Tusok tusok

Passed by Insular Building today on our way home. It's one of those Makati buildings that have never really changed, not even a facelift of new paint, Jollibee still there. I was reminded of those first few months of working, eight years ago. Took the bus everyday from Sampaloc to Makati via PVP liner. During flood season, Carla and I would be walking that Gil Puyat stretch in knee-deep water to make it to our shift, hand dryers become leg dryers. Fishball was my favorite part of the day. That ambiance of Makati afternoon, everyone is dressed in slacks and collared shirts, buildings as big as your dreams. Makati has giant fishballs for some reason. Also, there are no shortcuts to any place worth going.There are no shortcuts.

Big fish (Philippine Star Article for My Favorite Book, Lifestyle Section, Mar 17, 2013)

By Mitzie Celeste M. Luna (The Philippine Star) | Updated March 17, 2013 - 12:00am

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MANILA, Philippines - You might be poor, your shoes might be broken, but your mind is a palace.” At 10, Frank falls ill with typhoid. He has to stay in the hospital and gets his hands on some books. Reading Shakespeare transports him to a new world, different from what he knows. Away from the flea-stricken mattress, away from Malachy’s foul, alcohol breath, away from the floods inside the house during winter, away from it all.  “It’s like having jewels in my mouth when I say the words,” he utters.
My grandmother bought me a pad of white paper that I filled with poetry. She thought it was nonsense that I’d waste so  many pages writing down short sentences, each having its own line. The last page was filled with scribbles of my signature, deciding which one I should use to trademark my work. Poetry transported me to another world. Away from grandma’s illness, away from the questions of my mother not being there, away from missing grandpa who had to work far away to send us to school, away from it all. That pad of paper was my pride and joy. It gave me the confidence that I can create something, that I can be something.
Angela’s Ashes is Frank McCourt’s Pulitzer-winning memoir of his childhood in Brooklyn, Ireland and Limerick. He was the first child of seven. His mother, Angela, was pregnant with Frank when he married Malachy. Malachy, his father, spends his meager wages on alcohol, often leaving the family deprived of food, clothes and a decent life. Angela’s Ashes is honest, heart-breaking, yet charming. And while many of us often talk about our childhood with fond memories of hide-and-seek, Barbie dolls and toy soldiers, Frank speaks about his struggles. The family lived in a decrepit house that flooded during the winter. Wondering where the next meal would come from was a daily ordeal.  His little sister, Margaret, dies in her sleep. His younger brother, Oliver, dies within a year after moving to Ireland. His twin, Eugene, dies six months after from pneumonia. The kids did not have shoes or sweaters for school in the cold of Ireland.
The McCourts named the second floor of the house “Italy.” They would live in Italy when the first floor became damp and chilly from the winter. Frank survives through humor and acceptance.
We had our own version of Italy, too. At least three times in a year, our house would be flooded because of the poor drainage system in the province. The fridge, the gas stove and everything was on the second floor inside the two bedrooms. While everyone else was annoyed about the situation, I was having fun. It was like living in Little Tykes or like camping. Everything you needed was within arm’s reach.
When the water level was low enough, grandma would buy fish and release a couple of them inside the house. My brother and I would then have a mini fish-catching tournament inside the house for a highly coveted P5 coin.

Lifestyle Feature ( Article MRec ), pagematch: 1, sectionmatch:

I read McCourts book when I was about 23. Young enough to do my own fresh recollection of my childhood but old enough to understand what this book was telling me. “When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I survived at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while.”
Mom left to never come back again when I was two. I was perfectly fine with that, I suppose, because grandma took care of us. She passed away when I was 12.  I remember that night when my little charmed life was summarized into boxes, my doll house disassembled so everything could fit inside the jeepney. It was a long, dark drive to our relatives’ home. Our new home. There was no more grandma, no more packed lunches and church every Sunday, just life with strangers.
My brother and I slept in the living room and were not allowed to watch television for more than an hour. We never belonged so I wrote down all my hate. People thought I was weird but I thought everyone else was weirder.
Frank was telling me that the goo, the meat, and the richness of life lie in what you are able to overcome. That the beauty in life is the gap between your questions and the answers. God wanted me to tell a story. Just like how He wanted Frank to tell his story. This book helped me translate my anger and hate into something more profound and meaningful.
Malachy, his father, found a job in England but never supported his struggling family. Frank became the man of the house at 13, working odd jobs like writing threatening collection letters for a moneylender, delivering coal and newspapers to make ends meet. One day, the moneylender asked Frank to get him a glass of sherry. Frank found her lifeless when he returned. He took her purse and threw the paper with the list of debtors into the river.
Often the most underprivileged make the boldest decisions in life. No opportunity is wasted as you do not know when the next one will come your way. Always in a hurry, time is your enemy. I studied hard, worked hard. Never accepted my own excuses nor do I have tolerance for the excuses of others. I was determined to turn around my fortune, determined to make my grandparents proud. “The happy childhood is hardly worth your while,” Frank wrote. However, I was determined to get mine back no matter how old I was. To again have a home I could call my own where I could arrange the bed, the couch, and everything to my heart’s desire. To choose the colors of the curtains and sheets. To watch television all day. To use or not use coasters. Freedom was my idea of getting my childhood back.
Frank returns to America with the little money he has managed to put together. Back in New York he starts anew, hopeful and determined.
His work wins the Pulitzer.
A child, a poor child can dream.  I am imagining a seven-year-old boy or girl now out in the streets at night selling garlands. A child at this moment hiding under his bed while his parents are arguing. A hungry child, a child weeping for his sick mother. They will become president or doctor or philanthropists and tell us their stories someday.
And although my struggles were not as hard as Frank’s — but maybe just as painful to an extent — I can say that I am the person I am today because of my childhood, because of my grandparents, because of cruel and kind people I have met along the way, because of not having too much.
“I am for who I was in the beginning but now is present and I exist in the future,” said Frank.
Everything makes perfect sense now.

Middle child syndrome

I am Louie-free in the next 2 weeks. I know it sounds wimpy but this is the longest time I'll be away from my brother and the longest I will be home alone (since 2002). Here's the gameplan.

1. Brainwash Kyle and convince him that Louie left for good so I will be his new favorite human being. I plan to give him treats twice a day (as opposed to Louie's one per day rule). I will give him a bath once a week because he hates taking a bath (and I hate trying to tame him in the process)

2. Take out my speakers and play my pretentious music with no one turning it off to watch those 10AM tagalized cartoons in ABSCBN. Who watches those anyway?! Intro goes a little something like, "Merong French bread at Spanish bread, pero bakit walang Japanese bread?" Migraine-inducing.

3. Finish all my downloads without anyone complaining that I ate up all the bandwidth which resulted to a long list of 20%, 28%, 97% downloads in Vuze.

4. Sleep in Louie's bed - more comfortable and best view of the TV.

5. Use the Proactiv products that he intentionally hides from me. And yes, I know where they are

6. Spend all the five-peso and ten-peso coins he saves in his tin can for taxi fare.

7. Use his beloved white Hanes t-shirts for sleeping

8. Eat his lechon Cebu, Cronuts, Vienna sausage. The Jalapeno Cheetos I will share with Kyle if that makes him feel better

9. Exercise to my 20-minute Youtube workouts without being ridiculed or my video taken secretly (for future blackmailing purposes)

10. Project X! Yeah!

11. Try my best not to cry.

This is what it's all about

Palanca entry in progress - A Memoir

R-L: Louie, my brother, me as Rabittus, Jeng, Joan, Lyks, my way cooler cousins

Glimpse to the ending of this memoir

Pink slippers this year. After two hours of tossing and turning on our thirty-year old katre, I finally made up my mind. It was the only item missing from my list. Grandma made the perfect mixture of tepid water. Five in the morning and I could hear the kettle blowing, the signal to take a bath. I never really needed that alarm, I was waiting for this day like Christmas.

Summer vacation was nothing but a vicious cycle of hanging and folding clothes, suffocating dragonflies in matchboxes and make-believe games. I almost wanted to drink the Kool Aid we made out of atsuete that I bought using my one trillion peso cigarette foils. Little Miss Philippines pageant would have broken the summer monotony but grandma said I will not qualify because of the scars on my legs from running around too much, not to mention my crooked teeth.

What I despised most about summer were the chores. Grandma managed to keep us busy by adding more to the usual cleaning up and dishes. She had our coconut trees pruned to engage us in the drab, cyclic task of making broomsticks. One by one, we had to remove the leaves, using a knife to get the midribs. Approximately four hundred pieces for a single broomstick. My boredom multiplied four hundred fold.

We did not have a telephone so we wrote a letter to grandpa every week. I would be sitting by the dresser at three in the afternoon with a pad of yellow paper while Grandma is in bed telling me what to write, almost like talking to grandpa.

My grandpa liked my handwriting but told me to be more consistent.  He noticed the change in my stroke and increasing erasures towards the end of the letter. This task I enjoyed because I can write the things I wanted secretly. P.S. Anais Anais perfume, Trolls, Target corned beef. Send to King Wilkinson Saudi Arabia Ltd.

During Holy Week, grandma would wake us up at five in the morning to clean the church. When she starts getting busy talking to the other women, I would sleep in on a far away pew. I could not wait for my cousins’ rescue to invite me to stay at their house for a week or two. They had cable TV and a VCR rental place inside the village. We would stay up till two in the morning watching My Stepmother is an Alien or play Miss Universe and no one will pester us to go to sleep.

LA Lopez

Lim’s School Supplies is about thirty square meters big. You do not get a cart or a basket. You simply had to hand your list over to the saleslady who will get everything for you in a matter of seconds. The shelves are packed with Manila paper, long and short envelopes, folders, scented erasers, all pens imaginable. She just knew exactly where every item was.

This was my candy store. I would have been so happy with the plain blue ones that come with a plastic cover or the Corona brand that my cousins had. They would then cover them with magazine clips of Benetton models and I thought it was the coolest thing in the world. But one of those notebooks is equivalent to two of those dreadful cheap notebooks that grandma got for us every year – thin, almost translucent paper, smudged lines. To top it all off, LA Lopez on the cover with his infamous two thumbs up pose. Mr. Lim masterfully calculates items manually using the rule of tens in Addition. I watched closely, year after year, answering those damn window cards had never been the same. Right across was the dry market. I got my pink slippers with a Snoopy strap.

I hurry to my room and start wrapping the notebooks with colored paper. I need to cover LA Lopez’ face and I have to do it quick. The inception of my aesthetics.

Regime

Lubao Central Elementary School (LCES), a public school in San Nicolas 1st, Lubao Pampanga, alma mater of former president Diosdado Macapagal,  actor Rogelio Dela Rosa, dad, my grandmas
and grandpas, aunts and uncles. The legacy had to go on. We did not have to buy books, did not have to pay for any tuition except for a one time sixty-peso Parent-Teacher Association fee.
The word “Central” always denoted better than the rest, better than the other schools without the world “Central” like Sta. Monica Elementary School, Sta. Lucia Elementary School, Sta. Barbara Elementary School. Expectations were simply higher. I was in third grade when Diosdado Macapagal
celebrated his birthday and had a motorcade around town. We were lined up outside the school, holding banners that we had to wave when his convoy arrived.

Leaning against the metal fence, with the putrid, lingering scent of the sewage in front of me, I told myself that I will be the next Philippine president from LCES. This is my first memory of a dream, first memory of a goal. I mentioned this to grandpa and he supported the idea. After a few months, the dream changed and I wanted to be a poet. He said poets are broke so I changed that to journalist. My uncle said you had to be really pretty to be a journalist so I changed that to Psychologist. “The table is now open for nominations for President”. It’s time to straighten up my back and adjust my barrett because I knew I would be nominated and I would have to take over till we elect all the officers all the way up to class muse.

I have memorized the class election script and procedure by heart. I took the role seriously for six years. I had a
separate notebook for my collectibles – 25 cents for every Tagalog or Kampampangan word spoken, 25 cents for Noisy, 25 cents for Loitering or Standing without permission, 25 cents Littering. I kept on writing them up especially when the teacher stepped out.

I was not comfortable remitting a small amount to my teacher at the end of the week. So sometimes, I would get two or three pesos from my allowance and write additional, imaginary offenses to make it all add up. Three pesos from my ten-peso allowance that grandma religiously leaves on top of our betamax, two pesos for the jeepney ride.  

We started off our day with a “health inspection”. One by one, we had to check our classmates’ fingernails, ears,
clothes, hair and then report our findings in class. If everyone was “clean”, you had to say “I am glad to inform you that everyone in Row 1 is clean today”. Class applauds. If there were adverse findings, you had to say “I am sorry to inform you that one of us in Row 1 is not clean today”. The class is then compelled to say “Who?!” in unison and the reporter had to divulge who that person was and say something like “Mitzie has earwax today”

I was a regular at Quiz Bees except Math and the best part of that was being excused from all my afternoon classes for tutorials. I would have access to materials that were advanced for my grade and that made me feel invincible. Annual rings tell you how old a tree was. A meteorologist is the discipline and study of weather and the atmosphere, not meteors. Grandma will include every Quiz Bee in the litany. We prayed the
everyday at six in the afternoon. Towards the fifth mystery, I would start getting sleepy, my responses almost faint. I would then feel a quick,stinging pinch on my belly and my responses are louder than ever. Consistency,
consistency.

For a poster making contest, Sir Arthur made sure that my lines had consistent depth and thickness. The lightest color always in between. I loved his Industrial Arts class. Using graphing paper forperspective drawing made me feel like a grown-up. I would attend every graduation ceremony that was the same day they awarded honor students. The weekend before that, we would dye grandma’s hair with Bigen using an old toothbrush. She
looked forward to these days.

As soon as they announce the honor roll, we will write a letter to grandpa to ask for my reward for being first in class. The fruits of my labor included a brick game, a family computer and a huge two-storey doll house. This doll house was pretty special. Its room was at the center of the second floor. It had glass doors that opened to a porch. I rearranged the tiny furniture almost every day. I ruled the world.

Every year, we heard the Valedictorian’s speech. It was the same old, four-page speech that they made each First Honor pupil memorize. I knew someday I would be reciting this speech on my Graduation Day. I have secretly practiced the opening part where you had to acknowledge the guests, teachers, graduates, the nods, the hand gestures, the smile. This was all predictable so I paid more attention to the guest speaker. A guest
speaker made her own speech.

Before class, we had to sweep the lawn in front of the campus until about eight in the morning. After burning the dried leaves and trash, we had to draw horizontal lines in the areas devoid of grass using a stick broom.

I was chatting with my classmate for about three minutes to rest my arms. The broomsticks gave me calusses. Before I knew it, my teacher was behind me and when I turned around, she started at me for a second then said “You are a no good leader”.

There was a lump in my throat the whole day from holding back my tears. We walked back to the classroom by the periphery so we won’t make footprints and ruin the horizontal lines. The words echoed endlessly and from then on I swept as if someone was always watching me, with
purple eye shadow.

Homework

I can only wish that my teacher will extend today’s class, or that the jeepney breaks down on the way home. I can imagine grandma waiting by the door step, feeling the stinging pinches from her long-red nails with a white lunula perfectly arched by Ate Yolly. I stole the almost one-foot long guava tree that she has been taking care of for a few months now. The Bangkok type that bears gargantuan fruit that I had to sacrifice for the sake of Science. We had to prove that lack of sunlight or oxygen is detrimental to plants.

Chickens petrify me. We had chickens bredand trained for cockfighting. They were aggressive and would put up a good damn fight even with that dummy made out of rags and sticks. I made sure I did not create any noise while I snuck out of bed at five in the morning, headed to the kitchen to get a nice, sturdy plastic and opened the door slowly, almost lifting it so that the base does not screech against the floor.

I was eye to eye with the chicken now, contemplating on a plan to shoo it away from its triangle coop. I threw a
pebble at it, the absolute worst idea in the world.

Cockadoodle doo says my animal story book and I knew this was a big, fat lie. The sound is
a boisterous, contagious bucuuuuuck. In less than a minute, there was a chaotic symphony of buckuuucks around the house. I had to dig through the pile of chicken poop under the coop and put it in my plastic quick. I ran outside the gate and kept it there so I can pick it up before riding the jeepney. They cannot find out that I was the orchestrator of the untimely alarm so I went straight to the bathroom to shower. My uncles are paranoid now, thinking someone was trying to break in and steal the animals for the upcoming three-cock derby. My dad started sleeping in the living room since then.

At school, all the fertilizers are all in one area now. Highest points went to the moist, dark cow dung. My dry, loose chicken poop went to the trash can. We are now ready to make our plots for Chinese cabbage seedlings. I always made sure that I got the hoe first, the garden hoe was as tall as I was, making me look extra
hardworking for purple eyeshadow.

Once a month, we would have to polish the classroom wooden floor using candle wax balls. This was our assignment for All Saints’ Day. Right after the family rosary by my great grandparents’ tomb, I would start collecting dripping candle wax, shape and mold them into balls. I would intentionally apply thick wax to make it harder for the boys to scrub it off with coconut husk. The transformation of wax lines to a gleaming, dark wooden
floor after the scrubbing was a sight to behold.


Home remedies and pageantry

Making her way thru our red rusty gate in high waist slim jeans, Ate Vangie is our ever-reliable, resident beautician. She is a relative, just as we are relatives with almost practically everyone in
Sta. Monica. I have been pleasantly surprised many times when I did not have to pay for the one peso jeepney drive because the driver was my dad’s friend or classmate, grandma’s godson or our labandera’s husband. Six degrees of separation incarnate. One peso extra that I can put to the Noisy, Standing,
Speaking fund. Dad said Ate Vangie’s father used to submerge him in a drum of water when he was a kid, hoping that would straighten him up and stop him from playing dolls. All the women in our family have donned the
telephone-cord curls hairstyle. To achieve the look, you would have to put up with that rancid setting lotion, the small pink curlers with the rubber band and half a can of Aquanet to hold it together. I would lose about twenty
percent of my hair in the process and contribute a decimal percentage to ozone depletion from all the hairspray I have used.

Grandma had the perfect remedy. Once a month, she would massage my scalp with sabila (Aloe Vera). This was the day when I would not dare go out and play because I smelled like a walking, sweaty
armpit. She would also clean my wounds everyday with scalding boiled guava leaves and apply sebo de macho to make the scars lighter.

Ms Spain, United Nations Day (1990). Ate Vangie envisioned an elite Espanyola look for me. She made a cardboard cut-out of a tiarra, wrapped it in aluminum foil and placed the black, lace veil that my grandma used in church. She pulled my hair in a tight half-bun that made my eyes almost chinky. As a finishing touch, she gave me these long, fake lashes using Caimito sap as glue. I was a seven-year old drag queen.

My escort, Carlos was wearing a vested white suit with a butterfly collar. The huge, black, velvet wide-brimmed hat was hard to ignore. We were instructed to not smile too much. That was not so hard to do because of the scorching heat, a two-hour parade and a throbbing scalp from about twenty bobby pins. I thought Carlos looked more like a magician.

Miss Mousie (1990) was the lead role for a school play and we had to compete against five other schools from our town. I had a five-page script but there was this one particular scene that we had to rehearse for about half a day

Mr. Frog: Miss Mousie, will you marry me?
Miss Mousie: Way down yonder in the hollow tree

I had to say that line in a proud, overbearing fashion. I did not know what it meant till now but I just know
exactly what to say when someone proposes to me. We had to repeat this scene
till it was perfect, this was the key moment of the play. I continued rehearsing at home because I had
to impress everyone, especially Mr. Frog. How I loved those days when my teacher would ask me to go to their classroom and everyone in his class would go “yiheeeee!” I would be standing by the door, nonchalant. This feeling gave birth for what I call the perfume-wearing phase of dating.

Ms. Junior Escoda (1994). Josefa Llanes Escoda founded the Girl Scout of the Philippines and is often confused with Melchora Aquino in the one thousand peso bill. Annually, every class would have one representative. The girl who sells the most number of tickets will be crowned Ms. Escoda. I sold 1500 pesos worth of tickets courtesy of our neighbors, aunts and uncles. Grandma hated any activity that required us to spend.

Wearing an ill-fitted white sequined gown I borrowed from my cousin, I paused awkwardly with Harry for pictures. He was class salutatorian. The teachers would always partner us up in school activities and make us an item of some sort because they think it’s cute but we both knew that our competition is cut-throat.

I must admit that he was better in Math. Anyone was better than me in Math. I knew Harry would be observing me during those oral group exercises, trying to lip read to see if I had the right answers. Mr. Lim never had to convert fractions into decimals nor did he have to answer questions like “In three more years Ben's grandfather will be six
times as old as Ben was last year. When Ben's present age is added to his grandfather's present age, the total is 68. How old is each one now? These types of questions make me want to cry.

School band majorette (1994-1996) I have always been fascinated by the senior girls who led the school band during parades. So when my teacher asked me to be one, I said yes without bothering to ask for grandma’s permission. I knew she would scold me for this especially because we would have to get my costume and boots made. The boots alone would cost two thousand pesos to be custom-made at Romy’s Shoes – knee-high white
leather with yellow fringes.

I was not paying attention during the grueling one hour castigation with grandma, all I had in mind was the
xylophone. Majorettes were allowed to take xylophones home to practice. I placed it near the couch so I can take an occasional glance while grandma was talking.

A few minutes after, I was happily playing Mary Had a Little Lamb. The arts make life more bearable, practice it no matter how well or badly said Kurt Vonnegut. Harold and Maude cheered me up.
ending in progress..

See you tomorrow

We finally left the dinner table after two months of planning the reunion. Most of the girls kissed and hugged each other, guys shook hands, others anxious to go home. We said "till next time" and parted ways.

Your best friend dropped you home after lunch after the weekly Monday date. You are halfway through your list of restaurants now. Next Monday is that new Japanese place, then probably try that new tea place before the hype dies again.

Sent a SMS to my brother to tell him that I already paid for all the bills and he replies, "I'll give my share when I get home"

 My cousins and I had been looking forward to our ultimate getaway April next year. Just talking about it makes us giggle like kids

See you when I get home, till next time, till next Monday, till next year. Life has a funny way of making you so confident in the future. As certain as the sun will rise in the East, as certain as you will wake up tomorrow, eat, work, sleep and wake up again.

Routine takes hostages. Routine and predictability makes us confident. But are we to blame about this confidence if God makes you see and love this person everyday for 2 or 10 or 50 years. You just know the newspaper guy comes everyday at 6:00 am in his mountain bike,  that the guy in the sitcom will always be on at 7:00, that your brother will always be home by 4:00. Then one day they don't show up. 

When you lose someone you love, in the most unexpected time and ways, the line "See you tomorrow" becomes peculiar. You look at people like bubbles with their entire life story, memories, thoughts, feelings and plans inside this fragile dome that can rupture anytime. No pattern, no warning, only a momentary rainbow hue before it bursts. Confirmation.

Anything and anyone can be taken away from us anytime except perspective. Getting angry is a choice, losing faith is a choice. You can also choose to love bubbles liked you've never loved before. Every second is a gift. Memory is a gift.

- For our dearest Ate Des, Joan, Bajeng, Tita Pines, Tito Alex, Abram, Alessi. May you find the answers soon. Journey well Kuya. 

Crayons

I am not sure which part of life it is when you have it all figured out. Maybe after 40, maybe never. Does the comfort of an old rocking chair make you at peace with evolution or at peace with death, life after death or cowboys and aliens. I see my grandfather on the porch each morning for hours staring at the grass and the sky and I am curious to know if he is at a constant state of retrospect. Old people talk in retrospect all the time , they talk about the war, their lasting friendships, the hard kind of life, the things they never needed. They hardly ask.

Generations had lived and died before us and probably ALL possible problems known to man have occurred -- from the trivial like removing ketchup stains from your shirt, the different types of knots, making the perfect mix tape or the most complex like balancing equations or balancing your head and your heart. Everything has happened. Every solution written somewhere, a phone call to mom, a google away.

But it's not about knowing what the answer is, most of the time we already know – from the VCR manual, simple inner discernment or good ol’ plain common sense. We know. It's knowing that the choice is wrong but we do it anyway so we experience and live through what happens, to see, to feel, to get burned and to heal again. The greatest story you will ever tell is that gash on your leg on your first attempt to ride a bike. That you wore braces because your brother threw an orange at you and lost a canine. That life is not easy and I know it.

The juice, the goo, the meat of life is in the bridge between questions and answers. The crucial moment when you were seven and you had to decide if the apple will be colored red or green. The stop and go.