Was it divine intervention? A rom com? Regina Layug Rosero shares the story of how Lola met Lolo.
The rom-com version of this story would be that Chita met Ermy, and they fell in love and lived happily ever after. But Chita didn’t want to marry Ermy, however persistently he courted her.
I could only imagine how confused she was. Here was a pleasant young man, a handsome mestizo, her best friend’s brother no less, and he wanted to marry her. But she wanted to devote her life to the Lord. What was a young woman of the 1950s supposed to do?
Regina Layug Rosero shares the thrills of her first time at an evening of comedic erotica performance.
Everyone has sex.
You don’t want to think about it. But your parents had sex. In Disney movies, the princess falls in love with the prince, and in the DVD release of the sequel, they have a baby.
In “A Sexier History of Time,” Timothy Dimacali explored the sex life of renowned physicist and author Stephen Hawking.
But he’s in a wheelchair, you protest. Ah yes, but he’s been married twice and has three kids. Of course he has sex. And his pillow talk may be littered with puns about large Hadron colliders and black holes.
Have more (deus) sex at Rappler.com. Published May 2015.
“This is Dad crossing Roxas Boulevard.” Image from The Story When.
Paul Catiang explores family history for The Story When.
I was around four or five when Mommy first told me about Dad. She said that they couldn’t marry because he was already betrothed to someone else from birth, as is the custom among upper-class Indians. The exchange and merging of property was supposedly a done deal—there might have been some resort island involved, as a dowry. In the years that followed, the mental images that came to mind involved a mix of Bedouin tents, elephants, peacocks, turbans, all manner of exotic clichés my young imagination cobbled together from the Arabian Nights and the World Book Encyclopedia’s volume on entries under the letter I.
Patricia Calzo Vega examines the world of Lang Leav for Fully Booked Zine.
In stark contrast to the layered cultural references, the veneer of madcap and mayhem, and the polished finish of Akina’s world and her visual artworks, Leav’s verses are sparse, self-referential, and tentative (sometimes to the point of feeling incomplete). Like short verses scribbled off the cuff and sent off with nary a glance—a distinct possibility, given their social media origins; Leav was also known to respond to poem requests left in her ask box. Emily Dickinson is an acknowledged and quite obvious stylistic influence, and her partner, Michael Faudet—also an artist and poet—is both muse and collaborator.
Emotion it has in spades, and is laid bare for everyone to see. Love and Misadventure tackles the entire breadth of experience of a young person awakening to love: solitary musings of unrequited feeling, the comfort of phantom lovers, the transitory nature of relationships, the bitterness of heartbreak and regret, and, finally, the delirious joy of finding love and discovering its pleasures. Perhaps the experience of watching this story unfurl online, as Leav relived loves and imagined in verse, made readers invested in the outcome and seeing her happy ending.
Astigirl, by Tweet Sering. Reviewed by Mary Ann Marchadesch for Sex and Sensibilities. Image from astigirl.blogspot.com.
Mary Ann Marchadesch takes a look at what it means to be an Astigirl in this review of the book by Tweet Sering.
The 19thcentury American writer and philosopherHenry David Thoreauwent into the woods “because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”[note]With Thoreau and herAstigirlmuse, Angelina Jolie, for inspiration, Sering ruthlessly (yet lovingly) dissects family relationships, past romances, and childhood ideals; she re-examines her adolescence through the filter of ten or so years; she embarks on new and terrifying adventures (entering writing contests, auditioning for theatre roles…energy therapy?To willingly subject yourself tothattakes some inner fortitude. Or maybe that’s just me) and comes out not only more aware of her limitations, but also of her strengths. With each essay in the collection Sering deftly and delicately skewers long-buried doubts and insecurities and by “going back to zero”, as she puts it, creates a new beginning for herself.
Basically, whatAstigirlis saying, with lovely bits of humor and touches of irreverence, is this: I chose to do this, I saw it through, I came out of it not necessarily unscathed, but definitely more aware of who I really am and what I really want to do. The unspoken challenge for the reader is: Are youastigenough to do that, too?
Regina Layug Rosero explores the Philippines in a new neighborhood–the Pacific.
While many of our Asian neighbors eat with chopsticks and stage the Ramayana on a regular basis, we use forks and spoons, and few of us are familiar with the Indian epic. Many scholars and intellectuals have pointed out these and more differences between us and our Southeast Asian brothers and sisters.
But rather than focusing on this deficit of Asian character, Dr. [Fernando] Zialcita suggests we look at what we have in common with our other neighbors: those of the Pacific islands.
Our pre-Hispanic history tells of trade with neighboring islands, of extensive travel and exploration aboard outriggers with v-shaped sails, of a diet rich in taro and coconut. A glance at Micronesian culture will show you the same things, as well as many other commonalities.
Regina Layug Rosero walked five kilometers every night, seven nights in a row, and lived to write about it.
I trudged a few more steps in the evening rain, sweat dripping down the back of my neck and my chest. I could feel a few drops on my forehead, threatening to slip, stinging, into my eye. My legs were beginning to ache, my feet starting to drag across the concrete sidewalk around the park. The fatigue of each kilometer was starting to catch up with me. I spied a park bench, and made my way towards a moment’s rest. I took off my biker scout helmet as I sat, and my husband handed me a bottle of water. I couldn’t lean back to relax; the protrusion on the back of my armor was too large. I rotated my ankles as much as I could in my rubber boots, thankful that a biker scout had such little leg armor.
I’d been walking every night since September 23, at least 5 kilometers per night. Every morning when I woke, my legs were stiff, but come evening I would march once more in my biker scout armor. My husband was ready to catch me if I collapsed.
My name is Regina. I’m a biker scout, and I did this for the children of the Philippines.
Originally published in Illustrado magazine, December 2013.
Dante Gagelonia ponders the life of Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
While the concept of magical realism came about years before Garcia Marquez published One Hundred Years of Solitude, it was his novel that best illustrated its spirit. One Hundred Years of Solitude did more than tell the story of a family: it did so in a way that demonstrated the way he saw the realities of Latin American culture, and of Colombian identity. Through the lens of metaphorical Macondo and by utilizing the complex shadows cast by the Buendía family, García Márquez depicted ideas, morals and realities that would inspire an entire generation of Latin American expression. The Latin American Boom of the 1960s and 1970s counted One Hundred Years of Solitude as one of its seminal works, and García Márquez as one of its four undisputed pillars alongside Mario Vargas LLosa, Carlos Fuentes and Julio Cortazár.
From latintimes.com
There is so much more to García Márquez’s writing than what can be found in One Hundred Years of Solitude, however. While it stands as a capital city in the landscape of his work, his other novels, novellas and short stories still comprise the rest of a bountiful and detailed map. Each of his stories is different yet familiar, staying true more to a sense of being rather than to a strict sense of style. He would reference specific historical periods while generalizing locations, dissect emotions while obfuscating intent, and employ other fluid narrative techniques. It’s an elusive sort of vitality, giving readers a grounded sense of reality while leaving just enough unspoken. There is room to interpret, to feel, to explore.
Originally published in the Fully Booked Zine, June-July 2014.
Paul Catiang’s inner foodie relishes each word in this restaurant review.
Imagine traditional Cantonese cuisine–its array of roasted meats, the preference for fresh ingredients, the minimalist approach to spices–traveling around Southeast Asia, picking up a culinary technique here, a local ingredient there. Imagine Cantonese cuisine with a collector’s hoard of Southeast Asian ingredients, and you’ll find yourself in Summer Palace, the EDSA Shangri-La’s treasure chest of international Chinese cookery.
Whet your appetite with the dim sum. You don’t expect to start off a sumptuous Chinese meal with something sweet, but the custard roll turns such notions on their head. An innocuous dim sum ball on the outside, it delivers a light yet creamy custard center. After that gentle shock, the menu returns to the familiar once again, with the scallop-and-shrimp and vegetable dumplings, elegant in their combination of the freshest ingredients.
This was originally published in Metro Magazine in August 2012.
Mary Ann Marchadesch writes about what it was like to be raised by a single parent.
The best thing about Ma? She always trusted us. She raised us with a solid set of values that were unfettered by any sort of superstition or cultural shibboleths. She taught us to know right from wrong, black from white from morally grey and trusted that we’d absorbed enough over the years to be able to judge correctly.
She never sugar-coated any bad news, trusting us not to fall apart but instead rise to the occasion and give it a good solid thwack across the nose. She taught us to not be afraid of the world and made us tough enough to deal with its absurdities. She valued our opinion on things that really mattered, and even on things that didn’t. In return, we took the advice she gave, as rare as it was, very seriously.
(Except when it comes to hairdressers. She’s still got a bit of a blind spot there.)
Originally published in the book Happy Even After, 2011.
Puzzled Owl | Words, worked. 