Writers' tears

A small group of poets and writers had wonderful occasion to break bread one evening recently with visiting Fil-Am author Lara Stapleton. This took place at the Wine Lounge on the second floor of Ninyo, that attractive garden-setting resto on Esteban Abada St. in Loyola Heights, parallel to Katipunan Ave.

Ninyo used to be Inyo, a well-kept but well-attended neighborhood secret, but which was renamed after the young, masterful chef himself, Niño Laus, a finalist in this year’s Fusion Cuisine category in the Best Kept Restaurant Secrets awards.

Lara had e-mailed as early as November, that she would be around for only a little over a week in early January, to visit relations. She had heard of how we Katips folk had feted the poets Joseph Legaspi, Sarah Gambito, and most recently Patrick Rosal — all her friends and colleagues at the Big Apple — with invitational readings and of course a lot of booze.

I recall that when I first met Lara over dinner at Manhattan’s Pinoy Cendrillon resto, in 1995 I think, after we had been introed through e-mail by our common writer-friends Eric Gamalinda and Gina Apostol, we also broke bread (that night, excellent revved-up adobo) and killed more than a bottle, of wine and beers. So I knew she was at least a quarter of the lush that I admittedly am.

Jimmy Abad, Karina Bolasco, Joy Cruz and Lorely Trinidad wait expectantly for their turns at the bottle, and/or to read.

I asked her to reserve Friday, Jan. 7, for our get-together somewhere in Loyola Heights. If classes hadn’t only started that week, why, I would have arranged for a reading and talk by her, either before my class or as a Dept. of English-sponsored literary activity open to literature and creative writing students.

The next bet for a venue would have been Mag:net, which had hosted Legaspi, Gambito, and Rosal for poetry readings and drinking bouts, as well as Anthem Salgado from California and Rodney Garcia from Virginia on earlier occasions — when these Fil-Am writer stalwarts came to visit.

The one that got away was Aimee Nezhukumatathil, also NYC-based, a poet whose works strike me as among the very best of contemporary Filipino and Filipino-American verse. I had already arranged for her to read and deliver a talk in Ateneo, then join us for a reading in Mag:net. But she was in that interesting stage, and a trip with her husband up North rendered her in a delicate condition. She said she wouldn’t want to barf before a podium or onstage. A pity we had to cancel, as Aimee’s poems are no less than terrific

Now, Lara’s work in fiction has always had me just as impressed, so that I make sure to take up at least one of her tough-delicate short stories from her book The Last Blue Flame Before Nothing in my Fiction Workshop class, to set the bar high for the workshoppers.

Mag:net was out, since our buddy, the inimitable impresario Rock Drilon, needed some time and apace to get back to his own creative pursuit as a painter. He had given so much of both to the cause of developing young artists, writers, musicians and filmmakers over the past few years. Now he needs a break, for solo communion with his muse.

I asked Niño’s sister Carla, who takes charge of Ninyo’s Wine Lounge, if we could have the tidy, cozy place to ourselves for a private literary gig. She was gracious, as always, even waving the fee for such private reservations.

The usual suspects came: poet and super-mentor Jimmy Abad who just walked from his place a couple of long blocks away; Anvil Publishing director Karina Bolasco, who could also have walked from her Xavierville home; fiction writer Joy Cruz, who was visiting for a few days from Davao City where she teaches at UP Mindanao; the premier poet Marne Kilates, who runs the elegant international poetry e-zine, Poets’ Picturebook; the multi-awarded neighborhood poet Joel Toledo, now the new literary editor of Free Press magazine, and soon looking towards a paradisiacal fellowship at the Bellagio Center off Lake Como in Italy; Palanca-winning fiction writer Daryll Delgado; the poet-painter Pancho Villanueva; and the literary couple of the Brangelina mold (or maybe even an Ed/Edith Tiempo tandem look-alike — for both looks and literary talent), the prizewinning poet and new mother Mookie Katigbak Lacuesta and her coeval date, the new father and prizewinning fiction writer Sarge Lascuesta, who had to give up his FP literary editorship so he can fully partner in attending to little Lucky.   

Lara came with her friend Lorely Trinidad, a Fil-Am lady who’s also into writing as well as cultural research and promotion; she presently helps out Gardy Labad for his arts and culture projects in Bohol.

The author, a joyous bottlekeeper, with his Irish buddy Jimmy

A few nights previous, Jimmy and I had dropped in briefly at Lara’s first reading gig, as organized by Noel Shaw, at Black Soup Cafe on Maginhawa St. in Sikatuna Village. But we couldn’t stay as we had Danny Dalena’s 50th birthday bash to attend, in Kamuning.

So it was a full dozen of us around that long table at Ninyo. We had excellent treats from the menu (including wasabi-laced oysters!), and bottles of red wine. And we had something special to pass around — for those who cared for a taste of Writers Tears blended whiskey from Ireland.

The bottle was a Christmas gift from Dr. Leo Garcia, who had received it from a Belgian friend who hand-carried it on a visit here. Leo said that with the whiskey’s known literary association (or maybe literature’s known alcoholic association), he immediately thought of passing it on to Loyola Height’s foremost lush. 

Writers Tears is classified as a Pure Pot Still Whiskey, one of the three whiskey styles common to Ireland (note that like Americans they have to add an “e” to the Scots’ “whisky” — as the latter zealously protect their edition’s nomenclature). The other two Irish styles are Single Malt and Single Grain. The Pure Pot Still Whiskey is traditionally made from a mixture of malted and unmalted barley distilled in a pot still, making it unique to Ireland.

As we opened the handsome box, we noted that one side sported the following literature:

“Ireland has been blessed with great poets and playwrights down through the centuries. However, most, if not all our great writers suffered from writer’s block. Many sought comfort and inspiration from ‘The water of life’.... whiskey. It was said that when an Irish writer cried, he cried tears of whiskey.

“Writers Tears is a salute to these great writers with a style of whiskey that was popular in Joyce’s Dublin.”     

Thus did we salute James, and mock-wept as if we were at Finnegan’s wake. (I know that that darned FB has been purveying a black-and-white photo, taken by that perp Joel Toledo, showing this bottle keeper wallowing in grief beside the bottle. So now I present another, more realistic visual documentation, showing Sir Jim as the true Irishman.)

Lara Stapleton reads from her stories at Ninyo’s Wine Lounge, as Pancho Villanueva, Daryll Delgado and Sarge Lacuesta listen intently.

Thence Lara read excerpts from her stories, and we all applauded, far from lugubriously, around the table. Thence each one of us read or recited verse or story excerpts, as if to prove to our counterparts from the Emerald Isles that here we suffer from no block at all, but are ever ready to offer our sympathy, and comfort everyone by imbibing their tears in liquid kinship.

A late arrival was prizewinning bilingual poet Mikael de Lara Co, who had rushed from his Palace office still in a shirt and tie. We couldn’t commiserate with him, of course; we knew he too suffered no writer’s block. In fact he produced priceless bilingual gems of presidential speeches. And that night in fact he was all for transporting the party to yet another venue, for more rock ‘n’ roll.

Tears for our fears? Naah. Ulysses would’ve been proud, the way we behaved like Dubliners out on a pub crawl, even as the world outside Ninyo — once we thanked Lara and Lorely for their central presence — smelled and tasted of Araby.