At a loss for what to do next in my writing, I’ve been casing many MFAs. One is a workaround: the Masters in English with a Creating Writing track in (and this is a huge draw for this option) Dumaguete. Silliman University, to be exact. Finding out that Philippine National Artist had directed the program for Literature Edith Tiempo and her husband, I sought to read a novel or short stories from her. This is how I found “His Native Coast,” which starts slow at the end of the Japanese-American war.

I perked up at the first party scene, which she does well throughout. Socializing over meals, with finery, and courses, in each other’s house is a custom of civility here in the country, no matter what is happening outside the household, just like in Europe.

Of the writing itself, Edith wrote her scenes dry. She and her characters passed casually over what she knew about art, books, and music. And I don’t know if it’s a stroke of meta-fiction, but the protagonist writes poems that take her a long time to share.

I just had to get over the stage register of the lines, as if the characters were in a play (more to do with me being bugged by everyone speaking English). I wonder if Edith felt ghostly too. As a person and author. Reading the reviews on Goodreads, I got the impression she was an acknowledged smart person, but it was hard to get through her writing. And yet. Instagram grows with secondhand sellers of Barthes and resellers of beach reads and self-help from America.

One day I’d love to write the contemporary novel that breaks through the Netflix-lubricated water cooler. I don’t know that books by local writers can explode into the public consciousness anymore. But from Edith, I will likely steal the persistent descriptions of menus. Lots of coffee, including in the traditional method. Notes on decor. The protagonist, Marina, is a chic woman.

“I’m part tribal,” she always reminds ruefully. But how lovely does Edith describe the rooms Marina appoints with books, blue flowers, white tables, carved figurines, and her grandfather, the tribal chieftain’s old gong? In contrast, the account of some corruption she lives with had a tune-out factor. But all accounts of corruption are this way. Systematic stealing thrives in inattention. Something the artist Pio Abad, in the present time, actively fights. The artist’s ongoing research-based work digests specific items Marcos takes for the average person: jewelry, paintings, and even pieces of silver. Imelda loved to get her hands on the marks of class.

But reading Edith’s novel at around the same time as I got to see this show, I realized that every Filipino from a city or settlement wants to urbanize. We’re always reaching out for an answer just past us. Even I looked at a bunch of schools in the US first before thinking of Silliman. As if my writing life, which has come to an impasse, can start if I could just be accepted someplace more “advanced.” But that’s dysfunctional.

Meanwhile, Marina’s dream is to live on land her mother left her in the mountains. But it’s not like a romantic dream; you can feel her struggle. Asked to share her writing, Marina says, “Anyway the so-called poetry is only a sublimated form of thrashing about.” I can relate! Wrapped in other things, it is a book about soul-searching. When more mobile races (who don’t need visas for anything) do this, they go on vacation; they eat, pray, and love. When Filipinos do this, we often just quit our jobs or take up a hobby. But I like how Marina found her action, which I’m so tempted to say something about. But I guess I’ll leave that to your reading.