Southern Proust

It was a Proustian summer break, if ever there was one, our latest getaway to Negros Island down south, with side trips to Bohol and Apo Island as unexpected bonuses.

And it was a book on Proust that we read on the boat back to Manila, entitled How Proust Can Change Your Life by Alain de Botton, handed to us by Dumaguete faithful Cesar Ruiz on the eve of departure.

De Botton’s work is classified as not-a-novel, and definitely does not read like one, although in a roundabout, tangential way, much like hopping around the islands in the sun in SuperCats and fishing boats, it can be pieced together like a jigsaw puzzle of the mind.

We’d heard of Proust before, Marcel Proust, the turn-of-20th century French writer who forever redefined the novel form. Swann’s Way must have been a book taken up in college, the French original for majors of European languages. But we learn that In Search of Lost Time is Proust’s magnum opus, which De Botton tells us almost made Virginia Woolf abandon the craft altogether for feeling inadequate upon reading the master’s work.

It is actually a how-to book that is part critical analysis, part tribute and remembrance, but mostly De Botton teaching us new ways of looking at things while, say, on board a WG&A Super Ferry for more than 24 hours, and all worries about SARS can go drown in the deep Visayan seas.

Is the novel dead? This question may enter one’s mind while cruising north at so many knots, and recall the disclosure of Cesar Ruiz over tea at Scooby’s Silliman, about a possible first line of a novel-in-progress which he admitted to be a bit arrogant: "The novel is dead. I am its resurrection."

To which we could only reply, "And remember, we are in the last days of the world!" in imitation of Father Eleuterio Tropa, may the good lamplighter rest in peace, he never did get to see the dawn of his Spaceship 2000, though the presence of his zoo can be felt in Zamboanguita town, Negros Oriental, just before hitting the hills of Bondo to Siaton.

The importance of the first line can never be underestimated. During our trip to Bohol, courtesy of Burce and Montederamos Travel and Tours, we met with our long lost college buddy Clovis Nazareno, the poet of Loon who is concurrent outgoing town councilor.

Over a case of beer in an apartment along C.P. Garcia Ave. in Tagbilaran, with a parakeet squawking comments and asides nearby, Clovis remembered how my father was his teacher in fiction writing, and one of their exercises was to analyze and make comments on the first lines of the stories they’d written.

"The less elaborate the line the better, so you won’t get grilled," he said.

There were 10 rules the class set down on how to write a good, or at any rate credible story, and Clovis said he’s still keeping the list, maybe one day he’ll write an essay on it and send it to the Free Press where it might win a prize.

Tagbilaran, too, was rather Proustian, though it was not the first time we’d been there. Some 20 years ago we also visited the Chocolate Hills with some friends between Christmas and New Year’s, and took a walk through the man-made forest when the trees were still strapping plants smelling of mahogany. Also had a leisurely educational tour of Baclayon church, whose ancient wooden cabinets and artifacts and crumbling documents are better displayed now in a second-floor Third World museum where cameras made in the First World are not allowed.

This time around we were able to visit Loboc River and get a close look at tarsiers, which has my vote for mascot in the 2005 SEA games when Manila hosts the biennial event.

But going back to Clovis, who has written some two chapbooks of poetry, including The Search for Simeon Lugo, he remarked after receiving a call on his cell phone requesting that a dead person’s body be picked up and transported to the funeraria, "Ganyan kasimple ang buhay namin dito."

As simple as the Maytime fiestas in Tagbilaran, which is just 30 minutes drive to Panglao Island across the Bohol Strait, and where the beach is a fine white powder like an ingredient for pastillas de leche.

By the time you read this, the "divahstating divahs" must have already wrapped up their concert in the Bohol capital, and Clovis would still be rhapsodizing over the manok-tin dish, native chicken stewed in newly harvested tuba until the sweet coco liquor runs out.

Apo Island, a different story, was like a water buffalo wallowing in the blue, and we took off for the sculpted rock and coral formations of that imaginary being on a Thursday morning, a two-hour ride aboard the Don Antoy 4 vessel "strictly for fishing purposes only."

Ibid the deckhand was telling a boy that upon landing on Apo the first thing he must do is kiss a rock on dry land. It reeked of superstition but who knows if a child-like belief did not actually spare us from misfortune that sun-filled day?

The marine sanctuary was Proustian, too, in a sense, the water forming shapes around the vast coral reefs and jutting majestic rocks, the undertow a quick memory of time lost and time regained.