Coloring is for all

This “Peter Pan market” has roots in publishing, beyond coloring books (the growth in sales of children’s and young-adult books to much older readers has been well documented), but it is far from confined to that arena.

Summer camps for adults, for example, have also gone from curiosity to viable enterprise. Following a near-death experience, Fidget Wigglesworth (birth name: Levi Felix), then the vice-president of a successful dot-com, turned off his phone and went backpacking for two and a half years with his partner, Brooke Dean; when they returned, in 2012, they founded Camp Grounded, a “Digital Detox” experience for which campers relinquish their electronic devices and engage instead in stargazing and sing-alongs...
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“Coloring is so accessible,” she told me. “It unleashes the creativity we all have in a way that’s quite safe.” - Adrienne Raphel, "Why Adults Are Buying Coloring Books (for Themselves)" found in today's www.newyorker.com

Kimi's "book" and her tentative strokes

By coincidence, my eldest child Kimi (no longer a child, really, she's 30) Kimi came home a few hours ago from National Bookstore with something that would "chillax" her from her online work: a coloring book. Her fear is she might get addicted to coloring books and not get any official work finished. Nah, Kimi has a Kai to support so she has to balance work and play.

Curly Kai wasn't going to be outdone. I pulled out a "spoiled" rubbercut print that I had done when I went to art school at the University of the Philippines Baguio and a tin box full of broken or used oil pastels and pencils, still not all dried up (keep 'em sealed always). One of our electives in the Fine Arts program was printmaking (then taught by Manolo Sicat).

Like I wrote in an earlier blog, I like partnering with Kai--this time I gave the given (not a blank canvas paper as I did over a month ago) and it's her turn to fill up the places and spaces with colors.

When I left her less than 30 minutes ago, she was still at it.

God bless James Barrie's eternal boy Peter Pan and whoever invented the adult coloring book. Also grandmas who don't immediately throw old works away. My rubbercut that has lemons and strawberries for its subject now has a life of its own, and it isn't wholly mine but Kai's, too.

Our curly-haired colorist giving life to an old black and white print Photos by Babeth Lolarga

Simple joys...

...for a simpleton such as I. Yes, I am that. I never quite shook off the 10-year old in me. The thing with retaining that child is getting to a state of happiness is easy-peasy.

Mababaw ang kaligayahan ko. Easy to please, can adjust to any situation with a sense that it's a new adventure, can seek out friends like they were playmates even if they live in a far part of town because, well, play, when you're almost 59 and he is 75, can take the form of verbal jousts (we can't play hit the can anymore or climb trees to gaze at the view, our bodies have turned traitors as far as physical exertions are concerned). Right, Rustie?

Rustie hasn't aged a bit; he hasn't mellowed either. He remains belligerently bull-headed about certain adult themes. Here we are on the 10th of December lunch. His apres-lunch companion has accepted she can't coffee anymore with him but can sip a frap, and, dear barista, please don't be stingy with the cream! After this picture was taken in Imus, Cavite, I had to run off to UP Diliman for the jampacked Handel's Messiah, a story in itself. He waved me off with, "I wish I can go with you, but I will listen to Handel as though I were there with you."

A certain reporter-reviewer I know, who has the initials PAT and organizes concerts now and then, is portrayed in his tux. He's singing, accompanied by a music goddess. Spike-haired companion sings second voice. Doodled the night before Dec. 9.

If you haven't seen the Dustin Hoffmann-directed film Quartet, please do. It features folks like these who live in separate realities of their own, guided by private musical soundtracks. Thank you, Chit Roces Santos, for more pointers on social graces so I can try to be less of a social disaster. All doodles by Vergel O. Santos

I guess I'm this 10-year old who, like Peter Pan, refuses adamantly to be in the exalted ranks of mature persons who own property, hold steadfastly to jobs, have a car or maybe two or three parked in their carports in exclusive villages, buy the latest accoutrements that begin with a small "i" and other similar adult ways--the very thought of them, aray! a pain in my fat ass. Maybe 'tis the reason I can't live with a materialist or pragmatic philosophy but only agree on the analysis of the great social divides. Where does that put outsiders, i.e., kids like me?

Sometimes that can be dangerous, a playmate in my autumn years warned me. Because once a child is crossed, s/he reacts with the fury of a child, too.

Korek siya dyan!

But since this is that wonderful time of the year, I'm gonna let many things pass, forgive myself as I forgive others. Christmas and Easter tide are the best times for those.

Here's to ice cream man Jojo who has made the Kapitolyo-Pineda barangays in Pasig his work area. Every afternoon he pushes a stainless steel cart. Inside are pools of ube and cheese ice cream. The flavors change daily. Here's to milky and sunny days ahead! Life with love is beautiful.

Jojo, the ice cream man who brings joy to the children of public schools in Barangay Pineda and to one person in adjacent Kapitolyo. See you again, Jojo who evokes pictures of Clausy Ho! Ho! Ho! whenever I hear his bell tinkle in mid-afternoon.

Ice cream man's, ice cream cans, glass of ice cream photos by lactose-intolerant but defiant Babeth

Who's that other girl?

Yesterday I sat through four hours of the televised opening of the London Olympics, moved many times but especially when the Peter Pan tableau was presented. Only because it made me remember my father who took me to watch the Disney cartoon at the old, now demolished, Republic Theater in Manila.

That same evening, I gazed up from the grilled windows of the family house in Sampaloc, Manila, and wondered which star represented Neverland. For many nights after, I felt like Wendy looking up and trying to pick out the "second star to the right and straight on till morning." Even at age six or seven, I felt strongly the urge to escape.

Going through the shelves for something that may interest her while Dora sits by idly

When in Baguio for visits, this Booboo tries to be unobtrusive with the digicam so I can document the moves of growing Butones. She seems my opposite in my youthful desire to flee my earthly station.

She looks over and under, sideways and up for something to occupy her time. I imagine her to be like her new companion, an explorer. I hope she never loses her sense of wonder and the compulsion to discover.

Frisbee? Maybe in two, three more years, Butones, you can toss it and Grumpa will catch.

"Mi amiga, donde has estado? Vamos a jugar!"

Photos by Booboo