FOREWORD
By Vincent R. Nebrida
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I met Carissa Villacorta the writer first before I met Carissa Villacorta the person. At least I initially thought so. In the film industry where I belong, there’s often a dichotomy between the person’s work and who the person is in real life. Without naming names, it’s been my experience that many writers betray the thoughts and beliefs that they so persuasively espouse in their films or on the written page. Not so with Carissa (or Ms. Villacorta). When I finally got introduced to her—and eventually had my first lunch with her—my feeling was that I had truly known her already through her writing, and that the writer and the person are one. Indeed one.
For me, and for those of you who will soon know her through this outstanding collection of essays, what makes her remarkable—as a writer and as a person—is her ability to think clearly and write insightfully about everyday passions and timeless truths, matters obscured by our deluded quest for money and success or shoved aside by mundane priorities. Her concerns may not be new, but she makes them fresh by asking us to go to places that we no longer have the time or the memory to revisit. Even better, she finds the pulse that beats in all our hearts: the doubts, the fears, the longings and insecurities, the intimations of mortality that hit us more often now, by living in a post-AIDS, post-9/11 world.
It matters not that Carissa is a Filipina who’s in her 20s and living in New York City; her take on day-to-day living is completely relatable and is almost certain to touch anyone regardless of their citizenship, gender, age, place of residence, or religious denomination. What’s astounding is that she is able to demonstrate, in the very specificity of her time and place, how connected we all are, how consequential we all are to each other. In an age agog with cell phones, palm pilots and ipods, here’s someone, ironically from this tech-savvy generation, who’s got her humanity in check, who’s able to see beyond her own self, and whose moral outlook in life remains surprisingly grounded and optimism relatively intact.
Not that Ms. Villacorta ever resorts to easy uplift. One of the joys of reading her work is seeing how she navigates, along with us, her thoughts through life’s trials and tribulations. Slowly, yet very reassuringly, she tells us—in my personal favorite “Time is Gold, Money is Paper”—how any man in his dying bed will “not be asking for more money, but for more time.” In “Our 5-to-9 Lives,” she cautions against our sometimes all-too-selfish careerist motives at the expense of our friends and loved ones. In “Happily Ever Since,” she reflects on the vagaries of love and marriage on the occasion of her friend’s wedding. And in pieces like “New York and Hugh” and “1,000 People to Meet Before You Die” (another fave), she mulls how choices and destinies can collide, wittily summing up the possibilities of life with the zinger “strangers are just friends waiting to happen.” Over and over, through her keen observations and incisive writing, Ms. Villacorta enters the recesses of our hearts and minds, articulating the unspoken, the subconscious, the sublime.
I think Ms. Villacorta will gain more admirers not just because of her light, deft touch or entertainingly fluid style, but also because of the wisdom and inspiration that she so selflessly passes on to her readers. This book offers no new great philosophy, or even a better way to live, but I suspect it will cause to heal some broken hearts, calm some frayed nerves, rekindle some hopes and dreams, and possibly even bring some restful sleep to those who lead anguished lives.
I don’t want to be so naïve as to predict what Carissa will do with her boundless writing talent in the future. I won’t even pretend to know what lies in store for her or what she’s planning to do with the rest of her very young and promise-filled life. All I know is that humanity kisses the page the moment Carissa hits the keyboard of her computer, and that we, her readers, are all the richer for it.
Vincent R. Nebrida wrote and produced “American Adobo” as well as co-executive produced “Crying Ladies.” He has lived in New York City for 25 years, and has written film reviews and feature articles for various Philippine and American publications. He is currently finishing his new screenplay, “Woodside Story.”