I am sure that there are things in your life or one thing that you never thought you would do until you've done it. Right now, I can think of only one thing. My mind is still trying to recover along with the rest of my body.
I never thought I would walk home from my office in Makati to my home in Project 4 in 2 and 1/2 hours until tonight.
I guess I was tired of the same routine everyday. The daily grind then after that, packing myself in with the other human sardines into the MRT coach. So today, I gave myself a respite. And even though my feet in sturdy Mellow Yellow, were groaning from under me, I arrived home safe and sound.
Think I will be eating heartily tonight. Afterwards, blessed sleep...
Good night!
P.S. I'm preparing also for our office's version of the biggest loser. Wanna go back to running, too.
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Catch Me A Dragonfly
How fast-paced my life has become. I now crave for those bygone days of getting idly by without guilt. But because I live in the age of automation when machines are slowly replacing humans in the workplace, when there is always the pressure of proving oneself superior to machine, I feel alienated and like fish out of water. Though my childhood ceased to be idyllic after I was forced to grow up at age five, the peacefulness of the first years of my life could easily be pictured in the context of where our family resided in perennially flooded Malabon.
Panghulo, Malabon, with its fishponds and swamps full of floating water spinach, was the backdrop against which my young life was painted. I can still see in my mind's eye the little garden with the grotto at the center. Goldfish shone bright under the sun almost all day while they swam in the water-filled moat around the grotto. Butterflies and dragonflies flitted about over the flower shrubs and away from my tiny hands. There in that garden, I could run free without being afraid to fall and skin my knee. I could let the hours pass without a care in the world except the grumbling of a hungry stomach and the nagging thought that probably my mom had already arrived from work and was looking for me. Swamp and pond waters submerged our house in stormy days. My father would carry me on his shoulders and we would catch fish through a makeshift rod's hook on which a wriggly worm dangled. It was a borrowed house with a borrowed garden in the middle of water and floating water spinach. But the memories are mine for as long as I live.
If I had my way then, I would never have left Malabon for the busier, mostly concrete Caloocan. For even though, we moved to another borrowed house that faced a church, heard Mass songs several hours in a day and the clanging of the bells for Angelus, I never felt I was any closer to God while I lived there.
I now live in Project 4, the house that my mother's accident insurance built. It has become a nondescript habitat that belied all the care that I put into it even before the babies came. This house now looks lived-in, worn and weary and if it ever breathed, it would have gasped and huffed and puffed from its toils. I had wanted to preserve it, even though the saddest years of my life are imprisoned in its walls and it witnessed horrors that should never visit a home. Sadly, its wooden beams and boards seem to be crumbling everyday. I had wanted it to be a living scrapbook of my children's childhood and growing years. All the firsts in their lives happened in this house. But the world as we know it will end, weather-beaten houses included, including my house on borrowed land.
I will try to walk instead of run. Running is too much to hope for now. But I need to feel the wind blowing on my face, my hair. I need to go back even once to that long-ago carefree days of my childhood and feel the innocence, the promise and hope of my early years once more. And in going back, I may return to my now taking everything with me to help me live.
Panghulo, Malabon, with its fishponds and swamps full of floating water spinach, was the backdrop against which my young life was painted. I can still see in my mind's eye the little garden with the grotto at the center. Goldfish shone bright under the sun almost all day while they swam in the water-filled moat around the grotto. Butterflies and dragonflies flitted about over the flower shrubs and away from my tiny hands. There in that garden, I could run free without being afraid to fall and skin my knee. I could let the hours pass without a care in the world except the grumbling of a hungry stomach and the nagging thought that probably my mom had already arrived from work and was looking for me. Swamp and pond waters submerged our house in stormy days. My father would carry me on his shoulders and we would catch fish through a makeshift rod's hook on which a wriggly worm dangled. It was a borrowed house with a borrowed garden in the middle of water and floating water spinach. But the memories are mine for as long as I live.
If I had my way then, I would never have left Malabon for the busier, mostly concrete Caloocan. For even though, we moved to another borrowed house that faced a church, heard Mass songs several hours in a day and the clanging of the bells for Angelus, I never felt I was any closer to God while I lived there.
I now live in Project 4, the house that my mother's accident insurance built. It has become a nondescript habitat that belied all the care that I put into it even before the babies came. This house now looks lived-in, worn and weary and if it ever breathed, it would have gasped and huffed and puffed from its toils. I had wanted to preserve it, even though the saddest years of my life are imprisoned in its walls and it witnessed horrors that should never visit a home. Sadly, its wooden beams and boards seem to be crumbling everyday. I had wanted it to be a living scrapbook of my children's childhood and growing years. All the firsts in their lives happened in this house. But the world as we know it will end, weather-beaten houses included, including my house on borrowed land.
I will try to walk instead of run. Running is too much to hope for now. But I need to feel the wind blowing on my face, my hair. I need to go back even once to that long-ago carefree days of my childhood and feel the innocence, the promise and hope of my early years once more. And in going back, I may return to my now taking everything with me to help me live.
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