Kanlaon

Some upcoming readings:

at the Redwood City, CA Main Library
1044 Middlefield Road (at Jefferson)
Redwood City, CA 94062
Nov. 9 (Thursday): 7:30 – 8:30 PM

at the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum of the American Indian
Fourth Street and Independence Ave., S.W.
December 8, 6:30 – 8:30 PM

I’m participating in a Filipino Literary Panel as part of the Smithsonian South Asian Literary and Theater Arts Festival. My co-readers are Peter Bacho, Luis Francia, and M. Evelina Galang. Come to hear us talk about the sources of our inspirations and the impact of Filipino American writers on American literature. For more information, please visit www.apa.si.edu/APA_Events.htm

(1) After reading Megan Marshall’s review of Antonia Fraser’s Love and Louis XIV: The Women in the Life of the Sun King: Love and Louis XIV etc.

(2) After reading Liesl Schilinger’s review of Caroline Weber’s Queen of Fashion: What Marie Antoinette Wore to the Revolution and Sena Jeter Naslund’s Abundance: A Novel of Marie Antoinette:

Caroline Weber’s Queen of Fashion: What Marie Antoinette Wore to the Revolution

and

Antonia Fraser’s Marie Antoinette: The Journey

Tragedy has struck, oh loyal readers of my blog.

I am here at Old Dominion University’s Literary Festival, an event I have been blogging about for months and months. I arrived right on time at Norfolk International Airport with hair still perky and neck not too bad (considering I’d just spent seven hours sitting in that sardine tin otherwise known as United Airlines Express Flight No. 7678). Got to attend my first reading, Bernard Cooper’s, after first meeting assorted greats (Dagoberto Gilb, Tim Seibles, Patrick Rosal, Jon Pineda, and aforementioned Bernard Cooper) at Asian fusion restaurant on Granby. Had tuna sashimi liberally laced with wasabi in a kind of “Z” pattern– not bad; also, imbibed alcohol– Jamaica Me Crazy, a mango with rum blend that made me feel slightly fuzzy but was just the ticket for loosening my tongue so that I at least gave the approximation of being “sparkly” and vivacious.

Dinner over, was ferried to the Chandler Pavilion for Bernard Cooper’s reading. Afterwards, stopped by book display table. And– um, there must be some mistake, I say to young man in charge of selling. Where is my book, Mayor of the Roses? Young man stares blankly at me. Sinking feeling in my stomach.

There is Patrick Rosal’s latest, My American Kundiman. There is Jon Pineda’s Birthmark (beautiful; I’m reading it right now). There are at least four books by Bernard Cooper.

But where, oh where, is my poor Mayor of the Roses?

Frantic call to ODU Bookstore the next day. Many apologies from store manager. Apparently, because of an oversight, manager neglected to order this one book, out of all the books ordered for the Festival.

My latest! The fruit of many years of hard toil (fifteen years, if you must know–a span of time in which I seem to have magically morphed from “new Filipina discovery” to “has-been”). No, no, no, how can this be?

Heart is pounding, chest is palpitating, feel light-headed. Immediately pick up phone to front desk– where is the nearest place I can get a hot stone full body massage?

Down the street, at MacArthur Center (Interestingly enough, this mall, which I’m told is one of the most upscale malls here in the Hampton Roads area, is named after the General MacArthur, that man whose sonorous “I shall return” to Filipinos in long-ago World War II supposedly kept us going through the dark dark days after the fall of Bataan and Corregidor. But, I digress.), there is a spa on second floor called Dillard’s.

I pick up the phone book, find the number for Dillard’s (after first calling the operator to get the area code for the Norfolk area, so that I can call from my cell phone instead of incurring room charges– writers have to be careful with their money! I know, I know, massages are not cheap, isn’t this rather contradictory? But writers are, as far as I’m concerned, walking contradictions.) make an appointment for full body massage. “I want your best!” I practically yell at man who picks up the phone. “I want a massage as soon as possible!”

He cheerfully obliges with the name “Tiffany”.

Will report back tomorrow on whether Tiffany’s ministrations were successful in alleviating my depression …