jeepney-riding always seems to amaze me.
Read Full Entry

Problem: Define a failure. Answer: Someone who is still riding a jeepney after 40.

Read Full Entry

When I was a child our house in Dipolog was the most imposing in the block. Built in the early 1950’s, it was — I remember — a white-painted, two-storey wooden house with arched windows and an added foyer banked by a cement wall added out to look like it was made of large, irregular blocks of stone.
Read Full Entry

You entered the classroom and found your way to the seat a few chairs from mine. I looked at you as your put down that old, rugged bag. Dressed in a red shirt, faded jeans and a worn out pair of sneakers, I wondered to myself what had made you come to school this time.

As if reading my thoughts, you approached me and handed me a flyer. I looked ar the piece of paper and read. It was an invitation for a class walk out tomorrow. “So that’s why,” I said to myself.

Read Full Entry

I remember the day the magic died. But i’d rather remember when it was still there.

Giselle was my cousin. I mean, she still is, but we’re grownups now, or atleast that’s how society classsified us to be.
Two small girls we played in that cramped space in the bodega — a place where nothing is impossible and where dreamlike things can happen. It is the world which only allowed our puppy Sparky, our doll Cleska and a few other selected things that knew how to enjoy a hot summer day.

Read Full Entry

“Defamiliarize the familiar”
Writing gives us ways on how to see things.

The same object is seen from different angles

which then gives the reader the choice

on how they want to see an experience.

“Literature gives us names and symbols in a grammar of experience,

syncronizing feeling with events into an understandable order.”

Kathryn Morton

Literature is not a reflection of reality

but it gives us a glimpse into realities

so we may be able to deepen our understanding of our own realities.

Readers understand what they read in the text

by referring to the universe shared by the writer and themselves.

It is in that universe where the writer and the reader

becomes a continuity of thought

The universe equips readers about the world within the text.

it enables them to understand, react and re-live the experience as if it were their own

Literature helps us savor over and over again

the “distilled spirit” of life.

Is it possible to live LifE twice?

Identities are formed when one goes through life

gets his share of lived experiences

and writes them down to keep the memory alive.

Writers try to connect the abstract ideas with concrete objects and events

to embody the ideas and make them

come to life.

when we decide to keep those memories,

we write them on paper and we let them go

to be part of other people’s memories

“Reading the lived experiences is living life twice

like a piggyback ride you want to go through

over and over again.”