Raising Helen

Why the Priestess needs to watch Raising Helen:

1. Because sometimes, she wants to be a mom.
2. Or not
3. Or yes
4. Or not
5. Or yes
6. (space reserved for next decision)
7. Because the Kate Hudson character seems very Aquarian, tireless and enthusiastic :-P
8. Because she’s a popular tita to many
9. Because she could be Lutheran if the need arises (hehehe movie giveaway)
10. and would probably have earned herself one leg of ham.
11. oh, last but not the least, all that lovely curly hair :D.
12. (This space reserved for Priestess)

Ponder the strange patterns that occur.

In my organization, patterns of five, eight years ago are reappearing. It is time for resolutions, doing good, and moving on.

We live our life in ever widening circles of love, and growth, better versions of our selves.

***

Pounce upon the air heavy with things unsaid.
But existing still, ignored
As if they weren't there.

I want it cleared. I want the sun to shine thru. I want the air to flow.

Am done with tiptoeing softly around feelings, thoughts, hopes, careful not to hurt.

Let's cut to the chase.

Grasp the unsaid question, issue by the collar, and tell it to its face:
No means no.

I don't play games. Worse, I hate campaigns.

As parents often say, You'll thank me for this some other day.

Blog Birthday Soon.

And before you know it, almost 12 months has passed.

Writing centers me.

I have blogging to thank for bringing me back to thoughts and words. I’ve always written sporadically (letters, emails, the occasional poem and essay, the rare diary entry, writing for work) but I’ve always been at home with the written word – mine and others’. I was born a bookworm. I did take up journalism in college, on the principle of taking the most obvious and easy route.

I didn’t do my diary entries religiously though because oftentimes life happened too fast, no time to scribble. Or in the grip of a painful moment, or the middle of a circuitous and guilt-ridden process, I just didn’t want to pen a final word. Writing requires honesty and up-frontness with one’s self. It doesn’t work to do PR with your spirit.

Then too, when I started working with words, it became stressful. In fact when I discovered another field, I let it – writing – go (though the skill came in quite handy in writing reports and proposals.)

I thought it was time to develop other aspects of myself. But I missed the point.

Writing centers me.

Now I know.

I mostly write to put down funny thoughts or to unclutter my mind. Blogging works because I know that when I let go of a thought or an idea or an event by writing it, these stuff of mine still exist somewhere, pinned up on the information highway. My own little billboard. It’s letting go at peeking distance. Like you know that in a parallel life somewhere you’re living the life you would have lived had you made the other decision.


Or I write as rumination. A question tickles me and I write down all the varied thoughts I have about it, like would you move a million miles for love? At the end of writing, I am satisfied, having thought it out in full. Amusing sometimes how having written it all out and posted, I promptly lose my attachment to the topic or the theme, no matter sometimes how people react or get a good discussion going. It doesn’t matter anymore, it’s done.

It’s also like collecting the mundane stuff written on differently colored post-it notes and putting it all in one box. The mundane and the divine.


I miss that old URL/ blogspot address.
The mundane and the divine is me :D but I had to move because I don’t really want to be read by everyone around me. Just those who need to or like to for the right reasons.

Or sometimes I post stuff I want to put out there. If you want to find it, it’s just there. Follow your nose.

Even so, I hold that many things are too sacred to be put into words, simply because the sum of the words is not equal to the sacredness of the experience or the wish. Hence, some things will never find their way here. Or maybe it’s also about respecting other people’s privacy.

Be that as it may, we are different from moment to moment, and my last moment may no longer be true. I mean, read me but don’t hold me to it :D.

And if in the process of writing, I may have tickled your funny bone, sparked your own questions, pushed your buttons, and entertained you, that is my bonus. The fifteenth month pay like a gentle kiss to the forehead.

Tsup.

Pink Froth Returns

High Heels

Bridesmaid

About one

Getting Married
When one is part of a wedding entourage, one always bloats :D hehehe. The last one I was bridesmaid at, I looked like your round squishy siopao, minus the red dot. Three weeks after that particular wedding, I was at my thinnest in years!

This Sunday am going to look like a perfect pink cupcake. Waheeheehee. Complete with ruffles. Hmmm now, does a cupcake wear silver? gold? or pink high heeled shoes?

The bride, my housemate of many many years and many side stories about boys, says pink.

Watch Out
The danger of liking pink and painting a pink wall is that one has to be careful never to stand next to the wall when one is wearing pink! Or one simply disappears!

*Blink*

Celibate carabaos
I meant, it was one of the funniest Amazing Race 5 moments ever when that temperamental Colin told the carabao he hated it! Wahehehehehehe! Luckily, the carabao spoke no English :D or it might have been mortally offended!

According to a wise and uber cute woman a few days ago, celibacy is sexy! I can imagine, promise :D.

And another one responded, yeah, she doesn't have sex with the hubby anymore. But it's not like it's the saddest thing ever.

No they didn't talk about carabaos :D It's just that I can't get over Colin fuming over the innocent but frisky carabao!

sunrise

Image061
Originally uploaded by Pansy.

hello :D

sorry, our internet connection at work has died and gone to he*#!!! hehe.

no idea when it's going to work again. perhaps when my hair reaches my waist. or the next blue moon. or when i grow tall, little girl.

:D

Commitment-phobic

I’m commitment-phobic :D

Selectively, anyway. (So now you say, who isn’t?)

I find it hard to give away my weekends on a regular basis so for instance, I can’t commit to hosting a belly-dancing class regularly. I always want an out option, just in case I don’t feel like it :D or rather, feel like something else more. Like disappearing with Harry Potter’s magical cloak.

I don’t like having people keeping tabs on me either, even if they don’t mean anything by it or planning on me without me knowing or wanting to. Waheeheeheeheehee, such a control-freaky Capricorn.

I don’t want to be answerable to anyone that I don’t want to be answerable to. Or to get noticed. That’s why am freaky about my private space because I always want my options, like the option to throw my socks in a corner if I want to :-P just because I can, and it need not bother anyone or have to be noticed by anyone else but me.

Some people like to be in the limelight, and I’d rather not be a star to too many people. To each her own little quirks.

Still, am not bothered because I know that I can love and last a long time with the best of them (perhaps too much!), or work away determinedly at something (perhaps too much!) for an indeterminate amount of time.

Until a Capricorn decides, a Capricorn chooses to have choices.

So, am I really commitment phobic?

(I love the idea because it breaks the stereotypes of women always ready to faint into the arms of forever and ever, and of men forever and ever shying away).

Just a pansy too particular and persnickety :P

No Parking

Neigbors' cars or their relatives' parked in front of our home sweet home!

*shock*

Car-less but territorial roomie and I deliberating sign possibilities:
1. Don't block the driveway
2. Don't block the driveway, people passing!
3. Don't block the driveway, people getting in and out of friends' cars! (or cabs hehe)

Dessert!

Powwow with a Peacock (Davao)

Image027.jpg

My brandnew roommate

missed and found

Moving house entails playing many games simultaneously for an extended period.

There is of course the most obvious obstacle race, involving navigating various boxes and bags, in a house in a state of relaxed flux. How to get from point a to point b or to point b.1.2 without snagging one's clothes on a wayward hanger or tripping on a light bulb?

Then there is the more complicated jigsaw puzzle, where one has to ponder which part goes where, so many many many pieces of all sizes, weight and feel that could go into so many different spots and corners. But take note, when the puzzle is solved, the picture won't be the same!

Oblivious to the fact that it's a different forest altogether, our ate is expert at this game. On day one, she recreated our kitchen, complete to the placement of the pots from our former kitchen, to even the placement of my sorority sister's 2 x 2 id picture at the side of the ref! Yes, my poor unknowing sis, whose picture that I filched, no asked for, from her wallet, was posted at the side of our ref in our old apartment, simply because I did not often see it and did not remember to keep it amongst my photos of friends, is back at her place of glory, able to observe the washing of the dishes with her smiling eyes.

Then there is the game I seem to be more deeply involved in, a combination game of hide and seek, and lost and found. On day one, I practically had to spend an hour assembling stuff I needed to get out of the house and get a massage. Where was my shampoo? Towel? Undies? Top? Shorts? Sandals? Toothbrush? Comb? All right, maybe it took more than an hour :D.

As the days passed, I got better at this game, only spending more time hunting down needed documents on some mornings before I go to the office. Or maybe because I've chosen to simplify my life lately, going for the wash and wear (rugged chic? :p) look by wearing only the pairs of shoes and tee-shirts that I see, nevermind complicated outfits for now.

It hasn't all been delays and wearing down the staircase hunting down stuff though. I have also had occasion to find some surprises. A poem I wrote for an old lover that no longer makes me wistful, but glad for the existence of a poem. I've also come across the aircon man's precious number, after two weeks of bringing up its lost state to friends. (It was there all along but just didn't want to be found, in the tradition of a Mercury retrograde.)

And this morning, flipping thru notebooks for a school document, I found an old letter from the first lover, the one he wrote soon after it was truly over (yes HB, the one you and I bonded over, for the first time, more than a decade ago, hahaha!, when, you claim, you lost a hanky to me :D). I pounced on the letter delightedly, eager to show it to a girlfriend. However, rereading thru it brought tears to my eyes, on a morning when I'd already done some crying (it was that blasted book three of the Josephine Bonaparte trilogy, soooo heartbreaking). The thoughts and emotions described in the letter were real, it was like reading a novel of another time.

As I read thru the letter -back to back on a piece of bondpaper- I could almost recite precious parts from memory, so repeatedly must I have read it all those years ago.

The point? The game-playing continues. :D

true stories

For emoteras.

The music man croons songs that make the young woman's hair crinkle, curl. Shivery.

A young wife grips a steaming mug of coffee at recess. To keep warm, and to stay awake.

Suddenly, all the tables at a bistro seem so short. We did not, did we, grow tall?

The nanny banters with the townhouse caretaker from next door, the one who allegedly looks like a movie star.

Suddenly, three friends talk only in straight Filipino, eliminating English entirely from the repertoire. One girlfriend needs to internalize a foreign tongue, now home.

My love does not think of me nor I of him. Perhaps, tomorrow. Or the day after that.

On automatic, the booster pump comes to life at every toilet flush and open faucet, sending my electric meter spiralling into the universe. So then, I turn it off. But what of it being automatic in the first place?

I mustn't rush headlong. Lest I forget to feel, to touch, to smell. To enjoy.

Deconstructing my astrocenter tarotscope

If you've been thinking about putting your romantic situation on a firmer footing, today's the time to do it, according to the Pope and Judgment. It looks as though you could get the emotional happiness and security you're looking for. Your partner's love for you is sincere and you enjoy many moments of togetherness and harmony. Don't keep hunting for the buried treasure, V - you've found it!

Problematizing Firmer Footing:
1. Stop wearing high heels.
I was wondering why I woke up tired today and I remembered I had been walking around Congress and SM in high heels yesterday.
2. Better yet, wear trainers.
I love sneakers, and trainers :D
3. Stay away from staircases and shaky ground.
Yes, I once had a bad fall down the stairs.
4. Love the firm ground.
5. Love earth.
6. Love Capricorns!
7. Love me!

Yey!!! Hahaha. ...And yes, i have many many things to do today. See you later ;-)

Mmmmmm

They arrive in nondescript carton boxes.

Placed casually on our conference-dining-chika tables, a delicious smell wafts from the boxes.

Put your hand inside a box, feel around, and pull out a piece of ...

Warm, soft, freshly baked pan de coco.

Delish!

*eats one with relish*

and another,

and another,

why is it with pan de coco, one is never enough?

P.S. Desire one for yourself? Join our Congress troopings supporting the creation of the Commission on Debt, to look into all these debts of ours, and why we continue to owe and pay! Read more at the Freedom from Debt Coalition website.

We bring the pan de coco to Congress, in packets, in the company of mamon.

Geee Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

Image175
Originally uploaded by Pansy.

Witches Watch Over It

I am amazed at my SPEEDY laser printer HP Laserjet 1010. Faster than you can say green mangoes and bagoong, it spurts out a printed page.

It's brand new. The last one assigned to me, an HP flatbed model [in fact it was a printer-demotion but I got a room to myself in exchange for the use of a cranky printer] had to be caressed into printing-readiness, and didn't spurt out pages as much as it chewed them up. Its speed induced sleep and muscle cramp as I had to press down on the cover so it would budge.

The latter printer finally went back to printer-purgatory during our last Mercury retrograde cycle.

And today, exactly eight years after I started working in this activist organization, I print my first page.

Yet again.



Sniffing the Air
I am also entranced by the air. Ang bango ng room ko. An Aquarian ex-officemate has just left, leaving traces of his perfume.

He is laughing though he "wants to die."* And his perfume laughs still.

*not literal :-D

Me and the workers

(hehehe, what a title. never in my life did i think i would problematize a relationship with people working on our house! :-p)

Really, it's me. It's not them, it's me. :D

I realized this crying myself to sleep the other night, depressed. I don't know why :D but I feel vulnerable and stressed the way one does after breaking up with a significant other. Hehehe! Strange but true.

I guess the similarities lie this way: the recognition that there's so much still to be done, the knowing that one's life has been turned upside down (somewhat... somehow :P), the internalizing that one has no control and things will just come up, and the feelings of loneliness and vulnerability. Hehehe! Wala lang, ganon lang talaga.

It's not even that I've been doing this by myself, either. Roomie has already stretched herself loooooong, and been stressed too, and I am forever grateful. And many friends have helped, and there's Ate B, and Mumsicle would let me do anything I wanted, even.

In fact, I'm almost dedma na nga eh -- I haven't been hanging out at the house stressing because I've needed to work this week. But am tired from all the 4-5 hour nights sleep' because they work at 7 am and they work in my bathroom and my room. And lack of sleep never contributes to my wellbeing. I am a sleep hog. I was born in the Year of the Pig. Hehehe! That's unconnected but I appreciate the link :-P

Anyway, what I wanted to say for now is that these men, they're ok. I would recommend them if you needed builders. They know what they're doing :-), and they're mabait. I probably gave the wrong impression from my previous post. It was just the straw that broke the camel's back. Or rather the pig's :-P. This is the other part of it. In fact, some of them look cute pa nga. Ehehehe! And there's two that are my favorites for being very efficient and helpful. Tama na :D.

I guess the lack of privacy just gets on my nerves, even with mabait people. I was just born this way. Hanging out time with myself without having to relate to anyone else, is just as essential to me as breathing.

It's not you, it's not them. It's me.

:D

Three Postcards

Postcard #1

[In warm pink and aqua blue :D (my favorite colors)]
Front:

I try to take one day at a time/
But sometimes several days attack me at once

[extremely appropriate quote like you wouldn't believe :p]

Back:

Dear J,
We’re off to Japan in a few hours! … Will try to get in touch. Since you’re into pinks (and blues!) thought you might like this postcard. Take care and take on day at a time! Love, Mum

Postcard #2

Dear J, You’ll love Japan! Not only is sashimi here aplenty but it also seems to be full of C look-a-likes! Each day is an adventure, foodwise. Went to Kobe yesterday and to Kyoto today. Kyoto offers a more traditional experience of Japan – we saw a geisha or two, a shrine or two. Hilarious experience in a traditional Japanese restaurant where we ended up with a funny mix of food and T’s legs going dead as we sat on tatami mats. Off to Tokyo on Friday. Take care. Love, M and D and T

Postcard # 3
[in pink ink. This might likely be a hereditary disease hehehe :-p]

Hi sister! Wow Japan is ace! I was amazed by the geisha in Kyoto. I was like jumping around in excitement “it’s just like my book!!!” I’ve tried sushi but I didn’t like it :-( Blurgh.

The shops are cool, I love the clothes :-)

The guys look funny here – they have very 80s ‘new romantics’ hair. I saw this guy that looked just like C yesterday! Lol.

Going to Tokyo and Hiroshima sometime. I’m tired as I have to stay up till 2 am to call Maggot. Yawn. Love you, Duni xx

Wahahahaha! :D Cheered me up no end!

P.S. Back to original version :-P

a secret

Was debating whether to tell you or to keep it to myself. Isn't it true that some things so simple can give you so much pleasure, you just want to keep it to yourself for a while.

I know something you don't know. :D

I walked to work from the new house today.

:D *GRIN*

Now you know.

P.S.

Everything's fine now.

Hahaha having gotten past them, I actually can't relate anymore with most of the angst in the post before this.

Letting go is a thing of beauty and a joy forever :-P