Last Quarter Wail

September and I'm at tail's end of at least five projects. Can't complain at all about this year's provisions from the Almighty, but I wish I were faster. Why is it so difficult to meet deadlines? Partly, it's the heat. Partly, it's my health. Partly it's domestic glitches, but mostly it's boredom.

I read about friends going here and there, on writing grants, M.A. scholarships, year sabbaticals, long-term missions... and the world goes... and I'm here in my room... talking... to the internet.

Yesterday, I saw a friend from college at the bank. After two sentences of small talk, we were both quiet. There was nothing to talk about, the good old days were just to far off, and when she left, she did not even say goodbye. Maybe she forgot to say goodbye, maybe, like me, she was embarrassed at this huge gap we have when we used to be so close.

The thing I dread most these past week is the computer. I've been going to the library for at least three weeks now, just reading anything and basking at the coldness. It's my perfect escape. I watched Bourne Identity part III twice and enjoyed it both times. I went to Solarium and spent a total of a day praying.

I fixed my house in Cavite, installed new bathroom tiles, cabinets, pipes. I have all these plans of spending week-ends there, write, draw, or sleep. But I see these tricycles lined up right in front of my gate. There are no provincial settings anymore, everywhere, it's an urban jungle. Then I pray, Lord, I want a house with a view.

Got to "dispense with" this restlessness somehow. Got to be in the center of His will.

Down on my knees now.

James 4:13-17 "Now listen, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money." Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, "If it is the Lord's will, we will live and do this or that." As it is, you boast and brag. All such boasting is evil. Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn't do it, sins."

Self-conscious Writer Finally Blogs - Writes ...err Blogs

Yes, friends, it has been a month, as Dudut has pointed out, since I last blogged. This is cliche but true: I have been so busy! How do you rest from writing, editing and translation? I do other things: I water the plants, I go to the mall and buy wheat bread, I check the latest at the National Book Store, I eat halo-halo, I watch HBO -- all sorts of things, except write. "Serious" writers need to somehow get down from their ivory towers (another cliche, and I'm using this out of context) so they will have things to write about. In my case, I should go up to that tower, leave all these mingling with text behind. By text, I mean, literal texts - words, phrases, sentences. When I open my computer, they stare at me the way a sampaguita vendor insists on selling all ten leighs by plastering her face on the window of a taxi. (Ok this is what happens when you think of a simile which echoes a local flavor - no this is only partly successful....trying too hard if you know what I mean.)


While I long more for the rain, all I get is a deluge of alphas and omegas of real thick manuscripts and some pages do sound greek to me. (They say don't mix your metaphors so I should stay with the rain issue here...) I plod through the flood (haha, is that a tongue twister or what?) of murky word order and bland diction (Can you think of an adjective which can describe flood and diction? Pardon my choice of words since this is being done in a hurry - bad for writing, hurrying)

By the way, I am working with three electric fans on. Everybody says I should buy air condition, but what do you know, it's June and then hopefully, the rain will fall, even a teeny, weeny bit please, then I can save on electricity. (In any essay writing, this one is poor transition, but give me a break, this is a blog.)

Some texts on my screen are intended for cutting, others are intended for scrutinizing, and some - I need to create from nothing. By eleven o'clock in the morning, too hot for comfort, I curse myself for dozing off while thinking about the next deadline, and meanwhile, I am gathering my thoughts to make that next proposal. (This is a long sentence; don't write this way -- the fog index according to Lindy Hope, my mentor in editing, allows you only 17 words maximum, note Reader's Digest articles, if you can't place the commas and the semi-colons and the dashes in the right places.)

All right. Between my yearnings ("when will all the yearnings end" as Barry Manilow asks in his ballad) and the actual non-events of my text-heavy days, I forget that I am, I insist, first and foremost, a writer. And thanks to Dudut, I am truly forced to blog. But now I am thinking of playing badminton with our Bible Study leader and his wife, lest I become pre-diabetic (That, my friends, is when your sugar index is more than a hundred and twenty - consult the Internet for details.) Yes, instead of blogging, I might get really physical (as opposed to mental?)

As I blog right now, I think about the unfinished manuscripts right here on my filing cabinet. Believe it or not, George Eliot (please don't tell me she's sooo 18th century. I happen to think that she's the best writer during her time) also had unfinished files. Before she sat down and really wrote long novels, she did one Bible translation and plenty of technical writing, she edited for various publications. It helped that her husband had the money to support her as she wrote -- he was an editor -- and he also shielded her from all those knit-picking (did I spell that right?) editors. Her novels were bestsellers during her time and they are considered classics today. A Biography on Eliot which I read is called "Voice of a Century". I'm being very ambitious if she is my model. Yet I do need a model and I can't find them in today's writers. Most of us are writers-on-demand nowadays. This is not always good.

But do readers today care how you write? Maybe not. They do care however about finding answers to their deep and shallow answer now na questions. They are mostly merely looking for that line of wisdom to cut and paste on to their memory for as long as they need it. They can actually just google it so now more writers write for websites. (Do you know that most e-zines pay a pithy $10 for an article you post on their sites? My! My! My! How they bully the writers!)

Anyway, I'm not really talking about writing-on-demand when I think about my own writing. What I should do is find a hotel (in Tagaytay) and stay there for a week, and finish some of what I have begun - a play, a collection of poems and short stories in Tagalog. To do this, I probably should go back to the texts I'm presently working on, ASAP, submit on deadline, and hopefully save for that yearned for Write-in-a-hotel treat. It'll take time, I tell you, if I follow this route. So in the meantime, I blog.

Blogging helps me to nurture a dream, to sustain a kind of high feeling. And now, I've blogged. Indeed, I've blogged.

Wrecked Routine

So much for routine and schedules; I see that whatever I do, I can’t stay glued to a regular routine. That is, exercise in the morning, read a book at night, bum around on Sunday afternoon, eat some fish ball or munch mais bought from around the corner at meryenda – for me to grow rounder – yeah, all for health, and health for all.

The reason is that my work is such that I am doing at least five tasks, all with pressing deadlines. I remember my supervisor in my past work: she used to say that our work is like juggling. I thought when I resigned from that job that I would stop juggling and stay focused in one main dream of my getting-old life: WRITING. In fact, this is only the second time I’m writing in two months – not bad? one writing a month? HELLO! See even my writing here is getting, well, very common. I’m already getting tired, dreaming about writing. But don’t misinterpret me: I am very thankful for this present bulk of work, it’s only that I wish I have an assistant: (so I can write he..he)

An assistant will help me
1 run errands such as when paying taxes, SSS, Philhealth, Meralco, and Globe bills
2 do my bookkeeping because I am always lost at which to credit when I debit petty cash and other cash-es. I had very low grades in accounting in my liberal arts commerce course back in the 80s. I wish BIR would not require two books. Imagine, you have a journal (not the diary) and a ledger. Up to now I don't have a trial balance because I'm not sure what to balance. There's a perfect imbalance with what I want to earn and what I actually earn so what's the point of keeping books?
3 do the cooking, washing, watering the plants, changing the water in the plant…(wait a minute, I don’t think it’s an assistant I’m looking for here)
4 tally surveys of translation grids (well that’s a business secret so I won’t elaborate)
5 photocopy, print, fax, and file of documents on demand
6 do my invoice (this one is really one that should always be done pronto!)

Does it sound like my teeny-weeny business is on the upsurge? Don’t make that mistake. It’s still very average and manage-ably small. My take home pay (meaning the pay that I am able to put in my wallet and spend right after I placed them there) remains just enough. However, since I’m getting used to the silence of my text-heavy life, I can tolerate more words and am able to stay up later than usual at night simply working. I don’t get to talk much, except of course when my mother talks me out of my silence, and when my siblings and their kids, if they decide to visit our mother, provide the noise that would eventually require me to shout "quiet!" I fear that I may lose my voice already. So sometimes, I listen to my own voice by talking to myself. No there’s no partial insanity here, only a semi-flawed social life. They say that writers have their VOICES and I’m not sure if the voice I’m talking about and the VOICE of the writer in me are the same. But I digress.

No, it’s just peak season ladies and gentlemen. When July comes, rain would pitter patter on my roof and I will have time to compose a poem about it. Meanwhile, I’m fairly booked up to the end of June and I truly thank God for the jobs that come my way. I’m learning to multi-task and I realize that time management is not as simple as putting what to do in my calendar. It’s attending to the urgent, never procrastinating, always making sure nothing is wasted, that is, that even my leisure hours are not spent as leisurely (well, for this one, I hope that this is only for the meantime)

I still get six hours of sleep, I still eat less than others my age do (I eat like my mother, in small amounts. We always have some left over food in the ref so I bought six tiny square tupperwares for this purpose), I still can’t read the Bible on regular hours (although I’m working on Bible texts almost every day) and I am trying very hard not to get a meta-carpal syndrome. I’m not sure why these details are important in this life but they are to me and to you so whether you like it or not, you sleep long, watch what you eat, read your Bible, and ensure that your work hazard will not be YOURS.

A pastor and his wife visit us every week. They are a godsend really since they take time ministering to my mother. She isn’t able to leave the house anymore without my brother’s car and her wheelchair. When pastor and his wife come, I am forced to turn my PC off however urgent my work is because they come here to simply talk, about their ministry, about our Christian faith, about God's Word with me. We always have a very stimulating conversation which sometimes lasts up to five hours!

Whenever he and his wife visit us, I slow down, I breathe, I bow, I say peace to my wrists, I say peace to my eyes, I say peace to my body.

And then we pray for each other, and I say peace to my soul.

"Then I realized that it is good and proper for a man to eat and drink, and to find satisfaction in his toilsome labor under the sun during the few days of life God has given him -- for this is his lot. Moreover, when God gives any man wealth and possessions, and enables him to enjoy them, to accept his lot and be happy in his work -- this is a gift of God. He seldom reflects on the days of his life, because God keeps him occupied with gladness of heart." Ecclesiastes 5:18-20