The house on Algier Street

four stories of dark, solid adobe rock and a large peaked roof girded by square glass windows that seemed to suggest a space both unusual and intriguing. it seemed to belong in another place, somewhere foreign, maybe colder. (to my yet-untraveled, young imagination, that place was baguio.) it seemed so proud to be different, and defiant to be made of what it was amidst a quiet makati neighborhood of low, small, squat houses with flat galvanized iron roofs and wooden walls. back then, i didn't know the street it was on was named algier street.

i have been fascinated by the house on algier street as long as i can remember. growing up, i would pass by on my way to school, and it always arrested my attention, whether in a quick, second swivel of the head or a long, drawn-out, slow-moving gaze. as i grew older, a landscape of glass, steel and manicured grass sprung up around the house. a year or two ago, i noticed a "for sale" sign below the blue peaked roof and thought that whoever bought the house would be a very fortunate and unusual family. the length of time between the sign's appearance and its subsequent disappearance escaped my attention.

however, my curiosity never faded. it simply wandered idly to the back of my mind, where i always wondered what the house looked like inside, and what kind of people lived in such a proud and unusual house.

last saturday, i stepped inside and found out.

to be continued

Sundot

parang may nakasundot sa pwet ko buong araw. i keep sitting up straight and figuratively fidgeting and hopping around -- hindi ako mapakali. i am plowing through an amazing amount of work considering i was such a noncommittal vegetable yesterday.

and i still haven't written about sitting in flamenco class last saturday and my super big foot-in-mouth booboo at work!so much to do! so much to do! and i wanna be out of here by nine!

(by the way, that raket i was stuck on in my previous entry? after getting myself unstuck, my client was so happy with it that he agreed to accept the draft as final -- even if he had technically paid for a separate and final copy. yay me!)

i'm just a little energizer bunny curry!

Sunday morning sounds

heard while tapping away on lulu, working on a current raket (miraculously unstuck and thisclose to cracking it!), bright and early this beautiful sunday morning.

oo nga naman. *smiles*

Who says you can't be happy all the time?
Say what you like, but I'm still gonna try

"Happy", Lighthouse Family

Something old, something new

something new. instead of the usual puerto galera weekend, marlon and i hied off to the beaches of san juan, batangas for a day trip. we ended up at virgin beach resort in laiya, which was recommended by my sister. although laiya is supposed to be the "convenient" beach for manileños, i was surprised that we spent most of the morning on the road. medyo malayo pa rin, but at least you don't have to take a ferry.

one of the morning's highlights was getting to drive a manual for the first time since driving school. that was both fun (speeding down star tollway at 100kph! the fastest i've ever gone!) and mortifying (shuddering to a panic-fueled crawl in the narrow streets of rosario, whereupon i gave up the driver's seat to my nervous wreck of a fiance).

anyway, virgin beach was quite satisfying the beach is about as good as galera, with sand that made up for being slightly coarser and darker by also being cleaner. the beachside cabanas are great -- you can get them with curtains or none. (the curtains are, fortunately or unfortunately, not thick enough to hide the kind of hanky panky that will drive families with small children away. don't try it. just trust me.

being somewhere new was exhilarating. especially with sights, skies and a sunset like these.

no booming stereos, no drunken neighbors. just clean, quiet bliss.

blissed-out boyf with his science magazine. geeks rock!

a phoenix in the clouds

even if it wasn't on the water, the sunset was perfect anyway

something old. three and a half years old, to be exact: marlon and i, and the things we love about each other. the depth of being together and the ease of enjoying each other, and how it all comes so naturally and with such joy.

but come to think of if, that weekend, even those things were new again. and for that, i couldn't be happier or more thankful.

just as things should be

here's wishing this this weekend, and all the weekends that come after, will be as perfect as last.

Today's wows

wow!

-- i really miss some things about working in makati! the walking is great. it's so easy to step out of the office and have a pleasant walk to clear your mind. ( i used to do that rather often when i worked in the factory.) i believe this realization has much to do with the fact that i work right beside edsa -- i clear my mind by walking there and i will have to be peeled off some rampaging, decrepit bus's front bumper.

oh, and in makati cbd there's no shortage of decent to good places to eat. and the mall! two or three freaking blocks to greenbelt -- a short walk i would have despised before, but am totally craving now.

-- damn that chikn fillet sandwich from kfc is soooo yummy! why have i been stuffing myself with the bigger, greasier, twice-as-expensive zinger all this time?

-- lays vinegar chips! we had them for the first time at our weekly unit meeting (renamed "unit eating") and they are soooo good. i must have eaten half the bag... and that's ok! right pia?

-- i'm genuinely interested in booking tickets for this year's singapore arts fest. i've been going to singapore around the time of the arts fest for three years, and i've generally made up all sorts of excuses for seeing any of the shows. well, there was the stroj two years ago, plus the chalk art thingy. but since then, deadma. i'm open to that changing this year, though, which i realized when i opened the yearly mailer i receive from the arts fest people. this looks really interesting, for one thing.

-- my boss doesn't wear a barong! i don't know why i should be happy about that, and no offense to bosses who wear barongs, but today i realized i'm really happy that that's part of who he is.

-- someone i just met today who does wear a barong told me this: "you might very well be heaven-sent."

oh and can i make singit just one wow i had tuesday? marlon, as he shut the lid to the trunk, his suitcase inside and all ready for his flight back to singapore: "you are too good to be true and too good to pass up." it totally blew me away. especially knowing what i know.

last weekend was a huge wow, too, but i'd rather write about that with the photos.

Aray!

this afternoon i discovered why i put off waxing my upper lip for a quarter of a century.

because it HURTS, dammit.

it is almost probably certain that i will never have it done in the places that really count. ever. i actually cried, i'm such a wuss. but now that i've opened the door to a lifetime of upper lip maintenance, i figure i'll just pre-pop a painkiller next time.

masyado yatang naaliw sa akin yung waxer. she not only waxed my upper lip, but also threaded away the strays. and then she went to work on my brows, free of charge. that threading is something else ha. i didn't know whether to slap her hand away or just be thankful that she threw in the threading for free.

the waxing-threading lady kept giggling at me. before she dusted off my brow area with a piece of tissue, she tore it in half so that i would have something to wipe away my tears with. "eto o," she quipped. "hati tayo."

hmpf. i knew i should have had the wax done before the hair treatment, back rub and pedicure. that series of rips and smarts sure did burst my blissful massage bubble.

ang hirap naman maging balbon.

Just the two of us

my sister took this photo of marlon and me in puerto galera about two years back. i don't think i've ever posted it here because i thought it looked lopsided, but i think it's perfect for what we have now.

which is just him and me. together.

and an ocean of possibility, of our whole lives, stretching out before us.

All I need to know

up until last night, i knew a million things about my wedding.

i could have told you the name of the church and why we chose it, how much we had paid to reserve it and the supreme hassle of confirming the overseas bank transfer to singapore. i could have told you the exact date and time of the wedding, and a funny story about how my sister asked me to please get married in 2007 instead of 2008. i could have told you all the things marlon and i considered -- getting overseas friends and family home in time, where to put them up, and how to tell them. i could even post the save-the-date card that i made myself using photoshop.

i knew figures -- budgets and buffers and guest lists and contingencies. i knew where marlon and i could pull out extra money and where we could save.

i knew exactly what the colors would be, since i had spent a large chunk of one workday afternoon ripping out pantone chips from a book we have at the office. i could also tell you how all four designers i consulted about the wedding outfits absolutely loved the colors, and how i basked in the glow of being the ultimate "different" bride, blazing brilliantly past the trap of trends, consciously eschewing some version of last year's pink and chocolate brown or tiffany blue. i could have posted my color boards and described in detail the process that left me with the perfect color combination.

i could have named everyone on the entourage list and told you what they meant to me and marlon. i could have posted the carefully selected and compiled attire pegs that would give you an idea of what they would look like on the big day.

i could rattle off the names, services, rates, availabilities, pros, cons and general reputations of everyone from the venue rental to the caterer to the priest to the hair and makeup artist by heart. i could say the same of everyone on my shortlist, and why i hadn't yet decided. i knew marlon and i would serve hot chocolate and batangas coffee before dinner, and that my music was not going to come from some cheesy string quartet.

i could show you a flamenco guitarist's email address i had saved in my cell phone, and tell you why brazilian jazz bands are just way too expensive. i could tell you what ceremony songs i had wanted since i was a college freshman, what i would make my friends sing, and even where they would practice and how early in advance.

i knew exactly what i wanted to happen, from the passport-inspired invitation to the gallery of travel photos i would set up with the help of a professional event stylist i had hit it off with. i even knew what people would say, or what i wanted them to say about the wedding: that it was fun, personal, intimate, laid-back, so full of details, so romantic. i knew what all of that would say about me, about marlon and i as a couple, about the fantastic and wonderful life we were sure to lead after the wedding was over.

i knew. i use the past tense because i don't know any of these things anymore for sure.

none of that matters, because now i know the most important thing of all.

i know that marlon loves me, and that i love him.

and that we're starting over. and that our life together doesn't have to be anything that we previously thought it would be.

and really, that's all i need to know.

Toingk

that is the sound of a weekend being wiped clean.

wala daw alon sa la union this weekend.

my sister just told me about it last night, but i can also kind of figure things out from here.

crap.

cut to me and my figurative blank slate. or cut to me peering round the corner for something that could possibly be, well, just around the corner. cue maudlin rendition of "something's coming" from west side story -- preferably madly skedaddling violins. didn't care much for tony's vocals anyhow.

Yoga

ananda marga is sanskrit for "path of bliss." (actually, i knew long ago that ananda meant bliss -- i actually wanted to name my someday-daughter ananda, but someone beat me to it.) it's also the name of a yoga center tucked into an quiet, unassuming street (literally, maamo street) in teacher's village in quezon city. which is where i found myself bright and early saturday morning.

and when i say bright and early, i mean bright and early. i crawled home from jonel's birthday dinner at one in the morning, woke up promptly at 630am, left the house promptly (again) at 730am. all this promptness resulted, in of course, me arriving promptly at 830am in mcdonalds philcoa, where i was to meet my buff and sporty officemate raech (who, incidentally, i wasn't even speaking to last week).

Sunshine

the "early" part took care of the "bright". and that was... kind of amazing. i don't get to enjoy that kind of sunshine and breeze, being dead to the world usually until noon. usually. it's an understatement to say that things have been unusual lately.

if there's any one thing that would have made "path of bliss" real to me, it would have been the sunshine. the way it fell through the welded iron openings of the trike i rode, creating pockets of light and dark on my exposed ankle or blotting the fine brown hairs around raech's face into copper light. the way it streamed through the trees and welcomed me into the house, along with the creaking of the gate and the tentative smile of a woman sitting in the front yard. or the way it warmed the iron benches that i sat on while having lunch, making me feel oddly alive and peaceful at the same time.

and i would have missed all of that if life had just been a little different. if i had insisted on being the way i had been before.

Me, myself and...

the yoga in itself was good. i worked up a light sweat while doing the warmups, and alternated between complete, focused grace and flop-down-on-the-mat, tummy-jiggling embarrassment during the three basic yoga postures we did. all the way through, i felt i owned my body. that i was taking care of it. that we were friends who were learning to do things together. those are nice ways to feel about your body on a saturday morning, especially if you never expected you would.

one of the things i really liked was the bit of personal massage after. who knew i could make myself giddy and faint just by running my index finger around my face a couple of times, or rubbing my hands down my calves? suddenly, in that moment, it made no sense to pay strangers to take care of my body when it was so satisfying to take care of it myself.

it was so satisfying, there was no stopping the next image that flashed in my mind: my fingers tracing the same path on the face of someone i love, and seeing it bring the same peace and satisfaction i felt to his features. his eyes would close and he would relax even just for a little while, maybe pushing a long workday further away from him, and somehow that touch would melt into one of the miniscule million things that brings us closer to each other.

i didn't stop the thought at the time, since thinking of his features in such bliss was actually pretty blissful for me too. but later i wondered: three and a half years. is that all it takes to create such difficulty in separating myself from marlon... even just in my mind?

"Completely relaxed"

i fell asleep halfway through the guided relaxation bit. either i'm the easiest person in the world to suggest things to, or i can just be extremely... present. tell me my toes are relaxed and they'll feel like practically falling off, like bits of jelly. i zonked out at around the time the synthesized female voice (which raech found extremely disturbing) was telling me that my chest was "relaxing... relaxed... completely relaxed."

the vegetarian lunch served at the center was simple and satisfying, veggies with tofu and red rice for fifty bucks. i was so completely relaxed i barely ate. must've spaced out through the entire meal. also, i was so completely relaxed i rationalized taking a cab home instead of commuting (you know, to prolong the relaxation). then i zonked out on my own bed with the lights off for about two hours.

ah well. at least we know it works. and if you think about it, "completely relaxed" isn't such a bad place to be on a saturday morning. or the rest of the time. like monday mornings when you're waiting for a client. *ehem*

Unrecognizable

what in the world has happened to my life?

in five days, without lifting a finger or asking anyone for anything, i've received one full-time job offer, two business opportunity offers, one freelance editing gig, and a writing assignment.

only the writing assignment is from someone i haven't only talked to once in my whole life. the most recent of the business offers (just about ten minutes ago) is from a woman i've never spoken to, but knew by face. we bumped into each other this morning on the mrt, ended up chatting and she got my number.

at hindi ko man lang pinuhunan ng laway 'tong mga 'to!!!! susme!!!

i'm doing three things for the first time in the next three weeks: yoga class with raech tomorrow, surfing with my sister next weekend, and attending my first flamenco class on the 28th.

another first, albeit a jarring and slightly surreal one: the first ever hate mail of my life is on the way. but at least he warned me about it. thank God for small blessings. but man. i've never gotten hate mail!

our neighbor told my mom last tuesday that i made her day by just smiling at her.

my mom is happier than i've seen her in a long time. she keeps thanking me for it. what the...?

and...

the ultimate proof that my world has tumbled headfirst into a blender...

i wore a sleeveless top today. (haha akala n'yo kung ano, no?) my sister and my mom dressed me up this morning for jonel's chinese new year party and they were amazed that i actually looked... good. in a sleeveless top that belongs to my sister.

okay i wore it for about an hour. before leaving the house, i changed out of it at the last minute, haha. i ended up wearing one of my favorite tops, one i wore in my high school grad photo. it felt kind of... more me. or more like the old me.

so maybe i'm not quite ready to be unrecognizable yet.

but has life ever waited until we were ready?

:-)

First steps

this must have been what it was like, learning to walk in a world that was huge and unknown and terrifying and exciting.

shaking, falling, getting up, taking a step. crawling (groveling? haha) a few times.

or it might not have been what it was like.

cool.

===

jeline posted this on her lj, and i'm nicking it. i have something i don't have the words for. i think this one comes pretty damn close.

Recovery
Edward Hirsch


It was as if the rain could feel itself
falling through the air today, as if the air
could actually feel its own dampness, the breeze
could hear a familiar voice explaining the emptiness
to the dark elms that swayed unconsciously along
the wet road, the elms that could still feel
their own branches glistening with rain.

It was as if the sky had imagined a morning
of indigos and pinks, mauves and reddish-browns.
The smiling young nurse who helped you in the car
was wearing two colorful ribbons in her auburn hair and
somehow they looked precisely like ribbons gleaming
in the hair of a woman helping you into a car.
I believe I had never seen ribbons before.

And suddenly I was staring at asphalt
puddled with rainwater. And bluish letters
purpling on a white sign. And sliding electric
ENTRANCES & EXITS. And statues bristling with color.
The yellow sunlight filtered through the clouds
and I believe I had never seen a street lamp
shimmer across a wavy puddle before.

The road home was slick with lights
and everything seemed to be crying out, just
this, just this, nothing more, nothing else!--
as if the morning were somehow conscious of itself.
When you leaned over and touched me on the arm
it was as if my arm needed to be touched
in that way, at exactly that time.