It's harder than it seems and easier at the same time. It's hard to remember to keep in touch these days, but it's not as hard to track people down and a line to them. Spring makes me nostalgic. Undoubtedly 70 degrees is incomparable to the summers in the Philippines, but the heat, the thaw, the sun makes me think of home - of things I'd done in days like these or people I'd been with. Some days there are moments that bring me way back to my Miriam days - green knolls, ceiling fans, makopa trees. Some days I'm brought back to IS, middle school, Mr. Errington's room and S.A.V.E. meetings after school. Or sitting on the corridors waiting by the wall for homeroom to start, across from the seventh grader who had hair like Pocahontas.
Where are all those people now?
I have 10 potted plants: aloe, palm, purple shamrock, cactus, african violets, two types of foliage and two types of vine, not to mention a dormant cyclamen. Aside from the aloe, violets and cyclamen, I've had these plants for two years now. Most of them I got as a bulb from a lady I work with, or cuts from places I've worked at. Two years ago I had beakers and water bottles full of liquid fertilizer stuffed with plants. Everyday I would wait for them to grow new roots; and if I had a free Saturday I would go to Dickson's, buy a new pot and get my hands dirty moving them to a new home.
They're all flourishing quite nicely and now that spring is upon us, I even have a few flowers to greet me every morning.
There are few pleasures that can compare to watching things grow: looking back at how these plants were when I first got them to how they are now. I used to have to arrange the leaves so that the pot didn't look so empty, but now they are all full and soon in need of repotting.
In between all of that there's also the experience of watching them go to sleep, slowly drying up and losing its leaves, until there's nothing.
I wish I had the heart of a gardener, in all the things that I do.
I took down the tree below after two and a half months. Our living room looks like it did before. February break is winding down and it will be back to school very soon. I miss my kids.
Jen and KX helped me build it.
I remember when I used to watch my grandfather build ours. I used to help out by washing the leaves, one pine needle at a time.
It's been the busiest past two weeks - from hosting my roommates for Harvard-Yale to cooking and cleaning for college students homeless for the holidays, not to mention the Christmas shopping that still has to be done. But it's been fun.
However, I don't want to be too busy to say this. To all of my friends and family, this past year and a half has been a really trying time for me (although no time is without trial) in ways I've never known to express. I thank you for being there for me, for forgiving me and for pushing me out of my rut.
The first of the roomies has come - bearing this gift from Rome.
Calendario Romano - the Roman Priest Calendar. How can something that seems so wrong look so right?
After two days, I finally got the three-column layout to work on my page. Let's hope this new devotion to my blog keeps up.
I'm trying to get better at this updating thing.
I took this picture from a house we visited in Long Island. This piece I thought was beautiful and creepy at the same time. Why would anyone have bronze statues of people sitting and playing on their terrace? Shouldn't that space be for real people? The figures did look very life-like, particularly this one, which in turn added to the impressive eerieness of it all.
is my absolute favorite season. It's been exceptionally warm, too.
Lots of things to look forward to in the next few weeks:
a) Harvard-Yale with my roommates
b) Thanksgiving with my sister and stragglers from the college
c) Winter with the kids
d) Christmas
I have to go to Church in an hour. I thought I should post SOMETHING since it's been months.
The nice thing about cable TV with too many movie channels is that somewhere in that haystack of old and new, classic and forgotten is that occasional needle that sews purpose back into your movie-watching experience. (Also great is having TV Guide as your metal detector).
"Muriel's Wedding" is the story of a young woman in her twenties driven to lie, cheat and steal by her one and only goal: to get married. It sounds light-hearted, as if it could be the plot line for the next Lindsay Lohan/Hilary Duff chick flick, but don't take "lie, cheat and steal" too lightly nor "getting married" to be as happy and heart-warming as it is often symbolically presented.
I don't know if it was the fact that the movie is from the early 90s or that it's Australian that makes the plot and the character development surprising at times, breaking out of the formulaic romantic comedy we know and I, genuinely, cherish. It doesn't quite follow the mold where the audience is taken to gentle slopes of joy, frustration, grief and delight. For example, Muriel is, in a word, insane, and at times so horrid she deserves no sympathy at all. While there is the traditional naive, ugly duckling to the confident, made over woman transition, there isn't that core good but oppressed person you're rooting for through the changes. As for the story, the "happy ending" comes in the middle and "ever after" isn't quite what one would expect. But it works, and for all it's surprises, it shines on its own.
If I ever have to make a "Favorite Movies" list, I have to remember to count this one.
I made this one up. When all you have instead of a job are Arrested Development, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and CSI DVDs, the situation really calls for a walk into the inner recesses of one's ...well, insides (although today marks the day of internet at home AND directv - things might just be looking up for little old me). So try this one on for size:
Three things I want in my lifetime:
1. A sound medical practice
2. My own greenhouse and/or garden
3. World peace
(if I could have five:
4. An olympic-size pool
5. three kids)
Three things I want in the near future:
1. A job
2. All the things in my room put away and organized
3. World peace
(if I could have five:
4. more Arrested Development
5. more CSI and Buffy)
Three things I wish for now:
1. Patience
2. Perseverence
3. World peace
Three things I wish I did/had
1. A tape of my grandparents' voices
2. Photos from when I was younger
3. Not quit art lessons when I was 8
Things I've been learning to say in Spanish:
yo quiero ver contigo una película
yo quiero mirar las estrellas contigo esta noche
yo sueño contigo todas las noches
yo pienso que tú debes amarme
todo contigo
"I used to spend hours looking for ladybugs. Finally, I'd just give up and fall asleep in the grass. When I woke up, they were crawling all over me."I was chatting with Jelly today who reminded me of this movie, and this quote in particular. What is it about happiness that makes you forget about patience during the down times?
I never had much trouble catching ladybugs when I was little, but I remember it took me a while to master the art of capturing grasshopers. Dragonflies are particularly tricky as well. Fireflies were the most fun of course and spiders took the most courage - we never figured out which ones were biters. Last weekend I was trying to teach my sister's brother-in-law's daughter how to catch a butterfly. It was a failure; it's hard now even for me to believe that I ever did it with such ease. Where have my bug days gone?
Somebody please hit me the next time I go down the slippery slope of Emo Mountain. When did I get so depressing?
Lots of things to look forward to this month.
1) Our own apartment at last!
We're moving this week, so it's going to be really busy. At least it's the last bit of moving craziness we'll have to do. Finally my own room, with my own bed. We'll have to figure out the internet situation soon. It'll be so exciting to decorate and fix it up. We finally have our own kitchen so if I'm really ambitious I might cook meals or bake pies, or put hotpockets in the microwave.
Of course, everyone is welcome to visit!
2) Roomies going off to medical schools, consulting firms, fighting big time organizations.
While I'm being useless I'm living vicariously through the rich, full lives of my roommates (or at least their expectation of it since some are still in bum mode, ahem, Jennifer). On the one hand, it's really sad to think that we're not going back to the way things were but on the other hand, it's exciting to think of places we'll have to visit to see each other or stories we'll be telling each other. We can be like correspondents for various American frontiers, erm, or something.
3) Hopefully finding a job. Cross your fingers for me!
Although I am currently enjoying having all the time in the world to talk to my friends whom I miss every day, I would like to work.
4) August movies. Talladega Nights: The Legend of Ricky Bobby, The Illusionist.
I'm currently injured. So I haven't been able to run. Even walking hurts. I hate being stuck in one place, but I'm worried I'll do something to permanently mess up my foot. I guess the pace I'm looking for is slower than the walk-don't-run adage. The cosmos is telling me to sit and think. Dum dee dum.
Nic is right, I really need to snap out of this drama mode.
Today I was reunited with a pleasant summer memory. Three hundred and fifty or so days ago from today, a Japanese Airlines flight carried me away from the sandy shores of boisterous youth, the emboldening company of friends and a half-baked pseudo love affair - incident, really. Never one to sleep in airplanes, I stayed up as usual watching TV. Having seen all the English movies available, I explored the Japanese offerings and was surprised by the most cleverly amusing show on the planet - Trivia no Izumi, Fountain of Trivia (for a taste search for "trivia japan" in google video). It was like one of those ideas for a book or movie or, as in this case, a TV show that was so good and suitable for your pleasure you wish you were the one that came up with it. Despite my heart being in shambles and my mind lost in a haze, I remember laughing hysterically though ever so quietly to keep the two gentlemen sleeping soundly next to me from waking. It snapped me right out of my pathetic melancholy, for the moment.
I don't know why I thought of it this morning, the memory intensified by watching the episode on google video, convulsing quietly as I did before, so as to not wake up my mom and sister. Like Proust's tisane-soaked madeleine (oh dear, have I really become so pretentious? ay, mourn the death of small talk) my small experience today waking up to that memory flooded me with associations to that summer - Manila, the heat, the crowds, the noise, the train, the traffic, unpaved winding roads, empty resorts, cramped housing, abandoned buildings, people on the streets, the partying, the drinking, the spending. That summer, like Manila, like me, for all its near-hopeless brokenness I knew then and felt then I loved! Why? I suppose that is the big question that needs answering - and what I'm supposed to do with that love.
i've been so morbid lately. this should stop.
this morning i got a call from ingrid. yay! it was an excellent start to my day. it's nice to have unscheduled days. i read as much as i want - then read some more. there really isn't much else other than that. i want to go to the beach, but no one has been willing to go with me lately. i do feel restless occassionally - i want to go to work, but i can't. i can't say this is the way things are supposed to be - how do i know about the way things are supposed to be. but perhaps i should also admit to myself that i need the break - that i should just take it easy for a day, a week or the rest of the month. i'm too stubborn, i think, too used to doing more than i can handle and never having guilt-free time for myself. but then i get to thinking of how useless i am, and how there must be work that has to be done somewhere for someone or something like that. sigh. i just need to calm down.
i should take the time to think about my future - that big scary chasm beneath the edge of my toes.
I am unable to write. There are too many things yet to be understood, to be said, to be felt and to be expressed. This moment alone can fill chapters. Tomorrow my sister will drive away from Florida for good. Although Florida isn't my home I still feel as if I, too, will be shedding some old skin, for tomorrow's journey will mark for me the beginning of my new life - a life that from where I am now, hanging out by a milestone, is still looking very uncertain. Will I like my first full-time job? Will we find a decent apartment? Will my papers come through in time? What about my friends and the dawn of our time apart on separate trails? How is the rest of it supposed to unfold? Am I going the right way?
There were also the moments with its own bundle of thoughts and questions before this one - Disneyworld, reading the Kite Runner, deciding on a job, graduating, a family reunion, a grave loss, senior week, reading period, falling in love, my thesis - that is only as far back as a little over two months ago...But from the time I started this thing, from last summer, I feel as if I've journeyed through deserts and oceans, climbed mountains and fallen in cliffs with but a vague idea of what it has all meant and where it will all go. Overwhelmed, the writer within me has decided to shut down and rock itself to catatonia - silencing the fear and doubts disturbed only with incomprehensible groans. Nothing is thought out. Nothing is written.
Debilitating is the sense of exhiliration mixed with sorrow from having felt so much or feel like one has done so much but at the same time seeing that I'm not that far from where I was and that there's still miles and miles to go. Debilitating is the thought that each step from here could take me to one of the many tens of millions of possibilities, for both joy and disappointment.
stuck in reverse.
aaaah. it's never going to end. and i'm at a point where i can't even sleep to save my life. in 48 hours it should all be over. but what a hellish wait it will be.
the only things that have kept me sane are:
coldplay's "fix you"
beethoven's "pathetique" second movement
I am stuck in Cambridge, where under ideal conditions, I should be intently working on my thesis.
Less than fifteen days from now I have to turn in a paper that is supposed to be the pinnacle of my academic career (hah!). Sixteen days from now, I have to start looking for something to occupy my time and justify (support?) my independent existence for at least a year after the college lets me go and another body of higher education lets me in. A little over two months from now I will be marching to that heartbreaking song that will take me once again, as it did four years ago, away from my friends, the people that I love and the home that I've come to know. Somewhere between the time my grandfather held me up in the air (I was two or three, my earliest memory) and today (no grandfather, ass-on-chair in front of a computer), on one side of the Pacific and one side of the Atlantic, my life happened. Twenty-one years, and disconcertingly, still going.
At 21 my grandfather got married. In a year his first-born son died. More children. The War.
Even more children. A dream home. The death of a sister. A high position in the government. Weddings. The death of another son. Children leaving. Grandchildren. Retirement. Gardening. That day, when I gained consciousness of myself in time, I was in full view of a giant: my grandfather in his 60s. He was successful, he was happy, he made people happy. He filled my piggy-bank with coins, my head with stories and my heart with love.
All of my young life I thought of my grandfather as no more than a gardener. That was how he spent his time and that garden was my world. I caught spiders and ladybugs. We had beautiful orchids and ceramic gnomes. We even swam in the garden pond full of blue and gold fish. If I had known then the majesty of a life well-lived, if I had known about the hard work that led up to and went into keeping a simple, steady life, where one could spend the day cultivating one's own garden, I would have trembled in my grandfather's presence. I would have never learned how to laugh or smile. I would have spent my life terrified of time, of the work that it makes you do, of the places that it takes you to and the burden it imposes on you.
I know I would have, because I am now.
There's nothing more effective in keeping one from being productive than work that absolutely needs to be done. Finals blow.
Fun from stickynicky
Go to your music player of choice and put it all on shuffle. Say the following questions aloud, and after each one press play. Use the song title as the answer to the question.
What do you think of me, iTunes?
Obstacle 2 - Interpol ... wow, that is harsh!
Will I have a happy life?
Yeah, Whatever - Splender ... strike 2! iTunes suck
What do my friends really think of me?
Addicted to Love - Robert Palmer
Do people secretly lust after me?
The Nerve - Orange & Lemons ... geez, sorry I asked!
How can I make myself happy?
Abuse me - Silverchair ... this is a little close to home
What should I do with my life?
Let Love Rule - Lenny Kravitz ... if only it were that easy
Why must life be so full of pain?
Out of Habit - Ani Di Franco ... there's some truth in that
How can I maximize my pleasure during sex?
Play!! - Funk
Will I ever have children?
If You Fall - Azure Ray ... makes sense
Will I die happy?
Everything's not lost - Coldplay ... substitute for hope?
Can you give me some advice?
Love is Real - Jason Mraz
What do you think happiness is?
Just say Yes - The Cure
What's my favourite fetish?
The Secret Life of Daydreams - Jean Yves Thibaudet ... freakishly accurate
What is my theme song for 2006?
How's it Gonna Be - Third Eye Blind ... indeed!