The face of five

I have a writing coach, and she doesn't know it. Her name is Lorianne DiSabato. Although I am just an avid follower of her blog found in hoardedordinaries.wordpress.com, I can sense when her mood takes a dip like when she wrote in her latest piece what happens when she stays away from her journal too long. She feels "rusty when I return, having forgotten the route a feeble, circuitous thought takes from brain to hand then onto the page."

My life's circumstances force me to write in almost desperado fashion for a living, especially now with illness pervading in the room where I dwell in the lowlands. My other means of sustaining the freelance writing is trying to infect older children and teens with a love of and lust for the word. These have taken me away from this space where I like to chronicle, among other subjects, the growth of my grandchild.

Makeup time came early today as I reviewed the contents of my digicam and found these selfies taken by my now five-year-old Kai on her birth week. She may sue me for invasion of her privacy when she comes of age, but by then, I'll be past caring. Hey kid, this grandma still is in love with you. Friend Rita Ledesma likes to quote the author Anne Lindbergh who once said that grandchildren are the love affair of old age.

And mine is intense! Happy birth month, Tweetie Pie!

Daytime selfie

Our "fivester" at night with just the light of a lamp

This picture of Japanese fried rice taken at the Baguio Country Club's Hamada is my reminder to Kai the Not So Wee One Anymore to eat heartily.

Breathing and blogging again

From a blog I often visit comes this reminder:

"A blog is like a fog of breath on a mirror: yesterday’s brilliant utterance cannot make up for today’s sudden silence. If you want to stay alive, you have to keep breathing, and if you want to keep blogging, you have to keep writing. There is no resting on your laurels in this business: as a blogger, you’re only as good as your last post just as a body is only as alive as its most recent breath." Those are the words of Lorianne DiSabato.

Her entry for Jan. 11 this year marks her 12th anniversary in blogging. The figure "12" was enough to shake me awake from my temporary stupor. Yes, I did take a quick, three-day break from blogging so I could simplify and breathe. "Simplify and Breathe" is another blog by Rhissa Garcellano that I follow, primarily because I have an incurable sweet tooth and so has she.

With my breathing space I had time to review the photos that I haven't shared here. I found some from last year's Kasibulan anniversary art exhibit at the Ateneo Library of Women's Writings (ALIWW). Kasibulan is the acronym for the women's art collective called in full Kababaihan Sa Sining at Bagong Sibol Na Kamalayan. I count feminist artists I look up to like my former teacher in modern art Brenda Fajardo and Imelda Cajipe Endaya as among the founding members.

This exercise makes me feel like a teabag getting infused and coming alive in the warm water of women's art.

Ces Nuñez's soft marionettes that depict a Panay Bukidnon epic

"Jose Garcia Villa," terracotta sculpture by Julie Lluch

Sandra B. Torrijos' "Third Eye," acrylic on wood

"Green Orchid" by Anna Fer, watercolor on paper

Brenda V. Fajardo's acrylic work "Karapatang Pantado ng Kababaihan"

"Babae," oil on paper by Imelda Cajipe Endaya

"More Beautiful Now with Gold," oil on canvas by Yasmin Almonte

"The Living, Growing Circle of Women" by Lia Torralba, acrylic on canvas

"Kasibulan" by Brenda Fajardo, ink on paper Photos by Babeth Lolarga

The bigger issues and the smaller self

When I'm not writing, it feels like I'm a big useless, lifeless yellow big thingy that should be put away because I'm getting in everybody else's way. Tractor seen from a car window while travelling along the South Expressway last month. Photo by Babeth Lolarga

"When I’m not writing, my life seems both foreign and shallow, an insubstantial and flimsy thing I observe as if from a distance: someone else’s life, not my own. When I’m writing regularly, I feel more present to my life as it unfolds: I’m present and paying attention, inhabiting my own existence rather than watching it flash before me without conscious consideration. Forget about trying to walk in someone else’s shoes: first you have to learn how to walk in your own." - Lorianne DiSabato in "The unexamined life," www.hoardedordinaries.wordpress.com

Perhaps I exist in Ms. DiSabato's parallel universe because all the things she has written about missing journal-writing or even maintaining a space or blog like this are feelings that I'm familiar with. I tend to over-blame myself--that I'm past my prime when story pitches fail and editors don't quickly get back to you. I take the lukewarm or non-response as nothing deeply personal. Just professional rejection due to lack of space.

Where to put the darling baby (draft of an article or an essay)? In this space, where else? But what if you've practically lost heart over repeating the process and would just rather sing like the Julie Jordan character in Carousel, "What's the Use of Wonderin?"

And then the darkly vicious cycle repeats itself and you wait until the dark has rinsed itself out and the wash emerges clean. If a writing professor like Ms. DiSabato thinks my washing machine metaphor for days like this one is ineffective, I don't blame her.

Meanwhile, I am fully aware how there are more serious issues out there than my being a bit stumped for words (temporary condition).

I only have to think of the Syrian child Aylan Kurdi, his body not yet bloated by sea water, the strife his family sought refuge from. Then there's murdered Manobo teacher-elder Emerito Samarca and family and his terrorized students to wake one up to the realization that the occasional dips in mood a writer suffers isn't worth a hill of beans in this crazy old world. Time, be my friend. Let this dip dissipate soon.

2 kyootats slumming

"But, I’ve been writing (and blogging) long enough to know that even the worst case of blog blahs eventually passes: you just have to wait it out. And the best way of waiting, of course, is to keep writing, even if what you’re writing seems inane, insipid, and uninspired....When you’re in the midst of the blog blahs, you begin to wonder if you’re ever going to write another decent blog post, another decent journal entry, or another decent anything, but the only way out of that slump is to write your way out. -- Lorianne DiSabato writing in her blog hoardedordinaries.wordpress.com

Meanwhile, here's a pic of two sisters growing up in the '60s smilin' at ya. I cropped this from a bigger collage made by my sissy Evelyn Marie (Embeng, a nickname she herself coined, how cool is that?). She followed me 14 months after I made my own Earth landing in 1955. Six more bibis followed her. Them were "the more the many-er years" when phrases like "child spacing," "reproductive health" weren't in anyone's lexicon. Like Dad, she's inventive with words so "cute" for the new little ones in our lives was never pronounced "kyoot" but "kyootat"; "eat out" is "eatat."

I truly believe her assurance when she texted on my birthday: "It's going to be okay in time. Love you with your ups and downs." I don't know where she picked up the next quote (something our late Lola Purang must've passed on to us--this propensity for seeking inspiration or a lifeline in words well thought out but simply strung together): "Beautiful things aren't always recognizable at first glance."

Okay, stamping on this temporary slump. Brookside Baby ain't drownin yet.

Fourth year on Planet Earth

"Writers, like children, are not dissuaded by the uselessness of hoarded ordinaries; instead, we cultivate a collector's sense, trying to capture mundane moments on a string of words." --Lorianne DiSabato

She's a happy four today, but the first words she spoke was an anxious, "There's a cockroach on my potty!"

Ahhh, the joys and challenges of having a grandchild in the house that is more home now because she makes it so (leaves her books in her grandparents' room when she has her own mini library, parks her toys on the office desk when she has her own play area, has two rubber duckies in the grownups' bathroom, etc.).

Sometimes my best alternative to staunching the flow of child's things is to take The Wee One for walks and slow climbs, morning or afternoon or both morning and afternoon. It's my way of making her energy dissipate at some point, then she tires enough to want some quiet time. At the same time her Booboo gets some exercise.

Over a week ago, we went sunset chasing again, but we made several stops along the way because she is distracted by textured rocks, a pile of sand, the flowers of Baguio. Like they say, life is a journey, don't be in a rush to get to your destination.

Follow this leader.

Chatting with the flowers and telling them to smile for Booboo's camera

She's a bit obsessive about things (like fallen pine needles) not being in their proper place so she removes them from the rock's crevice and throws them on the ground.

What child can't resist sand? Certainly not ours!

Selecting stones from the rubble with a thought (thoughtfulness) of adding them to her Grumpa Tats' garden. I had to put my foot down because we still had a long way to go and I didn't want the stones falling on her or my exposed toes. Next time I bring a recyclable bag. Photos by Booboo Babeth

Dagohoy country once again

Part of Bohol's Chocolate Hills, the picture taken from the steps leading to the view deck

These are two bloggers who I follow regularly: Lorianne DiSabato, who can be found at her hoardedordinaries.wordpress.com, and Vivienne Gucwa at her travelinglens.me. When I'm not reading a book for leisure or leisurely penning postal mail, I visit these neighbors on my playlist.

Morning sky over the municipality of Carmen

When I'm stuck and flailing like someone about to drown when my life raft of words drifts hundreds of meters away, I linger longer than usual at Lorianne's and Vivienne's sites (even the end syllables of their names have a nice rhyming ring to them). I listen to their voices, look at their images, and I'm reminded to pick up where I was interrupted--a plain narrative, even if it's just my own or someone else's story.

Sunday being rest day and the need to recover from the past weeks is so strong that sometimes I succumb to the lure of a nap not during siesta hour but at mid-morn, I shook off the lethargy by doing the kaoshiki dance that I learned two years ago from yogi Ajita Reyes. I relearned it from her when she joined us during that long weekend in the south.

By the sea getting ready to salute the sun

Yesterday I minimized the pixels of some pictures that I took of some September days spent with people who poet Marj Evasco invited to experience "wide-awake dreaming". The "retreat" from the familiar world made room for slowing-down rituals: yoga, sunrise or sunset meditation, healthy semi-vegetarian or fully vegetarian meals, listening to fellow poet Jose Victor Peñaranda's speak on emptiness and awareness. There was time as well to see how Bohol province is rising or has risen from last year's 7.2 magnitude earthquake.

We had what the bees of Bohol Bee Farm also had: flowers!

The small Busay falls nevertheless emits a roar as water forcefully meets water.

About as large as a woman's fist and most of the times receding, this tarsier peeks from under his cover of a dry, brittle leaf

This forest, called a man-made or "artificial" one, covers land in Bilar that once was made barren by slash-and-burn agriculture. However, it's an eerily silent cathedral of green, save for the sound of vehicles rushing by. It's a lesson for those in the reforestation movement: plant a diverse number of trees to make possible the visitation of birds and other fauna.

The light that lit Bohol during several weeks of no power after the earthquake is sheer Pinoy ingenuity: small stones lined the bowls like this one, cotton balls were rolled, placed inside and floated on used cooking oil, then lit with a match. The practice continues to heighten the mood when dining under the stars.

So whether it's an inward-turned tremblor shaking one's being or surviving a big one out there, the hardy, unsinkable Boholanons have set the example of moving forward, of rising above the rubble. Daghang salamat. Padayon indeed.

Photos by Babeth Lolarga

A pledge to show up here

Lately I've been asking the man of the house, my main and loyal reader, if I'm beginning to sound like I'm running out of things to blog about, that my universe has contracted to include his work-in-progress (the garden), our granddaughter and the less-than-extraordinary things that Mary Poppins (a.k.a. Suzy Lolarga) has uncovered from the house's corners and furniture undersides. Have I turned into a chronicler of home-bound goings-on and found trivia with photos for accompaniment?

I'm aware that I have been more than remiss from a bounden duty to write for a living. I seem to have fallen into the gentle trap of writing for its own pleasure. I promised myself and an editor that I would get back to livelihood writing (a.k.a. the composition of articles that will pay for themselves) in a few weeks.

Last night I discovered Lorianne DiSabato's blog and found comfort, strength in her words. She's an enabler and motivator, indeed, the show-by-example type. She reminds me to just show up.

Detail of a painting showing two women, one at a writing desk, by artist Isoda Koryusai

"Showing up at the page is like keeping watch at the bedside of a comatose relative: you watch, wait, and hold out hope because your patient might be present and alive in there, despite an unresponsive body. Just because your patient doesn’t seem to respond doesn’t mean they aren’t there: as Jesus said of a child he raised from the dead, “She’s not dead; she’s only sleeping.” On days when your own creativity seems dead, you show up and sit by the tomb, expectant. If today should be the miraculous day when your lifeless creativity should stir and then sit up in its shroud, you will be there to see it. There might not be anything you can do to help either the sun or the dead rise, but it is of the last importance that you be present just in case.

"Keeping a blog is a great exercise in showing up at the page. When you start a blog, you make an unspoken contract with your readers that you will show up and say something regularly enough to make their checking in worthwhile: a blog grown cold is like a closed and darkened house where a weary traveler had hoped for hospitality. Many days when you show up to 'feed the blog,' you feel like Old Mother Hubbard reaching into a cupboard that’s sadly bare. When you’re forced to concoct a blog-worthy meal out of meager scraps, you often end up with a stone soup simmered with bits of this and that: nothing fancy, just something simple and savory. Out of the leftovers of your days, what kind of sustenance can you cobble together if you simply continue to show up for your own life?" - Lorianne DiSabato, http://hoardedordinaries.wordpress.com/