those jologz days we used to know...
[sing to the tune of those canaan days from the andrew lloyd webber musical JOSEPH AND THE AMAZING TECHNICOLOR DREAMCOAT and with a french accent]
...ver 'ave they gone
ver did zey go?
eh bien, raise your beret
to those jologz days...
we had a jologz reunion the other night at greenbelt's restaurant 12 (and we still don't know why the place was named as such) because jojo is here and that's like her despedida day (so i should say was here). it's also her sister's bday and they had an open bar. it was a good night with the jologz sans labordei and of course ithaca joe.
but before i ramble on, lemme put things into perspective. jologz is the collective name of my literary barkada in dumaguete '99. funny division of talents there - all guys were poets and all gals were fictionists, but that's just our barkada, the young set. and of course there's an older set who didn't hang out much with us, so we young 'uns were the ones left to explore dumaguete during those may summer days. there's moi, jojo, bunis, indi and we were all saints while popa, mayouno and jose comprised the hansons heheh. together we are the jologz. why the name? i dunno really, maybe because that was our catchword of the month (aside from keri!). or maybe because sometimes, the people we met and the places we saw were kinda jology. and our behavior at times was jology, too. as in, in order to save money, we bagged the freebie chips snacks in the session room and took them to the pension house hehehe. wala lang kasing makain din dun na matino most times, at malayo lumabas sa kabihasnan for food.
anyway, that was us, the jologz. i think it was 2 years ago or so when we last saw each other together. i think i remember joe and jojo having a garage sale because they were ready to fly to ithaca, new york (ny nga ba yun exactly? oh well) because joe got a scholarship at cornell university there for poetry, no less. way to go jose! galeng galeng! and he's already graduating this may. galeng! jologz pride! or course the others i see once in a while, indi the most because she's also in isis (and the one who got me in there in the first place, thanks girl;)). popa we see whenever he comes out with a new volume of poetry, eh he comes up with one every year yata so yun. mayo is my textmate especially when there are media-related eks because he works at malaya newspaper. but these days, i hear he's gallivanting around youthfests and summits (as a rocker dude, no less haha) here and there and picked up a singaporean gf along the way. aha going asia na ang lolo, ha. heheh cool. of course bunis i see a lot lately because of the different pr gigs of anvil's FASTFOOD FICTION anthology kasi ng we are both included there (but i kinda owe her one for pocahontas-ing the tv show appearance heheh peace girl bad timing lang talaga 'yun).
there was a time i wasn't hanging out much with this group because i was kinda preoccupied with some matters of the er, heart, 'ika nga (eek korni!) and that was such a tumultuous time, man, i swear. i never knew how much i missed these people's company until last friday nga sa despedida ni jojo. we ended up reminiscing about the good ol' dumaguete days, like mayo seeing chickenjoy floating in the waters near the boulevard brickwater area, the girls taking 2 laps in a hotel's pool because that's the whole length of the pool--two laps' length, bunis and indi (and everyone) having permasmiles when drunk and/or high, that kind of stuff, the stuff that happens outside of the workshop sessions because those are the most interesting, anyway. i mean, who's gonna like the company there inside with sawi the macho heterocentric dude leading them most times? like when somebody said something about my story CURVE SONG having song lyrics, sabi nya 'ha, meron ba, saan?' and he didn't even get its lesbian content. haaaaaaaay... haysus inay, get out of the island once in a freaking while! buti pa si ma'am edith, galing ng comments. pati si ms. marj e at ms. beni s, cool sila.
hay naku. of course, who would forget mickey the quintessential dumaguete silliman workshoppers' guide to everything underground there? what a character. told them that i met a similar character in sagada when i went there 2 years ago. funny what ganja does to people. well. met some other people there who brought us to some other under things, like moses the leader who gave us a tour of silliman and invited us to a poetry reading in a place called the catacombs because it really is a catacomb, man. i swear, ultra creepy. then i also met this bi girl there who, er, kinda gave me two long shots (glances?) during separate occasions, and gave me the shivers, really, because a friend in manila who has been a silliman fellow years ahead, when asked what she thinks of this bi girl, told me explicitly 'not with a ten foot pole.' okay, so i steered clear. heheh. good advise, ha. but then there was someone there whom some of us wanted to touch with a pole, ten foot long or shorter, because er wala lang, she had bad histories in our respective books. well, whatever. we just swam the other way, that's all. we're a peace-lovng bunch, after all. :P evil!
of course who could also forget the cheap food (fresh kilawin tuna good for 3 for the price of 1), cheap beer (20 pesos buy one take one pa nga yata yun) and cheap internet (20 pesos an hour at that time is cheap, man). so syempre may-i-surf/chat ek kami ever most nights there. ayun, walking walking around there, not much in gimmicks because of the limitation in transportation. we were thinking of exploring nearby siquijor but we kinda backed out when we found out who's going there, so wa na. heheh evil!
when we got back here in manila, we used to hang around together a lot all the time back then. mayo's pad, my naranghita crashplace, big sky mind, those places. those were good times, really. i enjoyed them. learned a lot from these people, too, especially in poetry. i'm glad that they're still glad to see me even after i didn't show up lots of times there during those tumultuous times. i'm glad these guys and girls are okay, doing fine somewhat in their lives, and are still cool.
hey ithaca joe n jojo, take care there, will ya? promise, i'll bring a box of quickchow toyomansi there when we get a chance to visit. :)
those were good times, precisely because i think those were the times when i was forming my identity as a writer, for real, you know? i never really thought of becoming one fulltime, nor did i ever think i will make a living out of it or i will make it my main selling point. i still thought (and also hoped) at that time that i will still be a cinematographer. but i'm glad i didn't choose that life, really. it would have been a different me if the people i met then met me now. i dont even think i'll be able to do this, writing like this, you know. funny how fate sometimes alter the roadsigns of your life and make you take detours that will eventually course you to where you want to go, even if you didn't think you'd go there in the first place. ahh, am i making sense here? wala lang. sometimes, i kinda miss those days, days of just eating corn for lunch and sleeping 'til noon and writing all day and night and sleeping at 5a. but that's the life of the twentysomething. totoo pala yung depiction na yun ng decade gap na yun sa SEX AND THE CITY dati about the age thing, twentysomething and thirtysomething. your late 20s will really define most of yo for the rest of your life, i think. tama yata yung astro charting thing na sabi ni bles about that, about when someone reaches that point in their lives. dami nga nangyari, dami decisions, dami ring things solidified.
well, i'm just glad most things turned out the way they did. i love being a writer, living this life i have now, still having the friends i have, and being myself. it's cool.
jologz4evr!
...ver 'ave they gone
ver did zey go?
eh bien, raise your beret
to those jologz days...
we had a jologz reunion the other night at greenbelt's restaurant 12 (and we still don't know why the place was named as such) because jojo is here and that's like her despedida day (so i should say was here). it's also her sister's bday and they had an open bar. it was a good night with the jologz sans labordei and of course ithaca joe.
but before i ramble on, lemme put things into perspective. jologz is the collective name of my literary barkada in dumaguete '99. funny division of talents there - all guys were poets and all gals were fictionists, but that's just our barkada, the young set. and of course there's an older set who didn't hang out much with us, so we young 'uns were the ones left to explore dumaguete during those may summer days. there's moi, jojo, bunis, indi and we were all saints while popa, mayouno and jose comprised the hansons heheh. together we are the jologz. why the name? i dunno really, maybe because that was our catchword of the month (aside from keri!). or maybe because sometimes, the people we met and the places we saw were kinda jology. and our behavior at times was jology, too. as in, in order to save money, we bagged the freebie chips snacks in the session room and took them to the pension house hehehe. wala lang kasing makain din dun na matino most times, at malayo lumabas sa kabihasnan for food.
anyway, that was us, the jologz. i think it was 2 years ago or so when we last saw each other together. i think i remember joe and jojo having a garage sale because they were ready to fly to ithaca, new york (ny nga ba yun exactly? oh well) because joe got a scholarship at cornell university there for poetry, no less. way to go jose! galeng galeng! and he's already graduating this may. galeng! jologz pride! or course the others i see once in a while, indi the most because she's also in isis (and the one who got me in there in the first place, thanks girl;)). popa we see whenever he comes out with a new volume of poetry, eh he comes up with one every year yata so yun. mayo is my textmate especially when there are media-related eks because he works at malaya newspaper. but these days, i hear he's gallivanting around youthfests and summits (as a rocker dude, no less haha) here and there and picked up a singaporean gf along the way. aha going asia na ang lolo, ha. heheh cool. of course bunis i see a lot lately because of the different pr gigs of anvil's FASTFOOD FICTION anthology kasi ng we are both included there (but i kinda owe her one for pocahontas-ing the tv show appearance heheh peace girl bad timing lang talaga 'yun).
there was a time i wasn't hanging out much with this group because i was kinda preoccupied with some matters of the er, heart, 'ika nga (eek korni!) and that was such a tumultuous time, man, i swear. i never knew how much i missed these people's company until last friday nga sa despedida ni jojo. we ended up reminiscing about the good ol' dumaguete days, like mayo seeing chickenjoy floating in the waters near the boulevard brickwater area, the girls taking 2 laps in a hotel's pool because that's the whole length of the pool--two laps' length, bunis and indi (and everyone) having permasmiles when drunk and/or high, that kind of stuff, the stuff that happens outside of the workshop sessions because those are the most interesting, anyway. i mean, who's gonna like the company there inside with sawi the macho heterocentric dude leading them most times? like when somebody said something about my story CURVE SONG having song lyrics, sabi nya 'ha, meron ba, saan?' and he didn't even get its lesbian content. haaaaaaaay... haysus inay, get out of the island once in a freaking while! buti pa si ma'am edith, galing ng comments. pati si ms. marj e at ms. beni s, cool sila.
hay naku. of course, who would forget mickey the quintessential dumaguete silliman workshoppers' guide to everything underground there? what a character. told them that i met a similar character in sagada when i went there 2 years ago. funny what ganja does to people. well. met some other people there who brought us to some other under things, like moses the leader who gave us a tour of silliman and invited us to a poetry reading in a place called the catacombs because it really is a catacomb, man. i swear, ultra creepy. then i also met this bi girl there who, er, kinda gave me two long shots (glances?) during separate occasions, and gave me the shivers, really, because a friend in manila who has been a silliman fellow years ahead, when asked what she thinks of this bi girl, told me explicitly 'not with a ten foot pole.' okay, so i steered clear. heheh. good advise, ha. but then there was someone there whom some of us wanted to touch with a pole, ten foot long or shorter, because er wala lang, she had bad histories in our respective books. well, whatever. we just swam the other way, that's all. we're a peace-lovng bunch, after all. :P evil!
of course who could also forget the cheap food (fresh kilawin tuna good for 3 for the price of 1), cheap beer (20 pesos buy one take one pa nga yata yun) and cheap internet (20 pesos an hour at that time is cheap, man). so syempre may-i-surf/chat ek kami ever most nights there. ayun, walking walking around there, not much in gimmicks because of the limitation in transportation. we were thinking of exploring nearby siquijor but we kinda backed out when we found out who's going there, so wa na. heheh evil!
when we got back here in manila, we used to hang around together a lot all the time back then. mayo's pad, my naranghita crashplace, big sky mind, those places. those were good times, really. i enjoyed them. learned a lot from these people, too, especially in poetry. i'm glad that they're still glad to see me even after i didn't show up lots of times there during those tumultuous times. i'm glad these guys and girls are okay, doing fine somewhat in their lives, and are still cool.
hey ithaca joe n jojo, take care there, will ya? promise, i'll bring a box of quickchow toyomansi there when we get a chance to visit. :)
those were good times, precisely because i think those were the times when i was forming my identity as a writer, for real, you know? i never really thought of becoming one fulltime, nor did i ever think i will make a living out of it or i will make it my main selling point. i still thought (and also hoped) at that time that i will still be a cinematographer. but i'm glad i didn't choose that life, really. it would have been a different me if the people i met then met me now. i dont even think i'll be able to do this, writing like this, you know. funny how fate sometimes alter the roadsigns of your life and make you take detours that will eventually course you to where you want to go, even if you didn't think you'd go there in the first place. ahh, am i making sense here? wala lang. sometimes, i kinda miss those days, days of just eating corn for lunch and sleeping 'til noon and writing all day and night and sleeping at 5a. but that's the life of the twentysomething. totoo pala yung depiction na yun ng decade gap na yun sa SEX AND THE CITY dati about the age thing, twentysomething and thirtysomething. your late 20s will really define most of yo for the rest of your life, i think. tama yata yung astro charting thing na sabi ni bles about that, about when someone reaches that point in their lives. dami nga nangyari, dami decisions, dami ring things solidified.
well, i'm just glad most things turned out the way they did. i love being a writer, living this life i have now, still having the friends i have, and being myself. it's cool.
jologz4evr!
posted by libay at 12:58 AM
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