Alex Maskara
Thoughts, Stories, Imagination of Filipino American Alex Maskara
~
Acacia: Barrio Tale
Any barrio folk who had been away for decades might think the way I do tonight. After nearly twenty years of absence, knowing that at least half the people I once knew are no longer alive, I find myself reflecting on the best memories the barrio offers me. But there’s a caveat: with age, my memory isn’t as sharp as it once was. The vivid pictures I recall now take on a watercolor-like quality, as if they’ve turned into postcards. Perhaps that’s why Kurosawa, the Japanese filmmaker, created such beautiful films. He saw Japan in the deepest parts of his mind. I may not be able to see the barrio with the same clarity he saw Japan, but I do see it in my own way. It’s always beautiful. And always sad, in the way life and the past have been for me.
Lying in bed, I think of the people who lived in the houses I used to pass on my way home. Indang Odik, dead. Apung Gundang, dead. Indang Leti, alive. Indang Maring, alive. Apung Aling, dead. The list goes on, but it’s not about naming them all. What matters is how we spent time together in the barrio when growing old and dying were the least of our concerns. I never imagined how quickly time would erase us all. Memory is the only lingering proof that we were once living, moving souls on this earth.
I don’t want to dwell on sadness, but my past in the barrio wasn’t exactly joyful. You might suggest I focus on the present instead. But when I last visited, the barrio had become congested, full of faces I hardly recognized. The ones I did know were either senile or gone. My contemporaries had either moved abroad or were too embarrassed to see me.
That’s the truth. Even I, who has tried to live in two worlds, can’t win everything. I can’t live perfectly in two places at once. I’m the floating man, caught between two continents, two cultures, many races, and countless attitudes. In such a world, nothing is stable. Nothing is fixed. So I rely on memory.
My memory clings to one constant: the acacia tree standing beside Chanda’s Beauty Parlor, where jeepneys come and go. Chanda once lured men with promises of love and sex beneath that tree. She was a has-been, once working at BlueMoon, the only whorehouse in the barrio. Rumor had it she was riddled with diseases, so men stopped coming. But I’m not in the mood to talk about Chanda. I want to talk about the acacia tree.
The tree—ancient and weathered—stands with its trunk burned, leaving a hollow in its center. Remarkably, the bark still keeps the tree alive, and it continues to bear leaves. Whoever tried to kill it must be dead by now. The acacia has outlived its would-be destroyers, just as it has outlived wars, fads, heroes, sins, and gossip. With my limited time left on this earth, the acacia will outlive me too. It’s an immortal tree, a symbol of the barrio itself.
My grandfather warned me of the kapre that lived in the acacia tree. He described the silhouette of the half-man, half-horse creature perched in its branches during full moons. Smoke from the kapre’s tobacco would curl into the air as it asked, in a low voice: "Where have you been? Where are you going?"
When my grandfather was young, the kapre once asked him those very questions. The next thing he knew, he found himself three barrios away, lost in the dead of night. He had to knock on doors to find his way back home. “The kapre was offended,” he whispered to me, “because I didn’t ask his permission to pass by the tree.” If the kapre ever confuses you like that, the antidote is simple: just turn your shirt inside-out.
Many nights, I would sit by the window, staring at the acacia’s thick crown, waiting for a glimpse of the kapre. I saw him, though without his cigar. I often wondered how he could confuse people. But I was never allowed near the tree, not because of the kapre, but because of Chanda. No one wanted to be associated with her, especially after dark. Despite her efforts to change, the barrio had ostracized her. Eventually, she left for another island, never to return.
Life back then was simple and beautiful. People competed to see who had the cleanest houses, the most colorful gardens, or the nicest curtains. Even the dogs were too lazy to stir when a stranger visited. Life was so contented that missing Sunday Mass was the only crime you could be accused of.
It’s unclear when the kapre left. But people knew he was gone when Chanda’s old Beauty Parlor was turned into a grocery store by a woman whose husband had become rich working in Saudi Arabia. After that, everyone in the barrio began talking about working abroad. The competition shifted from keeping beautiful homes to earning dollars overseas. Families started leaving—fathers disappeared, mothers took on both parental roles, and children, flush with money, indulged in vices. Education seemed less important because, after all, someone was sending them money from abroad.
And everywhere, the old way of life was disappearing. Gardens were paved over to park new vehicles, trees were cut down to make way for businesses, and, in a misguided effort to build a new store, someone tried to burn the acacia tree. It survived, but the kapre left.
And when the kapre leaves, so the superstition says, confusion takes root and memory begins to fade.
When I return to the barrio now, I don’t recognize most of the people I meet. Locals have largely disappeared, replaced by newcomers. When I introduce myself, no one seems to remember me—my name is just a faint echo from the past. People are too preoccupied with finding ways to leave, training for jobs that will take them abroad. Some even talk of transforming the barrio into a city.
I was one of those who left for work abroad twenty years ago.
Perhaps that’s why I escaped the curse of forgetfulness, why I still remember.
At night, I turn my shirt inside-out. When the moon is full, I step into the hollow center of the acacia tree. There, I try to remember.
But even the acacia’s walls are cracking, ready to vanish forever.
2024-10-21 00:29:03
barrio
The Anchored Angel edited by Eileen Tabios
"It's the FORM, stupid! Not the MEANING!"
---
Garcia Villa championed structure and form in poetry—so much so that when he encountered poems teeming with meaning, he labeled them prose. After reading _The Anchored Angel_, I've come to two conclusions about him: Garcia Villa was good, and Garcia Villa was bad.
At my age, the more I dive into our Filipino authors—those we now consider canonical, who cultivated Philippine English Literature—the clearer I see what went right and wrong with our literature. Or maybe I expect too much from Philippine literature in English, given that we’ve only had the language for about a hundred years. Then again, we never had a robust Spanish literature after 300 years of colonization either, and our Tagalog literature hasn’t flourished to any great heights despite being used for millennia.
Something went wrong. There’s something amiss when we lament our people's disinterest in reading Filipino-authored literature. Something's off when a friend of mine, after learning that I review Philippine Lit, casually remarks, "Philippine Lit is dead, honey."
Worse still—I have no defense to offer.
I wish I could hold up Garcia Villa as the exemplar of our English literature, but to my dismay, after reading his poetry and the essays about him in _The Anchored Angel_, I found him more of a culprit than a hero.
Let me explain—and please, keep in mind, I’m no expert in poetry.
I admire Garcia Villa’s experimental spirit, his boldness, his independence, his comma poems, his almost-too-perfect lines. But since I am no poet myself, I don’t quite understand him, nor am I sure I want to.
To my disappointment, Garcia Villa turned out to be everything I’m not. He sought structure and form, sacrificing meaning just so his poems could sing. But I don’t care for singing poems. I don’t want to be bound by pre-defined rules (who made these rules for fiction, anyway?) in writing. I detest formulas. And I certainly don’t write to emulate some overreaching foreign writer. I revel in chaos. I never saw the Beatniks’ work as "typewriting" (a line Garcia Villa borrowed from Truman Capote). And to be honest, Capote and Villa—both as queer as I am—embody the kind of characters I avoid in gay circles. Honey, from what I’ve read, Garcia Villa is as much of a “queenie” as any princess you’d meet at the club.
I want poems that tell me earth-shattering truths. No make-up, no tiaras, no perfectly defined eyeliner, no meticulously chosen foundation, no striving for some idealized beauty like Miss America.
In other words, no matter how divinely crafted a poem is, an orgasm is still an orgasm. You can be in Buckingham Palace or on a corner in Recto—an orgasm feels the same. The key is—you must feel it.
---
You Don’t Listen, You Feel
I bring up Garcia Villa's writing to tie it back to our English literature, because, in a way, he led what was considered the "Golden Age" of English writing in the Philippines. During his heyday, he was given a title equivalent to the "Emperor of English Literature." His “feats” were even celebrated in a regular newspaper column. In this case, “feat” meant that Garcia Villa had managed to be accepted into the literary world of the West, supposedly standing toe-to-toe with Western writers. I have no problem with him becoming a Western icon—what disturbs me is the negligence of the public from which his writing emerged and for whom it should have been directed: the Filipino people.
And now, when we wonder why Garcia Villa was eventually forgotten by the West, the answer is simple: he wrote for a people who never considered him one of their own. His greatest mistake was neglecting the Filipino readers who should have been his primary audience.
His flamboyant persona, his stubborn refusal to return to the Philippines—even briefly—despite the longing of every Filipino for his presence, is not a source of pride. A writer should not be solely concerned with his self-concept; he must also consider the wishes of the readers who love him. Garcia Villa was no Greta Garbo. He should have been a Mark Twain.
A writer must nurture not only their craft but also their audience. This is one of the greatest lessons I’ve learned from computer programming. If you want your program to work, to be useful and popular, its interface must be user-friendly. And trust me, the simpler and more intuitive you want your program to be, the more effort it requires.
The greatest writers, in my view, are not those whose works can only be deciphered by the "anchored angels" of heaven. The greatest writers are those who can be understood by everyone—down to the insects and the scum of the earth. If my writing can be grasped by a typical high school student, then I’ve succeeded.
If the founders of Philippine English literature had prioritized a more people-oriented approach, I believe our literature would have thrived. This is where I disagree with many Filipino writers—we often write as if our readers were Americans, Brits, or some other foreign audience. Sometimes it feels like we write just to show off our grasp of grammar or parade our hefty vocabulary. Other times, it seems like we’re writing to impress other writers, win awards, or meet the expectations of some literary figure.
I praise Garcia Villa for his style, but I reject the philosophy behind his writing. I’m not trying to dishonor his legacy as one of the greatest Filipino writers—especially not after his passing. Garcia Villa might have said, "Rizal was a great man, but not a great writer." Writers, after all, have different views on what constitutes great Philippine literature.
If you’re curious to learn more about this enigmatic and controversial Filipino figure, order _The Anchored Angel from Kaya Press.
This review was edited from its original in early 2000's - AM
2024-09-28 06:53:57
bookreviews
Acacia
Acacia: Barrio Tale
Any barrio folk who had been away for decades might think the way I do tonight. After nearly twenty years of absence, knowing that at least half the people I once knew are no longer alive, I find myself reflecting on the best memories the barrio offers me. But there’s a caveat: with age, my memory isn’t as sharp as it once was. The vivid pictures I recall now take on a watercolor-like quality, as if they’ve turned into postcards. Perhaps that’s why Kurosawa, the Japanese filmmaker, created such beautiful films. He saw Japan in the deepest parts of his mind. I may not be able to see the barrio with the same clarity he saw Japan, but I do see it in my own way. It’s always beautiful. And always sad, in the way life and the past have been for me.
Lying in bed, I think of the people who lived in the houses I used to pass on my way home. Indang Odik, dead. Apung Gundang, dead. Indang Leti, alive. Indang Maring, alive. Apung Aling, dead. The list goes on, but it’s not about naming them all. What matters is how we spent time together in the barrio when growing old and dying were the least of our concerns. I never imagined how quickly time would erase us all. Memory is the only lingering proof that we were once living, moving souls on this earth.
I don’t want to dwell on sadness, but my past in the barrio wasn’t exactly joyful. You might suggest I focus on the present instead. But when I last visited, the barrio had become congested, full of faces I hardly recognized. The ones I did know were either senile or gone. My contemporaries had either moved abroad or were too embarrassed to see me.
That’s the truth. Even I, who has tried to live in two worlds, can’t win everything. I can’t live perfectly in two places at once. I’m the floating man, caught between two continents, two cultures, many races, and countless attitudes. In such a world, nothing is stable. Nothing is fixed. So I rely on memory.
My memory clings to one constant: the acacia tree standing beside Chanda’s Beauty Parlor, where jeepneys come and go. Chanda once lured men with promises of love and sex beneath that tree. She was a has-been, once working at BlueMoon, the only whorehouse in the barrio. Rumor had it she was riddled with diseases, so men stopped coming. But I’m not in the mood to talk about Chanda. I want to talk about the acacia tree.
The tree—ancient and weathered—stands with its trunk burned, leaving a hollow in its center. Remarkably, the bark still keeps the tree alive, and it continues to bear leaves. Whoever tried to kill it must be dead by now. The acacia has outlived its would-be destroyers, just as it has outlived wars, fads, heroes, sins, and gossip. With my limited time left on this earth, the acacia will outlive me too. It’s an immortal tree, a symbol of the barrio itself.
My grandfather warned me of the kapre that lived in the acacia tree. He described the silhouette of the half-man, half-horse creature perched in its branches during full moons. Smoke from the kapre’s tobacco would curl into the air as it asked, in a low voice: "Where have you been? Where are you going?"
When my grandfather was young, the kapre once asked him those very questions. The next thing he knew, he found himself three barrios away, lost in the dead of night. He had to knock on doors to find his way back home. “The kapre was offended,” he whispered to me, “because I didn’t ask his permission to pass by the tree.” If the kapre ever confuses you like that, the antidote is simple: just turn your shirt inside-out.
Many nights, I would sit by the window, staring at the acacia’s thick crown, waiting for a glimpse of the kapre. I saw him, though without his cigar. I often wondered how he could confuse people. But I was never allowed near the tree, not because of the kapre, but because of Chanda. No one wanted to be associated with her, especially after dark. Despite her efforts to change, the barrio had ostracized her. Eventually, she left for another island, never to return.
Life back then was simple and beautiful. People competed to see who had the cleanest houses, the most colorful gardens, or the nicest curtains. Even the dogs were too lazy to stir when a stranger visited. Life was so contented that missing Sunday Mass was the only crime you could be accused of.
It’s unclear when the kapre left. But people knew he was gone when Chanda’s old Beauty Parlor was turned into a grocery store by a woman whose husband had become rich working in Saudi Arabia. After that, everyone in the barrio began talking about working abroad. The competition shifted from keeping beautiful homes to earning dollars overseas. Families started leaving—fathers disappeared, mothers took on both parental roles, and children, flush with money, indulged in vices. Education seemed less important because, after all, someone was sending them money from abroad.
And everywhere, the old way of life was disappearing. Gardens were paved over to park new vehicles, trees were cut down to make way for businesses, and, in a misguided effort to build a new store, someone tried to burn the acacia tree. It survived, but the kapre left.
And when the kapre leaves, so the superstition says, confusion takes root and memory begins to fade.
When I return to the barrio now, I don’t recognize most of the people I meet. Locals have largely disappeared, replaced by newcomers. When I introduce myself, no one seems to remember me—my name is just a faint echo from the past. People are too preoccupied with finding ways to leave, training for jobs that will take them abroad. Some even talk of transforming the barrio into a city.
I was one of those who left for work abroad twenty years ago.
Perhaps that’s why I escaped the curse of forgetfulness, why I still remember.
At night, I turn my shirt inside-out. When the moon is full, I step into the hollow center of the acacia tree. There, I try to remember.
But even the acacia’s walls are cracking, ready to vanish forever.
2024-10-21 00:29:03
barrio
Anchored Angel Review
The Anchored Angel edited by Eileen Tabios
"It's the FORM, stupid! Not the MEANING!"
---
Garcia Villa championed structure and form in poetry—so much so that when he encountered poems teeming with meaning, he labeled them prose. After reading _The Anchored Angel_, I've come to two conclusions about him: Garcia Villa was good, and Garcia Villa was bad.
At my age, the more I dive into our Filipino authors—those we now consider canonical, who cultivated Philippine English Literature—the clearer I see what went right and wrong with our literature. Or maybe I expect too much from Philippine literature in English, given that we’ve only had the language for about a hundred years. Then again, we never had a robust Spanish literature after 300 years of colonization either, and our Tagalog literature hasn’t flourished to any great heights despite being used for millennia.
Something went wrong. There’s something amiss when we lament our people's disinterest in reading Filipino-authored literature. Something's off when a friend of mine, after learning that I review Philippine Lit, casually remarks, "Philippine Lit is dead, honey."
Worse still—I have no defense to offer.
I wish I could hold up Garcia Villa as the exemplar of our English literature, but to my dismay, after reading his poetry and the essays about him in _The Anchored Angel_, I found him more of a culprit than a hero.
Let me explain—and please, keep in mind, I’m no expert in poetry.
I admire Garcia Villa’s experimental spirit, his boldness, his independence, his comma poems, his almost-too-perfect lines. But since I am no poet myself, I don’t quite understand him, nor am I sure I want to.
To my disappointment, Garcia Villa turned out to be everything I’m not. He sought structure and form, sacrificing meaning just so his poems could sing. But I don’t care for singing poems. I don’t want to be bound by pre-defined rules (who made these rules for fiction, anyway?) in writing. I detest formulas. And I certainly don’t write to emulate some overreaching foreign writer. I revel in chaos. I never saw the Beatniks’ work as "typewriting" (a line Garcia Villa borrowed from Truman Capote). And to be honest, Capote and Villa—both as queer as I am—embody the kind of characters I avoid in gay circles. Honey, from what I’ve read, Garcia Villa is as much of a “queenie” as any princess you’d meet at the club.
I want poems that tell me earth-shattering truths. No make-up, no tiaras, no perfectly defined eyeliner, no meticulously chosen foundation, no striving for some idealized beauty like Miss America.
In other words, no matter how divinely crafted a poem is, an orgasm is still an orgasm. You can be in Buckingham Palace or on a corner in Recto—an orgasm feels the same. The key is—you must feel it.
---
You Don’t Listen, You Feel
I bring up Garcia Villa's writing to tie it back to our English literature, because, in a way, he led what was considered the "Golden Age" of English writing in the Philippines. During his heyday, he was given a title equivalent to the "Emperor of English Literature." His “feats” were even celebrated in a regular newspaper column. In this case, “feat” meant that Garcia Villa had managed to be accepted into the literary world of the West, supposedly standing toe-to-toe with Western writers. I have no problem with him becoming a Western icon—what disturbs me is the negligence of the public from which his writing emerged and for whom it should have been directed: the Filipino people.
And now, when we wonder why Garcia Villa was eventually forgotten by the West, the answer is simple: he wrote for a people who never considered him one of their own. His greatest mistake was neglecting the Filipino readers who should have been his primary audience.
His flamboyant persona, his stubborn refusal to return to the Philippines—even briefly—despite the longing of every Filipino for his presence, is not a source of pride. A writer should not be solely concerned with his self-concept; he must also consider the wishes of the readers who love him. Garcia Villa was no Greta Garbo. He should have been a Mark Twain.
A writer must nurture not only their craft but also their audience. This is one of the greatest lessons I’ve learned from computer programming. If you want your program to work, to be useful and popular, its interface must be user-friendly. And trust me, the simpler and more intuitive you want your program to be, the more effort it requires.
The greatest writers, in my view, are not those whose works can only be deciphered by the "anchored angels" of heaven. The greatest writers are those who can be understood by everyone—down to the insects and the scum of the earth. If my writing can be grasped by a typical high school student, then I’ve succeeded.
If the founders of Philippine English literature had prioritized a more people-oriented approach, I believe our literature would have thrived. This is where I disagree with many Filipino writers—we often write as if our readers were Americans, Brits, or some other foreign audience. Sometimes it feels like we write just to show off our grasp of grammar or parade our hefty vocabulary. Other times, it seems like we’re writing to impress other writers, win awards, or meet the expectations of some literary figure.
I praise Garcia Villa for his style, but I reject the philosophy behind his writing. I’m not trying to dishonor his legacy as one of the greatest Filipino writers—especially not after his passing. Garcia Villa might have said, "Rizal was a great man, but not a great writer." Writers, after all, have different views on what constitutes great Philippine literature.
If you’re curious to learn more about this enigmatic and controversial Filipino figure, order _The Anchored Angel from Kaya Press.
This review was edited from its original in early 2000's - AM
2024-09-28 06:53:57
bookreviews