Happiness is...

balmy breeze on a mild Friday afternoon, a cup of very hot, very strong coffee, a book of beautifully-written poetry.

Life is, indeed, what you make it.

Little Mio

I honestly cried--no, sobbed--when I came across this little boy's story on his mom's blog.
He's a 5-year-old kid. Why him?

Gastronomical Blah

I have, fairly recently, given up on the Double Tall Mocha Espresso I consistently order on every Starbucks visit. I've known it all along--that this drink doesn't do anything to kindle my drowsy nerves--but have been in denial, so far. Well, I have had a change of heart and decided to switch to that most macho of macho coffees: the kapeng barako, Starbucks style. I couldn't do without the flavoring though (brewed coffee by Starbucks is E-V-I-L!), so I still make them put white chocolate mocha into the drink.

So far, that has been the only exciting thing to happen to my stomach (and my nerves) today. Lunch in the office was a bland affair of pork binagoongan (which I ordered without knowing what it was--it was too orange to be binagoongan); for snacks, it was a Strawberry-topped Danish which, due to the fact that I've been eating it almost daily for the past few weeks, has lost its excitement and novelty (such boring words!). I mean, I used to eat it with such gusto, but this morning, a third of it found its way into the trash can (the part where the custard and the strawberry jam was, to be more specific). Mom would probably berate me for throwing food away, with all the hungry people out there. Peace, Mommy! =)


I refuse to let this day end with my palate bored, or dissatisfied. After I post this, I shall whip out the Porky Best chicharon from its hiding place. There's Coke and ice in the ref, too. Ah, here comes the high-blood special, but what the heck.


What did you have for lunch?
=)

Kim

This afternoon, I lifted my 7-year-old so he could sit on the grocery cart. Boy, was he heavy! I had to do a take 2. We were both laughing during and after the exercise and as I gave him a kiss on the nose, I asked him, "when did you get so heavy, little boy?"

Does every blowing breeze take something away with it that it's gone before we even had the chance to know that a breeze had blown by? When we blink, does something get lost in the split second so that the something "disappears before our very eyes"? Are we such incognizant beings that moments get stolen from us under our very noses?

Questions.

I had to lift him out of the cart when it was time to pay at the cashier. For the briefest of moments, I held him close and took a whiff of his baby powder-scented cheek and whispered a silent prayer, "don't grow up so fast. Be mommy's baby for as long as you can."

And then he hugged me and tried to lift me. When I laughed, he said, "Mommy, when I'm older, I will lift you. Promise."

Sonnet XVII

-Pablo Neruda

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

Nonsense-s

Friday was a good time to shop. Mainly because: a) lots of stores were on sale; b) I haven't shopped in quite a while; and c) the funds-available-and-nice-stuff-at-hand timing was perfect. It usually happens that when I'm on the look-out for stuff to buy, nothing good turns up in the stores or, when I spot pretty loots, the moolah is nada. what a bummer, right? Not last Friday, though. Still, I made sure I didn't overdo it. Stashed in just a pair of office trousers and a few nice tops.

Oh, and yeah, PCX is offering lotsa good deals right now with their Pond's, Neutrogena, Celeteque, etc. sale. Perfect timing because I had entered the store with the goal of replenishing my almost-empty tubes of moisturizer. It turned out they had a buy-one-take-one deal on the brand I use! Some really good and cheap buys right there.

Heehee. I've become a cheapskate. Which is a good thing, really.

Facebook application update: I am now playing Mob Wars.

to understand here was a clown

who didn’t know where he was,

a clown without a context?

What could be sadder, my friend thought,

than a clown in need of a context?


-from "If a Clown" by Stephen Dunn-

And just when I think I'm already tinkering with too many apps on Facebook,

along comes...


COUNTRY STORY!

It's so cute!
=)

My Sh_tty Week, In Review

I'm done reading The Manikin and will be moving on to Ann Patchett's Bel Canto next. I was trying to decide between that and Irene Nemirovsky's Suite Francaise but Bel's synopsis mentioned a soprano, which clinched the deal. The soprano will always come first.

Blah.

I had meant to enumerate the week's events. I just realized virtually none of them (except the book I finished) are worth enumerating, at all.

Because for some people, it would take only one dark event to cast a pall over everything else, to lend shadow to what began as a sunny morning, to cause a domino effect over the hours of a day, a week, a month. And yes, it could go on longer than that.

I will call this post "My Sh_tty Week, In Review" even if it would hardly pass for a review.

My Facebook is teeming with negative status updates. Am thankful to the friends who took notice and took time to offer consoling/sympathetic comments. I'm hoping to shake off from this rut soon.

How was your week?

Lit Geek Update #18:

Last book I read: They Went Whistling: Women Wayfarers, Warriors, Runaways, and Renegades by Barbara Holland--

For the recently emancipated woman, this book further cements her being an offspring of the pains, the struggles, the glories, and the conquests of the women who, before her, had dared to wear a pair of pants and go whistling down the lanes, under the occasionally glaring, often frowning beams of the sun. Read about history's giantesses Amelia Earheart, Bonnie Parker, Joan D'Arc, Cleopatra, Isadora Duncan, Belle Boyd, the Amazons, and more than a handful of lesser known women who trod the narrow path toward the freedom to truly look the world in the face and laugh, wickedly, while doing so.

What I'm reading right now:


The Manikin by Joanna Scott

"The winter of 1846, when half of everything alive succumbed to the cold, has been stored for over eighty years in the mysterious mind common to the species, and though the owl didn't experience that winter, she remembers it--the poisonous smell of the air, the frost that pinned feathers to skin, the famine. She remembers that time the way a woman remembers her great-grandmother's death in childbirth..."

-from the novel's first paragraph, p. 3-

A "Whatever" Thought

Anne Boleyn was 5"2' and flat-chested. Bonnie Parker Of the famed Bonnie and Clyde duo was just 5" and loved wearing red.

Small--er, petite--women are really something else.

Hahaha. Still, we wear heels.
WT.

Poetry Poetry

Joel Toledo's Chiaroscuro is already in my hands. Next I'll be on the hunt for:

The Proxy Eros by Mookie Katigbak.

Somewhere
You are actual. Happen to me there.
-From “As Far as Cho-Fu-Sa”-

If it's true
That we move from one exhaustion to
Another, you are the tenor and the vehicle
Of all I cannot name in the things I do.
-from "The Proxy Eros"-

When I show you how you and I
Have more hunger than we know
What to do with, I am telling you
Goodbye before you know it.
-from "The Telling”

Such heartbreakingly beautiful, beautiful lines.
I am thoroughly enchanted.

Wind Matters

A mighty strong wind blew my way this morning. Was it a portent of things to come? A warning of sorts? Bad--or good--news being delivered?

I wasn't--and still am not--entirely sure which one of the above it was. All I knew was that it was a signal for me to tell my legs to hold fast and steady to the pavement I was walking on.

Thank the fairies I didn't get blown away, considering that I was already beginning to sway with the gale. I had a horrible fear my legs were going to give in.

Good thing they didn't.

Never Alone

The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf, Trinoma

It feels wonderful to exhale after holding one's breath for so long. And with music flowing through earphones and an ice-cold coffee to cool one down on a warm afternoon, the experience is something of a revelation--the discovery and affirmation that all things, even the most difficult moments are, after all, just moments that will, fear them as we might, pass.

They are moments that will pass.

Etch those words into your heart, my friend, whoever you are and whatever it is that you are going through. We are, if you think about it, never really alone. Not me, not you, not the girl sitting by her lonesome on the table across me, flipping absently through her thick textbook, not the guard standing by the door, greeting the couple on their way into the coffee shop, not the youngish, hapless-looking fellow, clutching at his phone on his way out. None of us. We are never alone. Ever.

Perhaps one really dark day, you will forget this truth. The possibility is very high, given the weakness our natures tend to bend into. Here's a prayer for the moment to pass as quickly as it took over.

/And let me tell you now

why wings and doors and flowers really open, why
this wall, once non-negotiable, had let you in.

It is because all things want to open, that often
all you need do is ask./

-from Joel Toledo's poem, "Open Sesame", Chiaroscuro-

The Eighties

Sunday afternoon, a drive down a busy street. Fussing with the car tuner and chancing upon John Parr's "St. Elmo's Fire", with David Foster's "Just For A Moment" and Joey Scarbury's "Believe It or Not" in tow.

So eighties.

So long ago.

It was a senti moment right there for M-- and I. M--, by the way, is an 80s' baby, like me, so we were able to go down childhood lane together. The songs touched chords in our psyches and there were moments of quiet (both of us, I guess, remembering lazy afternoons, drowsy hometowns and orange twilights), peppered with small, low conversations on how the songs reminded us of our childhoods, to the loss of innocence where one became forced to say hello to gray twilights and life's dead ends.

"Wasn't there a time in our young lives when we believed in something?"

"Ya."

"When we believed in forever and the goodness in people and in hopes of bright tomorrows?"

"From that point to where we are now--it's like having gone a hundred-eighty-degree turn."

How right he was. How right. Such a cynical generation it was we belonged to.
Sad.

Lit Geek Update #17: What I'm Reading Now

I defined a woman's duty, "To look the world in the face with a go-to-hell look in the eyes; to have an idea; to speak and act in defiance of convention."
-Margaret Sanger, 1914

All Those Moments Passing Us By...

So, where were you on August 3rd of two years ago? What were you doing? Were you the same person you are now? How much did you have in your pockets that day? Were you happy? Was there someone special in your life that day? What were the thoughts you were thinking, the plans you were making?

Not that this date holds any significance, just so happened that I chose to write this post today, so, no, this date is not special in any way. To me, that is. But it could have some sort of specialness to some of us. Which is a problematic sentence, if we really break it down to pieces. It holds up the frequency with which we take things, and hours, and days, and people, and places for granted. Which is, after all, not difficult to do, considering the number of seconds and minutes that pass, too many, really, for us to count and too fast for us to pin down and just hold in our hands and turn over for perusal. But then, again, what of the regrets we express at letting a particular day go away without us having lived it to the fullest, and what of the sadness in the line "all those moments passing us by..."?

I read, somewhere, that waiting is a sin--a sin because the amount of time spent during the waiting is really time wasted. Makes a lot of sense to me. Think about this: if we added up all those minutes, or hours, we spent waiting for something and not doing anything as we waited, I'm almost sure we'd be able to come up with a pretty significant amount of time wherein we could have done so much more with the time we had in our hands.

But then, again, we can argue: isn't the waiting itself an act that is just as significant as the next one?

So, do you remember now where you were on August 3rd of two years ago?

I have drawn a blank. Have you?

Facebook Status: Such gray, despondent weather. The rains must be bringing on the gloom for some of us.

A room that is really a box, its walls wrapped in ash-tinted blue. Light without rays, barely illuminating a third of the place. Outside, an angry sky pelting heavy sheets of rain and wind.

Where I am, I am not there. I am somewhere else.

Though in that place, I am unsure of my presence, too.