This is not a parody of Jose “Butch” Dalisay’s novel, Killing Time in a Warm Place. I just thought that as I am killing time here in the middle of Bryant Park, surrounded by people, a flock of fat birds, and possibly, a horde of harmless park rats hiding in the thick bushes, no other title will work quite as perfectly as the one above this paragraph. I know Professor Dalisay will not take offense as I dutifully sat in his classroom starry-eyed (bleary-eyed too from the late college night outs) and well-behaved during his lectures a million and a half years ago.
This is not my first time in this park. But it is my first time with a laptop. I figured that if I was going to kill time, I might as well do it in a manner that will make Prof. Dalisay proud. And how will I do that? Why, by writing of course! The other week, I was sitting here with a book in my hand, and if not for the homeless guy who was wearing two denim skirts (a micro-mini worn over a long acid-washed one – so 80s!), I would have finished the novel in a matter of hours. But the skirt-wearing homeless guy amused and distracted me and it went downhill from there. I ended up stashing the book inside my bag, resigned. With all the frenetic activity around me, finishing up the book would be close to impossible. So I sat back, sipped my warm coke, and spent the whole afternoon ogling 12 men wearing yellow hard hats while being serenaded by a group of would-be musicians tapping their bongo drums. The men were muscled, grimy, and sweaty – a visual paradox to the pristinely white, pretentious and chi-chi looking tent they were constructing for the Mercedes Benz Fashion Week.
New York is always bustling with activity, and for someone like me, it could both be inspiring and irritating. Inspiring because there’s so much material to write about here and irritating because I constantly crave for peace and quiet – a personality quirk, if you may. But I’m here now in the middle of the crowded park with my fully-charged laptop, so if I can’t get my peace and quiet, then I’ll just be inspired.
The truth is, inspiration can be found everywhere. There was no need to lug my laptop all the way here. I could’ve just stayed in my sister’s apartment across the Hudson River in my ratty pajamas and I could be writing about more interesting things than hobos in skirts. It’s just typical of me, orchestrating this whole writing-in-the-park thing, adding a bit of drama to the tedium. Nowadays, you don’t have to go anywhere, all you need is Wi-Fi, some junk food, a little bit of caffeine, and you’ll be transported in a different world and get lost in the rich labyrinth of information and ideas in the www.
Case in point, I was surprised to know that my two-part TNT review of Meyer’s Twilight saga was mentioned in a couple of web and fan sites here in the US and the UK. These sites quoted some paragraphs from my review and linked my column to their web pages. I was ecstatic of course, and marveled at how my little article got entangled in all these sites because when I typed “Twilight reviews” in Google, there were 13,700,000 results! As I said in my blog, being a writer can often be unrewarding, but rare moments like this make me grateful. It's just fulfilling not to be trivialized, to know that somewhere, someone out there is reading what you have written, spending precious minutes savoring the very words you have composed, and finding meaning in them -- and yes, enough meaning to quote you, appreciate you, and share you with the rest of the world. So, that’s inspiration enough for me.
And then, the other day, I discovered
Switchfoot (I‘m the Nina Simone, Bic Runga type so the band is quite a leap for me, even if it is in fact, a Christian band) while I was searching for
Anne of Green Gables in YouTube. Quite far-fetched really, if you think about it, to discover rock music while looking for the classics. Also, as I was searching for anything about Yann Martel, the author of my current favorite book and Man Booker Prize winner
Life of Pi (an inspiring story about an Indian boy in a lifeboat with a Bengal tiger), I was consumed by the urge to write. And mind you, not just write a personal essay, or my column, or a blog entry, but something that would be published in paperback form. A shot in the dark probably, but hey, dreams are for free, and I’m not one to scrimp on freebies.
So I did a little bit of research, asking myself how a Filipino writer could possibly be read outside of the Philippines without selling his soul or any of his vital organs. And guess where my research led me, why, back to Prof. Butch Dalisay of course! (Come to think of it, this article has a lot to do with Dalisay than just the title as I earlier let on.) In his blog, Penman, he interviewed four Filipino novelists: Charlson Ong, Christina Pantoja - Hidalgo (who were my college professors in Fiction and Memoir writing respectively), Vicente Groyon, and Dean Francis Alfar (who was an org mate in UP Tinta back in the days when I used to write poetry – all that existentialist angst had to be channeled somewhere).
He asked the four novelists what the challenges are of Filipino novels in English and why we cannot seem to break into the big markets like the Indians. I think that Chalson Ong gave the most significant answer and I quote: “The novel is an industrial product and until we have a robust publishing industry it will be difficult for novelists. As with other fields, a Philippine novel will likely earn major local attention when it receives foreign recognition. Writers in English have an advantage in terms of foreign publication and we might be getting there. The Philippines has not been in the imagination of the world, but perhaps our time has come. Who knows?”
“The Philippines has not been in the imagination of the world…” I agree. Except for being the source of caregivers, domestic helpers, and nannies, the Philippines really has not captured the “imagination of the world”. We all know we have the best musicians (trivia: one of the band members of Switchfoot is pure Filipino), artists, teachers, and health professionals like nurses and doctors, but one Lea Salonga or one American hospital filled with competent Filipino nurses can’t erase the fact that more often than not, we just fade into the background. (Especially after our very poor showing in the Olympics – but that’s another story.) How sad and depressing to know that as intelligent and talented as we are, we are also hopeless pushovers. If you doubt what I’m saying, go read Ninotchka Rosca.
If I will be true to myself then, become as Pinoy as isaw and dinuguan and write about OFWs going home inside caskets and caregivers being bamboozled in the UK, will the world listen? Will the world empathize? Will the world understand our country better, applaud our hardworking women who’ve left their families to become kindred spirits with white people’s feather dusters? Or will my imaginary novel be relegated to the back shelves, or worse, remain in the dark and not see the light of printing day? Would I then be, as Sir Walter Scott had so aptly written, doomed to remain “unwept, unhonored, and unsung?” (Or is it unwept, unpublished, and unsung?)
Now this is what I mean about inspiration and the fact that it can come to you while you’re in your pajamas or while you’re killing time in a crowded Manhattan park under the auspices of the Great Wi-Fi. Ideas can grow in inspiration’s fertile bed, and then, as swiftly as they can grow -- they can also die along with your laptop’s batteries.
(The above article was also published at
The News Today. Check out the Archives for past articles in my column Serendipity.)
