Each of us is marked by the memories of words spoken to us.

Alastair Begg on the power of words: 

Each of us is marked by memories of words spoken to us. Perhaps we reflect on the joy of a child's first words or still feel the bitterness of a friend's hurtful words. From our earliest days, we learn how to use words both to bring harm and to bring gladness. King Solomon was right: "Death and life are in the power of the tongue" (Proverbs 18:21).

Lake Street Dive!

I discovered Lake Street Dive through their interview with David Remnick in the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm a huge fan. My favorites: Hypotheticals, and Shame, Shame, Shame.  They have such great song titles! Their songs make me so happy that I listen to them early in the morning on my way to work, or after-lunch commuting, or late night drives back home. 

I’ve been playing out a lot of hypotheticals in my mind
I’ve been writing your name down next to mine
Been imagining all the things you and I could do oo oo


I’ve seen all the possibilities in my dreams
You’re alone when you should really be next to me
Baby, let’s not wait and see

I played the song to my mother, who said, "Nami man. Pero daw kabudlay kantahon."

My Kindle Oasis

I don't want to describe my feelings toward the Oasis as "love-hate" but that's the most concise, accurate, and precise way to capture my sentiments. It's a near-perfect device, if not for the lousy battery that I have to recharge every one or two days—that, with the wifi and bluetooth turned off, and the lights at level 13. Compare that with my trusted Kindle Paperwhite, whose battery lasts me weeks. I loaned the Paperwhite to my mother, who now uses it to read John Calvin's The Institutes. 

I'm reading The Best Short Stories 2023: The O. Henry Prize Winners edited by Lauren Groff. I discovered this collection because I'd just read The Haunting of Hajji Hotak by Jamil Jan Kochi in The New Yorker. Terrific storytelling. Now a fan, I looked him up and discovered that his story appears the 2023 O. Henry anthology. My favorites in that collection so far include Dream Man by Cristina Rivera Garza, The Locksmith by Grey Wolf LaJoie, Happy Is a Doing Work by Arinze Ifeakandu, Elision by David Ryan, and Xífù by K-Ming Chang. 

Now, where is my charger?

Congratulations to the Rotor Awards for Literature finalists!

I had so much fun writing the story. The process took me at least two to three months, since I'm a slow writer. I lived in my character's head during those times. After submission (because at some point, I just had to accept that there would always be errors in grammar or syntax, and improvements could always be made), I'd almost forgotten all about the story, the way I would temporarily forget about my students the moment the semester ends and a new one begins. I had, in a sense, already moved on. 

Last Friday I received the news from my chat groups that my work is a finalist to this prestigious competition. It was when I'd remembered "Nap9" again. 

What amplifies my joy is seeing friends on this list: Dr. Elvie, who had just won a Palanca for a children's short story, and whose poetry I adore; and Dr. Mich, whose novel ("Before High School Ends") I have yet to read. Shipping seems to take a very long time, and I can't wait to read her young adult fiction.

In the non-fiction category, I'm glad to see the names of Dr. Rey, who excels in both fiction/non-fiction categories, having published his stories in the Free Press; and Ma'am Sonia, who was a mentor during my training in Internal Medicine at the Philippine General Hospital, and whose work was included in a post-pandemic special issue of The Filipino Internist. 

The reward of writing is the process of living in my created world. In my imaginations, I am grasping for the tone and words to share with the reader what I see and hear from that window of life. This is then followed by the satisfaction of having written. But I am thrilled—and for this, I give thanks to God Almighty, from Whom all the great stories emerge—to be recognized. 

Typecast 14: Traveling with high school friends

 

(Click image to enlarge. I used a Hermes Baby 3000 to write this.)

The first order of business when I return from a trip is to write about it. 

I get asked what my favorite travel destination is. I say it's the most recent trip I'd been to.

My answer is invariably the same, but also varies depending on what time the question is asked. For instance, if you ask me that now, my answer would be Taipei, because that's where I traveled for the first time with my high school friends. I had been to Taiwan before, but with different people. They were my residency batch mates in PGH Internal Medicine, to celebrate the end of residency, in 2018 I loved those times, and I miss those people. I bought a fountain pen in the city, a piston filler that has cracks now but can still be coaxed into renewed usefulness.

This recent trip with high school friends was conceived of during a baptismal party in Marbel. Daphny, Vanessa, and Willie were seated on the same table. I broached the subject of travel. Find a good price for a round trip ticket, book early enough, and block the date in the calendar. I tend to delegate these tasks to others: I’m an ambitious thinker, with very little follow-through. Katty overheard us. We didn’t include Katty because she had children. Mothers live jn a vastly different world, have a different priorities. But Katty, who had just given birth at that time, seemed determined to come with us. We also dragged Christopher along. He wasn’t around, but we couldn’t imagine this trip without him.

We may have forgotten about the trip or the booking, until someone reminded us we had tickets. By this time our small group was swimming in deadlines and work, the stuff of mature life, ambition, and need. As the busiest among us, I said I'd go through with the trip. The tickets had been booked, after all. Sayang naman. I had blocked off my calendar. I did not schedule chemotherapy sessions or out-patient cliinics during that time. Perhaps it was my resolve that reminded everyone in the chat group—which was how we had been communicating—to take a step off our real lives and take a quiet moment to see another part of the world (literally and figuratively).

On the day of our flights, Katty and Willie were in my dining room, having breakfast at my house. We were driving to the airport together. Our flight to Manila was in the afternoon. I had to do some rounds. I saw patients in the clinic who were only too happy to shoo me away. They said, “Have fun, Doc, you deserve it." I love my patients and am grateful for their lives. 

In the evening we flew to Taipei. Christopher, who always likes doing things at the very last minute, met us at NAIA. He did not get left behind. He is notorious for missing his flights. We had two glorious days of laughter and catching up. Then Daphny and Vanessa, who had to rebook their flights because of work commitments—Daphny’s job interview, Vanessa’s new work environment—eventually met us in the bustling Taiwan capital, and it felt like it was high school again. In a way, we were the same people, but different.

September na

Oasis, Gone Girl, and Small Mercies

I bought a Kindle Oasis from Amazon because it was on sale. As far as I know, Amazon has discontinued making Oasis. That almost always thrills me—the collection of things that will soon disappear. Like typewriters. 

Kindles are wonderful devices. I've had my Kindle Paperwhite for seven years; it works just as well as when it had first arrived. But I was curious about the Oasis. I like real buttons to click when I turn pages. The physicality of reading gives me pleasure, like the turning of the pages, or the smell of books, both old and new.

How does Oasis compare with Paperwhite? The Oasis offers a more premium reading experience—warm light, better screen, and the buttons you can actually click. Then there's the ergonomic design: the uneven surface at the back that juts out for your hand to grab. It feels like reading an actual book. But the battery life is lousy. As someone who reads for hours each day, the Oasis gets drained after three days. I do not relish the ritual of charging my devices. In comparison, I can use the Paperwhite for weeks without ever charging it. I like that its back is in plastic, which feels more comfortable to my hand (I have bouts of hyperhidrosis), compared to the Oasis' aluminum surface. 

In the end, I'd very much prefer the Paperwhite. I do not regret buying the Oasis. It is still a wonderful device. It would have been much, much better if it had a longer battery life.

Now that the review of the Kindles are done, let me tell you about the two books I've read in my Oasis. 

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn, which was an absolute delight. 

And Small Mercies by Dennis Lahane, which was the kind of fast-paced book that felt like watching a film.

Lolo inside a Seoul café

I saw him napping and browsing his phone.

CALL FOR APPLICATIONS: The Fifth La Salle National Creative Non-Fiction Writers’ Workshop for Health Care Professionals & Medical Interns . Deadline: September 30, 2024

The previous La Salle National Creative Nonfiction Writers’ Workshop for Doctors has been re-designed as a hybrid two-part workshop. It is also now open to writers among Health Care Professionals (Physicians, Nurses, and allied Medical Professionals) and Medical Interns. The workshop is focused on Creative Nonfiction narratives (in prose or poetry), based on personally experienced or witnessed true-to-life stories, which are well-told using fictional techniques.

Applications for the 10 competitive national workshop fellowships is now open for the 5th La Salle National Creative Nonfiction Writers’ Workshop for Health Care Professionals and Medical Interns. The deadline for submission of applications is on September 30, 2024.

This Workshop is part of the BNSCWC’s efforts to boost collaborations and critical-creative exchanges between scientists and artists; to train health care professionals in the art of life-writing; and to give value to the stories written by health care professionals in caring for our people and in building the nation.

The hybrid workshop shall consist of eight synchronous sessions on Wednesday and Thursday evenings (6:00 p.m.-9:00 p.m. via Zoom) across four weeks. Part I, from October 30-31, 2024 will consist of lecture-discussions on the Art of Writing and Close-Reading Creative Nonfiction. Part II, from Nov. 20-Nov. 28, will consist of workshop discussions on the fellows’ submitted creative work. The culminating program on Nov. 29, 2024 will be held onsite at De La Salle University. 

Marjorie M. Evasco, DLSU’s Writer-in-Residence and Professor Emeritus of Literature, is the workshop director. She will be joined by Drs. Joey A. Tabula and Lance Isidore Catedral as panelists.

Submit the application portfolio here: https://bit.ly/5thLasalleNationalCNFWorkshop2024.

Dew

The walk

Because I'm the one left at home—everyone else is abroad or doing something—I trick Paul to come near me, and I tie his leash, first on his neck, with another hoop around his upper body, for good measure. He is strong and forgets he has a human to obey when he's out of the gate. He goes straight to the dirt road on the other street. He immediately chews on wild grass, and bows his head to smell whatever it is that dogs smell, raising his hind legs to pee to mark his territory. With my earphones on I listen to podcasts and greet passersby, occasionally speaking to Paul like I would to a child. The children adore Paul and pat him. Paul enjoys the attention. At the end of the road, the big black dog Victor growls at him. He was once Paul's best friend and now, for reasons unknown to everyone in the neighborhood, has become the fiercest enemy. I drag Paul away from the street and head over to ours—the quieter row of houses—and Paul realizes that he is getting older and more mature, and the bowl of fresh water is better than another round of walking.

Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower and Jamil Jan Kochai's the Haunting of Hajji Kotak

A great year for reading so far. 

Jamil Jan Kochai's The Haunting of Hajji Kotak and Other Stories was a treat. It's a powerful but tender writing about men and women in Afghanistan. He's brilliant.
 

After church, I finished Octavia E. Butler's Parable of the Sower. A young lady organizes a community built along her theology called Earthseed. The novel is set in a dystopic United States. Now I need to read something lighter. What do you recommend?

*

As you may have noticed, I'm having fun with Hipstamatic. The photos, filtered and made to look like they were taken by an analog camera, remind me of the good old days of the internet, when everything seemed safe and everyone had a quiet space in the web. 

Cats and dogs

Lovely covers from The New Yorker.

Caloy wins gold!

Carlos Yulo, winning the Olympic gold:

“We are a really small country and the portion of athletes is not the same as the US or UK, so to be able to get a gold medal is really big for us,” he said after. “I dedicate this to the Filipinos who supported me. I’m really grateful to them. I want to say thank you for watching and praying for me throughout the competition.”

And just beautiful journalism from the Philippine Daily Inquirer:

PARIS, France — Twice, Carlos Yulo let out a roar during the floor exercise finals of men’s gymnastics in the Paris Olympics. 

The first came after he stuck a cold landing to cap his routine, a primal yell that let the world know he had done exactly what he had come to do late Saturday evening (Manila time)—produce an almost perfect run that would be the standard to beat for the title.

The second came when the judges agreed with him.

The wait that came after was tense, but it seemed only to prolong a forgone conclusion: Filipino greatness was on the global stage once again.

In this country where good news is hard to come by, this is refreshing news.

Pens

Norman Maclean

So far, so good. That much I can say about 2024 as a year for reading. 

I finished Norman Maclean's story, "A River Runs Through It," this morning. He wrote it when he was in his seventies. I learned about Norman through Kathryn Schulz's piece in The New Yorker. 

. . . You can’t capture Maclean’s brilliance just by quoting him. Much of what he did best was architectural, and the strength of his writing often comes from the soundness of his structures, large and small. A beguiling setup leads to a punch line, or to a gut punch; the oomph of a sentence derives from how perfectly it caps or how swiftly it topples the ones that came before. My copies of his books are filled with underlinings that sometimes run for pages on end before terminating in an exclamation point.

Rambutan

Before they're ready for picking. 

A "gallery of living experience"

Alastair Begg, in Truth for Life: 365 Daily Devotions:

What a great sadness it is when churches become like dusty old libraries, filled with so many lives that are like volumes of truth just sitting there, never used. The temptation as we become increasingly aware of the truth is just to sit and think about it without ever taking action. James put that kind of life in stark terms: it is to deceive yourself. No—a church is to be a gallery of living experience. There out to be a vibrancy about believers, so that when we face the world's many problems—problems we ourselves are not immune to—we can see them for what they are and respond by holding out the truth of God's word as we ourselves live it out. 

Best books list

The New York Times is releasing its list of The 100 Best Books of the 21st Century on installment. I don't take any list seriously—unless we're talking of board exam passers or, my goodness, the yearly PGH Sunog List. The Times list is a consensus, a set of collected opinions, affected by feelings and some level of objectivity. 

Still . . . I am hooked. Enumerations like these are fascinating to read. I discover writers I hadn't heard of before, such as Lucia Berlin, whose short story collection, "A Manual for Cleaning Women," I'd just downloaded in Kindle. The writer Lydia Davis, whom I adore, heaps praises about Berlin's work. I figured there must be something in Berlin's books.

I'm still waiting for names like Marilynne Robinson, Cormac McCarthy, Salman Rushdie, and so much more, to show up. What about Lorrie Moore, Joan Didion, Jonathan Safran Foer, JK Rowling, David Sedaris, Miranda July, John Updike?

But I love the list because they show photos of book covers, crumpled on the edges, the way we know that a book has been read and, perhaps, loved. For instance, you can also view what books Stephen King chose, and proceed from there. The list offers a better alternative to internet algorithms. 

There are, of course, books that I would include, if I'd been asked. But I am not a "literary luminary." The list misses out on a lot of theological and religious books, and books in English written by authors who live elsewhere—but the list makers and you, the reader, already know that. 

The greatest value of such lists is the opportunity to discover writers and works, and to read others write about the books they love, which is part of the fun. Reading is a solitary exercise, but the enjoyment is amplified when other people, especially your friends and people you admire, talk about the books that have changed, entertained, and moved them and you, quietly and curiously, ask them, "Tuod ka? Nami na?"

***

It's Elena Ferrante's My Brilliant Friend that gets the number one spot. I love Elena Ferrante! I remember the time when, tired from walking around Milan, I entered a dark café to rest my legs and read a few chapters from the book. The chapter was, incidentally, based in Milan! My actual experience of the city enriched my reading of the book.

Inside a French restaurant in Cebu

"Shy ako."