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It was time to go to Mt. Cloud, surely. It was fate. I felt it as soon as our taxi drove into Session Road. Sarah, the kids and I were in Baguio for the weekend—the first time ever for the family to go there—and the Mt. Cloud bookshop, a place I had only known through Facebook, was definitely on my mind.
After settling down at the lovely old cottage that was our accommodations for the next three days, we went to the mall—SM Baguio. Yes, I know—but we needed to get some necessities and we could walk to SM Baguio easily enough. Someone suggested that we cross North Drive and go up about eighty steps to the Barrio Fiesta restaurant so the kids could see the life-sized and larger than life statues that surround the restaurant’s high ground.
On the way to SM, we passed by Mt. Cloud book shop and I made a mental note to drop by later in the evening, after we had brought the kids to Café By the Ruins. That night, as Sarah and the kids rested in the cottage, I did drop by Mt. Cloud—for some reason, the thought occurred to me that it would be a huge thrill to go into the book shop and find a copy of The Ophelia A. Dimalanta Reader Volume One: Selected Poetry.
(It’s funny that I’ve known Ophie for nearly twenty years but I’ve never bought a copy of this particular book, which she showed me in its original manuscript form a few times. She relished the prospect of its publication.)
And there the book was in Mt. Cloud. One single copy. The only one left in stock. Talk about synchronicity. I could never find that book in any bookshop in Manila, except the UST Publishing House Bookshop and Solidaridad Bookshop along P. Faura—and it was only on this occasion, in Baguio, that I was finally going to buy it.
The main reason I had put off buying the book was the fact that I already had a favorite book by Ophie: Lady Polyester: Poems Past and Present where she had inscribed a very encouraging note that turned out to be prescient. She wrote in her dedication that soon, I would have my own book, my own Lord Polyester. As a young writer, I was flattered—although I kept silent about my objection to “Lord Polyester” as a book title, since it conjured up visions of myself in a 1970s polyester pant suit and brocha mustache ala “Anchorman.”
Two years later, I did put out a book of poetry, my first with a major publishing house, with a much uglier title. Just kidding—I love that title: The 25th Fly. I like the looks on people’s faces when I mention it.
Ophie’s powers of prescience were first pointed out to me by a psychologist at the University of Santo Tomas. She said that Ophie was a powerful judge of character and knew things about people in an almost magical, intuitive way. Specifically, she knew whom she could trust. She knew who among her friends would be fiercely loyal to her. And she was right, most of the time.
Not that she never felt betrayed by her closest friends. She had a huge capacity for tampo—out of perceived disloyalty and out of what to her mind was a withdrawal of our affection. She felt that, on several occasions, towards J. Neil Garcia, Lito Zulueta and myself.
Whenever she was having a fit like that, her eyes brightening with tears, she would ask the person she was speaking to, “Yan, si (Lito… Neil… Ramil…etc.). Mahal pa ba ako niyan?” This would be followed by a litany of slights and hurts that the said perpetrator supposedly heaped upon her. Then the storm would pass and she would calm down. She would then say: “Hindi. Mahal ako nun.”
Love was such a big thing for Ophie. Perhaps the only thing. Some of her best poems are love poems. The very best ones tackle the human condition—immense, deep, subtle—but are always, always brimming with an almost mystical passion and breathless affection for people, places and memories.
Contrary to what some readers my think, Ophie seldom wrote about herself. The intensely personal and intimate atmosphere of her poems is a trick—it’s meant to seduce. Yet, even if she were to speak in the first person, the person who speaks is not her. It’s artifice of the highest order—meant for sensual pleasure, joy, insight and aural enjoyment. Her poems are some of the most rhythmic poetic works ever written.
Ophie played the piano very well. She didn’t like to read notation although she very well could. She would rather play things by ear, by intuition, by heart. This is probably why we felt closest to each other when we were rehearsing for a musical number. Ophie loved to play the piano during poetry readings we organized in UST. Specifically, she loved being the accompanist to UST writers like Mike Coroza and myself who have a yen for singing. Or were we, in truth, the accompanists to her piano performance?
Curiously, she didn’t like to play the piano alone onstage. She preferred to have someone with her, a singer, who could share the attention. It was different inside the UST Center for Creative Writing and Studies, though, where there was a piano in one corner. Ophie would simply sit down and play different songs, from classical music to show tunes to standards, to pop. We would all fall silent then. No words were needed among us writers whenever Ophie was playing like that. There was nothing but music, which demolishes language easily and gloriously.
We performed at the UST Museum for the Arts and Sciences, during a poetry reading organized by the Thomasian Writers Guild on February of 2010. It was impromptu. I couldn’t stay for long because it was getting late and I was with Sarah, our son Krishna and daughter Sophia. The kids were tired and restless and we still had to go home to Cavite. As goodbyes were said, Ophie, myself and UST literature professor Nerisa Guevara were in tears. It’s been years seen we last saw each other in person.
I learned of Ophie’s death on the night of November 4, 2010. Fictionist Kit Kwe, wife of writer Kris Lacaba, who somehow managed to get ahold of my mobile number, told me the news. “Ma’am Ophie died this afternoon.” The moments that immediately followed are now lost in the haze of absolute shock, followed by frustration: just before the semestral break Ophie and I had spoken to each other on the phone and we set a date to meet at her office when classes resumed. That was only three or four days away. “It’s too late,” I thought, “I’m too late.”
Ophie was—is—loved; quite fiercely by her friends and former students; just how fierce, is something that is rather difficult for others to understand. Simply put: she loved us completely and lavishly. For Ophie, love is not love unless it is absolute and unconditional. She did not always meet her own standard—but I feel that we, her students, failed to reach it more often.
That’s all that Ophie asked from us in return for her mentorship, her friendship, her wisdom, her guidance and her inspiration: that we love her. Seemingly so simple, yet the hardest thing of all.
It was nice meeting you in Mt. Cloud, Ophie. Thank you.
It was time to go to Mt. Cloud, surely. It was fate. I felt it as soon as our taxi drove into Session Road. Sarah, the kids and I were in Baguio for the weekend—the first time ever for the family to go there—and the Mt. Cloud bookshop, a place I had only known through Facebook, was definitely on my mind.
After settling down at the lovely old cottage that was our accommodations for the next three days, we went to the mall—SM Baguio. Yes, I know—but we needed to get some necessities and we could walk to SM Baguio easily enough. Someone suggested that we cross North Drive and go up about eighty steps to the Barrio Fiesta restaurant so the kids could see the life-sized and larger than life statues that surround the restaurant’s high ground.
On the way to SM, we passed by Mt. Cloud book shop and I made a mental note to drop by later in the evening, after we had brought the kids to Café By the Ruins. That night, as Sarah and the kids rested in the cottage, I did drop by Mt. Cloud—for some reason, the thought occurred to me that it would be a huge thrill to go into the book shop and find a copy of The Ophelia A. Dimalanta Reader Volume One: Selected Poetry.
(It’s funny that I’ve known Ophie for nearly twenty years but I’ve never bought a copy of this particular book, which she showed me in its original manuscript form a few times. She relished the prospect of its publication.)
And there the book was in Mt. Cloud. One single copy. The only one left in stock. Talk about synchronicity. I could never find that book in any bookshop in Manila, except the UST Publishing House Bookshop and Solidaridad Bookshop along P. Faura—and it was only on this occasion, in Baguio, that I was finally going to buy it.
The main reason I had put off buying the book was the fact that I already had a favorite book by Ophie: Lady Polyester: Poems Past and Present where she had inscribed a very encouraging note that turned out to be prescient. She wrote in her dedication that soon, I would have my own book, my own Lord Polyester. As a young writer, I was flattered—although I kept silent about my objection to “Lord Polyester” as a book title, since it conjured up visions of myself in a 1970s polyester pant suit and brocha mustache ala “Anchorman.”
Two years later, I did put out a book of poetry, my first with a major publishing house, with a much uglier title. Just kidding—I love that title: The 25th Fly. I like the looks on people’s faces when I mention it.
Ophie’s powers of prescience were first pointed out to me by a psychologist at the University of Santo Tomas. She said that Ophie was a powerful judge of character and knew things about people in an almost magical, intuitive way. Specifically, she knew whom she could trust. She knew who among her friends would be fiercely loyal to her. And she was right, most of the time.
Not that she never felt betrayed by her closest friends. She had a huge capacity for tampo—out of perceived disloyalty and out of what to her mind was a withdrawal of our affection. She felt that, on several occasions, towards J. Neil Garcia, Lito Zulueta and myself.
Whenever she was having a fit like that, her eyes brightening with tears, she would ask the person she was speaking to, “Yan, si (Lito… Neil… Ramil…etc.). Mahal pa ba ako niyan?” This would be followed by a litany of slights and hurts that the said perpetrator supposedly heaped upon her. Then the storm would pass and she would calm down. She would then say: “Hindi. Mahal ako nun.”
Love was such a big thing for Ophie. Perhaps the only thing. Some of her best poems are love poems. The very best ones tackle the human condition—immense, deep, subtle—but are always, always brimming with an almost mystical passion and breathless affection for people, places and memories.
Contrary to what some readers my think, Ophie seldom wrote about herself. The intensely personal and intimate atmosphere of her poems is a trick—it’s meant to seduce. Yet, even if she were to speak in the first person, the person who speaks is not her. It’s artifice of the highest order—meant for sensual pleasure, joy, insight and aural enjoyment. Her poems are some of the most rhythmic poetic works ever written.
Ophie played the piano very well. She didn’t like to read notation although she very well could. She would rather play things by ear, by intuition, by heart. This is probably why we felt closest to each other when we were rehearsing for a musical number. Ophie loved to play the piano during poetry readings we organized in UST. Specifically, she loved being the accompanist to UST writers like Mike Coroza and myself who have a yen for singing. Or were we, in truth, the accompanists to her piano performance?
Curiously, she didn’t like to play the piano alone onstage. She preferred to have someone with her, a singer, who could share the attention. It was different inside the UST Center for Creative Writing and Studies, though, where there was a piano in one corner. Ophie would simply sit down and play different songs, from classical music to show tunes to standards, to pop. We would all fall silent then. No words were needed among us writers whenever Ophie was playing like that. There was nothing but music, which demolishes language easily and gloriously.
We performed at the UST Museum for the Arts and Sciences, during a poetry reading organized by the Thomasian Writers Guild on February of 2010. It was impromptu. I couldn’t stay for long because it was getting late and I was with Sarah, our son Krishna and daughter Sophia. The kids were tired and restless and we still had to go home to Cavite. As goodbyes were said, Ophie, myself and UST literature professor Nerisa Guevara were in tears. It’s been years seen we last saw each other in person.
I learned of Ophie’s death on the night of November 4, 2010. Fictionist Kit Kwe, wife of writer Kris Lacaba, who somehow managed to get ahold of my mobile number, told me the news. “Ma’am Ophie died this afternoon.” The moments that immediately followed are now lost in the haze of absolute shock, followed by frustration: just before the semestral break Ophie and I had spoken to each other on the phone and we set a date to meet at her office when classes resumed. That was only three or four days away. “It’s too late,” I thought, “I’m too late.”
Ophie was—is—loved; quite fiercely by her friends and former students; just how fierce, is something that is rather difficult for others to understand. Simply put: she loved us completely and lavishly. For Ophie, love is not love unless it is absolute and unconditional. She did not always meet her own standard—but I feel that we, her students, failed to reach it more often.
That’s all that Ophie asked from us in return for her mentorship, her friendship, her wisdom, her guidance and her inspiration: that we love her. Seemingly so simple, yet the hardest thing of all.
There is so much that could be said about Ophie but there’s very little space here for that. If you are intrigued over why Ophie’s former students and friends—Thomasian or non-Thomasian—continue to adore her and get rather emotional when they perceive that her memory or her family is in harm’s way, then it’s good to read this essay [link: http://www.facebook.com/notes/ken-ishikawa/what-is-left-of-polyester-an-outsider-remembers-ophelia-alcantara-dimalanta-and-/10150485972580881] by poet Ken Ishikawa.
It was nice meeting you in Mt. Cloud, Ophie. Thank you.
