All the things I miss during this state of siege

How wonderful to get back to old-fashioned correspondence using pen, carefully selected sheets of paper and stamps! But times dictate against the sanitary aspect of this practice--the handling and delivery of postal mail.

So I will just journal religiously and hope that in this meditative practice, I expunge the anger I feel for the state of siege we find ourselves in. Anger also focused at an inept Leader who's hellbent on locking us down. Are we handing over our basic human rights to movement and peaceful assembly, even to observe one's faith, just like that? I can't even take a leisurely walk in the neighborhood with my walker or cane to flex and un-flex my new knee and breathe fresh air without fear of being accosted for aimless loitering.

Over breakfast, my siblings spoke how we're experiencing World War III but with an invisible enemy. Our grandchildren's formal education has been disrupted. Thank heavens for small graces like Robert Alejandro's almost daily online drawing and crafts sessions. We just pray that each time he goes online, the wifi signal is strong. I tried something different while drawing a unicorn yesterday--I turned the volume of his talking down, then played my YouTube mix featuring pianist Dame Mitsuko Uchida playing a series of Mozart concertos. Pablo Tariman, in an earlier incarnation, has interviewed this exceptional artist, one of the world's best interpreters of Mozart.

Last night, while tossing and turning, I scrolled down my FB feed and found recent videos of tenor Mher U. Nival and pianist Ma Elnora Halili uploaded--in fine performance states, singing and playing their blues away. Mher was scheduled for a song recital near the end of this month at Manila Pianos Makati in Magallanes, but that has been cancelled along with other events there. Elnora, if I'm correct (do correct me), played movie themes, including "Windmills of Your Mind" from The Thomas Crown Affair. For some reason, I can't share the videos of Mher on my wall, but Elnora's is there for your delectation.

I miss the simple act of pushing a grocery cart in the once near-empty aisles of Unimart Estancia. Usually, I just put in a container of Pastelleria de Mallorca's argellanas and barquillos, packets of dried green mangoes or Cebu's rosquillo biscuits. I don't know if these simple pleasures of the tongue are still available. Last time we were at that mall was March 8 when I hosted a gratitude lunch for my siblings who took turns visiting or acting as watchers during my five-day stay at the hospital. We even brought our pug Bruno for the occasion, and he sat in his stroller quietly observing us chewing and talking at the same time.

In a few weeks, my Baguio-based grandchild Kai Mykonos is turning nine, and I won't be by her side as she celebrates, in quiet family fashion, that milestone. Baguio, which was brought nearer by Scitex and Tplex in recent years, has become nearly unreachable with bus lines stopping their North-bound services temporarily during what I call this state of siege.

Unlike Pablo, who has turned to the poetic muse the past weeks, I cannot find it in me to discover morsels of lyricism in the unusual silence we face these days, mine broken by Mitsuko Uchida or Martha Argerich to keep me sane. I keep running my hands through my hair, not touching my face, and wondering if there's still reason to return to article, or what we call livelihood, writing. Like many freelancers, I belong to the "isang kahig, isang tuka" group--no output, no pay. As Pablo said, we don't earn from poetry, and we just must keep moving on no matter the oppressive circumstances.

I brought down from Baguio books to read and review, now piled up beside my bed. Today, I must pull up my large panties, be brave, soldier on and wrestle down the muse of writing. Good luck to us all!

Morning is indeed the best time

Old UP school chum Yolanda "Yoyo" Punsalan unfailingly sends me every Thursday morning her notes from the previous evening's Bible class held at the Potter's House Christian Ministry in Mandaluyong City.

Other friends from my Paulinian years also send me chain prayers. I love reading through them, a welcome interruption from the computer work I do because those powerful prayers remind me to pause and acknowledge the Greatest Being whose powers are beyond measure, who hears the heart's cries and desires, and chooses when, in this Greatest Being's time, not in human time, to give the answer.

Yoyo's pastor reminded his congregation that it is best, and may I add beautiful, to pray early in the morning. Why? Because we cannot predict, we cannot fully know--no matter how much planning has been done the day or the weeks before--what will happen to us the rest of the day.

Photos by Babeth Lolarga

Prayer has assumed an assortment of forms in my small life. There were the rote, almost formulaic prayers we had to learn in an all-girls' Catholic school from the rosary to the Act of Contrition (my personal favorite is the Credo or Apostles' Creed recited at Mass). For a time I tried total and trance-like silence, perhaps a Buddhist-like meditation. I went through dream work or the study of dreams to find metaphorical, even archetypal, links to the divine source.

These days I go for walks and have quiet conversations with cloudless blue skies, with white un-spotted or unmarked butterflies, with water-starved grass beneath my feet, with bromeliads and succulents that manage very well during this dry season, and so on. Now that's a clear betrayal of where once I belonged--among the Flower Power generation.

In my gloaming and graying years I like to also begin that hour before sunlight finally breaks through with a bit of, correction, with a lot of music that can be anything from Martha Argerich performing Rach 3 with a full orchestra or the Czech National Symphony Orchestra playing the theme from a favorite TV show from my childhood, "Mission Impossible."

It's amazing how the spirit soars with music. Before I know it I'm working as fast as I can or as fast as I can manage, given my limitations at 59, and somehow the day before me, no matter its unpredictability, is something to look forward to. Yesterday, even if something or someone ruined it, is past.

And so we all pray.