(2018) Heights Vol. 65, Seniors Folio

sf

heights seniors folio 2018 Copyright 2018 heights is the official literary and artistic publication and organization of the Ateneo de Manila University.

Copyright reverts to the respective ­authors and a­ rtists whose works appear in this issue. No part of this book may be r­ eprinted or reproduced in any means whatsoever ­without the written permission of the copyright holder.

This publication is not for sale.

Correspondence may be addressed to: heights, Publications Room, mvp 202 Ateneo de Manila University p.o. Box 154, 1099 Manila, Philippines Tel. no. (632) 426-6001 loc. 5448 heights - ateneo.org Creative Direction, Cover, and Dividers by Dianne Aguas and Ninna Lebrilla Layout by JJ Agcaoili, Kim Alivia, Rico Cruz, and Ninna Lebrilla Typeset in mvb Verdigris

Seniors Folio an anthology of seniors’ writing and art 2018

Contents Eunice Arevalo 2 Places 4 Alec Bailon 8 Until the City 10 Geene Sabrina Basilio 16 sipi mula sa Ang Mga Misteryo ng

Misteryosong si Father Jo 18 Si Lumawig at ang Pambihirang Ginintuang

Puno ng Bontoc 26 Nikki Bonuel 66 Baler 68 Ponch Castor 70 The Gentle Way 72 Yuji de Torres 80 gary ross told me it’s okay to be delayed 81 Karl Estuart 88 On A Mountain, Briefly 90 Corinne Garcia 102 craftsman by the sea 104 Dohtonbori River (made unrecognizeable by

city lights) (series) 105

Justine Chloe Guevara 110 a child, remembered 112 Gabby Jimenez 114 Double Experiment 4 116 Ma. Cecilia Rosario Basa Lamug 118 Night Out (series) 120 Ninna Lebrilla 126 ME-YOU 128 Gabrielle Leung 130 Notes on the Word Witness 132 Listen, 134 Yas Liamco 136 Stigma 138 Celline Marge Mercado 150 Humahalik 152 Nangangagat 153 Jose Alfonso Ignacio Mirabueno 156 Ilang Panuto sa Pag-ensayo 158 Jam Nitura 168 Saving Ela 170

Robyn Saquin 208 Let Go 210 Joaquin Singson 212 Pet Sounds 213 Kristoff Sison 226 Papa, I Love You 228 Reina Tamayo 232 an elegy for a memory of my father 233 attachment 235 Yuri Ysabel Tan 238 after Rodrigo Duterte 240 Noise 241 Michaela Gonzales Tiglao 248 Pilgrimage 250 Elija Torre 252 Pagdidili-dili ng Isang Sepulturero 254 Pagpapatawad 255

Marco T. Torrijos 258 Muse (2) 260 Male (3) 261 Alie Unson 264 Approaching the City 266 At Last, the Ocean 273 Mark Yu 286 Hue 287

Introduction Batch 2018 began our Ateneo journey with an invitation into discovery. Tuklas, our freshman OrSem theme, was a call that continued to define our entire college lives in the years since.

Through experiences and challenges, we have stumbled upon unexpected truths about the world, society, our communities, the people around us, and ourselves. Both inside and outside of the university, the changes that propelled these discoveries broadened and deepened our understanding of our realities. With each new uncovering, we have been asked to continually reevaluate how we understand the world and our place in it.

In recent years, changes have pushed many of us to see the world around us in different ways. Many of us have become increasingly aware of the political turmoil in our midst with the rise of fake news, historical revisionism, and rampant violence. In a similar manner, many of us have become mindful of our place in a history we find ourselves discovering every day. Our stay in the Ateneo has encompassed the 2016 national elections, the ratification of the new Ateneo constitution, the early years of the war on drugs, the burial of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos in the Libingan ng mga Bayani, Martial Law in Mindanao, the rise of the #MeToo movement, the launch of the Martial Law Museum, the CBA deadlock and the workers’ strike, the construction and inauguration of the AretÊ and the new Ateneo Art Gallery, among many other important events (both positive and negative) on a variety of scales.

Certainly, these feel like challenging times to live in. Yet alongside and amidst these changes, we have seen ourselves and our peers learning, growing, developing opinions, and coming into our own.

We have seen the potential for nuance and understanding, for compassion and hope.

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • ix

In heights, we hope to have fostered a space to unpack, reflect on, and even challenge the times that we find ourselves in. As they always have, art and literature can play a crucial role in finding new ways of understanding and creating meaning for the events around us.

This year, heights set out to recover the roles of art and literature in our social realities. There is work still to be done, of course. A desire to ground our artistic pursuits in the variety of realities we find around us must always be an ongoing struggle.

Each brushstroke, photograph, word, or stanza are all attempts—in perhaps an infinite permutation of ways—to understand the world we find ourselves in. Each work in this folio is a moment of discovery, both for the authors and every reader who engages with them through these pages.

In the years to come, we hope that you, soon-to-be-graduate, continue to create art and literature as we graduate from the Ateneo.

We hope that you continue to make space in your lives for appreciating creative pursuits, and the clarity of insight and depth of questioning they can bring with them. At the very least, we hope that you retain something from the kind of spirit that art and literature stands for: a love for thought, a dedication to craft, a commitment to engaging, a willingness to attempt, a drive for discovery. We hope that in understanding our realities, we discover new modes of participation and service, and recover ones that we have perhaps forgotten along the way. And in these, perhaps, we may find tools to deal with the swiftly changing world we continue to find ourselves in.

Alexandria T. Tuico Managing Editor for Finance Neil John C. Vildad Managing Editor for External Affairs

x · Introduction

Works

Eunice Arevalo bs psychology

Eunice is graduating with a degree in psychology—with a bunch of natural science units she said she wanted four years ago but now no longer knows why (but that’s okay). She tries to keep up her artistic and literary hobbies on the side.

“Places” is the first thing she has decently written in years. Though glad, she is surprised it has made it this far. The work was originally intended to be a longer series, but she dropped the words somewhere along the way. Hopefully she can go back and find them soon.

Some acknowledgments: To my family. To my friends. To my professors and mentors. To all the classmates I’ve had and to all the people I’ve met in between. To the people sending love from across the sea. To the oaa, who put up with me and all my confusing changes.

To heights and especially to the Art Staff.

To these four story and adventure-filled years—thank you.

[Hero – Family of the Year]

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 2

Places Busan Busan is nothing like Seoul. Granted, I was only in Busan for two days, but Busan moved differently. Sparser train lines and lower skylines. A Buddhist temple by the sea instead of tucked into the mountains or thriving in the middle of the city. An old man jogging in a speedo at six in the morning along a freezing beach (I had run into the water, expecting the warmth of May to have seeped into the sea, only to have it bite at my feet for assuming such a thing).

The sunrise was blue over Haeundae when we arrived. We had gone to the wrong end of the coast to catch the dawn. The beach was empty, with only locals popping up by sunrise on their regular morning walks. We ran into a Jehovah’s witness along the beach who had heard us speaking English and correctly guessed we were from the Philippines. Said he had been to Manila twenty years ago to learn—English? Religion? But he never forgot the city. None of us were old enough to tell him he was right or wrong.

Mapo Bridge, Seoul There are 27 bridges crossing the Han River in Seoul. There are any number of public parks sitting on either end of those bridges. In the spring, the parks are full of cherry blossoms and colorful bicycles and picnic mats with chicken delivery and haphazardly removed sneakers and laughter into the evening.

Near one of the biggest parks, crossing from Yeouido to Mapo district, is a bridge that doesn’t laugh. People used to jump off so often that the government had to pay attention.

They launched a “Bridge of Life” campaign in order to prevent more cases. Rather than build a barricade over the railings to stop people, they tried to reason with them—maybe even beg them. At its peak, the bridge had lit up railings with words of encouragement and pictures of families or children. There was even a statue that tried to remind you that you weren’t alone. heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 4

South Korea still has one of the highest suicide rates in the world, due in part, perhaps, to the air of competition that pervades the culture. By accident, I had attended a Christian talk at a nearby university, and a man spoke to the crowd about their lives. From birth, they hit the ground running, speeding to the next milestone.

Elementary. Middle School. High school. University. Work. Finish one then you’re faced with the next race to the top. But that’s how they got out of their post-war rut, my roommate said. That’s why competition shows are so popular in Korea, my roommate said.

The “Bridge of Life” campaign was shut down after a few years.

With all the talk about suicide on the bridge, more people just thought it would be a great place to do it. The government eventually had to give up their encouragement program and installed the high barricades they didn’t want to in the first place. I couldn’t find any of the photos or statues when I went, but the words were still on the railings.

Are you okay? Have you eaten? The wind is very nice.

Looking over the railing, I saw Yeouido park spreading out into the distance, with all its trees and picnicking families and blue skies.

Idyllic. Enticing. And above it all, you seemed so alone in the cold.

Maybe that’s why they still jumped.

5 • Eunice Arevalo

Alec Bailon

bfa creative writing

This for heights, my teachers and professors, Anne Carson, Lorde, Carly Rae, and all that have supported me and my journey in writing.

But most of all, this is for Woes.

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 8

Until the City And this where we began: in your car telling each other things on our minds. I take three different rides to school, every day I pass by a gun shop beside a Protestant church beside a bakery above a KFC. In Manggahan there are people that cross the highway below footbridges to deliberately get hit just to pay for bills, there’s a mall in the form of a castle known for crooks and shady transactions, I couldn’t even eat a decent meal in freshman year, there’s a dam inside a gated village a few blocks from home, there’s a church in the form of a castle we used to think was Disneyland, what happened with my ex, her father, we never have enough money to travel, I see the sky more clearly in the mornings now coming to you because they’ve cut off all the trees to make way for the new mrt, but once the trains have been built it’ll be less clear, I’ve been commuting since the 6th grade, the farthest I’ve been was Zambales, the place where you drop me off used to be a river before it was road, wet markets turned into supermarkets, as we enter Fairview we see mountains from Montalban but never get close, and I ask you about home.

You tell me about a river that’s important to you. You tell me about the time your ex took you there after a fight and you made love inside his car.

You apologize.

I tell you it’s alright. There’s a city in me and it asks you to keep going.

In the carpark after a busy day: I’m in the passenger seat, our seats are backed up and we are facing each other. I tell you that it takes almost an hour before I get a ride home, and when I get on I’m swept again against currents of headlights and taillights. Tell you how many times I’ve heard the Far View joke. I begin to wonder aloud about names as placeholders. Tell you about a poem that said the exact same thing.

How I began the habit of smoking. The names of the train stations, the neon placards on windshields. Streets that become extensions. heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 10

I can’t take you home because the house is still a mess, our roofs are caving in, we’ve no time to clean, only one toilet works. Highways with two different names. How names become places. I ask if you wonder why most would prefer to call it Quezon Memorial Circle instead of Elliptical Road. Well, I do. I tell you there’s danger in the hub. The heart of qc. It’s having a stroke. Blood pressure’s too high. It’s all that fossil fat we’re consuming. Your car’s too fast, there’s too much trash.

You know this as you drive your mother and sister who came all the way from Home-home to visit you. How you’re still scared to drive along the highway that I call home. And I think maybe I’m starting to become scared, scared that we’re going too fast. Because we both came from people we were ready to finally call home. It’s difficult to ask you for highways so wide yet so slow, when you’re used to driving fast from home to here. Remember when I began to wonder if it’s worth taking you around. I tell you nothing here is exciting, not like the sprawling plains of your home, the hidden waterfalls, the cave your father named after you, the houses on mountains where you bring books to kids—the rivers to make love to.

I apologize.

You tell me it’s alright. We can take it slow, you say. Bayombong is a six-hour drive from here, eight if you take a bus. You send photographs from other countries, how you’ve traveled far and wide, while I’ve never know any other place than here. You take photographs of the city as well and send them back to me. There’s one of the Tandang Sora part of Commonwealth, before the road splits into flyover and slope, it is out of focus, so you can make out only the colors of the lights, they become spots of red and yellow and green and orange.

You tell me this is called bokeh, and I had to look that up. As well as the songs you play in the car, many of the artists I barely know. And every day with you I’m learning something new; a song, a place, a phrase, a poem, a person, a feeling; these become the measure of our distance. Ay-ayaten ka, you tell me eventually, I attempt to reciprocate but I cannot say these words to you without imagining you laughing at the coarseness of my utterance. We both have languages either does

11 • Alec Bailon

not speak. Your Ilokano takes you worlds away, just as the gestures I make to my sister do. In the sharing of these things we are drawn. I don’t stop taking them, in the way a jeep or an fx routinely circles the city. And there goes my propensity to dramatize again. I think this is because I always think I’m never interesting enough, too regular.

You shut me up, you tell me none of that matters. You tell me how quiet it gets there, and you’d have to cross town and mountains just to buy the books you want. Growing up, you spent your time at home reading books instead of going out with your friends. You tell me none of them read the same books as you, or listen to the same music, or watch the same films. You tell me that you don’t even have a Starbucks at home. I joke that it’s the same for me because I can’t even afford Starbucks. But you tell me you’re excited to see my city with me. You’ll drive me home every day anyway.

Now, we are waiting for the next train in Santolan, an fx along Luzon, your car outside your village. Holding hands in the lrt, sitting across each other on the jeep, falling asleep at the back seat of M’s car. I ask myself why the city looks so different now. Why everything feels poignant, like the photographs you send me. Like a river in the city; like you have the river, and I have the city, both ceaseless as they are inviting.

I’m in bed, the rain is pouring on this Quezon City morning.

You remember what I mean by this. Our roofs are leaking, we’ve got dozens of mismatched pails and old containers beginning to fill with rainwater. The ceiling in the living room is caving in but none of the rain is coming in my room. So, I’ll tell you what’s dry: My cluttered bookshelf, my means of travel, some of those on there are yours, I keep them to a particular side; the posters on my wall of plays, shows, events I’ve been a part of; guitars that have not been played for a while, the tuning pegs out of screws; various wires for different gadgets and appliances that have lost their original partners and uses; lanyards of different schools hung on my bedpost, obtained through different people and different means; an authentic People Power sticker from my father’s youth on our

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 12

mirror; our surround sound stereo blasting music you left for me to listen to (it’s Sarah Vaughan, Norah Jones, and other women); a twinsize bed that would fit us both perfectly.

I’m still tired often, my culprit is the city, but you say this is what you’ve come to love. You know how it feels to approach and leave it.

You’ll be in the city in a few hours. You’re seeing things for the nth time. I wonder what it feels like to be perpetually coming back and forth from city to home, home to city. But you tell me this isn’t so.

You’re coming from home to home. You’re stopping by shops and restaurants I’ve never seen before. You tell me about them. And until you arrive, you’ll keep sending photographs. There’s a shot of the sky with nameless trees. That’s how I see you: the perpetual landscape of the to-and-fro of home. The sunlight filters through your eyes, rivers I’ve never felt before.

13 • Alec Bailon

Geene Sabrina Basilio bfa creative writing

Isang piyesang kabaliwan lang para sa apat na taong kabaliwan din.

Para sa lahat ng mga tumakbong ctc-bel; mga kapirasong papel na kinamuhian; mga bumugsong damdamin sa mesa (salamat Red Horse); mga estrangherong di malilimutan at mga gurong hindi makatarungan; mga minutong wala pang upuan sa Matteo; mga ilaw sa fa theater; mga sandali ng kabobohan sa Esteban Abada; mga slot na di nakuha at mga slot na pinagsisihan; mga naiwang bote sa amp bench; mga nakapag-liempo sa Manang’s, mga payong na hindi pinaglaban; mga tawag sa telepono ng nababalisang nanay; at mga sinugal na thesis statement.

Para sa mga nagpakawala. Para sa mga lumisan, at sa mga bumalik.

Para sa mga nagbahagi at tumanggap, sa mga nagpapatuloy. Para sa anumang kabaliwan pa ang paparating pa lang.

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 16

sipi mula sa Ang Misteryo ng Misteryong Si Father Jo* mga tauhan

Emil – 60’s; resident mortician at may-ari ng Carbonell Funeral Home Rhojay – 27; nag-iisang apprentice niya; kababalik niya galing Manila tagpuan 3:00 am sa Carbonell Funeral Home, Bayan ng Villaverde panahon

Kasalukuyang panahon. Gabi. ang dula

Nakaupo si RHOJAY sa isang sulok ng embalming room kung saan may nag-iisang bangkay na natatakpan ng puting tela. May nakasabit pang facemask sa leeg niya at mga papel na kaniyang sinusuri habang may kausap siya sa cellphone. rhojay

Wala. Paki-double check na lang diyan. Sige, at kailan ko kaya malalaman? Sige sige okey lang. Benj, sana atin lang muna ito, an’a? ...O-okey ako. (Titingnan niya saglit ang bangkay.) Okey naman. (Maririnig ang malakas na pagsara ng pinto. Hihinaan niya ang boses niya.) Sige Benj, mamaya na lang. Ag-text ka man. Wen sige, tenkyu tenkyu. Benj ha?

Isang bagong-gising at nababalisang EMIL ang papasok. Tatayo si RHOJAY para salubungin ang matanda. emil Alas-tres ng umaga, balóng ku!? Alam mo namang *Nabasa na ang isang bersyon ng maikling dulang ito para sa 13th Virgin Labfest Writing Fellowship Program: Wagas ng CCP.

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 18

’pag ’yang si Celia ang nagreklamo, buong purok ang ginigising! rhojay

Nag-panic garúd ako, Manong. Pasensiya na.

emil

(Habang nagsusuot ng gloves at apron) ’Di bale na.

Araw-araw naman na ’kong ginigising ng nag-aalburoto kong asawa. Ba’t ’di na lang din ng nagmamagaling na embalsamador na takot humawak ng ari? (Sa sarili) Isu la nga isu. [Parehas lang naman ’yun.]

Magtatapat sila sa gitna ng silid, bangkay sa pagitan nila.

Katahimikan. emil

Hindi para sa ’yo, kundi para kay Father Jo. (Hihinga siyang malalim. Susubukan niyang iangat ang puting tela ngunit bibitawan niya lang agad.) Rhojay balóng, kung ikaw nagloloko... Ay, hindi ito magandang biro.

rhojay

Manong, agtalná ka man! Hindi ho ako marunong magbiro nang gano’n!

Hahawakan ulit ni EMIL ang tela. Hihinga siyang malalim. Bibitawan niya ulit. emil

Alam mo, kung hindi ngawngaw ni Celia ang ikababaliw ko, balóng, ito na ’yun. (Hahawakan niya ulit ang tela) Excuse lang met, Father a. (Hihinga na naman siyang malalim. Bibitawan na naman niya.) Agúray man! [Teka nga!] Aniya ba nakitam? I-describe mo man!

rhojay

Sus apu! Tingnan mo na kitdí!

Iaangat sa wakas ni EMIL ang tela at susuriin nila ang ari ng bangkay

19 • Geene Sabrina Basilio

ni Father. Mapapaatras siya. Titingnan niya si RHOJAY, tapos ang bangkay. Kay RHOJAY. Sa bangkay.

Mahabang katihimikan na susundan ng mabilis at nauutal-utal na palitan. emil

Ukininana. [“Tangina.”]

rhojay

Kitam? Sabi ko ho sa inyo e! Ano na’ng gagawin natin ngayon, Manong?

emil

A-aniya? Ano’ng gagawin? Bakit may gagawin? E kung berde ’yung tite ng paboritong pari ng buong bayan ng Villaverde, may magagawa ba tayo? Sige nga, ano’ng gagawin?

rhojay

’Diak ammu, Manong! [Ewan ko!] Kaya ko ho tinatanong! Call niyo dayta! [Call niyo ’yan!]

emil

Ano daw ang gagawin. Hah! (Mas mahina nang kaunti) Berde ’yan o! Berde nga butu! (Sisilipin niya pang minsan ang bangkay) Berde met piman! BERDE! BAKIT BERDE! (Mangiyak-iyak) LOOORD! Ano po ito!

rhojay

’Nong! ’Di po ata kayo narinig ng kabilang probinsya, pakilakasan pa po. (Walang sagot si EMIL. Nakatulala siya.) Darating na po ang parokya mamaya. An’a garúden?

[Paano na ’yan?]

emil

Agúray ka man, siká! [Teka nga lang kasi!] Ba’t ba kasi ako ang tinatanong mo!

rhojay E kayo naman po ang nagsabing pinakamagaling dito sa Villaverde, ’di ba? emil

kayo

ang

Agtalná ka man! [Tumigil ka nga diyan!] Wala heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 20

akong sinabing gano’n a. Ang sabi ko, ’di porket nakapag-Manila ka e mas magaling ka na sa ’min.

Pinaalala ko lang sa’yo na kahit nakapag-siyudad ka’t lahat-lahat, dito sa Carbonell, ako ang nakatatanda.

Ako pa rin ang boss. rhojay

Wen garúd, Manong... [Oo nga... Manong.] No problem.

No problem. Ikaw ang boss.

Magje-gesture siya sa bangkay. emil

Agúray ka man! [Hoy, teka nga lang!] T—ti—teamwork pa rin dapat, ’di ba? ’Di porket may boss, siya na lahat?

rhojay

E ANO GARÚD? (Naiinip na siya) Totoo met gáyam, Manong!

Mag-iikot-ikot na si EMIL ng embalming room. rhojay

Totoo lahat! Naaalala niyo ’yung salamangekrong pinatapon nila sa doktor? Ito ’yun. Totoo ’yung sinasabi niya! Sino na’ng makapagsasabing hindi totoo ’yung tungkol sa tatay niyang basagulero? O ’yung tinatago raw niyang babae sa simbahan? ’Yung tungkol sa...“ostia?”

Titigil si EMIL sa pag-ikot. emil

Kastúy. [Ganito.] Gagawin lang natin ang lagi nating ginagawa. Patuloy lang. Respetuhin ang katawan, ang proseso.

rhojay

Manong. Ada nga berde nga butu ni Father Jo o.

BERDE! Paano ko rerespetuhin ’yun?

emil

E... bakit si Mayor dati! O, ada nga GENITAL

21 • Geene Sabrina Basilio

PIERCING na, ’di ba? ’Di ka naman nagreklamo no’n a.

Ikaw pa nga nagtanggal. IKAW mismo nagsabing ’di na ’yun kailangang ipaalam at ibigay sa mga anak niya, ’di ba? E ’di... e ’di gano’n lang din ito, Rhojay. rhojay

Manong, ibang kaso ang genital piercing sa berdeng uten, alam niyo po ’yun. Kitang-kita ko po kayang naririndi rin kayo.

emil

Sino’ng naririndi? Ako? Oy balóng ku a. Ikaw, ’di ka kailanman hinusgahan ni Father Jo tapos ikaw ganiyan ka mag-isip!

rhojay

Trabaho niya ’yun, Manong. ’Pag doing the Lord’s work ka, ’di ka puwede manghusga.

emil

At ikaw? Puwede ka manghusga?

rhojay

Manong hindi po ako nanghuhusga, nagulat lang ako.

Kayo ho ’yung nanghuhusga sa ’ting dalawa.

emil

Aba, ako pa ang—ako! Talaga! Ayan ka manén sa pagbaling mo ng mga bagay-bagay sa akin. Diyan ka magaling e! Tapos ngayon binabaling mo naman ang desisyon sa ’kin!

rhojay

Ta’s kung hindi, mayabang naman ako.

emil

E mayabang ka naman talagang bata ka.

rhojay

Wen garúd, sige. Kayo po ang panalo. Dami po nating nagawa kapipintas sa ugali ko.

Matatawa si EMIL. emil

Ano nga ba kasi kailangang gawin ha, balóng ku? heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 22

Ano gusto mo, pinturahan natin? Sabihin mo nga sa ’kin, bukod sa ’ting dalawa ha, may sisilip ba sa ari ni Father Jo? rhojay

Manong, nakakita na po ako ng berdeng ari, ibig sabihin ata no’n kahit ano puwede mangyari. Lalo na sa bayan na ’to, imposibleng walang mag-uusisa.

emil

Sus apu! Pari dayta, balóng ku! Pari! Kumbaga Diyos na siya sa mga tao dito. Pustahan tayo, matatakot ’yan silang lumapit kahit ipagsigawan pa nating “OY! KAYAT YO AMIN MAKITA ETITS NI FATHER JO? ’LINA KAYO!” (Ituturo niya ang bangkay) “BERDE NGANG TUNAY!”

Katahimikan. rhojay

Tiningala ko ’yang si Father Jo. Matagal na siyang usap-usapan dito sa Villaverde, pero pilit ko siyang pinagtanggol, ay. ’Kala ko naman sinisiraan lang siya kasi masyadong progresibo. Masyadong liberal.

emil

Rhojay, bay ámun [hayaan mo na] sila nga mag-usap dayta. Lagi naman nilang ginagawa ’yan e. Wala na dapat tayong kinalaman do’n.

Patlang. Tutunog ang cellphone ni RHOJAY. Dalian niya itong papatayin. emil

O sige ha. Kastúy, [Ganito,] kung may magtanong, sabihin na lang natin na... galing si Father Jo sa... simbahan na—basta ’yung mga nagpapatanggal ng bayag. Ipagpalagay na lang nating ’yun nga ang kaso.

Na wala. Wala na lang. Para mas madali sa ’ting lahat.

rhojay

Manong Emil, seryosohin niyo naman po ito.

23 • Geene Sabrina Basilio

emil

Seryoso nak met, balóng!

rhojay

Ang sinasabi niyo po, iaatin lang natin ito? Tama ho ba ’yun?

emil

Nakakatuwa ka naman. Sana tinanong mo rin no’n kung tama bang umalis na lang bigla nang walang pasabi.

Alam mo ’yun, balóng? Iwanan ang Mamang mong walang ibang tagapangalaga. Si Myrna, na inakalang papakasalan ka... Ang trabaho mo. ’Di ba parang mas okay nang magka-berdeng bayag kaysa gawin ’yun? Pero, akin lang naman ’yun.

rhojay

An’ya met ni Manong, nanghahalungkat o. Nag-sorry naman na ako, ’di ba?

emil

Ay sorry ba kunám? (Kakausapin niya ang bangkay) Sorry daw po, o. Ag-sorry ka man kuno, Father, nang maging patas na ang lahat.

rhojay

Ang galing. Ang mature po pala natin dito, ano?

Tutunog ulit ang cellphone ni RHOJAY. Papatayin niya agad. emil

Alam mo ang tama sa akin, e ’yung gawin ang trabaho natin. Preserbahin ’yung imahe na gusto niyang iiwan sa mga tao. Ipapakita lang ang gustong makita. Gusto nila walang butas sa noo, walang nagtutubig na ilong, walang lumulubog na mata. Ng paring malinis. ’Yun lang.

Patlang. rhojay

Si Father Jo pala ’yung nagpayo sa ’king ituloy ang

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 24

pag-Manila. emil

Aniya kunám? [Ano’ng sabi mo?]

rhojay

Si Father Jo. Nu’ng sinabi ko ho sa kaniyang gusto ko subukang maghanap ng trabaho sa Manila, siya ’yung kaisa-isang taong natuwa para sa ’kin. Sabi niya kung mangangarap rin lang ako, i-todo ko na.

Natakot lang ako no’n kasi ayokong isipin mo na ’yung kaisa-isang lalaki sa buong Villaverde na interesado sa kalakal na gan’to e aalis na lang nang—

Isang katok. May ilang boses mula sa labas ng entablado. Di kikibo si RHOJAY. Tatayo si EMIL. emil

Sinu ad’yay? Ba’t ang aga? (Sisilipin niya) Ay, ditoy ni Benjie! Bakit? Sina sister? Baka dala lang nila robe ni Father, an’a? Siguro... Baka magbibilin lang? (Tahimik si Rhojay) Rhojay?

Magtitinginan sila. Katok muli. emil

Ako lang naman tinawagan mo, an’a?

rhojay

Manong… Manong, ano gagawin natin, manong?

Isa pang katok. telon

25 • Geene Sabrina Basilio

Si Lumawig at ang Pambihirang Ginintuang Puno ng Bontoc Hango sa ‘The Golden Tree of the Ibalois’ ni Cecile Cariño

ang tauhan

Inang – 75 anyos; Isa sa iilang natitirang Mankotom1 sa Sitio Talubin ng Bontoc Ani – 12 anyos; Batang kapatid ni Nardo; maputla’t inuubo-ubo ngunit madaldal at mausisa Nardo – 16 anyos; Panganay na kapatid; iskolar ng Bumoro Mining Corp.

Lumawig – Anak ni Kabunian na Apo-Diyos; matipuno; bayaning nagturo sa mga taga-Bontoc ng kanilang kultura Tyadigan – Pinakamatapang na mandirigma ng Bontoc Koro – Ayon sa dula, lima ang bilang ng koro ngunit maaaring dagdagan ng direktor kung naisin niya; maliban sa isang lalaki at isang babae, desisyon ng direktor ang kasarian ng iba ang dula

Tahimik na nagtitiklop si INANG sa isang silya. Nasa paanan siya ng isa sa dalawang mababang higaan, kung saan nakaupo ang apo niyang si ANI. Abala nitong sinusuklay ang buhok ng lola. Iaangat ni INANG ang isang pulang tapis upang masdan ang disenyo. inang

Kita mo kung pano’ng sinusundan ng linyang ito ang hugis ng mga bundok?

ani

At ito pong nasa ibabaw?

Mankotom - tagapangasiwa at tagapangalaga ng mga ritwal; tagapayo at tagabasa

1

ng mga pangitain

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 26

inang

Ito si Apong Tyadigan, ang pinakamalakas na mandirigma ng kasaysayan. Nakaangat ang mga kamay niya dahil nagbibigay-pugay siya sa Apo-diyos.

Ilalapag niya ang tapis sa kandungan. inang

Ito ang paboritong ihabi noon ng nanay mo, Tapis Bangkuro.

Alam mo, sinusuot lang ito ng mayayaman.

Hahawakan ito ni ANI. Ngingiti siya. ani

Ang ganda po, Inang.

inang

Ang bawat tela nito ay isang dasal na gumaling ka na. At para na rin sa lahat ng mga nagkakasakit ngayon.

Susundan ng mga daliri niya ang mga linya sa tela. inang

Dasal na sana’y umalis na ang masasamang elemento sa inyong mga katawan.

Pipikit ang lola. Ititigil ni ANI ang pagsuklay. inang

Sige anak, tama na iyan. Mabuti pang magpahinga ka na muna, tatapusin ko lang ito.

ani

’Di po ako inaantok, ’Nang! Kuwentuhan niyo na lang po ako. Tungkol po kay Nanay.

inang

Sige, halika muna rito balásang2 ku, nang makita ko ang hitsura nito sa ’yo.

balasang - /balásang/; ginagamit na parang “iha”

2

27 • Geene Sabrina Basilio

Ipapatong ni INANG ang tapis sa may balakang ng apo. Mapapangiti siya. inang

Ang ganda talaga ng apo ko. Kamukhang-kamukha mo talaga ang Nanay mo. Mata, ilong, pati kinis ng balat.

Sana lang bumalik na ang gana mong kumain para hindi ka masyadong payat.

Ititiklop muli ni INANG ang tapis. inang

‘Di ka na niya naturuang maghabi ano?

Iiling si ANI. inang

Sayang at may potolan pa naman akong naipamana sana.

Alam mo naman iyon ’di ba? ’Yung panghabi?

ani

Ay opo, Inang! Ginusto lang po kasi ni Nanay na pagbutihan ko ang pag-aaral, para makakuha po ako ng iskolarship, gaya ni Manong Nardo.

inang

Ng ano?

ani

Ng iskolarship po.

inang Ah... ani

Pero sana nga po natuto akong gumawa nito. Ang gaganda po talaga ng mga tapis niyo, Inang. Mamahalin siguro ’yung tela!

inang

Aba, dapat pinakamagandang tela lang ang inaalay sa mga espiritu. Kaya tandaan, sa susunod na may bagyo

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 28

at epidemyang tulad nito, mabisang panlubag ang mahahalagang ari-arian.

Bilang pagsunod na rin sa bilin ni Lumawig na huwag kumapit sa mga makamundong bagay.

ani

Bilin po nino, Inang?

inang

Ni Lumawig, ang anak ng Apo-Diyos.

Papasok si NARDO. Aayos ng upo si ANI para mayakap siya ng kuya. ani

Manong ku!

nardo

O kamusta pakiramdam mo? Kanina lang, umiiyak-iyak ka a.

Itutulak siya ni ANI palayo. ani

’Di kaya!

inang

O Nardo, ginabi ka ha.

Magmamano si NARDO sa kaniyang lola. nardo

Pasensya na po, Inang. Nag-alok po si Manang Lantong ng miryenda. At marami rin pong inaayos sa daan, mga gumuhong lupa.

ani

Sa bayan ka ba nanggaling? Sama ako sa susunod!

nardo

O basta magpagaling ka muna.

29 • Geene Sabrina Basilio

inang

Ay balásang ku, ang babae hindi lumalabas ng bahay nang ganitong oras. Hindi maganda tingnan.

Halika, higa ka lang. Baka bumalik ’yang sakit ng tiyan mo ha.

Mag-aabot si NARDO ng maliit na basket kay INANG. nardo

Ay ’Nang, pinapabigay nga po pala ni Manang Lantong.

Basi at dilis, galing pa raw pong Laoag.

inang

Ay aba! Nag-abala pa talaga siya. Napakabait naman.

Kinumusta mo naman si Minyong, gaya ng sabi ko?

nardo

Opo, naglalakad-lakad na raw po, pero hindi na po nila pinalabas ng kuwarto. Natatakot po silang mahawa ’yung mga kapatid.

inang

Nako, kung gano’n mukhang kailangan na naman nila ng gamot. Sigurado akong gagana na ang lapting.

Tingnan mo o, gumana sa kapatid mo. Gagawa ako ulit mamaya.

nardo

A, Inang—

inang

Bumalik ka sa kanila bukas at bigyan natin sila ng bagong balutan ng lapting.

nardo

Inang, aalis na po sila bukas. Bababa po sa Manila.

inang

Manila ba ’ka mo?

Tatango si NARDO.

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 30

nardo

Mukha raw po kasing ’di na karaniwang sakit sa tiyan. ’Di po yata kakayanin ng... ng lapting.

inang

Ay kung gano’n na hindi kakayanin ng isang Mankotom tulad ko, na malapit sa kalikasan at hinirang mismo ni Kabuniang Apo-Diyos, e paano ito kakayanin ng kahit anong doktor sa baba?

Patlang. inang

Sigurado ako, galit na nga talaga si Lumawig sa Sitio Talubin dahil sinuway ng mga tao ang utos niya!

ani

(Malambing) ’Nang, hinahon lang po.

inang

Pinarusahan na tayo minsan ng bagyong Bebeng at ngayon ng isa namang malubhang sakit, nagmamatigas pa rin ang mga tao.

Lalo na ’yang mga minero na ’yan, Nardo. Sinasabi ko sa ’yo.

nardo

Nagpapadala naman na po ang Bumoro Mining ng mga tao sa mga sapa ngayon. Pati nga po talon ng Humuyyo, sinara po muna nila sa mga bisita.

inang

Ano’ng sabi mo? Sinara?

ani

Opo ’Nang! Pulos po mga naka-dilaw na sumbrero ’yung nando’n. May mga makina silang malalaki!

Titingnan siya ni INANG. ani

Puwede po ba ’yun, Inang? Linisin ang sagradong tubig ng Humuyyo?

31 • Geene Sabrina Basilio

nardo

Ani, hindi lang lupa ang tinangay ng bagyong Bebeng, pati na rin mga kemikal na desetso ng mga minahan sumingaw sa mga sapa. (Kay Inang) ’Yun po ang nililinis nila. Malamang po kasi do’n nanggagaling sakit ng mga tao.

ani

HALA, Manong! ’Di ba iskolar ka pa naman ng Bumoro?

nardo

Uy, ’di naman porke iskolar nila, magiging mining engineer agad!

inang

O, wala man lang bang silang sinasabi sa inyo tungkol diyan?

nardo

A, mga benepaktor lang po kasi ang humaharap sa amin.

Masyado pong malaking tao ’yung may-ari ng Bumoro para po makipag-usap sa mga tulad natin.

inang

Ito na nga ang sinasabi ko... Wala pa ngang dalawang taon mula no’ng sinira ng Bumoro ang mga gubat ng Patpayan. Nilamon nila ang mga bundok na bumubuhay sa atin. Ngayon, mga sapa naman ang nilalapastangan nila!

Paano mo nagagawang tumanggap ng tulong nila ha, Nardo?

nardo

’Nang, nasabi ko na po ito noon.

Gusto ko po talagang magtapos ng pag-aaral.

inang

Ay, bahala ka’n!

ani

Inang, magkakasakit na po ba tayong lahat?

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 32

Hahaplusin ni Inang ang buhok ni ANI. inang

Hindi. Hindi, nandito pa rin naman ako. At habang nandito pa ako, gagawin ko ang tungkulin ko bilang Mankotom ng Sitio Talubin. Pinagkaloob sa ’kin ng Apo-Diyos mismo ang trabahong ito. Alam ko kung ano’ng kailangan gawin.

ani

Ano po’ng gagawin, Inang?

inang

Sige, sandali.

Magkakalikot si INANG ng mga gamit. nardo

(Hihinaan ang boses para hindi marinig ni Inang) Ani, ’wag mo na kasing pinapatulan.

Kukunot ang noo ni ANI sa kaniya. ani

Kaysa naman galitin ko, gaya mo.

Babalik si INANG na may hawak na bote, maliliit na garapon, mga dahon ng gabi, at mga bato. inang

Heto! Samakalawa pag buo na ang buwan, dadalawin natin ang Bundok Púlis. Iaalay natin itong tapey3 (Iaangat niya ang bote) at bangkuro (Iaangat ang tapis) na ibabalot sa sida4 matapos itong dasalan. Kailangan maingat sa pagdasal nito dahil kung magkamali ka, magagalit siya at maaari ka niya gawing bato.

3

Tapey - /tapúy/; isang uri ng rice wine

4

Sida - /sidá/; karne ng baboy

33 • Geene Sabrina Basilio

Ipipikit ni INANG ang mga mata niya. inang

Makinig nang mabuti ha.

nardo

(Pabulong) Ani...

ani

SHH! Kakanta na si Inang!

inang

Sik-á san kabunián ay sana,

ta dakami san matágu,

ta gumábay san utikmi ya . . .

Susubukang sundan ni ANI ang pagkanta ng lola. ani & inang

Manókmiya san abiikmi ay sinpanábu

ta dakami matágu

san kapián di madmád ay.

ani

Kailangan po ba gano’ng gano’n ang pagkanta?

inang

Hangga’t maaari. ’Yun ang itinuro. Ganoon ang pagkanta tuwing salu-salong pesshet5 at gano’n rin magdasal noon ang Mamang ku. Hanggang sa panaginip ko, naririnig ko pa rin ang maganda niyang boses.

ani

’Nang, bakit po ’yung mga panaginip ko, hindi dinadalaw ng Nanay?

ya maseg-ánka ay apómi,

Magtitinginan si NARDO at INANG.

pesshet - pinakatanyag na ritwal o pista ng mga Ibaloi;

5

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 34

inang

Malamang nakakulong pa rin ang kaluluwa nila ng tatay niyo sa gubat ng Patpayan. Lahat silang mga natabunan ng lupa.

Magbubuntong-hininga si NARDO. inang

Kaya mahalagang magbigay-pugay na tayo sa mga bato ng Bundok Púlis, para makahingi tayo kay Kabunian ng tulong.

ani

’Di po ba siya magagalit na humihiling ulit tayo?

inang

Hindi, balásang ku. Ikatutuwa niya ang mga alay natin.

Simbolo ang mga ito ng mahusay na paggamit ng mga biyaya niya sa ’tin.

Duduraan niya ang mga dahon bago dikdikin ang mga ito gamit ang mga bato. Gulat na magtitinginan ang magkapatid. inang

Trabaho ng isang Mankotom na pangalagaan ang mga tinuro ni Lumawig sa atin. Tulad nito.

Ikakalat ni INANG ang durog na dahon sa garapon sabay aalugin niya nang malakas. inang

Ayan. Hawakan ninyo.

Ipapatong ni ANI ang mga kamay niya sa garapon. Bibitaw ito agad. ani

A, mainit na! Manong, hawakan mo dali!

nardo

Ayoko nga. Lahat naman ng galing sa bunganga, mainit!

Hahablutin ni ANI ang mga kamay ng kuya at ilalagay ito sa garapon.

35 • Geene Sabrina Basilio

inang

Nararamdaman niyo ba ang kapangyarihan ni Kabunian sa mga kamay ninyo?

Tatango si ANI, masiglang-masigla. Bibitaw naman si NARDO sa garapon, uusog ng upo papalayo. inang

Mahalagang maging mapanuri sa mga pakiramdam ha, huwag agad-agad salubungin. Malakas rin ang puwersa ng mga masasamang espiritu, gaya ng Butat-tew6 at Pinad-eng7.

Lalapit muli si NARDO sa kanila. nardo

HALA ANI! Butat-tew raw o! Baka panuorin ka sa pagtulog mo mamaya. Hala, nakakatakot.

ani

E ’di tatabi na lang ako kay Inang mamaya! Ikaw ang matutulog mag-isa!

Mag-aasaran sila. inang

Tumigil nga kayo! Hindi basta-basta binabanggit ang pangalan ng mga espiritu! Peligro ang nag-aabang sa hindi gumagalang sa kanila.

Tandaan niyo, ganoon rin tumubo, dito mismo sa Talubin, ang dambuhalang ginintuang puno ng Bontoc.

Iiling si ANI. ani

6

Hindi po nakuwento ng Nanay sa amin ’yan, Inang.

Butat-tew - espiritu na nanliligaw at nanunukso ng tao

Pinad-eng - espiritu na nananahan sa mga gubat

7

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 36

nardo

Kuwento na naman po, Inang?

inang

Hindi ito basta-basta kuwento, Nardo. Ang gawain ng iisang Butat-tew, hanggang ngayon dinaranas pa rin natin ang kahihinatnan... Halos wala silang pinagkaiba kay Lumawig sa lakas at talas ng isip.

ani

Inang, nalilito na po ako. Ano po pinagkaiba ni Kabunian kay Lumawig?

inang

Ito rin ba, hindi na naikuwento ng nanay niyo?

Bubuntong-hininga si INANG. inang

Makinig nang mabuti. Si Kabunian ang diwa ng bawat bagay na nakikita at di nakikita. Nakabalot siya sa mga daliri mo na parang balat ngunit siya rin ang hawak hawak ng mga daliri mo.

Ituturo ni INANG ang buwan. inang

Tulad niya ang buwan sa pagkabuo ng bilog at liwanag ngunit naro’n din siya sa bawat maliit na bilog ng ulan sa lupa.

Magsisimulang umulan. Mapapaayos ng upo si NARDO; sisilipin niya ang bintana. ani

Sino naman po si Lumawig?

inang

Si Lumawig ay dumating sa lupa kasabay ng ulan.

Papasok ang KORO. Gagalaw sila ayon sa kuwento ni INANG.

37 • Geene Sabrina Basilio

inang

Tuwing ato, nagtitipon-tipon ang mga Mankotom at Mambubunong para ipagdiwang ang mga buhay ng mga mandirigma, ang kabutihang-loob ng mga espiritu sa mga magsasaka, at ang pagkabuo ng tao mula sa lupa.

Pero ang pinakamahalagang kuwento sa lahat, ay ang kuwento ng anak ni Kabunian, na si Lumawig.

Papasok si LUMAWIG. inang

Bumaba siya mula sa langit at nagsalamangka ng Unang Malubhang Baha. Ito ang nagbigay hugis sa mga bundok at sapa natin ngayon. Dalawang tao lang ang naiwan ng bahang iyon. Isang babae at ang kaniyang lalaking kapatid na tumakbo sa tuktok ng Bundok PĂşlis. Sa kanila inabot ni Lumawig ang mahiwagang bato ng Khal-at mula sa langit.

Ilalapag ni KABUNIAN ang bato. inang

Ipinatong niya ito sa kanilang pagitan at sabi niya:

lumawig Magsindi kayo ng apoy sa batong ito nang tumigil na sa wakas ang ulan at lumiwanag ang langit.

Magsisindi ang KORO ng apoy sa bato, at titigil ang ulan. inang

At gaya ng sabi niya, nagsindi ang magkapatid ng apoy sa bato. Tumigil ang ulan at lumiwanag ang langit.

Nagdiwang sila.

koro 1

O Lumawig, bumugso ang init at liwanag ng iyong awa sa amin!

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 38

koro ii

Hayaan kaming ialay ang mumunti naming buhay sa pagpuri sa ’yo!

lumawig Kayong magkapatid, palawakin ang pamilya niyo at paunlarin itong lupang ipinagkaloob sa inyo. Kilalanin ang daloy ng tubig at bubuhayin kayo nito hanggang sa inyong pagbalik sa lupa. Dinggin ang kanta ng hangin at ituturo nito ang panganib sa hindi. Gamitin ang apoy sa paggawa—hindi paninira—at bubuksan ng Apo Diyos na aking Ama ang kaniyang palad sa inyo. inang

At kanila itong ginampanan nang walang pasubali.

ani

Pero ’Nang, akala ko po magkapatid sila?

inang

Siya nga. Ngunit sagrado ang utos ni Lumawig sa kanila.

Kaya nagsidami ulit ang mga tao sa lupa at namuhay si Lumawig kasama nila. Nagkaroon pa siya ng asawa’t dalawang lalaking anak tulad lang ng karaniwang tao.

Sa kanilang pamilya nagmula ang lahat-lahat ng alam natin ngayon, gaya ng kung paano ikulong ang tubig sa palayan o paano akyatin ang mga talon nang walang maiistorbong engkanto.

At dahil taimtim siyang sinundan ng mga tao, lubos siyang natuwa at kaniyang pinayaman lalo ang mga bulubundukin.

lumawig Ginagantimpalaan ko ang mga bundok na ito ng masaganang ani matigang man ang lupa o magsiumapaw ang tubig. Mananatiling puno ang inyong mga amatong8. Maipagbibili niyo habang-buhay 8

amatong - /amátong/; rice granary

39 • Geene Sabrina Basilio

ang pinakamahabang sitaw at pinakamabigat na kamote sa balat ng lupa. inang

At tulad ng sabi niya, ipinagbili ng mga tao ang kanilang mga inani, at naging matiwasay ang buhay sa Bontoc.

Kaya sa kaniya inaalay ang karne ng pinakamalusog na kalabaw, aso, manok, at baboy-ramo, tulad lang ng isda na ito.

Sasayaw at kakanta ang KORO sa isang bilog. inang

Pinagdiriwang itong gantimpala ni Lumawig sa tinatawag na Bendiyan, o pabilog na sayaw. Karaniwan, namumuno ang isang babae at isang lalaki na gumagalaw ayon sa tugtog ng sulibaw9 at gangsa10.

koro

Pinagpala kami ng inyong kadakilaan, Lumawig!

inang

Lumipas ang panahon, hindi na si Lumawig ang pinagsasaluhan tuwing pesshet. Naging tungkol na lang ito sa pagpapakita ng kayamanan at kapangyarihan.

koro iii

Si Pagayon, nagkatay ng sampung manok!

koro iv

Si Mandeko, nagdala ng tatlong malalaking bul-ol11, gawa sa Narra!

koro v

Si Wigan, nag-alay ng daan-daang yarda ng div-it12 at bangkuro!

9

sulibaw - Uri ng tambol na gawa sa kahoy at balat ng bayawak gangsa - Uri ng batingaw na pinapalo ng kamay o ng manipis na kahoy

10

bul-ol - Ukit ng tao; kinatawan ng anitong tagabantay sa mga imbakan ng palay

11

div-it - Katutubong kasuotan; telang ibinabalabal sa balakang na parang tapis

12

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 40

koro i

Si Balodahi, may kargang dalawampung sakong bigas!

koro ii

Si Iyadoy, nagkatay ng tatlong kalabaw at limang baboy!

koro iii

Si Odi-an, nagbigay ng ginintuang borloloy!

Magkakagulo ang mga tao. inang

Dahil dito, nagalit si Lumawig.

inang & MANAHIMIK! lumawig lumawig Ano naman kay Kabunian ang kahit ano pang halaga’t timbang ng handog kung para rin lang ito sa kagalakan ng sarili?

Tinatangkilik lamang ng mga espiritu ang tawag ng mga naka-ugat ang paa sa lupa kung saan kayo nanggaling.

Hindi tulad ng kabalbalang ito!

Aalis ang KORO, susundan ni LUMAWIG. inang

Ngunit sa halip na pakinggan nila ang payo ni Lumawig, lalo pa silang nilamon ng pagkapirmi sa kanilang mga pag-aari. Lalo pang malubha ngayon, dahil tinatago na nila ito para sa kanilang sarili, at tuluyan nang nalimutan ng Bontoc ang halaga ng wastong pag-aalay tuwing nananawagan.

ani

Kaya po ba mamahaling mga bagay ang hinahanda niyo para sa Bundok PĂşlis?

inang

Siya nga. Pinakamagandang tela para sa pinakamaganda kong apo.

41 • Geene Sabrina Basilio

nardo

Inang, paano po ’yung mga hindi mayayaman? Paano sila magsasamba nang maayos?

inang

Ang tunay na pasasalamat kay Lumawig—o sa kahit na kaninong espiritu—ay humihingi ng pagbitaw sa makamundong bagay.

Kahit pa ang maiaalay lang ay kapirasong kamote o tungkos ng cogon, kung ito ay taos-pusong hinahandog para sa mga ’di nakikita, ito ay mahalaga pa sa pilak at ginto.

Kaya ngayong paloob na ang pasok ng yaman, sa halip na palabas, umaaraw na tuwing tag-ulan at umuulan tuwing tag-araw. Marahas kung suminag ang araw at malupit naman ang hangin ’pag bumabagyo.

nardo

Pero Inang, para po kasing sinasabi niyo na sina Lumawig at Kabunian ang gumagawa ng mga bagyo. Tulad lang ng Bagyong Bebeng. Nasira ng Bebeng ang bahay namin sa Patpayan.

inang

Nardo, ang buhay ng tao ay nakatali sa kalikasan kung saan siya nagmula, kung saan nananahan ang Apo-Diyos. Kaya kung pagsasamantalahan ito ng tao, tinatalikuran niya nang tunay si Kabunian. Kaya tao pa rin ang sisisihin dito.

O, baka gusto mo itong ikuwento sa mga benepaktor mo sa Bumoro Mining?

Tahimik lang si NARDO.

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 42

inang

Sa katunayan, ang lahat ng minimina ng Bumoro, at ng iba pang mga minahan diyan, si Lumawig rin naman ang nagbigay. Ipinagkaloob niya sa tao ang kayamanan ng lupa noon pa.

nardo

Opo, Inang. Ginagawa naman po ng Bumoro ang makakaya nila—

inang

Sus, ano pa ba ang magagawa no’n kung kalahati na ng mga gubat natin ay putik na lang?

nardo

Pati naman po ’yung mga minahan, napinsala rin po ng Bebeng. ’Di po nila akalaing gano’n siya kalakas.

inang

’Di ibig sabihin no’n ay wala na silang pananagutan.

Simula pa no’ng una silang dumating dito, Nardo, wala nang tigil ang pagsapit ng sakuna sa buong Talubin.

Tingnan mo na lang ang kapatid mo. O, ang putla putla.

Di makakain nang maayos—

nardo

Baka nga po kasi, Inang, di kakayanin ng lapting lang. O ng KAPIRASONG TELA.

Hahawakan ni ANI ang kamay ng kapatid. ani

Manong ku...

nardo

Si Nanay nga e... Si Nanay, di naman siya gumagamit ng lapting. O kahit alin sa mga gamot niyo. Mahirap daw ihanda.

Matagal. Di na raw niya nakabisado.

Katahimikan.

43 • Geene Sabrina Basilio

inang

(Malumanay) Alam niyo naman ang nanay niyo, ’di ba?

Matigas ang ulo no’n.

Tatango si NARDO. Buntong-hininga. Katahimikan muli. inang

Gusto niyo bang matulog na muna?

ani

Hindi pa po, Inang!

inang

Ikaw ba, Nardo?

Patlang. inang

Nako, anghel kayong dalawa kung ihambing sa kaniya.

(Matatawa siya) Inaaway rin ako ng nanay mo noon, Nardo. Ganiyang ganiyan rin.

Pinangarap niyang noon maging artista. Ang sabi ko lang sa kaniya, hindi naman siya kagandahan.

ani

Ang Nanay?

Tatawa si INANG. inang

Hindi naman siya naniwala. Paano, araw-araw ba naman dinadagsa ng manliligaw. Para bang may diwata noong namamahay dito.

ani

Ang ganda talaga ng Nanay.

inang

O siya. Hayaan ko na muna kayo. Nardo, ikaw na muna magbantay sa kapatid mo.

nardo ’Nang.

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 44

inang O. nardo

’Di niyo na po ba ikukuwento kung ano nangyari pagkatapos?

inang Ng? nardo

Ng pag-alis ni Lumawig.

Tatango si INANG. inang

Mas makulay na naman ang kuwentong ito kaysa kanina, gusto niyong ituloy ko?

ani

Dali na, Inang!

Babalik ang KORO sa entablado. Susundan nila ang kuwento ni INANG. inang

Ilang daang taon ang lumipas bago bumalik ang nagtatampong si Lumawig sa lupa. Nagpasya lang siya isang araw na bumaba muli at magpanggap bilang isang matandang babae.

Lalabas si LUMAWIG na uugod-ugod at namumuti ang buhok. inang

Ang sabi niya sa bagong pinuno ng Bontoc, nagpahayag raw si Kabunian ng magandang balita sa isang panaginip, at dapat raw silang magdiwang sa pamamagitan ng isang malaking pesshet.

Magsasalu-salo ang mga tao, gaya lang ng kanina. inang

Bilang matandang babaeng hindi nila nakilala, pinagmasdan ni Lumawig kung paanong tinipon ng mga

45 • Geene Sabrina Basilio

tao ang kanilang mga ari-arian para sa pag-aalay. Tulad lang ng dati, labis-labis pa rin magbigay ang mayayaman upang mapansin ang angkin nilang kapangyarihan.

Nalungkot si Lumawig sa kaniyang nakita at nagpasya siyang umalis muli.

Pagkaalis niya, papasok ang isang buntis, ngunit uupo lang siya sa gilid. Hindi siya nakikisayaw kahit ano’ng hila ng tao sa kaniya. koro i

Halina’t ipagdiwang ang kabutihang-loob ng mga espiritu!

koro iii

Ano’ng saya at walang hangganan ang pagpapatawad at pananalig ni Kabunian sa atin!

Ang karunungan at katapangan ng kaniyang anak na si Lumawig!

koro i Magdiwang! koro ii Magdiwang! (lahat) Magtatagay sila ng tapey at magpapatuloy sa pagsayaw. Patuloy namang bubugawin ng buntis ang mga taong lumalapit sa kaniya. ani

Sino po ’yang nakaupo sa gilid?

inang

Masdan niyo lang.

Tatabihan ng isang lalaki ang babaeng buntis. Magsisimula silang mag-away ngunit hindi sila naririnig sa ingay ng pesshet.

Itutulak ng lalaki ang buntis at malalaglag siya sa sahig, hindi pulos kikibo. Tatakbo ang lalaki paalis, at mapapansin siya ng mga tao.

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 46

Ititigil nila ang pagsayaw at pagtugtog upang paligiran ang katawan ng buntis na babae. koro i

Ano’ng sinapit ng aming kapatid!

Hahawakan ng isa ang kaniyang noo. koro ii

Binawi na ni Kabunian ang kaniyang buhay!

Magugulat ang mga tao, ilan sa kanila mangiyak-iyak. koro i

O Kabunian! Sino ang may kagagawan nito!

koro iii

Hanapin siya’t biyakin ang kaniyang ulo!

inang

Ngunit hindi nila siya nahanap, pagkat ang lalaking iyon ay hindi na tao kundi masamang espiritu. Sinapian siya ng butat-tew na inimbita ng maling pagdadasal at pangungutya ng ritwal.

Papasok muli si LUMAWIG, na nagkukunwa pa ring matandang babae. lumawig Mga anak! Nagpakita sa akin si Kabunian sa isang panaginip! Kaniyang ninais ang pagbalik ng babaeng ito sa lupa na dati niyang anyo. Aniya’y iwanan ang kaniyang katawan sa lupa at takpan na lamang ito ng malaking paljok.

Dalian naman nilang susundan ang utos ng matandang babaeng si LUMAWIG. ani

Ng paljok po?

inang

Isang malaking kaldero.

47 • Geene Sabrina Basilio

Tatakpan nila ang katawan ng buntis na babae. lumawig Anuman ang mangyari, huwag ninyong tatanggalin ang paljok sa kaniyang kinalalagyan.

Sasang-ayon ang mga tao. Ngunit bago siya makaalis tungong langit, pipigilan nila siya. koro ii

Sandali lang! Ano na pong gagawin namin ngayon, Inang?

koro iii

Ano pa’ng sabi ni Kabunian sa inyo? Kayo lang po ba ang kinakausap niya?

koro iv

Oo nga! Bakit po kayo ang kinausap niya?

Aabangan ng mga tao ang kaniyang sagot. lumawig Mga balóng at balásang ku, isa lamang akong Mankotom.

Karaniwang tao lamang, tulad ninyo. Ngunit magsisilbi akong tagapagbalita ng mga pangitain tulad nito. koro ii

Ay, kung gano’n ay pagpalain ka ni Kabunian, Inang!

koro (lahat)

Pagpalain ka ni Lumawig!

Matatawa si ANI sa mga tao. ani

Hala sila!

lumawig Ituloy lang ang pesshet! Hiling ni Kabuniang ipagdiwang ang pangalan niya!

Magsisikantahan at sayawan muli ang mga tao bago umalis si LUMAWIG. heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 48

inang

’Di rin nagtagal, nagsimulang magtaka ang mga tao sa kung ano’ng sinapit ng katawan ng misteryosong babaeng iyon.

Dahan-dahang iaangat ng isa ang paljok. Bibitawan niya ito agad sa gulat. koro iii

Wala na ang babae!

Tatakbuhin nilang lahat ang paljok, tulad lamang ng pagtakbo nila kanina no’ng una nilang napansin ang babae. koro i

Ano’ng sinapit ng aming kapatid!

Sisilipin pa nilang minsan ang paljok. koro ii

Binawi na ng lupa ang kaniyang katawan!

Sa lugar nito, isang maliit lamang na halaman!

Magugulat ang mga tao, ilan sa kanila mangiyak-iyak. koro i

O Kabunian! Pangatwiranan ang kabaliwang ito!

koro iii Hanapin ang Mankotom at hingin ang kaniyang talumpati!

Sabay-sabay na mag-iingay ang mga tao hanggang sa bumalik si LUMAWIG, bilang matandang babae pa rin. lumawig Lubos kayong nagtataka ngunit ang binilin sa inyo’y huwag silipin ang ilalim ng paljok. koro (lahat)

Patawarin kami, Inang!

49 • Geene Sabrina Basilio

lumawig At ako’y hihingi ng tawad sa aking panlilinlang. Ako ay hindi tao, kundi isang espiritu ng araw, at nais kong manahimik roon, nang kahit sampung araw man lang.

Samantala, hayaan nang tumubo ang halaman! Pagkat ganito ang daloy ng buhay, sumisibol at sumisingit sa paraang di akalain. Sa halip na katakutan, ipagdiwang!

Ipagdiwang ang bagong buhay!

inang

At gaya ng sabi niya, nagpatuloy ang mga tao sa pagdiwang. Hindi nila alam na ang pagpilit nilang mag-usisa ay may malubhang kalalabasan.

Magsisimulang lumaki ang halaman. inang

Araw at gabi, pumalibot lang sila sa halaman habang patuloy itong lumaki nang lumaki nang lumaki.

Hanggang isang araw, sa sobrang laki ng puno, inangat ng mga sanga nito ang paljok sa mga ulap at kahit isang dahon nito ay ’di matanaw mula sa tuktok ng bundok.

Didilim sa entablado. inang

Akala ng mga tao’y sinumpa silang mabuhay sa lilim ng dambuhalang puno, kung kaya’t nagsimula silang manawagan muli sa langit. Nagdaan ang sampung araw, hindi pa rin dumarating ang matandang babaeng inaabangan nila.

Taimtim na nagdarasal ang mga tao. Ang iba sa kanila, nagsimulang nang mag-alay ng kanilang mga gamit at pagkain sa paanan ng puno. inang

Hindi naman tumigil sa paglaki ang puno, hanggang sa umabot na ang mga sanga nito sa langit kung saan heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 50

namamahinga si Lumawig. Nagising siya sa wakas at bumaba sa lupa.

Papasok si LUMAWIG muli, sa anyo pa rin ng matandang babae.

Agad siyang lalapitan ng mga tao. koro iv

Inang! Inang, pinagpala mo kami ng iyong pagbalik!

Lubos naming ipinagbunyi ang buhay ng punong ito, ngunit ngayon, wala kaming malakaran at makita sa sobrang yabong at kapal nito.

koro v

Nangangamba kaming lalaki pa ito nang lalaki hanggang sa lamunin nito ang buong Bontoc at daigdig!

koro i

Ano ang utos ni Kabunian sa amin, Inang?

Gagawin naming tahasan.

lumawig Dalhin ninyo sa akin ang pinakamalakas niyong mandirigma.

Magkakagulo ang mga tao, magtuturuan sila’t magrereklamo pag itinuro. lumawig Iyon, o habangbuhay kayong mamumuhay sa ilalim ng mga dambuhalang sangang ito. Mainam pa, kung ito lang ang paraang hindi niyo makakaligtaang nasa awa ng kalikasan ang inyong mga buhay.

Walang lumalapit. lumawig Wala? Ibabaling niyo na lang ba parati sa banal ang mga problemang kayo-kayo mismo ang gumawa?

51 • Geene Sabrina Basilio

Lilitaw mula sa grupo ang isang matipunong lalaki. Tadtad ang balat niya ng mga tatu at mga palamuting nakasabit sa kaniyang leeg: dalawang salimao ng baboy ramo sa magkabilang dulo ng kwintas; ilang pirasong nakar na hugis pangil; at isang pilak na palawit sa gitna. inang

’Yan si Apong Tyadigan. Ang pinakamalakas at magiting na mandirigma sa balat ng lupa. Suot niya sa kaniyang katawan ang mga marka ng isang magiting na tagapagtanggol.

lumawig Ikaw. Ikaw ang magliligtas sa iyong mga mapanangis na kapatid. tyadigan Ngunit ako’y hamak na tao lamang, Inang. Wala akong kapangyarihan laban sa hiwaga ng punong ito. Mabuti pang isang espiritu tulad ninyo, o si Lumawig mismo, pag balik niya mula sa langit. lumawig Tuluyan mo na bang tinalikuran ang angkin mong lakas, Tyadigan? Ika’y makapangyarihan sa dahilan mismo na tao ka. Ikaw dapat ang gumawa, hindi ang mga banal.

Hihintayin nila ang kaniyang sagot. tyadigan Ano po ang aking gagawin?

Aabutan siya ni LUMAWIG ng isang mahabang patalim. lumawig Ikaw ang bibiyak ng dambuhalang punong ito. inang

Ang tinanggap ni Tyadigan na patalim ay isang mahiwagang pinahig. Pahaba at palapad ang disenyo upang madali ang pagputol. Ginamit ito ng mga ninuno

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 52

upang kunin ang mga ulo ng kanilang kalaban, bilang gantimpala sa labang pinalunan nila. ani

Kumukuha po si Tyadigan ng ulo?

inang

Si Tyadigan ang may pinakamaraming bungo na nakasabit sa labas ng kaniyang kubo.

Sisimulan ni TYADIGAN ang pagtaga sa dambuhalang puno. Pag tinatamaan ito, tunog pinagsasalpok na metal.

Aatras si TYADIGAN. tyadigan Ang puno’y hindi kahoy!

Maliligalig ang mga tao.

Susubukan niya muli ngunit hindi maguhit-guhitan ang puno. koro i

Tunay na! Sinumpa na tayo ng Apo-Diyos dahil sa ating mga sala!

Taga. koro ii

Sasakupin na ng puno ang ating mga tahanan!

Taga. koro iii

Ano’ng kasawian! Gagawin naming tahasan.

Taga. koro iv

O Kabunian!

Taga.

53 • Geene Sabrina Basilio

koro v

O Lumawig!

Taga. koro (lahat)

Tulungan niyo kami!

Isa pang malakas na taga. Maguguhitan sa wakas ang puno. Isang mumunting linya na dilaw, ngunit nagniningning sa araw. tyadigan Mga kapatid! Ang dambuhalang punong ito’y gawa sa ginto!

Tuwang-tuwa ang mga taong papalibot sa puno. koro i

Tunay nga! Biniyayaan tayo muli ng Apo-Diyos ng kayamanan!

koro ii

Mapupuno ng kagalakan ang ating mga tahanan!

koro iii

Ano’ng parangal!

koro iv

O Kabunian!

koro v

O Lumawig!

koro iii (lahat)

Pagpalain niyo kami!

tyadigan Kayo’y manahimik! Hindi madaling patumbahin ang punong ito!

Mas mabigat ang ginto sa kahoy, mas makapal, tiyak na mas mapanganib ang pagputol! Hindi ito dapat ikatuwa! heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 54

koro i

Tunay nga! Sinumpa na tayo—

tyadigan Iuwi niyo ang inyong mga anak at asawa! Sumilong kayo sa inyong mga kubo, at huwag kayong lalabas hanggang makita niyong lumiwanag ang paligid!

Haharapin niya muli ang puno at iaangat ang pinahig sa ere. tyadigan AAAAH!!! inang

Patuloy niyang tatadtarin ang puno. Hindi siya huminto para kumain, o matulog, o mamahinga. Pinakinggan niya ang tunog ng puno at lupang nakapalibot sa kaniya.

Inikutan niya ang puno ayon sa bulong at direksyon ng hangin. Pinasalamatan niya ang init ng araw sa bigay na liwanag, at ang gabi sa bigay na katahimikan ng dilim.

Magsisimula nang magsilaglagan ang mga sanga ng puno. inang

Sa lakas ng kaniyang pagpupunyagi at ang taglay na kapangyarihan ni Lumawig ng kaniyang hawak na pinahig, nabawasan ang puno sa wakas. Ang mga dambuhalang ginintuang dahon at sanga ay nagsikalat sa buong bulundukin.

Buti na lang pinakinggan ng tao ang kaniyang payong manatili sa loob ng kanilang mga bahay.

Dahan-dahang tutumba ang puno, at aalog ang lupa sa pagbagsak nito. nardo O! Kakapit siya sa paanan ng kama ni ANI.

55 • Geene Sabrina Basilio

ani

Ang lakas!

inang

Sa sobrang lakas ng pagbagsak ng puno nayanig ang mga bundok mismo. Nabaon ang dating mga daanan at bumuka ang mga bago. Nahati ang mga ilog sa dalawa, at isinilang ang mga talon sa mga bumagsak at umangat na bundok.

Ang sabi ng mga Mambubunong at Mankotom no’ng ako’y bata, lahat ng nagsikalat na sanga ng dambuhalang puno ay binaon ni Lumawig sa ilalim ng mga bundok at sapa.

tyadigan Tapos na! Maari na kayong lumabas!

Magtitipon-tipon ang mga tao at papalibutan nila siya. inang

Sinalubong nila ang kanilang tagapagligtas. Ilang taon ang lumipas bago nilang nakilala muli ang bagong hugis ng mga lupa at tubig sa Bontoc. Sabi nila, sa kanilang paglalakbay natagpuan ang mga gubat na nagtataglay ng pinakamakakapal na sanga ng dambuhalang punong iyon.

Ang kinalalagyan ng mga ginintuang sangang iyon ay tinuturing ng mga Mankotom bilang sagradong kaalaman na hindi maaring ibulgar sa iba.

Ngunit ito ang kaalaman na pinipilit alamin ng mga minero ngayon.

Katahimikan. Nakatitig lang ang magkapatid sa kaniya. ani

’Yun na po ba ’yun?

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 56

inang

Sa ngayon. Hindi naman natatapos ang kuwento ng ugnayan ng mga bundok natin kay Lumawig. Tingnan niyo, ngayon nagkakasakit naman ang mga tao at mga tubig natin. Ibig sabihin, may magsisimula na namang bagong kuwento.

ani

Dapat po pala, lahat sila makinig sa mga kuwento ninyo!

inang

Kuwento ito nating lahat, balásang.

Ngunit binabahala na ang mga tao ng ibang mga bagay ngayon. Tingin nila ’di na ito mahalagang marinig dahil luma na. Ngunit ang mga kuwento ng nakaraan ay hindi dapat hinihiwalay sa kasalukuyan, binubuo nila ang isa’t-isa. Naiintindihan niyo?

nardo

Opo, Inang.

Patlang. inang

O sige. Gabi na, matulog na kayong dalawa. Lalo na ikaw, Ani.

ani Opo. inang

Matulog ha, hindi magtulug-tulugan. Nardo.

nardo Opo. ani

Puwede ko po bang hiraming ang Bangkuro ngayong gabi, bago po natin ialay sa Púlis samakalawa?

Mag-aalinlangan si INANG, ngunit iaabot niya pa rin ito sa apo. inang

Iingatan ito, Ani!

57 • Geene Sabrina Basilio

ani Opo! Kukuha siya ng tubig at ng garapon na iba sa kanina. Papahiran niya ang apo ng gamot sa noo at mga braso. ani

Ang lamig!

inang

Huwag itong punasan, apo ha. Ito ang bubugaw sa mga masasamang espiritu habang natutulog kayo.

ani

Ang kati, Inang.

inang

Huwag aalisin!

ani Opo. inang Nardo. nardo Inang. ani

Good night ngaruden, Inang!

Tutungo si INANG palabas. inang

Mababait kayong mga bata. Hindi kayo pababayaan ng Apo-Diyos.

Aalis siya. Katahimikan. ani Manong. nardo O. Babangon si ANI paupo.

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 58

ani

Tulog ka na?

nardo Oo. ani

Hindi pa kaya!

nardo

Matulog ka na nga. Paano ka gagaling niyan kung puyat ka lagi?

ani

’Di ako makatulog, Manong. Natutuwa pa ako sa kuwento ni Inang...

Manong, laro tayo. Kunwari engkanto ako tapos ikaw si Lumawig.

Hindi sasagot si NARDO. ani

Ang kati talaga nito.

Wala pa ring sagot. Hahawakan ni ANI bigla ang kaniyang tiyan. ani

Ah! Aray ku!

Babangon agad si NARDO. nardo

O bakit? Masakit ba? Tawagan ko si Inang!

ani

Hindi na, Manong. Okey na ako ulit.

nardo

An’ya ki din, Ani! ’Pag ikaw gumising na umiiyak mamaya, ’di kita tutulungan ha. Bahala ka!

Tatawa ang bunso. Katahimikan muli. Bubuksan ni ANI ang tapis bangkuro at ibabalot sa sarili.

59 • Geene Sabrina Basilio

nardo

Manong, meron akong paboritong tapis ng Nanay.

Haharap si NARDO sa kaniya. nardo

Ang ganda ’di ba?

Ituturo niya ang mga linya. nardo

Ito raw ang bundok, sabi ni Inang. At ito naman si Apong T’yadigan.

Titingnan ni NARDO ang tapis. nardo

Si Nanay ang naghabi niyan?

ani

Si Inang. Pero naghahabi rin daw si Nanay noon, at ito raw ang paborito niyang ihabi.

Tatayo si ANI at tatabi sa kuya. Ibabalot niya ang tapis sa kanilang dalawa. ani

Bakit kaya, Manong, ’di siya nagkuwento sa atin tungkol kay Lumawig? O kay Kabunian?

nardo

’Di ko alam.

ani

’Di ba siya naniniwala kay Inang?

nardo

Siguro. ’Di ba nga, matigas raw ulo niya no’ng bata.

Tatawa si ANI. nardo

Tsaka, lagi niyang sinasabi noon na ang mahalaga lang para sa kanila ng Tatay, makapagtapos tayo ng pag-aaral.

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 60

ani

Oo nga.

Patlang. ani

Ikaw ba, Manong, ’di ka naniniwala?

Patlang. nardo

Naniniwala kang may sakit ka dahil galit si Lumawig sa atin?

ani

Na sinasaktan natin ang kalikasan, kaya nasaksaktan rin tayo.

Naiintindihan ko ’yun.

nardo

Ako rin naman.

Katahimikan. nardo

Nakakatulong naman ’yang pinahid niya sa ’yo?

ani

Malamig siya. Masarap sa balat. Pero makati.

Bubuntong-hininga si NARDO. nardo

Hay nako.

ani

Masaya ako, Manong, na meron si Inang. Nilalambing niya ako, gaya ng Nanay at Tatay.

nardo

Malambing siya sa ’yo.

ani

’Wag ka mag-alala, Manong. Mahal ka rin ng Inang.

61 • Geene Sabrina Basilio

nardo

’Di ko naman kailangan malaman kung mahal niya ako o hindi.

ani

Pero oo nga!

nardo

SHH!

ani

(Hihina ang boses) Naiintindihan naman niya kailangan mong pumasok para matuwa sina Nanay at Tatay sa langit.

Katahimikan. ani

Kasama kaya nila si Lumawig kung nasaan sila? O totoo bang nasa Patpayin pa rin sila kung saan sila natabunan?

nardo

Ako, naniniwala akong nandito sila ngayon. Hinihintay tayong matulog na.

ani

Binabantayan nila tayo?

nardo

Si Inang na rin siguro.

Katahimikan. nardo

Alam mo, Ani, maraming hindi malinaw sa akin sa kuwento ni Inang. Bakit may handang paljok ’yung mga tao na gano’n kalaki? Bakit hindi na lang tinulungan ng mga tao si Tyadigan? Bakit may mga hayop pa rin ngayon kung dalawang tao lang naiwan ng baha?

Totoo ba lahat ng kuwentong ’yon, o gusto niya lang ba akong paringgan dahil pinagtatanggol ko ang Bumoro Mining?

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 62

Hindi sasagot si ANI. Tulog na siya. nardo

Pero siguro ’di na ’yun mahalaga.

Patlang. nardo Ani? Mapapansin niyang tulog na ang kapatid niya. Titingin siya sa bintana, sa langit, at hihingang malalim. Hihiga siya sa wakas at matutulog. telon

63 • Geene Sabrina Basilio

Nikki Bonuel ab communication

Girl behind the camera.

To everyone who has been a part of my life, who taught me, doubted me, and believed in me, thank you for helping me be where I am today. Thank you for helping me show my view of the world through my photos. There is still so much to learn, do, and see, and so much more that I want to accomplish, but I am thankful for what I have been able to do in these past four years. Now, on to greater things.

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 66

Baler. Digital photography.

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 68

Ponch Castor ab psychology

Ponch Castor is an ab Psych major with a minor in creative writing who talks too much about video games. He hopes that he’s earned the brown belt he dons in the dojo and the “Production Manager” on his heights id. He’s a firm believer that the purpose of a joke is to make at least one person smile, and it’s okay if that one person is yourself.

He’d like to thank some people, the main reason he wanted to be in this folio: To my parents and Ate Fanny, I hope that you are proud with how your little boy turned out. To the Prodcats, and the heights 17-18 eb: Luigi, Bee, Yuri, Alex, Neil, Marco, Coco, Kristoff, Dianne, Ninna, Sophia, Cat, Martina, Oey, Celline, and Jayvee: who have inspired me to be more than I thought I could be. To Coach Ali, Coach Robert, Coach Gilbert, Coach Kat, Coach JR, and to my teammates: IC, Eric, Raf, Sapi, Jaq, Queenie, Rhea, Paula, Gail, Laura, Ralph, Bernie, Nico, Allen, Joph, Gozum, Danny, Joerl and the rest: As iron forges iron, you’ve forged me. To Angel, who reminded me what it was like to hope. To Gi: Mochi, Mari, Gio, Alfy, Aj, Kalags, Ye Kwon, Martin, Henry, Aeio, Sugay, and MT, my ride or dies. To Mike, Miggy, and Mon, who have picked me up and kept me going on and off the mats. To Jab, who’s been my rock to keep me grounded and a source of strength. To James, who I’ve looked up to since meeting him. To Wax, the better half of eight years of dynamic duos. To Chaela, though I can’t find the words to describe how much you've made me want to be a better person. To those I’ve made smile, for giving me purpose. heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 70

The Gentle Way Training begins and ends with a bow in. At the start, all judokas are in a line, standing erect and attentive. “Shomen ni, rei!” the most senior member would call out, and we would all bow to the image of Jigoro Kano that every other dojo had as well. This was our way of showing respect to him, and to the art. Again he would call out “Sensei ni, rei!” and we would turn to our instructors and bow again, the ultimate sign of reverence. It has always been said that this was the first lesson of Judo: respect.

We start with our hands on our sides, about a meter apart, with nothing but a respectful silence between us. Together, we bow our heads; the first lesson, the sign of respect. At once, the calmness is broken and our stances switch from respectful to battle-ready. I put my left foot forward and keep my left hand primed for any weakness the opponent may show. He’s doing the same, with one foot forward, we’re both on the precipice of attacking. The next few seconds will set the tone of our battle. With my right hand, I make a sweeping motion upwards as I reach for a grip on his back. He twists towards my right hand in an attempt to evade the grab, falling for my feint. I grab his lapel and tug back, breaking the delicate balance he kept on his feet. I step to the side and yank him, his foot drags along helplessly for a split second before he gets his footing, and we become lost in a struggle of pulling and pushing against each other’s strength across the mats.

My mind almost feels overwhelmed with all of the information I feel, unable to keep up with every little tug and shove I give and take, but in a moment of clarity, I see my opening. My opponent stepped a little too far when I pulled him towards me, and his legs open. In a split-second, I shoot in between his legs and pull downward, hoping to throw him from right under him.

There’s an indescribable ecstasy to pulling off a beautiful throw.

I can’t quite explain what’s so wonderful about it. It isn’t the feeling of winning or overpowering someone that gets me. In fact, it’s quite heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 72

the opposite: it’s the surprising feeling of the lack of power exerted.

There’s a smoothness to a perfect throw where you don’t feel yourself throwing another person, rather the person seamlessly flies over you.

There’s no force, just a sense of peace and rightness and in a blink, the opponent is on the floor, and even you don’t fully understand what happened.

This has been a somewhat familiar experience to me, not because I get in amazing throws all the time, but because I’ve been doing Judo for a few years now. Judo is a grappling martial art wherein two practitioners (referred to as judokas in this case) fight to get grips on each other’s uniforms, or judogi, and perform one of the throwing techniques of Judo in order to get that opponent to land on his or her back. Since its birth in Japan, Judo has since risen to international fame as a sport across all parts of the world, going so far as to even be included in the Olympics.

Ukemi The most important aspect to learning Judo is not the throwing, but the falling.

It’s the first thing we teach every aspiring judoka, and the first thing we do every training session. You must learn to fall properly after being thrown, how to prevent injury, and most of all, how to get back up again.

It was November and only a few weeks away from the biggest intercollegiate Judo event of the Philippines: the uaap tournament.

I sat down to write this essay after a five kilometer jog which to me, felt like heaven compared to the four hours of non-stop training we used to do four times a week. For the first time since our four hour competition training program, I was able to complete a full lap around my usual route, not stopping for fatigue. I remembered a friend who joined me for a jog asking me why I don’t get tired, and when I told her all this, she simply said, “Wow, you’re so sporty.”

I don’t feel sporty. I was the scrawny weird kid in high school who the bigger kids liked to laugh at because of my eccentric habits.

I was the kid who in the province, never got into basketball, so was excluded from the main social activity of my classmates for years. I 73 • Ponch Castor

was the kid who, instead of getting interested in talking to girls early, I developed an interest in any sort of video game or book involving science fiction, fantasy, or martial arts, opting to retreat into any book, movie, or video game rather than learning how to actually properly interact with people. I’ve been conditioned for so long to have this as my personal branding that there are certain alarm bells that ring in my head when someone would describe me as sporty whenever I mention I practice Judo.

However, to most people, Judo is just a sport. It’s a part of the Olympics, and there are times the Judo Grand Prix or some other big tournament would be showing on Fox Sports. There’s a certain physicality demanded to do Judo. From what most people would know, it entails lifting someone and slamming them on the ground violently (if they don’t say, “Oh, you do Judo?” with a series of karate chops or taekwondo kicks for emphasis). That’s the kind of stuff you’d see on tv, and it’s more often likened to wwe wrestling or mixed martial arts.

In my head, I’m still that puny baby-faced boy on the cusp of puberty who spent a good part of his high school life getting tossed around like a ragdoll. Whenever I put on a judogi and step on the mats, I instinctively think of myself as “Smallfry” as my coaches used to call me. Smallfry was hooked into trying Judo by a friend, but he never really did sports. Smallfry just loved martial arts movies and he thought Judo was like that. Smallfry unwittingly thrust himself into the varsity team of his school, where the training program was rigorous to build up speed and power. Smallfry wasn’t strong, nor was he fast. In fact, he could barely throw anyone, but he tried his best to get up after countless times being thrown down. Smallfry also ended up quitting because he felt like he never won, and he questioned what the point of Judo was if he didn’t win.

Uchikomi Repeated form practice. First thing we do after ukemi. We do the forms of the throw: the grips, the stepping, and the lifting. We don’t actually throw each other, but the concept is that this is where we study the form itself. Each part heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 74

of the throw contributes to its success: the stepping, the holding, the pulling, and the pushing. One must not forget that in the heat of battle, which is why we religiously drill it into our heads every training session.

I’m sitting on my couch with my sweat-soaked judogi plopped carelessly on the floor next to me. There’s an ice pack on my shoulder, a tradition I solemnly keep after every training in an attempt to nurse the torn up muscles after four hours of abusing it. Every night I endure the piercing cold pain of the ice, before the numbness. My ac joint had torn after landing badly against one of the strongest medalists in the team. I complain to my long-time writing friend how hard it is to make an essay when your shoulder has lost all feeling.

“Ginusto mo ’yan,” he tells me after having enough of my whining for the whole season. “Why’d you go back if you knew you’d get hurt anyway?” He was referring to my “career-ending” collarbone injury years ago, but there’s a lot more hurting I’ve done for Judo that wasn’t physical. Whenever training got hard this season, I always went back to the idea that I could be somewhere else, with no responsibility to this team, but I willingly stepped back onto these mats.

I came back into the fray two years ago, after chancing upon it as a required pe subject for school. By this time, I had been gone for a year, and nobody expected me to come back, not even myself. To me, I picked Judo as a subject because I already knew the basics and it would’ve been no problem to breeze through. I had a judogi and everything, and every lesson was something I could easily re-learn.

Surprisingly, I didn’t have to. The second I put on my gi and stepped on those much smaller mats, I felt at home. Every time I did a throw, it felt like meeting with a long-time friend, and every sparring session made my blood boil in ways I had forgotten. Among all these other students who were in the class just to learn Judo, I remembered the fascination I had for it.

We weren’t aiming to throw each other, but the whole class was centered on making the throws actually work. There were no demands to attack faster or lift stronger, rather we studied what we

75 • Ponch Castor

actually did wrong. We focused on the details: the difference a foot placement can make, the vast effect of what bending your knees at a certain point in the throw can do. It was a study of pure technique, a kind of blank starting ground like all of us were babies and we were just learning the fascinating way of walking for the first time. After the class finished, I decided that I wanted­—no, needed—more of it.

I decided to come back to the varsity team, despite my strong disdain for competition and sports. I was being called to it, and like a perfect throw, before I knew it I had already fallen into Judo again.

Randori After form practice, we have a small break. “Prepare your elbow pads and knee pads,” our coach’s voice would boom through the dojo. I redo the tie of my belt and tighten the support on my shoulder, both loosened during the previous exercise. For three hours, we partake in what I think is the culmination of training: we throw our opponents in an actual sparring match. Points don’t matter here, there is no official scoring. The objective is to merely execute the things you have been practicing, or to practice other things in actual play.

Recently, I went to Japan on a family vacation, but I convinced my family to let me escape from the obligation of “together time” for one important journey for myself. I set out to visit the Kodokan: the birthplace of Judo where the founder Jigoro Kano first taught what we know as Judo. I expected to see a bloodbath, people crying and lying on the floor out of tiredness, because if we did that in our dojo, obviously it must have been much worse where the best judokas trained. To my surprise, there wasn’t any of that. Everyone was just casually milling about, practicing their own techniques and occasionally asking others for help. No shouting, or pressure to perform. If you wanted to learn a throw, you just had to ask, and from there, the burden of learning is on you.

The Kodokan way of teaching Judo harkens to the more traditional view of the martial art. When Kano created Judo from

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 76

a multitude jiu-jitsu schools of thought, he intended for Judo to be more than something you do. He intended for it to be a holistic philosophy that dealt with both the physical and spiritual strength of a person, based under the central idea that our coach constantly drills into our heads when talking about Judo: minimum effort, maximum efficiency. It’s more than just being able to lift or throw another person, but it’s about the art in achieving this in the smoothest way possible using the least strength.

Judo finds itself with the question about its existence. What does it aim to be? The two identities of sport and martial art find themselves in conflict because they both demand different things from their practitioners. While the sport demands athleticism and result, the martial art looks for the formation of the individual, and the throwing is just a byproduct of it. While it is possible to reconcile these two trains of thought, there’s still a tendency for one to lean towards a certain mindset.

Fast forward to uaap: I’m on the bleachers, overlooking the mats in this gymnasium far away from my dojo. There’s an incredibly heavy sense of alienation as I look at the hustle and bustle surrounding the tournament area: teams of judokas wearing jackets showing off their school colors under their gis, coaches and officials scrambling around the area trying to get the logistics of the tournament settled, and supporters from all schools sitting on the bleachers, waiting in anticipation for the exciting medal matches and victories to come. I feel my knees wanting to buckle under all of this, more than pressure, there’s a sense of displacement, as if I don’t belong here. I’m fixing my gi, almost mindlessly as I’ve done this countless times before, and I almost don’t notice I’m doing anything until I grab my belt from my bag. It’s brown, the color I was promoted to; despite not winning any tournaments before this, or being competitively weak, I remember that I no longer have the pristine white belt, the one that’s given before one has immersed in Judo. With a deep exhale, I tie my belt around my waist with a solemnity, and suddenly, I feel a little lighter.

77 • Ponch Castor

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 78

Yuji de Torres

bfa information design

everything is delayed: - the light from the sun is delayed by 8 minutes - your reactions are delayed by 250 milliseconds - the light from the second nearest star to the earth is delayed by 4.243 years - your vision is delayed by 13 milliseconds - the effects of paracetamol are delayed by 1 hour

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 80

artist statement for gary ross told me it’s okay to be delayed (series) I was talking to Gary Ross Pastrana once. He told me it’s okay to repeat my thesis since most of his friends took two to three years to complete their theses.

I. In 1994, slacker rock icon Stephen Malkmus sings “you can never quarantine the past”.

II. In 1951, the whiteout or liquid paper was birthed.

III. In 1951, Wittgenstein was dying and was thinking about the opacity of whiteness.

IV. In 1951, Robert Rauschenberg started painting his White Paintings.

V. In 1953, Robert Rauschenberg erased a drawing from Willem de Kooning.

VI. In 2000, Gary-Ross Pastrana graduates from college after six years.

VII. In 2016, I started my senior year.

VIII.In 2017, I officially failed my thesis proposal course.

IX. In 2018, Gary-Ross reassures me that his friends were also delayed.

X. This is my failed thesis proposal.

81 • Yuji de Torres

gary ross told me it’s okay to be delayed (page 1).

Correction fluid and inkjet ink on paper. 8.27 x 11.69 in.

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 82

gary ross told me it’s okay to be delayed (page 2).

Correction fluid and inkjet ink on paper. 8.27 x 11.69 in.

83 • Yuji de Torres

gary ross told me it’s okay to be delayed (page 3).

Correction fluid and inkjet ink on paper. 8.27 x 11.69 in.

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 84

gary ross told me it’s okay to be delayed (page 4).

Correction fluid and inkjet ink on paper. 8.27 x 11.69 in.

85 • Yuji de Torres

gary ross told me it’s okay to be delayed (page 5).

Correction fluid and inkjet ink on paper. 8.27 x 11.69 in.

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 86

Karl Estuart

bsm applied mathematics, major in mathematical finance

Here’s to everyone who believed.

For Josh, Kassy, Felix, Robyn J., Jethro, Raph, Elija, Kristine, Mariel, Alec, Helena, Andrea, Bee, Oey, Martina, Justine, Angel, Elo, Ronnel, Hannah, Ginny, Poch, Benj, Jopee.

For DM Reyes, Tonette Angeles, Ray Aguas, Bobby Guevara, Brian Paul Giron, Marc Pasco, Eddieboy Calasanz.

For Robyn.

For Andoi & Sar. For Mama & Papa.

To the coming years, that I may approach with patience and care. To cease denying true happiness, and all the opportunities for it.

For all yet to come.

“To catch beauty would be to understand... But no, delight need not reach so far. To be running breathlessly, but not yet arrived, is itself delightful, a suspended moment of living hope.”

—Anne Carson, Eros the Bittersweet

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 88

On A Mountain, Briefly “The best time of the year to climb the Zambales mountains is at night.”

—Common dictum Tim Hecker must have known this. He must have seen the same things. Wondered at the mist that stretched out from the water and glittered as it hovered in the air as I saw it then, on a peak on a mountain. Someone explains to me what he thought it most likely was: vapor rising from the ocean.

When Tim Hecker recorded Radio Amor, he was looking at an image: a fisherman working his boat, his leg stretched out to reach a pole some feet away. He adjusts his rope, how it tensed, if it pulled when it ought to. What this body is in, carrying out some duty, must be what they call grace. It is no different from the pulley above it, a mechanism hooking one thing to another into place. Faint lines intersect behind it, following the bend of his torso. On the album cover, the image seems worn.

In Mark Richardson’s review of the album, he calls attention to a strange habit of his when approaching music. Upon hearing that Tim Hecker drew from the image as a reference for crafting the music, Mark decided to approach it without the reference in mind—to remove the reference when engaging with its referent, to “see whether one can absorb and study sound as sound.” One wonders what the accomplishment there could have been. To attempt to see, or rather hear, something in itself almost seemed like a form of reduction. But there are divergences, spaces of tension when speaking of Radio Amor in itself. When encountering the album, the cover, the title, the very name Tim Hecker cannot help but conjure, insist. Is this interference from the sound, or was it constitutive of a larger whole which the sound can only represent in part? For all the static, the cuts and

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 90

scratches in the mixing, I could not help but see that it was both, and that Tim was trying to tell us something. He had crafted a medium out of interference. * There is a scene that portrays the fatalistic relationship between interference and distance, expressed in musical and spatial terms: Scarlett Johansson, adrift in a sea of Tokyo lights, turns gently to Bill Murray from across the passenger seat. The camera captures forms as she passes them by, her absent eye attaching to whatever insists on itself: advertisements and neon-lit signposts in a different language, the bend of a bridge with its framework cast in white. The city heaves itself onto her from the outside, deadening in its fullness and anonymity. Her gaze directed to an absent city scans for presence; she turns to him in silence.

My Bloody Valentine’s Sometimes plays over this. My Bloody Valentine’s work is a work of interference. Messages are not received in their clarity, but in the complete lack thereof, a lack stubbornly defending an ashamed presence. It was to say—you are with me here tonight. It means to say only this.

Simone Weil, in her account concerning grace, claims that we are brought to existence only to revoke it. To exist is to give meaning to this revocation. It is to locate return in a space of agency, of freedom, of time. I come to think of this whenever I encounter a purposeful difficulty. If the song douses itself with reverberation and interference, it might only be guarding itself, to draw us into its meaning only after we have given it the attention and freedom to be heard. But there is an alternative: it might not be able to present itself any other way. Its being is its guardedness. We are supposed to reconcile ourselves with this; we are supposed to take the wall of sound for what it is.

When she turned to him in silence, his presence—masked behind a seemingly impenetrable distance—occurred to her precisely in those terms. It was a distance that was not to be traversed, nor to be maintained. The inarticulable gravity between them—known 91 • Karl Estuart

only by them, in the final scene of the film, when he whispers to her something, the only thing we are not privy to—seems to gather its meaning and its force through this distance of age, of time, of experience, of gender, of place, of audience, of reality. In a space so charged with estrangement, that distance must be made out to be something we combat to reach for the essence of another is to refuse the meaning captured in that very distance. When I climb a mountain, it may seem that I am only trying to get somewhere. Yet the majesty lies in what unfolds before me, beyond reach and even beyond sight. * It was not on my first mountain, Mt. Sembrano; there were less than ten of us, or somewhere around that number, and I thought there were moments where I could have died. At one portion of the trail, an outcropping on the face of the mountain, the way collapsed into a tangle of vines stretching up into the leaves and down onto a sheer drop of running water and boulders. I held on to these vines, hugging the wall and bringing my body as close to it as I could, and jumped straight to the other end.

Mountains were misunderstood to me: a matter of literal climbing, stones jutting out the face, and a reaching-out with hands and limbs. What had not occurred to me was the sheer traversal of it, the duration that would wear on us. There was the mud—it had rained the day before—which made the traversal to the peak a matter decided by the branches, the leaves, the vines, and the trunks that rose around us, hopefully rooted deep in the ground so that we could grip onto them with our hands when our legs could not plant themselves firmly on the smoothened earth. At a certain point, my left foot was against the stump of a small tree, my left hand on a small stone jutting out of the ground, and my right gripping a leaf stretching out from a branch of a larger tree towering from the steep drop flanking our path.

The climb had started simply, in a way my life prior could have prepared me for: clambering along Katipunan with our large heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 92

backpacks—hosting six liters of water, tent equipment, clothes, food, cooking equipment, flashlights, gadgets wrapped in cellophane, lighters—standing by the edge of the road that leads into Marcos Highway and Marikina, and negotiating with the jeepneys that pass to carry us, our bags as large as two people, stacked at one end while I watched Marikina and Antipolo unwind at the entrance of the jeepney, the darkness gaping. It was a roaring-back-at-me of the world. The music there was the television hooked behind the driver, playing Clash of the Giants.

It was not this mountain. It was not the swathes of cogon grass that met us after the mud traverse, extending above our heads and marking our skin as we crept through. For miles, it was grass, until it was sea, and then city, the lights flittering across the ocean wind.

The breeze at the peak—more a clearing, cemented by many years of climbs like this—was more definite than any I’d ever been in the midst of. In the middle of the night, I lied on my back and watched the stars. The last time I saw those many stars was in the yard in Aguho, some eleven years ago.

This was not where I saw the water rise straight out of the ocean, glimmering in the setting light. On that mountain, Balingkilat, we stood, watching something none of us had quite seen before in our years. Traversing the trail up, the mountain face yielded to a view of the Zambales region, its hills, its rivers, roofs, mountains, volcanos, corners. We had only to turn our head and see. Unexplored terrain lashed out with green, forbidding with jagged treetops. * What Tim Hecker achieves is a fusion of the musical with the spatial, before the accomplishment of which being a career that delicately traced the lines of tension between the two. Before Ravedeath, 1972, his music remained merely referential—an account of experience, of imagery. This preoccupation with moments would tie experience with space, highlighting how one constructed and constituted the other so essentially that it would be impossible to 93 • Karl Estuart

trace which preceded the other. Memories of my early years can only come across through descriptions of a home I once lived in; of my recent years, the mountain.

The conscious reference to space in music was made in one of the earliest ambient works released to popular audiences: Music for Airports. It would seem that Brian Eno sought to produce music inspired by space. But what in an airport inspires? What can space offer to passers-by besides itself? Marc Auge designates to the space of airports the supermodern title: a non-place.

I like this phrase. Non-places. Somehow we are already presuming that we understand place and what qualifies space to be described as a place. I am referring here to a space bounded by history, time, recognition, and withdrawal. I describe a place that withholds itself, that does not surrender anything but the space it occupies.

I am speaking of a place where reality unfolds. I speak of where things happen.

The sounds of Music for Airports evoke. A space is conjured to the mind and inhabited by it. It is music preoccupied with attunement, with setting. Yet the nature of this setting is troubled by the airport, which is understood and experienced as a transition between different places. Nobody in the airport means to be there.

The lobbies, restaurants, walking decks all resonate with leaving.

An airport is to be departed from. When I step out of Xanland, everything after which precedes Davao is incidental. They are consequences of distance. In a non-place there is no time. There is no separation. Everything is present, everything burdens us with their presence. An airport collapses distance. Have I learned what it is that isn’t home? A window seat in an airplane is the only way to remind myself that I’m heading from a place to another. A window seat in a car is the only way to remind myself that I’m heading from a place to another.

It is an insistent effort by which the non-place manages to bring to light all things—a harsh, unnatural light under which we see from a mile the pores in another’s skin, or a stream of music echoing in a plaza. In a world where everything is offered, nothing is held. heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 94

Things switch hands. They are not possessed. Do I know possession?

What is ownership? I look at an album cover in possession of itself: through a sea of fingers, doused in oil and sweat, we make out the features of Margaret Chardiet. They slither through her hair, writhing along her skin and across her lips. Fingers become entangled like rat-kings. Her eyes are closed. Her album is entitled Contact. Her music is ambient. It is vicious, it tears into the body. One may call it power electronics. In another album cover she showers her groin with live maggots. The force in her music—a catastrophic, abysmal force— is not listened to but participated in. It is inhabited—it occupies.

It is the sound of space being torn out of place, yet not towards a non-place, which only desires for us to live in it so we may furnish it with resources it needs to sustain itself. It does not offer something to our hands, but rather invites us to something larger than us and therefore escapes us.

Depth and largeness, as Aristotle called our attention to, were once considered principles. The scene in James Ferraro’s music unfolds: a plaza of glass and still bodies carried by escalators. A compilation of tracks running for a total of 963 minutes, called Virtual Dream Plaza, hosts songs of nearly hours in length that sound more like the humming of nccc when I stood outside its entrance, my yaya and I waiting for our driver. Gen Thalz constructs a distorted field recording of the mrt, a cacophony underpinning the hustle and the moist crowding of bodies. There are edits of music, made to sound as if they were being heard ‘in an empty shopping centre in the middle of the night.’ The music is distant, some degrees separated from solidity, their notes bleached. This is an instructive distancing: in the oppressive presence of things in non-places—bodies accumulating in train cars, taxicabs at the face of a mall, masses of music records at vinyl shops—we can perhaps know things only by losing them.

Anne Carson speaks of “a man who knows the things I want to know about bread, about God, about lovers’ conversations, yet mile after tapping mile goes by while I watch his heels rise and fall in front of me...” When will desire return to us? A long stretch of highway is incommensurable with a pilgrimage, unless it is a highway far into 95 • Karl Estuart

the country, what Tim Hecker calls “the imaginary country.” Distance becomes the end. The deliverance of a concrete end that cuts through the imagined end can be devastating. We are people enamored with roads. We watch things glide past us. I awoke at five, on a bus ride to La Union, and watched the rice fields with its springs glowing, the sky a deep blue cut through with streaks of auburn like a wound. There are moments in this world that escape us.

Ambient musicians are taking after their god—they are stewards of their earth. * To compose ambient music is to oppose. I refer to the purposeful gesture of creating a work that desires to be ambient. To be heard is a consequence of the senses. To experience is to overcome hearing.

We overcome the senses with judgment. This is what we have always believed. We have learned to overcome the beginning of all things—wonder at the sense of touch, at the sight of a cove at the foot of a mountain yielding to the ocean, or the sound of cogon grass fluttering in a breeze. We have become preoccupied with getting ahead of them.

In an ambient work, there is no getting ahead. There is no progression, duality of sense and experience. There is no distinction.

If all music is meant “to organize and assimilate their own sense of time,” then a music of ambivalence is a music of proximity. It is a music that highlights space instead of time. Yet I do not want to imply that one’s experience of space and of time are separable—only within a non-place, which compartmentalizes space and annihilates time—but rather, as when the hiker stops and shifts his gaze from summit-ward to the view, there comes what we cannot brace ourselves for. Brian Eno speaks of “the excitement of grainy film, of bleached-out black and white, the excitement of witnessing events too momentous for the medium assigned to record them.” What is it in Tim Hecker’s life? The ocean unfolds, and I do not know if I ever recognized prior to Zambales what it meant to not see where the heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 96

ocean ends from where you stand. The trail faces the expanse, and at one point as we were climbing up we settled down when a hiker’s legs gave way to cramps. Hills surround what must have been the town, a webbing of lines flanked by rivers. Further ahead, the rolling hills, clenched, tense, shrouded by wisps of clouds. Space, much like time, changes a place. Ambient music is a music of proximity.

That standing too close or too far reveals something different does not say that perspective is nonpertinent. It is to say: you are from where you are. A place is space which does not depend on us. That the ocean consumes Tim Hecker and extends beyond my sight is of no consequence to the ocean.

Ambient music desires nothing else but to have us be of no consequence to it. When Tim Hecker records himself, he is already failing—the music urges to be listened to. There is needing in it.

Music, like non-place, can turn to ruin. There is no ruin in the mountain—Heraclitus speaks of cycles, of a raging fire that goes out and consumes in measured beats. Foliage seeps through the cracks.

A music that is ruined—Tim Hecker is still young. His albums once dared. Haunt me, haunt me again, one said.

Ambient musicians privilege whatever is not present to them.

They hold on to its promise. * In Ravedeath, 1972, he would transmit a space. The hollow interior of the cathedral, its ceiling so far up as to evoke a being that can match its heights, is specked with weathered air, its thickness the grain through which we examine history. The organ notes rang against its walls. It slid against the beams, riding up against arcs that carried them across unseen corners carved deep into stone. He is gripping at the spaces. The cathedral makes a larger response to the human act of pushing down on a key than the organ itself. It ripples at his touch.

We too used to live with consequence. The mit graduates that hoist the piano up the rooftop ledge, meaning to push it overboard, are not after the sound the crash will make—a maelstrom of strings 97 • Karl Estuart

snapping—but the descent of something too large to fall. A piano fills a space like a wall. A crashing wall charges space by expanding it. Drawing a curtain and pushing windows open is to combat loss. A city is nothing but a constant battle to reclaim space—a consequence of reclaiming freedom, which may only be exercised within space.

The roads that lead out of the city and towards the provinces come in four forms. There are the wide highways meant to be sped through.

There are highways you have to pay for. There are the narrower roads that ply through the towns. Then there are the roads that arrive at a place. You will know them by the nagging curves it demands of you, the towering mass on one side and a sheer drop on another furnished with an abundance of trees. Almost nobody else will be driving through these.

The way to a mountain in Rizal, as opposed to Zambales, says that to become a “road” is to be taken from place. It is a mass cobbling of stones spread across a clearing wide enough for only one car, some jutting out from the dust and capable of bruising the engine from beneath. It takes you an hour to steer through this. At the end of this stretch, you make out a town without lights, coated in the same dust, nested in trees at the foot of the mountain. There are houses here, and doors that slam in the middle of the night. There is the house that welcomes people such as you. You wait for the man who will guide you through the trail. Where the car is parked, you will not see it yet now, is a clearing and a large farm. There are houses here too, some serving food and pancit, some providing spaces for shower. The man does not arrive soon enough, and you stand at the base of the darkness, the dog’s howling coming straight at you.

When you lose control of a car in motion, the first thing you do when you wake back up is pull the steering wheel whichever way.

The panic must come from the blur of colors and light, or how the movement you’ve associated with the way you pull the wheel with your arms doesn’t come and, instead, tumbling.

I had decided to play Fishmans that trip, a band based in Japan.

Their last work was a two-hour opus, a live performance of dizzying highs. At the moment, the song playing was melody. It continued heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 98

playing, the cord snug in my phone, as the car was teetering over the 50-foot drop, balancing on its left side, and fastened in place by the incline and a thin set of trees. Lines burst across the windshield like fractures, and beneath me the window is ready to come off in one piece, wallets, coins, and receipts piling up, shaken from place.

The highway extending from Marcos Highway, crossing through Antipolo, and into a region without streetlights, is not of an uncommon kind in this country. Roads gather around mountains like music in public spaces. Non-places are departed from, places lie in wait. I was carried along such a highway, in an ambulance, and I wept. In the hospital they took us—more a dock for emergency cases, its facilities minimal—there was no signal for us, and we waited to be taken back to the city. This must have been what grieved me the most—that there was somewhere to return to, and I knew where it was, which was to say that it was nowhere. To have drifted from the crash site, forged through the mountains once again, to sit and await the clouds—anywhere else struck me as fabricated, out of some functional necessity. The mountains had no care for us; it meant that the mountains had all the care we could ever need. To have needed anything more than to exist, after having almost died, struck me as an excess.

The sea of clouds did not meet us on our climb before the crash.

We drove out at one in the morning, speeding through Marcos Highway—the traversal of places—to make it. Our guide told us the sea only comes through when there are no winds, in May, to fan them away. The music in places echo with their promise: the anxiety of return, the tension of opposites, like what passes for inhabitable, for the natural world, for shelter, between the next train station overlooking a massive hole to stitch a non-place to the city fabric, between where I live and where everywhere else is, like an imaginary country that emerges from certain horizons, beyond reach. I loved it out there, even now. I imagine the earth frothing where our car landed and grazed the face of the cliff. If I could return—

99 • Karl Estuart

* The promotional video for apeco features a stunning, unreal visual. Carvings of roads, waterways, and housing projects with smatterings of trees are cast in the plastic texture of digital architecture simulations. Footage of what would have been a plaza in mid-construction, “for welcoming visitors and investors,” becomes overlaid with the same artistic visualization: the bleached surfaces, agglutinations of polygonal forms and shadows, and meshes of the computerized with images of the real. The entrance plaza, according to the voice-over, was “to give a sense of place.” Along Esteban Abada, people stand by the side of the road, stretching their hands out to offer brochures to passing cars, a residential building towering above them. Here is the promise of cities: to traverse highways so you may live again, so you bring yourself out, like an extra note in a chord where harmony had already been made.

If we could set our eyes on a landscape and see as though we were not here­—these are the words of Simone Weil, to still the beating of our hearts so as not to disturb the earth. Ambient musicians have brought their music and their earth together and have disappeared from either. I am coming back, I am leaving, I will disappear.

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 100

Corinne Garcia

bfa information design

“When she does not find love, she may find poetry. Because she does not act, [she observes, feels, records]; a color, a smile awakens profound echoes within her; her destiny is outside her, scattered in cities already built, on the faces of men already marked by life, she makes contact…she looks for their significance; she catches their special outlines, their unexpected metamorphoses. She rarely feels a bold creativeness, & usually she lacks the technique of self-expression; but in her conversation, [letters, literary essays, sketches], she manifests an original sensitivity. The young girl throws herself into things with ardor, because she is not yet deprived of her transcendence [and it makes] her impulses only the more passionate. Empty & unlimited, she seeks from within her nothingness to attain All.” —Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex To the darlings who have awakened so much lust for living within me—Bless, Trisha, Mia, Anya, Kira, Jess, Mica, Nadine, Marga, Camille, Patti, Mandy—for all the Fridays we rolled & ran around the high school field, stained our socks with dirt & green, and took many pictures. To Bless, Bianca, Mia, Francine for filling many warm afternoons sat upon the de la Costa benches. To my friends in heights, for peeking from behind the rosebushes to keep me company in my 5th year. To Joaquin—for laughter, for listening.

To my family—Papa, Mama, Ate. I am still afraid of much, but your lights have pulled me through the waning of many nights.

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 102

craftsman by the sea. Digital photography.

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 104

Dohtonbori River (made unrecognisable by city lights) (series) 1.

Digital photography.

105 • Corinne Garcia

Dohtonbori River (made unrecognisable by city lights) (series) 11.

Digital photography.

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 106

Dohtonbori River (made unrecognisable by city lights) (series) 111.

Digital photography.

107 • Corinne Garcia

Justine Chloe Guevara bs life sciences

Chloe is a bs Life Sciences student specializing in Molecular Biology and Biotechnology with a love for the arts and humanities.

Her passions are social justice, inclusive healthcare, environment conservation, and BonChon chapchae. Her favorite color is #AFEEEE, she aspires to someday be a dog lady, and she dreams of and perseveres towards a suffering-free world. * Thank you to my dearest: BOx, Tanghalang Ateneo, and KRIS Library, for pushing me beyond my borders, and for being family.

Aimee, Christine, Karin, Miña, and Michael for being a source of light.

Doc Guss, for believing in me.

Vea and Gill, for keeping me company when you’d find me deep in the holes I dig.

Mom, for your love that always meets me more than halfway through.

God, for who you are.

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 110

a child, remembered. Digital.

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 112

Gabby Jimenez

bfa information design

Gabby Jimenez (iv bfa Information Design) is a graphic designer and photographer. Aside from stressing over papers and plates, she shoots sporting events, portraits, and gigs. She has been shooting film since August of 2017 and has recently been experimenting with double exposure work. “Double Experiment 4” was taken during a trip to Baguio.

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 114

Double Experiment 4. Film photography.

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 116

Ma. Cecilia Rosario Basa Lamug ab literature (english)

After five turbulent years, Cara Lamug is graduating. She is leaving the Ateneo a recipient of the Loyola Schools Award for the Arts for poetry and for photography. Prior to this year, she had never submitted any works for publication. Sometimes we just need a little extra time. * Thank you to the amazing people who helped me get to the end of this journey.

To my various teachers in the Ateneo, most especially to Dr. Mary Thomas, Dr. Vincenz Serrano, Ms. Charlene Diaz, Ms. Ivery del Campo, Mr. Max Pulan Jr., Ms. Teya Paulino, Jemo Ramos, Fr. Edwin Castillo, S.J., Fr. Asandas Balchand, S.J., Ms. Jackie Tolentino, Mr. Brian Giron, and Mr. Mark Cayanan. It has been an honor.

To my friends and mentors outside of university: to Rogerio Akiti Dezem, for teaching me how to look; to Matthew Buckmaster and Julie Ross, for all the guidance and grace shared over Skype. I promise I’ll visit.

To my family. I love all of you.

And to my two favorite people, Alie Unson and Kurt Marquez. Thank you both for everything, and for everything else in advance. heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 118

2 from Night Out (series). Film photography.

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 120

3 from Night Out (series). Film photography.

121 • Ma. Cecilia Rosario Basa Lamug

4 from Night Out (series). Film photography.

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 122

7 from Night Out (series). Film photography.

123 • Ma. Cecilia Rosario Basa Lamug

Ninna Lebrilla

bfa information design

072616, 12:43 p.m. Thank you for this place called home.

In the living room: Mom and Dad—I am always grateful for your never-ending support. I hope to return it someday. Lanz—though I am not home for most of the year, I hope I have been a good sister to you. Ysa—despite the conflicts, I still wish you all the best in your endeavors. Tanya—who has seen the best and worst in me, my confidant, friend, supporter, and sister, thank you for sticking with me through thick and thin. My dogs—I love you all.

By the steps: eb 1718­—Bee, Yuri, Alex, Marco, Neil, Chaela, Celline, Jayvee, Martina, Oey, Sophia, Cat, Dianne, Ponch, Luigi, Coco, and Kristoff, it has been an amazing year with you all and that is an understatement. To Marco and Dianne especially, thank you for the great years in DZGN. DZGN—thank you for the two years.

On the balcony: my blockmates­ , especially Kim, Regina, and Jezka­­— thank you for your love and acceptance. Watching each other grow these last four years has been a gift.

In the garden: friends—from longtime connections to recent ones, those who stayed and those who sailed away, thank you for your friendship. I am glad to have met all of you.

Please visit my flower shop someday. heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 126

ME-YOU. Digital.

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 128

Gabrielle Leung bs physics

1. “I want what I want, do you think that I want too much?” —Jepsen 2. Every month I cannot go to Baguio, my family sends me Tupperwares of home-cooked meals.

3. Robbie, Zeilina, and Ericka are 86.2 km away on any given day.

4. Things I learned from my professors: there is one hornbill that lives on the Ateneo campus; syntax is political; poetry is unequal to action; being human is an act; careful analysis means reading both with and against the grain; some things can only be said with a mask; uncertainty must always be reported; compassion should be radical; the root word of essay is essayer, which means to try.

5. I received an acceptance email from my first editors, Billy and Ayana, on July 22, 2014.

6. Josh taught me parousia and intermittence. Marco taught me all I know about Marxist thought and RuPaul’s Drag Race. Janelle taught me the best yoga teachers and the three Spanish words I understand.

7. My editorial board—Yuri, Marco, Alex, Neil, Chaela, Celline, Jayvee, Sophia, Cat, Martina, Oey, Dianne, Ninna, Coco, Kristoff, Ponch, and Luigi—have meant more than they think.

8. Chaela: we still have one more year of this.

9. “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” —Didion 10. The night I met David behind Henry Lee Irwin Theater, I very nearly decided not to go.

11. I am grateful.

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 130

Notes on the Word Witness Outside Camp Crame, there’s a billboard that says how many drug users have turned themselves in. The number is at a million. It gets higher every day. You are sitting in your friend’s car, talking about a poem you’ve been meaning to write. It’s about a boy, of course, but you haven’t started. The radio is singing about a breakup and I’m not that good at goodbyes, sometimes it’s best to just fly—you can’t look away. You wonder if the number includes the dead bodies that turn up in packaging tape and permanent marker. You’ve never witnessed someone die before. Imagine a million people: all standing at the side of the road, stretching further than the eye can see. You see them all.

You think of the names—you know them all, of course. You’ve read all the stories, of course. You are a good person, of course. Florjohn Cruz’s niece and nephew watched as he was gunned down. Joshua Cumilang was begging for his mother when he was shot in their Tondo home. Danica Garcia was only five years old. The radio sings ask where I’m going, oh, I. Pauses. You have never been to Tondo. After all, your parents say there is nothing to fear if you’ve done nothing wrong. Of course. You tell them you don’t feel any safer walking the streets at night, that you freeze when motorcyclists pass by, you always make sure someone knows where you are, say ingat ka instead of goodbye.

You say you have nothing to fear but you are afraid anyway. That isn’t true. Jennelyn Olaires holds the body of her husband, Michael Siaron, on an early morning in the early days of the drug war. She says Michael voted for the President in the last elections. She doesn’t want sympathy or pity or any notice at all. If she had wings, she says, she would fly to his side. You watch the numbers on the billboard and they stay numbers. You scribble down in your notebook how sino ang lalaban? sounds a lot like nanlaban; a group of children sniffing unmarked plastic bags darts across the street. You say to your friend you are tired of writing about yourself. You say to him, look at my

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 132

hands, you say to him, they are shaking, you say, look, you don’t know what to do with your hands these days. The radio is singing you might not see me anymore, anymore and the words sound like a trance but you are singing along. The bile rises in your throat. Adrian Peregrino’s last word was Love, his daugher’s name. Erica Fernandez was known to her friends as Angel. Kian delos Santos only wanted a bicycle. You remember every story. When the traffic lets up and the car moves away, the billboard is behind you and you push it to the back of your mind. The thought doesn’t leave you, until it does.

133 • Gabrielle Leung

Listen, there’s a song in the breeze that wants to keep singing; I hear my mother inside it, singing along to the child in her arms listen here, listen love the note a bubble that fills the room to bursting, a name I cannot quite remember, some old Hollywood movie she liked to listen to while falling asleep, arms curled around empty spaces where we wriggled out of her grasp. I hear her telling me to come back. I can always hear my mother, who once seemed to have ears everywhere; who never liked to listen to my dad’s advice; who didn’t believe in God, but sang church songs anyway; whose name is a sea of bitterness; who told me when she thought I wasn’t listening that this was never the life she imagined; who is beautiful, though we try not to think about it; who swallowed pale white pills every pale gold night—on those nights, I listened to the sound of her breathing, the hitch in her throat punctuating the silent blue television lights. This house misses her tidy. It listens for her footsteps. On the warmest nights, creaking, all the rooms sit silent as they wait for the ghosts to traipse through. Listen: I want to tell you that I loved her. I still am listening for a way out, the echoes of forgiveness, somewhere to make a home in besides the spaces she is always leaving behind, somewhere besides her silence, somewhere the breeze sings other songs to listen to.

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 134

Yas Liamco

bfa information design

Yas is a bfa Information Design student who loves to draw people and make comics about life. She is currently the Associate Editor of Blue Indie Komiks (blink).

She continues to be inspired and motivated by blink (always, past and present), her friends in Texas and across the globe, the people she meets along the way, and Korean pop music. They have kept her alive and breathing, and for that she is thankful.

If her stay in the Ateneo were to be summarized into a playlist, this would be it.

She is glad to be able to finally go down the hill.

1. Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want by The Smiths 2. Polygonal Graphs by Ang Bandang Shirley 3. I Need Somebody by Day6 4. for the broken soul by slchld 5. Season 2 Episode 3 by Glass Animals 6. epilogue: Young Forever by bts

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 136

Stigma (comic) page 1. Digital. 8.27 x 5.83 in.

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 138

Stigma (comic) page 2.

139 • Yas Liamco

Stigma (comic) page 3.

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 140

Stigma (comic) page 4.

141 • Yas Liamco

Stigma (comic) page 5.

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 142

Stigma (comic) page 6.

143 • Yas Liamco

Stigma (comic) page 7.

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 144

Stigma (comic) page 8.

145 • Yas Liamco

Stigma (comic) page 9.

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 146

Stigma (comic) page 10.

147 • Yas Liamco

Celline Marge Mercado

bfa information design, bfa art management

Thank you to everyone who took part in making and breaking me.

To Tatay, for your never-ending support. I hope I’m worth it.

To Mama, for reading me my bedtime stories. I haven't stopped dreaming ever since. To Ate Linelle, you prompted my very first drawing. To Gem and Sean, for pushing me to live on. To my dogs Thor, Mjölnir, Sif, Loki, and little Thoreo, for teaching me how to love. To Thor, you’ll always be my good boy. To my professors and mentors, Alfred Marasigan, Meneer Marcelo, Fr. Jason Dy, Doc Eloi, Tata Yap, Carlomar Daoana, Javier Gomez, Gilbert Que, Aldy Aguirre, Dr. Garcia, Dr. Karen Fraser, Susan Wolsborn, and Dr. Paula Birnbaum, for showing kindness and understanding to this perpetually confused girl. To the people of heights, who have taught me so much more than about art. To Krysten and Reg, for accepting a naive freshman into the staff. You’ve opened up the world to me.

To the friends I’ve made in the past four years. To the Art Staff under my editorship, Eunice, Jude, Aisha, Rico, Milo, Andrea R., Robyn, Wax, Clare, Andrea T., Dexter, and Charles. To Jayvee, my co-editor.

To the current editorial board I’ve had the pleasure of serving with, Bee, Yuri, Alex, Marco T., Neil, Chaela, Martina, Oey, Sophia, Cat, Ponch, Luigi, Coco, Kristoff, Dianne, and Ninna. To Marco T., for the laughter and your inspiring talent. To Yuri, for keeping me sane.

I’m not there yet, but I’ll keep going.

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 150

Humahalik. Plaster, acrylic paint, found objects.

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 152

Nangangagat. Plaster, acrylic paint, found objects.

153 • Celline Marge Mercado

Jose Alfonso Ignacio Mirabueno bs computer science

Marami siyang feelings tungkol sa extra rice. Nagawa na niyang lakarin mula LRT-Katipunan hanggang Ever Gotesco Commonwealth. Paborito niyang kanta ang Lupang Hinirang.

Nais kong magpasalamat kay Joyce and Ces Mira, sa lahat ng pagmamahal, tiwala, at tinapay.

Sa Blue Symph, sa lahat ng musika, hakot, at dinner sa Kenny Rogers.

Sa Heights, sa lahat ng sigawan, tawanan, at dinner kung saan mura.

Sa lahat ng naging crush ko, sa pagiging motivation na pumasok sa mga klase ko.

Kay Achi Clara, sa lahat ng sine, lakad sa Trinoma, at dinner sa Flaming Wings.

Kay Robyn, sa lahat ng pagsasalin, mga epiko, at dinner na may ginisang gulay at garlic rice.

Kay Martina, sa lahat ng readings, Cubao adventures, at dinner sa Kaboom.

Kay Karl, sa lahat ng Philo, Chilimansi sa Xanland 405, at dinner sa B.Wings.

Kay Bee, sa lahat ng Coffee Boomba, KFC Flavor Shots, dinner, at sa lahat.

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 156

Ilang Panuto sa Pag-ensayo 1. Umupo nang tuwid.

May bago akong piyesa. Clementi Sonatina in C Major, Op. 36 No. 3. Magandang ehersisyo para sa utak at sa kamay, wika ng guro ko sa piyano, dahil sa pabagu-bagong estilo ng pagtugtog sa bawat bahagi.

Matatapos daw namin ito bago ako lumipat sa katabing probinsya.

Hindi raw nagustuhan ni Mozart ang mga sonatina ni Clementi dahil sa hirap nila. Ngunit kakayanin ko naman, sabi ni Teacher Deanne habang inaayos niya ang aklat ng piyesa, dahil mahusay raw ako magbilang. Kagagaling ko lang sa isang summer camp para sa matematika, at may tatlong linggong natitira sa bakasyon upang buuin ko ang piyesa.

Pitong taon na mula noong huli akong nagkaroon ng pormal na pagsasanay sa piyano. Ang tanging naiwan sa mga daliri ko ay ang mga ehersisyong Hanon para sa finger technique, na mula sa unang leksyon ko ay pinukpok nang pinukpok hanggang sa nagagawa ko ito nang nakapikit. Ngayong binabalikan ko ang mga ehersisyo ay nadadapa na ang mga daliri ko; hanggang alaala pa lamang ang dating bilis.

2. “Tones!”

Paalala agad ni Teacher Deanne nang simulan ko na ang unang bahagi ng sonatina. Madalas niya akong pinapagalitan dahil sa kakulangan ko sa “tones”, ang tawag niya sa diin ng mga daliri habang tumutugtog. Kahit na pinahahalagahan ang maluwag at matulin na mga daliri, hindi pwedeng mawalan ng lakas ang pagpindot sa mga tipa. Mahina man o malakas, nahuhuli niya kung walang bigat sa mga kamay mo. Mula noong nagsimula akong mag-aral sa kanya noong limang taong gulang ako, bukambibig na niya ang “Tones!” dahil ako lamang sa lahat ng mga estudyante niya ang parang takot heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 158

na takot na hampasin ang piyano, parang patago pa rin kahit na ako na ang nakaupo.

Spiritoso. Lively. Pala-kaibigan daw ako noong bata ako, ngunit sa pagtanda ay tumatago na ako sa mga tito't tita, mga kaopisina ng mga magulang ko, at sa kung sinu-sino pang mga taong nakakasalubong ko sa mga piyesta o sa mga birthday. Pakiramdam ko kasi nakakaistorbo ako sa kanila, kaya't iiwas na lamang ako. Ngunit, wala akong problema makipagkuwentuhan sa mga pulubing baliw sa simbahan at sa palengke; kung hindi sila laging naiistorbo na ay hindi sila kailanman naiistorbo.

Unang nag-aral ng piyano ang ate ko, at nang makatipid sa oras ay sumasabay ako sa kanya kapag siya’y nag-eensayo sa bahay ni Teacher Deanne. Nanonood lamang ako mula sa sofa, nagbabasa o natutulog, o minsan sumisilip ako sa kusina, at kapag natitiyempuhan ko si Lolo Pete na nagkakape humihingi ako ng pagkain. Nang maubusan na ako ng antok, aklat, at burger nakagawian kong gaya-gayahin ang mga tinutugtog niya nang patago, habang walang nakaupo sa piyano. Hindi ito nakalusot sa pagmamasid ni Teacher Deanne, at napagpasyahan niyang turuan ako nang tama kaysa manatili akong kumakapa. Isang taon din bago ako nakumbinsing tumuloy sa pagiging estudyante niya, marahil sa nakikita ko ang mga nakayayamot na mga ehersisyong pinapagawa sa ate ko tuwing wala pa siyang piyesa.

3. Knuckles out.

Parang kamay ng batang gumagaya sa tigre. Mas madaling tumugtog kaysa kung nakalapag lamang ang mga daliri, at sa halip na ang dulo ng mga daliri ang tumitipa ay tila pumapalo ang buong daliri mismo, at nababawasan ang liksi at luwag ng paggalaw. Mahirap sanayin ito kasi maninigas talaga ang mga kamay mo sa simula ngunit sa katagalan ay hindi mo na pag-iisipan ito.

Un poco adagio. A little at ease. Sa bagal ng bahaging ito mahahalata ng kahit sino kung may maling nota. Kailangan ng presisyong matematikal—swak ang sukat ng bawat nota sa tremolo, hindi aangat ang nakatuntong daliri hangga’t hindi dumarating ang 159 • Jose Alfonso Ignacio Mirabueno

kasunod, walang nadadapang kamay sa mga akyat-babang scale.

Dito ako bumabawi, dahil nga mahusay akong magbilang. Sa bagal ng tugtog maaaring bigyang-diin ang bawat bagsak ng daliri nang walang tinatayang dulas o mali. Ngunit masyado naman daw akong naninigas, at natatakot, wika ni Teacher Deanne. Baka gutom ka, biro niya. Kalma lang. A little at ease nga naman. Nabanggit niya noong ikalawang taon ko ng pag-aaral ay kinapa ko sa piyano ang Lupang Hinirang, at tuwing papasok ako at wala pa siya sa music room ay tinutugtog ko raw ito nang malakas, kahit maraming maling nota, at naririnig daw ito sa buong bahay, parang hudyat na naroon na ako, handa na para sa leksyon.

Noong linggo ng pagsasali sa mga organisasyon sa pamantasan, naglakad-lakad ako nang tahimik sa harap ng lamesa ng orkestra.

Pinagpapawisan ako dahil sa init at sa nerbiyos dahil hindi ko alam kung paano lumapit. Buti na lang may tumawag sa akin mula sa kanila. Winika ng isang miyembro na mukha raw akong piyanista.

4. Bawal laktawan ang mga mahihirap na bahagi.

“Kung hindi ka sigurado sa solusyon mo, skip mo muna. Huwag mong sayangan ng oras kung mahirap.” Ito ang una kong natutunan sa mathematics summer program noong Grade 4, kung saan binibigyan kami ng tig-dadalawampung tanong tungkol sa mga paksang aaralin dapat namin sa susunod pang taon sa paaralan, na kailangan tapusin sa loob ng isa't kalahating oras. Walang “time-out” o “wait lang”, dahil kung lilingon ka rin naman sa palibot ay nakasubsob na ang lahat sa mga papel nila. Maiiwan ka lang at mapapagtawanan. Sunod kong natutunan ang “Kung hindi mo alam kung paano, magtanong sa pinakamatalinong bata sa kuwarto, dahil malamang tapos na niya ito.” Ito rin ang natutunan kong paraan upang makipagkaibigan, dahil hindi pumapayag ang mga guro na i-skip mo ang buong papel.

Natagpuan kong nadadala lang pala ang matematika sa pagkabisado ng mga shortcut kung saan sa isa o dalawang linya may sagot ka na.

“Pero bawal yan sa music ha, importante ang pagsusunod-sunod dito,” wika ni Teacher Deanne nang i-kuwento ko sa kanya ito. “Wala namang time pressure dito e. Kahit isang buong araw dalawang linya heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 160

lang ang aralin mo sa piyesa, ayos lang! Ang mahalaga ay natutugtog mo nang tama, kahit mabagal lang. Syempre kung puro mga madadaling bahagi lang praktisin mo pumili na lang sana tayo ng ibang piyesa.” Inabot ni Teacher Deanne ang lapis sa akin: ako na raw ang bibilog sa mga linyang hindi ko pa matugtog at kinakailangan ng dagdag na ensayo. “Kung mahirap, bagalan mo muna. Makukuha rin iyan ng mga daliri mo.”

“Pwede skip muna natin ang bars 21 to 32? Mahirap e,” wika ng kasama kong biyolista habang nag-eensayo kami ng piyesa. “Mas lalo kang mahihirapan diyan,” pabiro kong sagot. Madali lang kasi yung parte ng tselo, kaya't kampante ako sa pag-ensayo. “Tapusin na lang muna natin para kabisado na yung buong piyesa. Saka na ’yan,” pakiusap niya. “O sige, skip.”

5. Huwag magmadali.

Madalas din akong sitahin ni Teacher Deanne dahil sa aking pagdadaya sa pag-aaral ng mga piyesa: pinapatugtog ko muna sa kanya ang piyesa, at gagayahin ko siya ayon sa aking pandinig at sa galaw ng mga kamay niya nang hindi binabasa ang mga nota. Nahuli niya ako dito nang mapansin niyang nagagaya ko kahit ang mga mali niya. “Walang shortcuts sa music. Kung gusto mong matugtog agad, bagalan mo!” sabi niya sa aking sanay nang tumalun-talon sa mga numero. “Alam mo, may special talent ka sa hearing mo. Hindi lahat kayang gayahin ang naririnig nila nang ganyang kabilis. At least ang sightreading mas kayang ituro kaysa sa pagkapa. Pero kung gusto mo mas lalo pa ma-improve yang galing mo, dapat praktisin mo rin sightreading mo, para kumpleto ang skills mo sa piyano.”

Nakakabulabog, lalo na ang laging payo ng tatay ko sa akin ay “Ang pinakamagandang paraan ay ang pinakamadaling paraan”.

Kahit na nagtapos siya ng Agrikultura sa u.p. Los Baños ay nagagawa niya ang trabaho ng accountant, manager, at ingat-yaman sa kumpanya ng lola ko, dahil ginawa niya ang pinakamadaling paraan upang ipagsabay-sabay ang lahat ng ito: ipaubaya sa mga computer program. Mahalaga pa rin naman daw ang pagsubok sa mga mas 161 • Jose Alfonso Ignacio Mirabueno

mabagal na paraan nang mabigyang halaga mo nang buo ang proseso, ngunit bakit ka pa magpapakahirap? Kung magagawa nang mabilis, bakit pa babagalan?

Isang linggo na lamang bago ako umalis, at hindi ko pa natatapos ang kalahati ng sonatina. Pa-simple kong binanggit ito kay Teacher Deanne, ngunit kilala na niya ang style ko at tumawa siya. Tinugtog niya ang buong piyesa, sa kasunduang nakatingin lamang ako sa mga nota at hindi sa kamay niya. Kailangan ko raw sundan ang daloy ng musika, nang makuha ko ang ideya ng damdamin nito, ngunit ako pa rin dapat ang kakapa ng damdaming ito, at hindi sa pangongopya.

Sa huling bakasyon ko bago mag-kolehiyo sumama ako sa isang “special topics” na klase kung saan aaralin at tatangkain namin ang pinakamahirap na mga problema na lumalabas sa mga kompetisyong internasyonal. Dito ako unang nakasubok ng dalawang tanong na sasagutin sa apat na oras, ngunit pagkalaan ay kalahati lang ng isa ang nagawa ko. Sa tulong ng guro, tinapos at inaral namin ang dalawa buong hapon. Apat na baliktarang papel ang nagamit ko sa pagsusulat ng mga solusyon. Nakaramdam ako ng matinding kaba at takot, dahil wala na rin palang shortcut sa matematika.

6. Kung nawawala na ang mga kamay mo, bumalik sa mga ehersisyo.

Nahahalata raw kapag hindi ako nagpapraktis ng Hanon sa bahay, sabi ni Teacher Deanne. Hindi sapat na palusot ang mga sirang tipa ng piyano namin sa bahay, dahil noong bata raw siya may mahabang pirasong kahoy lang siyang ginuhitan ng mga itim at puting linya na sakto sa sukat ng piyano, at dito siya nag-eensayo nang tahimik tuwing walang leksyon. Sinubukan ko ito nang lumipat na ako at walang piyano sa dormitoryong tinitirahan ko. Mas madali palang magpraktis nang tahimik kaysa may mga maling tonong tumataginting sa bawat pindot.

Blessing and a curse daw ang kakaibang talas ng tainga ko.

Nagagawa kong tumugtog ng mga kanta at musika nang walang piyesa, ngunit nagkakamali ako sa mga mahahabang scale sa mga piyesa dahil inuunahan ako ng tainga ko. “Tama” kung pakinggan, heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 162

ngunit hindi iyon ang nakasulat, kaya mali.

Allegro. Fast. Halos puro mga akyat-babang notang naghahabulan, hangga’t hindi mo na ito matutugtog nang tama kung hindi madiin ang iyong pindot sa mga tipa. Tatlong beses na lamang kaming magkikita bago ako luluwas. Nanggigigil ang mga kamay kong bilisan na ang pagtugtog, ngunit hindi ko magagawa nang tama ang mga mahahabang scale kung hindi ko ito mememoryahin nang mabagal.

Kung sa matematika uunahin kong aaralin ang mga madadaling bahagi, ngunit ang tanging matematikang magagamit nang tama sa pagkakataong ito ay ang pagbibilang.

“Subdivide!” Sigaw ng konduktor namin. Ang whole note ay nahahati sa dalawang half note, na nahahati pa sa dalawang quarter note, tapos eighth note, tapos sixteenth note, hanggang sa makakaya. “Walang mahirap sa counting!” Hiniram niya ang biyolin ng concertmaster namin at tinugtog ang linya nang walang mintis na nota o bilang. “Mga letse! Magpraktis kasi kayo ng scales!” Alam naming lambing niya lang ito tuwing nagmumura siya, ngunit may kirot ng takot pa rin sa dibdib at sa kamay tuwing pinapaalala niya ang pag-eensayo.

7. Ihanda ang paa sa pedal.

Tatlo ang pedal ng piyano: soft, sostenuto, at sustain, ngunit madalas pinag-iisa ang huling dalawa. Wala itong gamit sa mga panimulang leksyon sa piyano liban sa pang-aliw sa mga bata dahil nag-iiba ang tunog kapag inaapakan ito. Importanteng masanay na nakaabang ang paa sa pedal, handang tumapak kahit hindi pa kailangan.

“Sa second part lang kailangan ng pedal. Pwedeng relaks na ang paa mo sa first and last,” payo ni Teacher Deanne habang pinapakita ang pinagkaiba ng paggamit ng pedal sa Un poco adagio sa hindi. Huling leksyon na; nililinis na lang namin ang mga detalye at transisyon sa bawat bahagi. “Hindi naman pwedeng lagi kang nakaabang sa pedal.

Mangingimay ang paa mo sa sakit.” Maya-maya pumasok ang tatay

163 • Jose Alfonso Ignacio Mirabueno

ko, nagtataka kung bakit hindi pa ako lumalabas sa music room kahit bumusina na siya, at natawa siya nang makita na kumakain pala kami sa loob ng bahay.

“Magpraktis kayo ha! Maraming salamat!” huling sigaw ng konduktor namin sa pagtatapos ng rehearsal. Habang nagliligpit ako ng gamit ay nakatikim ako ng kurot sa tagiliran mula sa kanya.

“Late tayo nagsimula kanina ha. Dapat 5pm nakahanda na lahat ng gamit! Para by 5:30 nakaupo at nakatono na ang lahat, okey?” babala niya sa akin bilang namumuno sa pagsasaayos at pagliligpit ng mga kagamitan ng orkestra.

8. Ulitin.

“Very good!” Wika ni Teacher Deanne habang sinusulat ang petsa sa dulo ng piyesa. Tapos na ang sonatina. “O, praktisin mo yan ha.

Kahit walang piyano doon basahin mo lang ang mga nota. Kung naiinip ka sa klase pwede kang mag-scales sa lamesa. Huwag mong hayaang mawala ang technique mo, sayang din ang galing mo.” Bilin niya sa akin. “Pero kung ’di ka makakapraktis, sige lang, aral ka lang.

Pag-uwi mo sa sem-break o Christmas mag-lessons tayo ulit.” Naalala ko bigla yung sinabi ni Teacher Deanne noong nagdadalawang-isip akong tumuloy sa una kong math summer camp dahil hindi ako makakapag-ensayo sa piyano: “isipin mo ang mga kuwentong mami-miss mo, balang araw magkikita-kita kayo ng mga kaibigan mo ulit tapos kapag nag-reminisce sila tungkol sa summer camp ay hindi mo maiintindihan. Pumunta ka na, dalhin mo lang mga exercises at piyesa mo. Tutal, andito lang naman ako.” Kahit pa ilang beses akong aalis, kahit gaano kalayo, uuwi rin naman ako. “Isang buo nga. One last time.”

Katiting na lang ng dati kong galing ang natitira. Sapat lang para maglaru-laro sa piyano, maki-jamming sa mga kaibigan, o maghanap ng mga chord sa kanta. Halos hindi ko na mabasa ang mga piyesa, dahil bihasang-bihasa na ako sa paggamit ng tainga. “Oido” pala ang tawag sa nagagawa ko, isang abilidad na maaaring ituro ngunit

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 164

likas sa akin. Maaari pa rin itong mawala, tulad ng kasanayan sa mga scale at arpeggio, kaya kailangan ito gamitin nang gamitin, balikan nang balikan.

Huminto ang buong orkestra, ayon sa utos ng konduktor. “Cello!

Bar 12, ulitin mo. 1, 2, 3!” Dalawa sa pitong nota lang ang tama ko.

“Ulit, ulit! Bagalan natin, 1, 2, 3!” Apat sa pito, ngunit nawawalan na ako ng loob. “Sige pa, mabuti na't ayusin natin ngayon kaysa masanay ka. 1, 2, 3!” Lima sa pito. Nakatingin na ang lahat sa akin, inaantay na maayos ko na ang parte ko. “1, 2, 3!” Pito sa pito; kalahati lang ang bilis ng tugtog, ngunit doble na ang bilis ng puso ko. “Praktisin mo yan ha. Bibilisan na natin. 1, 2, 3!”

9. Kung pagod, magpahinga. Ngunit magpatuloy.

165 • Jose Alfonso Ignacio Mirabueno

Jam Nitura

bfa creative writing

“I would like to give you the silver branch, the small white flower, the one word that will protect you from the grief at the center of your dream…”

—Margaret Atwood, Variation on the Word Sleep No words will ever be enough to express how grateful I am for the following: My parents, for supporting me throughout all this. Block ee, stress-reliever, giver of tiwala. Specifically to Bina, my sunshine, my life-support; Alec, my floaty intellectual siopao, my favorite soft boy; Helena, my fierce friend, all bravery and heart; and Shannon and Diana, for your courage, may we always find the morning.

My thesis adviser and my one playwriting prof, Sir Glenn, for your never-ending belief in the stories I write, and the lives we live. Inna, Cali, and Sofi; distance, space, and time have nothing on us. amp21 ebcb, for being my second home.

Ma’am Mara Marasigan, Sari, Mariella, Fran, and AJ for bringing ‘Saving Ela’ to life onstage, along with the rest of the Bunyi production team. May we never stop hoping for love, never stop holding onto faith. And for those who stayed, and those that will.

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 168

Saving Ela mga tauhan Ela – 26. Mapayat. Maikli ang buhok. May mga pasa sa braso dulot ng leukemia.

Maya – 26. Ex-fiance ni Ela. Alex – 22. Kapatid ni Ela. tagpuan Isang apartment sa Canada. May sopa sa gitna at mesa sa harap nito. May coat rack malapit sa pintuan. May isang basong halos ubos na ang laman sa ibabaw ng mesa, isang pitsel ng tubig, mga nakakalat na papeles, dyaryo, sobre, make-up, at isang maliit na salamin. May pintuan sa kanang bahagi ng entablado, habang labas-pasok naman ang mga tauhan sa kaliwang dulo ng entablado tuwing pupunta sila sa ibang bahagi ng apartment. panahon Kasalukuyang panahon. Gabi. ang dula

Nakaupo si ELA sa gitna ng sopa habang maingat na naglalagay ng make-up sa kaniyang mukha.

Matapos ay kukunin sarili. Hahaplusin niya tingin, hindi natutuwa ang salamin, kukuha ang make-up.

niya ang salamin at titignan ang ang kaniyang mukha, sasama ang sa nakikita. Agarang ibababa ni ELA ng bulak at susubukang tanggalin

Maririnig ang tunog ng naghahalong kutsara sa baso mula sa kaliwang bahagi ng entablado. heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 170

Mabilis na itatago ni ELA ang bulak. Hindi tuluyang natanggal ang make-up ngunit mukhang maayos pa rin kahit papaano. Kukunin niya ang salamin at titignan ang sarili, pupunasan ang kaniyang mga mata.

Papasok si ALEX na hinahalo pa rin ang inumin. alex

Eto na, ate. Kung tingin mo kadiri yung soy milk, humanda ka naman para sa juice na nahanap ko.

Ibababa ni ELA ang salamin at bahagyang mahihiga sa sopa, parang walang iniinda.

Hindi ito mapapansin ni ALEX. Ibababa niya ang baso sa mesa at mauupo sa may paanan ni ELA, tsaka titignan ang kapatid.

Saglit. alex

I can’t believe you actually did it.

ela

Oo nga. Ang pangit pa rin.

alex

Sus, wag ka nga. Ang ganda mo kaya. Ang daya nga eh.

ela

Ewan ko sa ’yo. Pero eto tignan mo.

Mahihiga si ELA, kunwaring matutulog, magkahawak ang dalawang kamay sa ibabaw ng tiyan. ela

Maganda ba ’ko at least ’pag tulog?

alex

Ate, seryoso ka ba?

ela

Wag kang masungit, bilis na.

171 • Jam Nitura

Hindi iimik si ALEX. Sa halip ay tatanggalin niya ang magkahawak na kamay ni ELA. Bubuksan ni ELA ang kaniyang mga mata. ela

Hindi ’yan pwede sa libing ko.

Dahan-dahang uupo si ELA, bakas ang pagod sa galaw. alex Ate… ela

I’m just joking, Alex.

Saglit. alex

Fine. Para ka pa ring zombie. Ayusin mo ’yung blush mo.

Parang hindi ka tinuruan ni mommy ah.

ela

’Yun pa. Alam ko si mommy yung laging nasusunod pero ’wag mo siyang hayaan na punuin yung mukha ko ng make-up, please?

alex Pwede ’wag muna natin pag-usapan yan. ela

Ano ba ’tong ginagawa natin?

alex

Pinapainom kita ng kadiring vegetable juice na nakita ko sa supermarket.

ela

Promise me, Alex.

alex

May one month ka pa.

Katahimikan.

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 172

Maglalaban ng tingin ang magkapatid.

Susuko si ALEX. alex

Okay, fine. Ako’ng bahala kay mommy, pati sa napakagandang mukha mo. I promise.

ela

Thank you.

alex

Kahit ano para sa ’yo, ate.

Kukunin ni Alex ang juice at ibibigay kay ELA. alex

Now drink up.

Mabilis na iinumin at uubusin ni ELA ang juice. Habang ginagawa niya ito aayusin ni ALEX ang mga nagkalat na sobre sa mesa.

Bakas ang pagkasuya sa mukha ni ELA pagkatapos. Ilalapag niya ang baso sa itaas ng mga dyaryo at papel. ela

Sumagot na ba yung dance school sa Paris?

alex

Ate, ilang buwan na. Wala na yun. Tsaka okey lang naman din kahit hindi ako nakapasok. Their loss.

ela

’Yan gusto ko sa ’yo. Confident.

Ngingiti lang si ALEX at itatabi ang mga sobre. alex

O ano, kadiri ’di ba?

ela

Lasang gamot.

alex Exactly!

173 • Jam Nitura

ela

Pero yung mismong gamot daw lasang kahoy.

alex

Gamot talaga itatawag mo dun?

ela

Bakit hindi? Kung yun lang naman yung gagana.

alex

Dapat talaga hindi ko na kinuwento sa’yo yung documentary. Kung ano-ano tuloy pinapagawa mo sa’kin.

Kukunin ni ALEX ang naunang baso at lalagyan ito ng tubig mula sa pitsel. ela

Practice lang siya for the real thing, Alex.

alex

If you say so. Inumin mo na yung tubig.

Mabilis na uubusin ni ELA ang baso at ibibigay ito muli kay ALEX na ilalapag ito sa mesa.

Patlang. alex

Thank you by the way.

ela

For not spitting out the juice on your face? You’re welcome.

alex

Hindi kasi.

ela

For what then?

alex

For finally calling Maya. For agreeing to wait another month para kay mommy and daddy, before you... you know...

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 174

Patlang.

Sandaling katahimikan.

Ipipikit ni ELA ang kaniyang mga mata. Tila may iniinda. ela

Alex, I’m not sure I can—

alex

Ano’ng tingin mong gagawin niya?

ela

Ha? Sino?

alex

Si Maya. Ate naman, you know her. ’Di niya hahayaang gawin mo ’to without a fight.

ela

Teka, Alex. Bago ’yan, I’m trying to—

alex

I mean I know it’s been two years but you were engaged.

ela Alex. alex

Sabi mo dati she can be really persuasive.

ela Alex! alex

Alam ko na sasabihin mo okey!

Tigil. alex

But just let her try. Please.

ela

Alex, hindi ko siya pinapunta rito para…

Mapapatigil si ELA sa pagtunog ng doorbell.

175 • Jam Nitura

Magtitinginan ang magkapatid.

Hinga.

Tatayo si ELA. alex

Ate, ako na.

Sisilip muna si ALEX. Hindi niya bubuksan ang pinto. alex

She’s here.

Titingnan ni ELA ang sarili. ela

S-sandali lang.

Biglang papasok si ELA sa kabilang kwarto. Maririnig natin ang pagbukas at pagsara ng mga cabinet o drawer. alex

Ate, anong ginagawa mo? Ate?

Babalik si ELA sa silid. ela

San mo nilagay ’yung sweater ko?

Patuloy na maghahanap si ELA, tataubin ang mga unan sa sopa, mga papeles, at dyaryo, ngunit wala siyang mahahanap. alex

Ate, stop, mahihilo ka nanaman. Baka lagnatin ka ulit.

Patuloy sa paghahanap.

Mahinahon na kukunin ni ALEX ang sweater na nakasabit sa coat rack sa tabi ng pintuan.

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 176

alex Here. ela

Thank you.

Susuotin ni ELA ang sweater.

Muling sisilip si ALEX. alex

Handa ka na?

Tatango si ELA. Bubuksan ni ALEX ang pintuan. alex

Maya, hi.

maya

Hi, Alex.

alex

We’re glad you came. Pasok ka.

Papasok si MAYA. Nakatuon ang mata kay ELA. maya

Ela, hi.

ela

Hi. It’s been too long.

Katahimikan.

Lalapit si ALEX kay ELA. alex

(kay Ela, pabulong) Ang awkward niyo.

ela

(pabulong) Ang ingay mo.

Ngingiti si MAYA. Halatang narinig ito. maya

We could sit down?

177 • Jam Nitura

ela

Yes. Good idea.

Kukunin ni ELA ang kamay ni MAYA at dadalhin siya sa sopa. ela

Alex you can sit…

alex Actually…

Mauupo si MAYA. alex

Iiwan ko na muna kayo.

ela

Ano? Wait, Alex…

alex

Magluluto pa ’ko ng dinner.

Lalabas si ALEX sa kaliwa ng entablado.

Iiling si ELA. Kunwaring uubo si MAYA. Uupo si ELA sa kabilang dulo ng sopa.

Katahimikan. ela

Matagal ba…

maya

How are you…

I’m fine…

maya

Matagal yung?

Tigil. ela

ela Sorry. maya

Go ahead, Ela.

ela

It’s okay. Mauna ka na. heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 178

Saglit. maya

I want to apologize first, for how we ended things.

How I didn’t…

ela

I didn’t—Maya, I didn’t ask you to come here for that.

(Saglit) Eto na lang. Kumusta ka na?

Sandaling magdadalawang-isip si MAYA ngunit sasagot din agad. maya

I’m good, I guess. I just came from this convention I went to two days ago.

ela Convention? maya

For doctors. It was in Vancouver!

ela

Maya, that’s great! Doktor ka na pala.

maya

A oo, nearing the end of my residency.

Lalapit si MAYA kay ELA. maya

Good thing you asked actually. I wanted to talk to you about that.

ela

About you being a doctor?

maya Oo. (Hinga.) You know now that I’m a doctor— ela

Kumain ba kayo sa diner?

maya What?

179 • Jam Nitura

ela

Yung diner sa Vancouver. Yung lagi nating pinupuntahan dati.

Tigil. Panandaliang tinginan hanggang… maya

Yes we—I did.

ela

Did you get—

maya

Yung hash browns? Syempre naman. (Saglit) Oh! I also got the red velvet cake you like.

Tatayo si MAYA. maya

It’s in the car, it’s—

Kakapain ni MAYA ang pockets niya. May maaalala. maya …It’s… ela

It’s empty isn’t it?

maya Well… ela

Nagstress-eat ka papunta dito ‘no?

maya

Fine, I did. I’m sorry.

ela

Maya, ano ka ba, okay lang. Isa pa wala na rin akong masyadong appetite. The cancer will probably just make me throw it back out.

Patlang.

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 180

Dahan-dahang uupo muli si MAYA, 'di matignan si ELA. Mahabang katahimikan. maya

And I’m so sorry about that too.

Tatango lamang si ELA. Katahimikan. maya

How long until…’til you do it.

Saglit. ela

Ano’ng sabi ni Alex sa’yo?

maya

Just... that you were really really sick.

Katahimikan. ela

Humingi yung parents ko ng isa pang buwan.

maya

Not long.

ela

Yes it is.

maya

Well... can you blame them?

Saglit. ela

Hindi pero... isa pang buwan, Maya. Na puro gamot— and you know how much I hate drinking pills—puro check-up, injection, pabalik-balik sa doktor na wala nang magagawa para sa’kin. I mean what’s the point?

181 • Jam Nitura

maya

The point is to keep you with them longer. With us. Ayaw mo ba yun?

Tigil.

Iiling si ELA. ela

Ang tagal mo nang wala. Hindi ko na alam.

Patlang.

Katahimikan. maya

Okay, how long do you really have?

Hindi sasagot si ELA. maya

Ela, ’gano katagal?

ela

It doesn’t matter.

maya Ela...

Saglit. ela

Six months sabi ng doktor, give or take.

maya

Six months. (Saglit) Alam mo ba kung gaano kahaba ’yun? Kasing... kasing—

ela

Kasing-haba nang panliligaw mo sa’kin?

maya

Exactly! And that felt like forever, Ela.

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 182

Titingin sa kabilang direksyon si ELA. Iiling. Susubukang itago ang ngiti. Mapapansin ito ni MAYA. Mula sa kanyang bag ilalabas ni MAYA ang kanyang car keys na nakasabit sa isang keychain na may hugis ng mundo.

Makukuha nito ang atensyon ni ELA. ela

You still have that?

Ngingiti si MAYA sa maaalala. maya

Baguio, five years ago, nung bumisita tayo sa Pilipinas for your cousin’s wedding. You were talking about wanting to travel around Europe when you gave me this.

ela

Naalaala ko. Tapos yung biggest worry mo baka mawala ka lang sa Amsterdam ’pag nakarating nga tayo.

Papasok si ALEX na may dalang tubig at gamot. Maghihintay siya sa likod, kunwaring may ginagawa. maya

Tapos sinabi mo “Maya, handa akong tahakin ang bawat mundong meron, para lang makabalik sa’yo.”

Mapapangiti si ALEX dito. alex

Grabe, ate ang corny mo talaga.

maya

Honestly, ’di ko naprocess kaagad yung sinabi mo pero alam ko sweet siya kaya kinilig pa rin ako.

Tatawa si ELA.

183 • Jam Nitura

ela

I got the idea from a movie we watched okay?

Uupo si ALEX sa tabi ni ELA. maya

Teka which one? Ang dami mong pinapanood sa ’kin eh.

ela

Yung Mr. Nobody, yung kay Jared Leto.

maya

Bakit hindi ko maalala?

ela

Pano mo maaalala e tinulugan mo halfway through.

maya

Right, sorry. Diba nga kasi gusto kong panoorin yung bagong comedy ni Melissa McCarthy.

ela

Well, it was my turn that day.

maya

Okay, fine I’m sure it was.

alex

Andito pa rin po ako. Hello.

Matatawa si MAYA at ELA kay ALEX. alex

So ano nga ba ibig sabihin nung sinabi mo, ate?

Saglit. ela

Alam mo yung theory ng multiverse?

alex Hindi.

Palarong magtitinginan ang magkapatid. Kunwaring naiinis si ELA. alex

Joke lang. Sige na.

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 184

ela

Eto na kasi. Sabi dun na maraming ibang bersyon ng mundo sa space na hindi natin nakikita. Kaparehas ng atin pero naiiba rin.

Mag-iisip si MAYA. maya

So… like a world where Alex is a gynecologist, not a dancer.

ela Tama. alex

So parang isang mundong hindi ka anti-social?

ela

Kanina ka pa.

alex

Joke lang ulit.

ela

Pero oo. A world where we’re not sisters.

alex

Or one where you and Maya never met.

maya

I’d hate that world.

ela

Or one where I’m not sick.

Patlang.

Katahimikan. alex

...Pabida talaga lagi si ate with her references.

Ngingiti na lamang si ELA. ela

It’s called being romantic, Alex.

185 • Jam Nitura

maya

And it was.

Lalapit si MAYA, ibibigay ang keychain kay ELA. maya

We’ll need more than a month but it’s not too late to do what you want, you know. Make this life the one where we travel the world.

Patlang.

Tatanggapin ni ELA ang keychain, titignan ito.

Katahimikan. alex

Ah eto, ate. Uminom ka na muna ng gamot.

Lalapit si ALEX kay ELA. Ilalapag ni ELA ang keychain sa mesa at iinumin ang gamot. alex

You know, ate, Maya has a point. I know you’ve always wanted to go to Rome.

maya

And you won’t have to worry about your health. I can help get you clearance.

Kukunin muli ni ELA ang keychain. ela

Ganun lang ba kadali ’yun?

maya

Oo naman. You could see The Colosseum, or that fortress in Israel you did a paper on once.

ela

Pwede ka nang mawala sa Amsterdam.

maya

See, there’s still so much you can do in five to six months. heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 186

ela

Matagal ko na ngang gustong pumunta sa Barcelona.

maya

And then you can finally dance to an actual mariachi band.

alex

Tapos pwede nating iwan sila mommy sa isa sa mga cathedral while we go around the markets. Grabe, Ate Maya, she could pray for hours!

Patlang.

Ibababa ni ELA ang keychain sa mesa. ela

Ang saya pakinggan—

maya

We can do it too. We can just go—

ela

—No, we can’t.

alex

Ate naman, why not? Maya’s here now, there’s nothing to worry about.

ela

Tingin mo talaga papayag sila mommy, Alex?

alex

Syempre naman.

ela

Let’s be realistic. You know they won’t.

alex

If it’ll keep you with us longer then they will!

Patlang.

Katahimikan. ela

Alex, napag-usapan na natin ’to.

187 • Jam Nitura

alex

I’m sorry—I know— Excuse me.

Kukunin ni ALEX ang baso at agarang papasok muli sa kabilang kwarto. maya

I think what she meant was—

alex

I know what she meant, Maya. Besides, alam ko na rin sasabihin ng parents ko. If I can afford to travel the world at this state, bakit hindi na lang ako umuwi ng Pilipinas.

maya

So dumaan tayo then, sa Pilipinas. We could…

ela

Absolutely not.

Saglit. maya

Don’t you want to go home? To the rest of your family?

Bisitahin man lang sila.

ela

Home? To my relatives?

maya

’Di mo sila namimiss? To say—

ela

Ano? Goodbye?

maya ...Oo. ela

Walang point na magpaalam kung hindi naman din nila mapapansin na wala ka na ’di ba?

Patlang.

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 188

Katahimikan. maya

No one called.

ela

A few of my cousins did. Sila Kim at Andy, nangumusta naman sila.

maya

That’s it? Sila Tito Ramon mo, o yung doktor, si Tita Lisa? Wala nang iba from home?

ela

Home? Maya, nung bumisita tayo for my cousin’s wedding, naalala mo, they wouldn’t even let me hold your hand when we were together. That’s not home.

Tatango lamang si MAYA. Katahimikan.

Mahabang patlang. maya

So… no dancing to a mariachi band?

Bahagyang mapapangiti si ELA. ela

We both know I have two left feet.

maya

After being stepped on over and over? Oo my feet can attest to that.

ela

Sorry, alam mo naman si mommy nagturo sa’kin. E balibaliktad din paa nun.

maya

She was just trying to help you.

ela

I know. Alam mo mahal ko pa rin naman parents ko kahit ang galing nilang magmarunong.

189 • Jam Nitura

maya

Tulad nung nilagnat ka for three days?

Hihiga si ELA, hahawakan ang noo, kunwaring may lagnat. ela

(sa boses ng kanyang nanay) “Ela, anak, katinko lang katapat niyan.”

maya

“O white flower. Pagsabayin mo na lang…”

ela

“…para mas effective”

maya

And when they gave you the car…

ela

’Yung gift kong kotse on my 18th birthday… na may GPS tracker.

maya

“For your safety, Ela.”

ela

Yeah, right.

maya

I’m surprised hindi nila ni-look up yung gay bar.

ela

Oh my god, and then remember when I came out?

maya

After five hundred years? Oo naman. Ano ulit sabi niya?

‘Akala ko study buddy mo lang siya?’

ela

Study buddies naman talaga tayo ah.

maya

Oo nga. ’Pag may orals.

ela

Huy, nasa kabilang kwarto lang kapatid ko.

maya

Bakit? ’Di ba siya nag theo orals?

maya

“…para mas effective”

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 190

ela

Baliw ka talaga.

maya

Yung dad mo? Ano nga ba sinabi niya?

ela

(sa boses ng kaniyang tatay) ‘I’m not homophobic. Marami akong gay friends nung nasa college ako.’

maya

‘So sino yung lalaki?’

Tatawa ang dalawa.

Di mamamalayang hahawiin ni ELA ang maikling buhok.

Patlang.

Kukunin ni MAYA ang kamay ni ELA at marahan siyang pauupuin. maya

Alam mo ang ganda mo pa rin.

ela

Maya, I feel like puking every five minutes.

maya

I’ve seen worse.

ela

You mean all those times na nasa loob ng toilet yung ulo ko after drinking too much?

maya

Ang ganda pa rin.

ela What? maya

Bagay ka kasi sa kahit anong toilet.

ela

Salamat ah.

Tatawa ang dalawa.

191 • Jam Nitura

Katahimikan.

Patlang.

Kukunin ni MAYA ang kanyang selepono mula sa kanyang bag at magpapatugtog ng musika. Ilalapag niya ang selepono sa mesa at saka tatayo. ela

Ano’ng ginagawa mo?

Ibibigay ni MAYA ang kamay kay ELA. Hihintaying kunin ito. ela

Gusto mo talagang maapakan ulit?

maya

I wouldn’t mind.

Saglit.

Kukunin ni ELA ang kamay ni MAYA at tatayo.

Sasayaw ang dalawa sa musika. Magkalapit, mabagal, tahimik.

Parang dati lang. maya

See, you haven’t stepped on me yet.

Mahabang katahimikan.

Patlang.

Marahang titigil sa pagsayaw si ELA. Lalayo kay MAYA. maya

What’s wrong?

ela

Bakit hindi ka nagpaalam?

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 192

maya

What do you mean?

ela

When I left for the States to pursue my writing, before... all this. I know we broke up pero…

maya

What’s wrong?

ela

Bakit hindi ka nagpaalam?

maya

What do you mean?

ela

When I left for the States to pursue my writing, before... all this. I know we broke up pero…

Hindi sasagot si MAYA. ela

Gusto ko lang maintindihan.

maya

I never… I never thought I’d have to say goodbye to you.

I always dreamt of us growing up, growing old together on our hospital beds. Kasama natin mga anak natin. Si Alex din. Ngingitian mo pa rin ako kahit hindi mo na matandaan pangalan ko. (Tigil.) If I had said goodbye at that airport, it would have made it real. A future without you? Hindi ko natanggap.

Katahimikan.

Patlang. maya

Pero we’re here now. That doesn’t matter anymore. We can have a future—

ela Maya—

193 • Jam Nitura

maya

Just listen…

ela

Hindi ka ba nakikinig? A month from now, I’m going…

maya

A month from now you’ll still be here because you’re that strong, Ela. Alam ko alam mo yun.

Patlang.

Mahabang katihimikan.

Hindi matignan ni ELA si MAYA. ela

Hindi mo naiintindihan.

maya

Ang ano?

ela

Yung... yung sakit, Maya.

maya

Okay, so tulungan mo ’kong intindihin.

Katahimikan. maya

Ela. Please.

Patlang. ela

Naaksidente kami ni Alex once.

Saglit. maya

When… what happened?

ela

Less than a month after we broke up. I insisted on driving kasi wala pa siyang license. heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 194

maya

You should have called me.

ela

You left.

Tigil.

Mahabang katahimikan.

Paglalaruan lamang ni ELA ang keychain na nilabas kanina. ela

I came out fine, you know. Pero si Alex, pagkagising ko sa ospital… she had all these tubes stuck to her. Watching her for five days… not knowing kung magigising siya… that’s what this feels like.

Nung sinabi ni mommy, after I came out, na itago ko muna kasi baka kung ano’ng isipin nila tita, nila tito, and all of her friends. Na parang hiyang-hiya siya sa’kin.

Sa atin.

Nung pinilit ako ni dad na kunin yung course na gusto niya kasi mas practical daw, kasi wala daw patutunguhan yung pagsusulat ko… pero ano bang alam ko sa engineering ’di ba?

Susubukang tumawa.

Mahabang patlang. ela

…Nung sinabi mo ‘Ela, I can’t hold you back from your dreams. I don’t want you to end up hating me if we stay together’… Oo naalala ko siya word-for-word… And then you wouldn’t listen after. Even if I wanted to stay.

With you. Spend the rest of our lives together.

195 • Jam Nitura

And then you left?

That’s what this feels like.

Except it’s every day now. Nagigising ako, at wala na kong kontrol sa katawan ko. Na parang gusto ko na lang takasan yung sarili ko pero hindi pwede kasi isang buwan pa daw, sabi nila mommy. Bigyan ko pa daw sila ng isang buwan. Konting tiis pa, Ela. Pero, Maya, pagod na ko. That’s it. I’m just tired all the time. Alex has to carry me to bed sometimes.

Tigil. ela

Alex can carry me to bed now. And you’ve seen my sister.

She’s tiny!

Patlang. ela

…My little sister has to carry me to bed.

Katahimikan. maya

Ela, I’m so sorry.

Tatango lamang si ELA. ela

Tama ka, Maya. Ang tagal nga ng six months. Sobrang tagal.

Katahimikan.

Patlang.

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 196

Biglang magsisimulang aayusin ni MAYA ang magulong mesa, matapos ay tatayo siya upang ayusin at linisin ang ibang parte ng kwarto, aayusin ang mga unan sa sopa, magpupulot ng kalat. ela

Maya, ano bang ginagagawa mo?

Patuloy ang paglilinis. ela Maya... maya

Kaya ko ’to.

ela Ano? maya

Kaya ko ’to, Ela.

Luluhod si MAYA sa tapat ni ELA. maya

Kaya kitang alagaan. If you would just­—

Agad na tatayo si ELA. Lalayo kay MAYA, di siya matignan. Sa halip ay titignan ang kanyang hawak na keychain. ela Maya…

Mahigpit na hahawakan ang keychain sa kanyang naka-kamaong kamay. ela

Akala ko maiintindihan mo. You of all people…

maya

I do.

ela

You don’t!

Maglalakad si ELA, hinahanap ang susunod na sasasabihin.

197 • Jam Nitura

ela

Alam mo dati nakumbinsi ko yung sarili ko na mabubuhay akong mag-isa. Don’t get me wrong, I’m proud of who I am. It took some time, but I am. Pero pakiramdam ko pa rin mapag-iiwanan ako ng mga kaibigan ko with their future husbands, and children, and their normal lives.

Tapos ako? Just something my family can’t look at.

Tigil. ela

Tapos dumating ka at nagbago ang lahat. Somehow you made it all better. You made this all real. I was happy, because that meant getting to sleep next to you every night and getting to wake up next to you every morning for the rest of our lives.

Tigil. ela

Then you decided to take all of that away. Just like that.

Before the rest of our lives could even begin.

Itatapon ni ELA and keychain sa mesa. ela

Pakiramdam ko 15 ulit ako, locked in my own room, takot na kapag nalaman ng pamilya ko yung katotohanan, I would have nowhere else to go.

Hinga. ela

I was alone, Maya.

You left me alone.

So no! Hindi mo pwedeng gawin yun, and then just suddenly decide to come back and tell me how what’s left of my life is going to be. heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 198

Tigil. maya

Tingin mo madali yun, Ela? It’s all you ever talked about.

Your dreams. Wanting to write sa States? And you talked about it na parang hindi ako kasama sa mga plano mo.

Then you got your chance. Remember? Once in a lifetime ’di ba? But you had to move there. I was still in med-school. You asked me if you should take it. Was I supposed to say no? Keep you from doing what you always wanted ever since you were, what, six years old?

ela

I wasn’t about to keep you from your happiness, Ela.

Tigil.

Uupo si ELA. ela

Edi hindi ka sana umalis.

Mahabang patlang.

Katahimikan.

Lalapit si ELA kay MAYA. Luluhod. Nasa dulo na ng desperasyon. maya

Ela, please. Kasama na kita ulit. How am I supposed to let go now?

Patlang.

Iiling lamang si ELA, malungkot na ngingiti. Hahawakan niya ang mga pisngi ni MAYA at pupunasan ang kanyang mga luha.

Magyayakapan ang dalawa.

199 • Jam Nitura

Mahabang patlang.

Tatayo si ELA, kukunin ang selepono ni MAYA at muling magpapatugtog ng musika.

Iaalok ni ELA ang kamay kay MAYA. Tatanggapin iya ito at tatayo na rin.

Muling mabagal na sasayaw ang dalawa.

Mahabang katahimikan.

Malungkot. Musika lamang.

Hanggang sa...

Biglang magpapalit ang tugtog sa “Angel� ni Shaggy. Magtitinginan ang dalawa. maya

May sira na talaga phone ko.

Sabay na tatawa ang dalawa. ela

Andiyan pa rin yan sa phone mo?

Hahayaan lang na tumugtog ang musika habang patuloy silang nagtatawanan hanggang sa mapaupo sila sopa. maya

Ikaw kaya naglagay niyan.

ela

I did tell you to delete it.

Hihina ang musika. maya Never. heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 200

Titigil ang tugtog. Titigil din ang dalawa sa pagtawa, marahan na ngingitian ang isa’t-isa. Malungkot ngunit kuntento sa sandali.

Patlang.

Tatayo si ELA, kukunin ang keychain mula sa mesa at ihaharap kay MAYA. maya

(pabiro) Pinapaalis mo na ba ’ko?

Iiling si ELA. Ibibigay ang keychain kay MAYA. ela

I’ll see you… someday. Kung saan man ’yon.

Patlang.

Tatayo rin si MAYA at tatanggapin ito. Tatango lamang. Di na kayang magsalita.

Maglalapit ang dalawa. Hahawakan lang ang isa’t-isa Mahabang katahimikan. Isang paalam na ‘di kayang bigkasin.

Parehong nagpipigil ng luha. Parehong matatalo.

Unti-unting nilang susubukang maghiwalay. Mahirap ngunit kailangan.

Matapos kukunin ni MAYA ang kanyang bag.

Mahabang katahimikan. Nakatayo lamang. Magkahawak ang titig.

Bubuksan ni MAYA ang pintuan.

Muling titignan si ELA sa huling pagkakataon.

201 • Jam Nitura

maya

Hihintayin ko ’yon.

Luluhod si MAYA sa tapat ni ELA. Tatango si ELA. Dahan-dahang isasasara ni MAYA ang pintuan, unti-unting lalapit si ELA, tila nais sumunod ngunit makakamit lamang ang sarang pintuan at katahimikan.

Lalabas si ALEX sa kabilang bahagi ng entablado, nakasandal lamang sa pintaun, malungkot na pinagmamasdan ang kapatid.

Isang mahabang katahimikan.

Iikot si ELA, makikita si ALEX. Magpapalitan ng malungkot na ngiti. alex

Sira na make-up mo… halika ayusin natin.

Uupo si ALEX at kukunin ang powder sa mesa. ela

Hindi na kailangan, Alex.

alex

Ano’ng hindi na? Nalulusaw na ’yang mukha mo o.

Uupo si ELA sa tabi ni ALEX. ela

Yung akin? Talaga?

alex Oo. ela

Nakita mo na ba yung sa’yo?

Hindi sasagot si ALEX. Sa halip ay lalagyan niya ng kaunting powder ang mukha ng kapatid.

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 202

Katahimikan. Matatapos si ALEX. Patlang. ela

Salamat, Alex.

alex

Hindi pa ’ko tapos.

Maingat na kukunin ni ELA ang hawak na make-up ni ALEX. Saglit. ela

Naaalala mo ba yung car accident natin?

alex

Oo naman. Narinig ko pinag-uusapan niyo ni Maya kanina.

ela

Grabe hanggang ngayon ang linaw pa rin. Parang tumigil yung mundo ko ng limang araw. (Tigil) I’m sorry halos isang taon yung kinuha ko sa’yo.

alex

Ate, wala kang kinukha sa’kin, ano ka ba?

Saglit. ela

Two job opportunities, mga sampung potential dates, di mabilang na oras para sarili mo, at…

Ililipat ni ELA ang baso na nakapatong sa taas ng mga nakakalat na papeles at dyaryo sa mesa. Mula sa ilalim ng mga ito maglalabas si ELA ng isang puting sobre. ela

…Isang dance program sa Paris.

alex

Pano mo…

203 • Jam Nitura

ela

I clean when I’m stressed remember?

Saglit.

Iiling si ALEX. alex

It doesn’t matter.

ela

Yes it does. It’s all you ever wanted since we were kids. You didn’t drag me to all of those dance lessons for nothing.

alex

Hindi ka kaya natuto.

Saglit. ela

Kunin mo na, Alex.

alex

I can’t. Even if I do it starts in two weeks.

ela

Alam ko.

Patlang. alex Ate… ela

Bukas tatawagan natin si Doctor McGrath—

alex No… ela ­—Tapos sila mommy at daddy. alex

Isang buwan pa. You promised.

ela

Niligtas mo ’ko, Alex. Ikaw naman.

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 204

Patlang.

Iiling si ALEX. Iaabot ni ELA ang sobre.

Marahan niya itong tatanggapin, hindi na mapigilan ang luha. alex

Pano ko ’to magagawa kung wala ka?

Wala nang magawa ang magkapatid. Wala na ring masabi.

Yayakapin na lamang ni ELA si ALEX. Mahigpit. Mahaba. Maaaring sa huling pagkakataon.

Unti-unting didilim ang entablado.

wakas ng dula

205 • Jam Nitura

Robyn Saquin

bfa information design

This is my comeback after taking a year-long break from art. I’m just humbled that you have welcomed me again. It’s good to be back.

To the friends who have continued to support me through it all, thank you for staying.

To the ones I’ve lost when I was too down to be with you, I’m sorry.

I hope we can make up.

To the groups I don’t see often but have happy reunions with, let’s hang out more.

To the professors who teach me a lot and treat me as a friend, you are my inspirations.

To the people who don’t believe in me, I hope I managed to prove myself. If not, oh well.

To the colleagues-turned-friends when we worked on projects close to us, you keep me smiling.

To the underclassmen and successors who always make me proud, I’m so excited for the future.

To the upperclassmen who saw something in me that I didn’t, I am so lucky to have you.

To my family, my art is sad but now I’m happy. Thank you for believing.

To all my loved ones, things may change for better or for worse, but I will always love you.

“And it’s then the word is true, when it insists on the encounter.”

— Yannis Ritsos, “The Meaning of Simplicity” heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 208

Let Go. Digital.

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 210

Joaquin Singson bfa art management

Wax is graduating with a BFA in Art Management and a minor in Creative Writing soon, and is a recipient of the 2018 Loyola Schools Awards for the Arts in Creative Writing.

He—I—would like to thank first the coin that led to all of this.There are thanks due, too, to my family—my mother and every book she bought me, my father’s cassette collection, the lollipops I imagine still tangled in my sister’s hair. Of friends, there is Ponch, best of all, who after eight years together every day still ties his laces just like how I taught him.

I know I can always count on his disgusting couch and tiny car to catch me when I need them. Renzo, whose idiocy runs just as boundless as his wisdom, my life much richer for both ways. Alfy, Michael, for evenings lost, drunk, stupid, wonderful. To more of them. Igi, who I hope learns to spell better one of these days. You’ll always have me for a righter.

Marco, Elo, Mikey—for being good-looking, for hiking, for the music.

Coco, for the conversation about football I hope doesn’t end soon, the afternoon at the LST I’m not sure we’ve come out of yet. The Collective I Refuse to Call Gi, for carrying tables, buying me drinks, holding me so tight I know my shit won’t pull apart. AM 2018, for somehow getting to four years in double digits—we’re here, guys.

Plenty is owed too to my teachers, mentors, heroes—Vincenz Serrano, Alfred Marasigan, Paolo Tiausas, Dr. Eloi Hernandez, Carlomar Daoana, Martin Villanueva, Dennis Temporal, Allan Popa.

And many more.

God only knows. heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 212

213 • Joaquin Singson

I. The blonde boy strapped into his car seat strains his neck to look out the window: the mountains bare and balding but green and greener still as the peaks rise, a stream clogged by rockslide and monsoon rain mud drying in the summer’s still heat. His mother in front of him, pregnant now and expecting (hoping thinking praying) another boy, opens a window to let the cool air in. The wind sucks a drugstore’s plastic bag out the window; The boy watches it fly out, his eyes landing on a dry riverbed splayed out on the valley below. He thinks of a dead man he saw in a movie, thinks of a giant fallen off a beanstalk, crashing out of the clouds heavy enough to tamp a mountain down and leave a mark deep enough for grown men to wade in muck chest-deep through in this heat, thinks of what would happen should he open his own window—would he get sucked out like the plastic bag? Fly off and follow the birds nesting on the cliffsides?

He wants to feel the wind closer to his face, smell the wind his mother always tells him to appreciate when they make the eight hours up; his hands are too small to grip the knob properly, arms too short to reach and he cranes his neck some more

Pet Sounds

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 214

as a truck passes by.

He hears a giant’s yell as its driver presses down on his horn, growing deeper and weaker as distance between open window and truck horn grows, until nothing more is heard.

The giant was killed.

215 • Joaquin Singson

This he repeats until he hears the frogs with voices like talking drums and tongues clicking on the backs of teeth, the dog kept chained up behind the kitchen woken up by headlights and barking at nothing in the night’s cold. Then­—

And the boy sleeps most of the way through, only waking up sometimes to stare up at the sky as they pass through rice field after rice field until his eyes are sore, then closing his eyes to listen to the thrum of the car’s wheels on the road until he falls asleep again.

Now his teeth have begun falling out; Now he is big enough to learn to be that.

It’s been arranged: an uncle comes in the summers to pick him up and take him to his grandmother’s house where he’ll spend a month. There is no talk on the road. There is no music on the road. His uncle prefers AM radio, likes to listen to people talk about nothing until their voices fade into static. That way he knows he’s in another city.

II. His mother now thinks of independence, of childhood growing out. There is a sister now, his own age when he wriggled out of his parents’ distracted grips to look at stone elephants in a park and neglecting to hear them call him when they realized. The night was setting in when they found him perched on top of a bench, practicing kicks he learned from a cartoon. He was so small then, an only child then, already insistent by then to be his own, to be someone outside of theirs.

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 216

Empty in the large of the old wooden house.

Then he knows he is back.

A squeak of old hinges, the ring of bells tied to strips of an old rug nailed to the ceiling.The boy drags his wheeled bag down the hallway’s pinewood floorboards, snagging and bumping on holes in the wood’s grain. He gets to the end of the hallway, turns right, and hears his grandmother’s voice, scratchy, thin, reedy: good evening, have you had dinner yet, how was your trip, your mom called asking where you were, you’ve grown so much since I last saw you, what have you been reading lately?

A huge steel bar lies across the huge door at night, gets pulled out of where its lies and is leaned against a corner.

Footsteps.

A doorbell like a buzz.

217 • Joaquin Singson

I’ll often stop and think about them.

In my life, I love you more.

Though I know I’ll never lose affection for people and things hat went before, I know

III. One of these summers he hears The Beatles for the first time in the back of his father’s car.

He is stuffed in beside a cousin and her baby daughter.

She hums the melody while rocking the baby to sleep:

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 218

He comes out of that car different: better for having heard that piano solo.

219 • Joaquin Singson

IV. To speak of returning to school never brings him much grief as he grows. He thinks warmly of the way things sound as the summer storms swell into the monsoon: the hush as birdsong stops when the clouds come overcast, the first drops, tentative, shy, on treetops and roofs, the crescendo as it grows larger and larger until it’s a proper storm. Once a storm rained in too strong and flooded the ponds outside their house: crates full of old cassettes left to be forgotten in a pantry washed out with black mud, the flowerhorn they found later flopping around in the garden and lived another four years, toads they mistook for frogs, now drowned, fourteen pairs of spoons and forks, a broken chair’s leg, five self-help books.

He spent the better part of a week testing which cassettes worked and which didn’t anymore, trying to remember the bits and pieces of his childhood etched into the celluloid, taking notes down of which ones he liked and didn’t: - The Spinners, Greatest Hits. Garbled, but still usable.

Mom tells me she used to listen to this all the time with me and Julia when we were babies.

Favorite song: I’ll Be Around.

- Led Zeppelin, Led Zeppelin IV. Tape gone, casing intact.

Dad always put this on whenever we were on the road. I once woke up hearing Stairway to Heaven as we pulled into the garage home, a mango from the tree clattering on the roof and rolling down the windshield.

Favorite song: Stairway to Heaven.

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 220

-

-

-

Ice-T, Home Invasion. Usable.

Even the flood doesn’t like rap.

New Radicals, Maybe You’ve Been Brainwashed Too. Usable, but begins to run on Technicolor Lover.

We once listened to this on the way to a wedding when I was six. I fell asleep on the car ride home and woke up when Gotta Stay High began.

Favorite song: Crying Like a Church on a Monday The Main Ingredient, Greatest Hits. Completely waterlogged, mud unremovable from the sprockets.

Mom’s favorite to put on when putting us to sleep. When I hear Spinning Around (I Must Be Falling In Love) I think of sunny days and statues by the roadside, a game where I’d follow with my body an imaginary point on the ceiling fan until I fell over dizzy.

Favorite track: Everybody Plays the Fool”

221 • Joaquin Singson

His grandmother fell ill that year, felt something taking root in her chest but never told anyone, thinking it was her time or never; She waited until she couldn’t breathe before telling her children. His mother cried over the phone at the table most breakfasts, helpless to know that she was in a city hours away, incapable of helping unless if she left.

He spent more time on the computer, too, trying to piece together all that was lost in the flood: cleaned out pictures and downloaded music, until the latter became a hobby and the former a skill. His parents knew this and told him to make mixes, one for every aunt at Christmas, more for every uncle, another for every road trip and another for driving around the city.

He snuck out on evenings to pretend that he was older than his fifteen, sixteen, crowding shoulders with college kids in loud bars full of smoke. It was always a soda and never a beer for him, and he stood in the farthest end by a wall, wanting to feel the drums and guitars vibrate off the wall, feeling like he could hear it better if he felt it.

V. And soon they moved away from the ponds, and he took to locking himself away in his bedroom in the farthest end of home, with windows pointing east and computer speakers facing the street. Here he took up the guitar in earnest, plugged it into pedals to make sounds like seagulls and a tide rolling in, an elephant’s call, footsteps in a concrete hallway. To call this lonely would mean to say the he had no say in how he lived; He knew just what he wanted:

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 222

The priests who once were her students played this on the last day of her wake, their voices sonorous, deep, clear, one of them on a ukulele and another on guitar. An entire choir in black, their voices filling a church that smelled of dried roses and old incense.

He made a mix for her, too. He only knew to reach out with the jazz she must have heard as a college girl in America, but knew they could never come eye to eye with what they wanted to hear: on All the Things You Are, she preferred Ella Fitzgerald, him Duke Ellington. Bill Evans’ Autumn Leaves for him, Duke Ellington’s for her. They agreed on Louis Armstrong’s Somewhere Over the Rainbow, but spent most of their time together asleep and reading, her voice now too scratchy to do anything but ask for water.

223 • Joaquin Singson

And still, he listens.

VII. And he held the sounds close to him and added to them more: The sound of hot water being poured into a ceramic mug.

A Belle and Sebastian song only in his left ear, the right shared with someone who loved it more than he did, herself happy to be introducing him to what she liked.

Basketballs thudding on an empty court, a trumpet, badly-played, and a trumpet, well-played. Someone once told him he reminded her of the sound of pages turning, an old guitar plugged into an amp and left to hum. He is picky about earphones and listens to recordings of oceans when he works.

Kristoff Sison

bfa information design

I was given a heights folio by my sister when I graduated high school, and it was filled with big names from the local art and literature scenes. I then made a promise to myself that as long as I am a student in the Ateneo, I will strive to be alongside those people. But alas, after four years of constantly improving myself, that moment never came.

However, I am proud to be published alongside people who may not be the award-winning writers and artists recognized by many today, but who will surely be in the near future.

To Block E1, my SOH family, my TNT family, and my family back at home, thank you for all your unending love and support. You all have a special place in my heart. To the 65th heights Editorial Board (Bee, Yuri, Neil, Alex, Marco, Celline, Jayvee, Sophia, Cat, Martina, Oey, Dianne, Ninna, Ponch, Luigi, Coco), see you all again at the next anniversary. Also, a special mention to the four years of Heights Online that I got to work with (Regine, Nikki B., Meryl, Billy, Ashley, Ameera, Michelle, Mayelle, Gaby, Laura, Mikaela, Axel, Arielle, Mayan, Janelle, Coco, Nikki D., Kaela, Janine, Laura, Jose, Pong, Neil, Zoe, Tamia, Hazel, Maia, Julien, Sam, Helena, Kayla, Aga, Gela), thank you for being the best college constant.

Lastly, to the organization, the Fine Arts Department, and the Ateneo, I give my biggest thanks.

As always: kapag hindi ubos, kapos. heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 226

Papa, I Love You 1. Graphite on paper. 8.5 x 11 in.

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 228

Papa, I Love You 11. Graphite on paper. 8.5 x 11 in.

229 • Kristoff Sison

Papa, I Love You 111. Graphite on paper. 8.5 x 11 in.

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 230

Reina Tamayo

ab literature (english)

Reina “I won’t ever write poetry, I’ll stick to fiction and essays” Tamayo leaves Ateneo with a degree in Literature. This is her first time submitting a literary work, and she hopes this marks the start of a more prolific, more devoted journey into the Circles of Writing Hell.

I would like to thank my family, my friends, and my professors. Thank you to Japan for anime, Kingdom Hearts, and the entire Final Fantasy franchise. Thank you to all the restaurants with vegetarian options, as well as the creators of my meditation audios. Thank you to all the authors whose words and voices have seeped into the fabric of my being, fundamentally changing me in ways that continue to astound me to this day. And to that friend who got me back into writing when no one and nothing else could: you who made me realize that for as long as I unconsciously considered writing as a tool to fulfill that twisted, impossible desire of making people love me, I will never write anything I’d be satisfied with; you who made me realize that writing is not just a means to an end but an end in itself, a necessity of a higher order; you who reminded me of what these hands are capable of, of what this mind can imagine and disturb to life—thank you. Because of you, this life shall never know peace until it writes everything that stirs it awake. Because of you, this life (or at least one area of it) feels like it’s back on track. To everyone else: thank you—for your time, your existence, your possibility—and I hope you allow yourself to be vulnerable, to be soft, to be moved. heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 232

233 • Reina Tamayo

this begins with a lie and this will end with a lie. human beings desire honesty without its physicality, coherence without the fine print. this is not a single picture, i know: a face captured during the gentler moments, body languages from the time of softer bones. sounds. some chiaroscuroed semblance of belonging, a synecdoche for the more impossible desires. how do we take apart the limbs of an image to stop it from holding us? how does one stem this desire to be held? not by poetry, not by writing. words are tangible only in how they can brush the gaps inside us, these voids devoid of buoyancy, and a chimerical emptiness

A child cowers underneath the dining room table, sobbing at the pain flaring from her behind.

Footsteps. A tall figure looms before her—

an elegy for a memory of my father

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 234

—arms open and outstretched, coaxing her out of hiding.

resides in me, reshaping the interior of things I define necessary. we remember to live, i dismember to remember

235 • Reina Tamayo

Of an apocalypse. The loss of you will splinter me but not render me Unrecognizable. I love you not to my eradication.

Like how we met: modulated, without expectation. There is no plunge to insanity, no All–consuming fire, no earthquakes that persist with the threat

Habitable. I did not lie when I said I love you. I love you like how A lake ripples: without splendor, without strain, without madness. I love you.

And us, it is not sterile of memories. Phantom pressures. Sometimes the sheets Whisper a different name, but I can absorb enough to keep this space

Home par excellence. It is not new to the practice of accommodating Another body. Though now it only knows the weight of me and you

This bed has never felt empty to me. It just is. This gentle Plot of transmuted earth, its unoccupied spaces but echoes of the self—

attachment

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 236

Can illumine.

Conditioned in darkness, and myself the test subject, self–conscious, instinct–driven, Grasping for purchase amidst the intangible, lost in the way only something solid

Unmoored by your claim of gravity, the density of your voice in the quiet, How the reality of you beside me can transform this bed into a vast room

Yet I remain unsettled,

Yuri Ysabel Tan

bfa information design / bfa art management

Yuri has one more year in Ateneo dahil feeling Art Management siya.

She would like to thank the following people: Papa and Mommy, for all that you’ve given up to be the amazing parents you are now. Myx and Ilya, for the stories, the laughs, and all the support. I’ll always be rooting for you. Penelope, Cooper, and Lodi, for teaching me to be happy.

My professors, especially to Nori, Dr. Coroza, PaoTiau, Alfred, Meneer, Dr. Eloi, Carlomar, DOT, and Dr. Eviota. Everything I know, I owe to you. heights 2014-2018. To name a few: Krysten, Lasmyr, Lorenzo, Marco B., Flo, Arielle, Arianna, Milo, Dexter, Kim, Alex, Bee, Chaela, Neil, Jayvee, Cat, Sophia, Martina, Oey, Ninna, Dianne, Ponch, Luigi, Coco, and Kristoff.

My inspirations: Gaga, Chuck, Taika, Marilyn, Rinko, Erika, Divine, Brenda, Julie, Chingbee, Faye, Jeona, Kay, and Minnehaha.

I love you even if you may not know I exist.

Bea, Gab, Andrea, Yanna, Yas, Pat: I hope you continue to create because I’m a fan. Marco T., for all the good vibes. Celline, for keeping me in check.

All the friends I’ve made, and all the friends I’ve lost. Sabby, my constant for the past six years.

My past, present, and future self: you’re doing fine.

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 238

artist statement for after Rodrigo Duterte On February 13, 2018 Rodrigo Duterte ordered his troops to shoot female rebels in the vagina because he thought that doing so would render them useless. I read an article about his statements in the morning of February 24. This banana was supposed to be my breakfast.

239 • Yuri Ysabel Tan

after Rodrigo Duterte. Banana and carving knife.

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 240

Noise (zine) cover. Collage. 3 x 4 in.

241 • Yuri Ysabel Tan

Noise (zine) spread 1. Collage. 3 x 4 in.

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 242

Noise (zine) spread 1. Collage. 3 x 4 in.

243 • Yuri Ysabel Tan

Noise (zine) spread 1. Collage. 3 x 4 in.

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 244

Noise (zine) cover. Collage. 3 x 4 in.

245 • Yuri Ysabel Tan

Michaela Gonzales Tiglao bs psychology

I wanted to be an artist first. Ate would lend me her crayons and tolerate my hideous imitations of her sketches. Kuya would teach me how to draw dragons and aliens and breathe life into them when that wasn’t enough. I knew stories this way; it came from Grandpa. Mama and Papa bought me Nancy Drew books every month but hid them whenever I was grounded. The first book Grandma gave me when I was thirteen had sex scenes and a chiseled Greek man on the cover.

Bigma and Bigpa let me convert their compound into a detective’s office and a wizard’s lair. Joe was eight when he bested me in art.

Niña spoiled Divergent, Jash loved to spy, and Alyanna still wants to be the Alchemist. Kaka, Ronni, and Pat have a list of all the weird words I’ve used in a sentence or song. Kaila and Jonina are my YA (and SAB) book club. Anthony, Sab, Jana, Denice, and Coco indulge the fantastical and the tita. Monica is my fatal attraction and Jim should show me his poems already. Pia, Andie, Ella, and Rojo are ruthless Werewolf players but stalwart friends. My bravery came in sophomore year. I have Ariana to thank for that. I hated poetry with the burning passion of a thousand suns but I adored Josh’s. Marco is shady, but he will also treat you ice cream. Janelle nursed my bleeding lip in a Starbucks in Madrid. I still cry about the English staff. The eb1718 took a stray wolf in and loved it like their own, like the mythological Lupa. My path tries to diverge from Bee’s but always eventually meets it. Tell Ponch I would buy his sci-fi novels in a heartbeat. I don’t regret anything, just that I wish I thought of the Sevenwaters trilogy first.

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 248

Pilgrimage. Digital photography.

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 250

Elija Torre

bsm applied mathematics, major in mathematical finance

Naglalagalag upang makauwi.

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 252

Ang Pagdidili-dili ng Isang Sepulturero Tayo’y mga sepulturerong nagtatanod sa puntod ng mga alaalang pinaslang natin.

Mga alaalang bangkay na kinatatakutan nating humayo mula sa kanilang mga ataul upang maging bangungot natin kahit tayo ay gising.

Subalit, hungkag ang anumang pagbaon sa mga alaala gayong naglilibing tayo upang may babalikan.

Ang mismong paglimot ay pag-aalaala.

Tayo rin ang huhukay sa mga alaalang kalansay na hindi mananahimik sa huwad na kapayapaan.

Magmumulto ang mga alaalang pinaslang, at ang pagmumulto ay atin.

Multo natin.

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 254

Pagpapatawad Nahiwagaan ako nang muli mong hawakan ang aking kamay: kung bakit sa kabila ng pag-aalinlangan, nagawa kong lumaban ng pagkapit.

Ramdam ko ang kahapon natin sa init ng kapit. Lalo na nang mahulaan kong tatanungnin mo kung sino sa atin ang pasmado. Hindi natin malalaman.

Kakalas ka upang punasan ang iyong palad (sa sandaling ito, mawawari kong mula sa akin ang agam-agam).

Muling magdadampi ang ating kamay, at tatanggapin ko—doon ko na lamang hindi sa kawalang-katiyakan ako nagpaubaya. Sumuko ako sa pag-asa.

255 • Elija Torre

Marco T. Torrijos bs management

Marco T. Torrijos is a bs Management major with a minor in enterprise development from the Ateneo de Manila University.

He also likes to draw and take photographs.

Instagram: @marcotorrijos Online Portfolio: marcoett.tumblr.com Thank you to my family Mom, Pops, Bro, Little Bro, and Ats, for helping me become the person I am today.

Shoutout to the Shake Up Boys™, R, Jame, Li, and Loz, for bringing about the best senior year to end my college life.

All love to the C-Boys/Men for always being there for me since the beginning. GVs lang!

Finally, thank you to the people of heights for constantly pushing me further in what I can do and helping me contribute to the art and literature community.

Let’s get it!

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 258

Muse (2). Ink on paper.

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 260

Male (3). Ink on paper and digital.

261 • Marco T. Torrijos

Alie Unson

ab literature (english)

Alie Unson is a South girl who’s begrudgingly come to love the North.

She’s exiting Ateneo with a degree in literature, a minor in creative writing, a minor in hispanic studies, and one goddamn hell of a story.

She was a fellow for non-fiction at the 22nd Ateneo heights Writer’s Workshop, and an awardee for non-fiction writing for the 65th Loyola School Art Awards. On her best days she is drenched in saltwater, bronze-burnt from the sun, somewhere in the ocean. * I have so much gratitude to give, to God, to my friends, to my family, to my professors, to all the goodness and kindness I’ve encountered, to all the various places I’ve called a home, to the universe at large.

Thank you. After all these years, there are so many things I’ve learned to love, and many things I know I’ll learn to love again. I’m lucky to have this gratitude to keep me moving. Here’s to a future spent returning it all tenfold.

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 264

Approaching the City after Approaching a City (1946) by Edward Hopper

Edward Hopper paints movement, arrested: a wide-angle view of railroad tracks and an underpass, implicative of a train ride, a moment before the viewer is swallowed into the city. It’s a curious limbo, to be neither within the city nor outside it—the massive wall in the painting separates the foreground from the tenement blocks that rear in the distance, and so the viewer is isolated, shrouded in a somber palette of grays, browns, and ochres. What is to be searched for here? The imagery offers nothing but the cold factuality of desolation, does not propose anything other than absence.

This could be any city, any with buildings and a train line, and thus homogeneity renders it universal. Here there is room for assertion, to imagine the train, racing into the city, and inside, the commuter, who turns her face towards the window. What is thought to be rendered is bleakness, but in the mind’s eye it is this: the momentary stillness, the frail second's worth of light, blinding, before the abrupt descent into darkness.

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 266

Morning has not arrived when I wake, the window at the foot of the bed a square of darkness. Time forces the body towards swiftness—there is no time to savor the moments before departure. But there is always a pause before the doorway, shorter than a breath, where the doorway frames the neighboring duplexes of my subdivision, the overabundance of cars cramped into our streetside, a small expanse of dark blue sky. Inside, the clock ticks loudly in the silence, the bed neatly made, the dishes already drying in the rack, the house telling me, go, when everything outside asks, where? So I go, my body hurried out the frame of the doorway, everything done in motion: eating oranges on the walk towards the street corner to wait for a jeepney, orange juice running down the gaps in my fingers, hurriedly wiped on the cloth of my pants so as not to stain my schoolwork as I reach for the papers in my bag, scanning hurriedly over text I should have read the night before, trusting my feet towards a faster pace, thinking, I must do better tomorrow, wake earlier, eat healthier, sleep more than a few hours at a time, yes, tomorrow, and the tomorrow after, over and over again.

267 • Alie Unson

We frame what we deem important, capture whatever we want made permanent. Held in place by the clear casing of my phone is a polaroid shot of the ocean, and in the pocket of my wallet, my mother and little sister. Photography renders all this so easy, a click and there it is: memory, preserved.

But before that, there were only paintings. I imagine what is captured there is infinitely more precious, how treasured the image might have been for the artist to dedicate so much time and work into its preservation. But Hopper did not paint in great detail. He captured less of the image and more of the feeling. His illustrations compose mostly of compact, empty cityscapes, solitary figures in Spartan rooms, subjects isolated in crowded spaces. When asked of his influences, of the things he desired to paint, Hopper answered, Maybe I am not very human—what I wanted to do was to paint sunlight on the side of a house.

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 268

Sunlight is absent still, the wind chilling in the early morning. A woman on the jeepney yawns as she texts her husband that she is safely on her way to work, pulls her cardigan closer with her free hand. A man, holding his construction helmet in his lap, looks out the windows as his phone vibrates angrily in his pocket, a square of light visible through threadbare jeans. The cars pile up along the main road, the jeepney is delegated to a crawl. Outside, small crowds of people lining the streetsides, arms crossed, the men running after the jeeps and buses, already bursting with people, clinging to the doorways, held in place only by straining fingers. A student checks his watch impatiently, the elderly man beside him tapping his foot in agitation.

Somewhere there are classrooms and offices and shops waiting to be filled and emptied, those squat buildings and great metal spires that loom terribly over the horizon, holding lives that rise and crumble within the petty pace of the workday. The stillness is excruciating; the city must not be kept waiting. Lives must be started, the paychecks must be earned. Overhead, an airplane roars, deafening, its belly startlingly close to the ground, and the girl by the jeep's entryway follows its journey across the lightening sky, looking up long after its departure.

269 • Alie Unson

Morning sun greets a woman, barely woken, nightslip pooled around her hips in a manner inappropriate for company. Her face is turned towards the warmth that spills from the open window, and outside: the city—waiting. But what strikes me is how her body does not move towards departure, with the way her arms fold around her legs—the very picture of stillness. Her gaze does not fall upon the city assumed below her window, but outwards, towards some distance beyond it. This is where the preoccupation lies, no longer drawn to the woman, but to the recipient of her gaze, on what is imagined there, beyond the city. I think: the fields, perhaps, or the ocean—Romantic inclination getting the best of me. Naturally, her silence can only be speculated.

Interpretation can only go so far until projection. Analysis of formal elements will mention how the angle of the woman’s bent knees mimics the angle of the water tower on the rooftop, how the horizontal line of the building runs parallel to the line of the bed, how all this reflects a symmetry between interior and exterior. But the viewer will see a woman turned towards the light and think melancholy. The seclusion as tranquility. A window, for longing. Look at how our eyes intrude upon the quiet, upon the body, sculpted by light. What is framed here has become permanent: a woman, sitting quietly in the sunlight. It is understood this solitude must be precious.

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 270

I board the train at Magallanes station, a station I’ve been boarding for the past six years, squirming into some mockery of comfort during the morning rush, traveling while pressed uncomfortably beside strangers. Through the window I glimpse the same familiar scenery in passing, the only things ever unfamiliar being new ads on the billboards, advertisers capitalizing on commuters like me, who stare out the windows and thus can name every brand displayed along EDSA, from Magallanes to Cubao. I know I am 15 minutes from my destination once I pass the obnoxious quartet of Bench ads that tower over the Pasig River, 10 minutes away once passed the House of Lamps. But today I am running late, and my eyes search the windows desperately for the billboards, for the row of lamps on display, as if the city will adjust for my timing, bend time and space to race me towards my destination. But the city does not know or care that I happen by at a particular time.

And so the lateness is inevitable; another miniscule failure.

Tomorrow I must work harder, be earlier, quicker, more time-conscious—better. Of course, nobody asks me of these things. But in the city everything moves so quickly.

How easy it is, to be left behind.

271 • Alie Unson

The window at the foot of my bed is a fountain of sunlight, flooding the bedsheets, coating the skin of my legs—a rare image, seen only when I am allowed the leisure of sleeping in. My eyes open and at once: the white frame of the window, a blue sky, the sun. Behind the glass, the mayas twitter restlessly on the branches of mango trees, and there is no illustration that can capture how their chirping rouses me slowly into waking, gently, so unlike the tinny blare of an alarm. The window frames everything I wish to keep: the mango trees, the red-tiled roof of my neighbor’s gazebo, a quiet, winding street in the neighboring subdivision—and in the distance, the city, obscured. Here, my body, barely woken, face turned towards the warmth that spills from the open window. And outside: the fields, perhaps. The ocean.

Whatever is imagined there, beyond the city.

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 272

At Last, the Ocean 1.

I cling, obstinately, to certainties. Let me speak about one of them: my mother loves the ocean. Every year, when schedules permit, we drive out the tiny gate of our little subdivision and make towards the seaside, any seaside, as long as there is blue for miles and sun enough to warm the skin. It’s only amidst this abundance of water and light that finally, I see the stiffness in her limbs dissipate, laugh at the way her body turns boneless on some ladderback chair on the sand. Once, on a particularly taxing drive up a mountain, our car turned haphazardly on a sharp precipice, and then abruptly: the ocean. When I speak of love, I think of this moment, the silver-blue of it, the way it flooded, all at once, into our eyesight, how it stunned us into silence, how the silence unfurled into my mother’s laughter.

When I speak of love I think of the perpetual dips at the corner of my mother’s mouth, and how they raise at the first glimpse of seascape. For her, the wonder never falters. It’s a fact of her, this love for the ocean. I’d never seen her more at ease than when she was in the water. And isn’t that what love is? Ease. Certainties.

2.

Should anyone observe me similarly, I assume I would be the same. It no longer matters which shore it is, as long as I feel the tides caress the skin of my ankles, conjure in that motion something loving and tender. In the city I’d bear the weight of all my self-imposed expectations, but by the sea they would leave me, so far removed from everything I considered of consequence—my family, my academics, my job, my desire to be someone of consequence—none of that mattered when I looked out at the water. Once, the burden of all my accumulated failures followed me to the shore, where I spent my days secluded, sleeping restlessly in the little rented room off the coast. But there was a particular morning when I felt 273 • Alie Unson

the sunlight drape slowly over me, inching into the room like a loved one on tiptoe, rousing me gently out of sleep with the barest of warmth. For hours I sat there, quietly, watched as the butter-yellow light receded back into the windows, clung to the stillness of that morning, even as it left me. I would hunt for this, back in the city, wake at sunrise if only to watch the light fall in curtains through the treetops. I’d find rest not in the light, but in the constancy. You don’t need to see the sun to know that it rises, a friend had told me, on a day we had gathered to watch the sun rise, and I’d been saddened to find the morning gray and overcast. I think, perhaps, he didn’t know me. I did.

I still do.

3.

I’ve a habit of wishing. All sorts of little rituals: staring up at the brightest star in the sky, throwing coins into fountains, blowing eyelashes off the tip of my finger. Or the Catholic route: praying three Our Father’s, three Hail Mary’s, and three Glory Be’s at every new church visited, asking for three wishes afterwards.

Realistically I know this is ridiculous, but what is a wish other than a fragile excuse for hoping? Once I was in the car with my mother, and she’d asked me why I had been holding my breath while she drove over the bridge. Don’t tell me you were scared, she said, her eyes darting over to my side, frowning. No mama, I answered. It’s a wishing thing, I explained, embarrassed. You hold your breath over bridges to make wishes. Oh, she’d said.

What did you wish for? Because I’m not getting you a car. I laughed, rolling my eyes in mock-exasperation. But something in the moment made me want to be honest. I wished for happiness, I said, suddenly somber. Isn’t that what everyone wants? Yes, she’d murmured, looking back at the road. But we weren’t put here on earth to be happy.

4.

What's a cure for sadness? Isak Dinesen says, the cure for anything is saltwater: sweat, tears, or the sea. Since the sea is not readily available on most occasions, sweat will have to do. heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 274

Tears are representative of self-pity, and I was raised to view self-pity as tantamount to sin. How could you be so selfish?

See, there’s a radio on in the back of my head, and my mother’s voice sings endlessly on all stations. When my eyes threaten to water, the radio sparks and stops, the antenna waving wildly— don’t be weak plays on a loop, and static warps music into a command, disgusted and angry. Don’t be weak. I lace my running shoes and run circles around my village until breath becomes desperate, my heartbeat lodged in my throat, until my feet ache and trip over themselves and I skin my knees on the asphalt. The pain of it doesn’t bother me. The radio turns itself back to song.

5.

Fact: when it comes to pain, the brain cannot multitask. A headache is forgotten once a bone has been fractured, the lesser pain rendered into non-existence in the wake of the greater.

The body doesn’t distinguish between emotional and physical pain, a psychiatrist had told me, when I’d explained this fact of pain to him, how I’d turned it into a strategy for relief.

Endorphins flood the system once a blade has cut through skin, deep enough to glimpse the globules of fat that are nestled into the inner layers before the blood rushes out, plush and bright and vibrant. I wonder what causes this delayed arrival?

Perhaps it’s the body’s way of saying, look at what you’ve done, the way it does when it makes wounds heal into scars, sitting like worms on the surface of your skin, hidden beneath sleeves and cotton shirts and denim. Forgive me. Even now I shy away from admittance—what would it do to say that this act was mine? I’d only wanted to feel at ease. Perhaps strategy was the wrong word. Justification would have been better. I can’t begin to explain how sorry I am.

6.

I live in a small subdivision, so tiny that the road is one-way, too narrow for cars to pass side by side. I wake at dawn to jog when the streets are empty, and a lap lasts 3 minutes, if my 275 • Alie Unson

pace is leisurely. The neighbours leave mounds of birdseed on the floor of their driveway every night, and while I jog in the early morning I find a flurry of mayas flocking to their house, watch as they fly up towards the telephone lines when I round the street corner, return to feed only when I’m a safe distance away. Beyond the subdivision I hear the screeching of the first train passing through, from above the roar of a plane fresh from liftoff, and outside the gates, the cars honking as the day’s first wave of traffic begins. I envy this movement forward. Me? I can only run in circles. By the time I finish the mayas have all but gone.

7.

There’s an old picture framed above my desk, of my mother as a toddler, dressed in a sunhat and a floral dress, building sandcastles on a beach shore with her father. I’d kept it if only to marvel at how young she was, how the photo freezes her chubby, laughing face. As a child I had hated beach trips—they were tedious, and I hadn’t known how to swim yet, and so was terrified of drowning. But I suppose some loves are acquired.

I’ve watched my mother love the ocean for so long that my own love seemed inevitable.

8.

I ask my mother where we’re heading for vacation, and her eyes light up, the way they always do when we speak of escape.

I was thinking Dumaguete, she says, and I picture an explosion of aquamarine, the Manjuyod sandbar, a strip of sand wide enough to hold a handful of nipa huts that wobble on high tide.

Instead: I’d love to watch the dolphins. And then a confession: I think I’d cry if I saw them. I’ve never seen my mother cry.

It’s a family value: intrinsic to pain is silence. Mama, what did Lola do when she was feeling suicidal? She drank vodka from a coffee cup every morning. What about Tita, what did she do when her husband died? She started working fourteen hours a day. And you, what did you do, when he left you? I took care of you, of course. I want to tell her how her nails dig little red heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 276

crescent moons into my skin when she is angry, or how expertly she fashions her words into knives. I want to speak of those bitter midnights, with the doors slammed shut and me, beating my fists on the windows, alone on the streets. I want to bring my hurt to life. Instead, I am silent. I climb into bed forgetting to eat, and I wake with a sandwich and a glass of water on my desk. I think: perhaps intrinsic to love is uncertainty.

9.

Isn’t there that old saying? Silence is a virtue. I’d only wanted to be virtuous. It was a goal to be less emotional, less weak.

How many nights had I spent in silence, hands stinging under the tap, watching as the water in the sink ran a deep, dark red?

There it is, running into the drainage: my silence.

10. So what do I do now? I make lists. I like to think myself neat, organized—at the very least, on ink and paper. Grocery lists, to-do lists, inventory lists, lists of places to visit, lists of things to try. I’ve read that the most successful people are list-writers.

Look how I number my life into order.

11.

There are few things my mother believes in. Love, most of all, is the least of it. But what she does believe in is God—that, too, is a certainty. Mass on Sundays is a constant, a necessity.

Afterwards, we walk towards the statue of the Virgin, stand on our tiptoes to brush our hands against her feet. We bow our heads together, reverent. In the silence I think sometimes we pray for the same things.

12. St. Augustine spoke of a restlessness, of finding rest at last in God, and that is what I think of when I kneel in quiet chapels, when I press my forehead to my steepled hands and ask for grace. I figure grace to be the smile on the Blessed Mother’s face, perpetually serene, the embodiment of some abstract characteristic intrinsic to the saintly heart. Grace is what leads

277 • Alie Unson

holy men past their suffering, straight into the arms of God. St. Augustine had been an awful sinner, they say, a thief and a womanizer, but it was with God’s grace that he turned his life around, dedicated his life to the Church. I could only hope for that kind of salvation.

13.

A few weeks ago I climbed the stairs towards the train station and felt the world turn in on itself. Suddenly my cheek was pressed against the concrete. Later a guard would carry me to the medic station, and a woman would ask me, when was the last time you ate? I don't remember, I would tell her, before laying my head in my lap to weep. This is how it feels to fall in on yourself. How to assuage this madness? I made my way towards the ocean, the nearest one I could find, hoping for grace. Wandering the walkway of Manila Bay, I found none, the noise and the trash and the people pressing up on me until the despair spilled over the edges of my body, and I went home under a heavy daze of gray. I didn’t want to see my mother when she came home—I pretended to be asleep. But she inched into my room on tiptoe and kissed me gently on the forehead, and I clung to that moment, and thought: grace.

14. If memory serves me right, Jacques Lacan talked of the womb as the original ocean, talked of how longing for water signals a longing to return into the mother’s womb. I could have misread this—I had hated reading Lacan for class—but the statement was horrifying enough to imprint upon my memory.

Why extract reason for our longing, place its source on some obscure origin of the psyche? I want my longing to be simple.

I want to walk into the water and feel at ease.

15.

Of course, I’ve been to the ocean without my mother, but it has always felt strange, to see the water without her wading quietly into the shallows, or lying prone on the sand in an attempt at

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 278

tanning. But the strangeness would never linger, replaced almost immediately with my own delight. I’d find myself usually in Anilao, where there was no sand to speak of, only rocks that made balance difficult, and required you wade in with slippers or diving boots so as not to step on sea urchins or coral.

But sand was inconsequential when the water was clear as glass, little schools of fish and sea anemone visible after wading a few feet into the water. From the East the blue stretched as far as the eye could see, marked by a little island shaped like a hat— Sombrero Island, I would learn it was called, and the aptness made me laugh. It was there where I snorkeled for the first time, dunking my head below the water only to feel my heart stop. On the surface I’d been enraptured by the blue, by the push and pull of the waves, had waxed poetic about the tranquility of nature and how the sight of the waves had never failed to uplift me. But here I was only terrified. Black sea urchins scattered along the seabed every few feet, and along every inch of coral was something wholly unfamiliar and so very alive. On a rock lay something pale pink that pulsed gently, like a heart. A fish buried itself into the sand near the rock where my foot was precariously balanced. I watched as a fish attempted to enter a sea anemone, and was stung. Later, my friend would hold out her hand to help me out of the water, and I stumbled over the rocks, my legs shaking.

16. Van Gogh painted the Saintes-Maries series on a weeklong stay in Saintes-Maries-de-la-Meron, a tiny fishing village on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, where he travelled from Arles to recover from his health problems. Arguably these are some of Van Gogh’s most peaceful paintings. Absent are the violent streaks of colour, the paintings muted but lively, strokes seemingly gentler, smoother. There is something to be said about the saturation of light, the vivid colours of the sailboats, how vibrant they remain in the midst of all the empty, aching

279 • Alie Unson

blues. It is easy to imagine Van Gogh by the water, his paintings lighter, his mood improving.

17. Once on a lake in Pampanga, my cousins and I had found a rowboat. Our parent’s disapproval couldn’t rival the enthrallment of three children from the city, and so in we climbed, my oldest cousin taking control of the oars. I remember this so clearly because I was terrified—not because I had been afraid once the boat made its way to the deeper parts of the lake, but because my cousin kept dropping the oars in the water, catching them at the very last minute, before they could sink beneath his grasp. Don't drop the oars, my mother had told us, sternly, or you'll never make it back to shore. But what were rules to a twelve-year-old boy? I saw my mother taking pictures of us at the pier, and I’d wanted, more than anything, to return to her.

18.

I pointed to one of the pictures once, as she opened her wallet to pay for groceries. I remember this boat ride, I said. Nicky kept dropping the oars to scare me. My mother laughed, flippant.

You were so cute when you were young, she said. When the smile used to reach your eyes. What is that supposed to mean?

I’d asked her, but she’d already walked ahead of me.

19.

In the context of philosophy, nostalgia doesn’t simply embody wistfulness or a longing for the past. The word comes from the Greek nostos meaning home or the return home, combined with the word algos, meaning pain. Literally, it is a pain that is associated with the longing for home. The word is linked to Plato's concept of the psyche, as the soul comes from the world of Ideas, a place that is infinite, atemporal. This is where the soul belongs, and yet, it remains trapped in a world of shadows, chained to the ephemerality of the body. Nostalgia, in this sense, is now the pain of existence, of a yearning that can

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 280

never be satisfied. The conclusion here is that we will never be truly happy, yearning for the infinite in a world doomed to the inevitability of decay. We, as humans, will never be fulfilled.

20. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, The Beautiful and the Damned, he writes, “Beauty means the scent of roses and then the death of roses.” The quote reiterates the long-held notion of ephemerality as inherent to the concept of beauty. I call bullshit. What is that but a pathetic attempt at consolation for the vague uncertainties of life, the short-lived quality of all that gives us happiness? I’ll say it now: writers are sad, idealistic fools. Beauty is that which never falters, never changes. Things that are infinite—facts. Constants. Certainties. The way the sun rises every morning. How the ocean will one day swallow the world whole.

21.

On July 10 1890, Van Gogh wrote a letter to his brother Theo, in which he says, “I try to be fairly good-humoured in general, but my life too is threatened at its very root, and my step is unsteady too.” He would send another letter, on the 23rd, stressing a renewed vigour for painting, writing: "I am giving my canvases my undivided attention. I am trying to do as well as certain painters whom I have greatly loved and admired... Perhaps you will take a look at this sketch of Daubigny's garden — it is one of my most carefully thought-out canvases. I am adding a sketch of some old thatched roofs and the sketches of two size 30 canvases representing vast fields of wheat after the rain.” On the 27th, he would go out into a wheat field with a revolver, and shoot himself in the heart. His brother would later travel to stay by his bedside, would tell him they would try to get him better.

“Non,” Van Gogh replied. “La tristesse durera toujours.” Even now, the story brings me to tears. The sadness will last forever.

22. I once spent a night drinking with two Thai men, on the deck of a diving resort in Batangas. I asked one of them—a master 281 • Alie Unson

diver—if he had ever felt afraid while diving. He had just been telling me of how he’d travelled to the Philippines to try and take a picture of the Blue-Ringed Octopus, the most poisonous octopus in the world, found in the coral reefs of Anilao. One touch, he told me, would render an instant and inevitable death.

I’d been perplexed. Aren’t you afraid? I’d asked him, but he only smiled and shook his head, as if my query were ridiculous. I waited as he struggled for words, his English slow and careful.

Here is earth, he said. Below is heaven.

23. Last year, I’d gone again to the ocean. I’d been with friends, those particular kind in whose presence time is rendered nonexistent. The four-hour commute passed as if in a dream, and from my driveway I found myself suddenly at the foot of a mountain, the water stretching out as far as the eye could see.

Always, the familiar feeling: something inside me, quieting.

And yet—I was restless. How to describe the feeling? I lay on the deck and felt the sea breeze raise goosebumps on my skin, watched the starlight glint off the silver fishes that would jump, unbidden, out of the water. But still I could feel it. My heart, closing. I thought: something is always far away. Here it was again, that yearning for constancy, for certainties, inescapable.

My friends were sprawled around me, chatting, and I wanted to tell them about my heart, how it was grasping for something tender to hold on to. How terribly I wanted them to stay with me, as if in moments, they would disappear. Instead, I was quiet.

24. Rooms by the Sea (1951) depicts an open doorway, where outside there is water that seems to come up right to the door, as if there were no middle ground or shore. The sunlight shines into the room as a stark ray on the white wall, directing our attention not towards the strange placement of the open water, but rather towards the narrow view of another room, seemingly cramped with furniture, painted on the opposite heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 282

side of the frame. The room contains glimpses of what seems to be a sofa, a cabinet, a painting—the accoutrements of domestic life, in contrast with the spectacle of nature. Here the sea and sky conspire to make the constricted space seem inviting, as if the water itself seeks to move up and inside, a house guest come to make the owner feel more at ease. Despite the empty, narrow space, it is the presence of light and water that accommodates the viewer and opens up the room, creating a feeling of comfort in a space that would otherwise render entrapment.

25.

To put it simply: I am trying, desperately, to be happy.

26. Once I dreamt that the world had flooded. I walked out of my house and found that there was nothing but water, for miles and miles and miles. There is a rowboat, in my dream, and I climb into it and row until my shoulders are sore, until the weight of them are too much for my arms to bear, and I drop them. I don’t bother to catch them, only watch as they sink into the water, out of sight. But there, I’m not afraid—instead I lie back and feel the sunlight warm on my face, listen to how the wind ripples the surface of the water. I think of this dream constantly, so much so that it feels more like a memory. All that water. All that infinite blue. I think of love and hear my mother’s laughter.

I close my eyes and there it is, at last: the ocean.

283 • Alie Unson

Mark Yu

bs management engineering

Mark Yu is a 4th year bs Management Engineering student from the Ateneo de Manila University. He is an avid photographer, who creatively dabbles in graphic design, videography, and editing. He wants to travel and is interested in getting to know new people. He is a big fan of TV shows, films, books, video games, and even Youtube videos, particularly Marvel and Wong Fu Productions. Above all, he loves stories, and how they can touch, inspire, and move people regardless of gender, race, or context. He hopes that, despite what life throws at him, he too gets to tell his stories soon.

This is dedicated to my family: for my brother Matthew, sister Abigail, mother Annie, and especially my father Rudy. You have my heart and I cannot express how much I love you all. Thank you for seeing more in me than I ever could.

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 286

Hue. Digital photography.

287 • Mark Yu

heights Seniors Folio 2018 • 288

Loyola Schools Awards for the Arts 2018 Creative Writing: Nonfiction Lorenzo Augusto LL. Escober, iv ab literature (english) Jose Carlos Joaquin W. Singson, iv bfa art management Natalie Ann Isabella L. Unson, v ab literature (english) Creative Writing: Poetry Ma. Cecilia Rosario B. Lamug, v ab literature (english) Dance: Choreography Maria Patricia M. Bernas, iv ab psychology Joseph Lawrence A. Morabe, iv bs health sciences Dance: Performance Miguel Enrique S. Roa, iv bs health sciences Lexxel JJ U. Tanganco, v bs environmental science Music: Arrangement Katrina Isabela A. Bartolome, iv bs management engineering Vincent Joshua D. IĂąola, iv ab political science Music: Composition Patrick John M. Fernandez, iv bs mathematics Paola Bettina C. Mauricio, iv bfa information design Lance G. Salazar, iv bs psychology Music: Performance Thea Mikaela P. Panaguiton, iv ab development studies Bernard Patrick L. Pingol, iv bs health sciences Leona Marie Francesca S. Rebosa, iv bs health sciences Austin Guiliano P. Tan, iv bs communications technology management

Screen Arts: Directing

Gabrielle Therese R. Mesina, iv bfa information design Cyril John V. Sindac, iv bs communications technology management Theater Arts: Performance

Geene Sabrina S. Basilio, iv bfa creative writing Margaret C. Crisostomo, iv ab communication Jan Rey S. EscaĂąo, v ab diplomacy and international relations/bfa theatre arts Josemaria Ecequiel N. Ledesma, iv bs psychology Alecx S. Lorica, v bfa theatre arts/ab communication Visual Arts: Graphic Design Dianne Manselle L. Aguas, iv bfa information design Rosarina Maria B. Sevilla, v bfa information design Visual Arts: Illustration Chrisenbel W. Alejo, iv bfa information design Marco Emmanuel T. Torrijos, iv bs management Visual Arts: Photography Ma. Cecilia Rosario B. Lamug, v ab literature (english)

The members of the Awards for the Arts Committee:

Alexis Augusto L. Abola Aristotle J. Atienza Yael B. Borromeo Mark Joseph T. Calano, Ph. D. Jonathan A. Coo Gianne Erika A. Cruz Allan Alberto N. Derain Glenn L. Diaz Jesse Gilliam Z. Gotangco Maria Victoria T. Herrera Fr. Rene B. Javellana, S.J., Ph.D. Skilty C. Labastilla Melissa Vera M. Maramara Glenn S. Mas Ma. Socorro Q. Perez, Ph. D. Maria Inez Angela Z. Ponce De Leon, Ph.D. Allan C. Popa, Ph. D. Clarissa Cecilia M. Ramos Jerry C. Respeto, Ph. D. Jose Angelo D. Supangco Jethro NiĂąo P. Tenorio Martin V. Villanueva Analyn L. Yap

Acknowledgments Fr. Jose Ramon T. Villarin, sj and the Office of the President Dr. Ma. Luz C. Vilches and the Office of the Vice President for the Loyola Schools Mr. Roberto Conrado Guevara and the Office of the Associate Dean for Student Affairs Dr. Josefina D. HofileĂąa and the Office of the Associate Dean of Academic Affairs Dr. Jonathan Chua and the Office of the Dean, School of Humanities Dr. Isabel Pefianco Martin and the English Department Mr. Martin V. Villanueva and the Department of Fine Arts Dr. Joseph T. Salazar at ang Kagawaran ng Filipino Dr. Allan Popa and the Ateneo Institute of the Literary Arts and Practices (ailap) Mr. Ralph Jacinto A. Quiblat and the Office of Student Activities Ms. Marie Joy R. Salita and the Office of Associate Dean for the Student and Administrative Services Ms. Liberty Santos and the Central Accounting Office Mr. Regidor Macaraig and the Purchasing Office Dr. Vernon R. Totanes and the Rizal Library Ms. Carina C. Samaniego and the University Archives Ms. Ma. Victoria T. Herrara and the Ateneo Art Gallery The mvp Maintenance and Security Personnel Ms. Gabrielle Gabaton and the Sector-Based Cluster Dr. Vincenz Serrano and Kritika Kultura Mr. Arjan P. Aguirre and the Martial Law Museum Ms. Yael B. Borromeo and the AretĂŠ Mr. Robbin Dagle and The GUIDON Ms. Micah Rimando and Matanglawin The Sanggunian ng Mag-aaral ng Ateneo de Manila, and the Council of Organizations of the Ateneo And to those who have been keeping literature and art alive in the community by continuously submitting their works and supporting the endeavors of heights

Editorial Board Editor - in - Chief Gabrielle Frances R. Leung [bs ps 2019] Associate Editor Yuri Ysabel G. Tan [bfa id 2019] Managing Editor for External Affairs Neil John C. Vildad [ab lit (eng) 2018] for Internal Affairs Marco Emmanuel T. Torrijos [bs mgt 2018] for Finance Alexandria T. Tuico [bfa am 2018] Editor -at - Large Michaela Marie G. Tiglao [bs psy 2019] Art Editor Celline Marge Z. Mercado [bfa id, am 2019] Associate Art Editor Jayvee A. del Rosario [ab-ma pos 2020] Design Editor Dianne Manselle L. Aguas [bfa id 2018] Associate Design Editor Ninna D. Lebrilla [bfa id 2019] English Editor Sophia Alicia S. Bonoan [bfa cw 2019] Associate English Editor Catherine Lianza A. Aquino [ab psy 2020] Filipino Editor Martina M. Herras [ab lit (eng) 2019] Associate Filipino Editor Jose Alfonso Ignacio K. Mirabueno [bs cs 2019] Production Manager Cesar Alfonso S. Castor vi [ab psy 2018] Associate Production Manager Lorenzo Miguel S. Reyes [bs mis mscs 2021] Heights Online Editor Corinne Victoria F. Garcia [bfa id 2018] Associate Heights Online Editor Nolan Kristoff P. Sison [bfa id 2018]

Head Moderator and Moderator for Filipino Allan Alberto N. Derain Moderator for Art Yael A . Borromeo Moderator for English Martin V. Villanueva Moderator for Design Tanya Lea Francesca M. Mallillin Moderator for Production Enrique Jaime S. Soriano Moderator for Heights Online Regine Miren D. Cabato

Staffers Art

Eunice Nicole Arevalo, Jude Angelo S. Buendia, Aisha Dominique Q. Causing, Rico Cruz, Fernando Miguel Lofranco, Kimberly Que, Andrea Ramos, Robyn Saquin, Jose Carlos Joaquin W. Singson, Clare Bianca F. Tantoco, Andrea Janelle G. Ting, Dexter Yu, Charles Yuchioco

Design Andrea Adriano, JJ Agcaoili, Zianne Agustin, Kim Alivia, Rico Cruz,

Diana F. David, Justine Daquioag, Zoe C. de Ocampo, Arien M. Lim,

Arien M. Lim, Riana G. Lim, Ninielle Pascual, Diorjica Ranoy,

Jeanine Rojo, Pie Tiausas, Jonah Velasquez, Dyan Villegas, Elyssa Villegas English

Alec Bailon, Helena Maria H. Baraquel, Sofia Ysabel I. Bernedo, Danie Cabahug, Karl Estuart, Trishia Gail G. Fernandez, Jamie Gutierrez, Daniel Manguerra, Ryan C. Molen, Marty R. Nevada, Lia Pauline P. Paderon, Mikaela Adrianne C. Regis, James Andrew Reysio-Cruz, Trisha Anne K. Reyes, Lukas Miguel A. Santiago, Patricia Clarice A. Sarmiento, Madeline Sy, Nigel Yu, Timothy Vincent Yusingco

Filipino

Carissa Natalia Baconguis, Danielle Michelle B. Cabahug, Charlene Kate D. Cruz, Gewell Llorin, Cymon Kayle Lubangco, Gerald Manuel, Angela Bianca C. Mira, Jelmer Jon Ochoa, Dorothy Claire Parungao, Mikaela Adrianne C. Regis, Paco Rivera, Elija Torre, Josemaria L. Villareal

Production Zianne Agustin, Sandy Añonuevo, Justin Barbara, Kim Bernadino,

Giane Butalid, Madi Calleja, Brianna Cayetano, Gelo Dawa,

Louise Dimalanta, Sofia Guanzon, Gerald Guillermo,

Cesar Fabro, Gio Lopez, Anton Molina, Trisha Reyes, Julien Tabilog, Bea Valenzuela, Charles Yuchioco Heights Online Zoe Andin, Marianne Antonio, Gaby Baizas, Helena Baraquel,

Maia Boncan, Angela Cortero, Hazel Lam, Kayla Ocampo,

Aga Olympia, Patrick Ong, Jonina Ramos, Tamia Reodica, Julien Tabilog, Sam Wong