My Blog on Bikol

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWrvHgIh63w

Lani Misalucha in a duet with Josh Groban at a concert in

Manila

a few days ago.

It’s crazy how homesickness suddenly gets you in the gut and rises to your chest, your throat, your eyes. It becomes a force in your body and mind and suffuses all your senses…indescribable, watery, sniffy, ringing-in-the-ears, longing. Maybe because the song sung evoked so much of home and me sitting in countless rehearsals of our chorale singing the same song at

Aquinas

U.

Maybe because I had just spoken on the phone with my husband who assured me that everyone was fine, no one in the family harmed by the recent bombing in

Makati

. But that’s just the problem with phone calls: you can hear but you can’t touch or be hugged. The mind is rested but the skin remembers. Or maybe because Lani Misalucha is so good I was moved…I was singing the prayer in my mind too and asking God to lead us to a safe place where bombs do not explode and kill innocent people, where there’s no war in which young persons fight or are forced to fight with real guns, and kill or get killed, where people get to enjoy the bounty of their land and do not have to beg for scraps….Or maybe because I was eating karekare with the canned bagoong from barrio fiesta. I was eager to eat it because I was hungry for lunch at past four in the afternoon and would not settle for any readymades in the fridge so I ran to the nearby store and got peanut butter so I can cook a decent karekare and I did. I was going to sit down to eat and wanted some music… Perhaps the loneliness got mixed in with the broth.

i have recently finished setting my timetable for this year! perhaps that’s the reason i can’t shake off this feeling of urgency, wanting to be on the move all the time, always rushing to get things done…emails to answer, arrangements for travel to conferences, doing the laundry, having to eat, and doing all the other big and little chores i have to take care of by myself (including taking the kitchen rubbish 5 floors down to the rubbish bins though i was hoping one of the boys in the flat would do it since i did the cleaning up blah blah blah..didn’t happen so i had to do it or continue to suffer the smell in the kitchen…haaay, i miss my kasama sa bahay/yaya/maid…)

i almost said yes to the stranger who spoke with me the other day on the street, inviting me to some bible discussions…just to have someone to talk to.  i did not, maybe because i still have this hesitation to get involved in such matters with people of a different faith and i normally prefer not to get into discussions of such nature even with fellow catholics. maybe it’s the timing, or maybe i just prefer to live and act my faith rather than discuss it.

well at least technology allows instant communication now, so i get to talk to friends and colleagues back home regularly. i think my greatest fear now always is losing my internet connection and having the virtual ties cut off. incredible. at home i usually savor being disconnected, staying away from the madding crowd so to speak. how’s that for irony, huh.

tomorrow i travel to the big city, london, and then visit oxford. exciting trip. i hope to get a visa to poland for a three-day conference in november.

for now…got to eat…why does the body always interpose itself? can’t ignore the pangs in the stomach. got to eat. have to cook to eat. oh well, at least i have a great view. my window spans almost the entire wall of the room and it is filled from end to end, left to right, top to bottom, with the ocean and the sky right to the horizon that’s spread out like an endless line of grayish blue, a moving painting,with the sounds of the waves on the shore animating it. i feast on the view, but the stomach growls….    

It is easy to describe Hong Kong. Depending on one’s point of view (of course), it can be paradise for shoppers, a must-see place of wondrous enchantments for children, a haven for artists, a study of contemporary architecture, or a showcase of modernity and industrial affluence, and so on. Danielle Marino of IIE said in her email that it is a marvelous city and Mikel Koven (my supervisor) said he was jealous that I would be in Hong Kong, another way of saying that Hong Kong is indeed a great place to spend time in. The Visitor’s Kit I picked up at the airport says it is a city of “diversity and memorable contrasts at every turn” where one can immerse oneself in “ageless traditions and festivals, or enjoy themed attractions and cutting edge sophistication.”

I opted to see first the ageless traditions for my self-organized day tour today, our “excursion day” in the congress program, for I am quite frankly stopped at every turn by the sophistication.

For both good and bad, I have been billeted at the Alumni Civility Hall of the City University of Hong Kong in Kowloon—seven stations away from the main venue of the congress in Hong Kong Island, across the Victoria Harbour, with a change of trains at Mong Kok, and requiring several minutes of walking before and after taking the MTR ride. Whoa! It is good because I suddenly got my needed dose of daily exercise.  It is good because I get to see more of Hong Kong, beyond even the congress program that has venues all over the city!  It is good because I am getting to be adept at traveling by train, usually just when everybody else is rushing to work or school or wherever else they have to be, and it is good that the MTR transport system is really super efficient, though I have to stand and sway with the train all throughout. It is bad because it is far and I am not as strong and spritely now as I used to be.  It is bad because I do not get to watch the plays scheduled at night and mostly in venues across the harbour; I am not so courageous to be out late at night alone in this foreign city. It is bad because I get to the venues always late. It is bad because Wai-yin Kwok who made the hall reservation thought I was male and put me in a room that has shared T&B with the next room given to two males.  At least they are congress delegates too and not really total strangers in that sense. Well, I could have transferred to a hotel closer to the Hong Kong Academy of Performing Arts in Wanchai, though I did not bother to ask if they still have room for me; I decided to just stay where I am in Kowloon. I am in an exciting city; I should live an exciting life while I’m here!

I digress. I was actually going to say that Hong Kong overwhelms with the way it is sooo modern, very much the global city of concrete and glass and steel, something that I did not see much of in London—definitely not in Aberystwyth!—or even in Europe, at least not the way that Hong Kong is.  It has a charm all its own, a different one, though I am sure I can only appreciate it as a visitor.  The “sophistication” is definitely not for a promdi like myself.

So I decided to begin my day tour with a visit to Wong Tai Sin temple, just beside the MTR station in Wong Tai Sin, one station away from Kowloon Tong.  There, in the midst of the tall buildings and concrete pavements, I saw the other face of Hong Kong: old but timeless, ornate, complex, rich, textured, not the flashy smooth exteriors of the modern buildings, but the uniquely Chinese lines, colors, and designs of the temples.  I clicked away like crazy, trying to capture with my camera how the worshippers prayed with their candles and food offerings, and trying to get a shot of the temple interiors. The people there were not rushing like those I meet in the train. They were on their knees arranging offerings of fruits and other food stuff or bowing before the temple altars with hands clasping the lit candle offerings. I gazed with wonder at how different is this way of worship but how familiar the feeling conveyed by the image of people praying.

…fast forward to the here and now… like many of the entries here, it seems, this is an unfinished piece, hehehe…will try to find time to wrap this up… but here are some photos, though I am not in anyone of them…

…the photos don’t come out clear..anyway they are in my photo album that i suppose can be accessed through here????

at last! all my things have been sent off to storage and i’ll hit the road again, this time for my field work. first the long train ride to london and then the flight to manila.  i will be home for the holy week! yehey!

this past week has been hectic, to say the least. becca and trixie visited and perhaps not so strangely i was able to see and appreciate Aber more through their experience. they had a good mix of academic experience and leisure for we attended a lecture on artistic persuasion as political rhetoric by a professor from Swansea  University, went walking and had a fun photo shoot on the seafront, watched Macbeth at the arts center, and enjoyed the shops in town. thank you for the visit, girls!

i’ll post some pictures later…..have to run to catch my train….

Obviously we are again going through a very trying period, one that gets either the best or the worst out of every single person who calls himself/herself Filipino and exercises his/her rights and obligations as a citizen. Or so I used to think. I have long stopped using battles and war images as metaphors or material for analogies, but I find I have to use them again in saying that I have learned to choose the battles I fight and the weapons I use to wound, maim, undermine, or kill, or simply to bring home a point.  And I have chosen not to fight this particular battle, the elections, and have therefore also veered away from the idea that it is the ultimate measure of citizenship.

By all means, let us support all the good ones who in our estimation will work for the welfare of the majority. Let us be vigilant and proactive. I know first hand as a citizen how having a good man or woman at the helm of government makes a great difference in our everyday lives, and so we must indeed discern and choose our leaders, be a good citizen and vote, perhaps even campaign for integrity and honesty and volunteer in the PPCRV or like organizations.

I’d rather not pour all my energies into it, however; it would be a waste of so much passion that can be of greater benefit elsewhere. I refer specifically to efforts in working for concrete and real projects and programs at the local level that bring actual benefits to people in the communities on a daily basis, be these in the form of additional income, better housing and services, or an improvement in self-esteem and concern for one’s dignity or that of the nation. What I’m saying is that I’d rather work at the local level, the barrio, sitio, village, neighborhood. It is there after all where even the elections will be fought. There are many other fronts as important, I am well aware, but I choose to join the silent workers down below, in the margins, on the hell roads, at the many unacknowledged spaces in the national political landscape. I shy away from the short-circuiting, confusing, strident cacophony of images and rhetorics in the center.  I don’t think I am equipped to plow through the thick muck of versions of this or that story heard on the news, broadcast on TV or the worldwideweb. I also don’t choose to depend on any outcome of any elections for the improvement of people’s lives, or staying on or getting out of the country (apologies to those who believe otherwise–i.e., that they’d rather leave the country since nothing seems to be going right with it, that it’s going to the dogs and so on).

Maybe it’s a cynical view, but I choose to call it a practical one, for what is new in all these happenings, after all? We’ve heard and seen all that. And very soon it will pass. And as in all battles, some will emerge victorious, others vanquished or even forever silenced by death.  The carnage would be horrific, as usual. And there would be new declarations of plans and directions, as usual.  But through all these, the communities would remain largely untouched, unless some government program opens them up to the plunder of mining companies or identifies them as rebel infested and therefore must be zoned and militarized. By "largely untouched" I mean by so-called progress. The rural communities specifically seem to come to the attention of government and business only in the context of what can be exploited there, whether it is gold down below the ground or a beautiful scenery fit for the tourists’ gaze; the lives of people come in only second in terms of the trickle-down effect on daily incomes, if at all. Economic progress? I say the communities are the major actors that should determine their progress and first of all this should mean sufficient food for everyone, land and housing, water and electricity, health and education. I don’t think the elections have anything to do with these concerns as history has long and repeatedly proven. Haay naku.

I remember only now that I should mention our cancelled flight from Liverpool to Amsterdam and our night spent on December 19 at the John Lennon International Airport. Let me just insert here my journal notes on that night.

Here we are, Trixie and I, esconced in these red seats at a Burger King store inside the airport, the remains of our meal strewn on the table, our bags beside us, waiting.  The day did not really augur well for the flight.  On the trip coming here I thought it was particularly cold and Chester (where I had to change trains from Aberystwyth) was shrouded in white mist.  People were rushing to the vendo machines for hot coffee.  It was not mist.  It was fog.  Thick, cold fog that made things disappear.  We couldn’t see the airport till we were right there almost on the doorstep.  Miko rang to say his 13:25 flight was delayed and asked us to wait for him at Schipol Airport just in case we got there first.  Little did we know how the story would turn out.

The airport check-in lobby was full to overflowing.  We thought we were lucky to have our boarding passes (printed online) ready and didn’t have to queue to check in.  It was not to be.  Flights had been cancelled and people were queuing to be rebooked.  My, my, my!  So we joined a queue.  After about twenty minutes Trixie rechecked the airport monitor boards and said we were on the wrong queue.  So off we went to transfer to another queue.  One hour later, about four elements away from the desk, the guy who was behind us on the first queue came to ask if we were indeed last on this second queue we were on and I said that apparently we were, for indeed there was no one after us.  A middle-aged male person on the queue beside us to the left suddenly inserted himself in our conversation saying I was wrong, that there were many others on the queue also waiting–he was referring to the line of people on our right! and a lady on that queue piped in saying there was supposed to be just one queue and we were squeezing ourselves in!!!  The Spanish guy had to leave or chose to leave rather than argue with them.  We remained.  After an hour of honest-to-goodness waiting we would be accused of cheating! Whoa-ho.  ‘Turned out that the lady and her partner who were part of a group of four–two old couples–were the ones who squeezed in between the lady we were right next to and us.  There were genuinely two lines on that queue!  What a way to start a holiday!

Well, at last, our turn at the desk came and we were rebooked for 6:15 the next day.  Great.  No chance now of getting to the Netherlands today.  Miko rang to say he had arrived at Schipol (from Gatwick, London) and asked where we were.  Naturally he was quite worried when I told him about our cancelled flight, for he didn’t know where to go or how to get to Den Haag from Amsterdam.  I was the one who had all the info on the directions to ISS and the phone numbers of the fellows we are going to stay with. And he didn’t have a pen with him with which to write my instructions…and my cellphone battery was running low.

Long story.  But Miko found his way and is now probably having a grand time with Bing, Joy and Derek.  We are still here in this red Burger King cubicle, with the remains of our meal strewn on the table, and the airport monitor boards now repeatedly flashing our CANCELLED 6:15 flight!  The next flight to Amsterdam, not yet cancelled, is at 9:25.  So Trixie had hied off to a Spar’s shop nearby and got a small bottle of Colombard Chardonnay, and here we are gulping down tagay after tagay of the wine in the Burger King paper glass.  God only knows what time we’ll be out of here.  So here’s to a great exhausting, unending day! Tagay pa!   

Eventually, with the help of Becca (in London) and cellphone technology, at 6 AM we were able to rebook online (the only quick way to do it, said the EasyJet staff), and at 15:35 we were going through security check.  The flight was delayed for another one hour and a half and as a result it was a very noisy flight….

Schipol Airport was huge…and clean and sooo first world.  Unfortunately we couldn’t linger to look around. Alex (Alejandra), Trixie’s schoolmate and friend who came early in the day to join us in waiting for the afternoon flight, was rushing to catch her train to another part of the Netherlands. We also had to rush to get our tickets and catch our train. How convenient for the train station to be located just below the airport!

And when we got to Den Haag Central Station, we followed the directions given by Joy to catch the bus to Mauritskade, and lo, Derek was there waiting for us. Sweet, gentle Derek took care of our luggage and paying for the bus fare, etc.  We felt we were home!  And on arrival at Bing’s flat, a hot meal awaited.  Mmmm, hot steamed rice and sinigang na sugpo!

But when we arrived in Den Haag, the ISS guys still had classes, so the three of us hied off to Amsterdam the very next day (Dec 21).

It’s been some time since my last post…my last long post, that is, and I feel the urge to write about many things…like the trip to Europe in December, my trip home to Albay in January, my recent trip to the US, and of course my academic journey.  I feel like I have been travelling incessantly, getting from one place to another, staying for just a few days and then being off again, from airport to train and bus stations to hotels and friends’ and kins’ houses. 

Talk about journeys and travels…perhaps pilgrimages. No wonder that’s what I am researching on, the Santa Cruz dotoc as pilgrimage.  It seems I too am performing pilgrimage..both figuratively and literally! The question is where to? Perhaps to the Holy Cross–Yes! I might just be able to get the resources to eventually go there, to the ultimate pilgrimage site, Jerusalem, so I can see for myself the Church of the Holy Sepulchre that the Persians led by the commander Shahrvaraz ravaged in 614 in service of Khusro II, king of Persia, and the place where Heraclius, Byzantine emperor of the 7th century, great warrior and leader, went as a penitent to return the relic of the True Cross in 630 after defeating the Persians (Regan 2003). i still need to go to Spain and track down and see for myself the Spanish sources of these stories that the women of Santa Cruz, Baao still sing about in the dotoc.

I say even the catastrophe in Albay on Nov 30, 2006 is part of this journey, though it is a grim, never-to-be-forgotten, jarring, maiming, traumatizing, station or moment exhibiting the liminality of life lived under the shade of the beautiful but fearsome Mayon.  When the calamity struck and I heard about all the deaths caused by the mudslides, ironically after I ascertained that everyone in my family was safe but everyone else was not, including beloved Aquinas…I guess I succumbed to what some would call a depression. You probably read it in my postings here anyway…I won’t repeat any of that.  But my IFP friends Miko and Trixie pulled me out of my depression and got me to go with them to mainland Europe as we planned since October. I would have become more depressed I guess had I stayed in the flat alone for Christmas and New Year.

It was a pity Becca was not able to get her schengen visa in time and the rest of the folks (IFP fellows in the UK, cohort 2005) could not join us for one reason or another. The trip turned out to be one of wondrous sights and a reunion with friends: IFP fellows at the Institute of Social Studies in Den Haag Bing, Joy and Derek, as well as other Filipinos studying there who joined the trip to Italy, and Jed in Wageningen.

Bing was like a caring nanay to everyone.  She cooked great meals for us and even the baon for noche buena that we ate in the train on the way to Rome from Pisa. Joy showed us the sights in Den Haag especially the open market which was really like a huge tiangge that sells everything from clothes to shoes and bags to all kinds of vegetables, meat and fish, cheeses, and all kinds of souvenir items. Whoa! I got dizzy winding my way through the crowd and trying to keep Joy and Trixie in sight. I also got a little winded with just looking and not buying, since I had a reaalllyy tight budget.  Well, I indulged just a little and bought a 20 euro red-black winter coat that Trixie wanted for herself but was too big for her!  She had to hear it from all of us before she would relent to not having the coat hehehe. Derek was charming and sweet, always there to help out with carrying things and such chores.  He patiently waited for us in the Den Haag central station for almost 2 hours, although he had just come from a class. Miko stayed with him in his flat.  Oh my…their rooms are really nice…big, really spacious, with sofas, and their own refrigerator inside, television (they don’t have to pay for a TV license like we do/are required in the UK!) and other abubots! Joy even has a wine counter and plants and an aquarium!  On the day we left for Italy, Bing got her TV set and a great black leather sofa from a Nigerian (?) lady who had graduated and was leaving.

As to Jed in Wageningen…his flat is a beauty as well. He had just moved into it a week earlier.  He has a kitchen in it and I cooked (with the help of Miko and Trixie) chopsuey–or was it chinese vegetables (?) and chicken curry. Jed was going to a christmas party of his class in the university and took us with him, with the cooked dishes as our contribution. The classmates (a multi-racial, multi-cultural group) were friendly and we had some great interactive games and became a little tipsy drinking red wine. Jed showed his skills on the guitar, and led us through some lively beatles and beegees songs and other old favorites. After the party we walked back to Jed’s flat and stayed awake till 4 in the morning sharing stories and laughing and giggling, finding humor even in the stories of loneliness and yearning for the warmth of loved ones, being teary-eyed a bit as well.

I have to continue some other time…it’s 2:27 AM.

in the end it turned out well–excellently in fact.  they liked my paper! and it looks like i have been given the big break into this world of academic research. i hit the nail right on the head! later this year the paper i presented will be part of a published book, i can’t quite believe it yet…. oh, well, more hard work to come.

UC riverside was nice, the people are friendly and warm, especially my hosts who are with the seatrip program (south east asia: text, ritual, and performance). the other presenters were also very approachable and of course i learned a lot from them. the hotel provided for us was the best one in the city, from what i gathered.

now i am in LA, just over an hour’s drive from riverside. but i have yet to see the city.  yesterday my nephew and i only went to the mall where many filipinos congregate and shop.  we bought some groceries, fish and vegetables; it was like any mall/shop in the philippines! they even have boy bawang!

i regret that i can’t take the offer of prof. cesar torres (UP alumni in cyberspace moderator) to go to san francisco and see him, and possibly speak at the launching event of ‘global filipinos’–he offered to buy me a ticket! it would be a grand opportunity to present the albay (post reming) rehabilitation for possible fund raising support by the pinoys here in the US.  but my time here is short and booked way before i came…. but i guess if they wish to help they will help.  my presence/absence may not really make a difference.

I am not even half-way through the readings I have to do for my PhD project, but the more I read, the stronger I suspect that I am not and should not be part of the conversations going on about what I feel I should share to the world, the performance traditions of my region in the Philippines.  Everywhere I turn I see labels, categories, taxonomies, some of them fiercely debated by worthy speakers for this or that idea and I say to myself:  what’s the point of explaining away the traditions? What would be the significance and usefulness of my research?  Who has the need to have these traditions explained, theorized, photographed, written about, published?  Would and should I aspire to be able to contribute to the discourses in a discipline?  Which one? Do I even care?

I realize that these questions have a strong underlying tone of distaste for academic discourse and I’m sorry if I offend any of you on this regard.  But if I learned anything from my field research on the dotoc, it is that the people and communities who practice the traditions do what they do and will continue the traditions as they have done, regardless of any academic discussions about them and their practices and that indeed any intervention by anyone like me in any way may do more harm than good. And if that is indeed the case, as I fear it might, PhD or no PhD for me, the question should be asked: what are we about in the academy?  What are the books for aside from serving as references for students who in turn would produce their own works and so on, while the world continues to turn and the communities and their performances go on or fade away, largely untouched by our conversations.  In the interim, we get paid for our research and our books, our stature in the academy is considerably upgraded, we get to be called “experts” and so on.  In the communities, the poverty continues or worsens.

As I write this, hundreds of people in my region are looking for shelter from the cold of night, hungry, and in great pain for the loss of property and the lives of loved ones buried in the mudslide caused by the recent typhoon.  But even in their misery they would pray, and slowly but surely they would pick up their lives, rebuild their communities, and in May the people of Bigaa would have their dotoc, however spare the altar décor, however meager the repast, however few the participants.  In the same way, the communities in Daraga and Legazpi and elsewhere in the region would make new lanterns for the Aurora—the old ones would surely have been destroyed by the typhoon—and organize the nightly processions, and have food for everyone to share afterwards however humble: gulay langka perhaps or dinuguan that is more soup with plenty of extenders than real meat.  These communities have gone on like this for maybe hundreds of years.  The Santa Cruz dotoc even flourished during the last world war while the people were in hiding in the hills and the guerillas were launching attacks against the Japanese forces.  And here I am wanting to document these practices, wanting to write about them, wanting to theorise about why they do what they do and how they do it.  I have to shed off my pretensions of being a cultural worker who wants to serve; I have more to gain in this than would they.

But though I take the researcher’s view, inevitably the outsider’s view, I cannot shake off the fact that I think like an insider and this is what’s causing all this tension.  As an insider for instance as far as the Santa Cruz dotoc is concerned, as a paradotoc or a former paradotoc, I resent the idea that my performance practice should need to be called anything but the way we call it, the dotoc.  Its integrity and value does not depend on any outsider calling it a theatrical practice, or a ritual, or a performance.

And it is this insider’s view and attitude that is giving me so much trouble in tackling the literature review.  I have this strong feeling that anything I say about the dotoc would come from a totally alien perspective and I can’t ignore the very loud question of why I need to explain the dotoc in terms of the ideas and lexical elements that have already been said, discussed, debated on in the field that I am trying to immerse myself in—performance studies, theatre studies, social anthropology, etc.  I realize I don’t need to do that eventually, but in the meantime I need to demonstrate that I know what indeed have been said, who said them and how and why, so that I can show that my study is being conducted with academic rigor and I would deserve the PhD.  Woe to me for wanting it in the first place! I should be in my country doing what I can to help in the recovery of those that were buried in the mudslide, or at the very least organizing another performance of our artists to bring ranga (consolation is a rough equivalent in English) to the communities.

Somebody told me that I will perhaps realize what is really important to me as I study in this faraway place.  Sadly I have indeed, this early, not even three months in the program.  And sadly I have to go on although I want to just drop everything and go home, for even the paradotoc community of Santa Cruz in Baao would want me to succeed, to finish what I have started.  And they would be thrilled to know that their photographs may one day appear in a publication, an international one at that.  I could not disappoint them.

We live in perpetual night

And the mind conjures days bathed in light

The brilliant sands of beaches

Rivaling sparkling laughter of children

Merry conversations while walking

Sundrenched on summer paths

Alive with the fuss of friends meeting

For silly carefree talks

But the eyes cannot keep out the dark

Like an insistent face you strive to name

It pops out in the pool of froth in your coffee

And you miss out on a particularly hilarious moment

You bite your tongue with the effort

So that again you might comfortably forget

But it’s not just the eyes that feel

It’s your skin teeth nose tongue

Ears that won’t be stoppered with good music

Your memory plays like a gripping movie

And your skin prickles with alertness, your teeth grate

Smell and taste keen to the terrain, such as it was

For only the blackness was real

Of trees and shrubbery swaying and coming at you

As your feet try to meet slippery mud-caked slanted ground

Charging fast as you run silent, choking on your breath

Tamping down the bile rising to your throat

And yes thanking God for the night

That you longed for the blacker the better

It had kept you alive

This darkness lurks in the rooms we have lit

With huge lamps, the better to show off

How brilliantly we now shine in glittering company

Away from the corners and crevices and into the center

A movement that is really a dance of forgetting

No more old faces to name and slinking wraith-like

On the edges of bright presences

Only the pleasure of honest handshakes

And hearing your name said by another

You strive to live in the light with friends and family

You keep your dwelling clean and clutter free

But an old ghost inhabits your walls

The lamps flicker and you ask if it’s day or night

Your skin prickles, your teeth grate

Today another body was found in the hedges.