Do not abstain from “A Celibate Season”

Ilia Uy is a Communication Arts graduate from University of the Philippines, Los Baños. Still currently frustrated by her present inability to find appropriate endings to her stories.

I am a bit indignant about the lack of information — not even a Wiki page — on this delightful book I picked up in Booksale because (1) it’s half-written by the brilliant Carol Shields and (2) I found its premise intriguing: husband and wife of more than 2 decades are separated for ten months due to work and opt to write each other letters to save money. Granted it was published in 1991, so the reviews may not have been archived online but this book deserves some praise — even if it comes from someone like me.

The last time I enjoyed — and not to mention learned from — a book of fiction this much was probably more than a year ago. A Celibate Season was written by Carol Shields and Blanche Howard, both Canadian women writers who happened to be good friends. At the time they were writing the novel, they were also sending the manuscripts back and forth to each other — just like the characters in the novel were trading letters. Carol wrote the letters of Chas (Charles), the husband, a currently out of work architect living in Vancouver, B.C.  The letters of the character Jock (Jocelyn), a lawyer recently signed on to work on a commission in Ottawa, was written by Blanche.

As a reader, I relished the subtle intricacies of the characters’ marriage being stretched by distance, career trajectories that neither of the spouses understand, sexual disasters, and the occasional infidelity. Jock and Chas were living characters: I see them move, talk, speak. And almost all the minor characters are whole and 3-dimensional. The experience is akin to watching a really good sitcom — and all these achieved through the epistolary form.

A Family Affair

Ilia Uy is a Communication Arts graduate from University of the Philippines, Los Baños. Still currently frustrated by her present inability to find appropriate endings to her stories.

After a one and a half-hour plane ride, a seven-hour bus ride, a two-hour scary van ride — we finally reached our destination, a place I haven’t been to in the 12 years: my mother’s hometown in Zamboanga del Sur. The next 3 days were spent smiling at relatives and family friends I’ve never met before, hearing more than 3 languages spoken at the dinner table, and enduring embarrassing stories about my childhood.

Family "photo shoot" at river in Lapuyan, Zamboanga del Sur. Click to enlarge, see if you can find me.

No, the first paragraph was not just a summary of how I spent the recent Christmas holidays. It also has something to do with writing. That vacation provided tons of material for characters and story ideas. Being an out-of-town family guest provided me observer status. This is also true of regular family gatherings. (Every day family interaction still counts, of course — if only personal involvement doesn’t impair accurate observation and interpretation.)

I would say I have a very interesting family. On the paternal side, I can tell of have growing up Chinese-Filipino in the Philippines and the complications of being a “half-blood.” On the maternal side, I can take inspiration from stories from a local royal clan in the Southern Philippines.

But here is the dilemma:

A New Year, A New Hope in The Land of Juan

The end is here!

Well, okay maybe not that end. In a few hours, the clock will tick away the last seconds of 2009 to usher in 2010, the new year, and (although there’s some confusion over this) the new decade.

For many of us, 2009 was a difficult year. And not a few will also point out that the decade (2000-2009) presented a bit more than its fair share in challenges.

Global recession, terrorist attacks, massacres, scandals, record-strength storms, tsunamis, flooding on a scale almost beyond human memory, earthquakes, wars, rumors of wars – the list haunts us with memories we’d rather leave behind altogether.  But it can’t have been all that bad.  After all, we’re all still here, aren’t we?

How uncannily familiar Lamentations 3:22-23 rings in our ears today.

The LORD’s kindness never fails! If he had not been merciful, we would have been destroyed. The LORD can always be trusted to show mercy each morning.

For many of us, reeling from either lost job opportunities, or from the damage of Ondoy and Peping, or from the loss of loved ones and colleagues, this new year marks a time of rebuilding.  Surveying the damage of the last year, finding ways to strengthen foundations, temporarily setting aside all but the barest of essentials.

That includes a lot of us writers.

Some of us have managed to pick ourselves up already,  and some have gotten back to the task of writing a little each day,  and finding out how the experiences of the last few months fit in the larger tale we are all telling.  But either way, I know a lot of people who still haven’t found their groove yet.

So I’d like to close the year here at Words from the Land of Juan with some encouragement:

As we turn from a difficult year and look towards a new one, there are few things more relevant than hope, and there are few kinds of people more qualified to bear that hope than writers.

Twelve years ago at a Ministry prayer retreat, I found a verse that I felt affirmed God’s call for me to become a writer, and set me on the career direction I’m still pursuing today.  I’d like to share Isaiah 40:9 with you as we welcome 2010:

There is good news for the city of Zion.

Shout it as loud as you can from the highest mountain.

Don’t be afraid to shout to the towns of Judah,

“Your God is here!”

Let’s get up on the mountains, my friends.  The good news of hope needs to be told.

Happy 2010, everyone!

-30-

(All scripture quoted from the Contemporary English Version.  © 1995 by American Bible Society)

Happy Christ-mas to all!

In our part of the world, it is already Christmas Eve. As I am writing this, it is exactly 4 hours and 23 minutes to Christmas day. Although history tells us that December 25 isn’t really the real birth day of Jesus Christ, we still celebrate that joyous and glorious occasion when hope arrived on earth in human flesh. On that day, reconciliation between God and man was finally at hand!

I will now proceed to join the Yuletide merrymaking, but before I do, I leave you with words from my favorite Christmas Carol:

Long lay the world in sin and error pining.
Till He appeared and the Spirit felt its worth.
A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices,
For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.

Fall on your knees! Oh, hear the angel voices!
O night divine, the night when Christ was born;
O night, O Holy Night , O night divine!
O night, O Holy Night , O night divine!

May you all have a joyous Christ-filled Christmas!

5 Ws, 1 H

Ilia Uy is a Communication Arts graduate from University of the Philippines, Los Baños, and is now working in the Public Relations industry. Still currently frustrated by her present inability to write fiction.

I’ve been in a long blogging hiatus not just here in Words but also in my personal blogs. I felt I didn’t have anything to say or anything of value to share so why write at all? I’d forgotten one of the most important functions of writing: asking questions. When I first started writing, that had been my primary motivation — to make sense of life — and somewhere along the way, I turned into a grown-up who thought she had to know all before putting pen to paper, or in this case, finger to keypad.

2009 has been a rather horrible year for the Philippines. Storms, massacres, death of a rare good person. Someone, something — most probably myself — put this weighty pressure on me to have a stand, to have an opinion about everything happening all around me. But in truth, I don’t really understand anything. And that hurts. It makes you feel useless, it makes words (whether read or written) meaningless. When there are no answers in sight, I turn to resignation. It will always be like this.