Strange to be engulfed by all the waves of kilig emanating from all around me. You could get a good-vibe aura cleansing just by watching it in a theater crowded with members of its target audience. Most of it would have been lost on me otherwise.

Normally I shush people who chatter during a movie, but couldn't bring myself to this time.

Gotta love the baddie vampires -- "We're going to slaughter you all, but first magmo-modeling muna kami."

Edward Cullen: Gay or just metro? Consider:

• Fabulous outfits, perfect hair, layers of foundation and eyeliner
  
• Very chic self-decorated pad
  
• Has primal thirst for human blood but resists the act even when provided with motive and opportunity
• Very violent (but still oddly graceful) outburst upon resisting the act
  
• Can barely conceal revulsion when first confronted with feminine pheromones
  
• Resorts to elaborate but lame excuses to keep girl away from him
• And eventually commits to her despite the lame excuses
• But still won't do her
  
• Disappears for long stretches with no explanation; returns rejuvenated
• Scares off straight dudes with meaningful eye contact
  
• Shows more decisiveness and vitality when engaging with James, the hot baddie vampire, or with Jacob, the hot goodie werewolf
• Has a history with the hot goodie werewolf
  
• Is condescending and hostile towards fellow female vampires who've hooked up with his "bros"
  
• Coats his body with swarovski crystals (risking life and health), then shows off
• Has a sugar daddy who "made" him, and is ultimately loyal to same
  

The vampire archetype as we know it today emerged during the repressed Victorian period in England and is usually viewed as a metaphor for unbridled sexuality, which is presented as dangerous. That EddieBoy is "vegetarian" is often read as a metaphor for abstinence, but there's a simpler explanation: He's just not that into her.

Kristen Stewart has a beautiful face, and the camera loves her.

I identify more with the parents. (Okay, so I first noticed this while watching The O.C.)

Most effective moment: The Cullens' first appearance in the caf. But I can't tell if this was because of the cinematic treatment or because of the thrill that rippled through the theater.

Watch The Lost Boys na lang.

It's a little over a year since the insanity of writing and producing Namets! started for me, and the story is finally going to have some closure. The Negrense movie is coming home to Bacolod to kick off a caravan that takes it to cinemas in Iloilo and Cebu. Catch it if you're in the area; click here for more details. Some press material follows:

Namets! is showing exclusively at the following venues: 

• SM Bacolod:  November 24 –30, 2008 SM Cinema 3
• SM Iloilo:  December  1-6, 2008  SM Cinema 7
• Ayala Center Cebu: December 6, 8-10, 2008 Ayala Cinema 4 

For reservations, please call:

•    Bacolod: (034) 495-0936 / Rhea Sol – 0919-744-7706
•    Iloilo: Eden – 0929-777-0734
•    Cebu: Tina – 0908-987-4731 
  

DVD and VCD copies will be available in video stores in December. 

We’d like to thank the following: 

Bonfire Productions /  7^th Films  /  Tramontina / Sugarland Hotel / Ford Motors Negros Occidental / Enting’s / Pixel / Cook Magazine 

Our media partners: The News Today / Yuhum Magazine / Expresscom / Pacific Ads / Love Radio / Killerbee

The MTRCB has given "Pass" an R-18 rating, which means it can be shown in public but only to people 18 years old and older.

It'll be shown at Cinemanila 2008, which runs from October 16-29 this year at Gateway Cineplex 10 in Cubao, Quezon City. It's part of the "Short Film Exhibition - Young Cinema" (haha "young" daw o) program.

Screening schedule to follow; in the meantime, view the trailer here or here. If you're 18 years old or older, come and watch; I promise it won't scar you forever.

Something forwarded to me.

------------------------

Please come and watch; one night only. Tickets are at P100 only; P50 if you flash a student's ID. Feel free to repost the poster below :)

Projections
133 mins.
Saturday, July 12, 2008
6:15 pm, CCP Little Theater
2008 Cinemalaya Philippine Independent Film Festival

A showcase of film craftsmanship   

Featured Shorts:

Dok
Animator/Writer/Director: Ramon del Prado
2003, 2.30 min
Animation
A hardworking islander’s tribe is introduced to his greatest rival for chieftain: a television.

Buhay Mandaragat
Directors:  Jason Lopez, Celize Innocencio, Aiza de Leon
2008, 10.19 min
Documentary
A short poetic documentary about the fishermen’s daily lives.

Altered States
Directors:  Marichris Quimson, Andrea Tonda, and Gian Cruz
2006, 3.30 min
Experimental Narrative
“Make the most of the hemp seed, and sow it everywhere.”

De Mano
Directors:  Mike Viñas, Heather Europa and Borgy Torre
2008, 20.08 min 
Short Feature 
The transformation of Emilio, a bus conductor, from a monotonous, repetitive and oblivious lifestyle to a more meaningful existence.

Be My Baby
Directors:  Naomi Quimpo, Sara Ramos and Ru Angeli Cruz
2007, 3.36 min
An overprotective mother refuses to let her daughter see her prince.  Inspired from the play, “Into the Woods.”

Lapida
Directors: EJ Angeles, Jed Bautista, Cathleen Cotioco
2008, 10.47 min
Short Feature
Joven (Federico Roa) comes home to find his mother dead and borrows a casket for a limited period of time.

Balik Tanaw
Director:  Jason Moll
2007, 19.08 min
Short Feature
A nostalgic story about a lost love. 

Dollhouse
Directors:  Naomi Quimpo and Patrixia Deseo
2008, 17 minutes
Short Feature
Red Zamora (Jao Mapa) has been left to solely raise their 7-year-old daughter Audrey (Fiona Robles) as his wife, Claire (Elle Velasco), works abroad as a nurse. He finds himself frequently waking her up from nightmares and discovers bruises in her arms. But as he inquires Audrey for the cause of these bruises, she simply relates the story that an evil force, which she calls the boogeyman, is haunting her in the dollhouse she supposedly lives in.
Cast:
Fiona Robles - Audrey
Jao Mapa - Red
Elle Velasco – Claire

Gusto Kita Too
Written and Directed by Rica Arevalo
2008, 9 mins
Short Feature
Love is at first sight for Brian when he sees Casey sitting in the park.  He pursues her, Filipino style.  True love is found in this funny courtship set in the USA!
Cast:
Brian Reyes
Casey Pascual

143:  Lovers Discourse
Written and Directed by Vicente Garcia Groyon
2007, 22 mins
Short Feature
Language: Hiligaynon with English subtitles
1 A man and a woman find ways of rekindling the spark after the first flush of sexual attraction has passed.
4 A woman of a certain age and her young lover confront the harsh truths of their relationship.
3 A teenage boy muddling through his feelings for a friend finds himself performing an ill-timed act of courage.
These fragments revisit the tropes of conventional cinematic representations of love and locate within them moments of honesty and truth. “143” is Filipino shorthand for “I love you.”

Muni-muni
Written, Produced and Directed by Doy del Mundo
2008, 13 min
Short Feature
“Muni-muni” deals with a screenwriter’s musings.  Frustrated with the realities of filmmaking, he talks with the characters of his unproduced screenplays.
Cast:
Sid Lucero
Chin-Chin Guiterrez
Elijah Castillo

God Explains Space To His Angels

By Sid Gomez Hildawa (1962-2008)

You'll have to slow down.

I mean, very, very slow, like travelling
an inch and a half (they call
it distance) in eight hundred
million years (they call
it time). You'll have
to distinguish between here
and there - yes, yes,
we all know there's only
the here and now,
but you'll have to see
it their way - with everything
reduced to three dimensions.
It comes with being
exiled in a mortal
body, you see, which is not
entirely a curse, I assure
you. Space is the disposable
furniture of a mind
enmeshed in its own
metaphors, brandishing
a meter stick under
our immeasurable sky.

You'll need wings.

If you still haven't picked them up, now's you're chance. They're in bookstores everywhere, and then in bookstores elsewhere soon. Support Filipino writers!

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Kung tutoo man 'to... sigh. *shakes head*

My friend the chef strikes again.

This time I was allowed to kibitz on a lunch he was serving to some potential wine suppliers for his catering business. By "kibitz" I mean I hid out on his bedroom balcony and had the food served to me there. Don't ask why.

The meal began with two generous slabs of foie gras on a bed of lettuce, moistened with a raspberry jelly dressing. An odd combo, but the tartness of the dressing works much in the same way that mint jelly does for lamb, which is to say, it was delicious.

Next were steamed scallops from Japan with some smallish prawns from -- I don't know, Batangas? -- drizzled with foie gras oil and resting on top of some chopped kangkong (I don't like the sound of "swamp spinach") which I mistook for seaweed, served with a red pepper puree. I'm allergic to crustaceans and shellfish, but they were very well-prepared, apparently, because I feel fine. The prawn meat was light and fluffy, and the scallops were meaty and flavorful.

Then came two slices of seared duck breast on perched on a serving of risotto cooked in chicken broth. The duck came with an orange cardamom sauce, which had a pleasant tang.

Finally there was a chocolate souffle topped with chilled mocha cream. There was extra, so I had a second serving.

All this was washed down by an incredibly light and sweet wine called a sauternes -- wonderful, and also wonderfully expensive. Gah. Yum.

The chef is the wizard behind Charley's in Lipa, now closed, sadly. But he caters functions private and public, for as few as two people. It's not a bad way to spend an evening with a beloved. Drop him a line at iampopit@yahoo.com to inquire about menus and prices.

The days are cloudier, nights are cooler, and people are leaving or have left for the big city. I'm due to go soon, too. After the whirlwind of the workshop, I feel a little out of sorts, like I should be doing something, when I really don't have to. It was C's last Sunday in Bacolod, and we had been rehashing the workshop over a long lunch at Kuppa, formerly Celyn's, when we rang up B and F and rounded up the leftover vodka, bought some Sprite, ice, chips, and plastic cups, and went for a quick drive in B's car. I thought it would be nice to cap the whirlwind with an alcohol-infused picnic on a grassy ledge overlooking Guimaras Strait while watching the sunset.

And it was.

I knew it was going to be grueling, and in fact I thought it was going to be a four-week thing, with a quartet of projects. As it turns out, three is just right -- by the third week you're kind of bushed, but simmering with creative energy and thinking about trying things outside the workshop.


G and I were talking about how the best thing about it is that it forces you to get off your ass and make something, if only so you don't get completely embarrassed on screening day. But the schedule's no joke -- you're given the assignment on a Friday night, during which you're forced to stay until midnight watching a movie which you simply can't concentrate on because you're busy conceptualizing and trying to contact talents, secure locations and equipment, etc. At midnight there'll be the inevitable winding-down drinks with the class, sometimes the sorcerer, and it's not until three in the morning when you get to hit your MP3 player (the assignments revolve around music) and your computer in earnest, hammering out something resembling an outline.


Then it's up at dawn the next day to do some more final preprod before shooting in the afternoon, or early the next morning. By the luck of the draw, my editing slots were always Sunday 8AM, which meant I had to be done shooting by Saturday night. A couple of hour's sleep after viewing the rushes, and then it's off to piece them together with L, who's thankfully a pretty good filmmaker himself, so he provided a lot of input and editing solutions. Then it would be screening time Monday night. You're forced to sit there and listen to people discussing what you sweated blood for over the last 48 hours. And then it's over -- on to the next project.

Fifteen years is much too long, but somehow using a camera is a lot like riding a bike -- you never quite forget how. It helps that for the last seven years I've been torturing shepherding students along the way to completing their own video projects. But there's something about holding a camera in your hands, pointing it at something, and pressing the record button that no amount of thesis advising can replace.

Yesterday was a red-letter day: I finished a 9-minute short -- my first in fifteen years. I wasn't quite prepared for how good it would feel.


In the apprenticeship course, every weekend is project time. The sorcerer issues a challenge, sets parameters, and then sends the seven of us off. This week the parameter was a strange piece of music -- 8 minutes of experimental choral droning.

I agonized over the concept. My initial impression of the piece involved a ball of light descending from the heavens to a crowd of people waving their hands in the air.

Not doable.

I'd been averse to using an old story for a project like this, thinking what for when there are millions of stories yet to be told chorva? Pressed for time, I turned to a short story I'd written about a menage a trois. The story's dark tone seemed to suit the music. It needed only one location (read: my room) and the action could transpire over the course of one night. The real problem was finding three people who would be willing to undertake the journey that the characters take, as well as simulate three-way sex acts on video.

I managed to cast the girl first -- she's a lovely Russian-Filipino beauty who's a cross between Uma Thurman and Maricar de Mesa. A friend found one guy -- a very talented, intense, and uninhibited actor who I've known for several years. I knew they would be easy to work with, as they'd been the subjects for a class exercise on staging and coverage. Finding the second guy was trickier. Everyone was either busy, out of town, or scared off by the requirements of the role. Finally I shifted gears and revised the story to focus on a couple instead of a threesome. Whaddaya know -- there ARE still millions of stories waiting to be told chorva.

My nervous energy ensured that my preprod was meticulous. I ended up going only half an hour over schedule, and nothing went wrong. It was a five-hour shoot with the actors, plus two hours of cutaways and wild track recording. I ended up with a tape and a half of footage. Then there was about two hours' sleep before I met up with an editor to cut it together and prune it down to 8 minutes.

In the end, not finding the third actor was a blessing -- I'd overestimated the amount of space in the location, and one more person would have been chaos. Because I had to keep a closed set, I was director, DP, camera operator, gaffer, production designer, grip, makeup and prosthetics artist, and PA. J the guy actor, about six or seven set-ups into the shoot, looked thoughtfully around at the set, watched me clambering and crawling and lifting, and said, "THIS is indie."

By the time I got home bearing the precious DVDs and miniDV tapes containing copies of the final cut, I was exhausted. But it felt good. The video turned out well, all things considered. I was lucky to get the actors and the editor (a Cinemalaya director himself) that I did -- they took instruction well, gave good input, and were a breeze to work with. My gratefulness is inexpressible.


Naturally I'm in love with what I came up with, but I think I could have produced utter crap and still feel as happy as I do now. I don't know how the sorcerer and the other apprentices are going to take it, but it doesn't matter -- this was something that I was scared/unwilling/too lazy to do, and I did it.

Practically all my life I'd heard about what a wonderful teacher P is, but I'd never had a chance to sit in his classroom, except for a couple of talks in high school and college. This summer my newfound free time allowed me to enroll in an apprenticeship course offered by the summer workshop that he founded and runs. Not a bad way to spend a summer, I must say.

Five days a week for four weeks, from 6PM to 12 midnight, seven of us apprentices meet up in the fabled Room 10 for an encounter with P, who takes us through the basics of film directing and shares his considerable experience in the industry. The small class size is perfect for a course like this, and the variety in the class composition ups the ante and enriches the discussion -- besides me, there's a film editor, a cinematographer, a young filmmaker, an older filmmaker, a student.

P's best qualities are his generosity and energy. He was fighting off the flu last week, but that didn't stop him from casting his spells. When he interviewed me, he said that he's very good at inspiring people. After one week of apprenticeship, I can vouch for that.

You, what are you good at?

...

I'm sure in your head you're thinking, "Well, I'm pretty good at a lot of things..."

...

...

Uhrm...

Yes?

I'm good at processing?

Processing.

Yeah -- breaking things down, putting them back...

I so agree. You know what you are?

No.

You're a synthesizer.

... Ah.

The best thing about having a friend who's a chef is, well, that he can cook. Even better is when he's generous about feeding his friends.

P trained at Le Roche in Switzerland and now runs a catering business, specializing in what I like to call "straightforward cuisine," meaning hearty, delicious, healthy food without the tomato roses, puff-paste swans, and other ek-ek (although he can whip those up when needed).

Sometimes he'll have friends over to unload leftovers from the last function, or to act as guinea pigs for his culinary experiments.

Last Monday was different. The C5 Homeowners Association, bored out of its wits over the Holy Week, decided to contract P's services for a private dinner to celebrate Christ's resurrection (and to stuff ourselves silly). That P's squeeze D is a member of the C5HA made scheduling a breeze. We rang up a few other old friends to make a night of it.

The dinner began with lentils in broth (a little thin, P warned, but yummy nonetheless), the bitterness of the beans tempered nicely by the onions and a dash of curry.

It was followed by a mediterranean salad -- greens, red peppers, tomatoes, black olives drizzled with grated feta cheese and an olive-oil-based dressing.

P then brought out some pasta with a thrillingly spicy tomato sauce that demanded chasing with strips of breaded fried chicken.

To soothe the palates, M and R brought wines from Vietnam and Chile, respectively: Dalat and Diablo -- which we deemed appropriate for Easter.

Then came the fried pork chunks and pan-seared mahi-mahi fillets, both coated with herbs and spices that accentuated the natural flavors of the meat without overwhelming them or the diners.

We garnished this with a kind of savory mushroom compote and dipped back and forth between pasta, pork, and fish as P kept replenishing the serving platters.

The wines were already giving everyone a nice buzz when dessert arrived -- coffee jelly topped with fresh whipped cream and two flavors of cheesecake (triple chocolate and strawberry) from Cheesecake Melliza (best cheesecake in Manila).

P then brought out coffee and tarragon tea (both of which provide strong, but strikingly opposite, narcotic effects) and conjured up pakwan shakes, just because he could.

More pleasant than the food, though, if that's at all possible, was the company. There were F & T, T & O, P & D, and R and M and me (R's A showed up for an hour). We found each other in our late teens and early 20s through a network rooted in the DLSU CommArts program and which extended into Harlequin Theatre Guild and a production outfit called Imagination Inc. Since then we've led separate lives, made new friends and attachments elsewhere, but we keep returning to each other for some reason, and it's always a warm feeling when we do.

Stephen King wrote that you don't ever make friends like the friends you make in high school, but I'd have to disagree. In high school you're still largely unformed, and so many things can still change about you if you let them. It's so rare and difficult to find people who share your interests, perspectives, and sense of humor, and I think it's easiest to do this in the melting pot called college, where there's just the right amount of diversity and homogeneity.

I'd been planning to seek it out, but it slipped my mind.

Then, quite by chance, I saw this on the wall of an interchange in Tsim Cha Tsui.


It merits a place on an information map, apparently. I couldn't believe I was so close.

	Emerging into sunlight, I sought out the spot indicated on the map, and found a pedestrian traffic light, its baleful red eye beaming a warning from across the street. I wondered if I should heed it.
	A glance upward convinced me to push onward. It looked familiar, and so very close.
	Past the light were a short flight of stone steps, then a narrow passage. It looked like another world at the other end.
	More steps down into a long alleyway. Delivery men brushed past me lugging boxes, pushing trolleys. People stared at me like I didn't belong there. Which I didn't. The sign didn't mean anything to me, but the arrow looked promising.

And then I was there.


I ventured up the elevator, of which there are several, each pair leading up to a different hotel/apartment tower. The elevator opened onto a kind of tiny vestibule with a dingy emergency staircase on one side and doors that looked like they belonged in a mental institution on the other. I took a peek through the reinforced glass, then I heard the elevator bell. I rushed down the staircase before I was discovered.

I finally made it back out, but with no angry Indian shopowners chasing after me. I looked around and realized I was on Nathan Road, Kowloon's main drag. California Bar, I later learned, was on Hong Kong island, much too far for a look-see, and too early. Something for the next visit, I suppose.

Exhausted as I was from the bloody event today (which went well, though "it's a mystery" still) something urged me to push on to Padre Faura and drop off the other long-overdue project that I needed to finish. There I found the old couple getting ready to do their nightly paseo at the mall before starting the long commute home. Manong F wouldn't get up until I agreed to join them for dinner, especially after finding out that I'd never been to the Mall of Asia. So I tagged along on their nightly routine, and we shared a plate of seafood shabu-shabu and a large bowl of congee before heading to UCC to have dessert. MoA was... huge, as expected. Large and empty, quite unlike the other SM malls in terms of atmosphere. The closeness of the bay made it feel even stranger. I'd been unnerved by the wide expanses of empty spaces in the U.S., and this evening brought that feeling back. Not even the blaring sound system or the sparse herds of people wandering aimlessly could dispel it. What saved it was the old lion's "pag-iingay" as he railed against the usual suspects and told new stories. Ma'am T joined in gamely here and there, though she had clearly had a long day. Once again they radiated affection and patience for one another. Wonderful vibes to be near to after all the stress of the past week. Take that, equinox. By the time we strolled back to their waiting car, the sky and the bay were black. More emptiness, but Brillantes was right -- only love can bridge the cold distances between the stars.

Read on the occasion of the opening of the Bienvenido N. Santos Museum at De La Salle University, 21 March 2007

Bienvenido N. Santos wrote several novels, but as a writer of fiction he will probably be best remembered for his short stories. One short story, in particular. Certainly all his stories are worth reading, but "The Day the Dancers Came" wields an uncommon power.

This is the story that's held up as being the most emblematic of the fate of the oldtimers-the manongs who were the first wave of Filipino migrant workers in the United States in the 20th century. Aging and alone after a lifetime squandered trying to make it in a foreign country, deprived of the social networks, transportation and communication technology, and cultural tolerance that make working abroad easier today, these shuffling old men found themselves wandering between two homes-one unwelcoming and persistently unfamiliar, and the other forever barred to them by time. It's a limbo state that Mang Ben effectively dramatizes in this story.

Read today, the story feels in places like a dated, quaint relic from its New Critical times. Published shortly after his fellowship at the Iowa Writers Workshop, it's constructed as an organic unity, with details carefully chosen for their symbolic value. The action is limited to the timespan defined by the story's title, and the point-of-view is fastidiously consistent. It's the type of story that rewards a Formalist close reading, since all its elements arch gracefully away from each other, only to touch at the most correctly ambiguous, ironic tangents.

"The Day the Dancers Came" is also often read as the definitive depiction of the oldtimer tragedy, and as a portrait of the America-tainted Philippines. However, beyond its topicality, the contrived images that enfold the reader in a thorny embrace, its magic sound mirrors that scream "objective correlative," this story achieves what few stories can-the delectable tingle that signals a direct hit to the soul.

Of the most memorable passages in this memorable story, two stand out.

The first occurs in its central scene, when the oldtimer Fil stalks the Filipino dance troupe at their hotel. He hovers at the fringes of this young, happy crowd, rehearsing in his head how he will approach them, invite them to his apartment for lunch, offer his services as tour guide-simultaneously being welcoming and creepy, vulnerable and needy. He longs to talk to them, but shyness and a raging inferiority complex, born out of years of being a colored person in a white country, prevents him. Finally, a whiff of perfume from one of the girls, scents of long-forgotten camia, ilang-ilang, and dama de noche, infuses him with courage. And then the real disaster happens. Listen:

"Two boys with sleek, pomaded hair were sitting near an empty chair. He sat down and said in the dialect, "May I invite you to my apartment?" The boys stood up, saying, "Excuse us, please," and walked away. He mopped his brow, but instead of getting discouraged, he grew bolder as though he had moved one step beyond shame. Approaching another group, he repeated his invitation, and a girl with a mole on her upper lip, said, "Thank you, but we have no time." As he turned towards another group, he felt their eyes on his back. Another boy drifted towards him, but as soon as he began to speak, the boy said, "Pardon, please," and moved away.

They were always moving away. As if by common consent, they had decided to avoid him, ignore his presence. Perhaps it was not their fault. They must have been instructed to do so. Or was it his looks that kept them away? The thought was a sharpness inside him."

It's a testament to Mang Ben's skill that he manages to show us in this scene exactly what Fil looks like, what he is to the dancers, without ever leaving Fil's consciousness. The reader is placed in an ambivalent, cringe-inducing position, simultaneously sympathetic to Fil's plight, yet understanding that no one in their right mind would ever respond to his advances in the way that he wants them to. Even the carefully placed detail of the mole on the girl's lip registers how his consciousness focuses on the mouth that delivers the polite but firm rejection.

Earlier, we hear Fil imagine

"how wonderful it would be if he could join the company of dancers from the Philippines, show them around, walk with them in the snow, watch their eyes as they stared about them, answer their questions, tell them everything they wanted to know about the changing seasons in this strange land. . . . He would go ahead with his plans, introduce himself to the dancers and volunteer to take them sight-seeing. His car was clean and ready for his guests. He had soaped the ashtrays, dusted off the floor boards and thrown away the old mats, replacing them with new plastic throw rugs. He had got himself soaking wet while spraying the car, humming, as he worked, faintly-remembered tunes from the old country."

This is a man with good intentions, who merely wants to be of use, if only because being of use means that people will pay attention to him again, that he will be visible once more after decades of living invisibly as a racial minority in America.

The second passage comes after the encounter with the dancers, when Fil is lying in his apartment half-awake. Here, Mang Ben allows his hero to speak, in a monologue that showcases Mang Ben's talent for rapturous prose. Fil imagines his roommate, Tony, is with him, and tells him about the encounter with the dancers, as he sees it.

"There they were. . . .[w]ho could have been my children if I had not left home-or yours, Tony. They gazed around them with wonder, smiling at me, answering my questions, but grudgingly, edging away as if to be near me were wrong, a violation in their rule book. But it could be that every time I opened my mouth, I gave myself away. I talked in the dialect, Ilocano, Tagalog, Bicol, but no one listened. They avoided me. They had been briefed too well: Do not talk to strangers. Ignore their invitations. Be extra careful in the big cities like New York and Chicago, beware of the old-timers, the Pinoys. Most of them are bums. Keep away from them. Be on the safe side-stick together, entertain only those who have been introduced to you properly.

"I'm sure they had such instructions, safety measures, they must have called them. What then could I have done, scream out my good intentions, prove my harmlessness and my love for them by beating my breast? Oh, but I loved them. You see, I was like them once. I, too, was nimble with my feet, graceful with my hands; and I had the tongue of a poet. Ask the village girls and the envious boys from the city-but first you have to find them. After these many years, it won't be easy. You'll have to search every suffering face in the village gloom for a hint of youth and beauty or go where the grave-yards are and the tombs under the lime trees. One such face...oh, God, what am I saying...

"All I wanted was to talk to them, guide them around Chicago, spend money on them so that they would have something special to remember about us here when they return to our country. They would tell their folks: We met a kind, old man, who took us to his apartment. It was not much of a place. It was old-like him. When we sat on the sofa in the living room, the bottom sank heavily, the broken springs touching the floor. But what a cook that man was! And how kind! We never thought that rice and adobo could be that delicious. And the chicken relleno! When someone asked what the stuffing was-we had never tasted anything like it, he smiled saying, 'From heaven's supermarket,' touching his head and pressing his heart like a clown as if heaven were there. He had his tape recorder which he called a magic sound mirror, and he had all of us record our voices. Say anything in the dialect, sing, if you please, our kundiman, please, he said, his eyes pleading, too. Oh, we had fun listening to the playback. When you're gone, the old man said, I shall listen to your voices with my eyes closed and you'll be here again and I won't ever be alone, no, not anymore, after this. We wanted to cry, but he looked very funny, so we laughed and he laughed with us.

"But, Tony, they would not come. They thanked me, but they said they had no time. Others said nothing. They looked through me. I didn't exist. Or worse, I was unclean. Basura. Garbage. They were ashamed of me. How could I be Filipino?"

Laid bare in this story are the fantasies, delusions, and sad realizations of this time-worn old man. Because they are all in Fil's head, they take place in silence, a silence that is really the sound of a single heart breaking. What emerges in this story is probably the most moving depiction of desperate loneliness ever achieved in Philippine literature, so vivid and specific that no one who has ever been lonely, who has ever longed for a smile, who has ever wanted to be included, can fail to recognize that silence, or respond to it.

One might argue that it's the story's technical perfection that achieves this brilliance. However, technical wizardry can only take fiction so far. To scale these heights-to be truthful while being compassionate, to be observant while being wise-a writer needs a heart, and a soul.

"The Day the Dancers Came" is the best introduction to Mang Ben's work, and also the best of his works to return to after you've read the rest, because it reveals his best qualities as a writer. Bienvenido N. Santos was perhaps the greatest humanist of his generation: emotional without being sentimental, barbed without being angry, gentle without being weak.

The Beatles once asked where all those lonely people come from. Mang Ben had an idea, but didn't waste time trying to answer that question. Instead, he poured all his energy into his own kind of magic sound mirror, recording the lives of all these lonely people, perhaps understanding that what they want, what they need, is to be seen, and to be remembered.

Mang Ben, thank you. We whose hearts are breaking salute you.