Crystal Memories

In one of my forays to the Legazpi Sunday Market, I once met the Crystal Woman.  She was tall and her rather blonde hair was loosely tied in a bun, some unruly strands falling on her face. She was wearing a faded blue cotton shirt; or, this might just be the way I remember her, I'm not really sure now.
Then, she talked about what she had in her hands in a loving, animated way, that everything around her seemed to dissolve and fade away.  I've been to other crystal shops before--including that one at the Makati Square or another more expensive one somewhere in Binondo--but because I really did not know much about crystals, their rugged edges and abnormal shapes, their shimmering colors and most of all, their staggering prices almost always intimidated me. How could I know the stones they purport to sell are real ones and not synthetically made? I stayed away because I can't keep my eyes off the price tags and I can't trust the voices that I hear.

But here I was, one Sunday morning in the mid of a leisurely crowd of condo dwellers, drawn to this towering Crystal Woman whose explanations were so down-to-earth, I can't help but gasp.  She had asked me if some of those crystals communicated to me, if I can feel their particular pull, I said I was drawn by the ones that were so clear and long but more expensive.  In a moment, I could sense her wanting to give those particular crystals to me. This perception lasted a minute and then, I could feel her going over me, trying to fathom if I was telling the truth about what I felt about her crystals. 
Then, she started talking about the Herkimer and it didn't take long for me to get convinced. "It's so small and yet, so powerful!" she said, putting such a tiny sparkling piece on her palm. "Don't ever underestimate the power of this small crystal!" 

When she handed it to me, she took a bell to cleanse it.  A bell to cleanse a crystal! This really blew me off.  She placed the crystal in the middle of my palm and sounded a bell to cleanse it. Really, it had that cleansing sound.  I could swear it cleansed my soul as well.
[Curiously now, I can't remember ever seeing the the shape of the bell. All I can remember was its sound--and what a cleansing sound!] 

The crystal had stayed with me through thick and thin inside the newsroom.  When I used to get close to an obnoxious energy, I would place the crystal on my palm or in my pocket and the obnoxious energy became bearable.  The crystal worked in a very subtle way.  It worked in the in-between of things so that you could not really claim without a doubt that what you perceived was its work was actually its work. But it worked the way it did with the obnoxious thing (or person) and you begin to wonder why. 

I can't forget my first encounter with the Crystal Woman. Somehow, it changed me somewhere. She made me perceive things in a different light.  She made me think of the energy I encounter and to make good use of energy. She still stayed in my mind somehow.  Sometimes, when I think of Legazpi, I would think of her.  I also think of bumping into her one of these days and when the comes, to talk to her, soul-to-soul.
That day I talked to her, I saw the worried glance on her staff's face when she began explaining things to me.  The staff tried to interpret her sentences, thinking I wouldn't understand her language. But her language transcended human speech and so, when the staff saw that I was entering her world, she slowly retreated away, leaving me and the Crystal Woman alone.
Now, I'm saying this as if there was only me and the Crystal Woman in the whole Legazpi market that Sunday.  Of course, there were lots of other people. One of the listeners, a man with a strong, commanding voice, flaunted his knowledge about crystals, trying to impress her.  This somehow turned her off.
She said she was giving yoga lessons somewhere in Batangas but she said she was getting too busy taking care of her daughter to continue those lessons.  She said she was calling off those lessons soon. I wouldn't be able to attend those lessons, anyway.  I had a hard time going out of Makati on weekdays.  

But her crystal had stayed with me until it got lost one day in our foray with Ja to Samal Island.  The date that it got lost seemed to be a reminder to me about the things that I've forgotten.  [O, crystal, can you just speak to me in a more straightforward manner, please?]
When it got lost, I was so upset that I kept sending it a distressed message. Then, somehow, it shot back its crystal clear message to me: rest now, everything would be okay. 
Thank you, crystal, wherever you are, rescue me when things get so murky here! 

What Mother taught me

Mother always taught me to see only the beautiful and ignore the ugly.  I was always in trouble with her. It was not really that I had the talent for seeing ugly things--for that is something that I would develop a taste of much, much later.  But early in life, I'd been made aware of the politics of the ugly. "Ugly girl," Father, rest his soul, used to tell me over the dinner table when he was angry and ill-tempered, which he always was when I was a girl. Your own father telling you that. The feeling stayed with me until I grew up and  I had to tell my boy one day at breakfast: "I grew up believing I was an ugly duckling only to catch my reflection on the mirror and discover I was  a swan!"
That startled everyone in the family.
Later, I discovered it was the in-thing to be ugly.  Still, I could not yet bring myself to do it the way that my boy would scrunch his face, distort it before the camera, revealing things inside out.  Will  that make him automatically an artist? Making a canvas out of his own face? 

It merely made me more aware of how much of my own Mother's creature I had become. Was this also the reason I was junked at about the same age she was cheated, betrayed by friends, fellow teachers? corrupted supervisors?

She always gave us the English equivalent of things, although the Cebuano ones had more texture, more color.  Why would I call kamungggay horse radish? Why would I call nangka jackfruit? kaimito, starapple, ampalaya, bitter gourd? My first writing composition, which had to be done in English, did not include the mud that got stuck and dried flaking on the carabao's back, or those that had caked around my shoes--I never had shoes at this point, she only bought me sandals! Mud wouldn't get itself into my writing composition because it was simply dirty, messy, and way below Mother's eyes. She always wanted things to be dainty, like the round white crocheted doilies she put on the table top or the settee. With Mother, I had learned to clean up;  though, her things around the house were always so messy. She never had the time to fix them.

Now, as my adulthood deepens and I've been going through lots of pain and disorientation, I would consciously study the ugly. I would stare at it in the eye and I would not flinch. I should be the one to strip it naked, to describe it inside out. I should be the first to explore its underbelly.  Speaking the ugly truth, this should be my project.

I'm almost back!

A mandala clock I saw at the Art Hunt during the 2019 Kadayawan

Prateeh has moved to Chiang Mai while I got stuck where I am. Of course, that's because she has the courage to jump off the cliff while I stood frozen, staring at the abyss.  Maybe, it might not even be an abyss I was staring at--who knows it could be paradise?! Only that it's too dark out there, I could not see a thing. But what did I say to Badette (Bernadette) before when she was about to go, and just like me right now, was assailed by so many doubts?
I told her, whatever you do, Badette, just follow your heart because it will lead you to the right decision. During the times when you make big decisions and you could not yet see what's far ahead of you, just close your eyes, quiet your mind, and follow what ever it is that your heart asks you to do.  Your heart, not your mind, will lead you to the right path.
Where did I learn this? Since when did I ever start blurting out things from the mystics?
I spent the whole day yesterday in an activity that only reminded me where I am in the scheme of things. Yes, I'm not yet back. I'm trapped. I can't even summon myself to follow what I told Badette. I couldn't even follow Prateeh. I'm not yet completely back. I'm still hovering over some hazy corner of the horizon, watching some YouTube vloggers leading such simple, carefree lives that I don't have.

There are some things that I missed

I am surprised to discover that I only posted five blogs for the entire year last year.  I failed to mark the coming of the new year and the going away of the old because I'd been working nonstop since July 2018, and the workload never allowed me to breathe all through the year. At Christmas and the New Year, I was simply too tired to celebrate. I even remember battling with sickness while I was doing the usual work overload.  My memory comes in fragments now because of fatigue. 
Since I arrived here in July last year, my days have been bleeding into each other,  the nights becoming days and nights into days, I could no longer tell one from the other.  At times--and it's because I edit the stories fast before they go out to the world as news, I oftentimes get the feeling that the headlines are stale when I see them in the morning. I get the feeling that they happen the other day or the day before that, instead of just yesterday. 
Sometimes an excruciating pain shoots up from my back somewhere and I begin to be afraid of things that I don't understand about spines and lumbar column or whatever they are called. I want to read and learn more about them but the breaking stories keep me occupied. The breaking news, they get in the way of everything I do. They even awaken me from sleep in the middle of the night. I long for simple things--like reading a good book at a leisurely pace in the middle of the garden or eating pizza with my boys at a table near a big window. 
The other day, I got a message from Prateeh but I was too busy when it arrived, I can't even put a finger on the goddamn phone. When I replied, Prateeh must have already gone too far away to even see it. I want to sit down and read a book without anyone disrupting me. The thing that I loved most working in Makati was reading The NewYorker everyday and listening to the Fiction podcast until I drowse off to sleep.  Now all I hear in the morning is the sound of gunfire.

What am I supposed to do?

So, am I supposed to tell you my life has become too laid back now? My life? What life? I don't even have a life. If I had, why can't I rest even just for a day and read Fiction? Am I complaining? During times like these, I used to turn to God. But now that my Pa has left, I always turn to him in my thoughts. Where am I going, Pa? Do you think this is the right path to happiness? What were you thinking before, Pa, did you think I was happy? But did you ever think about your daughters, Pa? Why can't I just give up everything and retire under an old Red or White Lauan, one of those which survived the logging era but fast being threatened by thieves and robbers? (This is a picture of our Maranao friend looking at Lake Lanao during our visit to Marawi in 2014, at least three years before the dreadful siege that reduced the beautiful city into rubble.)