Dear Errol,
It is 7:30PM here, but it's bright as day even with cirrus clouds in the wide California sky. Summer is ending. I am in my white Rimat t-shirt, and tsinelas my wife and I purchased at a Greenhills mall a day before we took the PAL flight 112 at NAIA Terminal 2 for the 13-hour non-stop flight to LA. It's daylight saving time, just like in Singapore where it is a broad day even if the hours are late and people are still out at 12:00 midnight.
My son, whose house we are staying in Winchester, says it is 10:30 in the morning in the Philippines.
Three days ago, it is 94 degrees F in Hemet, where Anib-Israel and his wife, both nurses, work in the graveyard shift. To the south, in Temecula city, where we purchased a sack of Thai rice at an Asian store, the 12 noon sun was oppressive but I saw an elderly white woman pushing a grocery cart on the pavement and a huge black man jogging on the treeless highway. Awan ti abbong ti uloda.
Where did we leave off re discussion on Saluyot literature? Ah, that one in Amarillo, Texas. Wen, bay-an latta idan ngem makidangadangka latta babaen ti panagsurat--daniw, sarita,salaysay--adu a sinurat a kas iti kaadu ti problema dita. Layusem ti Bannawag ken dagiti pasalip. Ngem masapul ti disiplina ti panagsurat. Tuladem latta ti gramatika ken estilo ti kunkunada a magasin dagiti Ilokano, ngem saan a ti nagelgelen a subject matter wenno estraktura ti presentasion iti sinurat.
But what used are these writings if they are not published and read by Ilocanos who read the magazine?
What's important is that you write the fiction, the poems, the novels, and the features. These are historical documents of the kind of life you lead and the people that roam and live and love and hate and die, perhaps, as you see them grapple with their own problems and other difficulties in the land that nurtured you. There is much to see and bear witness to and record in the landscape of the mind. Gather the facts that will translate into beautiful fiction, poetry of memory.
Mainaig iti panagimutektek, can we develop a Milan Kundera, the Czechoslovakian writer, (diac pay ketdin ammo ti ispelingna--ammoc laeng a Prague ti setting ti obra maestrana a "The Lightness of Being") who can manipulate similar materials and experience into a truly Ilokano novel?
Going back to the weekly magazine headed by the person whose father-in-law appeared to have mismanaged the funds for the construction of the writers' house in Suso. (Santa Maria nga ina ti Dios! Macatitileng ti ulimek dagiti bangolan iti daytoy nga isyu. Ket napanan daydi $600 a nai-c/o--nairekord daytoy iti 2005 GF Financial Report? $1,000 daydiay, Manong, inteks ni R.C. a sigud a Bannawag staffer. Wen, Manong, amangan no nasursurok pay, insarurong ti kasimpungalan daydi nangted idi nagkitakami idiay Riverside, CA.)
The practice of the editorial prerogative -the editor's selective policy--is a cold, bloody fact. We can do nothing but accept it.
There is a higher power that will execute punishment on them who have been unfair for doing what is inimical to the interest of their fellow writers, kindred spirits, who also contribute to the growth and development of Litsaluyot?
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