This is just to say that this is still my page for the adventure of trying as much as I can to do what I can in the time that I have to write and write, so help me God. The ongoing project is the dissertation, in which I am supposed to present the proposal for this poetry collection on the third week of June, and as of now, I have not even gotten back to the draft. But I do write the poems, mostly on Sunday morning before I attend the 9:00 AM church service. (Yes, I go to Robinson’s Forum at 7 AM and scribble on my green- apple, spring notebook sitting behind one of those empty, round, white tables at the fast food corner on the third floor of FORUM, or I go to “country style” outside for the air condition.) But sometimes, I just revise what I’ve written the previous Sunday, so that the poems now number maybe 10 or 15 , with at least 5 in revision and the rest in their semi-confident final form. I have to get back at each poem’s structure/form though. I am discovering that lineation is one of my weaknesses, when I’m not doing poems in specific rhyme schemes.

I have also tried the following:

First, I submitted a proposal to URCO, and the research panel there said I should think about my research project more, so I can be specific and focused. Their question was: “What does she really want to do?”

What indeed? But I know what I want to do —  a collection of poems/monologues of /or about some women in the Bible, those which the Bible is silent on. That is, sometimes, they don’t even have names in the biblical account, sometimes, they are catalysts for major events (the Levite’s concubine in Judges), sometimes, they are a case study of a certain suffering (Jeptha’s daughter in Judges). So their stories are merely mentioned. I wrote in the proposal that my creative work is going to be extra-biblical, meaning, that the monologues will be a product of my understanding of women’s psychology, and not of Bible exegesis. I am sure, though, that the panel is right in asking for the names of these women. What is certain is that they are not going to be about Bathsheba, or Ruth, or Sarah, or Hannah — the well known ones. But Peninah will be among them, the one Elkanah loved less in spite of her fertile womb. And that mother whose son David executed, and who was described as merely present there, watching her son die, wailing – she will be in the collection too. But the rest of them, I still have to find.

Second, I tried submitting poems to Likhaan Journal, and of course, I am not really confident about those poems. But what will I lose except the coveted byline?

Third, I’m still on BIANCA’s DIARY, for this is the major project in the perpetual works. But more and more, things about her character are getting blurry. What will happen to this kid? How am I going to proceed telling her tale? Shall I write one short story at a time as I conceive them, and then later turn them into chapters? This may be the best way to go considering that I am worst at plotting. Yet, as soon as I discover a situation (on Sunday afternoons during my brainstorming after the church service at around 12:00 PM onwards), I get overwhelmed by the immensity of the task of creation! Bianca has to evolve and here I am, still piecing her fragmented portrait in my mind.  But there’s only  one way to go — forward — with a struggle.