We were there a few weeks before the workshop and Dumaguete is still pedicab town, the buzz of tricycles omnipresent like the nearness of the sea. Across Silliman Hall, there is a relatively new hangout by Rizal Blvd. (at least it wasn’t there the last time we visited a couple of years ago), Cafe Memento, one of the ka-socios being artist Baboo Alunan-Wenceslao, son of the poet Merle Alunan. It serves short orders for merienda and has a variety of souvenir goods for sale, such as tastefully designed T-shirts and caps, not your regular butingting outlet.
Baboo, as well as other artists from Negros, were holding a group exhibit somewhere in the city, proof that the art scene was alive and kicking.
On the same street walking away from the boulevard, and past Perdices (formerly Alfonso Trece), is another souvenir shop, J&D, with Fanny Llego and Rina holding fort. More unique butingtings can be had at affordable prices. Fanny herself is a transplanted artist and writer who, after years in Manila, decided to resettle on the outskirts to concentrate on her kitchen and raising her cats.
Down Taclobo way on V. Locsin St. resides Dr. Cesar Ruiz Aquino, who, as of mid-April was rushing to submit the grades of his literature students, in between his honorary participation in a chess tournament at the tiangge where a 16-year-old girl was wowing aficionados with moves reminiscent of the Polgar sisters.
Cesar had asked us to bring a copy of G. Cabrera Infante’s Three Tapped Tigers from Manila for whatever reason, probably to transpose into local setting the rigmarole of events in pre-Castro Cuba.
Come to think of it Havana before socialism could well be a magnified version of Dumaguete with its motley assembly of watering holes and cheap tuyok manok, at P110 going at almost half the Manila price.
Infante’s novel is chockfull of puns a la Nolledo, which could explain Cesar’s fondness for the book, just as he is fond of Nolledo, sometimes known as Dazzling Ding.
Dr. Ruiz, or is it Dr. No, also asked us to look for a copy of Emma Shapplin’s Carmine Meo, a neo-classical pop soprano in the mold of, say, Freddie Mercury. If not Carmine Meo then the soundtrack for the movie Red Planet, where Shapplin sings some songs, but he said please don’t tell this to the feminists as they might claim having discovered the sultry soprano.
In the meantime, he has to content himself with the soundtrack from Thin Red Line with music from Hans Zimmer, as well as the first album of WDOUJI (Witch Doctors of Underground Jazz Improvisation), the band of Ayahuesca Yuson who, as a young boy with his Dad, used to walk the streets of Dumaguete armed with a wooden excalibur. Now the kid wields a completely different instrument.
Dr. No is aware, too, that Erwin Castillo’s son Diego plays in the band Sandwich, the sons of his contemporaries seem to have chosen music over literature.
Meanwhile deeper down south, past Bacong with its statue of folk hero Leon Kilat in the town square, past Dauin and Zamboanguita’s Malatapay of the fallen Chinook and Wednesday market days, past the mountains of Bundo of the late Fr. Tropa and scenic Km. 44, is the rustic town of Siaton where mythological creatures, like Don Antoy, reign with Vino Kulafu.
During one such twilight in Siaton, filled to the gills with nukus (squid), not a breeze was blowing and in between light and dark the leaves might have been conversing quietly among themselves, or was that the effect of too much fresh air spiked by a different kind of burning dried leaves (siga).
When the workshop starts next Monday, the city of Dumaguete might still be the same, of course, reeling with the sound of motorcycles and the scent of sea breezes, and the usual suspects will again look out from the boulevard to see the lightning flashes over Siquijor, Isla Siquijor, thinking it might be the deity or the supreme witch doctor taking pictures.
Flash! That’s us at Opeña’s partaking of the greasy food and looking for the jukebox. Click! There’s the pianist Ernie Yee at Sans Rival for merienda. Whirrr, click, flash, wait the camera’s busted but the small boy in the ’60s is now a grown man with two kids, and Edith Tiempo just celebrated her 83rd birthday on Earth Day, and what can I say except watch out for Mookie before the sound of the siren reminds us that yet another boat is leaving port to circumnavigate the summer of lost time.