inconsequential biggies

1. MY CURRENT FAVORITE FOOD are saba (oh yes, go boiled bananas! hehehe), spaghetti (this is a newbie, as in I crave spaghetti with red sauce), yogurt shake, wheat bread, rice! Yes! Go carbs! Hahahaha. Nah, I just have a newfound appreciation and respect for rice after being not into it for a bit. Most things are good in moderation, and especially good after deprivation. Hihihi.

2. MY NEW HAPPY SECRET THING (unless you read this blog, or you're my friend who shouted my name from a tricycle last week) is long walks around the village on late afternoons. Very happy. Very nice before the June solstice. It gets dark so late. Very calm it makes me feel, air pollution, street crime and all. Hehe.

3. MY NEW NOTHAPPY SECRET THING (unless you read this blog) is crying myself to sleep at night for things that come to mean the most (emotionally) in the dark in bed.

4. MY OTHER SECRET THING is dancing to Persephone when I'm alone, dancing like Ellen Degeneres, hehehe.

5. MY CURRENT/LONGTERM ADDICTION is scrabulous and scramble on facebook. So fun!

6. MY BEST MOMENT IN THE LAST 7 DAYS was a counseling "moment" with this girl. Yes!

7. I AM LOOKING FORWARD TO becoming the "secret woman" I catch glimpses of now and then as the hours blur into days and the days into weeks. The one who's responsible for herself, in all senses of the wor(l)d.

post #1,001

i feel surprisingly genuinely light-hearted today.

which is a surprise.

which feels genuine.

just think. if you find me kinda trying, just imagine how i must feel!

i have no choice but to live with myself!

so, contrary to the sound advice of ms. caroline myss (and if there's one thing you need to do in your life, it is to read her),

i have thought of several things that could have contributed to my feeling well:

i have finally found the perfect spot for my electric fan.
i have finally perfected the art of mood lighting for my bedroom.
i feel physically lighter than i have in months (probably due to blood loss)

wala lang. ms. myss wins.

you want to go out sometime? :P

imagine my chagrin when i suddenly realized that i had failed to cover the topic of "panliligaw" in the last gender-sensitivity training for young women (among many other things i failed to cover :P but this one finding glared at me from the post-training diagnostic sheets).

well, you know, that women can, if they want to. or more to the point, as my mentor sis explained, females need not sit cooling their heels for males to make the first move. it would be perfectly all right for women to express their feelings to men, on their own initiative/ volition. doing so does not take away from their worth as persons (the usual putdown: "cheap"), even adding to it as they are able to be confidently themselves.

i was so distressed by my omission that my sister documentor took it upon herself (also after my desperate suggestion, but actually doing so to my great amusement)to stage-whisper to each of our workshop participants, "puwede ka manligaw!" as each one came up on stage to receive our congratulatory kisses and a diploma for completing the 3-day training.

however, notwithstanding my strong convictions on this matter, i am actually a card-carrying member of the skittish clan of lurkers-secret-stalkers-and-across-the-room-gazers. i stack my hopes and romantic desires in my heart and stare longingly across the room/the road/ the seas/ the continents/the world, hoping against hope. i was born silly, that way!

i quake in my wedges thinking of coming in from the cold. you know when you're in crush with someone you don't know and who doesn't know you? how do you parachute yourself into someone's life and come up charming? the princess charming come to get to know the knight in no distress?

wala lang. just imagining myself asking someone for coffee and dying. i kid you not.

carrie's dream closet

hey :)

saw sex and the city movie with hb last night, and it was a lovely little film, not the least because we're fans. have always followed the lives of those four women because, notwithstanding the sexualization (or glamorizing of sex), the romanticisation of so-called women's "choices", and the crass commercialism/materialism (that super ugly LV bag, hello?!?), there's still so much there that women like us (not in our early twenties, have undergone many ups and downs in our love lives) can relate to like the very real love/ friendship, the characters' endearing humanity, and their hopes and dreams. (completely forgetting for the moment, that hb and i have had much imagined/real fixation with New York City, hehehe, her for their scholarship year there, and me for a previous love interest. oh, and the shoes :P). oh, and in the end, they all ended up with really lovely men (including the villainous Mr. Big). see, loads of reasons.

and, it got me to thinking (on a new track, seeing as i do too much thinking already, anyway). and i thought that in some ways, some of life's more complicated problems are really quite simple. so simple that we can miss them for years. much like i can read the long words from the twisted -- up, down, diagonal, and across -- letters in a game of scramble/boggle, but often miss the words made up by directly aligned letters.

like the fact that, you can probably can actually tell (:p) which men in your life really do love you. they are the ones who actually care about how you feel. so simple but it's become so complicated. notwithstanding the roles out there that are so easy for us to play, that culture has so helpfully laid out all ready for us to assume (like the maligned suffering woman, the insensitive adulterous man, the ultra caring nurturing woman, the charming abusive dick), hence making it extra difficult to find and be our true authentic selves, the truth is that we are worth loving (despite ourselves, and despite the men who don't), and there are men out there who truly care (despite the men who don't, and despite them being themselves). but it gets so convoluted and we women will fail to weed out the ones who don't care (which we could have probably clearly seen after a few attempts), and then we die trying to make them care (a bit like rushing into rocks repeatedly). it's not helped that many times, those who don't give a rat's ass, really, will also make it appear like they do, occasionally. or that by this time, we'd have made ourselves care for them genuinely, that they themselves will find it impossible to let go of being loved up so nicely by us. we provide them endless, as one of my old fashioned psych books call it, "narcissistic supplies".

Plenty of work *
Valid during several weeks: At this time you will throw your ego energies into working hard and getting things done. Now you are much more able to defer tomorrow's pleasure for today's work. In fact you are likely to take considerable pride in how much work you can do during this time. So the best way to handle this energy is to find plenty of work and do it. You may not want to work for someone else; instead, you want the credit for your accomplishments yourself, so that you are identified with what you do. This can lead to conflicts with your superiors and general difficulty in your work situation. Even if you are the employer, there may be difficulty if the people who work for you feel that you are not giving them enough credit. The best solution is to maneuver yourself into a position where you don't have to work with or for others any more than necessary.

The interpretation above is for your transit selected for today:
Mars in the 6th House, 6, from 15:24
activity period from 12 May 2008 until beginning of July 2008[turn off]Show the love horoscope for this transit (L)

AIdolist

my top 12? (11!)

1. david "imagine" archuleta!
2. michael "bohemian rhapsody" johns
3. jason "hallelujah" castro
4. david "happy together" cook
5. david hernandez

6. brooke "you're so vain" white
7. ramiele "pinay" malubay
8. amanda overmyer
9. carly smithson
10. syesha mercado
11. asia'h epperson

:p

I am happy to report that the addiction is waning. (Though not fading away.)

pagbubuno ng pag-ibig (ang bongga)

in spur of the moment spontaneous radical chat therapy, gf and i come to insight ;). here's mine.

me: kasi it is something in us that responds to something in them. parang you are loving in your lover what you are (not) loving/ seeking in yourself... yon sabi ng mga libro
me: na kailangan ko pang pagmunimunihan para makarelate ako wahahahaha
gf: haha!
gf: ako din...

(after a short trip to the bathroom :p)
me: puwede guro ah
gf: ano?
me: for instance i was attracted to the "power"/ kagalingan ni X. "power" (power-poweran) ni Y. ka machohan ni Z (acknowledging my macho self) and strike-anywhere-kebs/dedma-to-all ni W.
me: hahahahaha
me: gusto ko pala talaga maging "lalaki"
gf: :D
me: hahahaha
gf: naku... mahaba ang listahan koooooooooooooo
me: pero baka natural yon (na ganun ang aking attractions), kasi suppressed yon in my feminine spirit
me: kaya daw may yin and yang chuva. na dapat pala in one person instead of 2 peas in a pod
me: tapos tapos, kaya ako attracted kay C kasi i could safely express my "male" self sa kanya
me: wahahaha. self-talk therapy.

boo

Mark and Rovilson lost in the The Amazing Race Asia 2. Ooooh, that hurt! They raced so well, worked really good together, were funny, had fun! (I know I know put like that they still won of course). BUT IT WOULD HAVE BEEN GREAT TO HAVE ENDED FIRST!

Sigh.

Good one, guys :).

ang laking tuwa ko

so great was my delight ...

at the character BAOGEN in the movie A Beautiful New World in the Spring Filmfest at Trinomz tonight. he brought to cinematic life all that i've been learning in the past few weeks and months, spiritually-speaking. paano ko ba ikukuwento ko? how do i tell you his story?

the movie begins with this country boy's (promdi) wide-eyed gaze from the city bus navigating the modern streets of Shanghai teeming with skyscrapers. he'd traveled from his little country village to the big city, to claim his winnings from a newspaper-sponsored raffle/contest (?). his prize: a 2-bedroom apartment in an urban tower with a magnificent view of the river. sobrang sikat na siya sa barangay nila dahil condo-owner na si Baogen.

from the bus, he makes his way to an urban housing tenement, up rickety stairs to the door of an apartment that he finds crowded with people knocking furiously on the closed door. creditors, all come to claim what has been owed them for a long time. Baogen, he's looking for his granny at this address but finds instead the daughter, his aunty, a mataray-looking whip-thin streetsmart woman named Jinfang.

to make the long entertaining story short, Baogen's promised apartment was still very literally up in the air, as the building would actually be ready in a year and a half's time yet (the piece of information conveniently left unannounced by the contest sponsor). in a quandary, the good-hearted inosenteng Baogen struck up a rental agreement and a sort-of friendship with his crazy aunty Jinfang, a young woman clearly torn between her lifelong training in survival and her naturally warm outgoing nature. in other words, he contended with her sporadic bursts of friendship and generosity, coupled with her temper, and her suspiciousness. in the weeks and months to come he would also stand witness to the rise and fall of his aunty's ambitions and attempts to attain a life of leisure and comfort in the company of a doting wealthy boyfriend.

in the meantime, Baogen also searched for a job. he worked unsuccessfully in construction, and as a security guard. at his wits' end one night, beaten up and fired from the club where as the sikyo he smilingly and wholeheartedly welcomed guests, he wailed to a musician working the underpass, "i loved my job (being a security guard) with all my heart." hearing his story, about the apartment and his travails, the musician berated him, "you only need to wait a year and a half. think of all the people who have nothing to hope for." Baogen then stalks off.

then Jinfang facipulates Baogen into into giving her all the rest of his money to "invest" in the stockmarket. he waits for her outside the stock market building where he buys two lunches for them, and fails to realize that the vendor who asked him to stand and wait while he the vendor looked for change had run off with his large bill. the infuriated Jinfang then makes Baogen lug home all the rest of the lunch boxes that the vendor had abandoned.

however, bad things simply slide off Baogen's back. the lunchbox incident gets him thinking about the cost of vegetables and pork and rice, and makes him realize that a vendor can make a good living from lunchboxes. Jinfang disapproves entirely, declaring loudly and repeatedly (in Chinese), so jologs, ha! as a result, Baogen starts and builds his business behind her back. and build it he does! hungry citizens queue up at his stall (perhaps because he cooks with love) and soon, he pays off all Jinfang's debts to her and the creditor's amazement. (even though she lost all his money in the stock market.) by this time, she has learned to leave him to his business as it has become obvious he does so well, and that he cares for her as well.

biking with his wares one day, Baogen catches sight of the musician in the underpass, now working a street. He runs up to him, finds out his name, and drags him home to feed him, and give him a gift. He tells bornot Aunty Jinfang, that Aliang, the man who told him off, was in fact his only friend in Shanghai, and to go and get them both a glass of juice.

in the movie's last scene, as aunt and nephew are riding home from a wedding, Jinfang laughingly asks Baogen, what else does she not know about him? Baogen orders the cab to stop and drags the well-dressed Jinfang out into pouring rain and onto a pile of construction materials. he tells her, when this building is built, he will have an apartment on the 37th floor. she laughs, unbelieving. he laughs too and holds his hand to the sky, saying, "God will stop the rain because he knows I speak the truth."

and of course, in the next minute, the rain stops completely, leaving them soaked and amazed on top of cement blocks.

i looooooove it! :D

i love this movie because:

1. the rain stopped. of course it would :D. Baogen is so integrated in his spirit, his mind, his person and his body, that he is one with his God. He is God. So when he says, the rain will stop as proof that he was speaking the truth, it stopped! There were no barriers, no dissonance, his energies were one: he lived as his pure heart told him to. He was love. His chakras were clear. He was the sky, the rain. :D

2. there was no judgment of Jinfang in all her flawed humanity. there was compassion and caring for Jinfang, an understanding of where she was coming from, and the recognition that she too deserved love.

3. the naive and innocent Baogen, so much the "city idiot", always "knew" anyway. he always knew the most important things because he was always clear and consistent, and always lived from his heart. he knew for instance, that Jinfang was no bad banana. he knew too that he shouldn't get the cash equivalent for his apartment that the developer was trying to get him to accept. he also knew that the musician who spoke the truth to him was truly his friend.

4. he didn't get trumped by his troubles. he treated being swindled of the rest of his lunch money as a clue from the universe. he went into that business instead.

5. the idea that one can work any work with one's whole heart, and always come out the winner. Baogen gave all his jobs his all, and it worked out well for him in the end.

p.s. it's showing again tomorrow at 615 pm at trinomz. hehe.

Izzy, ILY!

Middle of the night text exchange:

Sister1: If I were a guy, me and Izzy, you and Addison, we could go on a double date!
Sister2: I can see why you love Izzy, but I don't need to be a guy to get with Addison!

product-ive

i spent ten years today in shampoo alley :D in the kingdom of food and groceries.

i had no intention of aging right there and then :P

but this mousse for curls caught my eyes ... this past week, my muse is mousse! my muse is mousse! my muse is mousse! i am now a princess for product! hair product. hehe!

my hair is going more and more straight as we speak! haha! gravity is real!

so, so. i grabbed mousse for curls. must extend lifetime of my perm as it did not come cheap, analog as it was (hehe, not digital perm). then i perused the products on same alley, diligently searching for shampoo and conditioner for curls! i even went round to the next alley, and back again, still taking my own sweet time, unhelpfully and thoughtlessly barring other shampoo shoppers from the shelves by parking my cart, right there! hehe!

anyway, i found them, shampoo and conditioner for permed hair (not cheap either). i am amused to be so much capitalism's victim by curls. but hey, this is the moment! the curly moment :D

meanwhile ;)

house and home

today i did my laundry, cooked pork binagoongan, and then went to the grocery (the mad mad mad grocery store, i might add) with our child.

i did my laundry to get it off the floor so i can replace it with my papers. hehe. oh, sweep it in between.

i think i cook a mean pork binagoongan, but it's really according to my taste. it's spicy sour and salty. what my friends call, "oh-it's-binagoongan-pork-adobo-but-it's-really-good-especially-the-burnt-version!"

then we went to the grocery store after making a couple of stops at two booksale outlets. it was mad! carts-a-crazy with no traffic lights nor proper right-of-ways between lanes. everyone's bent on getting food for New Year's Eve celebrations. i betcha del monte spaghetti sauce makes a killing over the holidays and everything else during the year is just bonus. ha! i bought mine two weeks ago. hehe.

yes, the child :). when i think about our new kasama sa bahay S, i realize how that thief A just wasn't meant to be. S is so easy to be with, so willing to learn, so easy to help. not perfect at all, but so easy! as a result, roommie and i take her with us to many places, and are helping plan her future, like good parents. hahaha. blessing, baga. hayan, the good things that come with letting go. hehe.

tapos, this last half of the year, i've become such a homemaker, haha. i cook stuff, manage a household, do groceries, eat at home to save money, blah blah blah. i even like feeding people.

such a woman, really :P

7 nights, 8 days

here, i am again, i'm back. time for another round of crazy Christmas confessions. i went three-four places in the last eight days, and that certainly makes for a host of experiences. not to mention that i also interacted with most of my significant others based south of Manila.

but here's my dilemma. how do i tell you my stories without coming off like am complaining or whinging or rationalizing. even this next sentence is loaded: sometimes i go through all my friends and family in my head, looking for a person who will simply hear me :). bear with me, i can only live my life one day at a time. i may try to or want to, but it's quite impossible to live my life in accord with the hopes and expectations of people who care about me :). so i can't promise that i will be happy, or that i will be wise, or that i will be nice, or that i will be worthy.

i can only live my life :) ... and as we know, each day is actually a spiritual adventure. and i probably failed half the tests that came my way :) ... wait, am being too generous with myself. maybe i failed all my tests :D. hehe.

there's the test of giving till it hurts :D. i love being generous but am never generous all of the time. i'm not quite generous when i know i might just run out of money already when i land back here and will need cash to pay for the cab home and the house-sitter, plus all the bank holidays endemic to the season making things more complicated. so what happens when we know the need of others is urgent, and yet you don't have quite a lot? plus all the righteous thoughts that come with giving. do they deserve the help that i will give? does helping have to go hand in hand with the issue of being deserving? darn, darn, darn. and then some things (self-serving ones) will always be easier to spend for than others. and so i always ask myself, what makes me think i should be better off than others? am i worthy? (answer: no, not at all, it's just a game of chance).

then, there's the issue of appearances. oh my, people are always hung up on appearances, and family reunions always make my fluffy body prime target. i feel beautiful living alone, but mix me in with relatives i hardly see all year, and there i am hanging back, waiting for the next blow. it's not quite the way to live. even after many years, i still can't quite (read: i can't) pull off the smooth and genius retort that'll pull the rug from under my 'detractors': still haven't found the one wise, understanding and compassionate response that will cure them of commenting on my looks forever and ever, amen. i blame myself: i obviously need to take more responsibility for my health and my emotional wellbeing.

this is so much my issue, that just when i had escaped my cousin and uncle who tailed me with their so-fat-tsk-tsk comments, and had already alienated my auntie once removed by rudely moving chairs when she raised her voice questioning me sternly on why it appeared that i wanted to follow her footsteps of never-marrying, life slapped me with a big one. i was strolling towards the boat, ready to sail by myself, when the security guard asked me if i was pregnant. i said no, wondering why he would ask when in my heart of hearts i feel thin (hahaha, delusional). i climbed the stairs, smiling but he had the nerve to call up to the stewards to ask me to go down again. face-to-face, he asked me again if i was pregnant. (damn, no sex for me, unfortunately). i said no. he said that i must wait for the doctor who would confirm this for him, and proceeded to explain how in a previous voyage, a woman who had given birth had cost the shipping company 200K, baby. F**K, major humiliation after surviving the family ordeal. all sense and reason left me, and i proceeded to curse out said security guard for his rudeness, for his nerve, for asking and not taking my answer into account, for humiliating me, for his stupidity, etc, etc. i didn't care, i was soooo mad, i swore blindly for a long time, and he didn't hesitate to swear right back at me. my rational self knew all the time of course that his greatest sin was merely that of being stupid, stupid enough not to know/ make the right judgment call about when a woman is at risk of giving birth or not, on his stupid boat. damn, i may be fat in the wrong places but sure i don't look 7-9 months pregnant. of course by this time i cried. when the doctor arrived, he chastised me for being so angry on Christmas Day, and i said i wasn't there to argue with him. one press of my tummy and he let me go (as if he could be really sure with that, too), and with one last set of curses aimed at the guard, i stalked up the stairs and cried in my cabin for an hour.

why do i write this here? i want to cure myself of my humiliation :). i do not want to keep secret, secrets such as this. i want to know the law about pregnant women and public transportation. do buses and airplanes and boats have the right to turn away pregnant women at certain points in their pregnancy? but most of all, i want to discern the lesson behind the incident. it has in no way escaped my attention that my private issue was made so glaringly public and so much bigger. it was like a streamer saying: VV, learn something from this. to be sure, i still don't know what the lesson is. am sure, it was not about cursing and quarreling like a crazed person. so there, i didn't do so well.

then there's the matter of love. somewhere along these years, i have slowly (slowly and quite painstakingly) taken responsibility for my emotional wellbeing when it comes to my lovelife. i have come to realize, and to act on the fact that some (many) things you can't expect on demand (and lots of pouting). some things you have to create and build yourself. you have to enable/ create the lovelife that you want, you have to make yourself and your needs and wants understood, even as you are also understanding and loving the other. and that there's no such thing as a perfect partner/ relationship, some things are as good as they are ever going to get. my problem is this: in which direction am i deluded? am i being down on something that's workable, and is being worked out in the long long loooong run; or am i consigning myself to not-quite-happiness. to be sure, things are better by me, i am no longer wildly expecting but am quite more accepting, but is that really better? you know how it is when you are no longer struggling as hard against something you can't control, it becomes less difficult. but what happens next? do you find peace or death? i don't know. is my idea of what am looking for, really still out there, or is it just another case of thinking my happiness lies in somebody outside my self?

thank the Mother, I have my thesis to do, or there will never be an end to this.

someday, sometime, love will be.

but far be it for me to say it was a tragic and uncomfortable trip. on the contrary. i had a safe and relaxing flight to cdo. my grandmother was pleased to see me and feed me. i spent time, and scooped ice cream for lovely uncles and aunts and cousins and nieces and nephews, and thanked heaven for generous relatives who give up the very bed they sleep in just for me (goodness me!). my dad came to my rescue, and stopped 'abandoning' me (hahaha, joke), plus i have been having really good times lately with dad and tita and b. you know you can just put me in a car, and you drive, and i'd be happy (oh make sure to make toilet pit-stops). then after the gangplank trauma, i absolutely loved the privacy of my cabin-room for one. i actually love boat rides. hihi. i look forward to them. then i had good times with friends in iloilo. then i had a really good talk with my brother.

so in the end, it was quite a whirlwind but happening vacation where i got the chance to learn many things, some of which i still haven't learned yet, hahaha.

pictures to follow.

Mahal na Ina

"I met my old lover on the street last night."
- Still Crazy After All These Years, Paul Simon

I bumped into my old self last night. I started reading this book and it brought back to me how much of my awareness, consciousness and growth came from my life with books. Books are like friends. They are the unconditional teachers that offer what you Yourself will take.

I was first a feminist from reading. Then friends came along, who brought more books. And of course, there's always Life.

And now, there is Her, our God, the Mother. It brings tears to my eyes, when I read how women have not been free to also define the spiritual. We hold up half the sky, and within us, lies the Divine.

I would give each of you a copy but since I can't, take notice if it pops up in your life :) Bless you, Merry Christmas, mula kay Nanay.


The Dance of the Dissident Daughter
For years, award-winning author Sue Monk Kidd was a conventionally religious woman. Then, in the late 1980s, Kidd experienced an unexpected awakening, and began a journey toward a feminine spirituality. With the exceptional storytelling skills that have helped make her name, the acclaimed author of When the Heart Waits tells her very personal story of the fear, anger, healing, and freedom she experienced on the path toward the wholeness that women have lost within patriarchal faith traditions. From a jarring encounter with sexism in a suburban drugstore, to monastery retreats and to rituals in the caves of Crete, she reveals a new level of feminine spiritual consciousness for all women— one that retains a meaningful connection with the “deep song of Christianity,” embraces the sacredness of ordinary women’s experience, and has the power to transform in the most positive ways every fundamental relationship in a woman’s life— her marriage, her career, and her religion.

P.S. Thanks HB for pointing out this book to me :)

have Yourself

Santa baby, slip a sable under the tree,
For me. Been an awful good girl,
Santa baby, so hurry down the chimney tonight.

Santa baby, a 54 convertible too,
Light blue. I'll wait up for you dear,
Santa baby, so hurry down the chimney tonight.

I have a confession to make ;)

It's been the longest time since I have felt ...errr, wait for this... the spirit of Christmas! Yes, it's been a long time :D

Previous to this, it's just been a string of romantic disasters, that just made me scrunch up my face at Christmas. Plus the discomfort and fright at traveling; plus the potential emotional minefield that's family. Hahaha!

But then, maybe it's the more regular meditation, the inner dance, the comfort of my space, and the ever-present connections that make the calls of my heart more clear, easier to discern and listen to. And makes me calmer.

Such that, though things haven't changed (hahaha), maybe I am changing.

THANK YOU :)

But wait, I wanted to share with you the signs ...

1. I've put up (as in put up on the hall table as it's super-small hahaha) our tree.
2. I've bought two Christmas motif cushion covers. Hahaha, so cheesy but fun.
3. I plan to buy more red tinsel for the banisters. I like red and green tinsel, it reminds me of my childhood.
4. I also brought down the Christmas CDs. Hahaha.
5. I've made a Christmas playlist on Fiolo (not Christmas songs).
6. And I've decided to make the Christmas trip. On my own. Regardless ... And brave the flippin' flight too. Hahaha.
7. And I say Merry Christmas on YM.

And don't forget, that I haven't even mentioned anything about clothes or presents. Now, that is truly the most hopeful sign of all.

And so, Merry Christmas!

fascinating

photo and text grabbed from Inquirer online.


Track of Typhoon “Mina” (international codename: Mitag) which weakened slightly while crossing northern Luzon Monday morning. Graphic image from PAGASA.

there's more:
"Lando" (international codename: Hagibis) will reenter the Philippine Area of Responsibility (PAR) Monday afternoon, as "Mina" moves out of the country, the Philippine Atmospheric Geophysical Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA) said.

"Mina" pulled "Lando" back to the country in a weather phenomenon known as the "Fujiwara effect" wherein in a stronger storm influences the movement of a weaker storm.

the truth

the truth is, i am with someone. i'm not available. but i'm free.

last saturday, at a group discussion, someone asked, who among you are in a relationship? i was taken aback. i didn't know how to categorically answer the question. i hemmed-hawed*, said yes, then laughed at myself. my friend laughed along with me. the other friend stared, curious about my reaction.

i guess i hurt myself when i fail to acknowledge that i jumped into the pool. i'm not saying the water's all-good or that it's sunny skies. it's not about that.

it's that i jumped. and i'm in.

*the reason i fail to advertise is that it's been a challenged/ challenging relationship. i understand friends who don't fail to worry. thank you for your love. i have talked about it with those who have told/ asked me directly, and i think they have understood me somehow. all i can say is that there's always a little more space in which to widen our understanding. in the meantime, i guess it's called life :D

getting real

the other day i told my counselee that, you know, LIFE SUCKS.

we grinned. there, we both felt much better.

* * *

the other night, we were drinking at Banca (hehe, rather, i was eating at Banca) and there was this emcee who simply had to insert all manner of sexual talk in all his spiels. if the conversation even for one second veered away from the various organs and arrangements, he would steer it back quickly using many many, much too many, words.

then this girl with curly hair stood beside him, and humorously, parried all his jibes, line for line. and sang wonderfully. and looked so non-sexual. and was funny.

oh, i tell you, she was wonderful. go maya! we love you! :D we may not know you but we're rooting for you. hehe.

* * *

you want a strong friendship, says my horoscope.

i finally arrived at this thought late last night. that this was my grief. that i long for male friends. i remembered carebear, and being in the playground with him (haha) and i almost cried. he's the one i can text at 2 am with my truest thought, and it would be funny, and safe, and non-threatening, and mean nothing more (yes, nothing more, or nothing less) than being perfectly wonderfully friends with someone who knows you and cares about you, and finds you funny, and worth it.

and that i have the right to grieve.

i want my male friends! hehe.