AFTER publishing three books (“At My Father’s Wake”, “After: Prose Poems”, and “Funny, Sad, and Dangerous”) last year when I turned 50, I thought I could slow down production this year.
I mean, sure, there is my Panay News column to maintain. And “My Life as Art” comes out three times a week.
Also late last year, I got the commission to write two senior high school textbooks (21st Century Literature from the Philippines and the World, and Contemporary Philippine Arts from the Regions) for use in School Year 2022-2023.
But if I just dealt with these two commitments, I could easily enjoy a more relaxed 2020.
*
Then COVID happened.
There were the quarantines, the lockdowns.
And while everybody was in the general community quarantine, Celia Parcon, my Communication Arts teacher in college, finally finished translating a few more of my award-winning Hiligaynon stories into English.
When she got around to six stories, I thought it was a strong enough collection to be published in a book.
So, without delay, we published “Nothing’s Lost: Stories by Peter Solis Nery, translated by Celia F. Parcon” in May 2020.
*
Because that’s how writers respond to tragedies and pandemics: We write.
Even in our stories, we try to put order and logic to the chaos of life.
We give meaning to things as we shed a light to the human condition.
Not a few people, for example, found a similarity, or a parallelism, between the events of drought in my story “Father Olan, God, and the Rain” and the desperation of the public in the early months of Covid-19 in the Philippines.
I’m sure, if people have the time to read “Nothing’s Lost”, they may find comfort and hope, and other things needed to survive this pandemic more beautifully.
I mean, I’m doing well myself. But then, I’m the author of these stories.
Reliving my stories through rereading them made me more patient in dealing, and understanding (if not utterly compassionate) of people’s panic and stupidity, and the incompetent response of government leaders.
*
Because of the lockdowns, I also decided to workshop a few teachers on Writing about Literature. The workshop was online, and because everybody was home quarantined in May and June, it went quite well.
I mean, for sure, the workshop provided some routine for my workshop participants.
It also gave them something to do while dealing with boredom and the stress of not knowing when we will ever get back to normal, if at all.
Most of the output from the workshop I tried running in this column sometime last month. And reading them in print made me even prouder. So I decided to publish them also in a book.
I mean, surely, I’ll be using most of them in my 21stCentury Literature textbook. Because that was the initial goal.
But I’m going above and beyond as I envision another anthology of critical essays called “We Begin in Awe.” It could be a September release because I will be dealing with my Contemporary Arts textbook in August.
*
In June, I published “The (Almost) Fabulous: A Self-Portrait in Bits and Pieces” in the USA. If you have been following my columns from January 2020, you would already have an idea of what it contains.
Around Thanksgiving last year, I decided to write and run in My Life as Art materials that could be gathered in a book about myself. A memoir, if you please.
I wrote randomly about my favorites: food, film, music, TV shows, travels, cities, people, et cetera. I thought that if I tried to identify what I liked, and include in my writing the memories they triggered, I could write a book that would tell people more about me.
I intended to write a book that I could just give to a potential boyfriend because I find it tedious to explain myself at my age. Add to the fact that I’m dealing with a long line of potential boyfriends!
I meant that if the potential boyfriend could read, then he could just study me from “…Fabulous.” That way, I can just focus on him on our dates instead of me thinking about telling him something about myself, too.
*
Coming out three times a week in My Life as Art, I have written tons of materials by May 2020. So I simply sorted them out, and put them in sections or chapters.
Thus, the five sections in “…Fabulous”— Sex, Love, & Relationships; Neuroses, Compulsions, & Affectations; Family, Friends, & Dysfunctions; Films, Books, & Music; and Time, Travel, & Whimsies.
To make things even more interesting, I had two millennial writers introduce the book to millennial readers.
Jonell Gregorio’s introduction comes out in this column on Wednesday.
Rainier Factuar’s follows on Friday.
See if they can convince you to buy and read “The (Almost) Fabulous” memoir of the great Peter Solis Nery./PN
