Fiction: Artifacts He Unearthed

During the Silliman University National Writers Workshop last May, my co-fellows and I were asked to create a batch anthology. Our indie book is worth mentioning in this blog because my story in it has got a lot to do with this blog. Here are five fun-for-me facts about the piece:

1. The story is in the form of blog posts.
2. The story is about blog posts that quote blog posts that quote blog posts.
3. I am the main blogger in the story, and I am writing about the blog of my co-fellow Jovy, who wrote about his experiences in Kulaman Plateau and my blog about Kulaman Plateau.
4. I am writing my blog posts in 2017, and Jovy (whom I killed with his permission) wrote his in 2015, and he made references to this very blog that you are reading, written from 2012 up to the present.
5. I call my piece "speculative metanonfiction," but my co-fellow and roommate Reno said it's really a fan fiction of myself.

You may read my story by downloading for free the anthology in the webpage of the writers workshop. Scroll down to the image of the book cover, and click the link right below it.

I won't tell you to enjoy reading my story because I wasn't thinking at all of readers when I wrote it. I was just excited by the fact that, for the first time in a little more than a year, I was writing a new story. I hope to take the part about Jovy in the story and rewrite it in a traditional narrative format in the coming months.

"Arguably the best-produced anthology" was how Sir Ian, coordinator

of Silliman's creative writing center, described our book.

The cover photo, taken by Arkay, shows Pre jumping off a cliff

in Siquijor. Jonggai did the book layout, and Reno wrote the intro.

My goal was to have the longest output among those who wrote

their pieces while in the Writers Village, so my story occupies 20

of the 124 pages of the book. I mentioned my name at least 10 times,

so maybe Reno was right: the story is a fan fiction of myself.

My excuse for including this photo is that I need to show you what

the whole book looks like. This was taken by Mike, alumnus

of the same workshop.

Anthropomorphic Lids

While conducting my personal—and mostly online—research on the Kulaman Plateau limestone burial jars, my vocabulary also expanded. One of the first new words that I learned and that I now regularly use is the adjective anthropomorphic, defined by Merriam-Webster as "described or thought of as having a human form or human attributes." The term is usually used to describe the lids of many of the burial jars, and here now are photos of jar coverings that are anthropomorphic.

The photos in this post were all taken at the University of San Carlos Museum in Cebu City. Most of the figures are crudely carved, and some look more like monkeys than human beings. However, probably out of respect by the authors, none of the academic papers I've read so far states that the lids are simian. Curiously, though, a paper or two describe the lids as "phallic," though I can't identify right now which papers do.

Look closely at the photos at the bottom of this post. The one on the right-hand side is a close-up of the lid of the jar at the left. When I first saw the jar in the museum, I thought to myself that the lid was indeed phallic. But when I looked at it closely, I noticed that tiny holes were bored into it, and the holes resembled a human being's eyes, nostrils, and mouth. I wondered if the lid was just unintentionally phallic.

I also remember now that I read in one academic paper that some of the Kulaman jars have designs that indicate the sex of the deceased interred inside. I'll get back to you on this in future posts. It's interesting to think that the ancient people of Kulaman Plateau had manifestations of their sexuality in their art. They were, after all, human beings like us—living, loving, longing.

The 100th Post: Portraits at the Plateau

At the provincial museum, June 2014

After being gone for a year, I'm back here in Sultan Kudarat Province. This also happens to be my 100th post for this blog. So to mark these occasions, I'm giving you . . . photos of me!

Ha-ha. I'm just being vain, of course. I'm using these lame reasons to turn this blog into a Facebook or Instagram account. Cut me some slack, though. I let 99 posts pass before doing this. If you have noticed, aside from the About Me page, I don't have a photo of me anywhere in this blog. I did it on purpose. I wanted to post here as few personal stuff as possible. Also, whenever I wrote about something, I would choose only the most relevant or best-looking photos to accompany the text, and normally there would only be three to five photos. My selfies never made the cut.

Next to vanity, my purpose in posting my photos is to show you proofs that I have really been to the spots that I have featured in this blog. So one photo below is of me in the White Cave, in Sitio Siokong, Barangay Kuden, Senator Ninoy Aquino. Another one shows me at the top of Ilyan Hill. The photo has an accompanying one-minute video in another post, and I've written about the hill when I had not yet climbed it.

Inside the White Cave, March 2013

At the peak of Ilyan Hill, March 2013

A Glimpse of White Cave

No, this is not a gooey baby alien. This very hard rock

is a chunk of a speleothem from the White Cave of Kulaman. 

I visited the provincial museum last week to see the limestone burial jar that I had heard was on display there. To my surprise, the jar was not the only item in the museum that came from Kulaman Plateau. The bare collection also included a chunk of speleothem from the White Cave in Sitio Siokong, Barangay Kuden.

When the staff pointed the smooth white rock to me and said it was from a cave in the municipality of Senator Ninoy Aquino, I was appalled. Tourists aren't supposed to touch the stone formations in the cave, much less take a chunk and bring it home. But since the deed has been done, I guess there's no point going ballistic over it. I just hope that (1) the rock was taken out of the cave for the sole purpose of displaying it in the museum, (2) no other rock has been taken out of the cave, (3) a similar thing will not happen in the future.

I noticed that the piece of speleothem looked different when shone upon by sunlight. It was slightly translucent. Inside the cave, where only flashlights and similar devices could be used, the stalactites, stalagmites, and other limestone formations looked solid. Artificial light seemed to bounce off the smooth surface.

The provincial museum, which also serves

as the local tourism office, is at the back

of the capitol, about 30 meters away.