the Earth-bound adventures of the Lost and Found

i had planned to write a journal entry on my last hurrah for summer, what with the flurry of travels i've had lately. been wanting to write an end-of-summer piece since last year (that was one glorious summer, too, with its extreme ups and downs), but i never got around to it.   when i learned that ana , my Weekend columnist soulmate and ka-WILA, wrote about summer waning in her column last saturday, i decided to turn mine into a column, too, for this saturday. so here it is, also as a sort of update on what i've been up to lately.   ========= lost and found (#20) by Jeneen R. Garcia   As Summer Ends   By the time you read this, the frayed ends of summer will be further unraveled, disintegrating under the June sunlight like a dream.   The memory of last summer’s long, languorous walk on the shores of Siquijor , the sun moving unhurriedly across the sky, finally sinking behind the mountains, the tree house by the beach, a motorcycle ride around the i...

hay naku. because none of the people (writer friends) i sent this to made any comments, i'm posting this here, bahala na. this is the first poem i've written about my mother. i actually got the concept back in college, in our ecology class (i love the poems inspired by my textbooks. i have one on chemistry, and another on calculus. psych is a good source, too), but somehow i couldn't write the poem.   but after the IYAS workshop in bacolod, poetry isn't so scary anymore. there i actually got to revise my poems, and write a new one. this is the first one i've written AFTER the workshop. because i realized poetry isn't all inspiration; it's hard work, too. i don't need to wait for (or expect) the words to drop from the sky onto the page in perfect order.   the idea or feeling that moves me to write is itself a gift. the poetic impulse will always be there, because poetry is a way of seeing and experiencing the world (sort of like photography, or filmma...

BACOLOD CITY--it's the second day of the IYAS workshop , and (i didn't think i'd say this) i'm actually happy to be here. yes, it's my first time in bacolod, and this is the last national writers' workshop i can attend (hmm..maybe they'll still let me into the UST workshop in tagaytay...), my first one in a long while, but i DID have to give up a free trip to go whitewater rafting and canopy walk(ing) in cagayan, and the talaandig tribal wedding in bukidnon, among other things. what makes this workshop worth all those things i missed is that it's the first time this format is being used. instead of the usual plenary critiquing where everyone discusses a work, with the author revealed at the end, here we've broken up into groups according to language and genre, with a panelist assigned to each group. and we not only discuss our own work but also get inputs and handouts and homework (just as if we were in a graduate class). marj evasco and elsie cosco...