Excerpts from "Walong Diwata ng Pagkahulog"

Abstract

Walong Diwata ng Pagkahulog (trans. Eight Muses of the Fall) is on the one hand a young man’s frustrated attempt to write the great Filipino novel, and on the other, his coming to terms with the futility of his search for his lost mother. Along the way, he is guided and misdirected by some muses and demons to reimagine his personal past without the burden of national history. He will be forced to accept that truth can somehow be in the deceptive, inchoate recreation of memories, without which, the fall seems inevitable.

The following chapter is part of the second half of the novel, when the protagonist Daniel tries to revise his personal history, with the help of his dreams, and his attempts at analyses of his chance encounters. In this chapter, he first meets Teresa, the prostitute who can read other people’s minds, but only after dark.