Bookworming

For weeks, reading had taken backseat to all the other goings-on in my life. Not this weekend. Reading my way from Friday night into Saturday morning, I finished the following:

Is That You, Miss Blue? by M.E Kerr
Cat’s Eye by Margaret Atwood
Six of One by Rita Mae Brown

I love Rita Mae Brown. She fills her book with oddballs. She writes sadness so matter-of-factly you find yourself laughing over the tragedies that befall people with the bad case of crazies. In the end, however, she ties everything together so beautifully you wonder how a story so funny and at times, even dispassionate, could make you cry. Rita Mae Brown, you are the thinking woman’s Jennifer Crusie. You had me at Bingo and Riding Shotgun.

I hope to read some more in the coming weeks. Foremost on my reading list are

Lake Woebegone Days by Garrison Keillor
The Onion Eaters by J.P Donleavy
My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell
Time Must Have a Stop by Aldous Huxley
The Glass Mountain by S.L Sparling - done

I don’t know if these books are any good. I read just about anything, anyway, so even if they’re bad, reading won’t be a waste of time. My eyes need the exercise.

Landlord Manual?

There’s no reasoning with landlords, this we know to be true. They come as they please, and have an inexhaustible supply of excuses. In my seven-year interaction with landlords, I’ve yet to meet one who does not have a ready explanation for everything, from leaky ceilings, creaky stairs, and knobs that come off as you open the door. Landlords are so eerily alike I suspect they underwent a training of sorts to prepare themselves for a lifetime of rent collection. That, or they read the same manual.

I wonder where one can get a’hold of this manual. It must be a very interesting read. Imagine how the first chapter would go.

Chapter 1

Landlords should maintain an adequate supply of lifeforms, such as rats and roaches. The minimum acceptable rat to tenant ratio is fifty to one. The ratio for roaches to humans should be exponentially higher. Should this arrangement displease your tenant for some reason, ignore the tenant. Tenants complain over everything. This is why they don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.

Hmm. This is fun. Maybe I should write a manual for my landlord.

The Old Neighborhood

This must be how oranges feel when they’re juiced.

We had very late breakfast at ten in the morning. Then, we had a quick dip in the pool for two hours. Because we had earlier informed the yaya not to make lunch, we stopped for food at Cheaverz. Talamban has changed so much. Wett and I looked around, marveling at how different the neighborhood has become in so short a time.

In the old days, there were very few stores and carinderias. Watering holes were literally hole-in-the-wall places; they’re small, dark, and cheap. Today, they’re bigger and are air-conditioned. The young, it seems, has learned to drink in style. It feels odd to belong to a generation that views beer and drinking differently.

You can tell a person’s age group according to how he sees drinking, Wett observed casually.

How so?

Our grandparents drank in defiance of social norms. Our parents drank for escape. We drank for witty conversations and to while time away. This generation drinks to be seen.

You exaggerate. Not all of them are aspiring fashion plates.

True, but most of them think it’s cool to drink.

I point to his can of Strong Ice. Why do you drink?

It’s the easiest way to fall asleep.

Working for a call center has skewed the hub’s sleeping pattern. He starts work at ten in the evening and comes home at seven in the morning. It takes him forever to get his shut-eye because he has to do this while the house and the rest of the world hum with activity. When desperate for sleep, he chugs beer. That afternoon, he decided he needed help fast-tracking his way to the sandman’s little village. So, we brought my sister and the little one home, and went back to Cheaverz.

By the time Wett got plastered, he decided he was feeling sentimental. We took a walk around the old neighborhood, making stops at the places we used to frequent. It’s impossible not to feel sentimental about Talamban. Every corner is fat with memories. No matter how familiar the place may be, however, it isn’t really the same. Sure, it’s the same spot, and sometimes, it may even look exactly the way you remember it. But it’s not the same place anymore because you are no longer the person you used to be. Memory, Wett and I decided, is kinder than sight, and the best way to continue loving the places you hold dear is to avoid going back to them, especially when you’re feeling tipsy and nostalgic.

We went home at 4:30 in the afternoon and discovered bold, yellow swirls on the bedroom walls. In the time it took us to eat, drink, and go maudlin, our three-year-old morphed into van Gogh, turning her crayons into a weapon.

Girls and Guitars

What did you do the night Lando raged?

The night Lando whirled through the city with the fury of a thousand avenging fireflies; the night it flooded so badly people waded in knee-high water to get home; the night it rained so hard winds howled and raindrops felt like hammers pounding on rooftops; the night we didn’t have water and electricity for 12 hours, we camped out in my sister’s bedroom and played music under the yellow light of the emergency lamp.

Yes, little one, storms are terrible; but it’s possible to go through one without feeling lonely or frightened.

Mud Pies and Spinning

What do I regret about growing older? It’s being unable to do the things I wish I could. For example, if I find myself on a long walkway with nobody else but the little girl to keep me company, I’d feel far too old to play tag with her. Sometimes, however, I cheat and run circles around her while the hub frowns in disapproval.

It’s little things like that - playing tag; dancing in the rain; flying kites, breaking into spontaneous, off-key singing; watching all the TV my eyes could take; baking mud pies - which make growing older slightly less palatable, if only because I could no longer do all the silly things I want to.

When I was younger, I’d take walks in parks dotted with trees, and if it’s quiet enough and windy enough, and if I feel happy, and the sky is bright with stars, I’d fling my arms wide open and spin, spin, spin until I collapse on the ground - tired but happy, exhausted but sated. On days when it rains, I’d scoop clumps of earth onto Coke caps, bake them in the little fire my sisters would keep going, and then serve them brown and dainty, with shreds of pink and yellow petals sprinkled on top.

In my head, there are things I’d still like to do but know I can’t because at 25, I’m wife, mother, big sister, eldest daughter, and boss and it’s just not possible to spin around in parks or bake mud pies without being thought cuckoo by everyone else.

Still, I don’t give up these secret longings. I do them mentally, instead. I sit here, writing requests I’d later on send to another part of the world. In my mind, however, I am dancing in the middle of an avenue lined with trees, my arms flung wide open and my hair dappled with light from a sky streaked with stars.

Yes, at 25, you can still spin about and make mud pies in places only you can see and find. While growing old is inevitable, aging in heart and spirit isn’t.