i smoke. i think. i write.

Expanding Horizons

2012-01-26T11:16:00.000-08:00

A writer's purpose is to be read. To touch someone, anyone, with her stories.

This blog has always made that possible. And it also opened a lot of doors.

You can also find me now at www.dailydose.ph

In Light of the Shadows

2011-11-10T10:40:00.001-08:00

A reader once commented on the way I write. He said my postswere candid and insightful, and that at times I was refreshing to read. Unlikemost blogs he’s come across which were light and fluff, he said mine slithereddeep inside places that most people would’ve just rather kept hidden. Mywriting, he added, saddened him for he felt my words always came from a very darkplace of hurt and pain.

That last remark had hit a nerve, for I pondered on this forweeks on end. I found myself re-evaluating this so-called gloomy outlook ofmine and began questioning why I couldn’t be like those people I’m perpetuallyin awe of --- those who bounce off walls with seemingly ludicrous glee andoptimism. Furthermore, was I too jaded that I couldn’t hold on to my episodesof happiness long enough to write about them.

In my thirty odd years, I’ve experienced most of what othershave --- I’ve been reduced to the ground in pain and I’ve also soared among theclouds in ecstasy. Yet, some of these moments I might have experienced too deeply than others. What could beeasily brushed aside by most, I dwell upon for ages.

I suppose it has always been in my nature to explore every creviceof a smile to the point that I not only know how it looks and feels but also sometimesI swear I even know its color, smell, and sound. And while the average personavoids the bad, I accept it by spending a great deal of time travelling these unchartedlows and acquainting myself with the strange shadows that lurk deep, untilI’ve unknowingly come to know them as a part of me.

I write about my experiences every time I feel these momentswould go to waste if I left them unwritten. But when everything in my life isin high spirits, creativity takes an unfortunate dip and my writing gets stuck. It’s eitherI’m too busy living it or the lightness of these joys just doesn’t interest meenough to actually sit down and write about them.

In turn, I’ve realized it is when I’m down and stressed thatthe ideas come spilling out. I don’t think it strange or that I’m alone on this.In fact, it comforts me to know that the Hemingways and the Poes (although Idon’t even dare to think I’m in their ranks, yet) of our time were sad torturedsouls as well.

It troubled me before when a reader said that I seem to draw inspiration and drive from someplace dark. Well, maybe I do… But honestlynow, I don’t think that’s such a bad thing. Because I can’t be insightfulunless there’s a willingness to dig deep into the highs and lows, and to visitplaces most would rather not even gaze upon.

So, to my readers:

I can’t be all light and fluff and everything nice ---because I’m also in the shadows, the intense, and in some places dark.

First Love

2011-10-13T11:34:00.000-07:00

(taken from my first ever blog --- eons ago in my 20s.)

It has often been said our First Loves are the hardest to let go of. This is where the cheesy cliché "first love never dies" comes into play. I think this is because for that moment, everything feels new to us. Everything IS new. We see things in a different, much colorful light. And we love it. We become those squeamishly mushy romantics and we never thought we had it in us. The very first exhilarating taste of love is always incomparable.

My First Love wasn’t what you would call love at first sight. We crossed paths in high school but nothing serious came out of it. College came and in my search for spiritual enlightenment, fate led me back to my first love. An unexplainable attraction drew us closer. This time, we found ourselves committed to the other. The relationship opened my eyes to things I never thought possible.

With my First Love, I laughed my hardest. Friendship played a part — my first love was constantly there for me, even through the hard times. I swore it was untouched bliss in its purest state. We got along so well that I don’t recall a time we fought, or even disagreed. Although, that became a problem --- our relationship was short of growth.

We decided to part ways. We’d run into each other on occasions. But that was that. The interest kind of fizzled out. This went on for years until a couple months ago…the inevitable happened. I found myself back with my First Love. And just like the first time, I was happy, contented. We lived a romance reminiscent of fairy tales'… But also, just like before, our bond couldn’t grow and old problems resurfaced.

Now it’s time again for me to turn my back on this affair if I want to find my focus. Once again, I will have to say goodbye. My First Love, I will miss you terribly. But worry not, for my love is of the undying kind. --- I can see that I’ll be puffing you again in the future. 'Til the next joint…

Oh, the Horror.

2011-06-07T10:24:00.000-07:00

Loshang (haggard) is the last thing I ever want to be.

As the youngest of a litter of ten, I watched my siblings grow up, marry, and eventually have children of their own. Through keen observations of a true blue loner and a ridiculously vain one at that, I saw and cringed at the sight of wrinkles, sagging skin under their chins, and unsightly dry frizzy hair as age took ahold of them.

Oh, the horror. It was like they were transforming!

It wasn’t just my siblings. No one was spared. Every one was getting old. Some aged with grace while others let themselves go. I vowed to never be the latter. To always appear youthful and put together, I became religious in exercising, drank gallons of water, had tea thrice a day to keep my mind sharp, avoided fatty and sugary food, and spent hours on end grooming myself --- all these to shun the inevitable. With that said, I knew at some point it was bound to happen. Just that I didn’t want it to happen to me. Yet.

Everything was working out so well --- until my daughter’s nanny decided to go missing. Thus, a two year old took over this single parent’s life with one mindless task after another, with screaming tantrums that never end, and with nights when she wouldn't let me sleep. I felt my fool-proof plan to fight the dreaded loshang process was slowly falling apart.

On my seventh week of being help-less, it was only now that I had the chance to stand in front of a mirror. And this is what I saw --- dry frizzy hair!

Alas, the transformation has begun.

Has Anybody Seen It Lately?

2011-04-24T11:32:00.000-07:00

I'm afraid I lost it again. This usually happens when I'm not too careful.

It goes missing even without a hint of warning. But panic will never poke its ugly head, because I'm oddly unfazed.

So common an occurence that I already know how it thinks. I understand its erratic patterns, even its cryptic inner workings. Putting it on the back of a milk carton or sending out a search team will be all for naught. It will not be forced, be bribed, nor it be fooled. It will only turn up when it wants to.

Yet, some find my indifference rather troubling. To quiet their ails, I get up and make a show of looking for it. But I don't really. When I've inched my way out of people's evil judging glares, I sit back and just let the madness of losing it envelope over me.

It is a terrible thing to lose, I'm well aware. Hours, days and sometimes, years, it stays missing. At times when I've grown tired of its absence, I do catch myself calling out for it.

And when it's ready, my mind may answer.

Then I know it's back.

What Lies Beneath

2011-03-20T09:25:00.000-07:00

Trust me. I never told anyone this.

I can make anyone believe anything I say. Even things that aren’t entirely true.

It all started when I was about five, or maybe six. Back then, I had always despised when the time would come around when I was wedged to sit down at the dining table to finish an entire meal. If they’d strap me to a chair and force-feed me through a tube once or twice, I wouldn’t be surprised. Even without using inhumane methods, I felt like a torture victim when they made me eat every damn morsel on my plate. I wasn’t an anorexic in the making. I just thought it a waste of time when I could be playing in the garden or reading my new 300-paged paperback. Plus, the fact that I was too lazy to chew.

So, what I did was, I’d shove all the food in my mouth until I looked like a chipmunk storing provisions for the winter up ahead. I wouldn’t chew at all, I felt it was unnecessary labor. I’d stay like this until I’ve sucked all the taste, or until I’m sure no one was looking. Then, I would discreetly spit the gray ball of flavourless grub in my hand and throw it under the table. Our house dog would immediately scarf it down like clockwork. Or when we dine out, the waiters would have to deal with the nasty evidence I've left behind. When that’s taken care of, my face would light up and I’d announce, “I’m done eating!” Every single time I did this, nobody ever doubted me; they believed me. Thus, this was the beautiful beginning of how I bullshitted my way through life.

I was reared by a no-nonsense mother who prided in practicing honesty. Yet, I took her adage that “Children never lie” into an entirely different context. I’m pretty sure now it was to encourage her offspring to be truthful at all times. But to a six year old wise-ass like me, it was that exact belief of my mom’s which gave me the notion and the confidence that no one would think a little kid would lie, therefore I could get away with anything. And that was usually the case. From pretending to like the horrid ensemble someone is wearing to accusing my niece of drinking the bottle of whiskey I conveniently found in my room to falsely claiming I was the star of a rock band.

Fast forward to the present and I’m well aware of what I’m capable of. I’m not all that bad, so as much as possible, I only say things when needed. However when a situation corners me to stay in conversation which, more often than not, warrants a couple of white and not-so white lies, I hardly harbor the telltale signs of someone trying to conceal the truth. I don’t look away. Instead, I deliberately make eye contact to seem more sincere. And since I’m stoic by nature, flinching and breaking into a sweat are hardly actions I would exhibit. When expected to respond, there won’t be the slightest delay in my answers. I say things with conviction, because I know how vague or how detailed the truth should sound.

I’ve lied. I’ve cheated. I’ve stolen. I might’ve even killed. How frequent, I don't keep track. I could walk away from all these unscathed, with no one discovering the anomalies I speak of. This is because I never go overboard, I know my limits. I stick to the realms of the believable. Eventually through years of practice, I’ve learned to control it and even treat it like an art form. Maybe that's why writers are known to be the biggest liars. And trust me, I've already said too much.

To future self:

2011-02-26T11:03:00.000-08:00

Later, next Thursday, or next year --- somebody will want to hold you for five minutes straight, and that’s all they'll do.

They don’t pull away. They don’t look at your face. They don’t try to kiss you. They don’t say anything.

All you can do is sink into their arms, and be glad for those five minutes.

AP. 2-26-11

I Woke Up Looking Like This --- No, Really.

2011-02-23T06:15:00.000-08:00

The older I get, the more rituals I follow. Especially in the bathroom. A decade ago, ten minutes would be enough time to shower and get dressed. I’d be out the door before I’d hear my bathroom mirror griping of neglect. Looking good was effortless back then.

Now it’s a different story. It’s either I’ve grown incredibly vain through the years or I’m hesitant to admit that I’ve aged. Either way, ten minutes nowadays is just the time I take to floss and brush my teeth. The whole nine yards takes an hour, for when staying in is the only itinerary of the day. Going out would take me in the two-three hour spectrum.

I would: 1 drink a glass of water to hydrate for the heavy workload ahead 2 conceptualize the desired look 3 clip 4 file 5 buff 6 shampoo 7 cleanse 8 condition 9 exfoliate 10 shave 11 rinse 12 dry off 13 tweeze 14 snip 15 tone 16 moisturize 17 look through closet for something to wear 18 space out 19 get my caffeine fix/slap myself awake 20 dress up 21 floss 22 brush 23 apply makeup 24 make sure I don’t seem like I have makeup on 25 study reflection 26 get out of the clothes I’ve just put on 27 try on a different ensemble 28 study reflection twenty times more 29 rest against a wall, head out the door, and hope I won’t catch on fire from all the chemicals I have on.

In spite of my crazy fixation with grooming, even a cat would cover its face in shame, I’d sometimes still get complaints --- that I should fix myself up more(!).

On such occasions, I 30 remind myself that I should know when to stop. For that moment, I believe this. But that moment passes on by fast.

By the next day I’d add two more steps to the list above, and wonder to my excessively groomed self if there are rehabs for this sort of thing.

Do I Need to Go Home Tonight?

2011-01-30T06:44:00.000-08:00

A nice smile and a glance are a dangerous combination in this state I’m in. Pair it up with a “Do you really need to go home?” and I’m a goner. It was the kind of situation I was instinctively drawn to. It dangled just the right amount of temptation for me to feel its tiny mischievous hands tugging, luring me in to consider. He stared at me waiting for a response. I didn’t say anything, and soon I started questioning ---What do I have to go home to?

Home is not exactly the place I like going to.

The moment my car enters the gate, two things automatically greet me: Darkness (majority of our lights were broken from the flood last year, some from neglect.) and silence (my co-inhabitants are usually sprawled in bed getting their 16hrs of tv time.). Not exactly a very inviting environment.

I’d get out of my car and fumble my way around the garage, always hoping that I won’t step on any crap our dogs have planted as traps especially made for me. It’s either they’re not right in the head or they just hate me with a vengeance. Because as soon as the soles of my shoes interrupt the silence engulfing the entire abode, they come out of the shadows and come at me like rabid monsters that they are.

Once I’ve escaped their wrath, I’d brace myself and switch on to stealth mode the very second I step inside the house. If there’s one thing you have to understand, to survive in this household, one has to be invisible (although I have a feeling this rule only applies to me). Once I start speaking up or even make my presence felt, war often breaks out. Electric fans flying from across the room, death threats, and a convulsing elderly are often the aftermaths.

Before I go on hiding, I’d zip by the kitchen in hopes of finding something edible. Our cook, or whatever kind of helper she’s supposed to be, can only manage to concoct these gray-colored dishes which all taste like cardboard. It’s the kind of food I’d shove in my mouth just to merely stave off hunger. By the time I’m ready to go upstairs, I’d have more mosquito bites than I’d have of our gourmet grub.

I’d bound up and go straight to my room. In a different lifetime, I’d be able to finally relax once inside. But in this life, there’s nothing comfortable about my room. It’s the darkest part of the house. I can’t turn on the lights, nor can I turn on any music or the tv. I can’t go to my desk to write or sketch because there’s no more desk. Basically I have nothing to do in my room. Coughing and sneezing aren’t allowed as well. The slightest sound would make the lice-ridden nanny lying on the floor mumble something in annoyance, probably casting evil spells on me.

Around sunrise, I’d still be wide awake. And like clockwork, a little girl gets up and gives me a kiss on the lips.

“So…do you really need to go home?” He asked me a second time. Maybe it was the third or fourth, I don’t know. I was done questioning. I got my answer.

I pried myself away and hurried home. I had an hour before she wakes up.

The System of Fight/Flight

2011-01-16T08:11:00.000-08:00

“Am I doing something wrong?”

I kept asking this in my head when I felt something pressing down on my chest hard, making each breath a strained effort. This is how it first made its presence felt today --- just ten minutes shy of finishing my weekend yoga class. I told myself it can wait, so I proceeded onto my supine poses. As I was on my last restorative pose, the heavy feeling had already spread all over my body.

My first instinct was to bolt out of that studio before anyone realizes what was going on. Instead, I stuck it out and just focused on making my breathing steady and controlled. I lied down spread-eagle on my back along with the rest of the class and coerced myself to relax into Shavasana. Yet, a single thought remained. I knew right then what was up.

I miss him.

It’s just been over a week so I think I’m entitled to feel this way. For the most part, I think I’m doing just fine, although I realize how I’m dealing with this is completely out of character.

For years, I followed a tried and tested system of surviving a break-up. An escapist approach, so to say. It went something like this:

• I’d bid farewell to the outside world and lock myself up in my room for a whole week, or maybe a month. Armed with all the essentials, i.e. booze, smokes, angry music, bad tv, and a sulky disposition.

• When I finally do decide to shower off all the dried tears and grime I’ve accumulated during my isolation, and probably shave off the beard on my chin for good measure, I go out, meet my friends, and continue onto drinking myself into a stupor. I’d go home reeking of alcohol and what-not, I’d pass out, wake up when the sun’s about to set, then I repeat the cycle all over again.

• When getting wrecked isn’t quite doing its trick, I sometimes put my drinking to a moderation, because no one likes a slurring old drunk incapable of any intelligible conversation, to give way to another diversion --- men. It’s most likely my way to soothe my bruised ego and to check if I still have it in me to snag any guy who catches my fancy.

• When these men can’t satisfy me, which is often the case, without any inkling of a hesitation, I leave town. I go far far away where nobody knows me and I stay there indefinitely.

By the time I’m done doing all these, I’m already over the ex. Not because I spent a great amount of time mulling over what went wrong and coming into terms with the loss, but because by the time I’m done doing all these, a year has already passed!

This time around, I feel like an entirely different person is holding the reins. I’m just as hurt and as confused now as I was in my past failed relationships but I’m baffled beyond belief that I haven’t done any of the above. It didn’t even occur to me for the past days to use the approach I’ve relied on for all of my dating life. Instead, I changed my system:

• True, I didn’t go out of my room the first day after. I thought it was only right for me to not think about anything else but the relationship that just ended. I let it all out until it was impossible for my eyes to open, they've become preposterously puffy and gross that setting foot out of my door was non-negotiable.

• The day after that, I didn’t want to but I talked myself into going to work. It’s funny how I took comfort now in the work routine that I used to despise before the break-up. I took initiative and even gave it that extra something. Thoughts of him would come in unexpected spurts. This would usually send me on a downward spiral but this time, I just went back to tallying the week’s sales.

• When I found myself with free time, since idle time made me crazy at times, I threw myself into my two loves --- yoga and writing. But by day two, I didn’t just practice or wrote just because I had nothing else to do, but I actually started making time for both. It’s an enlivening feeling every time I finish my practice for the day or every time I finish a piece. It’s these moments that hush out the niggling worries in my head, that makes the days a little better.

• I’ve reconnected with some people I’ve lost touch with since. They gave me new perspectives and an assurance that I still had people I could count on no matter how much I mess up. On my nights out with them, I’ve managed to squeeze in two alcohol units for the week and a lot of laughs --- some forced, some by surprise. At the homefront, time with my daughter has also changed. I've put a little more quality to my time with her. I savor her every little kiss, every little devious antic and even her every little fart. She has taught me something important; to live like a child : to appreciate and value the little things.

I still get sad every day. I can’t help it, most especially those moments I wake up to the cruel realization that he’s really gone. I’m not a hundred percent better, in fact, I could just be two percent of the way. I’m doing things differently now so I don’t know how long this is going to take. Months, a year, or more.

But if there’s one thing I learned in my yoga practice is this: No matter how off-balanced I get and no matter how uncomfortable and painful the positions I get myself into, just deal with it --- Work on it and with patience, doing it right will feel almost like second nature.

A Piece of My Mind

2011-01-13T09:00:00.000-08:00

I find myself in an ongoing staring contest. My confidence is starting to wan yet I refuse to accept defeat. I believe it has surpassed the time that is humanly possible, but I try to push this thought aside because I know it’s not helping me.

It stares right back at me now with such raw ferocity like it senses my spirit has weakened. I don’t know how long this has been going on, I fail to keep track. All I can do is helplessly gape at it and hope that this staring contest has somehow bonded us in some way ---- this blank page and I.

Words are a writer’s lifeline. Some days, the words flow like notes from a finely tuned instrument but this is not one of those days. Something should materialize any moment now, I said, as if saying it out loud would magically make it happen. Still, alas, before me is that dreaded blank page. Taunting me, sneering like I don’t have it in me anymore.

I try not to mind it and tell myself to just put in those first few words, just keep writing, even when half of the time it’s just plain meaningless babble. Just keep at it and eventually, maybe, it will start making sense. Yet, I still hesitate.

Maybe blank pages shouldn’t be all that intimidating that it cripples me. Instead, I should see them as something good, as endless possibilities, as fresh starts.

… maybe I should start by ending this ridiculous staring contest with this godawful page and just giving it a piece of my mind.

Holding Go & Letting On

2011-01-11T08:56:00.000-08:00

Holding on to something you believe in is one true display of strength, my years growing up has somehow etched this in my head. For someone who’s held on for far too long to old clothes and teenage years in hopes that they’d come back in style someday, the concept of letting go always seemed foreign to me.

It happens… when my friends and I are finishing that bucket of beer, I find it hard to stand up from all the nonsensical chatter that I stay for another bucket, or two… when I’ve been exercising and eating right like it would be a cause of imminent death if I didn’t, I’d beat myself up for weeks if I see all that hard work still didn’t save me from the cellulite that has managed to sneak in my thighs… or when the person I’ve been seeing for months just ups and leaves, I’d go to the ends of the world and back again, trying to fix the unfixable.

For me, the problem isn’t the act of letting go of the position or the person, but it’s the fear of losing that deep and pernicious sense of myself that I’ve discovered while I was in that situation. My last relationship got me to laugh and to try at life again. I felt so much alive, I assumed we were right being together. Things changed and I wouldn’t let myself see that. I fought for the relationship even when there wasn’t anything to fight for anymore. Inevitably, he left. I was devastated, because I felt my laughter and my hopes disappeared along with him. I don’t know when I’ll ever get them back. In time maybe, when I’ve learned to balance holding on with letting go.

For now, I’ve accepted that things will never stay the way they were, and no amount of holding on will stop them from changing. Everything changes and when it does, sometimes letting go is the true display of strength.

At some point, I’ll need to outgrow the things I keep holding onto --- I need to accept that cellulites are a part of every ageing (yikes) woman’s life, that he really wasn’t going to stay since he said so himself, and that fun mindless talk infused by booze and old memories is only good until the effect wears off.

2011-01-03T10:45:00.000-08:00

Talk is cheap.

However my words will cost you.

2010-11-26T10:32:00.000-08:00

I've changed much too many times...

I'm amazed how I'm still myself.

at a sound of a Click

2010-10-07T12:27:00.000-07:00

It freezes a moment, an emotion, a memory. It's an image that will only happen once in this existence, a moment that will never happen again. If it does, it's not the same, not exactly.

To capture and suspend something that brief, that delicate, is what fascinated me about taking photographs. I love that just at the sound of a click, that moment becomes less fleeting and more real.

I'm not a photographer nor do I own those high-end cameras with lenses that menacingly extend a foot or three. I use a regular point and shoot that I take almost everywhere like it's surgically sewn to me. People often ask me why I do this. I explain how incredibly forgetful I am and the ridiculous amount of pictures I take serve as my memories.

I have pictures of me, my family and friends out having suppers, drinking tea or drinking beer. I have pictures in friends' houses, in cars, in plush and seedy bars. I have pictures taken around town and out of town. I feel the more pictures I take, the more tangible my existence becomes.

I'd like to think I have photographs of everything but I've learned that I'll never be that skilled of a photo-taker to capture everything I want. Everything like,

          Finding the right words

          Sleeping eight straight hours

          Learning to quiet my mind

          Growing from my yoga practice

          Connecting with someone

          My one-year old laughing at my jokes

If I could take photographs of these too, that just at the sound of a click ---- Everything in life would become less fleeting and more real.

spark it

2010-09-23T09:47:00.000-07:00

Two words. That's all I can say.

Maybe for some unexplainable reason that is all the dialogue I'd be programmed to say from this day forth. Just those two words on repeat. It would be my answer to everything.

Maybe tomorrow would greet me with this compelling need for silence. And I'd go through life believing two words can say earfuls more than hundreds of thousands of words combined ever could.

Or maybe, just simply, I just ran out of things to say.

Two words. That's all I can say.

I mulled over this today. I thought about the words I choose to say to myself... and to the rest of the world.

If I only had two words left...

2010-08-08T01:30:00.000-07:00

I am lost, once again. Any person in her right mind would be worried. Although I’m not quite sure if I have that kind of mind.

My concern for being lost is blurred as screaming images and picturesque sounds collide and cloud my senses. Staring out at a speeding underground train for far too long can do that to you, I’ve noticed. I should look away but I don’t. In fact, I might have just hypnotized myself into a coma watching this fast moving transit whiz off before me.

The vacant look on my face and my standing motionless like a catatonic might have been cue enough for a couple of helpful travellers to stop and tell me that I should have gotten on the tram that just left. Another one is arriving momentarily, they said, but I should watch out for it since it will be awhile until the next one comes around.

Any person in her right mind would have paid attention. Mine just absentmindedly wandered back to watching tram after tram pass by until I was once again caught up in my reveries. I snapped out of it when I realized a little too late that I had just missed the one I was supposedly waiting for, yet again.

I don’t worry because I KNOW another one is bound to come around.

--- that is, if I’m awake enough to realize it while it’s still there.

♥ milk

2010-05-18T10:38:00.000-07:00

Her Clouds

2010-05-17T12:21:00.000-07:00

I spent a good portion of my formative years watching. Not watching television, for I was already in my mid-twenties when I got my first tv set. Instead I watched our half chow half german shepherd chase after our cook, just to scare her enough to leave her post unguarded and have freshly cooked food for the taking. I watched through my window the kids next door throwing water balloons at unfortunate passersby. I watched anger turn up in the passersby’s faces because the water balloons always smelled like urine. Growing up, this was my cable tv.

But there’s nothing like lazy afternoons and blue skies.

It beckons for me to drop everything and just find a place where I can lean my head back on. I would look up into the great azure blanket above and watch graceful clouds float by. I would find myself getting sucked into these magical white mists and quite often I would succumb to it until I fall into a trance ---for if the grand spectacle above me had a tune, it would be the strange luring music the pied piper played. Clouds had that effect on me.

There's something about sitting back and watching clouds --- to be able to see the patterns, the rhythms, the tendencies we become blind to when we get sucked into the rest of the busy world. Each passing cloud is never the same from the other, never the same from what it was just mere moments before. The wind moves each one, making little insequential changes in their forms. So little these changes that most people with very busy lives don’t ever notice them.

As for the first twenty odd years of my blessedly blasé life, I knew if I practiced a little patience, their contours would visibly alter. That’s when the magic happens. These clouds change into something mythical, ghastly, enthralling, you name it. The possibilities are endless. Rarely do people see the things I point out but I don't mind. I could watch clouds every single day and declare by nightfall that it was a day well spent.

But such is not the case these days anymore. I can’t watch clouds all afternoon anymore. The girl and her clouds, I bade farewell. My time was up when the wind blew me in an entirely different direction and *gasp* I’ve become one of those people with very busy lives --- I’ve become a single mom.

Afternoons are never lazy anymore. Gazing up blue skies in my habitually leisured pace is now a rarity.

Afternoons now are about making sure my eleven-month old daughter drinks 8oz every couple hours just so she’ll start gaining more weight. It’s about neverending diaper changes and cleaning up her tush and her sick. It’s bout going through an entire set of flash cards in hopes of making her smarter each day. Afternoons are about touring her around the house, naming everything we come across just so she can remind me about these things when I’ve grown senile.

It’s about calmin her down from her horrid tantrums. It’s about avoiding getting hit in the face by the cordless telephone she thought would be fun to throw. Afternoons are about a long line of mindless tasks after another. To most who aren’t parents would think this is a meagre exaggeration but seriously it does take much of the day.

So nowadays, cloud-watching or any kind of watching would be considered a long vacation. A luxury. Doing it every day is out of the question. For now I should be happy getting by with my mini-spurts of quiet time. Because an eleven month old is quite a handful. She shows signs that she’s ready to walk, but I definitely am not ready for that yet. Thank goodness, she still crawls to get to places. However, by the 4th straight hour of reaching for the nearest limb on that split second right before she falls off the surface is already extremely taxing. When she lets me place her in the playpen, that’s when I can breathe easy. I can plop myself down in bed and doze off for that heavenly five minutes before she turns fussy and starts wailing.

One afternoon last week while I was half-asleep enjoying this heaven of a five-minute break, I awoke in a jolt. An alarm had gone off in my head indicating that I was way past my five-minute mark. I awoke to silence. My heartbeat raced as I looked for her. Yet she was where I had left her, safely in her playpen studying something in her hands. I went closer to see what was keeping her busy this whole time.

Lo and behold, in her hand was a pinch of cotton. As tiny as her nail. She closed and opened her hand, and the white fiber moved from one sticky finger to another. She got the cotton with her other hand but unknowingly she had torn it apart. She stares in amazement at her hands, like a holy apparition had decided to appear on her very palms --- there were two, not just one, wispy balls of cotton now(!). I may never know how she sees things but I can say she looks mesmerized by it and I by her. It wasn’t until ten minutes has passed until she stood up and baby talked her way into being carried.

Every day since then, I would pinch a tiny portion from a cotton ball and leave it in her playpen. It’s now day six and she still hasn’t tire of it. I don’t know for how long this will last. I do this, not so I could get longer breaks. In fact I don’t nap, instead I found myself just watching her.

I do this, maybe more so because I saw a sight in her that I couldn’t tear myself apart from. I saw something of the ol’ and past. In her, I saw once more the girl and her clouds.

What's in a Name?

2010-03-01T11:19:00.000-08:00

I could’ve been named Laura. Or Mary. Or even just plain Jane.

But I wasn’t.

I was born last in the family. My older siblings, all nine of them, were given very traditional names such as George, Elizabeth, Christine… After having nine kids, it seemed like my folks just ran out of common names to choose from when they had reached baby #10. It sounds ridiculous but from a child’s point of view, it wasn’t all that absurd.

As a child, I was baffled why I was given a name so different from the rest. Why couldn’t mine be ordinary like everybody else’s? I eventually found out my parents didn’t pick out my name. One of my sisters did. She said she had chanced upon the name while browsing through a random magazine. I thought, Great job, mom and dad. Thanks for leaving the task of picking out baby names to someone barely in her teens.

During that time (I was no older than ten), I have never met anyone with the same name. I have never even heard of anyone with my name. I felt like my name was just made up out of boredom. Just gibberish, like it made no sense.

I’ve been called Angela, Angeline, Antonette (and any other similar-sounding names) because people couldn’t quite get what my real name was. In time I grew tired of correcting them, of stressing out every syllable so they’d understand. Eventually some people kept calling me by these names that weren’t my own. I didn’t care anymore because when people got my name right, I’d often be teased and be plagued with maddening questions about my unconventional name. I never knew what to answer.

In my teens, during my quest on finding my identity (before the age of the internet), I did my research. I made it a point of visiting every bookstore I ever came across. I’d make a beeline to the pregnancy section and methodically riffle through countless books on baby names. I was determined to find my name and what it meant. However for years, I was unsuccessful, I couldn’t find my name in any book. I felt I couldn’t find my identity.

I wanted to be like everybody else yet deep inside I knew I couldn’t be. I felt different. I was different. While every one of my peers was busy mingling and conversing with each other, I was happy just watching them from afar. They would find me by myself and some worry if I get bored being alone. In actuality I was often too caught up in my imagination to be bored and to even notice that I was alone.

People would ask me why I don’t talk much. Because back then, I didn’t do small talk. I felt it was a waste of precious time and saliva. For most of my teenage years, I’d communicate by shaking my head, shrugging my shoulders, or raising my eyebrows. Rarely would I give a vocal response. Some thought I didn’t have a lot going on mentally, that I was dim, that’s why I didn’t talk. I just didn’t feel the necessity to until years after.

At the homefront, I had a hard time relating to the rest of the family. I was the odd man out. I kept to myself thus, I was considered weird. All nine of my traditionally-named siblings led traditional lives. Most of them did what was expected of them --- they grew up to be well-respected individuals, continued the family business, married and had children of their own.

Unlike my siblings, I never found a suitable partner and I never got married. But I am a single parent. And, unlike my siblings, I was never interested in the family business. Instead I ventured into a wide variety of things. I took up marketing in college, thinking I could follow in my siblings’ footsteps. But that was the end of trying to be the same. I did my own thing. I did everything differently. And I have no regrets.

When I was ridiculed in competing in a manly sport, I became an athlete. When I was told I was too short and I had funky teeth to be considered beautiful, I tried modelling. When I was told I couldn’t see the world without ample money, I still travelled and got by with whatever pocket change that I had. When I was told my talents were juvenile, I became serious in making my art for a time. When I was told I had nothing substantial to say, I wrote down my thoughts.

Admittedly I’m still undecided on what I want to do (but aren’t we all?) but I’ve come to learn to be thankful for my unusual name. I feel if I had Jennifer for a name, I don’t think I would’ve ventured out as much as I did. My experiences, both successes and mishaps, made me who I am.

Names are there to label. Names distinguish one from another. I don’t go by any labels. And my name still sounds gibberish to me, like it makes no sense. I may take a whole lifetime making sense of it. But I believe that’s the best part.

I could’ve been named Laura. Or Mary. Or even just plain Jane.

But I wasn’t.

And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Kiss and Tell

2009-10-15T11:58:00.000-07:00

Faces mere inches apart. Something incredible is about to happen.

For that moment, the cars honking in angry bellows, people scurrying in haste to their daily routines, even the wind so ethereal and certain has somehow been turned on mute. Nothing within earshot makes a peep. Every thing and every one freezes in time.

For that moment, it’s just about me and him. Nothing else.

He leans forward, erasing the distance between us until we’re breathing the same air. This moment has been anticipated for a time, the scene played out in my mind even nights before it occurs. It’s entirely new yet peculiarly familiar. This is really happening, I shout giddily in my head as the rest of the world disappears.

An ache in my bones seizes over during those crucial seconds. This is it, it tells me --- as our lips touch for the first time.

Right then, I knew...

***

First kisses are the most honest.

I have been dating for half of my life, and during that time, I’ve had my share of first kisses. Some magical. Some lousy. Some from princes. And some from frogs. From experience, I can now tell a lot about how a relationship is going to turn out from that kiss alone.

I kiss and tell.

A kiss that comes naturally, like you know what the other wants without even saying a word, is just surreal. The kiss is so in sync that you wonder why you haven’t been kissing eons ago. This kind of kiss does not come very often. In fact, I believe I’ve only experienced this twice in this lifetime. And the relationships which followed those kisses, although they ended, were the ones I valued the most. They were the ones which made me feel so alive. They touched my life in ways the others couldn’t.

The others weren’t bad kissers, so to say. They were uh, an interesting bunch. They were the ones who kept their mouth sealed shut, as if swapping saliva would be the death of them. While others, the polar opposite, would open their mouths so wide, I’d be afraid they’d swallow me whole. They were the ones who had breath so rank I’d have to breathe through my mouth praying I wouldn’t die from the germs inhabiting in their traps. The ones who think massaging my every molar and my tonsils with their tongues is sexy. The ones who drool and foam at the mouth like rabid dogs... I could go on but I won't.

Well, every time, I tell myself, I’m not one to judge a person by their kiss so I stick around thinking it can’t be that bad. But it usually is. Fix the kiss, save the relationship? Our preferences, values, priorities don't mix. Even when I already know that, the stubborn brat that I am would insist on staying because of my stupid notion that I can fix things even if it's quite obvious that we are beyond repairable. From experience, I guess when kisses are wacked, so is the relationship.

Time and heartache, I could've saved a lot of, if only this came to me much earlier. But oh well. When it’s just not there, it’s just not there.

Bad kisses. Good kisses.

I do look forward to that incredible moment when time freezes over, when the rest of the world disappears --- to when my next first kiss happens.

I'm sure I'll run into a lot of bad ones. When that happens, if he doesn't want to take smooching lessons or even take the mints I've offered, I may move to Zimbabwe, join a pretend-nunnery, fake my own death, or all of the above. I just ain't staying.

For this time around, I won’t settle for just any kiss. This time, I'll only stick around when it's GOOD.

And that's when something incredible happens.

Goat In The Act

2009-09-08T05:05:00.000-07:00

I've been writing ever since I thought owning a diary with a tiny pink padlock was the coolest thing on earth. I can't say I wrote well. I just put down everything that happened that day, while sometimes the dreamer in me wrote about the realities that only happen in my head.

I was the dorky kid with the thick glasses who talked more to herself than she did with her peers. Instead of going on gabfests in class like any normal girl would do, I told my stories on sheets of paper. I guess I was different that way. Or maybe I grew up differently.

***

I have lived most of my life in a village where frogs hiding in tall grass stalks would routinely croak everytime in chorus after a rainfall, as if chanting for more rain to fill up their muddy puddles. Our streets, which had only experienced the solid feel of concrete just a few years back, had always been just bumpy dirt roads. The kind of road that could mercilessly puncture your wheels if you drove over 10kph, and the kind that left you covered in reddish brown soil dust. Farm animals would be seen loitering along the streets, probably discussing who's unfortunate neck is next to get axed.

Yes, I am the provincial girl, the one who grew up complaining most of her life, asking why we had to live so far away from civilization. Well, not really civilization. Just city life, that is. I hated that we lived so far away from good drainage. I was tired of riding on makeshift-rafts every morning just to get out of the village during the rainy months The village bathes neck-deep in reddish brown water. Half an hour's worth of downpour would make us Atlantis.

It would've been bearable if only I was connected to the rest of the world, via telephone, cable television, internet, etc. But no. Our area lives in a different time zone. Advancements get to us years delayed. We had a party line on our landlines until the late nineties, when the rest of the world have already moved on to cellphones. I only discovered around the millenium that you can watch movies all day long on tv. And only last year, that it doesn't take as long as a meal and a shower to access my email.

Yet living provincial has its perks I've also discovered. A few months ago, my dad who is always chatty with complete strangers comes in and says our next door neighbor has a goat tied up to a tree on the grassy lot where he usually parks his car. (My dad parks outside because age has made it hard for him to manuever cars thru our gate.) Every day I would pass by the goat as i go in and out of our house. I practically saw it grow from being just a little kid. It wasn't the kind of animal which pulled at my interest for far too long. The goat just stood there every day crapping, chomping on grass, and crapping some more. Weeks go by, I soon forgot about it as the grass on that empty lot grew taller.

One night I came home famished and pregnant. Our cook wasn't much of a cook so I was prepared for food which tasted more like cardboard than food. But much to my surprise, dinner was some sort of spicy beef stew which I had devoured with gusto. It was GOOD! I asked the cook how she managed to concoct something that tasty. She answers, "Uh ate, uwi ni sir yan kanina." I finished the stew until there was nothing left but bones, then went on looking for my dad. I wanted to know which restaurant he got it from since I was crazy about spicy food since I got pregnant.

Well, I didn't know what to feel when I finally got the answer from my dad. Turns out, my dad wasn't just hard at getting the cars thru our gate but he also had trouble parking. He accidentally ran over the goat. He knocked on our neighbor's door to admit his blunder. Being a man of PR, lets him charm his way around people. After hours of chatting, he left their house as new found friends. And they even sent my dad home with newly cooked stew.

So here in the boondoks, your food is prepared fresh. :) Yum roadkill.

Which reminds me of another story...

When women meet, girl talk and gossip would most likely come up. Not this strange news my sister wanted to share with me and my mom one afternoon last week. My sister asks us if we have seen the news this morning. My mom and I pause in silence, a cue for my sister to continue with her story. She goes, in a province an hour away from here, a man was arrested for killing a goat. Me and my mom laughed thinking that my sister was about to say the punchline to a joke. It wasn't a joke. Apparently, the man was found that early morning raping his next door neighbor's goat. And killing it in the process. What is it with neighbors and their goats. Before I had the chance to comment dryly that it must have been a wild night, my mom beams and says, "Goat (caught) in the act sya." Cute mo, mom.

I guess to fight the quiet and the monotony of rural life, no matter how trivial, strange or stupid, we live on stories.

I can't say that I write well. Just that I got stories to tell.

MEEEEEH...

Pillow Talk

2009-08-03T08:25:00.000-07:00

It's 3 am and I lie wide-eyed. Someone has placed a pea under the mattress to plague this princess with sleeplessness. I look over absently to the opposite half of my bed.

Two pillows rest on that side. They have acquired residency on the right side of my bed for months now. I don't use those pillows. I already have one for resting my head on. Another for embracing through the lonely nights with. And a pillow on both sides of my body for my bad aching back to lean on. Those two pillows just occupy the right half of the bed, as if a real person was resting on it.

It occurs to me that it's been awhile since I've slept in the middle. It's been awhile since I felt I had the entire bed all to myself. I guess by force of habit, I've stayed on the left, always wrapped in a cocoon of blanket because it happens to be the coldest part of the room. Not that I like the cold that much. Just that I let the two extra pillows that I share the bed with, have their own space on the right. They're not there for decorative purposes. They're just there, unused for months.

Recently I've been inching my way back to the middle of the bed. Each night I'm that much closer to the middle but not quite. And in time, I'll know what to do with the two pillows on the right half of the bed. For now, I'll leave them be. For it's half past 3, I should try to sleep first, on my side of the bed.

so - real

2009-07-27T07:48:00.000-07:00

This is not my life.

Yet every day I'm living it.

Where Are My Foot Rubs?

2009-05-04T08:26:00.000-07:00

“Kung pumunta ka dito, sasampalin kita.”

Spoken to me in a scream dripping with enough venom that sends me in a shock. This is supposedly the man I thought I was to marry. And one shouldn't forget that I am at the moment very hormonal, behind the wheel, and almost 9 months pregnant.

Growing up in a big family, I watched my five older sisters get married and build families of their own. The mere task of getting up from their chairs while sporting a baby bump would send their husbands hastily rushing to my sisters' sides, making sure that they didn't have a hard time with the impossible feat of standing up. And when one of my pregnant sisters would throw a tantrum, no matter how unreasonable and downright silly, her husband would just take it all in and would even sometimes do cartwheels just so the crazy pregnant lady would forget what she was upset about in the first place. Anything to keep her happy.

Watching them would be my source of amusement. I couldn't get enough of it. To me, being pregnant is the key to being treated like royalty. And to unlimited foot rubs. Back then, I thought it was the phase in a woman's life I was looking forward to and at the same time dreading (from horror labor stories I've heard). I thought I would be in heaven if I do get pregnant in the future.

My experience was not what I had expected. Never in a million years. I had skipped the marriage part and just went straight to getting pregnant. At the time, I admit I was upset, being a closet traditional that I am, but I eventually forgot about it because I was inexplicably crazy IN LOVE. I was excited that I was with someone who seemed to love me as deeply. And that we're going to start a future together. So, in my mind, who cares if I got pregnant out of wedlock. We could always get married anytime we wanted to. What's important was the man I love is staying by my side through this.

None of my sisters ever told me this. And I couldn't feel as more unprepared than I do now. As the pregnancy progressed, so did my mood swings. One minute I would be laughing til I would pee in my pants and the next, I would want to wring someone's neck, just because I found the person in front of me disturbingly ugly. The shifts would be so erratic that I couldn't keep up with it. It was uncontrollable that I felt like something had taken over my body, like strings were being pulled to control my limbs by a merciless sadistic puppeteer that were my Emotions.

I would cry watching my body become almost unrecognizable. It looked to me like an aging old man's body. I would feel my skin being stretched. And just when I thought it has stretched its limits, it continued on to stretching some more. I constantly worried that I will never have the body I had before, I would never be desirable. I worry that my skin would stretch out and I would be left with nothing but loose skin that would flap in the wind.

The first few times I felt the baby move inside me, I freaked out. It felt so strange having something living inside me. I felt I was in a sci-fi flick. For quite some time, I thought I could run away from it. But after running probably for miles on end and beneficially losing some calories while I was at it, I realized it's useless when the “alien life form” I've been running away from is lodged inside me. Then, I started worrying if a mother would even think this way. I worry that I might not know how to take care of another living being. I worry if this alien life form that is, my baby would love me no matter what.

Through the months, I started to miss how my life was before. All the times I could go out with friends whenever I wanted to. The times I would go home at ungodly hours feeling silly and inebriated. Or just being around friends. I thought of all the travel I could be taking, the opportunities in pursuing the career I always dreamed of, all the dives, all the shopping I could be doing. I felt sad. And at the same time, lost because I didn't recognize myself anymore. It felt like everything that I stood for wasn't there anymore. I gave up a lot and I wasn't sure if it was all worth it. I've never been a mother so I wouldn't know.

I shared these unsettling thoughts with him. And he also became witness to my ever-changing moods. I thought I would have nothing to worry about just as long as he was there by my side. Even just to listen, to understand. With outstretched arms, I was ready for my much needed pampering, my being cradled like a child, and for my unlimited foot rubs. But instead, I got an entirely different treatment. Gone is the man who's happy to start a family with me. Gone is he who was excited to get married to me. He took off and hasn't come back. Instead I am left with someone who doesn't understand me and puts down everything I say. Someone who calls me stupid, a psycho, an unfit mom, and all the hurtful things one can think of--- for the way I've been worrying and acting for the past eight months. He said he doesn't love me anymore. For me, he doesn't need to say it. I know it.

I guess he couldn't understand the changes I've been going through. And if ever he reads this, I'm sure he would say that everything I've written is bs, since he believes I've gone loco. I was wrong to think from watching my sisters that being pregnant would be a ticket to being treated like a queen and that my partner would be there experiencing with me all the excitement and strangeness that the pregnancy would bring. Even though I still see him once in awhile, I have never felt so alone, so unloved.

I'm still hoping he would come back. Nevertheless I find comfort and a reason to keep going on, knowing that in a couple weeks, I'll have someone to love and call my own... (no matter how much of a “psycho” I've become) I hope she loves me back.

Forget, fool...

2009-01-09T11:52:00.000-08:00

They say this may be a time in my life when I could become rather forgetful...

Although lying in bed on a Friday night, I am far from forgetting. Just months ago, I would not be in my bedroom flipping though random channels, searching for something good on tv to past the time on. But I would most likely be out tipping back some alcoholic units, searching for some poor-fortunate souls to make fun of with my mean-spirited friends.

At present the closest right now I can call my friends are the ones prancing around inside the boob tube. The dazed life of getting wasted, of not having any care in the world, of crawling on all fours trying to get up the stairs before someone wakes up... that life is far out of my reach but I still remember it vividly while I stared blankly at the moving pictures on the television.

My thumb has grown tired of pressing on the same button on the remote over and over for the last dreary hour or so. Seems like nothing good is on tonight. Or rather, nothing as good as what people my age are doing out right this very instance. I sighed and rested the remote control on my tummy. I gazed at yet another rerun of lab rats trying to solve this night's mystery. As I looked away in boredom, something else caught my attention.

Right on top of my stomach, a lilliputian earthquake is currently rumbling into place, the remote control erratically shakes in tiny jerky movements. I put the remote aside and placed my hands on my tummy. There for the first time I felt it kick. Strong unexpected kicks. Then, for a glimmer of a moment there, I didn't feel too bad for giving up my crazy old lifestyle. For a moment there, I was ready to accept the changes; for a second, I felt happy.

The kicks, tiny but strong, continued for a couple minutes or so. Hmm strong kicks... I thought to myself, “Just like its dad's.” I was about to get up all excited to share this news with him. But then I slumped back deflated in my bed when I remembered --- he's not around.

Well, okay I admit, maybe I am the tiniest bit forgetful after all. It's just that some things are nice to forget every now and then.

Hack Job

2008-08-15T11:56:00.000-07:00

People say I'm blessed with enviably beautiful hair. BUT I could use a little style, they say. Maybe if I cut a little off the back, straighten that pesky curl on my bangs, get hair plugs on my ever-rising hairline, my hairstyle could, almost possibly, look presentable. Known for my hardheadedness, it baffles me how I still continuously listen to people's hairy comments.

And so I have traveled far and wide, (Well, as far as a 10km radius from my house and as far as my not-so-plentiful money would allow) looking for the stylist who would understand the cut my mood was calling for. More often than not, the quest would prove to be sadly unsuccessful. I'd come home infuriated gawking at myself in the mirror. In between trying to snag all my hair out, there are instances I'm not even sure if it's me in the reflection. I can't seem to pull myself away from staring. Staring at the alarming sight before me--- a proof of ungodly creation that is, my hair! A shoo-in if ever I wanted to be a carnie and join a freak show.

In a haze of panic, I'd change my usual side part. Forcibly tie it up with a rubber band; if that won't suffice, I'd stick a gazillion hairpins to keep it looking neat and in place. Be incognito and hide it under a hat. Or slap a fistful of styling goop and mold it into something else, like uh, a better haircut perhaps. But at the end of all the fuss, as a last resort, (usually after a minute or two of ranting to a friend over the phone) I would whip out a pair of scissors and start snipping away.

This is when the real problem begins. I start thinking like a stylist. While cutting hair is their art and they are the artists, I thought it only logical I should go by emotions, and just let my feelings tell me where I need less hair on. What the hey, I'm certainly overemotional at the moment and what better way than to channel it out by creative (stupid) impulses.

I snip a little here. A little there. Pull my hair this way and snip it slightly diagonal. Pull it on top of my head and snip that part as well. When I start making jagged motions in the air, flicking my wrist carelessly with every snip, that is when I know I am already feeling like an expert. At times when I get carried away, I would shave a little off of my sideburns, too. By half an hour's end, I am five inches less of hair and five notches closer to being a true imbecile.

By sun up, I'd conclude last night's fiasco is still fixable. I head out the door, drive out to the next salon, and repeat the process all over again. And again. And again. It's a sickness maybe. Only do I stop when I only have stubbles for hair ...and the very people who coerced me into getting my hair styled, have now rendered me deaf from saying, Honey it's not that bad. You know, they say it's what's inside that counts anyway.

TSSS. Put a sock in it.

Beyond the Ninety Minutes

2008-07-26T00:30:00.000-07:00

I fell in love with stories. I filled my head with them for most of my life. From my dad and his never-ending bedtime stories of his favorite character, Tarzan and his many adventures in the jungle. (I didn't mind that Tarzan spoke in broken English with a heavy Chinese twang.) From spending too many hours after school in libraries burying my nose in old moldy paperbacks. From unlimited access to all the movies I can watch, thanks to my family for having our own video rental store.

I lived for the stories. The way the story unfolds and show how the characters' lives are intertwined. Then how conflict conveniently comes in to stir up some much needed tension. And how confusing events all come together at some point and start making sense.

I believe the best kind of stories are the ones that take you far and keep you guessing what the ending will be. But do happy endings, bad endings, or any kind of endings really apply to real life? I mean, given the clichéd ending for most romantic comedies, what if you have found the love of your life and you have ridden off to the sunset, does that mean that any minute now the end credits are going to start scrolling down? And a text that reads “happily ever after” appears? If that were the case, people would be living very short lives, or however much of that life can fit in 90 minutes.

For as early as the time I understood how stories work, I perpetually wished the story of my life will work its way to a happy ending. If I get to travel and compete on a sporting event internationally, I would get my happy ending. If I just keep writing, someone would take notice and I would finally get published, I would get my happy ending. If can magically make money just by sitting pretty, I would get my happy ending. And yes, a dreamer such as myself will always have to deal with naivety.

Fortunate as I am, those conditions I made with myself really did come true. I took home medals, trophies. I can now read my name on print. And sometimes money do just come in without even so much as lifting a pinkie. I was happy for those particular times but I was constantly plagued with the now-whats(?). Where is the grand spectacular finale??? Someone should have smacked me hard in the head and told me happily ever after is just a cinematographical device of cutting the story short.

Then some time ago, I met someone. And like perfect sequence only found in films and novels, an undeniable spark between us starts the ball a-rolling. Our personalities complemented each other and we could not see ourselves being with anyone else. Naturally we became a couple. A very happy couple at that. Only weeks old as a twosome, talks of taking the next step together even came up. Since things were perfect and we couldn't be any more in love, I thought that was the prompt for that “happily ever after” to come out on stage. Then life happened. Problems surfaced and the restraints we practiced just to avoid from biting each other's heads off was beyond imaginable. I was downright disappointed. My firm belief in happy endings is not so firm after all.

Since then, I have accepted there are no such things as happily ever afters. There are no grand finales since I have learned life does not hold only one big story. But countless little stories after another, each with an unexpected triumph, a dragging plateau, an inconceivable letdown, along with the conflicts... and in between those are several fleeting moments, no matter how infinitesimal they are, when happiness becomes the focal point of the story--- little blissful subtleties hidden in the beginning, in the middle, or in the ending. It doesn't matter.

I still believe the best kind of stories are the ones that take you far and keep you guessing what the ending will be... Same goes with the story of my life. I know that when that 90 minute-worth of story is up, an ending won't be necessarily taking place. But most likely another 90 minutes will. And another, and another...

The Perfect Jeans

2008-07-20T09:04:00.000-07:00

My room has been making me feel uneasy. Almost suffocating to an extent. Other than the fact that everything is covered with a thick blanket of dust, I feel it is most certainly because of the clutter I have been procrastinating of dealing with. So today I have debated, dangled tempting incentives in front of my face, even thrown in some false but believable promises for good measure, and finally convinced myself to get off my lazy butt and start de-cluttering.

I stand before my disaster of a closet. Piles upon piles of clothes mixed together like I'm having an end of season sale right in my very own room. Powders of dust float up in the air as I pull out my clothes one by one. I'm covered with dust myself by the time I finish sorting them. A good portion of my wardrobe in blue. Dusty old blue jeans. I had several. More than most would think necessary.

Ever since I had the freedom to shop whatever I like, and like most women can relate, the search for the perfect blue jeans always stuck with me.

Even while my head is languidly swimming with hot gossip from my gabbiest friends around and even when there is a good 30 feet which stands in between me and that particular show window in the mall, I close in on that distance and walk closer to the display behind the store window. It pulls me in without knowing for what reason. I just let it. I could be going nuts but I swear it was calling out my name the moment I was within hearing distance. A beautiful pair of jeans on a mannequin sells itself to me.

In a trance, the people, the surroundings, and the noise blurs out. My vision plants solely on that pair of jeans. What catches my attention. It could be the subtle way the color fades around the middle of the legs. Or how the way the end of the pants fray. Or how it makes the mannequin's legs stretch on for miles on end.

Whichever reason, I try it on and it fits just right. Not too loose that it makes me look like a frumpy old bag lady. Not too tight that it cuts all circulation in my lower half. It is just right. The right snugness to accentuate and not flatten my almost-not-there behind. Just right that it feels comfortable enough to live in it until the end of days. Just right that it complements and hides unsightly flaws. Just right that I feel I can wear this pair anywhere, to my next night out with friends, and call it crazy, even to a cousin's wedding next week. Alas, I found The Perfect Jeans.

For how long it is going to stay perfect, I'm not sure. It could be years, months or even just weeks. Then I move on to the next “perfect” pair. And quite apparent from the towering heap of dusty old jeans laid out on my bedroom floor, I have had an extravagant share of perfect jeans in my lifetime. Though they are all still perfect, there are some I can live without. Some I will have to get rid of. Some I will have to keep.

2007-10-10T12:42:00.000-07:00

What are you to do when you run across a past while you’re still trying to make your present start moving about?

It’s the most unlikely place I’d want to be in when I’ve been bartering with The Higher Being every single night for the past weeks that I’ll be good if He’d help me forget. But I guess He structured my life to have a cruel sense of humor.

I’ve been keeping myself occupied, even accepted a job(?!). I thought it’s about time to get back to where I left off, focus on my work-in-progress self, toss aside the long-ago, and begin afresh. After the umpteenth breakup of a lifetime, I found myself once again floating in limbo, racking my brain trying to figure out why I’m here once more. I noticed I get very disoriented every time. Now that I’ve gathered my senses again, brave or maybe foolish enough to accept an assignment I know I’m not ready for, armed with a voice recorder I had no clue how to operate, pen and paper to look professional, I went for my first interview write-up.

It was going shockingly smooth; interviewees were really cool and friendly. Ten minutes into my talk with the artists, I catch sight on my peripheral of a not so friendly face --- the current ex. My mind goes fuzzy. I lose reception. I stand up and thank them for their time. In my runner’s stance, bolting would be an option. Halfway out the door, he corners and greets me with a big celebrity grin. Smile. I’m polite; but I don’t try to make small talk. I just don’t want to. I just smile. And bear with it.

He says bye to his gazillion buddies. I had aged just waiting for him to leave. “Oh just get it over with”, I think to myself. He goes out the door. Just when I thought the coast is clear, he comes walking back, kisses my cheek, and motions that he’ll call me. The amount of restraint from not screaming profanities.

So what am I to do?

I smile and bear with it.

Stories and Pictures. Stories in Pictures.

2007-10-07T09:34:00.000-07:00

One lazy Sunday afternoon not too long ago, Kaboo peeped through her mother’s bedroom door and asked if they could look through Kaboo’s old photo albums together. Her mother beamed at the idea and told Kaboo to come back in a few minutes while she looked for them. Kaboo went back armed with a bowl of caramel-coated popcorn, plopped down on her mother’s soft bed and made herself comfortable under the covers.

Her mother handed Kaboo her album. She went through all her childhood pictures just in a flash of two minutes. The popcorn bowl was hardly touched. This was not because she just flipped though everything without so much as examining them a bit. But it was because she only had eight photographs to look at. Her mother explains that majority of it was ruined when most of their village was submerged in water during the last flood, which was a rather common occurrence in their part of town. But fortunately her mother was at least able to salvage these eight photographs.

Kaboo tossed a few popped kernels and tried to catch it all in her mouth mid-air. She missed one and found it on top of one of the snapshots. Kaboo took the photograph in her hand, looked at it closely.

The photograph has faded and turned brown with age, almost making the effect look sepia. The mother revealed this was taken while waiting for dinner to arrive on Kaboo’s first birthday. In the middle wearing a pink silk top is her mother. While the little girl in a frilly dress on the left corner of the photograph is Kaboo’s older sister clapping her hands while their mother breaks into song, both trying to encourage the one year old in her white dress to dance. The lady with her hair pulled back is the mother’s sister. She watches on, slightly amused as the mother supports Kaboo in one arm so that her baby legs can do a bop. Oddly, the baby then stops mid-clap and mid-headbob and just stares affixed at nothing in particular.

Squinting through her reading glasses, the mother laughed and pointed out Kaboo’s dazed eyes. She continued that even at an early age Kaboo’s eyes had a habit of drifting away, as if rerouting her attention to something entirely different from what others see. Kaboo’s eyes had a permanent dreaminess quality to it; the photograph taking captive how Kaboo really is, her mother said. Her daughter sat up and raised an eyebrow in disbelief. She paused. Then Kaboo smiled in agreement.

For most of her toddler years Kaboo spent it inside a playpen with her toys. Her imagination was her constant playmate. Her toys would move, talk, and live a fairy tale romance, be on a cowboy adventure or just have intelligible conversations while having afternoon tea between fellow stuffed animal friends. Every night until she learned to read on her own, her parents read stories from her favorite books. On some nights when she has grown tired of the books, they would make their own stories with Kaboo.

Kaboo grew up dreaming up stories in her head, constantly switching in and out of reality. It was evident in her eyes at times. Or maybe she saw life through cloudy dreamlike spectacles. So when Kaboo became learned enough to hold a pencil, she would put her all her dreams and all her stories on paper, in hopes of preserving how she saw life. A switch is flipped and ideas come pouring in like tapping into the great cosmic library of understanding and knowledge. She loved feeling a pencil in her hand write nonstop about her thoughts and feeling herself get lost in it as ideas and tales come in swarms in her head. In hopes of capturing an era, an emotion, a vibe, or even just a split-second and to suspend that memory in time, just like what most photographs do. To immortalize.

Decades passed; Kaboo’s still putting her dreams, ideas, and stories in writing. Storing them in a safe place in case a flood would come by their village again; careful not to have her memories have the same fate as her old childhood photographs. And, more often than not, she still has that look in the eyes that seems to say her mind has wandered off some place else...

I was brought up to be a sucker for stories. My mother once told me a story of how for my first six months as a baby, I was hairless. My older sister couldn’t pronounce kalbo when we were kids. So I was once nicknamed “Kaboo”. My mother has a photograph of that somewhere. But that’s a different story.

May come handy in the future...

2007-09-20T12:20:00.000-07:00

Note to self:

"NEVER, in any circumstances, EVER, eat your own leftovers."

Gasp.

2007-09-20T10:48:00.001-07:00

The room is caving in. Suffocating.

She slides the window open and thought a little fresh air would be great about now. She dangerously lets half of her body out the window ledge as if tempting fate to pull her down. She takes a long deep breath. Then she frowns. She doesn’t know why she keeps forgetting. When you’re twenty-six floors above a major highway, fresh air in this area is kind of hard to come by.

Her hair catches the wind and you can almost feel an imminent storm brewing. Right under, cars are scrambling in tangles. Fed up drivers honking their horns thinking the noise would help speed up traffic. She stares out to the distance to where in the middle of the city, a river flows. Although the water is more brown than anything, it’s still a river. Its surface covered in countless dancing soft yellow specks, a reflection of the street lights. It is night time once again. A Friday night, no less.

She’s staying in, waiting for someone. While everyone her age is out partying and celebrating the weekend, she’s being an old little prude all cooped up inside. She feels tired and drained. Her chest tightens. She reaches her hand for a pack and gets a cigarette stick. She has managed to quit smoking for months now. She didn’t find tobacco all that appealing anymore. But lately, for the past couple weeks, and after lengthy debates in her mind, she has found herself lighting up. Solely just to ease her nerves.

She inches closer to the edge, takes a drag, and says to herself, “Now this is fresh air.”

The Nth Morning After

2007-08-10T06:40:00.000-07:00

…a faint sound nudges me from my slumber. A sound coming from the living room has managed to slip inside and has been tiptoeing around me. I listen and begin to make out a Chinese woman chanting, accompanied with an almost inaudible clanging quality to it. The tune just about seems repetitive or maybe the track is put on repeat…

…I clutch onto the light comforter wrapped around me. I glide a hand over the smooth sheets, feeling every thread of the soft fabric. It feels cool under my touch. Perhaps from the cold air gusting from the AC right at the foot of the bed. The same culprit who has been blowing my feet into icicles the entire night. I curl up under the covers and sink deeper in bed…

…I lean my head close to the pillow I have in my arms. A bit fruity from the shampoo I used just before coming to bed. And it smells like…something else. A scent I know so well before. The scent I still sometimes look for when everything is going wrong and I need a picker upper; for when I need to find solace. The familiarity soothes but at the same time breathes life back into my body…

…My eyes open slowly and narrow as they catch the sunlight streaming down from the beige window blinds nearby. I notice the walls. They are painted blue. An old rock band poster hangs slightly askew…

I know where I am now. Some place I have not set foot in for months.

Still lying down, I turn over to my left. There he is, sleeping beside me.

Little Ms. Conceptions

2007-07-31T11:07:00.000-07:00

Children live in a reality far from our own. A world where the incredible, the bizarre, and most of the time, what adults see as ridiculous dwell.

It is where the rosy-cheeked Santa Clause, the money-bearing Tooth Fairy, enchanting mermaids, and action figures come alive. Where every dusty nook and cranny is just an adventure waiting to be embarked. Where an afternoon dip in the mud seems like untouched paradise. A reality where having supernatural powers like flying and being invisible were considered the norm. It is where wishing on the brightest star above would make all your dreams come true.

It is a part of our lives where everything and anything is possible.

Childhood brings a time when our grasp on reality is still loose. It was when I thought having an “I-must-I-must-increase-my-bust” regimen would help, uh… accentuate my bustiness. Cough. Here are some of my other misconceptions:

I learned to count way before I set foot in school. I first learned to count up to the number 10. I felt like the biggest genius on earth. I went about each day believing with my head up high that I now know everything. At the age of four, I knew when every living thing would expire. Until one day, a man who I did not know was at the house. He was visiting my older sister and was waiting for her to come down. To boastfully show off my new knowledge in life and to maybe haunt him by telling him he will only live up to 10, I asked him how old he was. He answered, 29. I could not believe it. I retorted, “That is impossible. Everyone only lives up to 10. There is no such thing as 29!”

Parents usually tell their children that they can be whatever they want to be and that if you believe enough, dreams come true. When our first grade teacher asked the class what each wanted to be, most of the kids answered,…”teacher”…”racecar driver”…”astronaut”…”doctor”. I kept quiet. But the question stuck with me for days. What do I want to be? Upon much pondering, I finally knew what I believed to be my destiny. Why stop at just being a lawyer or an architect when I could be MORE. I was even determined to read hundreds upon hundreds of pages from a leather-bound book that was all about being the person I want to be. But the most important part was that I believed, believed, and believed. I kept my dream to myself for quite a time. Months passed, I do not really recall who asked me again what I wanted to be but I still remember clearly my answer… “I’m going to BE Jesus Christ. Or be the next Messiah.”

Although I am happy being a woman now, when I was in grade school, I was a bit of a tomboy. I was out in our backyard more than I was inside playing with dolls. I hated having to wear a dress while trying to climb up trees. I did not want my panties showing. I envied boys not having any care in the world if they are sweaty and filthy. From the very moment I learned the differences between girls and boys, I wanted to be a boy. I felt I was born in the wrong body and I was trapped. And having to watch this 80s gender-swapping flick on Betamax, I thought it would be possible to become a boy in time; that a penis would just magically grow just because I believed it so. Every now and then I would check inside my pants if something has sprouted yet. For about a decade, I waited. It never happened. My dream of miraculously growing a penis has long been given up. Sigh, childhood letdowns.

Age 12, I started thinking more about the future (since my “10-Years-Only-Lifespan” theory did not quite pan out). I wanted to have a business empire and be comfortably on my own by the age of 25. Then, marry late, marry a lot older than my sisters did, when my 27th birthday hits. I do not know what but something must have happened in between the time I was 12 and now. Because I am 28 now… No further comments.

I am no longer a child although I still think like one sometimes; believing that everything and anything is possible, even if the entire world is telling me otherwise.

On clear nights, I still look for the brightest star. And

Someday have the ability to fly.

Chasing after Wind

2007-07-26T09:55:00.000-07:00

A breeze passes through every strand of my hair and takes with it some of my feverous state. During rainy nights, it whistles through my window and lulls me to sleep. And quite a few times I feel it adoringly brush against my cheek, leaving subtle kisses that soothe every inch of me.

It is all around me. But no matter what I do and no matter how crafty I devise my plans, I can never hold it. I can never make the wind stay put.

In that same sense, love can not be told. It can not be tied down when it does not want to be tied down.

A mighty pain to love it is,
And ‘tis a pain that pain to miss;
But of all pains, the greatest pain
It is to love, but love in vain.

We (or maybe it was just me since cartoons was my life) have witnessed it when we were only kids in the form of cartoon strips from Mr. Schulz. Time and again, Charlie Brown would be sweating bullets trying to get the attention of the Little-Red-Haired-Girl. The cartoon ran for decades on end but still Charlie Brown never got to hook up with this dream girl of his. In one strip, Charlie goes,

“Nothing takes the taste out of peanut butter like unrequited love.”

Ah, unrequited love… As I grew older, the more familiar I became with the rapture and the agony that came with it. I have had my fair share.

I meet them. Eventually got to know them. Well, maybe I never got to know them that well. But that was not the point. Maybe just the curious way he says my name. Or how he remembers to spoon out the mustard in my sandwiches ‘cause of my distaste for it. Or how he would always make it a point to have at least one part of our bodies (it be our backs or just a pinkie) touch whenever we sleep. Something that trivial, yet that infatuation might, and usually does, grow into something more.

I start doing things I know I would not normally do. Drive to the other side of the world just to drop off something for him. Shell out thirty grand for his tuition ‘cause he somehow lost all his money on gambling and drugs. Spend the entire weekend cleaning out his roach-infested pigsty of a place. Considering that I hardly ever lift a finger around my own house, seeing myself doing things like these sends me thinking that I have caught a grave and terrible malady. Or maybe blame it on some demonic possession. Or just plain madness.

But despite how back-breaking or time-consuming the efforts and regardless of how close and intimate “I” thought we have become, something deep inside me keeps telling me something is not right. But as much as I would like to maintain a veil of secrecy around my emotions, it often becomes impossibly difficult to keep them bottled up inside.

Eventually it would be brought up. He acutely refuses to discuss the matter and seems to be under the impression that my twenty paged tear-stained confession was nothing but just a bad dream. Or he becomes unbearably uncomfortable and just magically *poof!* disappears. Or he suggests the friends-only setup but always boy scout-ready with an excuse to get out of a social call.

I have been through every imaginable diss. And it surely hurt like hell. After all that has been said and done, it only boils down to this:

Love does not always beget love.

I will find myself once again with someone. It is going to be far from perfect. We will get the typical highs and lows of relationships. A laughter here and a squabble there. However I would like to think…

I am done chasing after the wind.