Skip to main content

Post Christmas

Dec 23 and 24 I cooked and cooked -- roast chicken and paella and etcetera. I cooked because there were no columns to write and students to shock.

Then night of Dec 24 I went home to my parents' house in Fairview and my yaya gave me a great back massage, using the best of them all: Vick's Vapor rub. My eyes fluttered, I fell asleep, and woke up the next day -- already Dec 25. It was as if all the irritation of the year, the lumps and the knots and the bumps caused by some super-mega-hyper idiotic people at Comelec and the bribe-givers from some unnamed, big political party have vanished.

And so today I am here, trying to write again. I am going to the phone company to ask them to reformat my cellphone because some bug has embedded itself in it. Then I might go to the wake of satirical writer par excellence Adrian Cristobal, dead of cancer at 75.

Or do that tomorrow and attend the party given by one of my lesbian friends, a cook who looks at the world the way it should be -- one eye skeptical, the other one hopeful.

Do not eat a lot of meat.

Comments

hendrick said…
Hi! Mr. Danton, I'm a student from Ateneo de Naga University and I just love the way you write, so, I wish that you could promote your book here. As much as I would like to be the organizer but I'm powerless to do that. Sorry!

I hope you will win in the 2010 election. Ask help from your fellow writers like Jessica Zafra (my idol)
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
hendrick said…
Oh, and by the way, what is the official website of Pinoy Parazzi? (if there is). Please do tell the bigwigs of that particular tabloid to reach us here in Bicol-at least in Naga or Iriga. Many thanks and God bless.
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
Danton Remoto said…
www.pinoyparazzi.com is the website.

i will tell them to bring the tabloid there.

national book store has a branch now in legaspi. wala pa ba sa naga? i told them ten years ago pa to put one there.

thanks for your kind words.

yes, zafra will help me in 2010.
Friday, December 28, 2007
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A mansion of many languages

BY DANTON REMOTO, abs-sbnNEWS.com/Newsbreak | 10/16/2008 1:00 AM REMOTE CONTROL In 1977, my mentor, the National Artist for Literature and Theater Rolando S. Tinio, said: “It is too simple-minded to suppose that enthusiasm for Filipino as lingua franca and national language of the country necessarily involves the elimination of English usage or training for it in schools. Proficiency in English provides us with all the advantages that champions of English say it does – access to the vast fund of culture expressed in it, mobility in various spheres of the international scene, especially those dominated by the English-speaking Americans, participation in a quality of modern life of which some features may be assimilated by us with great advantage. Linguistic nationalism does not imply cultural chauvinism. Nobody wants to go back to the mountains. The essential Filipino is not the center of an onion one gets at by peeling off layer after layer of vegetable skin. One’s experience with onio...
1 comment
Read more

Five Poems by Danton Remoto

In the Graveyard Danton Remoto The walls round the graveyard Are ancient and cracked. The moss is too thick they look dark. The paint on my grandfather’s tomb Has the color of bone. Two yellow candles we lighted, Then we uttered our prayers. On my left, somebody’s skull Stares back at me: a black Nothingness in the eyes. The graveyard smells of dust Finer than the pore of one’s skin— Dust mixed with milk gone sour. We are about to depart When a black cat darts Across our path, quickly, With a rat still quivering In its mouth. * Immigration Border Crossing (From Sadao, Thailand to Bukit Changloon, Malaysia) Danton Remoto On their faces that betray No emotion You can read the unspoken Questions: Are you really A Filipino? Why is your skin Not the color of padi ? Your eyes, Why are they slanted Like the ones Who eat babi ? And your palms, Why are there no callouses Layered like th...
Post a Comment
Read more

Taboan: Philippine Writers' Festival 2009

By John Iremil E. Teodoro, Contributor The Daily Tribune 02/26/2009 A happy and historical gathering of wordsmiths with phallocentric and Manila-centric overtones *** This is from my friend, the excellent poet and critic John Iremil Teodoro, who writes from the magical island of Panay. I wish I have his energy, his passion and his time to write. Writing needs necessary leisure. But this budding, bading politician has shifted his directions. On this day alone, I have to attend not one, not two, but three political meetings. And there goes that new poem out of the window. Sigh. *** According to Ricardo de Ungria, a poet of the first magnitude and the director of Taboan: The Philippine International Writers Festival 2009, “the original idea was for a simple get together of writers from all over the country who have been recipients, directly or indirectly, of grants and awards from the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA). What happened last Feb. 11 to 13 was far from being ...
2 comments
Read more