Tearings By Jing Villamil   Living alone too long is actually not too sad. It is exhausting though. You get used to doing everything by yourself. At the end of the day, the homeplace would look sparkling clean and neat. In fact, so much sparkling clean and neat you hesitate…

Love at first sight! By Jing Villamil   FERVENTLY, I believe that people tend to be in the right mood to fall in love at first sight mostly when the weather is fine, the sky is blue with Cirrus strands stretching lazily across its face, gentle wind stirring now and…

In April she came! By Jing Villamil   THIS month is most confusing. And not only because it opens with April Fools’ Day, the odd pranksters’ holiday. Each of its days is a study in pleasant/unpleasant contradictions, and endearing but sometimes heart-stopping surprises. Take the weather. Today it is sunny…

You are not alone By Jing Villamil   LOCKED-down, locked-in, locked-out. Whatever prettified euphemism you may choose to name the situation we are all in, there is no other word to better describe being “house detained”. My family had personally gone through this, soon after Marcos demolished the opposition by…

To a parent here and gone! By Jing Villamil   I WROTE this for my parents. My father never got to read it; he was a desaparecido during the turmoil of the last year of the Marcos era, 30March1984. My mother placed it, stretched inside a rounded frame, at the…

Water on rocks! By Jing Villamil   AND when this monstrosity of a spiked ball had crowned itself and had pushed its bastard birth to a world caught unaware, unbelieving, unprepared . . . she closed her eyes. And promptly disappeared. Though, she did not just upped and puffed away….

War to end all wars! By Jing Villamil   THE original storyteller was Grandma herself. And before the storytelling was a ritual her awed listeners would watch raptly entranced. Gone elderly, she still wore her former grace and beauty. She must be truly graceful and beautiful before her prime: tall,…

Once upon an island! By Jing Villamil   IN these grim days of quaking bursting flooding crusting earth, of abusive corrupting power, of hunger and thirst and neglect and never-mind-them, of viruses and men gone deadly haywire . . . she had not forgotten the many a lifetime she had…

Phantoms of the House!     By Jing Villamil   WE are not frightened. We are very frightened! This is a clear case of deja vu: here yesterday, here today, here again tomorrow. It is not just a dreadful dream; it is a nightmare most horrible! The immortals stand triumphant…

From behind bars!   By Jing Villamil   SWIMMING back and diving deep ìnto her neurons she found – the exact moment she became a prisoner to a crime that is no crime. It was the day when, as a wee three-year old, Nanay asked her while she was running…