Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Rainy Afternoons


Manila is very rainy these past days. Five days a week, I cuddle with my daughter at our fifth-floor flat and just do things indoors. Julienne plays with her wooden toys. I draft my second book, send messages to friends that my book is available on the shelves of "My Breathing Space" Novelty Store in Cubao Expo- so please hurry and grab a copy. And, yes- I cook, we eat together, roll around in bed, while the rain raged on.  And I would fly downstairs and pick a twig or two from the pocket gardens so she'll have some real leaves drenched in rain. She likes them!

I miss the summer blooms, though. In summer, there are just these light drizzles that quench the flowers, making them even more colorful. Not heavy, gray, rains.

Next door where my brother lives, rainy days are a different thing. He used to sing this song: "Rain, rain go away... goddemit!"

Museum Clues

I've been visiting more museums these times than the past years of my life. I am amused that just when I started becoming a full-time mommy, I had more time and opportunities doing the things I've only dreamed of when I was single and had all the time and liberty to do things myself. Ah- the paradox of doing nothing!

Among those "things" is visiting museums, have coffee conversations with interesting people, shopping for my leisure, keeping house, writing, painting. And I do these things I have Julienne strapped to me on a carrier. I have company! Only that she just coos and stares at people and luckily, doesn't cry in public.


At the museum last April- I- we came across this glass table with a lady's paraphernalia back in the days. Fans, combs, bonnets, fountain pens, a child's shoes. Exactly my fancied things.

 Who owned them many years ago? Was she a beautiful, long-haired woman, probably a landlord's wife? What about the pens- did she love to write? And they had a child who got baptized on an Easter Sunday and that same day the landlord was shot by an unknown gunman.... and the gun man happened to be his wife's former lover?

 Stop me before I incubate a whole new fiction.

Location: Sorsogon Museum and Heritage Center, Sorsogon City, Philippines