01.29.09 kulturnatib

A cup of sea
When in his last column, Raymund Fernandez, wrote about his mother reminding him to always make it or find his way home, I was reminded of my own mother.

She knows that home now is a different, far away address for me and she will want, pray even, for me to always make it to this home.

Yet, she was overjoyed when, just before Christmas, I told her that we were going to be home soon for a visit.

So the past week or so has been spent preparing for this visit, that includes winging across the Pacific with a child too young to have worked out the mechanics of walking yet old enough to try and launch her own flights of fancy. Or, daredevilry, more like.

This is challenging enough without having to also prepare for an exhibit that, by the time the visit is over, will have the preparation window of opportunity open for just a little under two months.

There is more. The exhibit – two simultaneous exhibits actually – is an undertaking of two artist run centers in Vancouver and Ottawa. The idea of the exhibit is to pair artist from both centers – 5 each – with each preparing a concept for a piece that the other of the pair will execute and vice-versa.

And, still more. The parameters, from the curators of the exhibit, state: The artists in this exhibition do not know one another and consequently cannot have a sense of how the artist that receives their instructions will respond. They are not necessarily collaborating, but instead releasing the idea for a work whose production is entirely out of their hands.

This is a double challenge multiplied many times over. There is, first, the blank sheet of the starting point for the initial piece whose end point can only be suggested or hoped for. Then, second, there is the filled up sheet whose final result is far from straightforward.

In fact, the curators allow for one of the pair – or even both -- rejecting the concept of the other but he or she must nevertheless produce a work that will give evidence of this rejection.

So, after many conceptual misses over the course of as many days, a hit. Or, so I hope.

The concept calls for a sculpture/installation entitled, 'A Cup of Sea.'

It states: A cup of tea is a social occasion for many, particularly in Asia. Yet it is also an occasion for personal reflection, inward and outward. While there are many ingredients for tea, the single indispensable ingredient that draws out the contribution of all the other ingredients is water; hot, preferably just before boiling water.

Water is, of course, the one ingredient that makes life as we know it possible. We are surrounded by, even constituted of water. The great Pacific Ocean is home to many. Humans as well as other creatures.

My birth and adopted homes are connected through the Manila-Vancouver route that arcs over the Pacific. Like water in general and the oceans and seas in particular, there are many threats and challenges to it or to them that impact on humans and other creatures. There is, now more than ever, a need for reflection on and about our cup of sea. The artwork is a contribution to or an invitation to such reflection.

While working out the possible elements to the work I came upon a fact that can only be considered serendipitous; Cebu City and Vancouver are close to being exactly positioned opposite each other on the globe.

Both lie close to longitude 123° though Vancouver is further north in latitude by more than 30°.

There are many things that can be said about this. The one I prefer is that with this exhibit I can't be too far from home in both art and life.

01.22.09 kulturnatib

It is not often that I am this early for my column. This isn't scheduled for publication until the 22nd, next Thursday. But, I just had to write this after reading Raymund Fernandez's column that lately he now sends me. He has yet to set up something like this blog and I did not long ago subscribe to his RSS in CDN online. As I have said before, this is one of the advantages of being subscribed to this blog. You get my columns earlier than the published version, though, I would still encourage you, once again, to buy the paper. If you can. And then, as always, I won't mind hearing from you. Salamat.


Where heart takes you
Raymund Fernandez's latest column about Ed Alegre's passing on saddened me. But it also filled me with wonder and amazement at how circles or ripples of circumstance overlap or flow into each other connecting our often distant and disparate lives together forming bonds that loosen or tighten depending on our current situations and dispositions.

Last Saturday my wife and I were at a memorial service. We hardly knew the person being memorialized. We began to know him only when he was well on his way to succumbing to cancer. Even then, it was knowing only about the bare facts about him.

The barest of which is that he is the father of a friend. The senior to our friend, the junior, who we didn't know to be so until his father's name in the funerary directory led us to where the memorial service was to take place.

Here, as in most of North America, seniors and juniors are usually not part of the legal nor even common name. Especially with the juniors, unlike the way it is with us where Jun is a most common name or nickname which then gets confused with, mistaken for or mistakenly substituted for June or other similar sounding nomenclature.

Our friend's name, as it happens, is a perfect set-up for such confusion, if he were Filipino or a full-blooded one. Or when he is the Philippines.

Jean was my immediate boss when we worked together in Riyadh many years ago. We forged a friendship beyond work that was unusual if unremarkable were it not for the strict though not openly acknowledged work or professional hierarchies there that had the whites mostly at the top, the Filipinos somewhere in the middle, and the South Asians – Bangladeshis, mostly – at the bottom.

This, thanks to Jean who initiated the breaking down of this barrier which we, particularly in the art section, reciprocated by 'adopting' the Bangladeshi gopher – officially, tea boy -- assigned to us.

Even after deciding not to renew my contract our friendship continued especially with Jean paying me – or the Philippines – a visit soon after I returned home.

It was one ripple in that visit that interacted with a ripple mentioned in Raymund's column that in turn propagated other ripples that connect Ed Alegre, however peripherally, with Jean's father.

In that column Raymund mentions Tabo, this cultural project he worked directly, among others, with Ed's wife, Joycie. After the launch in Tacloban, the project moved to Iloilo, then Cebu.

In Cebu, it took place in a not quite dilapidated warehouse. A perfect venue for what was a mishmash of artistic expressions including a musical one that saw myself being dragged into playing the electric guitar with an impromptu band whose self-appointed leader – who owned the instruments and the warehouse – just gave me the barest idea of what to play while handing me the guitar.

Three chord reggae, he said then proceeded, on the keyboards, to play the wildest electronoize south of Kraftwerk or Krautrock.

I'm not sure the impression this made on Jean who I invited to this event thinking to give him a taste of the emerging Bisayan culture. I know though that he was thoroughly taken by this girl, a student of Raymund and by then my close friend as well, who was also present looking more bemused than confused at our attempts at music.

Jean and Renzi have since been inseparable, made even more so with, now, two boys, the eldest for whom during his baptism both Raymund and myself stood as godfathers.

Raymund ends his column with a lesson he learned from Ed: It is a wise man who travels only to where his heart takes him.

Surely, this applies to Jean. And if I might be so bold, myself as well. That's why I now live in the same country and province as Jean, just a few blocks away from where his father used to live and only ripples away from friends like Raymund in this ever expanding and inclusive circles of life. And, even, death.

01.15.09 kulturnatib

Geophagy
One of the the characters in Gabriel García Márquez's 'A Thousand Years of Solitude' is Rebeca.

Among her memorable traits or quirks that is supposed to be among the contributors to the 'magic' in the magic realism of this book and the general writing style of Marquez is that she eats earth or soil.

In an address to a group of writers, Marquez said that while his most popular works have been labeled magic realism it is really just simple, everyday realism he writes about. He cited letters he has received from all over the world about personal testimony to events in his books that has really happened to them or to other people, soil eating among them.

Technically this is called geophagy and is indeed being resorted to by a growing number of people. It is, however, not so much magic as it is tragic.

The newspaper we get everyday is running a series on the worldwide food crises. There are the grim statistics, graphs, pictures, illustrations, analyses, feature stories, etc., that make for an interesting and pleasant (visually, at least) read – the subject is dire enough, why not make it a bit more palatable?

One of the feature stories immediately caught my attention, reminding me of Rebeca. Only this time it wasn't just about an individual but groups of people or entire communities.

A search later in the internet revealed that this story has been carried by most major newspapers and news organizations worldwide. Yet for the paper we subscribe to and for most people here the feature could have a special resonance or point of empathy as the country in the story is francophone, a country where French or some version of it is the lingua franca.

Haiti is one of the poorest countries in the world. Alongside crushing poverty is widespread hunger made even worse by the international food crises that has seen food imports becoming more expensive. This led to food riots last summer and the eventual fall of the government.

The poor in Haiti have now resorted more and more to eating soil or clay. Galettes d'argile, they are called or clay cookies.

While clay is the main ingredient which gives it its mostly yellowish hue making them look like regular cookies, they also contains salt and vegetable shortening, which make it a bit more expensive than free but way more affordable than the imported staples.

These are considered one of Haiti's traditional remedies mostly for pregnant women and children. A source of calcium for the former and an antacid for the latter.

Still, the health impact of this food is under scrutiny – Gerald Callahan, an immunology professor at Colorado State University who has studied geophagy suggests that dirt can also strengthen the immunity of fetuses in the womb to certain diseases – yet, it is widely accepted that relying on this alone can lead to serious malnutrition.

An accompanying whole page infographic showed the extent of the world wide food crises. In absolute numbers, Asia – with India and China in the lead – is experiencing the most critical situations of hunger.

The Philippines doesn't figure in this map. Not yet. It doesn't mean that there is no hunger in the Philippines. It just hasn't reached critical levels.

But given the continuing and increasing obsession of the Arroyo government with changing the constitution, the continuing scandals in almost all branches of government, the deepening international economic crisis, the tipping point might come sooner than later.

Then we will have our own version of creative cuisine. The ingredients could be different and dirt cheap won't probably have dirt in it, but just the same it will be desperate.

01.08.09 kulturnatib

Prediction
Fortune, like luck, can be either good or bad. A credible fortune teller will reveal both. Maybe not in equal doses, although depending on the inquirer's disposition, either one could be taken to weigh heavier than the other.

This teller could then be expensive. Or, entirely free. And even fun, in cases where the fortune predicted is neither about one's self, family, someone close or someone in the immediate neighborhood.

That was what we -- myself with my wife's family – were after most while counting down the minutes towards the just ushered in new year.

Fun, yes but without the frivolity. Serious fun, if that doesn't sound oxymoronic.

Proof of this are the printed forms that were passed around for us to fill up with our predictions. In the end though, one person became the involuntary secretary, who wrote down the predictions as they were contributed, questioned or agreed with.

At first it was a free for all with no apparent rhymn nor particular reason, except that, as expected, they hewed close to the interests or current preoccupations of the contributors; The father about provincial and national politics, the brothers about technology, etc.

Fun as it was, I wasn't really into it. First, I was occupied with the computer, finishing a collaborative gift for our friends. This was an extension of the DIY (do-it-yourself) Christmas gift exchange we initiated for the immediate family under the banner, “Joyeuses Faites.” And part of our general desire for this year to buy less, by more.

This banner was a play on the usual holiday greetings here, which is, Joyeuses Fetes. Or, Happy Holidays. With our banner, it means, literally, Happy Makings or, as we preferred, Happy Creatings.

Second, as the immediately preceding paragraphs might have clued some of you in, the proceedings were done almost entirely in French. Quebecois French to be exact. Exactly the language that, despite recent formal schooling – interrupted though, I still manage to only stumble through.

Despite this, I did manage to chime in every now and then, predicting, for example, that the Chinese would beat everybody else at mass-producing the first pluggable electric compact car. Whether this was going to be a good car wasn't part of the prediction.

But, it wasn't until I was asked pointblank that I started thinking hard. The question: Any predictions for the Philippines?

My answer after a few minutes: There will be more public demonstrations against the government especially its plans to ram through constitutional change in preparation for keeping GMA in power beyond 2010.

Philippine politics is not an immediately familiar subject here. But the martial law period is sufficiently known that it is can be recognized that a similar situation is approaching where a president for entirely selfish reasons will tinker with the constitution in order to legitimize moves to extend the hold on power.

This president is not even legitimately elected to begin with. This is the biggest scandal that the Filipinos will now finally realize as the most persuasive reason against charter change and to once again convene the parliament of the streets.

My most recent readings of my favorite columnists seem to bear this out. As 2010 draws closer the machinations of Malacanang are also revving up which are only getting all to obvious to the most ordinary, uninterested, unpoliticized Filipino.

From where I am this prediction seems too far out in time and space. But soon I shall be closer and shall have a better view of this prediction becoming history.