From The Workshop: Chasing Ben
We give writing workshops at the Ayala Museum. The workshops consist of three two-hour sessions of lectures, exercises, and group discussions held over three weeks. Our participants are mostly working people, so the sessions are held in the evenings, after office hours, with coffee and refreshments. We focus on the practical aspects of writing, like How to stop planning to write something and actually do it, and Good luck waiting for that thunderbolt of inspiration, say Hi to Thor when it happens.
The most recent workshop, on The Personal Essay, concluded last week. The next one, Writing Boot Camp, will start on 3 September 2015. For more information or to make a reservation, email Marj Villaflores, villaflores.md@ayalafoundation.org.
This month we will feature, with their permission, essays by the participants. The last batch was half-standup comedy, half-trauma ward. Some of the authors preferred to use aliases. Everyone actually wrote something.
* * * * *
Photo from www.felicitypage.com
Chasing Ben
by Pilar Rica D. Tabora
I was there for Ben. Benjamin Covington, the tall, green-eyed, curly-haired jerk of a boyfriend whom Felicity Porter blindly chased for four seasons of the TV show, Felicity. He wasn’t a real person (I knew that), but I wanted to revel in the essence of Ben Covington so badly, I dove into the germ-infested, sweat-laden, heat wave-stinking maze of the New York City subway to find him.
It was the summer of 2003, just a year after Felicity ended. J.J. Abrams received a lot of flak for inserting a ridiculous time travel storyline in the last season, but I didn’t care. Ben was a jerk, but he had a heart of gold. I was going to name my future son after him.
I was in Providence, Rhode Island for a summer study intensive on graphic design. Like Felicity (Keri Russell), I had usurped my future and disappointed my parents. Felicity dropped Stanford med school for the University of New York’s art program—her move was instigated by her high school crush Ben (Scott Speedman), whom she barely knew. I, on the other hand, had realized in the middle of my college thesis on the rehabilitation of the Marikina Riverbanks that architecture and city planning was not for me. I could not imagine myself computing for bags of sand, negotiating with misogynist engineers and corrupt government officials, or waiting years for a project to end.
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>
