THIS August 2020, the prolific Ilonggo writer Peter Solis Nery releases his 28thbook, “Heart of My Youth”. It is a volume of collected memoirs written in the late 1990s, which are released in one volume after two decades. With the original books compiled here are newly written forewords that introduce each memoir to a new generation of readers.
Quarantined FJ Parlan (in Metro Manila) introduces “My Life as a Hermit”, which was originally published in 1998.
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An Open Letter To Hermit Peter, Part1
by F. J. Parlan
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Dear Peter,
I’m sorry.
Having uttered a most sincere apology, here follows a most honest appreciation:
Thank you.
Have I ever told you that? Of course, I have. So many times to the point that it may not come off with sincerity anymore, but not as many times that it is adequate.
The same goes for my sorries. I’m sorry that I said too many sorries. Which means I may have distressed or dismayed you far too many times.
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This is the third time I’m writing this introduction, but when I decided to finally approach the task in this manner — pouring my heart out rather than racking my brains out — I realized I have to begin with how I really feel. Because isn’t that what correspondences are about? There is a reason historians, in efforts to uncover the genuine principles of history’s most revered or reviled, favor the historical figures’ personal correspondence over their public policy.
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Private feelings over public thoughts. The best writers, like you, tend to toe the line pretty well. Such is the line I’m toeing in this open letter. At the end of the day (or actually, the month — nay, way past the deadline), this is what My Life as a Hermit inspired me to do. Seemingly barely inspired, due to my self-questioning and self-torturing. I choose to let these complexities and complications out as you did in a most ardent fashion in the juvenilia your new (and your most loyal) readers are about to indulge in.
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To those readers: What comes after this letter are nineteen letters which Hermit Peter (as the author referred to himself at the end of every letter) wrote to a certain Ishi. Reading these letters reveal more about the PSN than reading some of his best works. (Most, if not all, of which came in the 30 years after this mini book.) In that sense, this is canonical content for the PSN. For the fans, this is a must-read for that reason alone. For those who are not yet fans, this is a must-read for many more reasons other than that.
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Back to you, Mr. Peter. I am a fan of yours, sir. I’ve seen your public profiles. I’ve taken in your online workshop lectures. I’ve read your award-winning play, The Wide Ionian Sea, and got my name published on a broadsheet because of it. I’ve read many of your My Life as Art columns in the same newspaper, Panay News. I’ve seen some of your interviews on social media, and had informally interviewed you the first and only (but hopefully not the last) time we met. I’ve read My Life as a Hermit, and this letter is my submission for its foreword.
(Also, I’ll write another literary criticism of one of your works again not just for my graduation from The Peter Solis Nery Foundation’s Writing About Literature workshop, but because I want to make this right with you.)
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Perhaps that is the reason I struggle to produce an output “just like that” for anything related to your literature. Perhaps that is the reason for the personal nature of this introductory piece. Perhaps I try too hard to please your standards even as you’ve shown your love for others (alongside your love for yourself, and literature) again and again. Perhaps that is the reason I counterintuitively fail to apply your reminder that “sometimes, production is better than perfection.”
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I wondered, to a lesser extent, whether Ishi felt similar pressures when writing back to a younger you in these correspondences. I mean, how could anybody not — in the face of carefully crafted paragraphs in your letters? I wondered a lot more about Ishi than that, of course: how old was she, what was she like, how did she look, what did she occupy her days with, and whatever-have-her.
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I wondered, after all that wondering, whether it really matters for the purposes of these letters. I mean, of course, to the Hermit you, it should matter. Aside from protecting her privacy though, the book was not really about her. It was about you: your greatest fantasies and fears, you at your toughest but neediest, you in the most unbelievable and unstable states.
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My Life as a Hermit is not a collection of letters, and a dream. It is, to me, artistic pieces of self-expression disguised as mere letters. It contains an endless array of aphorisms, quotable quotes, and timeless thoughts. And a dream.
* One can get drowned with the patented literary references here, boasting of your voracious consumption of the greatest of literature. But one can be floated along with the pleasantry of poetry, which, knowing how you write, was an unceasing labor of love, but seems to be written with the greatest of ease. (To be continued/PN)
