someday,love will perhaps be

someday, love will perhaps be
a courageous windflower
that will unbosom on my galoshes
and make me look to where it is
with my unassuming eyes.
but i
because of my rare coldness
will have but to cavort
past it
like it was
a
weight
less
cobblestone.

shane.ignes

An Attempt at Recollections of Childhood

I grew up in a close-knit neighborhood in Bacolod. It was a custom to call our place “compound” because we lived in an enclosure of about seven houses owned by the families my maternal grandma and her siblings. We belonged to the third generation of a big clan. My mother alone had 14 other siblings, and my first cousins were running close to 60, until the youngest was born in the late 90’s. My mother’s cousins were plentiful as well. We practically grew up next door with our first and second cousins, hence the impression of being close-knit.

But the truth is, each of the siblings had tacit rivalries and secretly considered their neighbor inferior to themselves. In our family, my grandma took pride in the fact that hers are the only grandchildren who regularly go to mass, clean up before bed, say the rosary everyday, and who have our respective chores in the house. She blindly believed that we grandchildren were of pure Catholic morals and should not often be in the company of our brash cousins. For us however, the years growing up under our grandparents’ despotic noses were the loneliest and most oppressive. We sometimes wished we belonged to the other families, who seemed happier.

Ours is the archetype of the extended family. We were about five families crammed inside my grandma’s 4-bedroom house, although we later had a house of our own. My parents had a tiny humble house erected at the back end of the compound when the second baby was born. My father and mother both went to work in the city and left us to the care of my grandparents in the daytime, only to fetch us at nighttime.

It was like that for a long time. Until my mother passed away, and we had to move in to my grandparent’s house. Without our father. He went home alone to our little house to avoid the spitefulness of my grandparents. And because we counted on our old folks' mercy, my brothers and I had to endure the cruelty of some of my aunts and the other nasty goings-on in that house. We were like the little orphans in lemony snickett's book. Until my father decided to take us someplace else. It was many years however that my brothers and I would finally reunite.

I wanted to write about happy days and warm memories of my childhood, but all too often losing someone in your life as important as your Mother shifts the way you look at things and how they took place. This first endeavor is terribly futile in that it paints a picture of me as being the saddest act in the world. I just had to stop.

I hope to have a second take one of these days….

Change

This is the nth time I’ve changed my blog template. For want of something new perhaps. But because I am a total ignoramus in html, I have no choice but to make do with pre-designed templates. Good thing Blogger has a lot better to offer now. One hit and I get a new look on my blog, only to change it after a few weeks or months.

Which brings me to consider... It is inherent in my personality to be always moving and changing things around the house, in my workspace or, in this case, around my blog. Change is nothing I cringe about, especially if it is to satiate my labourious idleness and whet my visual appetite. I always like nice things around my space, never mind if they're not the real mc coy. If I had my way in fact, my house would be like a display window where I have a new color and design theme for every season. Not for posterity though. My husband doesn't give a damn anyway.

Sadly I carry this mind-set even in what I wear. I have a become a clotheshorse since I started earning enough to buy what I want. And then the flea came into existence. When I learned to indefatigably rummage my way through piles and piles of gorgeous clothes that could be had for a trifling, my mind was buried in the mound as well. Who could resist buying an original armani for less than a hundred pesos, or a pedro garcia pumps for 50 bucks, all in mint condition, as compared to run-of-the-mill tops which sells at no less than 700 pesos in malls, and which you would later realize are total rip-offs? I have mastered the art of sifting through racks of clothes and spotting a signature from a mile away. I never miss.

It's no surprise how I have amassed overwhelming amount of clothes. It has become in fact a dilemma as to how to fit them all at once in the closet I share with my husband. We have an enormous closet which houses most of my clothes, and a teeny bit of his. I have clothes in boxes and paper bags. It is almost embarassing to think that I have so much and always complain about not having anything to wear. I am an office girl, and it is a necessity for me to wear the "corporate look" everyday. Or so I contend.

As a result, I give some of these clothes away. It is almost always a cursory decision, but what the heck, I would think. I can always buy a new one anyway. When I was a kid my wardrobe consisted mostly of hand-me-downs from older cousins. Contrary to feeling a little sorry, I thought there was always something quaint and charming about old clothes. They're like heirloom pieces that you succeed into, but you take extra care in wearing them so you can pass them on to the one next in line. The clothes age, but the importance you give it, the gesture of generosity, are values that form inside you, if only inadvertently.

I am sometimes convinced that my inclination to bring change into my life, be it in the home, my personal circumstances, or as mundane a matter as to my choice of templates, are for reasons leaning on the little act of benevolence towards myself---to taste what life can give me, to ascertain my boundaries and what's beyond, and to learn to do away with excesses, for the benefit of others.

i don't know.
i am not making sense
this pleasure is propagating around.
on my regions
no songs. no thoughts. no windows.
i cannot even embrace
the shadow of the rain.

Trees

in one of our manila-bound visits to my inlaws, we passed by the south superhighway and i saw these signs etched on a metal plate every 1km apart. i thought whoever came up with that inspired idea about caring for mother nature, translated very aptly in kilmer's poetry, should be given the highest praise. i dream of a world where in all imaginable places we read the great works of men rejoicing the beauty of earth and humanity.


Trees
Joyce Kilmer

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth's sweet flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in Summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.

The Washingtonienne

She could be your erstwhile college friend, except that she's not. She is Jessica Cutler, a 26 yr old ex-assistant staffer at Capitol Hill in DC who was fired off her $25,000 a year job sorting mails and answering phone calls, after her blogs, cleverly named The Washingtonienne, about her sexcapades with Washington honchos made big news in the US media. Looks to me like she has a bit of Pinoy (I sure hope not!) or Chinese in her, but the catch is that she got paid fat moolah by some of her supposed bedmates for her sexual services, which according to her, thankfully takes care of her bills. Her blog was pulled out from the net, but my husband has eagerly directed me to a mirror archive file of her blogs, which caused her, well, infamy. Hardly really. News is that she doesn't give one hoot about her dismissal and was in fact offered a six-figure book deal for all she has to say about her shameless meanderings, which for me, falls way below par as far as the writing style of belle is concerned. One site even hints of her being the american belledejour. But I beg to disagree. Belle is a classic, and Jessica is, as the online forums refer to her, just a slutty skank. I have no moral issues about what she did though. I just think Belle deserves more fanfare than Jessica is currently reveling into.

Nuff said.