on fear

I am still not over my ruminating these days, so bear with me. Not too long ago, a good friend asked, what is your greatest fear? This question has been asked of me a lot before. I swear I must have answered it countless times in our class essays, but I don’t recall whatever it was I wrote, or if indeed I wrote about it at all. I’ve always suffered from chronic absentmindedness, and I think that I could not be trusted with memory. I better get used to writing my thoughts down. There are a few morsels of my past that are committed to my mind without my even trying to, and oddly, I do remember things vividly from when I was but a fledgling two years old. But my mind plays tricks on me, and sometimes I doubt if these things really happened or did my imaginings evolve from some movie I randomly saw.

In the real world, I would forget what it was I said ten minutes ago. I really am quite spaced out when it comes to remembering things, especially that it would sometimes appear like I tell white lies and I end up bungling my thoughts. Eventually, I get to swallow my own bitter pill. And God knows how many times I’ve made a horrendous faux pas by blurting out things in the middle of conversation that I shouldn’t have because I have totally forgotten that I shouldn't. By then it was too late to take the words back and I wish the earth would open up where I was standing, and swallow me to the ground forever. So, obviously that is one of my worst fears. My irredeemable freudian slips.

But there are bigger ones. All of us have our own primal fears, rational or irrational. I had mine, too. From the moment I have recognized dreams, I was maybe six years old, I have had to contend with gargoyles and witches, and snakes and cold-bodied rodents, that plague my sleep. I have been bullied and chased to earth’s end. As a teenager, I lived in constant fear of flunking exams and losing my scholarships, and I crammed throughout my studying years. When I started working in manila, I never missed work even if I literally had to wade through flooded streets, on the monsoon season, because it is unthinkable to be alone, unemployed and penniless. Generally I had fear of people rejecting me and that’s probably why I keep a sort of emotional wall, to fend off from vultures that prey on my vulnerabilities, when in truth it is my own menacing phantom that rile inside me. Now as a mother, I do not fear for myself much, but for the people I love. Don’t we all? Our fear doesn’t just go away, it crosses over to people we now have responsibility over.

However, the thing that I fear most is dying a violent death. There are nights that I watch the news on television and the world’s evils and tribulations leave images so intense and appalling in my mind, that I would dream of them afterwards. A car crash, earthquake, tsunami, drowning in the sea, snake bites, monsters---I swear they have given me the arctic chills and fever, even while I sleep beside my family in a sweltering tropical heat. You are never more alone than in your nightmares and I fear that one morning, people would find me stiff as I have died in my sleep trying to free myself from a vampire’s deadly grip and kiss. Some nightmare…but I’d rather have the gall to wake up to reality and discover to my horror that the world is still the same cruel place. Seriously, abortion, incestuous rape, robbery, mass murder, feuding nations at war, abject poverty, and natural disasters---they swirl around in my subconscious like giant twisters that no matter how I try to see them with a feeling of disdain and self-imposed distance, I can’t help but feel that gnawing feeling that death lurks somewhere behind, ready to stake a claim anytime on any unwitting soul who happens to be close by.

I may talk about death, unfazed, as I have in fact rationalized about it many times in my blog, in a sound which others may find a little morbid, save for a tinge of sadness here and there. But death is sadistic, and all our theological heroics will mean nothing when it happens. It is nothing that we can welcome gladly unless we’ve been suffering so much all our lives that it is better to end it and be done with it at once. Life with suffering is meaningful, and if there is nothing to suffer for, it would bother us a great deal. And that’s why there is the paradox of the suicides. But so is dying violently or without warning, when there is so much yet to live for, and suffer. I may not be in accordance with everyone. Sadly, we create our own danger and dying is bound to happen, like it or not. But the only way I can muddle through this fear is to accept it, and have a quick dab at optimism. So hey, it's not so bad. In the mind, we too can strengthen our resolve, that we can dart through this world for a few fleeting moments and seize the chance to enjoy life as it is.

on beauty

Physical beauty has never been something that I pondered on in my younger years. I know a lot of beautiful men and women from my school or hometown, but I had not been one to deliberate on people’s faces or outward appearance, to praise or criticize them. I know they are attractive in some sense, as everything that is symmetrical probably is, to a viewer’s eye. Nonetheless, I have known people too who have jagged lives and have suffered a few deformities somewhere, and yet they beckon you to take a second and closer look at them and secretly say, my goodness how utterly charming....

As I grew older and met more people, I’ve realized that not all of us think the same way about physical beauty, or more particularly, the pulchritude of a woman’s form. Maybe it’s because I’m the proverbial late bloomer, or just generally careless about my own appearance that I don’t really give a hoot about how the world revolves and fawn over fashion or good looks. Well, not really…I did give a damn about those shoes every now and then. But going back to the form, I have had to struggle a bit to understand why people, men generally, make such a fuss about how women look. Why, in a world where nature has not been fair and benevolent to everyone, only the doe and dark-eyed get more of the stares and the ogling. Why sudden curves and well-defined bumps are synonymous to sex appeal. And if one were born sans these endowments why does it seem that she is fated to live the dismal life. Isn’t beauty ephemeral after all, and everyone will come to a certain plateau when we grow old and wrinkly that it didn’t matter if we were Greta Garbo or an obscure hag?

But I am not a man, and being the opposite sex, I have to say that us women are saddled with the duty of being “beautiful” in the slightly bigoted eyes of men. Hence the make-up, the clothes, the gyms and spas, and all that stupendous endeavor to be one with the metrosexual world. So damn tiring. I am all for beauty. Who wouldn’t want to be called pretty, or cute or beauteous? But what if we’re simply not? I know that it sounds rather myopic to say that, but believe you me; I have seen many instances that people had the temerity to peer through disapproving lenses, and judge others on the grounds of their aesthetics canons. You are considered a lesser mortal if you did not have the proper nose height or hair texture or skin color. Sometimes there is very little tolerance and too much repulsion. I am not saying I am ugly, so don’t mistake my over-enthusiastic commiseration. Oddly, this is the way of the world. You have to swallow it, or die alone with your ugliness and mute indignity. Okay, enough of the doggone hyperbole.

Beauty is something that we gloat on everyday, on things that surround us, our children, our peers, our family, our crushes, people we meet on the streets, actors we see on tv, models we read of on glossy prints…But I wish, that we would as much consider the qualities that lie beyond the alabaster skin and the dark big eyes and the pouting lips or the reed thin body. That in all our exultations about the perfect human form, there are men and women who exist-- deadbeat workers and laborers, peasants, priests, doctors, mothers who live unglamorous and washed-out lives for people other than themselves. That inside everyone of them lies a heart that beats for love, kindness, compassion, and respect. That nothing is more beautiful than having a self that candidly tolerates, and often generously reaches out to others across her white picket fences and her spotless, well-manicured life, to share that which nature has so liberally afforded her to enjoy.

Pocoyo

"Little Me" is an allusion to the Spanish name Pocoyo. It is, as coffee is to me, my children’s daily pick-me-up on Disney playhouse. Pocoyo is a little curious boy who likes to wear blue, though it seems he never wears anything else. He has some close friends-- Pato the duck, Elly the pink elephant, Loula the puppy, and Sleepy Bird. Together they go on adventures in their seemingly infinite world, and sometimes they get to interact with a few characters like a whale or some lovable aliens, in space or surprisingly, in another land that you wouldn’t know exists. Each Pocoyo segment runs for only a few minutes. But the simplicity of its graphics, the wonderfully colored characters in a stark white background, coupled with a very gentle but engaging British narration of Stephen Fry , and the cute half-muted voices of the characters-- bring a generally pleasurable viewing atmosphere for children, and even for adults like me. I know that, because Gabby and Sam would drop whatever they are doing and are no sooner glued to the screen when that little funny-sounding marching song begins. More than anything, this award-winning series teaches pre-school kids, and reawakens in parents like me the sense of wonder, childlike curiosity, precious friendships, and an earnest regard for others without the typical grown-up qualms. I like..

my irrelevant 2

About that unexpected event that had me going off tangent and talking in vague sketches that it was only me in the long run who could have followed what I was really yakking about… well, I’ve just thought about it recently and maybe I ought to talk about it more and be less self-deluded in order to clear up the peripheral grays. I know that I shouldn’t be blathering about my past relationships here in my blog, seeing that it might hurt some people I love, but well, the heck when I am not about to drool on the what had or what could have beens. It’s just one of those moments of eureka, a kind of realization that makes you bang your head on the wall and exclaim in pain “ I should have known better!”.

One boring as hell day, the kind of day that I sit in front of my pc doing every conceivable thing I could to fill in my day job, or to translate it more aptly, kill eight mind-numbing hours until it’s time to head off home , an old friend buzzed me out of the blue and struck a pretty casual conversation. It was a totally unexpected buzz as I have almost forgotten about this person, and it was impossible, to say the least, that he would likewise remember me or my address after what, ten years? Well, if I have to be more precise about who this person is, he is a guy from my past, a guy who had awakened so much emotion in me, and who made a French leave out of my door without so much as saying hey i'm off,so get a life. Because what life I got after that episode with him was of compunction and endless wound-licking. Alone.

Sometimes, I can’t decide whether the internet is a godsend or a bane on humanity. I sure have a lot to be thankful for where I have arrived using it, but this kind of thing leaves me incredulously gaping and a little incensed about the injustice of getting dug up from one’s lurking hole where you have comfortably settled forever just watching the world go by with nary a sound. Anyway, our conversation didn’t start in an earth-exhuming way, but the nineteen to the dozen sort that two people would, as they got nothing much in common to prattle about. How are the kids and the spouse, what do you do now, same place you live, etc etc??....Get my drift?

The topic went slightly askew when we talked about that fateful night that we parted ways. A thought bubble seemed to hover above my head and then a kind of dream sequence in sepia appeared. My memory of that night was slightly different from what he had remembered. But something about what he said opened me up to a lot of realities. It was 1994 and I was the impressionable young person who would worship everyone and everything that would stir her, no matter how insignificantly. It was a time that my faculties were too receptive of what was going on around me, and I would bask in everything without much judgment of whether it was doing me good or bad. Love was a habit binge. Emotions were flowing, expectations soared. Life was coming up roses. But in an instant, it was not so. The world was vindictive, and cold, and full of pain. I had never thought ill of him. But unfortunately, his name was etched in all of it…..

And I snapped back in reality. In my oversaturated colored world of purples and bright oranges. He must have been buzzing a dozen times as I have stopped responding to his messages. Because off he went, in his no-goodbyes fashion. I do not expect to hear from him any soon, or maybe ten years onwards. It doesn’t matter. Now that I’ve had time to chew it over, I realized that all the crying over spilt milk was not for naught. Crying was a prescription I needed to end my soap-opera catastrophe, and wake up to the real world with a stronger sense of self, and a really high and mighty moment to say “what the fuck was all that??”

So irrelevant...

shoe porn

If there’s one label I could give myself and yet continually disavow (in my small public at least), it’s that I am obsessive-compulsive. My fixation on particular things like shoes or my predisposition to certain situations like dying, or shying away from people is not the side I usually want to be seen. It’s nothing that I am ashamed of really, or am being dishonest about, but I feel that my being so, is a private torment that I wish people would overlook or not notice at all. If someone as much brings up in a joking light, like “hey, nice shoes!”, I would get deathly embarrassed and spoil the whole atmosphere by acting like a bumbling fool and muttering something along the lines of “oh this old, cheap, ugly what have you....” Like it is not, so it’s futile. Obviously people know that I am on to something, and I’m only doing so much damage to my ego, if not to my already ill repute. It’s as if my revelry is something sacred to me, and others cannot just march right into it like it’s theirs.

I enjoy being alone. In a café, bookstore, shopping place, or even at home. I love walking alone and exploring nooks and crannies in malls without anyone in tow. The more obscure I am and the place, the better. If there were anything this concrete jungle I work and live in could offer, I would be there, but in a dark corner. I do worship my solitude. So much so that at times the presence of other people seem to wind me up and rouse me from my momentary catnap, and I get a little agitated. I have once said that people, regardless of who they are, are easy to love. But I find it more pleasurable to admire them from a distance that I so choose. Sometimes, I watch a bevy of little children play in the sunshine and I feel truly joyful about it. Yet I am not inclined to articulate of such feelings to other people. Except maybe to the anonymous few in this blog. But no, not even here. If I were to be reminded, I have nothing but murky thoughts in this place. It’s a wonder even that some souls still choose to venture here every so often and rally me on to the brighter side. Right you are, I’m such a sucker...

So anyway, I digress again. I will not talk about death today, but a little on shoes. They say that people who get overly indulgent in certain things—say clothes, food, and yes, shoes—are those that have been, at one time or another in their life, deprived of the very same corporeal things. In my experience, I think it’s true. To some degree. Alright, to the nth degree. Owning something you have hoped for and desired for a long time brings a sense of gratification that it cannot be measured by whether you acquired it for a million or a trifling. It doesn’t even matter if it’s useful to you or not, but just hitching your wagon way up there for the longest time, and feeling that you have finally arrived….gosh, it’s giddiness incarnate. Nothing could seem to sever you from your precious object of affection. Not for a moment.

Even when I was a child, I have loved shoes. But it was not very often that I could slip on a good one. I remember that when my mother buys me a new pair, I feel as if everything in the world is pretty and nice-smelling and suddenly not so unattractive anymore. I would grudgingly resign the old pair to the bodega, and welcome the new ones with open arms and a very tender regard, as though I was holding a little baby for the first time. As if that wasn't enough, I would sleep with the shoebox, and peek into it the moment I open my eyes, making sure they were really there and I wasn't just dreaming.

Shoes were my therapy for those days when things seemed drab and miserable. I must admit now that I have extended far into loving it and developed a compulsion for buying, whenever I set my covetous eyes on one.

When I walk around, I would often look down, past the faces and shapes of people, to concentrate on their feet. I would survey women and men on how their shoes make or unmake their outfit, and smile with accord if someone looks good from toe to top. Emphasis on the toe. Quite obsessively I make mental observations of women who are considered fashionable because their stilettos or maryjanes or mules or thongs pull together what they are wearing. What other reason can my proclivity for shoes be, the gaping awe I feel when I see them on others, and more notably, on me? But of course, it's fatal attraction.

I have forgotten how many pairs I’ve had since the years I started earning my own keep. At times without really keeping tab on how much it would cost me, a leg or an arm, I would have to have it, right there and then.

When the stockpile had gone too far up, I often give away old shoes. In spite of my fondness for them, I am not really quite the magpie that would hoard them forever and ever until they rot in my closet. One at a time is my battlecry. Or maybe five at a time. Depending on my cashflow. If there still is such that exists, as shoes have a way of draining your nest egg to obliteration. It would be uncharacteristic of me though, to buy what I cannot afford. I don’t. It’s just that I love. And you know how love sometimes comes in little unexpected packages.

vows

Our fifth anniversary as a couple is nearing. I got to think--what lies ahead for both of us? Two people who once fell in love and begat two children--two important reasons why they have totally put aside their own needs and shifted their life’s patterns, so that they can enclose the little ones safely in between. Is there some reward for us in the offing? For us and us alone?

My husband and I met while we were working in the same building in the south. He’s a web designer, and I…..well, it seemed that I had been a century old vampire, slaving behind the corporate desk all my life. One day, a towering guy who was young and brash and ready to embrace life head-on meets a pocket-sized woman whose only claim to fame are her proud appendages,and her disturbing brain. Nonetheless she too was cavalier and was never frantic about anything much. They fell in love, and voila, love took root, that's Gabriel and Sophia for you. But can you imagine what we had to do to make up for the remarkable disparity between us, the years that divided us, he being five years my junior? We certainly were not a match made in heaven, and God knows what concessions we had to put up with to find our very middle ground. It was not a walk in the clouds.

Children are supposed to be the underlying principle of our effort to stick together as a family, but sometimes when they come into our life, things don’t seem like they used to be. Suddenly, there are schedules to keep, deadlines to meet, mouths to feed, hours to wake up to, infantile emotions to check, undivided attentions to give. It’s all theirs, and hardly yours or his. You forget to be a wife or husband, to take care of your spouse, to act up fittingly in moments that you should take the edge off each other’s uncertainties, or show the least bit of tenderness and consideration.

It’s not as if I hadn’t. I know how it feels to come home from an endless traffic snarl, smog and the city blight. I sometimes wish that I could go to a place where I can shut off momentarily and enjoy some silence. Far from the car horns, from the earsplitting screams of my kids, from just about anything. But more importantly, from the unforgiving realities of this world. And have someone at your side, come hell or high water. I know he does too. That’s why I never want to censure him for his little acts of neglect. He needs what I need. But when he hates, I hate. When he loves, I love. It’s a work in progress and there are many loose ends to always tie up. It is not beyond me to do it, and do it right and good. I wish, though, that I don’t have to trudge alone. I wish that it wasn't always only me, but us.

I think that if love is to be made an action word, it is as my husband would one day tell me: that it is accepting, realizing, and affirming the other one. I am still of the same mind. If not always of the same heart. On our fifth year together, I feel that it’s nigh time for me to get doing these very verbs, and not just vacillating about them. A random person who refused to be called nice and yet unabashedly leaves nuggets of his wisdom once said, smile and the world will instinctively smile back at you.

So there, I am grinning from ear to ear....

a stranger one day

By this time I am quite aware that the prevailing theme of this blog I started some three years ago is me, me and me. Me picturing me snapping at myself. C’est moi. It will not come as a surprise that people who saunter into this place think I’m self-absorbed, reveling in the wry pleasure of putting myself down in different ways, making blistering disparagements of my life as a mother who constantly carps about her failure in the home front, a person who nitpicks on her lackluster existence of thirty-five years, and many other imaginary things that are greatly in danger of falling over her, if she just as much as manage a little smile on her face. Hear, hear. I’m sounding like it now.

But the truth of the matter is, I never feel more free than when I expatiate about those feelings and ambiguities in this little space. Discomfiting as it may seem for others. I’m sure they must have muttered something under their breath about the unhelpfulness of my glum and pessimistic thoughts, and God knows how tedious it can get, but yeah, what can I say? Sometimes I just want to write. Of something that didn’t or doesn’t happen. Of nothing. Of nada. Nada y pues nada y pues nada, crap that hemingway suckers like me devour hungrily like aphrodisiac.

We live in an intolerable uncertainty, of what’s to come tomorrow, or five minutes from now. Maybe we will succeed, or fail, as we try to struggle in our chores as wife, mother, lover, worker? Or maybe we will go on whirring about, like machines. No heart, no soul, but nonetheless functional and useful in man’s end result. Our end result. We make the hero or antagonist of our own life story. I am both, to myself. And understandably so.

So, as a favor to my other world, where I am a envisaged to be nice and companionable, let’s not split hairs over pointless semantics, I will remain to be what they see me. And I’ll reserve my desultory grumblings to myself alone. Or to a random stranger maybe, who by the same token, will one day shake me out from my lifeless stupor, and scream--By golly, how you bore the living hell out of me!

my irrelevant

Well, here's something. Just when I am all set to close the door on the past or at least a fraction of it, and have in fact rightly done so, here comes an unexpected event that stirs me up again. Not that it can affect me still, but to muse about it now can’t be helped. Suddenly, things come flooding back. Those many nights and days that I walk around wounded, head hanging so low that it could reach the ground, wandering around so blindly and aimlessly that I hardly notice the quizzical look on the faces that approach me. People and friends wonder why I’m so fucked up, while I was too dazed to ignore their raised eyebrows and circumspections. There were probably tattling signs everywhere of me getting scary suicidal, and I could just imagine the hushed tones and furtive looks. Such was my catastrophe . But I chuckle when I think about it now. What if right then, after resolving to finally cross to the brighter side of the street, I do not, in my dejected state, and in a sort of soap opera anticlimax, see an enormous vehicle running towards me at breakneck speed? Like in the movies, I fight through my tears that I could hardly see the rainsoaked road, while a silly goodbye song plays over and over again in my head. In one crucial instant, a blast of light seizes me on my tracks, and I hear the deathly omen of a blaring horn. A second of total confusion, and I am smashed into smithereens. Haze...Heartbeat...Tunnel of light..Flatline..Total darkness... Silence...Void...Totally fucked up thoughts, but I wouldn't be here today boring you to tears, would I? Yeah. Well no, I did cross the road safely, and when I looked back, I sighed. Poor girl, she was cool, but kinda loony.Funny that sometimes we choose to carry the weight of the world on our shoulders and bawl over some person who is not even there, but who is halfway around somewhere, too happy with their life to give a shit about our own wretched existence. And yet, we do bawl.

Now really, if you haven't the faintest idea what I'm rambling about, don't fret. It's because I don't either.

thoughts on a friday

Got busy today, thank god it's the last day of the workweek. And I got to fix my social security finally in alabang. It's funny that I had always hated to go to that place. Being there takes you into an atmosphere of helplessness...a cesspool of old, schoolmarmish women who condescend at you, and sneer at you like you are a beggar asking for alms. Even the security guards behave like bigtime assholes. Yeah, and it's your money running the damn place. Talk about public service. This kind of institution makes me think why I'm putting my hard-earned pesos with them, and putting up with such non-personalities. Anyway, enough said.

I had a chance to meet Sachiko one day, and old friend. We had a great talk, and although we have not seen each other for nearly ten years, it seemed as if it was only yesterday that we last left off. Such is the beauty of pure friendship. Sach and I are out and out honest with everything about us, no airs and no false humilities either, just the brass tacks. I really appreciate her like that. I honestly had misgivings about meeting her at first because of many things in my mind. You know me, I have the propensity to ignore text messages and give shameless excuses about not feeling well. But I'm glad I saw her. Ho-hum...I wish I could say something sad, but heckles, I can be glad too sometimes, can't I?

Shoe Fetish

Ain't she lovely? I just had to have a picture of this little lady , so I took her off on the office floor and snapped. After being angsty about an encounter with a princess warrior in the streets once, when I had a big-hearted altruistic moment with humanity---let alone in my thoughts–-I figured shoes is an important part of our being, in that it helps us feel good about ourselves, and buoys us up to the fluffy clouds of material indulgence. A reward for our hard work and pinings, for those countless times we stick our noses on store windows and salivate on the shiny beauties, longing that on a fortuitous pay day we can finally point with shaky fingers and bated breath to THE ONE, yeaaahhh thaaaaat, and take them out proudly from their incandescent cages of desire.... hence, my unaissailable gluttony for it can always and forever be justified. Who doesn’t love shoes, eh? Stand up and speak out, or forever hold your bunions to yourself. I admit shoes is one of my favorite things on earth, but I don’t mean the manolo blahniks that will disfigure your life, nor the garden sort of variety that will leave a bad taste on your poor toes. Eeeek, fuck the metaphor. I just mean good sensible shoes. Regardless of the name. Regardless of the price. Naturalmente, these shiny black martinez valeros set me high up there in the self-possessing, elation department. And that is rare to come by ....

So sue me.

Nature Boy

There was a boy

A very strange enchanted boy

They say he wandered very far, very far

Over land and sea

A little shy and sad of eye

But very wise was heAnd then one day

One magic day he passed my way

And while we spoke of many things

Fools and kings

This he said to me

"The greatest thing you'll ever learn

Is just to love and be loved in return"

:: Nat King Cole/Miles Davis ::

freedom....

...At last. This week, I have been unchained from domestic slavery, and from the strains of having to be good and meek and too accepting of people’s glacial treatment. So sod it! as the brits would say… First the yaya came back in one piece. How relieving to finally look at an empty laundry basket, smell the fresh sheets outdoors, and appreciate having the walls back to their spotless state again. Because I swear, tried as I might to move around like a bionic superwoman, with two jumpy kids, and a day job I can’t afford to stay away from, I was only indeed as superwoman of two minds as I could get. One mind wants to give way, and one mind wants to give up. So yaya business restored to its normal sway …equals a happy blogging mommy.

Well the other freedom I’m talking about is being able to survive the ice age in the 21st century. In retrospect, it’s all your own doing. You give yourself up for other people. You set aside your emotions, to house them in the center of it all. Their turbulence and their trouble is yours. You listen to their thoughts, you share your thoughts, but mostly you just listen. And understand. You give them the rein, to say what they want, to do what they want. You applaud when they most need encouragement. And you cry with them, when they most need sympathy. You were being a good sidekick. An efficient PA. A genius girlfriday.

And then they break your heart. Just like that. These people that you call Friends, or sometimes in a state of being capricious, Boss. And one day, they treat you so coldly and without the slightest regard, and you wonder where you failed them. You think, rather helplessly, had I not been a funny sidekick? Had I not been an obliging PA? Am I not good enough?

And it dawns on you, and you learn to accept. That you are not. Good enough. So, face it. Time to move on. Time to go out in the sunshine. Time to seek the warmth in the tropics. Time to burn yourself up and resurrect from the ashes. Time to lock it up. And let it rot in the cobwebs! To the bowels of the earth! And the deepest recesses of your cursed soul! With the scums of the universe! Sod it! Forever! La la la la…..

Being free takes a lot of pluck and a good dose of to-hell-with-them attitude. And I guess I cinched it. Today, I smile at the prospect of meeting up with my next emotional and domestic challenge. And I say..... to hell with it!

homage to the once little one

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near.
your slightest look will easily unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously) her first rose.
or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing
(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses).
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands.

:: edward estlin cummings::

Redemption

Today is my mother’s 59th birthday, had she been alive. I have stood back long enough to realize that probably she would have wanted to see a different me today, a child she once saw living in the outskirts of the city, in the little town of sum-ag, in a house along the street where you can find a chockful of tangerine santans, and a tiny girl with a great love for music, poetry, and her family.

My childhood wasn’t one fit for a fairy tale book. It was an ordinary childhood, but up until the day my mother died, all I could remember was that the sun was always shining amply on my side of the world. I was a happy child, full of life, and ebullient in many ways .We weren’t rich, but it was scarcely necessary to ever feel poor or wanting, what with everyone in a jovial mood, helpful with each other, sharing in many things, even though there wasn’t that much to begin with. It was a life bursting with friendships, and laughter, and an extensive amount of love. It was quite impossible for me to have felt so guarded with everything that we had or didn’t have. I didn’t care about wealth as I was remarkably ignorant of the practical side of life. For me, it was just a happy and simple existence.

But when my mother died when I was fifteen, I realized that life wasn’t so easy, that in fact, we were indeed quite poor, and that the wretchedness of being an orphan was more than I had previously been prepared to acknowledge. I changed almost instantaneously. I was just too upset by the travesty of her death, and the fact that my brothers and I were in no second rendered motherless, and ironically almost fatherless (as my father, too, needed time to deal with the blow all by his lonesome). It left us anguished, but I think I must have felt it the most, being the eldest child. Pretty soon we were coerced into making decisions, about who goes with whom, realities to face that my mother’s illness and death had left the family almost penniless, and that we had to survive, or strike out aimlessly toward an unknown future and fail. I think we have overcome all that, but the sadness had lingered, and stayed for a long time .

It was for me a start of a ceaseless struggle against despair and emptiness. Being at an age where my feelings were in their most defenseless and overwrought, I felt like life had conspired against me, taking away the only reason that could espouse all my aspirations and dreams whilst I was growing up, and clinching my solitary all the more when my father and brothers were separated from me. Sure, I did go on with my life, never had a major clash with people in my environs, or with their accepted morality. In short, I was normal. But the pain never really fled from me. I was always afraid that a little enactment of high emotions would make me flinch and run away from myself or from people who would show sudden leaps of sympathy towards my circumstances.

But I don’t think I ever did.I embraced human pathos and divergence, I learned to love people and empathize with them in spite of myself, but I am sorely disappointed that up until now I could not swerve against my high-flown rantings and come to terms with my loneliness, and be damn crazy happy for once.

What I am is what I call a savage pilgrimage—a person trying painstakingly to be in the swing of regular life, trying not to feel different and alone amidst a throng of a thousand other souls who suffer alone, or are insufferably slow to realize their aloneness. One moment I urge myself to be free and embrace my destiny, but in another breath, I hold back, afraid of the crosscurrents that may take me to an unsafe place because of the wrong choices I might make. And I rail against all these suppressed conflicts inside me. I realized that I am fixated on something almost unachievable.

But it’s not, at all. I think that being a mother has offered a saving grace on the other hand, a form of deliverance. Some nice person once said that maybe creating something can offer a kind of redemption, although it may not always work. But hey, it does. Not always effectively, but sure it does. The passion that I may have withdrawn from many things because of my lost childhood had been conveyed incessantly to my two kids in a show of motherly devotion. I am emotionally in thrall to them, from the moment they wake up in the morning, until they close their eyes at night. Yet I do not ask that they be anything, but only be happy and full of love. The things and people that I see, that I photograph, that I write about on my blog or in my head, they provide me a valuable measure from whence I can tell that my happiness is growing, or glowing, or can even blaze across like the sun I’ve always known to shine amply on my side of the world. I might smile a little now. For my mother at least.

bedlam in bruger...

Bruger is the subdivision where we presently live. How it got its name I can only guess, but everytime the word is mentioned, BRUGER, I can't help but create a mental picture of a juicy burger filled with BLT to excess, and my mouth waters and a teeny bit of saliva is just threatening to come off. Anyway, that is not the subject of this post.

I have been nothing short of a domestic slave the past two weeks… until Thursday at least when the yaya comes back. She has gone away to the province to bury her dead brother. Husband and I have been left tending to the kids on weekends, and me, poor me---a washerwoman, child minder, cook, etc...hammered by crying baby and a little boy who so conveniently throws fits of temper on these bleak hours of domicile mayhem ...There's no one we can ask help from at the moment, and it would be too much to impose ourselves on relatives who have their own hands full with something.

So, can't I help feeling like that french woman banished into a life of slavery, scrubbing floors and hanging laundry, against her repressed sensibilities, while the greasy stinking husband pokes into her poor ass. Only this time it’s not the husband that pokes, but the little monsters that are my children. How much more could I endure, I don’t know. But, patience, patience, patience…is still a virtue.

On days like these, I am constrained to look back at the single life I had for many, many years. Back then, it was only me, myself and shaz (my other self) to care about. The world didn’t complain one bit if I didn’t tidy up my room for one year. No one would dare disagree if I thought it was more practical to sortie the food stalls outside than cook on my own. I could read all I want, I could go home whenever I pleased, I could move at a snail’s pace if I wanted to. It was a simple and uncomplicated life. Not unlike now, urgency is the word of the century, and so much more.

I wonder though, had I remained ensconced in my simple and trouble-free life, if I had been any happier. Strange that having too little to worry about makes me quite unsettled. Sometimes unknowingly, I embrace the convolutions of life….being human and living strenuously brings some sense of comfort—in that I am indeed alive and struggling to overcome Life, and trying to become bigger than it is.

So am I happy being a mother? Ouch, I hear my children shrieking and yelling again…back to the merciless motherly business.

recollections: nam

I am not much of an assessing kind of blogger. If anything, I tend to be more of the stream-of- consciousness kind, with a flair a tad too much, for the melodramatic. I speak mostly of feelings rather than of events or details. I truly believe observing the littlest things is not one of my pursuits or strengths.

But I am at a point of my blogging life that my mind is preoccupied with vague insinuations of things that are neither here nor there. In other words, I am mentally flaccid, waiting for eventual death. So I deemed this would be the best time to at least talk of something more….fact-based. Hence, a nervous attempt at recollecting my thoughts, of my first-time ever to leave home and travel abroad.

Vietnam was my very first destination. It was an almost cursory decision to make, even if the person I was traveling with (B) had goaded me forever to do it. Back then, traveling simply didn’t appeal that much to me. But after I did, in his able hands, I got hooked for life. The first time he broached the subject of going to Nam, I thought duh? Honest. I was blissfully ignorant of the world outside me, being cocooned all my life in my little bucolic world of carabaos and mangosteens. And I thought the only place worth calling a “vacation” is in Europe. Which incidentally I could never afford, even if I held five jobs at one time and saved every penny I could by eating instant noodles at every meal. I still can’t afford it today, but I’m not as ignorant anymore of the bliss at having traveled places and gained experiences.

So fast forward to the whole rigmarole of securing travel documents, and we were off to the international airport. Like a desperate city slicker (slacker?), I had my new beige backpack two sizes bigger than myself, which I lugged around everywhere, nearly breaking my back. Two hours of relatively calm plane ride, his hands over mine, sensing that I was a little jumpy at the prospect of setting foot at alien soil, and I had my first view of the Hanoi runway…..

And you thought I was so psyched up to do this piece. Apparently, I couldn't. Now, I will have to slog and sweat over the next paragraphs and will post again sometime. When I’m ready. First off, cold HANOI up north…..Then the long bus rides and innumerable pit stops to many many places on the way down south, ultimately ending the whole gamut in Saigon, now known as HO CHI MINH city . I know how bitin it is, and I'm strangling myself right now if it's any consolation....

Don’t blame me if this account will come in very patchy and far far in between episodes. I warned you how this is always my achilles heel...

it's impossible...

...not to think of angels when you hear andrea bocelli sing even a somewhat schmaltzy song popularized by a perry como. Its almost impossible not to carry on with everyday life, hanging on with what little sanity you’re left, if music doesn’t exist. And it’s impossible not to accept, in deference to all your sullen and vulnerable thoughts, that a man like him…the voice without sight… can teach you how to want nothing and yet be happy and full of dreams…

SOMOS NOVIOS

It’s impossible…

Tell the sun to leave the sky,
It’s just impossible . . .

It’s impossible…

Ask a baby not to cry,
It’s just impossible . . .

Can I hold you closer to me.
And not feel you going through me,
Split the second

That I never think of you,
Oh! how impossible . . .

Can the ocean keep from rushing to the shore?

It’s just impossible!
If I had you, could I ever want for more?

It’s just impossible!

And tomorrow

Should you ask me for the world,

Somehow I’d get it . . .
I would sell my very soul

And not regret it . . .
For to live without your love,
It’s just impossible!



:: andrea bocelli . amore ::

Transcience

Year after year, there are people we know who pass away and leave our physical world to the vast infinite cosmos only they can know about. We hear of friends and relatives who succumb into illnesses, or have lived long enough to want another day on earth. Thus, they willingly take that last trip down the road and disappear forever. We do mourn for them, true. We feel deep sadness as the ones left behind. But, the impact is not as deep as losing a person who is next of kin, or who has been nearest to our emotional core. Like a mother, or a child.

This week, two of our relatives passed away on the same day. The son died earlier, and the mother died too, a few minutes soon afterwards. They lived in different towns. But strangely, the mother who hadn’t known yet of her son’s demise, was asleep and never woke up. Just like that. As though they had a deal, a vow to walk and knock on the pearly gates of kingdom come, together.

Together. Not a day apart. Eerie, but it happened. And now, there they are, two happy souls drifting above, looking down on their nearests and dearests. He was 65 and she, 85. Although they were at the ages when death seemed fated and inexorable, the circumstances of their departure, is enough to shake me up and remind me (again) of our stark mortality. How, in the grandest scheme of things, we can be blown off the face of the earth in a single breath of sickness, or accident---creating, thus, our life’s conclusion.

Fortunately, we can lessen our chances of meeting an uneventful end, by being cautious and vigilant of what we eat and what we do to our bodies. We can veer ourselves into safety at all times, or create miracle concoctions to prolong our youth and extend our lives. Unfortunately, we are still faced with the fact that we are but transient beings, and that physical death is preordained. There’s no escaping it. We may try to meander around its curves and turns, or sometimes even cheat it. But at the end is the same cul-de-sac, the same blind alley that we will fatally collide with. We can not just ever go back.

I don't mean to scare but....

But the children….I can never imagine to leave them alone. Not now. Not even if they have everything they will need materially whilst growing up. Because I have been there, a place where sadness is so profound that nothing else can mend it or alleviate it, except death itself.

And yet do I hold supremacy over it to say no? Maybe in principle yes.

But words are ever so empty when Death’s black mantle finally comes closing in…


written 9.12.06

love is not all

Love is not all: It is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain,
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
and rise and sink and rise and sink again.
Love cannot fill the thickened lung with breath
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
It well may be that in a difficult hour,
pinned down by need and moaning for release
or nagged by want past resolution's power,
I might be driven to sell your love for peace,
Or trade the memory of this night for food.
It may well be. I do not think I would.

:: edna st. vincent millay::
posted at 360 on 8-07-06

far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife

(title borrowed from thomas gray)

These last few days, I have been in a state that I hardly recognize myself when I look in the mirror. The woman I see is tired of everything, but she seems to deliberately inflict it upon herself, because really, stress is just a state of mind, and it's nothing like a good dose of sex or movies and shopping can't cure----or better yet, drowning in a sea of cuervo, or walking naked in public. Imagine how that would be like, a nanosecond of adrenaline rush, and voila! adios to self-recriminations...

But seriously, I have no inclination to do any of the above, save perhaps for some ocassional carnal remedy, which I am not really prone to gloss over any further in my blog. And so I blame myself solely in the process. I know that people around me think I am a little difficult to deal with, although often mellow and proper. But I am a self-declared loner, and I give no horseshit to anyone, so sometimes it's a feeling of me and me, against the world. That spark of hostility is almost always latent, but I can sometimes sense how they frown upon my being an oddball. But being who I am, I guess that they would not have seen it otherwise.

I mean motherhood and marriage and all, puts you in the mainstream. There are certain mores and expectations you have to flow with. You are doomed to wear that mask all your life, and it's your choice so no one else can be faulted on it. But inside you, deep where your soul is, not as a mother or wife or officemate, or neighbor, just the person you are--you want to be hip or cool or crazy or renegade or wanton---but you can't bring about the audacity to show it to anyone, not at this stage of your life, and in scenarios you create to realize your secret dreams. Suffice it to say that eventhough there are many people outside your circle who claim to empathize, or psychoanalyze your every move, not all of them are wont to understand you or NOT judge you. Society dictates that we fit a certain mold, and try we must if we want to have a quiet, albeit boring semetertian, life. Lest you wish to be called childish or irresponsible. In the face of all these, you just got to have faith in the fact that behind your back, yourself is as true to you as you are to her.

My life in this age, it gravitates me to do what is good and beneficial. But in spite of the unrealistically high and questionable lengths I sometimes go through to become a perfect stepford spouse, I detest being goody two-shoes and proper. What is it that I really want? I think most of us unwittingly go through life trying to ignore our true calling or at least that which will make us happy. We sacrifice our characters, and even kill our souls for what is perceived to be a more noble and meaningful cause. We equate being a docile wife, and having healthy children and comfortable lives with satisfaction. And yet, there's a diminutive lot of us, the madding crowd, who aren't even half as happy, and think we can only find our sense of belonging in the dank compartments of our minds, which are by the way, already festered with our own psychotic maggots.

Why can't we be like the rest of them, outside and more so inside? How does one go back in time when only your selfish ideas mattered? I wish it were that simple, like clicking the Undo button. But hey, whoever said life is bunchful of lollies to loll with....And so, sometimes I am convinced that tagore or gibran are a bunch of liars with a lot of senseless shit to say and it's about time I embrace the pessism of a schopenhauer. At least when you don't expect, you don't get disappointed.

Shadow Child

Oftentimes I feel guilty about not having enough time for Gabriel. Sure I’m physically there, as I have devoted most of my waking time to him and Sophia. Our weekends have been relegated to caring for them, above other things. But after having Sophia, I have almost completely forgotten that Gab is first and foremost the little baby that gave me a profound sense of joy and the reason to explore a wealth of other maternal temperaments I haven’t known. I had many times deliberately lingered on the thought of him, and wrote about him at length in my other journal. Back then, I had all the time in the world for him. We played games, read books, sang songs and did many things together. Gab was everything you could have for a docile and lovable child. I could not have been any happier.

I thought that I could simply jump back into being a cool mother with him after I am done with the nitty-gritty of rearing Sophia in the first few months, but I was much too wrong. Apparently, I was not ready to act my part as best I could, in Scene II of my Motherly Life.

Juggling time with work and raising up two kids was more than I could bargain for. To begin with, there is a conflict of trying to discipline Gab, while being indulged in, on the other hand, by his dad. We have different methods in trying to create an air of authority as parents to him, I being the more unyielding of us, and the dad being a bit of a spoiler. Now that seems to confuse the child, and you could imagine how two little tots competing for notice all at once, made us lose focus. Non-plussed, we thrash about trying to get a grip of it, making the effort to be nice and low-spoken, and yet enormously struggling to otherwise keep our sanity in place.

Gab has begun to be misunderstood and mistrusted by us, and vice versa. At this moment, his point of contention and envy is the little bundle of only 9 months. We could only do so much to protect the baby. In his effort to curb a part of our attention from Sophia, he does everything to make himself felt, physically or in some other ways. He would complain of non-existing pains from cuts, or stomachache, or earache. And if that wasn’t enough, he would “punish” his little sister with surreptitious attempts of tugging at her hair or shoving her from the crib. It’s horrifying, especially that I know he lies in wait to see if we’re watching, and would pounce on her, every chance he gets.

That fleeting feeling of enmity seems to lurk from somewhere like a shadow, and it is his form. You know it's not consciously what he is, but the distress grows in uncontrollable proportion that you forget who you are and who he is, and you lose sense of it all, and the only easy way to fumble out is to be angry at him. Sad that you hate in the way you love.... But I came to think of it, he’s just a child. And he must have a hell of a time trying to cope with this business of new STRANGER in the family, an entirely new landscape where he has been reduced to a bit player. Not being in the center of it all anymore has caught up with his childish ego. He could only cling on to Mommy’s little kisses and embraces, to reassure himself he still reigns supreme. The last thing he needs is all that cooing and indulging on the little stranger.

To make matters worse, I became a bit worried that Gab may be a little slow, not being able to speak in straight sentences at age 3. There are clear words in sporadic flashes, but still, I incongruously try to compare him with other kids, when deep inside me I know that I should not. Gone were the days that he would beckon for book after book, although rather petulantly, if I didn’t come huffing at once. Lately, he’s an android sitting in front of Disney Channel all day long. Hard to admit, but Playhouse has become to him a surrogate parent, as we struggle on to care for the other kid, day in and day out. There’s no one take blame or credit, for anything, except us, his parents. However I am always determined to make it better, If only I could try more, now that many realizations have come to languish in the background for many months and I yank back in sonic speed.

Last night, we congregated inside the bedroom, and even if I was dead tired from all the household uproar of not having a yaya for a fortnight, I asked him to get a book. I was a little apprehensive to find out what (little) he knows. But, reading Robert Louis Stevenson, we browsed through pages and pages of shadows, and rivers, and cathedrals and minarets, and beaches and horse-drawn carriages, and storybook fairylands. He points here and there. He asked me to name things, and he gamely volunteers answers on my made-up ignorance. Just then, I discovered that my little boy has many words to say in his heart. He knew that the wind can blow the leaves off trees, and shadows can grow bigger than we are….

And I could only listen, listen, listen.


written 08.14.06

then it occured to me....

that all we humans have our own transgressions, be it in the mind, the body or the spirit. it is a frailty that equalizes us all, and i'm dead sure that even the holiest of thous have sinned once or twice in their lifetime. it is only in the intensity of abomination where we differ from one another. i have erred in that i allow caffeine to seep in my veins even if i know it's causing me to shiver and act a little loony. i have sinned because i've read far too many blogs that i hardly have the appetite to write my own. my spirit has gone astray because everyday, for the last so and so months, i have believed that there are indeed orbs and ghosts and evil that exist. but most of all, i am guilty, and will never go scot-free- because i have fallen deep, so deep into this fracture. i have gone addicted to you, been captivated, captured, obsessed....may they forgive me, if it went on and on and on....

Black Girl Assaulted

one of the biggest mood setters in my life is tracy chapman, a remarkable woman with a remarkable voice. no, i have never discounted the fact that she is almighty dykeness, but i have thought of her more as a woman whose emotions are undoubtedly too feminine to not relate to, dreadlocks notwithstanding. back when i was a struggling recluse in the big city of manila, circa 1991, i was walking down the street to the beat of her revolution song, armed with all the angst of an orphan girl, without a home and without warmth to speak of. for my lover brought such crushing appeal to me that i honestly wished i was a dyke or had a bummer for a lover. fast cars was the most overplayed tune around that time, and although it was fated to be so, i had deliberately turned away from the idea of sharing her with a million other souls. i must admit, the literary brilliance and her unqualified talent are way too blinding to ignore. hero worship, a term coined by an erstwhile friend about me gushing over him, or at least his qualities, that's exactly the thing that this singer/writer has caused and done to me. may i just reckon though that over late night mullings (me, cigarettes, and the ocassional mr. sanmig) and her, ms. chapman, singing the black woman sufferer's songs-- it was an undeniably hot union.

written 07.18.06

Being In Love

Note to self: I have long made a mental reminder to migrate the entries from my 360 blog to here. In fact, I already did so with a couple of posts. I have decided to "kill" 360, as having two blogs is too much for me. And, at the risk of sounding like a thankless wretch, I have to honestly say I did not enjoy writing there. Henceforth, the succeeding posts are stuff rehashed from my other blog, unless I say otherwise. Just a caveat.

Back to my endless meanderings about the rains, some afternoons I enjoy the cool air brought about by the monsoons. I wish we have this weather all year round. Well, that's about all I can do really, just wish, and imagine wildly.To me, a day like this is close to perfect. It's like being in love....and I swear there are instances that the rain just makes you go woozy and bask in the glowing feeling of loving or being loved....!

One such afternoon, it was just perfect. A little drizzle here and there as though I was on my way out to somewhere infinitely romantic. Really if I had a choice I would toss away my umbrella and take pleasure in the teeny drops of water that seem to purposely caress my face. I wasn't exactly on the verge of singing and trip-tripping like gene kelly on the puddles of the wet cobbled streets of madrigal. Sure I have felt love, and at best it's a happy thought, but in the real adult world, I had to appropriately appear unruffled and in one piece.

And yet, I'd know I feel love. That glorious feeling can't be helped. Like seeing someone you have not been with for a long time...it makes you feel terribly anxious, and a little heady. Do I worry about getting there, no I dont know, but believe me, it's hard to keep one's composure when you feel the bite. Either you stare into space like you're too overcome with a nervous spell, or you run around like a headless chicken because of the unbearable suspense of the coming minutes. Everything seems to teem with...well, exaggeration. Me, I choose to be a cool chick, eventhough I feel a gazillion butterflies swarm and flutter with giant wings in my stomach. But that's when I know I'm in love.

And then say, you see a someone. You notice how old you've grown apart, I mean not apart from each other but individually, yes..something like that. Has it been that long? You see yourself in the person who sees you for the first time again, and it's a little strange. There's a half smile in both your faces because you can't seem to find a word that will at least make ordinary sense. Instead you size each other up secretly....and the discovery is just unspeakable.

Or a person who long ago thought of you as someone you just exchange a few pleasantries with, is actually standing right in front of you--a little nervous like yourself probably--but certainly real in flesh----and some kind of wonderful. Suddenly the past comes rushing back, the years that had gone, when you were younger and confounded with the mysteries of life and the common hurts, watching life from a terribly selfish point of view. Your mind bustled with thoughts about the poor world that owed you everything and nothing. There was once arrogance , but now you're more steadfast, waiting for something to reborn, something which is about to be understood by only both of you and no one else. Highfalutin, but yeah, there will be such love....

At times, there's a torrent of desperation to talk, to want to know more, to ask more....and then it begins to rain down again, and you somehow feel the tranquility in the sound of water trickling down on the roof, on the windows, from the sky, or from your rapt hearts....no words need be spoken. A just silence painstakingly shuts you out from the world and makes you hear how deafeningly loud it actually is...a crash and boom you can't deny. Now, tell me if that isn't love?

Someone once said,there just won't come soft rains....

Being in love is getting the worst of the monsoon, being hit hard, feeling the icky bite, and finally relishing an afternoon delight in the tropics of your passion....yay! How cheeky can you get? But,true indeedy..

written 7.17.06

A Day in the Life

Today on my way to work, the jeepney I was riding came to a full stop at the intersection of wilcon and vivere. Don’t ask me the streets coz I don’t know. Anyway, I was busy fumbling with the I-pod inside my bag, looking for the track I like. And then there were these grubby-looking kids, aged 9 to 12 probably, who asked to get on the jeepney. The driver tried to shoo them away, but two girls were able to get on when the traffic light turned green. One girl, maybe 10, had this little strap bag on her with lots of par avion envelopes. There were scribblings on it that I didn’t determine to understand. I know they were some kind of solicitation, but I didn’t have the chance to read it.

Commuting to work everyday gives you a good picture of people who are either too indolent to eke out a living from hard work, or are incapacitated to get themselves a decent job. So they resort to faster ways to make money, and this is one of their operandi. All year round in Manila, you encounter different people who would get on public transportations and make all sorts of solicitations ranging from unemployed men who are perennially on strike, quasi-religious people who wear long skirts and neck ties and would read verses from the bible and warn you of perpetual doom while their companion makes the round with a white leather pouch, surreptitiously sucking on your unwitting catholic guilt so that you couldn't stand not dropping in a precious peso for the sake of inner peace.

Then, there are men who would sing Christmas carols with their pathetic little rattles, and street children who ply the streets, come rain or shine, to beg for a ride or for money…I could go on and on, but my point is I don’t trust them. And hardly do I have any sympathy for them. Except perhaps for the children, but not for their morons of parents who leave them be. Which brings me back to my story about the girls....

So, this girl hurriedly placed the envelopes on the passenger’s laps and signaled to her friend, who was seated on the estribo, before my feet. Then this other girl, the friend, started to bass beat on the makeshift bongo drums she was carrying (by makeshift I mean crosscut pvc pipes with the other end of the hollow covered with a cellophane wrapper from a corn snack and stretched tight with cheap rubber bands---so ingenius I swear it could make a steve gadd kit pale in comparison [exagerration really]).

She started to make rhythm for about 30 seconds, and then broke into a chant. I know that I didn’t understand a thing she was singing but, it just blew me away. The girl-woman voice, the unkempt corn yellow hair, the bare feet, the closed eyes and quivering lips, as if she was on a trance, the fact that she was sitting on the estribo without anything to hang on to….it tore me away from my ipod that was playing louis armstrong’s what a wonderful world.The stark contrast of the words from that song, and the little girl’s, whose every inch of body represented dearth and poverty….I could not help but ask what indeed is wonderful with this godawful world.

The strangest thing is, while she was singing, there was a writhing of passion, and a sense of elation in her face—like an ecstatic feeling of being freed from the shackles. I mean she could try to look sad and pitiable right, and hasten the pesos in their envelopes--seeing that she and her companion are strapped for cash, or food, or a home, and everything material…but there was none of it. What a character!

I would have liked to hug her like a long lost sister, or give her something at least, although I’m reminded that today I’m broke and have only a pack of kraft crackers in my bag. Tee hee…. Nonetheless, I would have emptied my meager possessions right in front of her if only to make her know what I feel. But she, well what do you know…she only smiled like everything’s okay with the world. Fuck, I thought. She did not deserve this kind of life, and neither do I— I, with all my hostility and condescension to everything mediocre. She ought to live in a castle, and me in the remote mountains of the himalayas...

Seriously, if I could only be half as strong and content as her, then I could go to the office penniless and barefoot, and she could have my pair of fake suedes to use for wandering the streets, whilst haunting whiners like me with the unforgettable act she just did.

But…she was gone with her girl-companion before I could shake myself off and do what I should have done.

The Rains Cometh

Far too often, I have talked about rains and how much I love its presence. It's not actually raining while I write this....but the sky has an ominous color that tells it's going to pour soon, and so I am strategically set into my little inspired artsy mode which seems a bit peculiar because there's absolutely nothing artsy about what I am thinking or doing.....but, whatever.

I like the months leading up to the wet season, in this case July. The suddenly musty smell of the room, watching rainwater drip from the glass windows of my building, stirs me back to memories of the times that rain had made a big mark in my consciousness. Pardon my sounding tawdry, but back then I could always feel the romatic undertones of being huddled in the rain with just about anyone of the opposite sex. Somehow, the quixotic side of you hopes that some nice guy would offer you his coat or his umbrella, watch the rains let up, in a quaint coffee shop over petty and embarassed exchanges. But hey, I was fifteen when I had those thoughts.....

And then it was always very sad, infinitely sad, especially when you see the wet leaves glimmer under a pale moon after a downpour....you see life's tragedies unfold before you, how you lost a mother, the time you lived apart from your brothers, your first heartbreak, your failures, your unspoken furies, your fears, and your self-loathings.....It always seemed to rain. It was a waterlogged existence that you couldn't even tell when it would stop....

But oh, it stopped actually. The rains stop, but the memories are etched and burned. And that's why today, there's a crazy woman talking about senseless stuff about rains, even if it's too fucking hot and sundrenched outside. ...

To My Little Gabriel,

On your fourth birthday, I wish that I will always remain close to your heart, that I am the first person you run to when you are down and need cheering up. I love that you have grown to be a beautiful child, inside and out. You are at a phase of your life that you often misunderstand, and are sometimes misunderstood. But as your mommy, I know deep inside who you are and what you need. I love that when we have our little quarrels, you are the first one to hug me and say sorry, although I hope you know that my guilt cannot compensate for your forgiving way. Sometimes, I just look at you, and remind myself how you were such a little creature enclosed in my arms, fragile and undemanding. To me you are still such, but I know you’re getting stronger and more sure of yourself. I wish that life will be good to you.

Love,

Mom

the gift

I have always wanted to own a camera, a good camera. Eversince a friend back in college casually took a photo of me leaning against the window, the afternoon sun streaming through the sheer curtains....I had immediately coveted the precious thing. And now, many years and silent yearnings after, my husband got us one. Not that it is anything too grand, but well for the past months I had bided my time and made do with the 35mm kind, and even the 2megapixels phone camera. Even then, I knew I had the eye in picking out a good photo, if not exactly capturing one. Looking back however, I admit that those ordinary contraptions helped me a lot in being resourceful and more creative with pictures. And there's post-processing to be had. Needless to say, a new digital camera with ten times zoom and 6 million pixels is eons way better than what I had dreamed of. And I can't complain one bit.

I'm happy that I will finally be able to take the kind of photos that I like, of the kids, of nature, of friends and family, hell even of me. Without wanting to sound too forthcoming, I have all heart for photography, and if not yet the eyes, soon I will....

The best Christmas gift, never to be forgotten or put away. Snap, snap,snap we go!

Thank you, dear....

to sophia, belatedly....

Far from the grumblings I now read, about having you inside my tummy all those months, I smile at the thought that it was after all worth every hurdle and discomfort I went through. You are more than your father and I have anticipated.

The happiness you bring into our family make us marvel at everything more tenderly, as if with purer eyes. That by just being yourself. Innocent and yet perceptive of our love. Feeble and yet powerful enough to get us scuttling about for your needs and wants. Simple and yet to be treated with utmost care and delicacy…

Sometimes, you and I have our little clashes, when in my best effort I couldn’t grasp what you are trying to say. In your unrelenting baby aches and cries, you challenge me, and I frustrate you with my motherly blunders. But often, the smile in your face, that seem to tell me I am doing just right, more than makes up for all of those low moments in our young life together.

Your dad and I...we may not be the best parents, but hey we try, for you and your brother. As days pass, I will constantly miss holding you in my arms, lying awake in the wee hours to make sure you’re warm and sleeping soundly next to me. How I wish to slip back to that time, and enjoy you infinitely...

But too, I watch you everyday in eager faith, that you will grow up to be a strong, gracious girl. My little love, never be fearful to share with us your small sorrows, and in the due course of struggling, even your greatest joys…

Happy first birthday …I love you so.
(10.28.06)

In Remembrance of Toni

I have decided to go back here, thinking that this is where it all started. For many months, I have fancied writing again, and did so in another blog I created, but I continually idled around, that it has all become one protracted nonsense. The excuses for random things and laziness took over me again, but I admit the domestication of a mother like me kills whatever little brainwave activity is going about in my muddled head. And I can hear myself making excuses again. So on to blogging. This time I hope that I’ll be more motivated and constant to slog on to Blogger, rather than just clicking and reading what seem to be now the washed-out entries of long ago….

Sadly, the reason why I’m writing now is to grudgingly try to disentangle myself from the inward grief I feel for a beautiful girl I once met, but who is now up in the heavens with her maker. At the tender age of five, one ordinary, humdrum day, a speeding vehicle sideswiped her outside her home, and killed her in the ensuing minutes before aid rushed to her side.

How cruel can fate be, even to the innocent and helpless?

We met her on the occasion that I wrote of another two deaths in the family. Shy and pretty, with long beautiful jet black hair, I was drawn to her as I am always, to little kids who have no wariness or qualms about them, just coyness that awaits a welcoming gesture, for them to open up. Her folks graciously received us at their home where we stayed the night. They gave us the most comfortable room, in spite of our small protests. It was an occasion intended for sober actions, but having had the opportunity to know them as relations, it was otherwise a juncture that made my son gain a friend, and us, share a few heartwarming moments with them in that quaint town.

What breaks my heart now is that my son had doggedly asked me to give the little girl his CareBears pillow as a parting gift, but somehow she was too shy to accept. And 3 year old Gabby-- a perfect illustration of how kids can be mercilessly direct and unrefined sometimes-- changed his mind in a millisecond, when she was about to take it. Back then, it seemed amusing, but never was there a trace of foreboding that it was the first and last time we would see of that little angel.

Not a couple of months afterwards, we heard the sad news of her passing….

What to make of it? I don’t know. The loss of a child is not new to me, having had a miscarriage the first time I got pregnant. But I believe it is not nearly as agonizing or emotionally crushing, as having indeed spent years watching a little life from you grow and blossom into a beautiful living thing, breathing warmth into your otherwise controlled but dreary existence. Of how many times it made you laugh aloud and look at everything in a much gentler perspective, and often with rosy eyes. Of the fact that a little being could bring out so much enthusiasm in you, could test the ends of your patience, and reward you with boundless joy you never thought you could take pleasure in.

But how I feel for them, the ones she left behind, who will get back to the house, a place once awash with her happy clutter, and her childish laughter, and all the jollity of a small child, that is now empty and devoid of any hope, reverberating only in endless tears and untold sadness...

Why her?

Much as there is enough happiness found in my little kids, I can only cry, and cry eternally inside, for the special one that got away....