IN his great novel, 'The Woman Who Had Two Navels,' National Artist Nick Joaquin has a scene where the old revolutionary in exile in Hong Kong remembers the old country he has left behind. It is not the Philippines as a concept that he misses, but its vivid images — the sight of fire trees in full bloom blazoned beside the boulevard by the bay, the smell of a certain evening flower washed by moonlight.

In the last three years, I have left the Philippines every July and stayed in the United States for months, or even a year, to write. I was lucky to have been accepted in the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference at Middlebury College in Vermont, where the likes of National Artist Francisco Arcellana and Kerima Polotan were also invited years before.