelling race for fame and fortune.

Speaking of comfort zone, a young Jew was heard praying loudly in front of the Wailing Wall saying, “Lord, please bring me to where my people are! Please bring me to where my people are!” An elderly Jew heard him and said, “What do you mean bring you to where your people are? You are in Jerusalem, this is Israel the land of the Jews, where are your people?” The young Jew said, “They went to Miami Beach!” Comfort zones are like pleasure zones, they are not permanent places.

I suppose I am just like any writer who creates his own center, and it doesn’t matter whether it is in the center or in the margins. What matters is that I am comfortable in my own center.  

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Re-posted with permission from original note posted on Tuesday, 23 November 2010 at 18:06

Reading MLK and rediscovering contemporary Asian Lit

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Weekend had me busy with other things and so I'm catching up tonight with MLK's weekend poetry. Marne L. Kilates gave a name and a face for my "favorite Filipino poet". Definitely a master of his craft! There are a lot of reasons my poetic senses become so alive each time I read him up and this would count as one:

"Black granary god,
Sitting on my Taiwan-made
Plastic rice dispenser,
With your namesake
From conquered nations
And our checkered history,
Bless our crossover meal of Thai rice,
Laing pasta, siomai, mami."

From

Weekend Poems: Sitting Bulul

by Marne L. Kilates on Friday, 29 October 2010 at 23:21

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As I have previously stated, this blog takes a whole new direction in that it devotes itself to the appreciation of Bikol literature and language.

Nevertheless, it does not turn away from its own self, which is multicultural and linguistically diverse. The predilections of readership and study will and always bring me to look out of the window and imagine what the people of Rabindranath Tagore, of Albert Einsten, of Jacques Derrida, and of Sir Francis Bacon have been painting with their words.

Then, tonight, as I sit upon MLK's train of thoughts, the conversations I overhear draw me towards a lucid dreaming of what neighboring cultures have been writing about. For, while I refer to the continental for theories and structures of thought, I have always had a ready preference of reading through the works of the Oriental cultures and heritage.

On my research, I have been coming across several Asian names over the last few weeks but I have not had the opportunity to bookmark their pages or at least recall them. I remember today, the names of Asian writers like Naseer Ahmed Nasir and Mamta Agarwal.

So then, after a refreshing weekend poetry from the master of ekphrasis, I switch to bookmarking the pages of these other noteworthy writers of our time and age.

Learning the Language (An Sakong Pag-adal ki Tamang Bikol)

Bicol is perhaps the most romantic and most flexible language I can speak and understand. Being a writer, I could not help but wish to be able to use it as a means for literary expression. In the past, I have sat down and read books at the university's Center for Bicol Studies, partaken in forums merely for the sake of conversation and chatter in the language.

Books alone are never sufficient, for language has its rules and yet it is dynamic and ever evolving, but along with participation in the forums, I was able to be come up with a Bicol adaptation of one of the poems I have already written in English. This was published back to back in a literary folio in our department, in which luckily, I happen to be a member of the publication staff.

At leaving the university however, nothing has followed. Over the years, I have continued to write, but in the language I have trained for half of my school life. It is absurd that when we speak of writing in the native tongue, my hands fall into a hush. It is by lack of diligence in study and eagerness in communicating in Bicol that too many writing opportunities in the language have passed for me, I admit, and it is sad that there are pieces left unwritten for lack of proper words to write.

Today, I set my mind to start again, and begin by reading the works of renowned Bicol writers. I go back to reading the blogs of Jose Dalisay and Vicente Nierva. Of Kristian Cordero, I have yet to look into his writings.

For now, The Midnight Writer will have to sleep, and tonight, post the remaining parts of the Autumn Fireflies series--the last of which is "Pagkasulnop Minabangui", to mark the new avenue that this blog and its writer is heading to at the turn of the season.

Nothing major, major.

The -ber months have started and it's a whole new season for all of us.

I have decided to work around a bit again on this blog and finally get things up and running.

A whole new season.

A lot of things have kept me preoccupied for the past months and I am only able to do very little for this blog and looking back on my notes, I realize some vital aspects I have left out and those are what I will be working on in the next few days, or weeks. Don't worry, it's not some major, major, revamp that's going to happen....


It's just a going back to the original:

A blog that features original compositions I have compiled over the years of my midnights as a writer, and random musings and posts about faith and life in general, all blurted over like a splatter of paint or some spilled ink, that they fly free as fireflies and come alive in forms that allude to the masters of literature and criticism.

• One that reverberates in the strings of the heart of Tagore, touched by the metaphysical and one with nature, while reflecting on the ruminations of Einstein on the invisible lines that link true faith and religiosity over the philosophical and scientific evidences of the mystical wonders of life and those of Derrida on the thought of Deconstruction. 
• One that is imbibed with echoes of the soul of the Roman Catholic Christian, writing daily aiming at perfection, despite of knowing that all is temporal, and that perfection comes only by the grace of God, the Editor-in-Chief of every human life.
• One which continually explores and experiments on the various literary styles and techniques, crossing over the genres and transcending beyond the barriers of language, defining the undefined, in an attempt to capture the graces of the moment. English will remain the primary language, however, as I continue to study my native tongue to a deeper and more literary level, this blog will be my online keeper of any poem written in the Bicol language, should I be able to produce such.

It is good to remember who you are

in order to know where you are heading to.

Thus, once again, the midnight writer reaffirms its commitment 

to write according to the purpose and the plan, 

and what you just read is otherwise called, 

"The Midnight Agenda"