Aqui Sila Tumba
By Alfred A. Yuson
The Philippine STAR 09/27/2004

(Following are excerpts from a paper on the writing of fiction presented on the opening day of the Second Ateneo de Manila Literary Conference conducted at Escaler Hall on Sept. 16.)

It is gratifying to note that this conference is dedicated to the memory of the greatest Filipino writer who walked among us -- and sang and
guffawed the loudest, and often berated us of the younger generations over the paucity of our literary produce.

That was in the late ’60s and early ’70s, when Nick Joaquin would often treat to drinks. Of course that came with a price. He liked to needle us over spending too much time on tables laden with bottles of cerveza, and too little when faced with typewriter keys.

I’m not sure now if he ever changed his opinion -- of the generation of writers that followed the stalwarts who were already his contemporaries,
in a sense, or at least in his workday company: Kerima Polotan, Gregorio Brillantes and Wilfrido D. Nolledo among them. He liked to say that those who were only slightly his junior -- Bienvenido N. Santos, NVM Gonzalez,
Edilberto K. Tiempo, Edith L. Tiempo -- had all been proving themselves dedicated and indefatigable in their work habits. While there we were, the young crop of fiction writers, seemingly beholden more to the pleasures of nocturnal camaraderie rather than the solitary efforts at
writing more short stories, perhaps even novels.

Oh, he would acknowledge, most of us were promising poets as well. But then that’s what we all seemed to be engaged in for the most part, for it was -- if only apparently -- easy pickings…. Fiction was the hard stuff, Nick would bellow. And sneer and snort. It took more discipline. It took the long-haul requisites of character, of imagination, of patience in the revision process…

We would rationalize our lean harvest by saying that we were still in the process of research, of soaking in atmosphere and ambience, soaking up on experience. We were covertly involved, despite the overt nonchalance, in gathering material, in sorting out worthy subject matter.

Mga ga-go kayo. Lokohin niyo ang lelong niyo. That was how Nick put an end to our juvenile remonstrations. And we would all succumb to fits of laughter again, while still soaking in the atmosphere and ambience during this precious playtime with the master.

But I believe we eventually learned our lessons well. We learned them from Nick, from Franz Arcellana, the Tiempos, Santos and Gonzalez, the
older Paz Marquez Benitez, the much younger Gilda Cordero Fernando and F.Sionil Jose. We admired Kerima greatly; she was another master. So was Greg a paragon in fiction writing. And Ding Nolledo, why, his language made us poets weep, in exhilaration.

Only a month ago, we attended the launch of a posthumous book by Nolledo, who had also become a primal influence as well as a dear friend. It was a long overdue collection titled Cadena de Amor and Other Short Stories, collated by Dr. Bienvenido Lumbera, who offers a salient introduction.

I was privileged to be part of a motley group of readers for the affair. I wanted to read from the celebrated Nolledo story “Rice Wine,” but then
so did everybody else. And so I eventually chose excerpts from the short story “Harana,” which was equally eloquent and mellifluous

Suffice it to say that Nolledo was a language writer of the first order. And as young, impressionable writers, we were intoxicated with his fiction. He was certainly an influence, especially when it came to getting away with the sheer power of language when one’s idea for a narrative isn’t all that solid.

… But we knew we had to outgrow this adulation, and wend our own way through the thickets of conceptualization, creativity and craft. Thus did
the writers Erwin E. Castillo and Cesar Ruiz Aquino eventually find their own voices, and come up with short stories where lyricism is tempered with a sufficient proffer of conflict, dramatization, insight, and an inveterately ludic quality, especially in the case of Aquino.

Our contemporaries, Ninotchka Rosca, Luis Teodoro, Resil Mojares among them, chose narrative tacks that were nearly entirely shorn of romance, rather relied on social, sociological, and psychological concerns and realities. They were strong storytellers.

So was Antonio Enriquez of Zamboanga City, who mined the wealth of material in Mindanao, and transformed personal experience in the wilds,
such as at Liguasan Marsh, into vigorous, macho narratives that would prove prescient.

Aquino, who also grew up in Zamboanga, and like Enriquez honed his craft in Dumaguete City under the benevolent if exacting gaze of the Tiempos
Edith and Edilberto, would in turn shuck off his fear of flying into uncharted territory, and utilize his felicities of prose AND essential delight in the zany to come up with memorable stories.

Aquino it was, or, let’s call him as we call him -- Sawi -- who often fell back on his Chavacano background by quipping: “Aqui sila tumba”
whenever he felt that he had produced something, or was about to, that would push the envelope for Phil Lit. A poem, a story that was remarkably
original or wondrous in its form and content: “Aqui sila tumba!.” Here, or this, is what will make everyone fall down in rapture and appreciation,
maybe even in stark envy. Talo sila rito. Aqui sila tumba.

From Nolledo to Aquino, then, we have quite a range of strengths as story-tellers. One was pure romance in his heroes’ and heroines’ stance of
rebellion or grief or angst. The other plied angst apart with humorous touches, nay, with swabs of nearly manic glee at the preposterousness of
characters, situations, life passages.

Let us jump now, across decades and an ocean, and partake of yet another exceptional sort of Philippine fiction: I offer (a) passage from a
collection of short stories published by a San Francisco press in 1998, titled The Lowest Blue Flame Before Nothing..... The mature, wizened
narrator’s voice, editorializing from the very fringe of very hard edges, belongs to the 30-something writer Lara Stapleton, a Filipino American
based in New York City. In her short fiction the characters are all emotionally downtrodden, yet always there is a sad hope flickering in their periphery.

I believe she is among the best of her lot, which includes the novelists Jessica Hagedorn, Peter Bacho, M. Evelina Galang, Brian Ascalon Roley,
Noel Alumit, Michelle Cruz Skinner, Bino Realuyo, R. Zamora Linmark, Han Ong, Rodney Garcia, the fresh discoveries Tess Urize-Holthe and Sabina Murray (novelists both), the distinguished transplants Eric Gamalinda,
Marianne Villanueva, Rowena Tiempo Torrevillas, Luisa Igloria, and Gina Apostol, the California “old-timers” Cecilia Manguerra Brainard and
poet-fictionist Oscar Peñaranda. Many more continue to come out of the diasporic woodwork.

In Paris we have Reine Arcache Melvin, in Wollongong in Australia Merlinda Bobis. Also based in Australia is the novelist Arlene Chai. These expatriate Filipino writers are all first-rate with their fiction. And`they share the same wealth of material as the most outstanding among our home-based writers, such as Renato Madrid aka Fr. Rudy Villanueva of Cebu, Jesus Q. Cruz, Leoncio Deriada of Iloilo, Antonio Hidalgo, Cristina Pantoja Hidalgo, Ernesto Superal Yee, Bobby Flores Villasis, Butch Dalisay, Susan Lara, Charlson Ong, Carlos Cortes, Carla Pacis, Clinton Palanca, Jessica Zafra, Timothy Montes, Lakambini Sitoy, Luis Katigbak, Romina Gonzales, Sarge Lacuesta, Nadine Sarreal, Noelle Q. Cruz, Ichi Batacan, et al, et wondrous al

As counterpart to Lara Stapleton’s prose of offbeat emotional engagement, let me share an energetic, erotic passage that marks our very own
Lakambini Sitoy as a young master of prose, and one who is so wise to the ways of her cutting-edge, rock-‘n-roll world.

… But that is only one sample of the kind of wonderful, fevered if well-crafted writing we are capable of. Besides Bing Sitoy, we have the
current leading triumvirate for Philippine fiction in English who have been divvying up the yearly prizes among themselves: Menchu Aquino
Sarmiento, Rosario Cruz Lucero and Socorro Villanueva

And we have the latest generation of fiction writers that count Vicente Garcia Groyon, Tara Sering, Cyan Abad Jugo, Myrza Sison, Francesca Kwe and the recent Ateneo graduate Asterio Enrico Gutierrez who just won his first Palanca First Prize for the Short Story.

Why, that’s more than fifty names I’ve dropped. I am reminded of Dr. Isagani Cruz’s anthology of just a few years back, The Best Philippine
Short Stories of the Twentieth Century, which assembled 50 outstanding short stories in English. Surely a follow-up volume can accommodate even a hundred excellent stories representing only the past decade or two. And each one may be preceded by proper fanfare: Aqui sila tumba.

… I always tell my students in fiction writing, nowhere else should we hope to have been born than here in this seedbed, hotbed, of magical
material. Singapore may have a more rewarding GNP, but its fictionists can only write perpetually of the generation clash or the dilemma of temptation to pee in a lift. Such narrow confines of literary material, indeed.

But here? Aqui sila tumba. Why, the Martial-Law years have yet to be adequately mined by our novelists and short story writers. Fables and
legends jostle with culture clashes with our colonizers and invaders, from Limahong to Yamashita. There is material in our regional differences, in our gamut of economic classes. And always, always there is the undercurrent, the soft but wicked underbelly, of our humor, our rumor of
song, the enduring triumph of daily jokes played on ourselves, the whole wide world over. Aqui sila tumba.

… It may be said that we are multifarious, after all, in our characterizations, situations, settings, circumstances, our history of serial contretemps, AND the particular ardor we bring to bear in our short and tall stories.

The bigger and heavier they are, the harder they fall. That may be so in the West. Here, the lighter we are, the more lithely we fall, the better to rebound with grace.

Talo sila. Aqui sila tumba.