New Filipiniana titles

Here’s another set of recently released local books that readers may want on their shelves. This was supposed to have followed our first omnibus review two weeks ago. But expressing our grief on the demise of our friend the poet Ophie Dimalanta had to take precedence.

Lost and Found and Other Essays by Rica Bolipata Santos (UP Press) collects 26 column essays written for The Philippine Star. As Cristina Pantoja Hidalgo writes in her Foreword, “These essays are well thought out, carefully crafted, lovingly wrought pieces. But most important, they are deeply moving. Trying to put my finger on what makes them so touching, so poignant, several words present themselves honesty, courage, careful attention to the nuances of emotion, to life itself.”

Rica’s earlier essay collection, Love, Desire, Children, Etc. (Milflores Publishing, 2005) won the Madrigal-Gonzalez Best First Book Award, with the judges citing her “luminous little personal narratives” for their “uncommon candor, grace, and humor,” and the way she explored “the uneven terrain of the quotidian with an open compass, unafraid to confront and scrutinize even her own intimate fears, insecurities and confusions.”

Jing Hidalgo adds that Rica Bolipata Santos emerges through it all “clear-eyed and convincing.” The assessment may as well speak of this new set of essays, which deal with such topics as “A Family in Faith”; “On Romance, True Love, and Marriage”; “Confessions of a Romance Novel Addict”; “On Marriage”; “Why I Did a Vagina Monologue”; and “Yes, Margarita, There is a Santa Claus.”

Although the author acknowledges in her Preface that “the pieces in this collection are a bit different from the ones in the first...,” an equal level of luminosity pervades the collection. 

She explains her thematic binder thus: “Lost and Found is an invitation to think about the things we hold dear and how we handle these things and how we lose them, in spite of the attempt to keep them safe and sound. The irony in life is how easy it is to lose that which we hold most dear. As if, as humans beings we cannot help ourselves and ultimately want to see what might happen to us if we ... just let go.”

This she manifests in very clear, engaging terms, with lucidity and levity, however the abiding hallmark of poignancy, as when she remarks on Jennifer Aniston’s imagined hurt upon hearing of Brangelina’s infanticipation, as well as the recent loss of the author’s father.

“I always think of this paperclip I had lost as a kid. I loved the yellow paperclip for some strange reason maybe it was the shape I loved or the color. One day, I lost it. I remember clearly understanding for the first time loss: that it could happen so easily, no matter how vigilant one was, no matter how much one loved something, or someone.

“A few days later, I found it among my clothes. Such joy at the revelation that it was only lost to me. Because that is one thing Jen and I can take hope in: things are never lost completely. They are put away. They are misplaced. Someone else takes them. Sometimes, they are transformed into something else. But nothing ever disintegrates or disappears. That precious paperclip lies somewhere in this world it must have a new shape, or a new color, or even a new form. Just like the love you have for someone who has gone. That love does not disintegrate either. One day when you least expect it (this I can imagine because I am a romantic), you will find that things are less ... achy. You will be amazed at how much the heart can bear. And yes, you and I will be grateful for all that we’ve lost and all that we’ve found. In time.”

In brief, Rica Bolipata Santos, albeit she may sometimes think of herself as a late-blooming writer, has found a strong, inspirational voice something that had always been there, we may suppose, but which was eventually, ultimately transformed into clean craft. Now, with heartwarming insights, it has assumed the power to illumine, inspire, and by itself transform others.

The Kobayashi Maru of Love by Carljoe Javier (published by The Youth and Beauty Brigade) is very now, cool and hip, with all its geek-y affiliations.

In her Introduction, the poet Mookie Katigbak-Lacuesta sums it all up so well:

“Javier’s post-breakup essays, universal in scope and galactic in magnitude, trace the chronological arc from the lover’s disconnection notice, the final severance, the getting by which, depending on one’s predilections, can be the road to ruin or the ultimate fast track to freedom. By turns elegiac riff and breezy romp, these essays are the work of an original mind at play. ... Part One deals largely with the concessions and compromises one makes while in a committed relationship (read spa dates and utilizing chocolate-scented roll-ons, despite their obvious affront to manhood), while Part Two shudders with the new ache of losing a sure thing. Comprised of seven nonfiction shorts that chronicle the first seven days post-break-up, much of the book’s lyricism and pathos are found here. Of this triptych, Part Three is arguably the most winning. In the ensuing essays, Javier chronicles the hijinks, hustling and faux pas that accompany one’s headlong descent into the dating fray. ... Javier’s aches are contemporary and written with an unflinching eye.”

Indeed, there is winning self-deprecation here, not self-pity. The writer knows himself, makes light even of the proferred pathos, which often finds an objective correlative in an ice-cold bottle of beer. Admirable is Javier’s total regard for the ambience entire, inclusive of haphazardly enviable couples, which dwarfs his own hopefully temporary sense of incompleteness. Why, despite being youthful wisdom personified, he speaks to my very heart:

“My powers of courtship have never been a point of pride. In fact, I owe most, if not all, of my relationships and sexual encounters, to the powers of alcohol. It seems that there is an inverse correlation between sobriety and my ability to attract women.”

The infinite prospects of nuclear physics or any imminent nuclear family notwithstanding, Javier plans ahead but looks back at how he has both stepped into and traipsed through a minefield, while escaping dismemberment.

“I thought that I would discover a way to beat the system, a way to overcome the Kobayashi Maru and I would be able to write my happy ending. It didn’t work out that way.

“I do have a happy ending, sort of. It’s not the one that I expected, not the one that I went in search of when I started this book.

“This may reveal the reason for the lack of cohesion in the essays in this book. Art and life were in conflict and it didn’t make for a clean, neat narrative progression. Life offered up starts and stops, situations and realizations without regard to aesthetics. Thus there are narrative essays, contemplative essays, bit of dialogue, and snatches of this or that. It’s a work that not only captures the events after a breakup and the attempts to understand it, but it also shows the process that one goes through.

“And it’s a bloody messy process.”

We are charmingly conned into cohesiveness all right. There is no dismemberment, only the shrugs and Aw Shucks of recall and remembering.

Mama Mary and Her Children, Book 2: True Stories of Real People, by Fr. James B. Reuter, S.J. (co-written with Ma. Rowena Juan Marti and Cherry Castro Aquino), published by Anvil, had its launch a couple of Sundays ago at St. Paul’s College in Quezon City.

Soon after the Mass, I found myself perusing the “stories from real people” about their relationship with Our Lady of which the good father says: “You learn more from real life happening around you than you learn from the fiction of cinema and stage.”

True. There are many accounts here, in the form of letters, telling of the power of transformation from disabilities and diseases, reaffirmation of faith, and momentous visions.

“While we were praying the Rosary, I saw white clouds, some of which were swirling. Then the Blessed Mother appeared, life-size, wearing white, and surrounded by the clouds. She was smiling and her hands were extended downward. I couldn’t take my eyes off her.” Lucila R. Alvero, OCDS

“I was sitting with my wife on the embankment of the River Gave facing the Grotto at Lourdes, waiting for the candlelight procession. Then it came quietly a feeling of ineffable peace. I had no fear, no worry, no cares whatsoever. It was my brief moment of heaven on earth.”-  Miguel C. Sangalang

“Suddenly I felt a soft arm trying to lull me to sleep. I felt the softness of the material of her dress flowing down her arm as it swayed with the wind. I can still remember the peaceful feeling of being able to relax in her arms. I forgot that I was resting on a stone image. It was not stone. It was a soft warm arm comforting me as I cried on her shoulder.” -  Ma. Theresa ZuÑiga-Dimaculangan

All three books cited here are inspirational in their own little ways “little” as a manner of speaking, since they are modest albeit not in an artful manner. But they become large in their reach and power to evoke a smile, a nod, an acceptance, and the appreciation of how authentic and true to oneself these authors are, in their generous sharing.