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reflections

I’ve been working nearly 8 years with the same company, and I am still the same subservient slave that I was since the day that I got here. I am working with people who I feel don’t deserve where they are, and maybe I don't deserve to be where I am anyhow, but one person in particular has become such a clever ass that he gets his way with everyone, beats the shite out of me every time, treats me and everybody else like shite, not all the time but majorly, and there he is enjoying what he could squeeze out of the firm, before our very eyes. And the rest of us are like hostages in a movie, trying to be jolly good and obedient, all shackled up to a tree, unable to move, fear gripping us all over, us helplessly watching our very own corporate ghosts repeatedly vandalized, threatened and trampled upon---as we wait only for our caped heroes to rescue us from the eventual throes of morbid death. The horror and the pathos of it.

But one might ask, how come I never moved out and moved on, so then I wouldn’t be this ornery middled-aged woman complaining about things, and instead be climbing up the corporate ladder, dressing up to the nines, driving a town car around with cappuccino in one hand, and the steering wheel on the other, while flicking her cigarette out the window with her perfectly chiseled blood-red manicured nails, and dreaming up big dreams for herself? Yes indeed, whatever happened to me all these years? Last time I checked, I had high hopes and a promising future. But then I got kids and I got grounded here. For life. Today, I got split-ends on my hair and a plain, pallid face full of worry lines. I have no regrets about it really, and I am absolutely sure now that I have wanted this. But there are buts and ifs that egg me on to consider how and why everything stopped there. Or so it seemed. Well, one would wisely say, it’s all about choices, my poor dear. And I can’t agree more.

But I never thought myself a poor dear. Deep inside me I know that I have something that I can hold on to as my strength, or my redeeming virtue. But somehow I am not one to really wallow on them, or to publicize my accomplishments. I smile inside when I do believe I have done the right thing, but always—and I do not know how I’ve managed to go about life with this---I always fear that exulting too highly or openly on what I have done might make me fail twice as much. In my mind, I am sometimes guilty of condescension towards other people, that whatever they are proudly blabbering about today is archaic to me, I have been there, done that, read that, heard that. Yet, I can never be too rude to tell them off. And that is why in the course of my silence and gentle acquiescence, I am being the one construed as old-fashioned, outmoded, or maybe even dumb? Ouch. But that’s my sad reality. I only blame myself and nobody else. Because really, life goes around and we can't mope around hoping that change will take us under its wings. I am so very well aware of that.

I have a small worlds where I can express my creativity, and reel in it without having to make an excuse of who I am. However the idea of putting myself up or my abilities for sale is still new to me. Yes, even at this age my self-confidence is very elementary. Many times I have met people who tell me great things about myself, and I do believe in them. The candidness of their appreciation towards me is really quite embarrassing at times for me. I know I do deserve it. But, I hate press releases. My main assumption is that, there is always someone better, greater, more than what I am. And goodness, how I clap my heart out when I find out about something that is far greater, that gives me joy, because I know that I can strive higher. Maybe that is what keeps me grounded. Or untrusting? It may be, it seems to always be. However, for once, I want to learn how to take it graciously. Without excusing my candor. Without caring how I would look, as I jump around like a little girl shouting at the top of my lungs “ I am good, I am good!”…

colors.

The one time I had experienced discrimination in life was when I had a relationship with a foreign man. I met him when I was a little orphan girl back in the province. My friends and I were doing volunteer work one hot summer for an orphanage near my home, and there were a bunch of blokes from australia who came over to build classrooms in poor communities, under the auspices of apex, a civic club probably equivalent to our jaycees. Not having had any close brush with people of a different skin color, the girls and I, naturally couldn’t contain our curiosity with the white people. You know how in your naïve mind you generalize people with white skin color as americans? It wasn’t a few times that I heard an exchange of hey joes with the whites and the local people who looked permanently wide-eyed, agape, or an O forming on their lips.

I mean could you tell the nationalities anyway, when you are young, or even old enough, never been outside your province, and already half-condemned to a life of veiled realism, and obscurity? It was only many years afterwards that it sunk in, that australia is in fact, not anywhere near america, but many worlds apart. I wonder how the aussies felt at the allusion then, but I am sure they did not mind a lot. I think it was enough that people had regarded them with such interest, as though there were aliens from outer space, with completely curious eye colors, hair colors, skin colors, and an absolutely indiscernible speaking tongue.

There was a bunch of them from different walks of life –doctors, engineers, teachers. They traveled and came here together as builders with their own tools and a lot of eagerness to meet people and to immerse themselves, however briefly, in a rather bewildering culture that is ours. As volunteers, we girls taught catechism subjects to the little orphans for the length of summer. Since the classrooms were being built, we held these short classes under the trees. Working in rather close proximity and a warm atmosphere with them, the girls I was with had started to inch their way to becoming friends with most of the men. But I had remained quiet, unrelenting, timid and shy.I don’t remember ever once having talked with any one of them as I was afraid that their words would be incomprehensible to me, or worse, I would be caught tongue-tied when spoken to, and end up looking like a total fool. Nonetheless, their project and the summer came to a close. We were employed to plan a culmination program when they, the apec guys, would turn over the classrooms to the nuns who were running the place. The event went well. But before everyone could turn to leave, there was an exchange of addresses, and tokens to give and receive. The girls were ecstatic, but I could only manage to say hello and goodbye to one guy, and in fact had someone give me a rather unpleasant elbow on the rib so I could trade addresses with him. Thus ended my summer when I was fifteen. I put everything behind me as school begged in.

Little did I know that the guy would figure mainly in my single life.

He sent me his first letter the moment he got back home and settled in. He wrote from when I was fifteen until I was already working here in Manila a decade later. In every ten letters he wrote, I answered one. I’d moved to different places, but he always managed to seek me out. He wrote endlessly about his life, and even though I volunteered very little information of myself and was on the brink of writing him off, he still wrote. Then one day he came again and I met him. And as he had always hoped, we were now both sitting across the same table, face to face, smiling, he much older, and I all grown up and a woman. And there we were, exchanging pleasantries and talking about our respective lives. It was the first time everything he wrote all those years really made sense to me. Things got better and better, and when I woke up from all the pleasantness and reverie, I realized that we were a couple.

Suddenly we were doing things together, planning trips together, and I was spending my weekends with him up the cold north. The six-hour bus trips I had to endure on the way up and back down felt nothing when I had only held on to the excitement of being with him again. In other words, it was nice and fuzzy feeling to be with someone who cared a lot for you, and vice versa. Then I started meeting his friends. They were all rather pleasant and good people, but as I was an insufferably timid person, I didn’t always get to advance my friendships with them, not without some prodding from him. Now that I think about it, I think it’s really me. But you know that when you’re trying not to be overly sensitive about things, you feel worse about it ? That unbeknownst to your partner, you are ill at ease with the crowd he is with, but still you try to meld in, because it is what pleases him?

I think he wouldn't have known about how I felt, because I never told him so. But in one or two instances, I think that I could not anymore close off my eyes and say it was pure coincidence, or I was deliberately trying to make a poor excuse of my sorry prevaricating self. I felt that I was being looked down upon, and regarded with different eyes because I was with someone whose skin color was different from mine. Is it bigotry? I sure hope not.

But there were others still. An incident when I overheard a conversation between a hotel owner and our common friend who called to book us but was asked if I was “dirty”, and she was assured that I wasn’t. And another time when we had to stay overnight at his friend’s house, and there were looks that doubted who I was and from whence I came, or maybe, what I was doing with a white man. But nothing could have been more hurtful than having to be invited at an intimate party of predominantly white, in fact I was the only brown girl in the crowd. I was told a few days then, the owner has lost her diamond ring that night, was looking all around the next day, saying that there only a “few” people in the party---but found it down the kitchen sink soon afterwards. I mean, what??? What did I have to be told about that for? I had to take a careful look at myself in the mirror once and ask… Did I dress like a slut? Certainly not!!! Did I talk like a trashy bitch? As far as I know, I had only been most polite and careful with my words. Do I look like someone who would steal?? Now, this really enraged me inside. Because I had never ever found myself, nor an infinitesimal fraction of who I am, having been interested in another’s possession and coveted it to want to steal it. Not me. Not in this lifetime. And that is why I changed towards him, or them, all for the worst of it, or maybe for the better of it. I don’t know. He was still full of candor and childish naiveté, or maybe a warped mind, until the day we said goodbye.

That is not really why we ended our four-year relationship though, but sad as it is, I recount those incidents now with a slight regret, of why I never really rose up to it and said something, why I evaded having to show umbrage and perhaps teach them a lesson about condescension and arrogance. Why I always believe that people are good, or not so bad as they are and that they deserve some kind of chance and redemption….But why I always end up hurting, even when I thought the ball had already been bouncing the right way.

swig

Woke up this morning with a bang in my head, and a thump in my stomach. I spent the better part of the bad night getting intoxicated at east 21, while putting on my best behavior towards our work colleagues from abroad. Obviously, somewhere in between two shots of tequila and a couple glasses of whiskey, my aim to be prim and dignified somewhat fell apart. Drinking has been part of a social function where my work is concerned, as that’s where everybody seems to gravitate after a particularly long dinner and lots of senseless conversation with people you only get to meet every three years or so. Earlier that night at dinner, the boss came over to each of the girls, and there’s not a good many, to talk us sweetly into joining the boys for a few swigs afterwards. It’s been several years since we have done anything like this, so I felt that I couldn’t say no. Neither could Jo.

I remember all those years back when some, or rather most of us, were still single, that drinking seemed an essential part of our work life. There’d be days in a week when we would look forward to settling down comfortably at our nook in the Bronx, and our favorite waitresses would be waiting to serve us with our favorite frizzies. Just chilling out, singing ourselves senseless at the karaoke, making little conversations about mostly nothing….it was the quintessential single loser’s life. Yet, good in a way. But after we all got married, the habit seemed to naturally drift away, as everyone, too, drifted apart. The smoking went, the incorrigible flirtings went, and so did the love for liquor. I for one, never really tried to look back, as I have no good reason to be proud of, whilst I was under the influence. There was never a time that I managed to stay sane and sensible, as I have never been accustomed to drinking an iota more than what I am supposed to.

Last night was not an exception either, for me whose relationship with alcohol is not casual and light, like having a quick puff of cigarette outside and flicking it gingerly with the finger, and after a few more, I get done and back to my routine. So anyway, as I have obliged our visitors, I started out with a light beer. I never intended to drink any more of it at first. I had my heart fixed on just sitting silently in my corner and watching the loud band playing, not really keen on getting into tête-à-tête or feigning to want one, with the boys or the girl. The officemate next to me discussed about getting cocktails next. To be honest, I’ve never been socially educated about bar drinks, the margaritas and daikiris are greek to me, but I am willing to imbibe anything to my limits, and be acquainted with it every then and now. So, it is with a twist of irony that we settled in ordering a concoction named “sex in the beach”. This was after all a night of fun and team building, and I was not worried about raised eyebrows or wry admonitions. Not when I absolutely aimed not to get wasted.

But before the “sex” could come, the boss started passing glasses around, something on the rocks, and he was aiming for the girls, while the boys cheered us on to drink. Needless to say, I obliged again. And again. And then before I could hold out for breath, there were little jiggers for the cuervo floating on the candle lit tables, and one landed on the spot next to my sanmig. To drink or not to drink? Perhaps something was beginning to take place in my head, that suddenly things started to look a little easy and groovy. You know…people were loosening up and smiling more silly, and I knew for the life of me I was heading to my destruction. And yet, I drank it all up. Second shot of cuervo, washed it down with beer where the tube ice has completely thawed and joined the yellow liquid. For the boys, or the men, this bravado for drinking was a matter of who was more virile amongst them, and whose culture (all Asians) definitely could hold it best….I didn’t give a damn. For me, it’s my devil beer or the deep blue sea. I was slightly aware that I’m beginning to get red in the face like a devil. I was flushed and free-wheeling….

We had all walked out of the bar for some whiff of the night air, and we went to the nearest gazebo where we could overlook the laguna. There was the flickerite in me saying that I should take some photos of the beautiful lights, but there was no way I could get myself to do that. Not anymore. I was beginning to feel my temples tight across my head and the throbbing pulse inside became more and more pronounced. I had decided to hold my drink down now. But what’s the use? The shamelessness of my act had oozed itself into my bloodstreams and I have begun to lose track of who I was, or who I was with.

I wouldn’t say that I acted a fool, but I had definitely said some things that I might not otherwise say when I am sober. That’s me. I have lucid awareness of what I was doing, unless I fell asleep and be elsewhere in my mind, away from the rowdiness and incoherence of my surroundings. But I was woken up, not a few times, and I know that a mix of drinks, and drinking uninhibitedly one night in every three or so years, ultimately lands me into something I would half-regret the next day. Because people will start telling me, with a slight sardonic chuckle, that I had pointed to an idiot or a sucker, or whispered some insolent,mean quips, that made them laugh out loud at the amusement of it all, while the idiot i try to ruin sits across me, wondering why this girl is so boozed up and suddenly looking rubbish. I lose.

awakening...

Reflecting on the events of the past weeks, I cannot help but suspect that something is up with the year 2007. Many unpleasant things have happened, not to me but to people I know and care about, and I can only wish the unfortunate string would be cut off this very instant and we can go about our business like we’ve always used to, minus the hard luck. As for my own life, it’s still the same…not so good and not so bad. I have a lot to be thankful for everyday, especially that the kids are growing up fine and healthy, but personally I have not found a good reason to really inhale and say “this is the life”. I am not complaining, but God knows I would be shamefully lying to myself if I said it is sweet and nice. There is the perennial pattern of being poor and sucking up to the system, and I mean all systems. In my mind I am a grand dame of some neverland, but in reality I am one of the nameless millions who carry on with their lives wishing for something better, and yet not getting as much as a notch higher, where comfort and quality of life are concerned. Is it because I am married into poor money, and that having children has been a poor choice as well? Oh god I wish not, because really I wouldn't trade any millions, if I had it, for the happiness I feel with my little children. But still, you wish for those millions, don’t you?….not for yourself, but for the children who right this very minute play in the yard, blissfully unaware of the worries and consternation you feel, while you look at them with sad eyes. I think that I have completely owned up to my responsibilities as a parent, and I can never be selfish enough to think of my needs, in deference to theirs, but it is the apparent truth that to fulfill whosever needs, we must provide….

On the other hand I recently finished this book, The Awakening, by Kate Chopin. It is a story of a married woman , Edna Pontellier, whose life seems to be in a cage, but not in a bad confining way, as it seems on the surface she has everything: a wealthy life, a generous husband and two lovely boys. However, deep inside her she wanted to be free of society’s rules, to be unlike all other women who conform and do as they were expected. She was awakening to a new sphere where she comes to be her own woman and appreciates her physical and external powers, which were pregnant with sensuality and the passion she otherwise found lacking in her relationship with her husband. She took on a lover, believing that she could sacrifice the unnecessary things and reject society’s expectations, and find the self she thought she had lost in the roles she was condemned to.

However in the end, she had to make her own tale’s conclusion, as her discovery of maternal giving and loving had led her to understand that she could not go on with her unique and independent sense of self, by being what she wants, and having to be a mother to her children and a wife to her husband, all at once. As her lover rejects her, she walks into the water and swims away from the shore and from everything, thus the suicide. And, probably, the belated purpose to find herself again.

Once I put the book down, I thought…is this me? I don’t mean the lover or suicide, even if to be honest I had entertained the thought of the latter vaguely once or twice, but yeah what the heck, any form of dying is painful unless you’re born with case of catatonia. But seriously, is this how some mothers or married women must feel? Somehow? Is there a minutest moment in our lives where we feel that having married and raising kids have made us lose our sense of womanhood, of self, of personal growth? And if like Edna, we live in a society, that in spite of its modernity, has double standards, and still frown at women who indulge in their individuality a little too openly that it threatens to tear up their so-called moral fiber, well…are we to assume a mute compliance, and be the perfect mothers and wives, loyal only to our masters? Maybe I can, or will not.

I am afraid though, that when I feel I have too much to fight for my evolution as a woman, in the event that I have the full command of my freedom that I could finally grasp it on my fingers, I would be much too old and useless to enjoy, or even want it...

Three Six

Was wondering whether I should say something about my birthday that just passed, as a thousand other thoughts swim in my mind like a teeming mass of little dots waiting to burgeon before me in a frenzy. Maybe I should anyway. As per usual, nothing of significance happened that day, except that I finally saw Makati after having been cooped up in the south for so long. I brought my little boy with me, and I am glad that Gabby seemed to flash back the same feeling of delight that I have at having seen some sort of civilization. It’s awesome to see that buildings have scraped the skies much higher than when I was last working there, and with growing curiosity I started taking snapshots, however much to Gabby’s annoyance in the end. People were getting busier and were dressing up much smarter. I felt like Gabby and I were like country mice meeting up with city mice cousins in a big scary place.

We had lunch with the cousin and my brother, they were both on a short break from work, and so it was down to the usual small talk of the urbane, and eating hastily while glancing at their wristwatches every so often, which I excuse them for, as I understand the corporate culture. I had a feeling though that I will never succeed in living in their kind of environment anymore, the hurried and harried life, as I prefer to spend and vacillate my slaving days in a mound of brambles, meaning the not so modern dusty south part of manila.

After saying our goodbyes and blowing kisses in the air, I dragged my son to glorietta. The afternoon heat was dreadful and I needed to down something on my parched throat. Gabby was complaining that he was tired and I had for a few moments needed to carry him to the shade. While in glorietta I was assailed with a tempting itch to buy something for myself, probably a new pair of shoes—fortunately I resisted the urge and remembered that my son has been egging me for a “yellow truck”. I know that a matchbox car would be quite harmless, but what do you know, I wasn’t prepared for the realization that my afternoon with him would lead me to.

We had left glorietta for toy kingdom and were walking around in circles for half an hour inside the store as he could not decide which one to get. We pretty much walked past hotwheels and matchbox cars, and I thought that he might ask for something really big and expensive, and I was gearing up myself up to say NO, just in case he hauls a thousand peso worth of toy from the shelf. He looks from one aisle to another, and this time I didn’t say a word. He took my hand and he led me. And after looking up and down the shelves, he made his verdict: let’s go home. I uttered an almost inaudible yes, but I said wait, are you sure. And the little boy couldn’t have been more resolute: Yes mommy, let’s go home.

I’ve been waiting for many a weary years to avenge myself for some unreasonable habit of spending in the past, and I finally see it coming, to save my life on my thirty-sixth birthday. My son, a little four year old thing, teaches me how to say no and mean no, and never look back.

And so it is.....

Love in deed does that the sweetest and the most painful thing to us. I had the disadvantage of seeing both last Saturday . I know it may be wrong to think it, but that was how it is to me. And so I write about it now.

I was giving a hand with the music to be played at the reception of my sister-in-law’s wedding. I made a cd-full of love songs, couple songs, but of course the indomitable me would always squeeze in something that is nice for me, although it might not be so for anyone else. And we were sitting there in one of the tables, waiting for the bride and groom to enter the room, this Damien rice song played in the background. I realized my lack of forethought while I was listening to the words. That it was not a wedding song for the couple, but for a supposedly spurned lover. I could not help but turn and glumly look at the person next to us who has been quiet the whole time…....

When sometimes love hasn’t come full circle,we go through the hurtful stage of losing things or people in our lives. Even when they exist right in front of us, we know that we would never have them. We have the choice to turn away, and look at the other side of our life, the brighter one perhaps---but sometimes we stay and confront the sad fact, brazen with our effort to be calm and collected, while deep inside we weep for what had not been.

He is our friend, a dear friend who has been with us in many milestones. I know that he was once in love with her, I do not know for sure if he still is. I think he does, a little. But he acted like a real gentleman and went with us to her wedding.

She was ecstatic as she walked down the aisle. A silhouette of a beautiful bride, tall and magnificent in her ivory gown, a steel of nerves trying to keep her wits about and her pace steady, in spite of the many nights and days she has exhausted herself preparing for her special day, almost single-handedly. I know that she had wanted this. Very much so. Her face was radiant, full of love, too overcome with joy as her true love awaits her in the altar. You could not trace a hint of sleeplessness and an ache to be done with it all.

He too is a picture of a happy young man, eyes brimming with dreams and trying to hold back tears of joy, a little embarrassed to show his emotions. But you can tell how his heart leaps in bounds. He is a good person, and there is nothing you can say that will fault him. He deserves his beautiful bride, and her life , and her sacred vows.

Things go in a whirl, it felt like a dream, the next thing I was conscious of was the couple kissing and people clapping in unison. It was over, and a new life has begun. But I lingered on the thought of the other person. How he sees the whole happy event in his sad, blameless eyes. How he could not deny his hurt and jade himself against feeling that he should have been the man holding the beautiful girl’s hand and slipping on the marriage ring. How he could be the one dreaming up a life of love, laughter, companionship and more love, from that day forward.….

But they are all good people, and I know that they know their places in the sun. He wished them well, I wished them well. But most of all, like a fairy godmother who makes it her business to grant a godchild’s desire, I wish HIM well. That he will find happiness and his one true love, and one day stop the secret rain pouring inside his heart….

tripping the light fantastic

please allow me the occasional navel-gazing, a much needed respite from all that drivel about Nothing. i have recently been photographing things and people, and am enjoying it sweetly, like a child would a new toy. i've thought of posting a few things here once in a while, images that i would probably have already put up in my photostream, but would like to post the same just because i so frigging like it. so no contest there. this one above, i made this with flickr toys, warholism, culled supposedly from the famous andy warhol who revolutioned pop art. he was a painter, film-maker, commercial illustrator, geesh he was even showbizz. and i am an insignificant blog pimp.

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!