Despite today being made a National Day of Mourning for an incident that truly deserves one, I found that there’s still so much to be grateful for. And I’m not just talking about being alive either.
So, in no particular order, here are the things that made my day:
1. The Commute to Class
2. Some bad behavior.
3. Late Lunch/Alone time
4. My companion
4. Desiree gave me jewelry
5. Found a cow pencil case
6. Movies to watch
&
7. What I wore today (Because I wanted to mourn…and Dylan was in my closet)
Be happy! ♥.
At 85 five years old, Olec’s mom passed away after spinal injuries that resulted from falling off the bed. I don’t recall ever meeting her. Maybe I was too young to remember or oblivious to the fact that this woman was his mother. I know Olec, though. He is a Baguio based salon owner and the only person I ever go to for a haircut. I’ve been seeing him since I was a little girl and something tells me that even past adolescence, I will still continue to see him.
Last night, he prayed for strength in case the inevitable would happen. I sent him the equivalent of love and prayers through a message on Facebook and when he replied today, he had been telling me what had happened and that all was well but in the midst of replying, he received news of her passing from his niece. Here is another woman I would like to remember. I may not have known her but I’m sure in some ways, I’ve met her in the eyes of her son.
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In Ateneo the semester has almost hit its first month. Students are in the usual flux of crunch-time and down-time and while the humdrum of student life keeps the halls pulsing with the steady school atmosphere, there was one person I knew who went missing. It wasn’t apparent at first. We (Anton & I) assumed that he might have decided to take the day off when we had both been in school. But, hitting the third week of the semester, Anton realized it might have been more than just a day off. So, a few days ago he went to the Bento stall in the school cafeteria, ordered his usual Yakimeshi Rice and noticed that there was a new cook in town. He didn’t hesitate to ask what had happened to the previous man, THE Ateneo version of the Iron Chef who could whip up meals within minutes and keep a long queue of college kids happy during breaks.
Mang Arlan was 36 years old. He suffered from high blood pressure, went to sleep then never woke up. School will never be the same without him. Hopefully his family is okay. I have yet to find out about them but there certainly was a tinge of sadness that could be felt upon hearing this news. 36 years old, best chef in school. I hope he was happy.
J’adore ce film! Il est tellement magnifique! Après ma classe demain j’écrirai mes pensées.
Merci, Richard.
I know enough about Islam and Muslims to know that their religion is in no way linked to violence or murder. Every religion has its murderers and saints but we are in no way given the right to choose one better over the other.
Please do not use this Ampatuan Massacre as an excuse to push for hatred against our Muslim brothers and sisters. And let us please not call this the Maguindanao Massacre because the people of Maguindanao are not terrorists. Several years ago, my father visited those lands in order to document their weaving history for a book project and he passed the very same highway where those people were killed. He recalls a peaceful and kind Maguindanao and not one that foreigners have hastily called extremely dangerous and barbaric. Yes, we have a long history of difficulty with militant groups that have chosen Mindanao as their base but when we condemn their actions, we don’t condemn those Mindanaoans who strive to do Allah proud and live dignified lives.
While the situation brings us grief and shatters our idea of a safe home, let this not be an excuse for cyclical violence in word or deed. We ought to learn from history and not allow atrocities like this to ever settle in our shores again.
Once again, Assalamu alaikum.
The life of the dead is placed in the memory of the living.
-Cicero
Petra just posted this on Tumblr. The check-marks are really chilling. Here are some of the names. Let’s remember them.
In her book, Writing Down the Bones, Natalie Goldberg dedicates an entire chapter to discuss a commonly experienced phenomenon among writers which I think applies to just about anyone. The discipline of writing is immediately painful for the one who has to sit through the “discipline” exercise, the process if you will. Goldberg calls it Fighting Tofu…”Tofu is cheese made out of soybeans that is dense, bland and white. It is fruitless to wrestle with it; you get nowhere.” Indeed, I find myself always reminded about this. Half the time ideas are flowing through my mind and just as I am preparing to write, little demons in my head are convincing me that I am too tired, too stressed, too worked-up or just saying, quite bluntly, I don’t want to write. Maybe later. Of course, the other demon is saying the opposite, write now for so and so reasons, altruistic or not. I have yet to encounter a day when I don’t take a few hits off that tofu, but lately, I’m proud to say that I’ve found reasons to sit and write.
Not all of them are happy though.
1. First, there is obligation. My mother was just recently told to write an essay of sorts on waste management. The last meeting she attended for our subdivision was one in which people could air their concerns about neighborly things. Somewhere between recalling stories from the recent floods that hit the city, she raised her hand and said that there should be an increased awareness for proper waste management. in my mind, I was silently applauding this lady, my mother. But then she told me that instead of finding some sort of way by which the community leaders could integrate this into their agenda, they made her responsible for it instead. Scapegoating a bit I guess but much as that would have really irritated me, I’m just glad they told her to do it. That way it gets done right. Oh, but over dinner, she asked me, rather reluctantly, to write it for her. Again, boon turned bane turned boon again. At least, by virtue of obligation, I’ll be compelled to write. Don’t even think my only obligation here is to my mother. There’s also this whole save the environment cause I have that seems more like it should start from the home. So, from home it will start. (As usual, if you have much needed input, I will be more that happy and very grateful.) And before planting trees, we have to learn to recycle first.
2. Second, there is the inevitable reality that blindsided me and caused obvious strain throughout my day. Yesterday’s news of a mass murder seemed surreal. I knew of mafia-like killings in the country and some mass graves that were discovered by our local human rights chapter of volunteers and experts but nothing could have prepared me for the news that 47 civilians were killed due to election violence. Someone is toying with all our emotions and it’s a bit too much to handle. On the one hand you have the back-to-back recognition of world famous champion boxer, Manny Pacquiao and larger than life dreamer/idealist Efren Penaflorida then all of a sudden, news of a massacre? No, no, this can’t be true. I can’t say it because I know that once I say it, it will really be true. How can we go from great to downright inhumane? Last night, I kept wondering how persons who’ve ever shot another human being dead sleep at night? Don’t they hear the people’s voices echoing all the time?
3. Another reality that bites is the constant reminder that life is short and sometimes unforgiving. Toward the late afternoon, I checked my email and found that one of Alexis Tioseco’s sisters whom I met briefly during his wake had added me on Facebook. I confirmed the request and wento over to her page to leave a message and then after I had done that, I saw all her posts linked to her brother’s killing. I think that’s when it became clearer, yet again, that he and Nika were really gone.
4. I think of articles 2 & 3 together and it hits me just how senseless it is to die over theft. Alexis’ killer and those hit-men from the massacre wanted to steal something…be it papers to file for someone’s candidacy or petty cash and appliances, the thieves took something they can never give back, much less atone for. They stole lives. Real people died yesterday and 47 is only a statistic just as 91 landslides in the Cordilleras during Pepeng’s wrath did not account for all the people whom we lost.
5. To end the year, I was thinking of using all the days of December to write down as many names of the people who died this year. I definitely want to write them down with my own handwriting because, just like speaking, writing also makes things real. My tofu will always be something to wrestle with but none of my demons object to this endeavor. I’ll write them on sheets of colored paper, or maybe just the white ones. Then, maybe we can fold them into cranes? Make paper boats? Kites even? —December, much as it is festive and full of joy, must also be a month of remembering and celebrating the lives of those whom we wish we could share it with, if it weren’t for the fact that they were taken too soon.
6. My only wish is that during the holidays, we might all bring hope in our little way into the lives of others so that everyone who lost someone this year (in death or otherwise) might begin to feel the wounds slowly healing. I really really hope this happens.
What if I just learn to cook? The two main happiness factors that are constants in my life are places and food. As Weiner himself admits in that book I loved so much, geography can really determine one’s happiness if only because a place has the capacity to really move us in ways we can’t explain. I’ve had so many epiphanies in places like Brunei and Indonesia. From the morning and afternoon prayers that devotees sing to Allah to the mystic moon that hangs above Bali, all these experiences have in one way or another been a result of displacement–getting from here to there and being in a constant state of flux. But alas, the irony is that travel doesn’t come cheap and if I’m to wallow in this pool of woe just because I can’t do what I really want to do just yet, I might as well kick myself. Self-pity isn’t pretty and looking at other people’s success with the job-hunt isn’t either.
Oh but Eureka! I just discovered while chewing on a tasteless muffin that my problem isn’t that I can’t find a job but that I don’t really want the things I see. I know, I know. How dare I say that when so many people are itching for jobs and would gladly accept anything that pays the bills. This makes me really sick inside…but you see, it’s always been my self-imposed rule that I ought to do something that truly causes me to wake up in the morning and work until the wee hours of the evening. Is it wrong to think this way? Maybe. Get a job and earn money. Get a job and earn money. Get a job and earn money. But wait, why not get a job that makes you happy? Money doesn’t really make me happy (ahem, except maybe when I go into a bookstore or see pretty things I’d like to wear) and neither does owning too many things. My idea of living in my twenties is a knapsack, 3 pairs of pants, 5 shirts, notebook, pen and open road, and maybe a couple of bucks to fly me from here to wherever I can walk. Sounds Utopian doesn’t it? But it isn’t all fantasy, believe me.
So on the one hand there’s travel which I cannot afford right now or risk since a huge chunk of reasoning in my head’s still keeping me home. I’ll only go away when I’m pretty sure I can manage. There’s still this pending surgery and some concerns but I tell you, I’ll do it before 25.
In the meantime, food is still an incredibly huge source of joy. Eating is one past-time I wouldn’t mind putting on my resume next to reading and writing. I thought it was silly to cook at first because independent women in this century don’t need to stay at home but you know, my deeply traditional inner self is struggling to get to the kitchen and cook something, anything. It’s a concept you learn from college where everyone is taking some kind of specialized degree. Economics, Law, Engineering, Science, Molecular Biology–yum. On the flip side of things there are those among us who have decided to go to culinary school instead. It’s expensive to do this and if you believe in college-speak, it’s only reserved for those who can’t manage to get into other colleges…ech. Which mindless student from some boring course thought that up? What about the number of college students who go to school, ace their tests but don’t have a taste for learning?
Before I digress and defend the people in the business of degustation, I might as well come out and say it. I want to cook and be able to invite friends over for dinner or lunch. I want to stage picnics with baskets full of food that elicit reactions akin to that of the Mole in Kenneth Grahame’s Wind in the Willows. He was invited to eat lunch by the riverside and he had just as much fun unpacking, devouring and putting back lunch containers into the basket. How wonderful!
I know it sounds crazy and a tad bit too risky but if all else fails, at least I’ll know how to cook me a tiny pot of comfort soup. That should be worth everything.
This is the new book I’m reading. I didn’t know Iyer wrote fiction until I saw this at half the original price and decided quite doggedly that I wanted it. So now I have it and oh this book is such a wonder.
The last book I blogged about was pretty awesome also. I’d recommend it to anyone who wants to actively think about what happiness truly means is a personal sense. There is also an element of travel here and I guess that’s what lured me in for good. If I can’t afford to see all these wonderful places, I might as well traverse the universe with a book in hand.
A new-found friend also asked me to compile a list of books that have meant a lot to me. Hmm, sounds like a good writing exercise. Let’s see…where do we start?
What are you reading? 
Finally! I hope Efren Penaflorida knows that his people are proud of him. With a simple pushcart and strong desire to further education in the country, Efren is giving hope to so many kids in the country.
Seeing this story made me begin to realize that perhaps all isn’t lost. This year, despite our difficulties, we seem to be surrounded by world-class Filipinos. After a record breaking fight by champion boxer Manny Pacquiao, another winner who garnered 2.5 million votes emerged to set his own record. While Pacquiao remains a hero to me for being the athlete that he is, I can’t help but feel a deeper connection toward Efren and his educational campaign.
How awesome to live in a time when Filipinos are properly recognized for what they are capable of and not for the stereotypes that poverty has bestowed upon us! Ahem, and to the prosthetic-eye wearing guy who made that youtube video about eye-care, I have to tell you–even this “third world” country where I live boasts of world class prosthetic treatment. Our artists make great eyes and people come from all over to get them done here.
oh, and if someone knows Manny Pacquiao personally, please send him this letter from Manong Sionil Jose.
This must be a sign.
I’ve avoided seeing the doctor at all costs. Knowing my prognosis beforehand made me want to buy some time to figure out what to do but last Tuesday, I finally walked into my doctor’s clinic after three years of being absent. He is always pleasant and seeing him is like visiting the relatives you love but don’t have the luxury of seeing very often. It didn’t take long for him to blurt out the obvious, though. I half-expected him to wait but I guess having my mother out of the room made it easier for him to cut to the chase.
“Well, things look the way they always do and from the last time we met up until today, there haven’t been any new developments in the field. So, are you ready for the final step?”
Years ago, I never thought this day would come. I was reeling from what would be the last surgery defining my childhood and for the first time the pain was quite palpable. I was 12 and that was the twelfth operation on my left eye. Cryogenics was the proposed solution for the eye that suffered a congenital cataract that developed into glaucoma. As this is a problem concerning eye ducts and their inability to properly allow the liquid to pass through, my eye constantly bulges. It resembles a a blue-grayish marble and is something that really fascinated me as a young child. But yes, that last surgery was horrible. They simultaneously froze and heated the eye in the hope that they could manage the liquid intake but in the end, the procedure was not as successful as they had hoped. I still had no vision to speak of but I was grateful for the attempt. Every year since I was born, my mother and the various doctors we saw all tried their best to restore my vision. I’ve never met a more dedicated team and to be honest, I never realized just how much they risked then. Every surgery was like visiting the moon. Techniques as well as the actual procedure always had to be studied and well-documented. How fascinating really.
But, it will end soon. If all goes according to plan, I will have surgery early next year. My left eye will be removed in lieu of a prosthetic eye. I just met the doctor that might be operating on me and he explained the procedure step by step. I know how necessary this is but I can’t help but feel like I might wake up one morning, post-surgery, not knowing who I am anymore.
I read somewhere that the things we most identify with and allow to describe us are also the abnormalities or quirks that we are blessed to have. In many ways, this is how I feel about my eye and I hope that between now and January, I might find the kind of courage that lets me accept this change.
*Here’s a video of what my new routine will most likely be like. If you have an aversion for the grotesque, please ignore this. The video is of a girl removing and placing her artificial eyes (She’s gorgeous, btw and my new hero.):
I couldn’t sleep last night or at least I kept falling in and out of sleep, tossing and turning. At some point I sat up. I was so thirsty but too dazed to get out of bed. I don’t remember what I dream about anymore these days. Mostly its because I fall asleep tired.
But when I saw this, I think something clicked in my head.
Only people who are capable of loving strongly can also suffer great sorrow, but this same necessity of loving serves to counteract their grief and heals them.
—Leo Tolstoy
Yes, its true.
Let me tell you about those meteors that didn’t quite shower like I thought they would:
1. Pwshiw. Pwshiw. This is how you described what they would look like from the city and I pondered first how sound creates images. Pwshiw. Falling stars appearing for less than half a minute, enough for you to be in constant awe of the next one. The sound you made to name it was spot on.
2. Craning one’s neck in the direction of the heavens for five hours during the wee hours of the day to glimpse a mere six meteors is quite like Sisyphus and his will-roll-right-back-down rock nut hey, I won’t complain.
3. I just wish I pressed the shutter like I knew I could. My settings were right, everything was perfect. The stars came out against a black night sky which is exactly how they should look in photos if you decide once and for all not to use the “starry sky” setting that just takes in more light at 30 seconds but keeps a stable ISO setting. It was perfect I tell you and even dad was surprised by my sudden ability to interpret camera speak that sometimes seems more Greek than the actual language…okay, I lie. Icelandic seems much more interesting than Greek and no amount of fuzzy symbols with ten times the language history would appeal more than Icelandic.
4. Why bother? It was space crap anyway. Comet feces, waste product…again, isn’t God so spectacular as to create beautiful things out of the most mundane and severely gross? Hmm, I don’t see myself peering into a toilet after my morning rounds but just think about it, I spent a good deal of my life out there in the balcony hoping for a miracle. Beautiful things are miracles and I expected that a shower of lights would be so enthralling that it might diminish the black hole that found its way past my wonder at the world.
5. Profound loneliness is the backbone of my stargazing experience for while I am filled with a compelling amount of awe and gratefulness, I can’t help but feel as though I might have met the abyss and spoken to it only to discover that no sound is echoed back. Ugh.
This is supposedly an experience list describing meteor viewing but as always, I digress. This might be less about those pshiws that mesmerized me. Instead this is geared toward the sky’s utter massiveness and emptiness, two qualities I find useful in describing the sad sea that I find myself swimming in. Yes, I’m swimming. None of that drowning business that’s so poignant and irreplaceable in Russian literature. I cannot drown and I know it, my name is not Russian enough to permit it.
Maybe sadness is a slight pshiw. It comes and goes, as bipolar as that might sound. Or maybe, it is greater than all of us. It might even be the very night sky we look at. Or wait, can it also be the tiny pieces of sky or stardust we find in our most basic components? It was scientifically proven that each of us is a tiny spec of space dust and while normally, again, I am in awe of this Universe, I can’t help but feel as if we were wired to be this way. To feel, as Atlas did, that the weight of the world balances on our tiny shoulders on account of our origins as bits and pieces of the abyss itself.
Perhaps I should learn to drink and ponder these existentialist tidbits with a swig of memory-altering vodka. Perhaps.
Can’t put it down…despite the difficult french homework for tomorrow. Arg. (How ironic to have a grumpy guy named “Weiner” writing about happiness!)
“Robert Nozick did think long and hard about the relationship between hedonism and happiness. He once devised a thought experiment called the Experience Machine. Imagine that “superduper neuropsychologists” have figured out a way to stimulate a person’s brain in order to induce pleasurable experiences. It’s perfectly safe, no chance of a malfunction, and not harmful to your health. You would experience constant pleasure for the rest of your life. Would you do it? Would you plug into the Experience Machine?
If not, argued Nozick, then you’ve just proved that there’s more to life than pleasure. We want to achieve our happiness and not just experience it. perhaps we even want to experience unhappiness, or at least leave open the possibility of unhappiness, in order to truly appreciate happiness.”
-Eric Weiner, The Geography of Bliss
I couldn’t sleep well last night. Anger isn’t a good bedfellow and neither is Frustration. But, I figured, for as long as we manage to get really really really sleepy, we’ll live (or sleep, rather). I don’t know how people normally deal with break-ups and honestly, two months later (yeah, I checked, how fast time flies) I feel like things are slightly less abnormal. Except, every now and then we fight about things we really shouldn’t fight about anymore. Last night, I was on the losing end. So, I slept with my anger and frustration and woke up sore in the head.
When will I ever start accepting that I can’t be mad about petty things anymore? ugh. I hate drama.
Anyway, have a quote from the school of life:
There was some value to be taken from watching Serbis and perhaps because I saw it on a Wednesday evening, right after dinner, the movie moved my disposition towards nauseousness. Right off the top of my head, dizziness was the only feeling I had and it wasn’t one of those, we-just-went-dancing-and-now-my-head’s-light kind of dizzy. It was really more like my stomach protested against my dinner. But, after discussing it with Richard(–who knows these things better than I do), I realized that I wasn’t really seeing the film, just passively watching it and reacting only to something that I felt biased against seeing. That said, I’ll write a more truthful entry about Serbis…just give me some time to put together a more thought out piece.
In other news, the yoga workshop was a success! I’m now officially declaring a hatred for sneezing and being made to laugh! I’m a bit sore and these things make me feel like my limbs could come off so, despite the avalanche of happy thoughts and videos like this:
I’ve sworn off all laughing and smile instead. But isn’t this such a killer?! Seriously though, I learned a lot from the yoga sessions and even managed to convince mom to come along. The sessions deserve yet another post but again, I find that there are still things to mull over. I’ll probably post this one tomorrow though. There’s already an outline in my head that’s begging to reveal itself. Also, since health is most likely related to yoga, I’ve been reading a lot about vegetarianism and I find that I really would rather keep my diet. What I need is some balance and healthier options but I most certainly refuse to disregard meat altogether. I’ve just been raised in the school of taste is all and by that I mean, we like to eat. Going vegetarian will make me miserable and I know that there’s really no need for me to make the shift completely. So there. I’m staying true to my nature and now, I’m running again. Yay!
Last but not the least: These past months I’ve been trying to convince myself to get a camera. I was set on the Canon G10 and when a classmate of mine from Alliance finally got her G11, I knew what I wanted. Fortunately, Tito Boy offered to take me to Quiapo! I didn’t realize that we were buying already, though. I thought we would look at things and go again but as I have just learned from yoga, sometimes we just have to do things right the first time and have the courage to get things done. So, in that light, here I am getting things done.
Say hello to my new camera! I know, I know, I wanted the Canon G10 but I seriously value wide lenses! Isn’t it awesome though?!
Okay…I’m officially broke. This Christmas, you’re all getting your photos taken!
Be well everyone.
WORKSHOP
Learning to work with CORRECT ACTION
November 12 & 13, 2009
6:00 to 8:00pm
Open to ALL: Beginners and Regular yoga practitioners
November 14, 2009
10:30am to 1:00pm
Iyengar Yoga experience required, at least 6 months regular practice.
Sessions to be conducted by Rina Ortiz
*Click image to learn more.
This movie made me want to kill myself…and I had to watch it with my parents.
My ninang Mitos, the Food Goddess, sells the best granola I’ve ever had. I think just found my new mojo:
If you’d like some of this wonderful stuff, please don’t hesitate to let me know. The price per grams are as follows:
1. 200 grams @ Php 175
2. 350 grams @ Php 275
3. 500 grams @ Php 375
Lately, I’ve been seriously contemplating going vegan for 2010. I like talking about saving the environment and whatnot but the more I think about it, the more I realize that a lot of lifestyle changes need to be made. I’m seriously considering this guys and if you know anyone who can help me think green and healthy, please let me know. I want to iron out my plans before the year ends.
Be good, everyone.
