Thoughts for April Fool's Day

Since the other night, I have been incubating the idea of making a prequel to my book (it is still in with the printing press yet- cross my fingers that everything will turn out fine). That prequel is about the artists who painted the murals at the chateau. An artist and his apprentice. Twenty eight rooms. Giant walls. Huge murals. One year. It would be in the Philippines, set in the late sixties or early seventies. No electricity. Plus, there would be a ship docked somewhere in the nearby shore, and in it would be a mysterious lady. Seen through the eyes of an artist. Probably a withdrawn male moping after a lost business and the murals were his escape, and a talkative apprentice, probably a daughter of some historian, trying to chart her destiny. Due 2014.

I have been making critique papers for someone's PhD on aesthetics. Maybe that could help. Or I can learn art classes again. Why, Jacques Pepin was an accomplished chef but he painted on the side!

Too many ideas and eccentric plans. But it's April Fool's day and anything goes.

Grandmas' Farms

 I love going to farms.

And I am thinking, who knows someday, engrossed in my writing and trying to figure out the patterns of the universe, before I knew it, my daughter is already wallowing with the carabao (not!!)

Farm Chicks

 Julienne is always the first to wake up in the morning. She'd be creeping all over me, waking me up with that mumbling so common to infants. Good thing, I often rise to a smiling face.

But why are grandma's places full of chickens? In our place, there are only birds at the small terrace. But in both grandma's places, there are just so many chickens. Do older people have more connection to living things that's why they're wiser?

And everytime I hold Julienne to those little creatures, she always reaches out those small hands as if she can't wait to get a hold of those soft feathers. Of course I hold her back. Err... the germs.  But seriously, I'm considering looking for rabbits.

That Thing Called Cheese

For the long hours that I've been editing my book, this music has played 100 times or so. But I didn't get that Last Song Syndrome. Now that's magic!

In My Heart, Japan

 There was something that tugged at my heart to the core about the earthquake disaster in Japan. I couldn't put a finger on it. There have been so many tragedies in the world for so many years but this one in Japan tore at me so bad.

 Maybe because of a few memories I've had there. And how I experienced the ways of the Japanese. If I could choose my life in another lifetime, I would want to be Japanese.

The world mourns and prays for you.

Forgetting

Whenever I want to forget something, I can't think of a fancier way than this: to recall one of the very first movies I've seen as a child. There was a scene there, where, to forget her past, all that the princess had to do  was inhale the scent of a blue rose. Then... all memories are erased. You can start over. How pain-free is that? 

For a few days I have been struggling with this resolve to forget something. Some part of my life- which in truth didn't really exist in the truest sense- but had lingered with me badly for years. It was like a drug. Every time things in my real world got screwed, that other life was the easiest escape.  And I want to forget now that other life.

I could not truly justify what it was. The emotions that governed that experience could probably be classified as mere infatuation, raw attraction, like those feelings of  adolescents who stare at posters of Kurt Cobain on their ceiling every night. For some time I thought it was one of the best things that ever happened in this life. And yet, everything dawned now that what happened in my life was just my own making. I could not fully credit it to that experience.

Did I waste time? Maybe I did. Did I waste strength? Maybe I did too. And yet, whatever beauty that experience gave, I want to throw it all to the universe who in the first place, made that experience possible the whole time. To put the experience into writing could be one of the best cures. The emotions were masked in figures of huge, deserted houses and  withered gardens, and  death and leaving of loved ones. For some time I believed that it gave me some liberation, some wings, some unseen sword to brave the storms of life. It did. And with the same liberation, my mind flew to another dimension and  see that experience with a different sight: that it is beginning to ruin my life. 

The Thief of Baghdad

The Other Work

 

 I used to think in my 20's that my world will be very limited when I become a mom. It means, more time must be given to the family and less for work. It also meant back then that I might not even get a chance to work what I love to do but get stuck at the routine of what needs to be done. But what happened was quite the opposite. I have three "works" (I don't know if it I'm really working- seems that I'm just there doing something) since I became mommy. One is the book (this one is work) in the truest sense, another is writing for an expatriate, and another is at a cooking school. What I appreciate most about the second work is that it takes me everywhere. We would sit at a restaurant (I do more "serious" work choosing what food to eat) or a coffee shop where I'd sip liters of cappuccino in a day,  and in the process confusing Marcel with Sartre, and, attending my client's events. Yes, those events that I myself personally enjoy. Like visiting museums. Or libraries. Or the opening of art galleries.

I just go there. Look around. Then go to some corner and write something. Oh yes, the food. Ah...work? What work?

Leaning Back and Thinking

Every time I look back at the last 20 years, I can't help but notice that I've spent most of my life in school. I don't know why I had this strong attachment to school. But here's one paradoxical thing to that. That the more I spent time sitting in class, the more I look outside the window, daydreaming.I'm not a scholar of the world, and I'll never be. Maybe for the last 20 years, those days went by and those days taught me nothing much that I could truly remember. In the process of all that schooling, maybe I didn't really learn what I should. For 20 years I sat on that armchair looking outside. Hoping that the schools I've been to should have taught me to imagine more.