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."

Today is Election Day

Back here in my very humid room where my only view outside are windows as usual, I find it very difficult to concentrate on editing the final pages of a manuscript written by a Japanese while TV anchors and reporters do their voice stunts reporting on each local precinct's performance. We're waiting for my brother to fetch my mother and myself so we can go to the public school where all our names are registered.

My mother is so excited about this election that the first thing she did when she woke up was to call my brother to ask him to take her to the polls. She had been murmuring against all Team Unity candidates and has promised to vote 12-0 in favor of GO. She had watched both ANC and kapuso's coverage of conversations (asking candidates three questions and giving them a minute for each question) and of course, she never listened to Team Unity and KBL candidates.

In fact, she has set her mind to vote for every "young" opposition candidate from the very start of the campaign period or even since Gloria Macapagal Arroyo said "I'm sorry". "Tama na 'yang mga matatanda. Iboboto ko si Bamboo at saka si Trillianes!" (And our laundry lady, Ka Yoly, while ironing our clothes echoes "Iboto si Trillianes!" raising up a close fist for effect.)

For my mother's local choices, she's debated against every one who has vowed to vote for Vilma Santos for Governor and Christopher De Leon for Vice Governor. But she'd been overwhelmed by the majority thinking that Batangas can do good with a live soap - "Let's show these soap writers a run for their money with our local version of 'Relasyon.'"

Just yesterday, my brother told us to vote for his kumpare's kumpare who is running for congressman. And at the mall, the vice mayoral candidate winked at my sister-in-law, who immediately said that he - the candidate - is a friend of a friend of a friend. Back home, my mother immediately castigated my brother and my sister in law, commenting that what's wrong with this country is that every kumpare and kumare of the candidate are forced to vote for their kumare and kumpare - to which my brother retorted - "E sino pa gang ating iboboto ay pare-pareho lang naman yang mga 'yan. Di dine na sa kumpare at nang may mapakinabang naman."

Posted right beside our Batangas City hall is a signed peace covenant. It's been blown up billboard size for everybody to see. I've never witnessed a violent election-related incident in Batangas, although in the past, there were news and rumors of ballot snatching and gunmen threatening teachers to cooperate or else.... We've only had black outs during the counting.

Anyway, my mother has twice reminded me already to get ready to vote. I feel that she has cast all her hope on her ballot -- the only expression of her anger and frustration over all kinds of corruption happening in our land.

I read books I won't Reread

When I was an AB English student, boredom would always lead me to read books. I didn't have a library of books and I didn't borrow from the college library, so I just read whatever was available or whatever was being read by most of my fellow college students those days. Mostly they were Ayn Rand, Robert Ludlum, Thomas Merton, Ernest Hemingway... and my personal pick...Thomas Hardy. (Well, I liked Far from the Madding Crowd so I read all of his other novels. I have seven titles by this naturalist, but now, I don't enjoy rereading him. Why? I think I have gotten used to fast, modern English. I became an editor, and I've gotten impatient and unable to wade through long and difficult sentences.) I also read the Bible in those days, but only the gospel narratives.

I can't remember how I got hold of Robinson Crusoe, by Daniel Defoe, but it was one of my favorites at the time. Before Tom Hanks had his film "Cast Away" I had already been fascinated with stories that had the same theme of being isolated. Tom Hank's film asked the question in the end while he was standing at the crossroad: "What was the point of my getting stranded for four years?" At least this was my reading of that ending.

Many days of my life were spent isolated, alone. Of course not in an island, but maybe in the mall, here in my room, in the city when I walk around after a tiring day, or inside a bus during my travels to and from Manila. In most of my writing commissions, I rode the airplane alone, explored a place alone, and so I have very scant memories of those travels since, to be honest, I did not really enjoy them.

Most of us can't last a day without company. As for me, I have gotten used to being alone. All my family members frown at my preference for quiet and isolation. They said I should just live on the mountains. Hmmm.... Why not?

But of course this doesn't mean I don't like company. However I pick them as when you pick only those authors you know when you're browsing book titles inside a bookstore.

That said, I would like to share with you this excerpt from Delancey's place.com

The Real Robinson Crusoe
"Alexander Selkirk, the inspiration for Robinson Crusoe, is found by the captain and crew of the British ships Duke and Dutchess while they are sailing the Pacific seeking to plunder Spanish ships filled with treasure:

"The next morning the Duke and Dutchess sailed into the [Juan Fernandez Island] harbor entrance, their guns ready for action. ... As they approached the beach, they were shocked to see a solitary man, clad in goatskin, waving a white cloth and yelling exuberantly to them in English.Alexander Selkirk, the castaway whose story would inspire Daniel Dafoe to write Robinson Crusoe,was about to be rescued.

"Selkirk had been stranded on Juan Fernandez Island for four years and four months, ... a Scotsman, [he] had been the mate aboard a consort ... whose captain and officers had lost faith in their commodore's leadership and sailed off on their own. Unfortunately, the ship's hull had already been infested by shipworm, so much so that when the galley stopped at Juan Fernandez for water and fresh provisions, young Selkirk decided to stay--to take his chances on the island rather than try to cross the Pacific in a deteriorating vessel. According to the extended account he gave [Captain] Rogers, Selkirk spent the better part of a year in deep despair, scanning the horizon for friendly vessels that never appeared.

Slowly he adapted to his solitary world.
The island was home to hundreds of goats, descendents of those left behind when the Spanish abandoned a half-hearted colonization attempt. He eventually learned to chase them down and catch them with his bare hands. He built two huts with goatskin walls and grass roofs, one serving as a kitchen, the other as his living quarters, where he read the Bible, sang psalms, and fought off the armies of rats that came to nibble his toes as he slept. He defeated the rodents by feeding and befriending many of the island's feral cats, which lay about his hut by the hundreds. As insurance against starvation in case of accident or illness, Selkirk had managed to domesticate a number of goats, which he raised by hand and, on occasion, would dance with in his lonely hut. ... He was rarely sick, and ate a healthful diet of turnips, goats, crayfish, and wild cabbage. He'd barely evaded a Spanish landing party by hiding at the top of a tree, against which some of his pursuers pissed, unaware of his presence.

"[Captain] Rogers said ... 'He had so much forgot his language for want of use that we could scarcely understand him, for he seemed to speak by halves. ...We offer'd him a Dram [alcoholic drink], but he would not touch it, having drank nothing but water since his being there, and 'twas some time before he could relish our victuals.' Selkirk was remarkably healthy and alert at first, but Rogers noted that 'this man, when he came to our ordinary method of diet and life,though he was sober enough, lost much of his strength and agility.' "

Colin Woodard, The Republic of Pirates,
Harcourt, 2007, pp. 75-77.

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