soccer here

fun

soccer is fun

well guys if you want fun

have FUN

Clothing Souls

Agnes, until her father’s death was an obedient daughter, marri <!– @page { size: 8.5in 11in; margin: 0.79in } P { margin-bottom: 0.08in } –>

Agnes, until her father’s death was an obedient daughter, married a Mandaya man. It is common in Mati that the most recurring tribal groups are that of the Mandayas and Muslims. Agnes’s parents came from the Visayan region.

Someone Else’s Deed

Arnel, he thought, was a name no nobler than some other people’s names. The mother had first a daughter followed by two sons each with a year interval, and settling for that found no need for another child. Shrugging it off as another blessing, the husband had trouble sleeping after the late night annunciation of his wife’s fourth pregnancy. That name was a reminder of an ill-timed birth. It neither stood for melted together names of both parents and was even less appealing compared to names as Theabelle, Christoff, and Francis. If those weren’t his siblings’ names and himself not christened Arnel he wouldn’t have had the strength to crumple the signed letter in his hand as he stood by the church’s entrance scanning for a seat.

The recommendation letter on his right hand prevented him from making the sign of the cross, or so he reasoned. San Pedro Church stood in the heart of the city; against the towering pink painted City Hall building, in contrast to the church’s gray scheme.

Taginting Sa Kanyang Utak: An Essay

“Mariang Makiling” written by Eli Ang Barroso is a piece belonging from Luzon and Southern Tagalog literature. In its short story form, the story was expressed in the richness of the Tagalog language. At the beginning, the reader is already bombarded with the words of the language that seem to have initiated romantic elements found in the story.

Soccerly Yours

This is a photo of my whole bunch of soccer family. We’re inviting anyone to join us. It is always fun to have good pals behind you.

Then and there

I see

what lies close

as a touch enveloping

friends

then and there

are everywhere.

The Revolutionary Road

Last night, me and my boardmates watched this movie. earlier that morning our fiction teacher Prof. Montes told us that if we want to cry over a novel read Yate’s The Revolutionary Road.”

It was such a tragic story that made me feel like crying if not for other people’s presence. I don’t want to end up like them. But you should really watch it, it has many gender issues wherein both roles of man and wife are explored.

Forgive me, I really can’t have a movie review about it because I don’t yet know how it feels to be in their shoes. But this I can say the movie rocks!(Not to mention that me and the character share the same name “April”).

A Review: Salamanca

my choice for the scond book review is a novel written by Dean

“Power of an Artist: Salamanca“

1. Introduction

My choice for the second book review is a novel written by Dean Francis Alfar entitled Salamanca, which won the Palanca Grand Prize Award for the Novel in 2005 as published by the Ateneo de Manila University Press.

Dean Francis Alfar is a playwright, essayist, and fictionist whose works are performed and published locally and abroad. He has won 8 Don Carlos Palanca Awards for Literature and the Manila critics Circle National Book Award for the acclaimed graphic novel Siglo: Freedom. He is also a comic book creator, and a marketing and publishing entrepreneur. Salamanca is his first novel.

The book revolves around the lives of its characters- presented in magical realist fiction genre of writing. At first, I was taken aback by the magical and fantastical elements of the novel that I wondered whether I could appreciate it. Yet it was through the course of events in the book that made me realize how effective the workings were in the novel that all the while give the story a realistic touch and an admirable uniqueness among the literary efforts of great contemporary writers. I loved how the book created a world of magic and reality through love in the lives of its many characters.

II. Body

According to Caroline S. Hau in the book’s preface: ” The novel is about the sorcery wrought by love, lust, and literature, by friendship, family and the Filipino nation. Salamanca tracks the stormy relationship between the polymorphous-perverse Gaudencio Rivera, whose passions ignite prodigious feat of writin and wandering, and Palawena beauty Jacinta Cordova, whose perfection transmutes walls into glass and adoration into art. Tracing the arc of an imperfect marriage sundered by acts of nature(not least human) and sutured by acts of will (not least nonhuman), and vividly peopled by a multigenerational and multinational cast of kithand kin, this audacous work of imagination takes the reader on a magical exursion into the Philippine life and history while setting new standards for the Filipino novel along the way.”

This novel reminded me of Laura Esquivel’s “Like Water for Chocolate.” Both novels have similarities through supernatural elements like in the first meeting of Gauencio and Jacinta:

“At the moment their eyes met through the see-through walls of the inconceivable house, Gaudencio dropped the cigarette from his hand as he was devastated by exposure to Jacinta’s luminous beauty….For Jacinta, an invisible bolt of electricity stuck her where she stood, causing her to gasp once before the energy arced from her hands to the cooking pot she carried, causing the clump of string beans that she had been planning to prepare for supper to explode from the intense heat, releasing pods that left contrails as they flew with untoward vigor”(12).

A series of extraordinary events happened during a storm in the latter part of the book stating the lines: “The inhuman storm swept up all four victims of outrageous passion from off their backs or legs, buffeting them in coiling cross currents as they rose off the ground”(26). I just didn’t think that the four victims namely Gaudencio, Jacinta, Mrs. Helen Brown and Ceasar could survive being whirled by the wind.

Prior to all series of unrealistic or rather fantastical event is what had happened to the infamous woman who lives in a house in the island of Tagbaoran in the province of Palawan: “Jacinta Cordova was a firm believer of modesty, and did everything she could to comport herself in a manner that was beyond reproach,especially since the walls of the house she lived in were transparent.She had adjusted as best as she could when her unearthly beauty came into full force on the eve of her twelfth birthday that midnight, she had trembled and closed her eyes as a potent radiance burst from her skin, transforming all the walls inside and outside her house to a material that resembled fine glass”(5).

One significant thing about the novel is the duplication of pages 57-64 and 81-88. I wondered if that was due to publishing errors (because some donated books are defects or discarded) or it had a reason for it being that way. I have settled for the latter because I think those pages contain most of the crucial scenes of the novel.

The flashbacks were wrought well in the book. Without causing confusion, the flashbacks pieced the story together, showing a juxtaposed angle of the separate lives of its characters. The time frame of the story was relevant to the historical facts in the Philippine history and setting. The techniques used by the author continually paces the movement of the story. Cirilo F. Bautista, also a notable writer, stated that the narrative moved at an appropriate psychological pace to give us an interpretation of a slice of Philippine life that is both common and unique. A comment stated by Lawrence L. Ypil says, “In the end, it reminds us ultimately in its expansive scope of the historical retelling and fable making fantasy and ‘reality,’ what good novels, when they work, can do.”

In the third chapter of A Preface to Literary Analysis an important detail was discussed in these statements:

What distinguishes literature from nonliterature is its invented quality…. style is the way a writes, whatever he writes about regardless of its relationship to actual fact. It is however, neither mere mannerism or idiosyncrasy, but the sum of those devices, inherited or newly invented by which language in its various possibilities is employed to bring an implied reader into a hypothetical world, contrived by an empirical author speaking through an artificial voice”(Zitner et al. 33).

These relevant arguments provides an emphasis on the devices that render a styled texture to any work as that which is evident in Salamanca.

III. Conclusion

Salamanca is a novel worth reading. The book made me understand the deeper meaning of the lives of its fictional characters. At first, I thought I wouldn’t finish reading it because a novel is lengthy but then the in reading the first part, I was hooked by the novel.

1. References:

Alfar, Dean Francis. Salamanca. Manila: Ateneo de Manila University Press,2005.

Zitner, Sheldon et al. A Preface To Literary Analysis. New York: Scott Foresman & Company,1964. 33

phil Lit

1. Compare and contrast the female characters in “Tanabata’s Wife,” “The Virgin,” and “Sounds of Sunday,” according to their motivations, their personalities, and the manners in which they confronted and resolved their “predicaments.” What do you think were the intentions of the writers in portraying the feminine persona in each of their stories this way?

A very striking similarity relevant to all three stories is that they can be categorized according to their theme: love. The three love stories portray women in their very own circumstances. All of which were showed perspectives that emphasized the realistic situations in real life.

World’s Realities

World’s realities…I’ve been thinking about what to put in my blog lately. I first thought of posting my research proposals and class submitted papers so that I won’t think much about these stuff.

Again we have our own realities. I mean, I’m the kind of person who had been told “Nothing poetic about it…”, “bad prose”, “Scrap the whole poem,retain the title”… It’s painful to get those remarks from our Poetry class but hey! My revising reality slaps me in the face. Honestly, I haven’t done any except for the principle of sticking with the requirement date. Friends, I tell you doing what I DO IS SUCH A MISERABLE THING. If you really want top impress your teacher, please do otherwise or suffer his/her/the professor’s slips of the tongue(lucky, if they’re just slips…ahahaha painful ones worst embarassing ones). Well, lucky me I don’t take them as destructive criticisms(I’m a hopeless roma…um optimist). If ever you get them.welcome them.they’re inspiration coming right out of the teacher’s blues. Anyway, if there’s a class I’d like to get them(criticisms), it’ll be poetry. I just love my classmates there(maybe except___) because in poetry each of us knows when to meditate or bluff(LOL) when we can’t find the right words. Actually I was suppossed to talk about the movie Slumdog Millionaire and now I end up sentimentalizing.

Let’s go to what sir Timothy told us about: that “The Philippines is actually the only country who/which/that has a literary man as a national hero” these aren’t actually the exact words.

I always think of it now, and I ask myself How?(uy, rhyming)/ Why? What if it was Andres Bonifacio who made it as a national hero? I don’t know really. But there was always something about a statue in most parks that made me ask who is he?” when I was young. Just this morning I reported about Amado V. Hernandes and his poem “Aklasan.” I was bothered byu what E. San Juan Jr quoted that the artist had said something about “Bakit sukdulang napababayaan ang mga manunulat sa wikang bernakular?”

Whew…my brain neurons popped(eww, what a morbid image so final-destination-thingy).It made me think about my being a BA English student(why not medicine?nursing?). I don’t know if I could even make something such as a real work of art or rather what they call “masterpiece.” (forgive my lapses, again this is an unrevised post).

Well, if ever your mind boggles over many things remember this: Chill. It’s worth wasting time when you’re about to have a nervous breakdown right?

I’m always the smiling type when I love what I’m up to… So hang on April. It’s a tough ride but I know you’ll get through(with so amny wonderful people surrounding you)

World’s realities….uhuh…tsk..tsk…slips of the tongue.

Totally outrageous

Well, there are really stuff that make us say “That was outrageous!” I can’t imagine myself saying that especially when I’m so awe-stuck by a lot of happenings in the world. Forgive me for my blog doesn’t contain certain entertainment news. My schedules are cluttered with so many things pending. I’m in a wait list on the other tasks that I still have to do. I don’t even read newspapers nowadays. I hope I could still comment on other peoples’ lives especially the Hollywood stars or local celebrities of the Philippines.

I wish I had more time to sit and do somethings better than dozing in class. Boring life that’s surely it.