I learned just a few minutes ago that artist, poet, and friend Sid Gomez Hildawa, head of the Visual Arts Department of the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) and award-winning (Palanca) poet, has succumbed to typhoid and dengue.

He actually made it home from the hospital just two days ago and everyone thought he was going to recuperate.  But the universe had other plans.

My last memory of him was of the third week of November 2007 when we were together with other CCP trainors in Zamboanga City conducting an Arts for Therapy workshop with elementary school teachers of Basilan.  Moments with him were filled only with laughter, the joker that he was.

l-r: Doc Luis Gatmaitan, Sid Hildawa, Geejay Arriola, Ronnie Mirabuena, Eyna Villar, Pachie Ignacio, Buddy Ching / CCP-UNICEF Arts for Therapy Workshop, Zamboanga City

l-r: Sid Hildawa, Buddy Ching, Eyna Villar, Geejay Arriola, Ronnie Mirabuena, Prof. Jun de Leon, Doc Luis Gatmaitan

I cannot say much about him, but his blog (http://lihawad.blogspot.com/) most certainly can. His last blog post was on February 10, 2008—a picture of him and National Artist Bien Lumbera.

How sad and painfully beautiful that right below the picture was a November 11, 2007 post–his poem written in reference to Juan Luna’s painting “Parisian Life.”

SICK LEAVE

Like a patch of skin spared
from sunburn by a shield
of cloth or sunblock lotion,
there’s a rectangle on the wall
lighter than the wall itself
where a painting used to hang.
Now that the artwork is gone,
visitors ask, “What used to be there?,”
and “What was it about?,”
as if they hadn’t seen the piece before,
or maybe not carefully enough.
‘Wasn’t there a woman seated
in a café?, Didn’t she have a glass
of wine, or some company?,”
The damp ground, eavesdropping,
almost shifts, holding up the house
whose wall holds up a rusty nail
in its perpetual upturned pose,
holding up no answer.

On my fourth day in hospital
with dextrose feeding me twenty
drops a minute, I picture in my mind
a space I may have left behind,
not entirely empty, but of air
made thinner by my absence,
or of lighter tissue,
so that people pause, inquire,
and imagine what used to be there.

“So where’s the painting now?”

Sid is now in and with the LIGHT—-the wellspring of life, and where the muses of poetry and art reside.  The Philippines has released one great creative soul to the universe.