Kamala is almost gone • PhilSTAR Life

You never know what you might find as a sideshow when you attend international literary festivals. For the 2013 World Poetry Congress in Iran, the anticipated gatherings in Tehran expanded to Shiraz for visits to the mausoleums of famous poets that draw a daily throng of devotees and students, plus a day trip to legendary Persepolis, where ancient ruins harked back to the glorious centuries of the Persian Empire.

Fortunately, there was no unrest or tension in ancient Mesopotamia at the time, allowing us to walk through legendary stretches of desert where the marks of an earlier civilization were still visible.

In Medellin, Colombia, and Granada, Nicaragua, separate poetry festivals showed how public appreciation of the lyric word can survive the drug cartel violence and arms shipments that have become synonymous with the terrain. For a while, at least. Now we can be grateful for the resumption of peace that guard or “fiery water” to kick off a lecture in a public square in Pereira, and the corridor whistle to create a jungle rhythm.

In Mukkula, Finland, and Durban, South Africa, the essential attractions remained the cultural force that defined the area. But unexpected extras included a midsummer day with a crazy midnight football match between the Finns from home and the RTW (Rest of the World) among the more athletic guests – poets and writers who also marveled at the sunset that was not there.

And in Durban, the younger hosts became the “griots,” or West African troubadours, performing the poems stored in their heads to a rap beat, while the older “page poets” had to rely on traditional readings. The divide didn’t last long. The readers picked up the beat from the spoken word artists, having learned to write long lines on their mobile phone screens.

Near misses become memorable, too. In 2019, when I visited the PAWA, or Philippine American Writers and Artists Book Festival, in SF, old friends took me to the Pinoy legacy that is Manilatown’s I-Hotel at one end of Chinatown, where Fil-Am artist Mel Vera Cruz has been a shining example in regular exhibitions. As I wrote in a follow-up column about him a year later, the historic building’s ground floor now serves as a civic center, but is also often entirely occupied by an art gallery. In October 2019, the group show featured Mel’s impressive “Benny’s Altars,” in honor of a manong who stayed in the old hotel in the 1970s.

Mel has been active with his street art community projects in San Francisco’s SoMa. These include blown-up bilingual flashcards that were displayed on 10 utility boxes at crosswalks. Mel’s designs simulated Filipino words spelled in bay bay, printed on vinyl and glued to the sides of the electrical boxes.

Mel’s good fortune was that California Senator Kamala Harris was invited to give a short lecture on recognizing the history of the Asian American community. Fil-Am photographer Tony Remington introduced Mel as one of the artists, pointing to the large diptych hanging some distance away.

“Shouldn’t we pose closer to your painting?” The cheerful lady who suggested that she move closer to Mel’s large diptych for photos was the former attorney general of San Francisco. It wasn’t until a year later that Mel remembered that he had a video clip in his file of the future U.S. vice president-elect brilliantly delivering her suggestion.

Actually, I could have been in that fateful company, but I missed it by barely a week when I went with Mel to check out the regular hotel room of poet-friend Oscar Peñaranda, who, in absentia, entertained us with a pendant of my whisky bottle. And PAWA’s closing evening meeting was also held at I-Hotel.

If the world is lucky enough soon, we can expect the presidential candidate who may have turned things around to take a fresh look at the Asian American community. For this, the 7th PAWA, energetically spearheaded by Edwin Lozada, is scheduled to celebrate “Kaisa’t Kasama: Our Diverse Voices and Solidarity” on October 12 and 13 at the San Francisco Public Library Main Building.

Well before the start of the festival, a special reading and celebration of the new book by the prominent poet Luisa A. Igloria took place Leaderwith her daughters Ina Cariño and Gabriela A. Igloria, on Sunday, August 25, with the reading moderated by PAWA Press author Beverly Parayno. On September 7, the 43rd Northern California Book Awards in Fiction will have its awards ceremony in the library’s Koret Auditorium, with Parayno nominated for her debut short story collection Wild flowers.

On the same day, Oscar Gutierrez Peñaranda launches his new prose collection on the other side of the Pacific Ocean Follower of the seasons on Saturday, September 7, 2:00-5:00 PM, at Corinthian Plaza, Elks Club, 7th Floor, Paseo de Roxas corner Legaspi St., Makati.

I would like to think that these positive literary developments bode well for a long-awaited reversal of the miserable ills of most of the world, and prevent a “queer coward” who, despite his supposed sophistication, has never tasted sushi and sashimi, from once again joining the ranks of autocrats who plague political hotbeds. Just seeing him on TV with the sound turned off should convince anyone that he is everything all our parents and mentors told us he was to distance our character from the bluff, the lies, the bullying, the intimidation, and the outrageous behavior.

Kamala Harris brings strong hope for a return to decency and rationality. Why, even after a near miss at a literary event, however brief, convinces me that a turn in fortunes may soon come to lessen the saddest of times.