|
|
stalks and shrubs: BLOGS BIN  a notebook of feelings, thoughts, & observations day to day   - she prays, she loves, and she's a goat- Oct. 11, 2006 - I'll never take on an evening class ever again! I taught a night-time class ( 6 to 9) every Friday this past semester, for the extra pay. The experience was new and it also gave me more than my share of fright and dismay. Going back to the faculty room to return the heavy textbook and workbook after my class was over, always gave me the goose bumps. The hallway would be routinely deserted and dark (understandably to save on electricity), and once inside the unlit room, you think I'd finally feel safe. Well, noone else is there since the few others who teach evening classes are never back at the same time. And so, abetted by a fertile imagination, I'm spooked! I "see" a ghost or a stranger's face with ghastly bright eyes averted or looking straight at me from one corner of the room. In my hurry to scamper out, things-such as my cell phone or a bag of snacks-get left behind!  If the back-to-the-office-from-the-classroom scenario is something from a horror flick, the catch-a-taxi-ride-home, especially on a rainy night, is a tearjerker. Why do taxi drivers transform themselves into demons when it rains? They just suddenly stop picking up passengers! I don't get it. I plaster on an anxious smile as I hail and wave, but they speed past me in their passengerless taxis as if I were invisible. Some who grudgingly stop, ask with impatience in their voices, " Yo ti nay? " ( Where to? ) And I have to get inside the cab or I'll catch my death in the downpour before I answer, " Nong, Inthamara, soi sipsong." Nong is equivalent to hijo in Tagalog, Inthamara is the name of my street, soi means street, sipsong is 12. " Nononononono!" the driver emphatically delivers his one-line outrage at having to drive this Farang-sounding skinny old woman home. Farang is the word they use here to mean foreigner. "Why not, Nong?" I say this very nicely, and coughing a little for effect. I plead, "Please,Nong, I can't get out again in this fon tok. ( fon tok means rain ) You are heading in that direction anyway, Nong." Still he's unmoved, doesn't start the cab, and spews out in a series the only English word he probably gets an orgasmic thrill mouthing on a night like this, "Nononononono!" In other words, " This is my car and I choose who to take in! Scram!" ...... Well, so much for bigger numbers on my payslip! 
Sept. 16, 2006 - I get a jolt reading my children's blogs. Instantly, I go, " How did they learn to write this way?" or " Where did they get their literary panache?" And then uncertainty teases me. Is my writing style antiquated? Are my expressions dated, my topics passe? Of course, it always turns out - after moments of unease and self-appraisement - that there hardly is any cause for panic at all. Not even surprise at why they write the way they do. We all are products of our own generation; typifying the influences inherent to our times of awakening : the books we read, the art and artist we subscribe to and adulate, the new technology that engages us and modifies our lives. I wish Dad were still around to read and critique my writing. Unlike my children who are sheepish, if not galled, about their mom checking on some products of their literary attempts, I think I'd have been perfectly relaxed about my Dad's prying into mine.( Note: Nanay was never one for more reading than her normal dose of school books and lesson plans ) Would have Dad been taken aback - positively or negatively - at my writing style, language, points of view? Would he have said to me " Right on! " as I now say to my own budding writer-children? But here's an afterthought : Would have Dad also built a 'public' repository for his thoughts - a personal website - as I have built this, my Boughs and Sprigs? Knowing him to be articulate and evincive, I bet he'd have. Sept.12, 2006 - Family reunions - the big kind in which there are grandpas, grandmas, uncles, aunts, cousins, nephews, nieces, children of all ages - offer a balm to the routine and humdrum of everyday life. The Dolons - my mother's side of our family - are having one this coming summer. Plans are afoot for the various activities on this possibly 5-day reunion in our hometown - Hinunangan, Southern Leyte. Not to be side-stepped, the Libarioses - my father's side - are planning a family reunion in Hinunangan this summer as well. Thinking ahead to these 2 'marathonic' mammoth affairs, including the long haul to be endured from Bangkok to Manila to Tacloban City to Hinunangan and back - I ask myself, " Will I be up to all that when the time comes?" Remember I'm as frail as a stalk; as brittle as a dry twig. Sept. 9,2006 - I cried some today. A letter came through the post - a letter on a yellow lined-paper from my favorite uncle in the Philippines. Among other things, he said, matter-of-factly, that he had been diagnosed with " t/c prostate c." Cancer, in short. Luckily, he said, the CT scan indicated the cancer had not spread to his bones nor other tissues and organs. Thus to contain the wayward cells, he is right now on a one-month-one-tablet-per-day medication, with each tablet costing 750 pesos. He said surgery is also an option. My uncle, who is in his 70s, likewise wrote, " I am not worried ...it's God's will... I have no regrets as I have lived long enough to enjoy my life and see my children in their best." He said he looked eagerly forward to our Dolon family reunion ( my Mother's side ) in our hometown this summer 2007. What could I say? What can I say? Nothing much. All I can do now is feel and remember... and promise to myself to be at the reunion. Whatever it takes.  Archived 4 ( latest ) Archived 3 Archived 2 Archived 1 ( oldest )
|
|
