Walk with Ja at the turn of the year

 

Last Eight Days with X

I'm already looking forward to the day after X, to be free of X, at last! 

X has given me an umbrella in the last nine years, almost 10 years to be exact. He has protected me against storms, mostly financial ones; most of all, he  has protected me from Covid, at least, since he has given me a home, a roof over my head here in downtown Davao, in an area very accessible to everything that I and my family need so that we could not really feel the extent of the horror of the lockdown all throughout the pandemic. It was like living in a protective bubble. Although we are aware of the risks and the danger everywhere, we feel where we were a basic sense of safety. During the times when the outside world seemed to be going mad, we were able to retreat to our sense of safety, here in our bubble, thanks to X. 

X has also allowed me access to some privileges, reduced the fear and anxiety I've been carrying with me since childhood, protected me against the harshness and prejudices of fellowmen and women, etcetera, etcetera. It was because of X, or at least with the stability that X provided, that I was able to explore oil painting, watercolors, pastels and embarked on my journey to self-discovery. It was X who allowed me to travel, to find adventure in several places, to go wayward, sometimes, without adverse cost to myself.

Now, I'm saying goodbye to X. Because even if X was really a good provider, he was also ruthless, cruel, egocentric and rigid in his own beliefs. Through the years that I've been with X, X had never seen me. Or, is it right to say, he refused to see me. He has always treated me as invisible although through these years, I've been doing work for X. 

These are my last eight days with X. I can't describe yet how I feel. Excited by the prospect of my impending freedom? Afraid of losing all the privileges I used to enjoy? I'm supposed to write a goodbye letter to X but right now, I can't do it yet. I'm still trying to still myself, I'm still trying to console myself because I feel so broken. 

All about hair

“What happened to your hair?!” my friend Minerva at the City Engineers’ exclaimed as soon as she saw me after long years of absence. 

“Why? What happened to my hair?” 

I hardly ever see my hair even if I looked at it eveyday in the mirror. So I was curious what she was seeing.

But as soon as I said that, she was very careful and just gave me a measured reply. “You used to have such thick, black hair when we were together,” she breathed to my ears and did not say much more. Just a few days after I met Minerva, I saw our picture together in the mountains of Marilog, wearing our windbreakers with the mountain fog as a backdrop. My hair was scandalously thick and black. Just as it was in the photo of me as a six-month old infant in my grandmother’s arms. Whose hair is that? The babysitters used to say and giggle.  

I simply thought that my hair was so thick that my head looked even bigger than my body.

  

Hair suddenly became our topic when Prateeh and I met in Manila this month, our first meeting in 12 years. We were about to part when I broached the subject of hair. Finally, it was from Prateeh that I learned what Minmin refused to say--that I already lost what used to be such a thick black hair.

 

I used to have a problem with my  hair when I was growing up.

Or so, I thought. 

For it was only much, much later when I began to understand that it was not really my hair that was the problem, it was the people around me. In the place where I grew up, women--Mother, aunts, women neighbors--used to have only one concept of an ideal hair. It has to be straight and black and easy to control.

My hair was thick, wavy--even curly at times, if you allowed it to grow at a certain length. I used to have a picture as an infant with long curly tresses but the aunts did not like it. Kulot. And in our place, people never allowed hair to grow long. “You will look older,” Ma used to say. Older, when I was five or six years old, simply meant ugly. At least, that was how I took what the grownups meant.

So, Ma would push me to go to the hairdresser to have my hair cut. Most often, the hairdresser would have a problem. My hair had a wave just somewhere near the ears; and wavy hair, at least in our village, meant difficult to control. Unlike the straight hair of my sisters, my hair would not follow whichever way you combed it. My hair was unruly, had a mind of its own, would not follow directions. In other words, a rebel.

So, the hairdresser would cut the hair just before the length when it begins to wave; and that meant, cut it even shorter than it normally should. The hairdresser had nothing but high praises for my sisters and mere silences to me. Needless to say, the ensuing haircut would be very unflattering, even ugly. Most of my childhood, I roamed around planet earth feeling ugly and out-of-place. A cast out; a perennial outsider.

 

There was a time when I began telling Sean at breakfast, “I used to grow up thinking I was an ugly duckling until I discovered I was a swan.” He and Ja looked at me. I showed Sean the picture of me as an ugly duckling and he did not recognize me. “See?!” I said. “I’ve already turned into a swan!”

It was much, much later, liberated from the constraints of home, that I finally began to grow my hair long. Later, I could no longer stop to have it cut because I hardly had the time. To control its thickness, I had it straightened, rebonded.

But nothing lasts forever.

Age sets me thinking about my hair now and the people’s attitude towards hair. At the recent gathering, I watched how Iris let her hair be in all its glory.  Prateeh, too, said her hair, once wavy, had developed real curls.  She merely untied it without a fuss as soon as she reached the session hall where we all gathered.  She seemed puzzled why I could not let my hair down.  Why I could not untie it in front of everyone.  I still hear voices in my ears telling me that hair is bad, hair is dirty.  

Suddenly, I longed for that thick, black hair vilified by the world that only wanted straight hair.  I failed to defend that hair. 

Test Post

Catherine of Alexandria

 

I arrived in Mambusao, Capiz province towards sunset and immediately caught a glimpse of the belfry of St. Catherine of Alexandria. "That's it. Yes, that's it," I told the bus conductor, my heart skipping a beat. 
It was unmistakable. The church, though newly-painted, was exactly what I saw from the photo of a blogger who posted it on his blog years ago. That was about a month after Pa passed away and I regretted it that I could no longer ask him about how it was to be in that church when he was still a little boy. The blogger had described the church as eccentric; and I read up on St. Catherine, who was actually such a tough, eccentric and extraordinarily strong woman. She resisted the advances of an emperor who later imprisoned and incarcerated her. After reading all about her, I actually wondered how bad, loathsome and ugly that emperor must have been because St. Catherine would rather stay in the dungeon than to be with him. I failed to look him up, though, because as usual, I was too busy and did not have much extra time. I should even have remembered his name. But I forgot because all I was thinking then was my Pa. I told him that one day I would go visit his place and tell him all about it--even if he's no longer around. I want to go to his place to remember him.   
So as soon as I got off the bus, I hurried off, dragging my luggage from the terminal, my heart singing.  St. Catherine, St. Catherine!

I can end all the crappy things that ever happened to me

According to the psychotherapists I consulted, if you experienced emotional neglect and abuse as a child; or came from a crappy home, you'd likely be more susceptible to crappy relationships as an adult. You will likely end up in crappy friendship; or have friends who bully you or treat you badly; you'll have crappy lovers who treat you as badly and who don't care about you. These crappy relationships  also get carry over to other aspects in your life; including your work. According to these Oracles, you will most likely end up in some crappy jobs where you're treated as if you don't exist.  At 56, I knew all these to be true. But I also have the power to end and change the narrative. I can write my own life all over again but I'm already too tired and exhausted. I just want to play with watercolours.

Green Building on Gil Puyat Street

Of course, it's an attempt to be green and it's good. But for me, it's not even good enough, considering how much fossil fuel you use to maintain it and how much fossil fuel is consumed by its surroundings. Still, an attempt is an attempt.

The Rainbow Tree

The Rainbow Tree had survived the blight it experienced in January last year when I travelled to Pagadian City and everyone forgot to water it.

When in November I left it again to embark on our trip with Sean and Ja to Intramuros. We went home to find most of its leaves wilting although the roots were still intact. So on December 21, I planted it where it should belong. 

It finally reached its destination in the rainforest after such a long travel from Laguna in 2021 or 2022 to Davao. 

Tomorrow when I see it again I should ensure that I inspect all its leaves. I should ensure that it will survive!

Traces of Pa

 

Life is too short for our mistakes

Sometimes we often take things for granted. We've been warned about this every time by so many people around us, by friends, neighbors or even strangers we just meet on the road but we never listen. Or, if we ever do, we think that we already have everything covered: We take care of our loved ones and we're not in anyway aware that we've been taking for granted anything or anybody at all.

When Pa was alive, I practically had all my focus on my boys, who were of course, very photographable and I often ended up editing, even deleting Pa's pictures. Don't blame me for this, I'm not alone. Check Lualhati Bautista's later novel that had an ageing woman as a narrator and that narrator also did this to her Pa.  

So, right now that he's gone, I've been looking for photos of Pa and feel so happy when I see even a parcel of him or his clothes in past family events. I hold on to these photographs, which make me remember clearly what happened to us on the day they were taken. 

This set of photographs I culled from my old file was taken on November 29, 2013, when I was so agitated and restless, prompting Pa to bring me to the boundary areas of his farm. [Actually, it was I who insisted because I did not know anything about the farm, where it began and where it ended]. But even after that and until now, I still don't know.  That was precisely the reason I was very agitated on that day.

2013 was a difficult year for me as a journalist. I could hardly make ends meet. I was doing odd jobs to compensate for my very low income but still those were not enough. 

These were taken with a Nikon point-and-shoot Coolpix S-3100 that I often carried in my pocket at that time. 

Less than two years after these photos were taken, on April 2, 2015, he would be taken to the hospital, groaning in pain.  
Pa would have turned 89 on January 15. He died on June 1, 2017, at age 82.  This post is dedicated to him. 

Mother Hood

In temperate countries, the hood is worn to help ward off the cold, said the priest after the baccalaureate mass.  Later, the academe has adopted it as a symbol...

That enlightened me a bit and called the pinning the most important thing I've ever done in my life. Then something suddenly hit me in the gut.