On May 5. Remembering... Me and A Poem

 

The Miracle

 

THE MIRACLE

By Ben Crisp and Rose Flores

 

The coffee was still too hot, so I cradled the foam cup between my knees and lit my last cigarette. 

My last ever, I promised myself, as I had done the day before.

The park was mostly empty.  The sun had not yet crept above the horizon, to burn the dirty greyness from the dawn sky, and it would be at least an hour before the rest of the city left the their homes to brave another miserable taglamig day outside.

There had been reports of another journalist shot in Manila.  I had long grown used to such news, acknowledging it with a kind of postured indifference that my ex-girlfriend had found no comfort in.  It didn’t matter to her that I was relegated to the smallest sections of the sports pages; I was white, and besides, could not an outraged sports fan be just as violent as a vengeful gangster or deranged terrorist?  She was probably right.  Still, I found comfort in my own sense of insignificance.  Speaking barely a word of Filipino, and – some had argued – only just enough English to get by, I would never rise to the ranks of martyrdom like my braver, more talented brethren.  I may have been white, but with no money, no connections and no friends I was worth nothing to anyone.

A familiar figure appeared from behind the trees that formed the arched entrance to the park.  She always wore yellow dresses, or perhaps the same yellow dress, that danced beneath her knees.  She was pretty, or at least she gave an impression of prettiness from across a distance too far to know for sure.  She meandered, indecisive, between the benches scattered beneath pines that brushed the air in the morning breeze, before choosing the one she always chose.

It faced the statue of the Madonna that stood upon a plinth in the centre of a small pond.  It was a simple carving, as they all were; achieving no greatness in aesthetic or skill.  The virgin’s head tilted to one side, serenely, eyes opened wide and her hands stretched out in blessing - not, as it had always appeared to me, shrugging as if to say: what?

To the pinay in her yellow dress she was captivating.  She sat before the statue, alternating between long, lingering stares and moments with head bowed, eyes closed, I guessed, though I was too far away to know.

I sipped my coffee and watched her watching the Madonna, killing time as I waited for my day to begin.

 

There was no place to go, but here. 

I was raging as always, to imperfections. As such, at least, be perfect in front of this holy woman. 

Something stirred into my memory, while I uttered chants I couldn’t even understand.  So, this holy woman people called their mother, and the Catholics believed to be the mother of Christ, had always stunned me.  No, she did not stun me like ghosts scared, but her benevolence scared my sins and inspired me to hope.  At least, in this way, I could re-organize my undecided life.

At least, I’d be prim in front of her, confident in front of her; complete.  Apart from my whoring affairs to get money, I wished some guy would come back for me, as my yellow dress meant waiting.

In a few weeks, my boyfriend, a married man, would decide whether to marry me and annul their marriage, or leave me for his wife.  Of all the men in my life, I just got into material quests so I could sustain my falling business, but this married man was different because he thrilled my every need, other than desire. 

We’ve been on and off this love affair for two years now, and I could see how he craved for my being, because of his maid wife. “My wife compared to your diplomas is only good for a housekeeper,” he told me.

And so, I summoned him.  “You must choose between me and your wife.”  In a few weeks, I hoped, he’d be back to cuddle me and present me a diamond engagement ring.

A yellow dress would be good to wear all the time!  I’d go for this good luck hype.  

“Oh, would you always come back for me, Madonna?” 

In my thoughts I chanted, “My boy friend would come back for me; heaven might let the maid wife curse me, but what can I do?  I have to steal something to love me, or else I won’t stop whoring.  Who would come back for me?  Maybe, a thousand other men, to prance on my neck and mark it ‘Hey, I’ve got your ass, too.”   Will I be punished for ruining a sacred matrimony or stealing a father?

In this place, was something more real and tender.  “Love me tender, love me sweet…  Oh, my love complete,” I hummed.  After my love affairs, here was the only concrete and beautiful thing.

Across the benches, of this, which I called a sanctuary, were a few others who breathed solace like me.  Perhaps.  One could be on a fitness program, another read a newspaper, and still another guy, sipped his brew.  This guy, sipping his brew, could be thinking nuts like me.  Or could he be thanking the magnificence of another day, while he looked up the sky, bowed low for his cup, and darted again, in front this Madonna? 

Or would he look at me, too?  His gaze was flaming hot.  For what thoughts, he could have sensed my urgent pleading to this holy statue, sublime in simplicity and honesty.  “Well, we’re flesh and bones, but if for moments, we could be holy,” an old priest said that during the mass I had attended when I was younger, so once in a lifetime I had been serious in the temples; so once pure, I was, before I came into this labyrinth.  Would my pleadings echo around? 

I caught him looking into nothingness, unconscious maybe, when he glanced into my space and my confused efforts.  That time, when he raised his cup, swallowed and sipped again, I thought he was a handsome bum. 

 

It must be nice, I thought, to have some sort of certainty in life.

To be able to look to a faith to guide you when reality – that deluge of chaos that tears at the flesh and soul – is inescapable.  Or maybe she just liked the statue.

More people began to trickle into the park.  The illusion that this was my place began to fade, like it always did, as the sun drew long shadows on the ground; soon it would be time for work.  Once I had enjoyed the anonymity of living in a big foreign city.  Now, I feared, solitude was decaying into loneliness and I felt myself disappearing into the crowds that lined the streets each day.

She finished or paused whatever thoughts had held her and stood up to leave, as though in a sudden hurry.

Was this my life?  Watching others from outside a window like a child at a pet store?

It took a moment for me to notice the sliver of yellow beneath the bench.  Curious, I stood and walked slowly across the park to the space in the front of the statue.  The impassive Madonna did not turn to look at me as I entered her periphery, and when I stooped to inspect I saw it was a silk summer scarf that had fallen from the bench; that same canary hue of the woman’s dress.

She was already at the end of the park, turning left out of the gates without looking back.  The scarf in one hand, my other reached into its pocket to retrieve my phone.

come dwn sick.  mybe flu.  srry.  tlk 2morrow.

I had taken three sick days in four years.  Whatever else that devotion to such a badly paying job might be called, I reasoned, it wasn’t the symptom of a well man.

I quickened my pace not quite to a jog and scanned the streets when I reached the gates.  For a moment I thought I had lost her until I spied a flash of yellow amidst a crowd of pedestrians moving across an intersection two blocks down.  The traffic closed after them like parted waters and I waited, tense.

Overloaded trucks and bikes whined past at high speed in the dangerous dance of weaving engines that only the Filipinos can survive.  A group of wiry children aligned at the curb next to me, chattering like squirrels, watching the road with unblinking eyes and gesturing to each other with their hands.  They were preparing to cross.  I watched them watching the cars, and when they darted out I sucked in a breath and ran with them.

Horns blared all around me, and I felt the thundering slabs of steel rush by close enough to feel the heat from their choking and spluttering motors, but after a few terrifying moments we were across safely – the children giggling and pointing at the idiotic white man.

The woman had vanished from sight, and I spent a few moments striding between street corners, standing on the tips of my toes as I scanned the faceless crowds for her.  Then the yellow dress peeked out through gaps in the crowd ahead of me, and I moved again in her direction, pushing my way past the suits and the sneakers and the cell phones and sunglasses.

I followed her to a street lined with townhouses – the angular, rendered townhouses for people with the money to pay others to choose their tastes for them.  I had gained enough ground now to call out to her from the other side of the street, but I caught myself when she stopped in front of a high stone wall to push the button on an intercom panel.

She spoke for only a moment and waited for a response, then the courtyard door must have been unlatched from within because she pushed it open quickly and stepped inside.

I was alone, on that lush and empty street, the scarf still wrapped in my hands.

THE MIRACLE

Final Round

The Miracle

 

by Ben Crisp and Rose Flores 

 

 

 

“Yes,” I said, gesturing pointlessly down the street as I crossed to her.  “I… you left it at the park.”

“Thank you,” she said, reaching out a hand to take it.  She brushed a loose strand of hair back and squinted at me.  “I have no money, sorry.  But thank you.”

“No, you don’t… I didn’t want a reward.  Are you alright?  You look upset.”

She turned away, and I wondered how I could be so direct to this perfect stranger.

“I’m sorry,” I said.  “I’m inquisitive.”

“OK,Yankee Steve.  I have to go now,” she said, and started to walk.A stupid, mad chuckle escaped my mouth and I caught it quickly in my hand as I chased after her. 

“No, not… it means I’m nosy.  I’m curious, sorry.  Like a cat, you know.”

She stopped and squinted at me again, as though wondering whether to smile at this insane white man or not.  Then she pointed at my nose.  “Curiosity kills the cats.”

“Yes it does,” I said, nodding.  “Do you want a coffee?”

She turned and started walking again.  “If I had money I would give it to you, but thank you for bringing my scarf.”

I chased after her.  “No!  No, it’s nothing to do with… I want nothing from you.  I just thought you looked like you could use a coffee.”

Her squinting tortured me.  I had no clue what was going on behind those stern brown eyes, and not knowing this little thing was vanishing all that I did know; every instinct was fading from me.

“I’m a journalist, I’m not…” I said helplessly, and shrugged. Not what?

She shrugged back.

 

“Your boyfriend’s house?” I asked as we sat at a table beneath a red canvas umbrella.

“Why do you think that?”

“The locket.”  I pointed at the little golden heart turning restlessly between her thumb and forefinger.  She snapped it into her palm defiantly.

“The scarf is from my boyfriend,” she said, pulling it from her neck and resting it on the table as our coffees arrived.

I tore open a sugar packet and tapped it into my cup.  “I’ll bet you chose it.  It matches your dress.”

She checked her phone and did not answer me.  I was right.

“You drink too much coffee,” she said at last, after she had sighed and tucked her phone away again.  “Caffeine is bad for the heart.”

I shrugged again.  “Everything is bad for the heart these days.”

We sipped from our cups and ventured into the silence that filled the air around us.  Empty, silent air; it choked me more than smoke.  Was that why my fingers reached for last cigarette after last cigarette after last cigarette?

“May I see?” I said, and held out my palm.

She stared at me through steam rising from her coffee, a cradle of warmth between her two soft hands; then lowered the cup, unfolding her fingers to proffer the locket.

It was of the yellow gold I had never admired, adorned with rubies that might have been real, or might have not; and not knowing made them seem worthless.  A tiny clasp unhinged its two halves, splitting the fragile little heart in two, revealing a miniature biscuit-tin print of the veiled Madonna.

“Lucky charm?” I asked.

“She is pure.  Perfect.  Everything else is dirty in the morning.”

“Nothing’s quite as pretty as Mary in the morning,” I sang in my best Elvis voice, but she did not smile. A digital chirrup sounded beneath the table, and she withdrew her phone swiftly, reading the message with that same familiar squint.

“Boyfriend?” I asked.

She reached out and took the locket back, standing as she did so.

“I have to go.  Now.”

Her voice had a tiny tinge of urgency to it.  I stood too.

“Thank you for the coffee,” she said as she started to walk away.

I was about to remind her that I hadn’t actually offered to pay for her drink, but changed my mind and dropped a handful of coins on the table instead, following her.

“Your scarf,” I said, offering it to her.  She snatched it from me with a little noise of annoyance – at herself or at me I was not sure.  “It’s Michael, by the way.”

“Violeta,” she said.

She began to murmur underneath her breath as she quickened her pace.  I was almost jogging just to keep up with her, my hands in my pockets as though we were just two friends in a mutual hurry.  She was praying, I realised; every other word of the rosary filtered from her lips through the noise of the traffic – into which she suddenly stepped, waving her hand at a Corolla with barely readable taxicab printing that skidded to a halt beside her.

“Where are you going?” I asked.

She glanced at me like an impatient schoolteacher as she grabbed at the door.

“Hospital,” she said.

 

“Then Michael hop in!  Or would you leave now?”  So we boarded the Corolla. 

I didn’t know what this guy wanted from me, but I didn’t care less because my thoughts were horrible.  I knew something would happen, and whatever fate again would present to me – as to my friend Hannibal’s wisdom was to be happy and free.  I assured myself that what could happen to my boyfriend was reality, like the shifting of clouds – we just couldn’t stop their movements, only God can.  The next thing I felt our hands were tightly locked, and Michael’s gaze trying to seize my brokenness.

     “Is there something I can do?” he asked.

     “Nothing.  Thank you.”

     Lane upon lane, track upon track; my mind whizzed the clouds, the nothingness, the coldness of my fright, the fallen hopes, the waiting, my single life of faith. At this time, the locket...

    “Don’t worry. We’ll get there.” Michael asserted.

     And then, in my bag the phone buzzed again.  I grasped the phone firmly, but my hands were weak so the phone dropped down the cab floor.  Michael got it and read the message. 

     I did not mind his resolve.  The driver was silent with only the twist of his wheels.  The air was cold and my heart pounded heavily like rocks on my chest breaking for mercy.  “Oh, Maria!”

     Silence in the cab, in the air, near the afternoon...  Michael didn’t say any word, but searched the locket for me and put them in my hands.  He held me close and I did not resist the comfort of his arms around my bereft shoulders that needed warmth and flesh. 

    “We’d go to the back office of the hospital, Violeta.  The staff will give us instructions...”    

I paid the driver as she sprang from the taxi.

            My only thought during the ride was that I could not remember the last time I had hugged someone out of the simple instinct to comfort; when had the act of touch become so foreign?

            Please hurry.

            That’s all the second text had said.So whatever disaster had befallen him had not restricted his use of a phone.  I hated myself for the unkind thought.  Had my ex looked as Violeta looked, whenever I had told her I was ill?

            The nurse at the back office desk glanced at the clipboard hanging by her side.  Emergency. Bay 212.  Violeta hurried ahead and I followed, helplessly, at a distance.  I thrust my hands into my pockets and peered through the gridded windows on the doors as we walked the length of the corridor, my lungs filling with the smell of disinfectant.  The figures in the beds looked so small and vulnerable.  As Violeta stopped ahead of me I realised they were children.  The realisation shook in me, and my fingers closed around something in my pocket.  The familiar scratch of a paper curl on skin. A forgotten cigarette.

            I stood behind her. Through the window in front of us I saw a dimly lit room.  A woman leaned forward in a chair, her back to us.  Her hands were clasped around the hand of a boy who lay motionless in the hospital bed.  From where I stood I could see his eyes were not quite closed, fine red lines crossing his face around them.  Machines surrounded him, their cables disappearing under his sheet, electric green and blue lights winking and flickering softly.

            Across the bed from the woman stood her husband.  I recognised him.  I had seen his face in newspapers; a politician, maybe.  He was short, dressed in a dark business suit.  His hands were deep in his pockets and he stood, slumped, staring at the boy with a strange look on his face.  It was the look of a man for whom the curtain of life had been pulled aside, and he saw nothing behind it.

            His glassy eyes drifted from the boy across the room to the door.  He saw Violeta.  He saw me.  I glanced at Violeta, her eyes now welling.  Across the space, through the glass, the two of them were sharing a look filled with all the sadness, the sweetness, the tenderness and heartache that I had ever known love to be about.  It was then I felt alone, as the lonely will do, rain soaked neighbour to the world of the loved.  A world for those who felt the warmth of others even when parted, and who felt another’s pain.

            I felt pain.  I felt Violeta’s, as she felt her lover’s, as she felt and he felt the pain of his son, and the mother did too, and I; all of us there in the chapel of pain, Our Lady of the Sacred Heart Hospital.

            He looked to his wife, and Violeta turned from the window, her hands to her mouth, eyes searching for some solace in mine.  I curled an arm around her shoulder and walked her to the stairwell at the end of the ward.  As we rose, step by step, I heard the rooftop doorway humming a mellow chant between the cold conditioned inside air and the free and humid day outside.

            On the roof we stood and stared, listening together as the yellow scarf fluttered in morning eddies, and I saw… I saw, across the avenue, beyond the cries and howls and mirth of the city streets, through a border of bricks and bolts and steel, perched on a plinth in the centre of a pond, the concrete Madonna.

            Perhaps love was not pure, but stained.  Perhaps love was not harmony, but discord.  Perhaps love came in all the shades of earth and grime, and in the moist and dirty breath of the taglamig air that brushed our faces on mornings such as this.

            Violeta prayed in silence beside me, and I lit my last cigarette.

 

   My last ever, I promised myself, as I had done the day before.

 

 

 posted by rosevoc2

at July 15, 2016   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Last Kingdom

 

The Last Kingdom

 

The series "The Last Kingdom" is a  blockbuster, as the book of Bernard Cornwell depicts history larger than life.  Thank you for the actors, staff and production who worked hard for us/viewers to enjoy watching and think about passion, honor and fate.  The good values, as well, cannot tarnish any man of his faith, if for love of humanity.  We saw how leaders and people pray earnestly, how some monks are made to choose paths, how the heathen become good at heart and about courage to realize an oath.  Blessed days ahead for everyone! Oh, yes, I'm a fan of Uhtred and everyone there, and of course, Cornwell!    Yay!

 

In August. From Netflix/You Tube. OUTLANDER

 OUTLANDER

Depicts genuine love of family, loyalty to friends and vows, charity for the unfortunate.  Congratulations to the book author Diana Gabaldon, to the production and staff, to the actors/actresses commendable endeavor! Outlander is stunning and educational!  

Kiss Me

St. Ignatius de Loyola

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbjRlz-HQdc

The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien

" They shared the weight and memory.  
They took up what others could no longer bear.  
Often, they carried each other, the wounded or weak.  
They carried infections.  
They carried chess sets, basket balls, 
Vietnamese English dictionaries, insignia of rank, 
Bronze stars and Purple Hearts, 
plastic cards imprinted with the Code of Conduct.  
They carried diseases, among them malaria and dysentry.  
They carried lice and ringworm and leeches and paddy algae and various rots and molds.  
They carried the land itself - Vietnam, the place the soil, 
a powdery red-orange dust that covered their boots 
and fatigues and faces.  
They carried the sky..."

Love After Heaven, Parts 1-5 by Isagani R Cruz

Love After Heaven, Parts 1 to 5

2015/08/04 FICTION IN PROGRESS ONE COMMENT

I shall but love thee better after death, one book says, but I don’t believe that. I’m dead and I don’t see Julie anywhere around. Of course, another book says that, after death, we neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven. Angels, my foot! I don’t have wings. I’m not playing a harp. In fact, I’m exactly as I was the day I died, except I’m not tied to that hospital bed with all those tubes going in and out of my body.

Heaven is grossly overrated. I thought that, when I died, I would experience unimagined happiness, like orgasms that last for decades or food that I can eat without having to go to the bathroom or music that I can listen to without getting tired. Or at least, something really enjoyable. I spent most of my life praying that I would go to heaven, even being sorry for anything that would endanger my life after death. I could have done all those things I was not supposed to do, but I didn’t, because I thought that life was hell, or at least purgatory, and if I had suffered enough on earth, I would not suffer in heaven.

What crap! Heaven is just like earth, only a bit cleaner.

I remember the day I died. They were all around the bed – Julie, my cousin Gerry, my sister Yoly, and four, maybe six doctors all shouting orders to three or four nurses scampering like terrorized schoolchildren in the background.

Code, someone kept shouting.

I looked at them from the ceiling, or actually through the ceiling because I could see in front of me the fluorescent lamp and the fire sprinkler. My body – it looked like my body, even with the grotesque tubes injecting all sorts of colored liquid into it – was jerking with every touch of the defibrillator.

I could see not just the bed where my body was lying, but right beside it, or maybe superimposed on it – I can’t be sure now – my condo apartment in upscale Global City. There were two or three cops there – it’s funny how I can’t seem to count properly here in heaven. They were talking to my two domestic helpers, the cook and the laundry woman. I half-expected Julie to be there, shouting at them to keep their hands off the antique blue porcelain plates, but of course, she was in the hospital room, like the dutiful wife that she wasn’t.

I could also see a room in a seedy motel in downtown Manila. He was there, the asshole, the guy that turned Julie against me. He was with a woman, or maybe a man, or somebody anyway. They were in the shower. He was sitting in some kind of contraption that looked like a trapeze swing. He or she or whatever that shadow was was hovering over him.

Then I found myself, without even a dissolve or a fade-away, here in heaven, sitting in this queue that must have stretched for miles.

Oh, yes, sometime – and here in heaven, time has no meaning, so I can’t really tell if this was long ago or just a minute ago – I went through a tunnel. There was a light at the end, the light that some guy in white was waving at my face to guide me through the darkness. I say it was a guy, but it could have been a woman, or even an animal, or something. Maybe an angel? But whoever or whatever he or she or it was, he or she or it had no wings.

But I knew I was in heaven because, well, it felt good to be here. Peaceful. Calm. With no more pain. Not as good as I thought it would be, but good enough. Better than having all those doctors forcing my body to bounce on the bed. Better than seeing Julie pretending to still be in love with me even when she was already sleeping with that asshole.

Boy, that sucks! That really sucks! Some guy with a long beard comes to me and apologizes that they made a mistake somewhere in the bureaucracy here in heaven. I’m not supposed to be here yet. I’m supposed to suffer some more down there on earth.

Okay, so I got carried away saying that heaven was overrated. Okay, so I used the word asshole here. But surely those are forgivable misdemeanors. Surely all my efforts at being good on earth were worth something. I thought that the bureaucrats here kept a ledger of my good deeds. Of how patient I was when I found out about Julie and that asshole. Excuse me, that person. Okay, that human being. Surely that counts for something.

I can’t go back to earth. I was the laughing stock of the entire corporation there. Everybody knew about Julie. Except me. Her husband. Her husband of twenty years. Twenty years of being faithful to her. Not even glancing at any other woman. Not even entertaining any thoughts of sleeping with anybody else.

I was a fool, for heaven’s sake.

When I did find out, I did not even confront Julie. I just went to our parish priest and asked him what to do. He said that I had to forgive her. She was a human being, fallen because of original sin. The devil made her do it. He asked if I still loved her, and I had to say yes. I couldn’t lie to him. He was a priest, after all.

I did love her. I still do love her. But I am not sure if that means anything to her. One thing I know, I don’t really want to see her again. When we got married in that grand wedding in that old cathedral, she promised to love me till death do us part. Well, death is a good way to part now. Though she did say, during our first anniversary, that she would love me better after death. She made me memorize that poem, for heaven’s sake. How do I love thee and all that shit.

No, please, do not let me go back. Please, no, let me stay here in heaven. I promise never to badmouth heaven again. Seriously.

Well, it looks like this guy listened to me. He now tells me not to worry. He will send me back, but not to the same body. He will send me back in a different body, as an adult. I do not have to be born again as a baby and wait so long to be as old as I am now. I will be resurrected – I think he used the word reincarnated – as a male, single, mature adult.

Maybe things won’t be so bad, after all. Maybe I will meet Julie again and she won’t meet that asshole again and maybe we can live happily ever after after all. Perhaps even meet here in heaven again. Perhaps.

What? Now, that really sucks! This guy with the beard says I won’t remember my past life at all, except in moments of great stress. How can I find Julie again if I won’t remember that we were once happily married, that I loved her even when she was unfaithful to me, that I want to be with her again? Holy shit!

* * *

Julie cried, as she had to. It was what she was expected to do. She had practised it at home, in front of the mirror. How to cry without ruining her mascara. How to cry like she meant it.

This man had made her life miserable by doing what she never expected him to do. He had ignored her affair.

He had kissed her like he always did when he would come home from work and she was in the kitchen, preparing their dinner. Except that she had not prepared dinner. She had dinner instead with Frankie. And not just dinner. Dessert. Dessert like she never had dessert before with this husband of hers.

But this man kissed her anyway. Did not even ask, never even asked, where she had been. She was sure that he could smell Frankie on her skin. He was not dumb. He was, in fact, very smart, the smartest in his group of business executives. He had not become a millionaire by being dumb.

She knew that he knew, but he never said anything. Just kissed her on the cheek as he did every evening of their married life. Their unexciting, boring, routine married life.

The only excitement – if she could call it that – was the anxiety of not knowing when he would finally let go and slap her, kick her, maybe stab her with that paper cutter he kept on his desk. But he never let his anger show. The guilt she felt was worse than even the ugliest scene she could imagine between him and her.

She could never forgive him for forgiving her her trespasses.

http://isaganicruz.com/blog/

The Jeepney Murders, Chapter 17

On November 4, 2018. Story Draft 1

november 4, 2018


the house was filled with a scent of hope and of people from many places.  clear white stairs and orange tiles made everyone comfy.  it was almost a gathering of people with ideals and happy tomorrows.   to and fro the kids of various families explored the place. nothing seemed grand, but what each had in his heart.  what can i say, but kneel and be proud of heaven's blessings.  that was my place and everyone loved it.

a lecture would begin while participants waited.  guests were already there and professionals, too.  Even the ambassador of Blood Line, Madame Carina was present.  So what's next?

Descent

https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/descent-21/

60th Philippine PEN National Conference

Ma'am Cristina Pantoja- Hidalgo, Ms. Shirley Lua, Marvin and Wilson, myself - in the photos above  

60th Philippine PEN National Conference
21-22 November 2017, Tuesday-Wednesday
4th Flr. Buenaventura Garcia Paredes, OP Building (UST Alumni Center)
University of Santo Tomas, España, Manila, Philippines

Theme: PEN at 60: Reaffirming the Writer’s Commitment to Truth and Freedom
Overall Convenors: Bienvenido Lumbera, Charlson Ong, Lito B. Zulueta