Once more unto the beach

Among the flotsam and jetsam washed ashore on the rocky beach past Antulang Beach Resort in Siaton, Negros Oriental, was a waterlogged basketball. Of faded yellow. As heavy as a shot put, with seawater dripping from its hole as I tried to simulate what James Yap might do had he wandered into the area and found the spheroid.

Not unlikely that the superstar would do that sometime, even if he comes from north of the island, as this southern bend of the coastline has attracted showbiz and sports celebrities inclined to check out its underwater attractions.

There are several marine conservation sites in these parts, from Apo Island to Tambobo Bay and another off Dauin, a town closer to Dumaguete. The original conservation site that was Sumilon Island, fostered by the good people of Silliman University in decades past, has since given way to municipal governance (read: Cebu Island) and eventually a Bluewater Resort.

And so we find ourselves on a beach once more, bright morning of the Ides of December, in the last of three days of sun and clear blue skies after that strange spate of rainy days in Manila. The day is full of significations, not the least of which is that basketball. Something else round and soft has grown and matured, fulfilling our yen for a heartwarming sojourn, at best into that breach of nostalgia that has always niched a beloved if adopted hometown. 

Nine writers associated with the City of Gentle People attend the launch of a “family” anthology: Cesar Aquino, Bobby Villasis, Krip Yuson, the editor Merlie Alunan, Susan Lara, Myrna Peña-Reyes, Bing Sitoy, Marj Evasco, and Ian Casocot

There is never any primary reason for revisiting Dumaguete, not even when we last did so to lay flowers at the fresh grave of Mom Edith — National Artist for Literature Edith L. Tiempo for official records.

That was last September. A week earlier, in August, we had also visited her as she lay in state, the same day we found, oh so serendipitously — at the popular Times Mercantile store in downtown Dumaguete — a startling new bottle of single malt whisky from the Isle of Skye: Smokehead 18 Years, 92 proof. We broke it open on the steps of the church that fronted the grassy quadrangle of the SU campus. Mom was 92 when she left us.

This time, ostensibly we came home again to be part of something we could not miss: the book launching on December 14 of The Dumaguete We Know, edited by our good friend, the premier poet, essayist and mentor Merlie Alunan, published by Anvil. Brought together are 25 loving contributors, with the predominant essays and two short fiction pieces by all-too-familiar bylines, all products and/or stewards of the National Writers Workshop:

Eva Rose Repollo, Grace R. Monte de Ramos, Laurie Raymundo, Myrna Peña-Reyes, Jaime An-Lim, Lakambini A. Sitoy, Niccolo Rocamora Vitug, Ian Rosales Casocot, Krip Yuson, Rowena Tiempo-Torrevillas, Timothy R. Montes, Edgar L. Griño, Linda Faigao-Hall, Nino Soria de Veyra, Dinah Roma-Sianturi, Susan S. Lara, Christine Godinez-Ortega, Priscilla Supnet Macansantos, Anthony L. Tan, Marjorie Evasco, Francis C. Macansantos, and Bobby Villasis.

Bookending and spicing up the endearing prose of remembrance are a poem each by Allan Pastrana, the editor, and Cesar Ruiz Aquino.

Antulang Beach Resort’s resident artist Lito Aro

From Pastrana’s “Geography” (its first stanza): “There is a way to go about this place — how I let it/ settle on my left pulse and leave it there, when/ it’s never truly mine, but yours, irretrievably,/ like a word you just said: maybe sleeve, or/ sorrow, stranded in a slowness our arms/ are trying to imitate. The boulevard hangs/ here—not absolutely, but irretrievably—/ with its brief incidents: the breakwater, shop stalls,/ trees. You know how this city works;/ so that when you start to speak in your native/ tongue, everything clicks into place, just/ right, probably unpunished even….”

And here’s Aquino’s one-stanza poem, “Dumaguete, summer of ’62”: “You can’t step into the same town twice, as. Every revisiting poet worth his/ Assassin (the poem) knows: ‘This ain’t it!’/ Rimbaud returns, a small if double if,/ Or is it Lorca: ‘I am at sixty-/ Five, no longer I. I is another.’/ The boy, father of the man bowled over,/ Him who made the phrase his, owned it. NJ,/ Ed, Edith, Franz. Franz, Edith, Ed, NJ./ The greatest workshop panel ever, if/ I may say so, inventing a Dumas/ Goethe where, in 1962, t’was/ Endless early good morning the way the/ Rooster crowed all day. Was Dumaguete.” 

Editor Merlie does well to include, as a grounding preface of sorts, historical facts excerpted from The History of Dumaguete by Prof. Caridad A. Rodriguez, or “Nana Caring,” beloved historian of Negros Oriental. This preface of entries provides the bedrock for what is, after all, a literary collection.

In her foreword, the editor acknowledges this: “Dumagueteños themselves may not recognize the Dumaguete that these writers know. There are, of course, the landmarks, and no doubt they add to our sense of place. On the other hand, the landmarks themselves would not mean much if there were not these unusual human encounters that certain activities institutionalized in the city have made possible.”

She refers specifically to “the Silliman University National Summer Writers Workshop, which celebrated its 50th anniversary in May 2011.” Alunan adds: “…remarkably, it is the common thread running through all of the stories. Consequently, the Dumaguete that emerges from these writers is limned in the strange watery light of the imagination, lustrous at the same time that it is vague, more a thing of feeling than of physical specifications. It is Dumaguete transformed into the inner terrain of memory.”

Another come-on is an ice cream stand at the new lounge added to Gabby’s Bistro of the Florentina Homes complex.

Mismo. Bitaw.

The book was launched at the theater adjacent to the Silliman U. Library, with nine of the contributors present. Significantly, the day also marked the birthdays of the editor, 68, and Dr. “Sawi” Aquino, 69. 

We wouldn’t let them off that easy. Merlie wound up with Myrna Peña-Reyes, Marj Evasco, Susan Lara and Anvil’s Karina Bolasco at Kri, that excellent pan-Asian resto across Silliman Avenue. But since I still have to receive a free resto tee with KRI on it, to which all I’d have to do is add another letter, even without a colon preceding it, I joined another set of friends to celebrate the older birthdate, at Gabby’s Bistro of the Florentina Homes lodging complex.

There we could pop open wine bottles as well as the Isle of Jura, Superstition edition, quart of single malt I had chosen over a yet available Smokehead 18 at the good Times. Hosting the party of nine were the Adrianos — Suyen, Annabelle and Edo, with Ian and I bookending the birthday boy Sawi as his co-conspirators, plus three other special friends who must remain anonymous.

The place had acquired yet another unique building that rose three floors to complement what seemed like a Mediterranean version of Dumaguete’s old belltower. It also had a lounge that served excellent fruits in ice cream — why, yet another come-on to keep revisiting the City of Gentle People. Proprietress Wing del Prado also keeps on adding to the lively art that Dumaguete engenders, the way she paints all the walls herself, with trompe l’oeils and other masterful triumphs.

Aro’s representation in acrylic of Tambobo Bay, as photographed by Annabelle Lee Adriano

We happily noted how Cebu Pacific’s inflight magazine Smile’s December issue had also lauded Dumaguete for the vigor of its writers and artists. Speaking of which, one such artist, the landscape painter and portraitist Muffet Villegas, also came by during dinner. We had met her previously at Antulang Beach Resort, where her small paintings are always a good buy at the gift shop.

And yes, when the meteor shower in the northeastern skies broke up the party that night, we still had a couple of hours to catch the fiery streaks from a better vantage: a pool villa by the sea, where midnight rounded off the sweet experience. And the morning after, we meet again with Antulang’s resident artist, Lito Aro. He is busy at his wonderful studio, but he gifts us with his painting based on Annabelle’s panoramic photograph of Tambobo Bay nearby.

It all comes together. One can step into the same breach twice, and come away blessed each time.