Writing enchantment
ANNOTATIONS
The Island of Ticao closed the gathering of writers. On the last day of the Second Bikol Book Festival, I, with my birth-attachment to the island, was given the honor of ending the feast. People, I said, especially those who are strange to the land, look for the enchantment of this land. The enchantment, however, evades those who are in quest of the extraordinary partitioned from the ordinary, of the magical from the mundane.
That night, the old ladies of Ticao, their lives gilded with memories of isolation giving them their name, the Golden Girls, sang of lost love and precious kinship, the names of birds in the melody now gone from territories extant as metaphors for the vanishing. And then they performed a courtship dance, the movement of birds recovered into a ritual for men and women entering a contract of love. Then the dance was over. This was the sign for the women to do what they had prepared for: to dance with the writers. This was the tradition of the island that women would dance with the stranger visiting the land, till the light from the moon, or, if the moon was not there, the beam from the night sky, exhausted the gallant men (or women) who braved the crossing of Ticao Pass and endure the charm of the island enchanting.
But, as I said, I spoke too soon. Enchantment had taken hold of us already. It began with the people of the island. The living room of Dr. Roger Lim and wife, Manay Luting, was a gallery of artifacts: a saint’s head mingled with ancient beads dug from rice fields; secondary burial jars were watched over by the differing religions where saints become patrons and relic devotional guides; and, a replica of the famous Ticao Stone, the original now in the National Museum, teased our minds about authenticity.
In our four days on the island, the town of San Fernando opened
the doors of its homes for us. Coolis Resort of Rene and Nora Alindogan was the main headquarters. An elegant white house of a kin who asked he be named only “Don Paquito” was another of our exquisite yet cozy home, its owner offering the first formal lunch for us. Each day was a banquet: Clarita Sagad Dimen’s sprawling home offered more than 10 culinary forms. On the third day, Leny Lozano Serra with the help of some of the Golden Girls, was the hostess of a dinner so varied her apologies for the simplicity of her offering amused us no end. The writers were treated to “tuba,” with Honeylu Briones Cañares introducing us to a drink gathered early in the morning, the product to be imbibed for lunch and one harvested in the late afternoon, for the juice meant to be drunk in the early evening. The morning or late afternoon tuba was served with bagóngon, a sea snail, sometimes known as telescope shell. The writers were even taught how to suck. Such fastidiousness was rare for us.
Lia Monteverde was the main curator of the feast, making sure the kakanin or native rice cakes were done according to age-old procedures. One day, she served a chicken dish that was described as “kinabas-an” (the word “kabas-an,” indicated “wet-rice cultivation”) and prompted a respect for food prepared according to the wisdom and preference of farmers. When I requested for “utan” (lit. vegetables cooked in coconut milk) “na bayawas” (guava), Lia said the ripe guava used for that dessert was not in season. No pressure, I assured her. But when that day’s lunch came, on the table was that dish—the soft pink flesh of the fruit succulent and tangy, a light sourness escaping every now and then the magisterial hold of the coconut milk.
On the last day, Lia was still the curator as she sent us off to two sites: one was the Catandayagan Falls, the other the so-called Buntod Reef.
The reef took us a full one hour from Talisay, famed for its pebble beach. It was last in our itinerary, coming after the falls. This was anticlimactic. From afar, the reef could be seen by what seemed like a strip of aquamarine water flanked by deep blue-green sea. The lighter colors were for the shallow, navigable part of the sea and the dark belonged to the depth. The lightblue shallow water was a lie. The truth was there in this huge tanker docked far from where the writers were swimming: around us was the sea dangerously plunging into an abyss of some sort.
It was wrong to visit the reef after coming from the Catandayagan Falls. The reef was lovely prose.
Nothing prepared us for the Catandayagan Falls. That day, our boat followed the curves of the island, the shores marked by crags and precipices, with trees darkening their walls. We noticed the motor of the boat slowed down to a murmur, its prow quietly circling a small rock, then a cluster of bigger rock. We became conscious of a pause. We looked around, noticed the calmness of the sea and what seemed an eternity of shadows below its surface. Our boat was gliding not to but into the majesty of rocks. The crew knew when to stop. Our eyes knew where to look. I looked up. A long, full, tensed minutes. From the top of the oldest rocks of the island f lowed the whitest rush of water, plunging into the immortality of this primitive sea.
This was where the island ended; this was its beginning. There are no tales about this silence, this terror. Tandayag, the great Serpent is our only link to its past and its present. Nothing stops anyone from writing about its story and how the Serpent became too small for its cave. In that moment, face to face with the Catandayagan, nothing moved. Not time. Not the place. Not even timelessness.