The Exuberant ‘Last Lecture’

an essay by Roger B Rueda

I happened to read ‘The Last Lecture’ by Randy Pausch because a friend of mine had swapped the book for my ‘The Valkyries’ by Paulo Coelho. ‘The Last Lecture’ is much more than an anecdote of a man living his final months knowing he has barely months to live. It is on being a spouse, a father, a professor, an acquaintance, and a man. It's about dealings with parents, spouses, children, friends, colleagues, students. It's on passion, belief, enthusiasm, kindness, and almost certainly much more than I was able to take hold of from reading it. There are quite a few parts which I think are signs of jollity, unpleasantness, hilarity, poignancy.

Randy Pausch stood in the company of four hundred spectators at Carnegie Mellon University to deliver a last lecture labelled ‘Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams,’ on 18 September 2007. With slides of his CT scans beaming out to the viewers, he told them about the malignancy that is getting through his pancreas and that will claim his life in a matter of months. He, on the stage that day, was young at heart, full of life, fine-looking, often with a smile, intriguingly witty, seeming indestructible, although this was a pithy moment, agreed as he himself.

Randy’s lecture has become an observable fact, as has the book he wrote anchored in very similar ethics, celebrating the dreams we all do our utmost to make certainties. Randy, dejectedly, lost his fight to pancreatic cancer on 25 July 2008, but his bequest will go on with to enthuse us all, for generations to move towards.

‘The Last Lecture’ goes further than the now-famous lecture to rouse us all to subsist each day of our lives with reason and delight.

We, Randy Pausch avers, cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand.

Countless professors give talks titled ‘The Last Lecture.’ Professors are asked to consider their downfall and to mull over on what matters most to them. And as they tell, spectators can’t help but muse on very similar question: What insight would we impart to the world if we knew it was our last chance? If we had to vanish tomorrow, what would we want as our legacy?

Randy Pausch, a professor of Computer Science, Human Computer Interaction, and Design, when asked to give such a lecture, didn’t have to envisage it as his last, since he had of late been diagnosed with life-threatening cancer. But the lecture he gave - ‘Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams’ - wasn’t about on its last legs. It was about the magnitude of overcoming hurdles, of making the dreams of others possible, of grabbing hold of every moment (as ‘time is all you have...and you may find one day that you have less than you think’). It was a rundown of the lot Randy had come to accept as true. It was about existing.

The professor, in this paperback, has combined the humour, inspiration, and intelligence that made his lecture such an experience and given it an ineffaceable form.

In burying myself in ‘The Last Lecture,’ I was intensely enthused and stimulated by Randy Pausch’s weighty message about making our dreams come true. He is a muse and I can definitely relate to parts in his lecture specially when he refers to the best of the gold’s at the bottom of barrels of crap because every so often we must get through intricate experiences to attain our dreams. I really consider that, his fulfilment of his dreams, by giving ‘the last lecture,’ Randy Pausch was able to focus not on the pessimism that is linked with loss, but instead was able to hold life in his arms and live every minute he had with no regrets, sharing that message with one and all. The message to follow our dreams in the face of the ramparts that may get in our way but be able to recognise those ramparts are not meant to keep us from our dream, but instead they are there to thrust us forth towards our imaginings and goals. Randy Pausch is an extraordinary man and it brings me down that he is no longer with us, though, his inspiring message lives on.

The lecture was so heartrending. To vicariously see a man who is dying in such good spirits stirred me to see life in my own way. Having read the lecture, it made me reflect that I must stop condemning people so much or carping and just understand them for who they are. It may be some truth in the old chestnut, but life is short and does necessitate to be lived to the fullest. I am aware of that I subsist for the future, but after reading the book I perceive that I should live my life in the now at times and just take pleasure in life and have fun. Thus, when my time comes and my voyage on life is ended, I will know that I have enjoyed my life and it has been well lived.

I painstakingly enjoyed reading the book. Have your say at inkslinger215@live.com. /Panay News Sunday

Solitude

a poem by Roger B Rueda

I am and no-one else in my world, I know.
Is it blight? That one
that lies in wait within?
Unrelenting souls
who cross and now and again
sway my life as I speak to,
I am and no-one else.
I have been, from my dawn till these days
(possibly to the moment I breathe my last),
inimitably alone.
I see the world, in my imaginings,
secrets, optimisms.
I make my mind up
what part of that lost world
to let slip to others,
trying to fit in what’s to their liking.
The seconds before I drift off I am alone
no matter who is stretching out beside me
to say good night and what part
of my world he has witnessed.
In the stillness, I am there on my own
with the only being I really
am familiar with: myself.
Solitude is what I try to take in hand,
I don’t think.
It’s not a prickle, or grief.
It comes about even
once I’m midway of a multitude.
It’s in me. Is it that I have nobody
to talk to?
Perhaps. Or that not a soul can
empathise with me the way
I feel for myself?
And that’s just the way it is,
I find it great
to know that in me there is
a world ajar only for me,
which only I’m familiar with.
Each solitary person about me
has his own world and though
it may be
the nearly far-fetched place,
he feels lonesome, for he can’t give
anyone an idea about it lock, stock and barrel.

Hounding My (His) Legend

a poem by Roger B Rueda

I am hard to go after myself these days,
admittedly.
Still I am looking
to make myself
discretely better, though.
I‘m not putting up
someone else’s realm.
Has my need for material wealth
made it tough to go
behind myself?
I know Roger B Rueda,
no matter how
the pathway
transforms itself through time.
His following
a nameless trace
that is calling him,
along the way,
beautiful things are popping
here and there.
One way or another he feels that he’s
on the right footpath,
though no one can tell it
before it happens
and, thus far, that bolt
from the blue is worth unwrapping it:
as he goes on his way,
he would understand
and get him ready
on his voyage to his tale,
his reverie.
His spirit and life
always shout at him
what they most hunger after.
I am following his tale.
I am familiar with that.
And really I can not
tell you who he is like,
how he feels.
Perhaps at some point
I will be able to.
He is filled with fervour,
dread, uncertainties, and obsessions.
But how will it end?
Will he be able to carry it out?
That’s an answer
that must be given just
before the end.
I hope to manage to enlighten you
just before the end.
His dreams are about him.
They inspire his being
and purpose in life.
He looks into his relations.
I can see much more a pattern
and a flow.
Things that made him
disenchanted
as they came to pass
and he didn’t realise
and experienced coolly,
were truly commonness
where he had to discover
and put in order
to be here in this now.
To live his tale in his way has been
not a straight way,
a side road with mounds, or dreary,
jagged, and curved,
but it has been just a grounding.
What he is doing now and he loves,
and finding himself completely,
these did not even exist
at the time of his dawn,
or 31 years ago.
So, it would have not been
likely to plan fully for his way.
When things go another way
as he expects he begins
to calm down
after some time,
trying to trust that he is led:
The more he thinks, the more
he uses his wits
rather than his kindness
and his inkling, the more lost
he becomes. When he is lost
in the dark,
he remembers
that he has the radiance he
needs inside him, and there is
always some help out there.
He only needs to ask and be open
to the signs.
He is enduring.
He knows opportunities
will present themselves if he is open to them.

Books

a poem by Roger B Rueda

You are thin, and flat, from crushed copses.
I am keen on your texts, textures,
and concentrates
of colours, most often black.
No, best friends, you are magical pieces,
thought up to share
our souls, which you
don’t swank about.
I am beginning, up till now though,
not to feel certain
about you, what
you really are.
Are you like us, endless
and immense?
You, in your classic form,
create a touchable sense
of realism that I find
nowhere else. As I
put down your part way through,
even if one of you was in black
and white years ago,
and thousands buried
themselves in you
earlier than I first did, it is
as if the world
were overhanging and passing the time
for me to return.
You look as if shapeshifters
as time looks the other way.
Is it really you I’ve come upon?
A very delicate looking woman,
her face was a little pallid,
her nose a little hooked,
her brown eyes awfully welcoming,
I could not suppose her age,
the eyes looked sensible
and so seemed
to be aged but the rest
of her face was seemingly
much younger.
In her hands, was it you she had?
Slender, black, and
which she held up like
she was burying herself in what was
on one side,
leaving the black exterior
to my sight?
She, she said, could carry hundreds
of you that way,
since she was your fanatic lover.
Have you been reborn there?
As you pity those
who you are too heavy for to carry?
I know your smell,
your magic, your power.
I love your feel against
my skin, you are thin, and flat,
from crushed copses.
No? Best friends,
you’ll transform yourselves
into virtual beings
but you, as decent as you are
in my hands, will beat
staring into the future form
of you hands down.
You’ll stumble
on new friends for your reinvention one day.

Attaching Importance to Dinagyang

 an essay by Roger B Rueda

To both frequent holidaymakers and locals, well, you know a lot of the Dinagyang Festival off by heart, it is held each year around January time, Iloilo City a colourful culture. The throwing of the festival is indispensable, thus, perceptibly. Competing tribes composed largely of vibrant young performers, mostly students, always use cheerful colours in their elaborate costumes worn during the festival time and no one can fail to be struck by the vibrancy of Iloilo City streets where they shimmy, shake their bodies, and jump through, their skins coloured black.

The Dinagyang Festival, transforming unusual spaces on and around the streets with a mixture of arts, performance, carnival, pyrotechnics, art installations, exhibitions, street events, music and dance, food and feasting, signifies Iloilo City celebration of its cultural heritage to pay the Ilonggos’ respects to Jesus Christ portrayed as a small Filipino pilgrim child, the Santo Niño.

Every year, key Iloilo City streets are closed to traffic for the festival's spectacular finale event, a magical dance competition that winds along all directions of the city, each tribe having amazing costumes and fantastic structures.

The definitive advantage of the festival, for my part, is a shared experience for those who usually take part in all the festival’s activities. This adds force to the societal bonds between those who push the boat out for the festival and shows vigour and unanimity to those outside of Iloilo City.

Taken over by commercialism although the festival has been, its meanings and significance has been kept on. It brings back a dissimilar nature of humour and delight - it’s something imitable where one and all comes together to enjoy that moment with devotion and friendliness, most of us, by and large,  throwing our heads back as if in ecstasy, but its being Ilonggo could by no means be, it’s of Iloilo City. The festival, truthfully, lets the holidaymakers experience what makes Iloilo unique amongst other places and examine it more deeply and more realistically because its past and traditions are rooted in a particular period and milieu.

More to the point, there’s a lot of fun in spending our money as it’s an occasion of celebration that makes us place ourselves into a mood of being able to entertain and be generous on our wallets. It is a way of welcoming one and all, even our bitter foes, with a broad dazzling smile. So, I reckon, let it be colourful and enjoy the spirit of the festival.

Our life, for one thing, is so full of activity in recent times, and most of us don’t have time for our dear ones. That’s why the only way to stay together and get pleasure from our nearest and dearest is to celebrate one festival, i.e., the Dinagyang Festival, one of the best in the world, at least once a year.

The motto behind the Dinagyang Festival, when I reflect intensely on it, is our bright and breezy reunion with our kith and kin. It is to remember our traditions and rituals and be in close touch with the younger generation with the intention that they can also follow our folklore and that every Dinagyang will go into legend.

Celebrating the festival, unmistakably, is to share indulgence with each other by putting out of our mind our problems and differences. It helps us forge close meeting with our ancestors and solicit their protection, as some would trustingly affirm. It is what's more held so as to cleanse the city so that we can cross the threshold of every New Year with confidence and hope. Our culture of hospitality portrayed by the ways we speak and are on the same wavelength with others can be seen through the festival.

In the streets, to boot, the dances and the beat of the drums entwine themselves with the dancers in which the action unfolds so that the people, the culture, and the history turn out to be inextricably linked.

I believe that, expanded and stocked with new attractions every year and featuring no end of exhibits and activities, the Dinagyang Festival is the festival which explores and develops ever richer meanings of Iloilo City. Our experience of the Dinagyang Festival is part of what forms our identity, our very sense of self as Ilonggos.

Too, it gives the public chance to weigh up the competence of our local leaders enjoying having a little fun along with their hard work and dedicating their life to the citizens of their community.

We, in view of that, ought to know off pat that the Dinagyang Festival is very important in quite a lot of ways, by tradition, religiously, within society, economically, culturally, ethically, and politically in the lives of most Ilonggos. Observing the festival is holistic medicine which does away with the pall of displeasure from our life and conveys us a great sense of spiritual and cultural devotion and happiness. It makes us, by some means, understand that where we are is who we are.

I hope that every day of your life is a dinagyang, is filled with delight.

Have your say at inkslinger215@live.com. Hala bira! Here’s to celebrating our Ilonggoness!/PN

At One Fell Swoop

a poem by Roger B Rueda

We have a word to our heart and ask it what it needs
to learn in a while.
We speak to someone
else’s heart
so as to let slip the same.
We realise
that our pain is
where growth suggests itself
and consent to that growth
to keep us up
and how we are.
We support
green practices.
We stand by the edge
of the sea
and drench it all in.
We get pleasure
from the loveliness
and heady scent
of a blossom.
We return a smile.
We return a kind
word or a moment
of peaceful breath or
realisation
to a cruel other.
We let a spider spin
its web.
We don’t stand
on an ant.
We spend time
with others
enjoying punting a ball
around,
so we can just be breathing
in the radiance and sun.
We build up
an enlightenment
to life’s struggles
no matter what
or where on earth
they may be.
We don’t give up
on love and ritual
and shared civilisation
to give saintly growth
a lift into the light
of our divine
subsistence.
We subscribe
to organisations,
literature, or way of life,
which espouse
bright transformation.
We eat a peanut butter
sandwich
made with macrobiotic
ingredients.
We don’t use
synthetic water bottles.
We recycle.
We see ourselves as
a role model.
We suppose
that we have the right
to feel good
about ourselves
and invert that
within our relationships
and the etheric tune
we make as one.
We seek role models
and kindred spirit.
We understand that we
are all part of each other.
We spend time
in surroundings,
looking for secret
codes and moulds
and light.
We see the realism
in the eyes of children.
We prize the privileges
of children and
what we need
to learn from them
as being closer
to God and the truth.
We work towards
inner peace and peace
without.
We learn to be
unassuming.
We watch our sense
of self
act upon
so as to bring it
into line
with the need
to come from a more
healing, empathic,
and empathetic side.
We put ourselves in the shoes
of all other
sentient living beings.
We are stuck
on ingenuity and the way of creating.

I Am

a poem by Roger B Rueda

but I miss myself, myself, which time,
as if it were waves
crashing against
the shore, has drifted
out to sea.
I want to touch it
on the arm.
I want to talk to it.
Only memory, dim to me now
although is, can get to it.
I can only smile to it
at how it played piko
or chomped jute little girls,
its playmates, and it
steamed in a tin,
how it climbed a tree
and it couldn’t know
how to get down,
how it preferred brown
sugar, as it would take
it in its rice,
to adobo for its dinner,
how it was taken sick,
how it first met
and talked to Santa.
It tends to get lost but remains within.

Paolo's Death

a novel by Roger B Rueda


>Chapter Seven<

The Death of Erma, the Lenage Queen





The disgusting odour of death stayed behind in the night. It was a weird and wonderful smell, somewhat like sulphur. An odour Paolo was acquainted with too well, an odour that had impressed itself in his reminiscence ever since he was all of three. As he took in the slain body of a non-Linage aswang woman, slouched alongside the alley fence, his lips arched back in hatred. He guessed she was about his age, all of twenty eight, too. Her hair was dishevelled and thick with blood. Her black eyes where open and cold, just as unmoving and unfilled as her body. The white silk blouse she had on was now discoloured red about the neck.

He took notice of her screaming hardly any minutes ago and he hurried to help out. But now her howls for help only resounded in his ears. His endeavour to save the woman was wasted, and now here he got to his feet fix his eyes down on another nameless prey. He once more was too late, and a life had been taken because of it. Whoever did this would pay, even if he had to stay out for the night looking for the Lenage aswang. He would give this non-Lenage woman her act of vengeance.
Inclining his body, he closed her eyes and fluffed up away the tears she shed by her death. He had failed this woman. He didn't know who she was; in fact, being a man-about-town, he'd never even seen her in town. But as ridiculous as it seemed, this woman looked recognisable in a way and it worried him. In effect it confounded him for some untried explanation. Her passing hanged on to at his heart sending a shudder of angst down his backbone. Perhaps, because she looked a little like him if he were a woman, no different hair colour, no different frame, diminutive, possibly because he was in her place on one occasion before, a vulnerable wounded of a Lenage aswang hunger for flesh. No matter what the grounds were, it filled him with compassion and torture.

‘Your soul can have a rest,’ he spoke softly before he stood up another time.

He looked about the neglected lane, searching for inkling - no matter which for him to go ahead to the Lenage aswang who caused this killing. But he found not a soul. The hairs on his arms stood up, and he was aware of his eyes boring in to the backside of his skull. He was well aware of another presence, he couldn't see them but he could sense two of them in close proximity.

But all he heard was stillness, an intimidating silence chilling him to the bone. It was apparent they were toying with him. But what they didn't recognise was that he could bend their little recreation against them.

‘Show your face, come out where ever you are,’ he called out with a perverse grin.

‘Why should I?’ A cold voice called from the shadows.

‘Because the sooner I kill you, the better,’ he laughed out as dim-witted as it seemed, taking joyfulness in egging the Lenage aswang on it as it brought more excitement to the clash.

‘Ah a certain one, I haven't seen a non-Linage aswang with this kind of guts in a long time.’ A shill feminine voice rang in his ears.

'What can I say, I'm a required to be reckoned with,' he expressed joy.

Before he could even bat an eyelid, his back knocked against the fence, opposite of him a strong grasp holding his hands above his head. A tall woman came into view, her dark hair exposed, her haunting red eyes looking fiercely down in to his own. She stood a good six inches higher than his tiny five foot frame. She looked fairly hungry for a Lenage aswang, but behind her ailing pretence, he could tell she had some kind of magic unseen away. Her pasty white skin shone in the moonlight, and her bloodstained lips created a relentless disparity. She was attractive, no doubt about it. But he wasn't an immature man. He knew of the hideousness in the rear of the beautiful faces of the destined.

‘You talk without stinting for a young man,’ she hissed exposing her three inch fangs. ‘Such a shame, you’re rather striking, for a person. It's almost a dishonour to kill you.’

‘Stop playing with your foodstuff, Erma. We're going to be behind schedule. Just kill him and let’s be on our way." Another woman called out, emerging from the shadows. Her long hair flared out behind her, like a drape of conflagration. Her eyes were afire with hunger for man beef. She was taller than he by only a few inches.

‘Quiet Leah, you’re running all my enjoyment,’ Erma said in a slapdash fashion, her eyes flashing riskily at Paolo.

He had grown irritated with all this talk and decided to do something. He at the double kneed Erma in the stomach; Leah was taken by surprise and hanged him down to the ground. Leah let out a ferocious snarl absorbedly and pulled him towards the rear by his hair crashing him in to a barricade. He kicked Leah’s legs out from under her. He pushed his self off the fence and smashed his elbow into her jaw causing her to descend to the ground. Erma took a swing at him, but he dodged swiftly. She was bewildered by his swiftness and he took advantage of the situation. He plunged a stake right into her heart. Erma hissed out in rage. Her pain and resentment echoed off the alley fences as her friend was burnt to a cinder. He just sniggered at her enjoying the misery he allowed to run riot.

All of a sudden, he was held up in the air by his neck, Erma baring her fangs at him, her eyes turning to a cavernous crimson. Agony twisted her features into a twisted pretence of fury.

‘You will pay for that,’ she hissed at him.

‘In the future, she might but not today,’ the yawning voice called out and Erma was also burnt to a cinder right before his eyes. Before he even knew it, he fell to the ground, shuddered, and disorientated. He looked up at his uncle expecting to see him delighted, but when he met his aged eyes, he right away knew his uncle was far from pleased. The old man glared down at him, clearly disenchanted. He was known as Uwa Oret, a clairvoyant and a self-directed non-Linage aswang. As the pits would come, many non-Linage aswangs would seek advice from him.

‘Nice going Paolo, only you could get yourself in this kind of jumble,’ his uncle said hard-heartedly.

‘I was just doing my job,’ he said scuffing at the old man.

‘Will talk about this back at home,’ the old man said glaring at him.

‘Calm down, Tiyoy, it was nothing,’ he muttered blowing his bangs out of his eyes annoyed.

‘It was nothing?’ The old man asked uninterestedly.

‘Yes nothing, Tiyoy. Just a graceful killing,’ he stated.

He had just killed a Lenage queen. An awe-inspiring rush of smugness washed over him. He had just killed one of the toughest aswangs and he wasn't even a fully-fledged non-Lenage assassin yet. He was truly living up to the non-Lenage tradition.

‘This is nothing to be proud of Paolo, this could start off hostilities,’ his uncle whispered at him, taking hold of him by the wrist and pulling him away from the passageway, the man beef still lying there dumped by both her slaughterer and her righter of wrongs.

‘Erma is your real mother,’ his uncle stated. Paolo was very befuddled. ‘You can only have her back when you have read a prayer in a book written by Paciano, the chief of the Linage aswang. Even she herself doesn’t know that you are her real son.’

‘Where is that book now’ he raised.

‘I don’t know. It must be with a Linage aswang,” he went on.

‘How does it look like?’

He didn’t reply. He just shrugged his shoulders.

Paolo metamorphosed into an extremely large owl and took to the air as high as he could. He wanted to meet his father once the next day. He somewhat didn’t want to believe Uwa Oret. He had been on the fence since then. Paolo knew that the old man hated bloodshed and slaughter, or even settling of scores.

Uwa Oret was not knocked for six at his transformation anymore as he knew well who Paolo was. He was a clairvoyant, so he knew many things. Linage aswangs could not harm him as he had a lot of talismans and magic charms.

Let pass the time and see, he thought.

Paolo’s Death
A Novel by Roger B Rueda


Product Details

Reading level: Young Adult
Paperback: 420 pages, 6x9
Publisher: AntBooks for Young Readers (15 May 2011)
Language: English
Price: Php 630

The Legend of the Phoenix: Striking Up a Conversation with the Phoenix

a poem by Roger B Rueda

After rising from your ashes, strangely,
believe me when I tell you
you’ve become
house sparrows,
your feathers
coffee and grey,
the cherubs surprised
at your very ordinariness.
You go hunting
at every opportunity.
So: Is there any difference
between phoenixes
and sparrows?
You don't fit my image
of how phoenixes
should look.
You’re risking your neck
in the grains being dried
in the street,
passing faster automobiles
even if it is not safe to do so.
You have been
struggling to get free
of your fiddly years.
When you die a natural
or violent death,
will you
carry out surviving
the challenge
to your immortal spirit
suffering periods of amnesia
as it were?
From the moment you
stepped into here your
fate was sealed.
There would seem to
be some realism in
what I rarely avow
for it contains
in any case a grain
of truth.
You’ll be breathed
new life into
from the big unknown
where the being
having an effect
on all effects
is waiting for you,
o divine phoenixes.
That time, in a place
where you can enjoy
perfect delight,
the house
of your dreams.
Feel every twinge
of subsisting.
Bear it.
It is largely ephemeral.
Listen,
real sparrows have hard,
cold eyes and
their beaks are set in
perpetual sneers.
They will live on only
well into your forever as you
bring back a piece of them
kissing the oblivious clay, into your mind.

Consider This

a poem by Roger B Rueda

we try
to unfetter ourselves
like foliage
before they osculate
with the earth
sand trickles from our shins
nude boys
slouch spread on the sand
a genus trying to be noticed
the sun in each set of eyes
waves closing in
the distinct noise of unknown
having to go in the rear of the shrub
someone
there are no less than a ladder to be tramped down
even more to get back up
most people in no way
actually move toward here
would rather envisage it
talk about it
at small surge
we skedaddle
to the waves
taking part in like young boys
yelling
as the natural cold water
clasps at penises
back on the shore
the crude balmy sand
ties
the feet
think gracefully

Salimbabatangs

a poem by Roger B Rueda

Putting my feet up on the futon by the great

image pane,

my thought

is committed to the heavens.

Early evening.

Sapphire slithers away

like water into beach.

Black draws out now,

the coconut tree

near, lead trees and

houses across the road.

Street lamp bends 

a slight radiance

below the untaken dark.

After that, salimbabatangs. 

Plunging,

wings flicker,

shift and go around

in the footing

of starvation,

the strip for intention.

How specks complect

as one or

collapse to capaciousness,

appetite, entreaty.

Variety is but a flash. Shift

feeds us.

Tranquillity reclaims the firmament.

This January

a poem by Roger B Rueda

Torpedo, goose, crow, what can the foliage,

lock stock and barrel,

cry to my toes, squishy earth,

a glueyness underneath slippers?

Studded with spines

and affectionate

upsurges of grass masticated by goats,

what can wickers, that smooth,

those points, furry

exteriors and rims,

and the embrasures, the yielding

brittleness and obstinacy of intolerance,

the resilient,

ridged blossoms of fire tree,

of umbrella tree,

chilly brunts of rain,

sun flashing, edifice shade, tree

shadow, or cloud,

warmth revolutionises,

what can they shout to a body

encrusted this cold month?

By next week I inhale

ragweed substantial as words

and would give it a flush, whatever

tint is, not a hint of your metaphors roll.

Wind, such as, thickens the star apples.

Evidently there are fowls, one

every morning sounds

that odd gooey weight in a palm.

A sparrow making its home

is a maya. And wool chemise

return, or silk at a premium, but I fancy

denim, eyebrows, the terrain

and resonance of salutation,

the way of walking,

all tempos, none the same.

Without even knowing

how to tell you, I listen in;

I have constantly listened. Any spell,

a mile is in front of or outlying

as an hour, like stillness

or hours of darkness that in no way

relatively arrives.

I read about pin-ups as nonvocal come-on.

Skin is hilarity, the meaning and gauge

that clings to me and by no means dozes.

Door, Door-to-Door

a poem by Roger B Rueda

The copse must once have
been burnished
and burgundy
but now it
develops whorls
of discoloured coat.
Bits and pieces
of shades
imprinted
into the small piece
turn round
like brandishes
across blanched covert
or flurry round
in whirlpools,
like shapes
on a plan,
the plan
of this tree’s
olden times.
Aged guardrail’s tattered
soft
by cohorts
of hide:
children’s
clammy palms bright
from the gelato shop
or warm parched palms
back from the ridges
where warm sand
cleaned them
and their lines
materialised
like the gritty
legend
of lumber itself.
Relations have been
told here and
will be
put in the picture
through countless day's ends.

Your Tongue

a poem by Roger B Rueda

for Z

as if it were a rapier, pointed,
has been severing
little hearts which seem
unable to sense
the twinge
and your passion.
You think they’re
statuettes like divinities
or china dolls.
They appear
to have been
utterly
hard of hearing.
But see, they shudder
when they see you
every day.
They look unspeaking like
watermelons
in the field, you
always standing
there facing
the blackboard,
like a scarecrow.
Don’t they
have a brilliant
memory
for your words?
Yes, they do.
I think they have been
crammed into memory
as if it were chests
or bottles.
Hope and pray
they’ll grow to like you
over the years
and they won’t
become real ogres like you.

First Sex

a poem by Roger B Rueda

I hugged his leg tightly to my chest. His leg hairs like
thin threads were tickling
my cheeks and lips,
his hands pushing my head off from him.
I moved his underwear
strap from his waist
towards the tops of his legs
with my teeth.
His penis like bubble gum touched me
on my clam-like lips which were ready
to close together to swallow
it as he put it
into my mouth, it getting
firm and more
difficult to bend and he
having a masturbatory
fantasy, I felt it was a golden
opportunity.
In a sudden paroxysm, it burst
a salty flavour.
I ate it the way I eat raw oyster,
thinking
lucky me. Then, we undressed and got
into the bath. I washed
his penis with
Safeguard, its bubbles falling
into his hands.
I licked his lips, cheeks, ears,
neck, and nipples,
he on bended knee and we
showering together.
Then he stabbed at me
with his penis.
I was bleeding, he sploshing water into
my flesh wound, the wound
which made me feel
a sense of freedom and baptism.
He kissed me on the mouth
and whispered
I love you in my ear, I was crying for
the pain in my bottom.
In a sudden paroxysm,
it burst whitish lotion
which I gently rubbed in.
Then we hurried back to school,

we put on
clothes, I taking up my bag
with my Grade Five
workbooks and he his folders and class records.

English

a short story by Roger B Rueda

While I was drinking coffee with a poet friend in Starbucks, an old college friend introduced me to her gay boss and one night I got a call from him and persuaded me to work at the language centre where she worked. They were in need of someone who had spoken English since they were a baby. Well, I thought it was exhausting commuting from Makati to Quezon City where my company was located, every day, so I decided to accept the offer right away. It was a nice job and financially worthwhile.

All of twenty, I was so naïve: I was too willing to believe that someone was telling the truth, that people's intentions in general were good, or that life was simple and fair. Well, perhaps, I was naïve because I was young and hadn’t had much experience of life that time. Never had I had any serious relationships in the past year. D'you think I was still a virgin that time?  Of course I was.

Well, normally at twenty, a woman like me then was never naïve anymore. But I was. I don’t know. That time, I was curious about everything around me especially about having a relationship with a guy although I had learned a lot of information on different subjects by reading. Reading and cooking are my favourite pastimes.

An ESL/EFL teacher, I met my Korean boyfriend when I was all of twenty-one; he was all of twenty-seven. He was my student. Our meeting started at the language centre and that was how we became a couple.

'Please write your full name,' I told him. Then, he wrote 'Se-hyuk' on my pad. He looked so manly. 'What’s your family name?' He had a broad smile on his face and an appealing personality.

'Moon.' He was very confident though he spoke with erratic English. But he was easy to teach. I was his discussion teacher. So, our class was very exciting to him. Every day, I looked forward to teaching him and, perhaps, he, too, to his studying with me as he’d come five minutes before the time. I felt so lively whenever I had class with him.

'Very very help me Fe,' he told me. I knew the principal of the centre would always say it was helpful if the teachers would correct their students’ pronunciation and grammar. But I intentionally didn’t listen or give attention to his mistakes. In his case I’d make an exception because I was thinking about him with affection.

Every day, as I looked at him, he got handsomer and handsomer and it made me mesmerised. Then after some weeks I fell in love with him. For one, he was very gentle with his classmates.

'Se-hyuk, did you like the Victoria sandwich I gave you.' I wanted to know whether he liked the perfect Victoria sponge I made for him. It was one of my favourites then. I was keen, you know, to perfect my cooking technique.

'Yes, I'm really really like it,' replied by him joyfully. It was nice to be able to bring a smile to his face.

I had a hot date every night. We had used to eat out all the time since then.

Every morning, he’d call me at home and we had a brief chat. Or sometimes, we’d natter away on the phone all evening.

'Se-hyuk, you must get some sleep - aren’t you exhausted?'

'Well, good night - sleep well,' he told me. It was the set expression I had taught him.

It was I who suggested the idea that we should become a couple till he went back to Korea. He smiled, his eyes almost crinkled, and I knew that he accepted my suggestion.

Time seemed to pass by so fast. I was afraid that our relation would end. But he promised to come back after two or three months. Well, he did. We hugged each other. He kissed me on my cheeks and on my mouth several times.

'Did you miss? Did you miss me?'  he asked me while taking his present for me. It was wrapped with bright yellow and pink paper. I unwrapped it straight away. It was a gold watch with diamond cushion case and 14-carat braided bangle.

That visit lasted for seven months. I was extremely in love with him. I thought the love which I was fighting for was true love. I even left my family and decided to cohabit with him. There, I learned how to be a wife. I thought I had been in Korea. Sometimes, I’d spend a pleasant afternoon looking at photographs in the magazines he’d bought from Korea.

He taught me how to speak Korean even how notoriously difficult it was. 'Annyeonghaseyo!'

'Jeogeo jeseyo!' he gave me a note pad and pen for taking notes.

He taught me how to cook Korean food. I really enjoyed cooking Korean food though it took a lot of time to know that art of perfecting it. Some Korean dishes are simple and some are complex and they can be light or hearty.

So now, I am good at cooking peppery Korean ojinguh jut (pickled squid). It packs a lot of flavour, so it's the perfect accompaniment to a traditional Korean meal with rice and soup or stew. Sehyuk loved it so well because of its gochujang (chili pepper paste) and gochukaru (chili pepper powder).

When I turned twenty-two, it was sad that he had to go back home to Korea.

'Take good care of yourself. Sarang hae!' He was handsome with the merino wool polo shirt I had bought for him. I just nodded. 'Annyeonghi gyeseyo!'

Then at that time I discovered I was pregnant. I ignored my not having a period and checked it six months later because I did it calculatedly, having an idea in my mind that when I had my baby developing inside my womb, we would get married. Then I easily moved back to my family in Salcedo Village from our apartment on Nobel Street.

Every day, I would cry. That was because it seemed incongruous doing things without him. For one, I used to live and eat together with him. So then, I didn't feel like eating. I depended on him so much. But never did he forget to keep in touch, and that made me live in hope.

'Sung Tan Chuk Ha!  How are you?' I was adorning the Christmas tree kept in the home with colourful light bulbs, synthetic poinsettias, and ornamental balls.

Gradually though, rarely did he communicate because he thought it would be impossible to keep our relationship anymore. To him, visiting the Philippines was the last until I e-mailed him and broke out the news that I had been with child for almost six months. He rang me up whether it was true or not. I bought a pregnancy-testing kit, and eventually went to St Claire’s - just to confirm I was with child. (Until now I keep the kit and the result in my room; they are placed in my drawer.)

He talked to his family about our situation. His father, though, told him that if he’d marry me, they’d turn their back on him. I have learned that most Korean parents do not favour any mixed-race marriage. They are quite conservative until these days. He didn’t want me to suffer and have a difficult life, so he suggested that I should have my baby aborted. At first, it was a battle. It put me in a situation in which a difficult choice had to be made between two things I could do. I vacillated between two poles of moves, that was I should keep my child and not. I had to face the ordeal though that time I was depressed and felt totally hopeless about my future. He’d call me several times in a day to convince me. For instance, he told me that if I loved him I had to do it. Since I was blindly in love with him I agreeably followed him. I don’t know why never did I feel any a strong feeling which made me want to hurt him or be unpleasant because of something unfair or hurtful that had happened. I talked to the child in my womb that I didn’t want us both to suffer, for I might not be able to support her when she grew up. I didn’t want my child to grow up without her father nor myself without a husband. I guessed the child and I had a connection and that led me to a high school friend, who introduced me to an abortionist. The abortionist asked me Php 10,000. I informed him immediately and he deposited Php 100,000 in my account. He told me that that money was for payment of the abortion and the rest was for spending on my own personal things.

So, I went to the back-street abortionist. After, I followed her to stay in her house.

'Remove your knickers,' she told me. I was very nervous. I knew it was dangerous. I knew I might die for what I was doing.

Then she made the intentional ending of my pregnancy. Bit by bit over some hours, she pulled the baby down after she inserted an instrument in me. It took me for about eleven hours. I was almost dying because I almost became unconscious, to go into labour to push the baby out of my body until the baby appeared. She was not dead yet. The abortionist told me I had an option, I could bring the baby to the hospital, but people might ask me how I delivered her; the police might investigate as well. I was scared and worried of a public feeling of shock and strong moral disapproval it might cause. For four hours, I carried her in my arms and I talked to her to forgive me and she needed to rest. Shortly, she stopped crying, peacefully.

My eyes were very red as I looked at myself in the mirror on the wall. I didn't notice that I cry a lot. The abortionist took my baby from me. She wrapped her with a piece of multi-coloured fabric. I hugged her once more. 'Baby, please forgive me.' I closed my eyes and took a rest for about an hour and stood dazed and weak-kneed beside the bed to leave.

It was dark by the time I arrived home.

'You’re a killer,' said Mummy when I entered our house as I was pushing the door shut. I understood what she was angry about. I just closed my eyes and cried. There, there, don't cry, I raised my spirits.

Perhaps if I hadn’t had the abortion, possibly, my daughter would be all of seven now. It took me two years to get back my life from the pain. I went to England then, which if it had not been for it, I could have been depressed then - or have been until now. My paternal family, in England, were supportive. They helped me to forget what had happened to me and to my life.

Such a thing was traumatic that I didn’t want to meet people anymore. I hated talking to people. I liked being alone in my flat. Eventually, we lost communication. I deleted his e-mail and his mobile number, which was to totally forget him and for me to start a new life. I sat out on the porch of the hotel and looked at the people talking to each other while sipping their teas. I looked at the sky and saw that the clouds form like my baby. She was smiling, telling me in my heart that she had already forgiven me.

I enrolled on the modern art course at King’s. Later, I decided to pursue a career in writing and preferred to freelance from home rather than to work in an office.

***

That was not the story.  So, what actually happened? The real story was that Maria Fe Lee, my mother, died when she delivered me. Born with slightly blue skin, she'd got a bad heart. I never had a chance to see my mother. But I know her very well through the books she left. I just reworked the last part of her story. She had never enrolled on the modern art course at King’s. It was just her inclination. I just had a very vivid imagination. And never did she plump for abortion. Otherwise, never had I got a chance to be alive, had she been self-seeking and unfeeling.

'Go on, have a good cry,' said my husband, stroking my hair as he was drinking his tea for his arthritis. He took Mummy’s notebook of her short stories, packed it off in a transparent aluminium box, and kept it in the bottom drawer made of light-weight, translucent plastic. It produced a soft, almost eerie glow, as it was closed by him by remote control.

Daddy and his parents, my jobumo, attended her funeral.  After a month, he took me to London, a place made up of a rich tapestry of villages. It is where I have spent my life since then up to this year. As a matter of fact, I will be celebrating my 75th birthday at the Egerton House Hotel where I will be launching Mummy’s novel I have edited and published posthumously by me and my husband, who is a true sister under the skin.

Daddy, a restaurateur, died a natural death in St Ann's Hospital in Harringay, as he would have wanted. There was a full moon that night. We buried him ten years ago in his hometown in Daejeon in the Koreas. He never completely forgot his broad Korean accent. And I must say that it's surprising to find a man not looking for another woman after his lover’s passing away.

When I was at the London Waldorf School, I just got in touch with my grandparents in Korea and the Philippines through a mobile. But now, things have changed a lot. I have a communication cube, a sleek and multifunctional thingamajig which I wear around my neck. Of course, I’d go to the Koreas and the Philippines on vacation. In both countries I was amazed by how well people spoke English; all the more nowadays.

In 2019, the year after my debut and when I first met my then husband-to-be (now my husband), my first e-book where I included my mother’s unpublished memoir was presented.  My grandchildren listen to my story collections through their watches, jewellery, and eye wear, all are high-tech. They are wireless and look cool as they use the Bluetooth technology to connect RF to their ear buds. My grandchildren enjoy reading or listening to stories especially my stories.

'Gradma, I have wine for you. It’s made from organically grown grapes from a health farm in Baguio.' My granddaughter has arrived from the Philippines. 'I have old photographs of our ancestors from our Makati house.'

There is a really noisy table behind me celebrating the Lee-Moon Museum’s first year anniversary. On the slim table made from a steel frame painted a white colour are my favourites: dak galbi (spicy stirred-fried chicken), kimchi chigae (spicy cabbage soup), tukbokki (spicy rice cake with vegetables), barbecued bangus (milk fish), chicken adobo, Yorkshire pudding, and Lancashire hotpot.

By the way, Lee-Moon Museum was originally a small room in our house, which I converted into my mother’s undersized museum last year. It’s the only room painted a pale yellow colour. So, my family help me to collect museum pieces about my mother and her unpublished writings from the Philippines.

***

She didn’t go back to the abortionist anymore. Her love for me pricked her conscience and she decided not to abort me, her little one, whatever would happen.

She e-mailed Daddy that she had changed her mind. So after round about three months, she was delivered of me. On that day, 26 April 2000, she died in her sleep an hour after she was in difficult labour for twelve hours with me.

Ignore the pain, Maria. You have to get used to it. If you want the memories to stay then be ready to suffer. Don't let go yet. Let the memories stay. Stay. Let the memory of your baby stay even if it's only in your own mind, in your heart. You will miss her face and her lips.

All the hurt subsided and all that was left were happy memories. She decided to move forward as she closed her eyes for all time.

That day, my jobumo, my Korean grandparents, had already changed their minds about my parents’ nuptials, so they were supposed to visit the Philippines for it as quickly as they could. Then as planned, Daddy would bring Mummy and me to London as he’d manage a restaurant there. And so, I have this Moon Caff situated two miles north of the city centre. Although my café has several machines to perform jobs automatically, which is controlled by a computer, I have some Filipino and Korean waiters in my café. They are very diligent about their work.

Daddy and my grandparents were present at her funeral, instead. My maternal family had a video made of Mummy’s funeral. Everybody especially Daddy wept buckets when Mummy was buried in the garden of remembrance.

***

Such a thing is painful, but it reminds me how my mother cared for me, at great personal sacrifice. From the porch of our house, I can see people talking to each other as they slowly sip at their teas, every afternoon. And looking up into the sky, I always see the clouds form like Mummy smiling and telling me in my heart how happy she is now.

***

On BBC London, April Joy Moon-Demick's Manila won huge praise from the judges.

Filipino-born English author April Joy Moon-Demick Wednesday won this year's Orange Prize for Fiction for her novel Manila, which tells the story of a woman as she returns to Manila to resolve the differences with her past.

The prize, worth 80,000 pounds, recognises a work of fiction written by women around the world.

Manila is Demick's sixth novel in nearly 40 years.

The 74-year-old author beat American first-time novelist Leah Kingsolver, who was in the running for Paolo, a story about a man with AIDS.

The shortlist also included authors Marjorie Marlow and Edith Meyer, Korean writer Helen Choi and another Filipino-born English author Merlie Pantoja Smith.

Ophelia Doucet, chair of the judges, described the winning book as 'a kind, prudent, heartening novel, elegantly crafted.'

'We were unanimously agreed - it is a profound work of art,' she said at the award ceremony for the 89th Orange Prize in London's Royal Festival Hall.

Demick was described by the Sunday Times last year as 'the world's best writer of prose.'

Manila centres around Phoebe, who returns home after 20 years looking for refuge.

'It's a work that deepens your life with its delicate prose,' said Doucet.

'It's a book of understanding and compassion that never leans towards overemotional schmaltziness, in fact its message is quite unyielding.'

Accepting the award, Demick said: 'I'm so indebted. This is such a fantastic event and a wonderful organisation. It certainly is the most elegant, brilliant platform for women's literature that I can envisage.'

***
Long live my daughter April Joy. Mummy’s ghost haunts my room talking to me when I am sleeping. She provides inspiration for my writing. We always talk late into the night.

Birds

a poem by Roger B Rueda

You can move through the air, perch
on the overhanging branches
of trees, or go off
gallivanting around.
You can pick up berries
or grains of rice.
You can hover in the sky,
waiting to swoop down
on your prey.
But can you woof or purr
or holler or moo
or snarl or chuff?
You can ruffle your feathers,
but can you change
utterly the emergence
or nature of them
into the rabbit's soft fur?
Can you walk by,
holding hands?
Can you read this poem
slowly and quietly?
I wish that I didn’t have
what you don’t have:
you don’t know
the greatest of you
that is birdly able
to be done by you, birds,
which I know.
And mine, much more,
so I am ill with myself
as by no stretch
of the imagination
could I move free
without an existent
or predictable
streak that marks
the periphery of me.
We’ve got the same doom, birds,
which has brought us together here!