2012 TO 2013 TRANSITION

Waiting … Waiting … Waited 

AND NOW IT’S GOING, going and the first month is gone.

      Twenty Thirteen feels like trying out a new sofa, sizing it up whether it fits snugly or it will leave some faint pain. 

      Twenty Twelve, for me, stayed soft as an easy chair even in its remaining days. Despite the onslaught of typhoon Pablo down south, we Filipinos were at our resilient, generous and loving best even in the worst of times. 

      The year’s last week proved to be a stroll down memory lane with an overload of the most, top, best, and worst of everything, as analysed in all forms of media. I don’t have such list because I will just round it off – no doubt, 2012 was a fantastic year for me and my loved ones! 

       For purposes of yearend lists, I visited one of 2012’s Top Destinations in Asia, Singapore [Travelers’Choice Awards 2012 by TripAdvisor]; and I wrote about one of the Most Bankable Fashion Cover Girls of the year, Angelica Panganiban. This was for MOD magazine’s July issue. [PEP.ph listed 13 of them and to make the list, these stars landed at least three covers from identified monthly local fashion magazines, including – aside from MOD –Preview, Cosmopolitan, Mega, Meg, Metro and Chalk.  Angelica also graced the covers of Cosmopolitan and Meg both in their August issues.]

   

 

      And so 2013 has another set of 365 days and it won’t be gone until the entire year is spent. It is my fervent prayer that the good times and the positive vibes will continue.

      It is my intention to make sure each day will be really truly fully spent. Using that famous line from the movie Dead Poets Society – carpe diem –I will seize the day ... I will seize each moment.

      Whether I am procrastinating or making sure everything gets done for the day. Even if I’m just watching TV or watching earth and sky from my small frontyard. 

      [Two weeks after the New year started and while watering my plants, I saw a rainbow and took some shots.

  

 

      [Right after the holidays, I noticed a cocoon hanging from my money tree and I stopped wondering why its leaves are full of holes – the caterpillar in it has been feeding on them and I didn’t mind because it will become a butterfly soon.]

 

      Each activity or action, every mood or reflection will matter. Notwithstanding the importance or triviality of what I am doing or what is happening, I will make the most of it. I will make sure that when looking back, I will merely look back and reminisce and not think or regret what might have been.

      But I wouldn’t be so serious and, borrowing the words of an Anonymous, I will always take life with a grain of salt … plus a slice of lemon and a shot of tequila.” 

      Carpe diem …

BOOB TUBE TIPS

     Waiting for what the Chinese call the Year of the Water Snake – although the said year officially starts this weekend -- begun right after Christmas Day or exactly seven days prior. It was like the lull before the storm but in an exciting way because we were then waiting for a brand new year to unfold.

Image from www.onlineastrology.com

 

      These days were quiet and uneventful but not necessarily boring. It was actually relaxing. After all, there was Be Careful With My Heart, ABS-CBN’s hit teleserye, to perk up my mornings; and interesting movies and other shows on cable TV to sort of brighten my nights.

       And there are just too many memories from the recent holiday parties and get-togethers that make me smile, laugh and misty-eyed, to keep me entertained even if alone.

       Twenty Twelve’s last few days saw me staying in front of the TV too much. And I really mean too much because I have chosen taglines from two TVCs to become my mantras –

      Hooray for Today. This is from McDonald’s and I like the jingle’s tempo which makes you think of sunshine and fresh air and green grass and it jibes with my morning prayer that starts, “Heavenly Father, thank you for another day …” I enjoy listening to the poetry in the jingle:  Hooray for stop’s and go’s … hooray for colors and quick hellos …

      Open Happiness. I love drinking ice cold Coke and I believe its TVC that you really open happiness when you uncap a bottle. At the risk of sounding like an endorser, the softdrink is refreshing and it goes well with all my favorite food. Just always open happiness – it’s like another version of good vibes always; shun the negative, etcetera etcetera … As Mother Teresa has said, there is no key to happiness because the door is always open.

                                                                                                                         

      Other tips picked up on the boob tube are –

      Kapit bisig by Maya in Be Careful …, putting emphasis on teamwork and a sense of “we’re all in this together”among family members and even friends; not to mention her good vibes [again] philosophy.

      “Maybe we could express ourselves more fully if we say it without words.” – The Darjeeling Limited on Star Movies … This is not so original and we’ve heard several versions of this but it’s true. As one of my favorite songs goes, “you say it best when you say nothing at all.”And this one, again by Anonymous, “silence is never misquoted.”

      “How hard can it be if you set your mind to it?” … This is Alvin telling his buddies in a Chipmunks movie [seen on Star Movies] after they were stranded in some deep forest. Again, this is something we’ve heard before but I liked the way the cute chipmunk delivered it – full of spunk.

      And then there were other interesting quotables – 

      “I think divorce should be made available to people who become homicidal at the sight of each other.” – Senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago when asked to comment about the Divorce Bill currently making the bishops go short to ballistics [seen on ABS-CBN’s TV Patrol].

      “You have to love yourself tapos kumuha ka pa ng isa pa o madami para magmahal sa sarili mo.” – Singer/Former Makati Councilor Rico Puno in response to ABS-CBN’s game show Minute to Win It host Luis Manzano’s question on how he stays young, when he guested in the said show.

LESSONS FROM THE CLUTTER

     With daughter Ghiselle back at work right after Christmas Day and then going to Boracay for a pre-New Year getaway with friends, I occupied myself cleaning the house but more of clearing it of my clutter and other oddments. 

      I took a second look at our veranda which has become a mini repository of old and current stuff and possessions – including an electric fan that slightly fans and my dad’s rocking chair that needs repair – and I found a lot of press kits, reference materials, paper placemats (?), loose photos and notebooks filled with quotations, and other printed material which have been occupying much-needed space.

      I also found a bunch of my cross-stitched work – some still to be completed, others waiting to be framed. One of them is a quotation – Live Well . Laugh Often .  Love Much – I myself designed by buying cross stitch letter patterns and chose the country colors I came to love since I started cross-stitching, as influenced by my sister Patty whose work adorns her house walls beautifully.

 

 

 

      One interesting thing I liked about cross-stitching back then was all those beautiful colors. I learned that there’s more to pink than just baby pink because there’s salmon and coral and they are all beautiful shades. I discovered another favorite color – aside from orange and green – and it’s called periwinkle, which is not just blue or violet or bluish violet but a mix of both colors wherein it’s not too blue nor too violet, just right and it’s beautiful.

      Okay, I don’t do descriptions well …

      Anyway, I was happy to find the old notebook of quotations because there were a lot of such notebooks which were Ondoy-ed and gone forever. I started collecting quotations and short anecdotes way back in high school and I would copy them to a notebook – from my dad’s monthly Reader’s Digest to my mom’s magazines and from almost everywhere, even framed sayings in restaurants.

      Opening the old notebook, the first quotation goes –

      ONE OUGHT, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.

      This was by author Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

      Next were some one-liners I copied from an old calendar in Nini’s desk during my F. Jacinto Group days – 

·       Start each day with a blank sheet.

·       Never let the urgent crowd out the important.

·       Take care of your relationships.

·       Life does not stand still for you.

·       Take the road less travelled.

·       Fill your life with good memories.

      And then there’s more –

·       All of us could take a lesson from the weather. It pays no attention to criticism.

·       Life may not be the party we hoped for, but while we’re here, we might as well dance.

·       Life is a journey, not a guided tour.

·       Life is what happens while you are making plans.
 

      Here are two by Bill Gates – 

·       Life is not fair – get used to it.

·       The world won’t care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something before you feel good about yourself.

      This one shared by Atty. Pompey [may he rest in peace], again from my F. Jacinto Group days –

      LOOK FOR the humor in the serious; joy in the sad; strength in the weak; and the best in the bad.

 

      And here’s something to comfort me when household chores, most especially dirty dishes, start to pile up – 

      THANK GOD for dirty dishes, they have a tale to tell. While other folks go hungry, we’re eating pretty well. With home and health and happiness, we shouldn’t want to fuss, for by this stack of evidence, God’s very good to us.

      Finally, I found my Desiderata, another Ondoy victim. I will ask my brother Abe to fix it so that it can be hanged again. I like the entire piece but I especially like the following –

      Be yourself. Especially, do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity & disenchantment it is perennial as the grass.

      There is one important lesson these clearing operations taught me and that is I should have learned a long time ago what to let go and when to let go. [Paper placemats, seriously?]

BOOK REVIEWS

     Next, I checked out the pile of books and photo albums at the foot of the stairs and in rearranging them, I came upon some of my favorites – The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery; Hope For The Flowers by Trina Paulus; I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou; The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran; The God Of Small Things by Indian writer Arundhati Roy; A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain by Robert Olen Butler; Enough Rope by Dorothy Parker; and The Velveteen Rabbit by Margerry Williams. 

      The last book is an adaptation and I gave this to my daughters on Christmas 1994. There was also Tamar and the Tiger by Susan Jeschke, a prize daughter Ghiselle got during a coloring contest sponsored by Wendy’s at Greenbelt when she was only five years old.

 

      On impulse, I picked up The Little Prince and started browsing through the pages. I have read this book a lot of times and it never fails to touch my heart. My favorite line – and I’m sure everyone who has read it share this – is “It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”

      I scanned through the pages of Hope for the Flowers and I remember what happened to my money tree.

      Hope for the Flowers is a simple story of two caterpillars  – one, named Stripe, sets out in the outside world feeling there must be something more than eating leaves, only to get disappointed; while the other, Yellow, stays and let nature takes its course while eating leaves and spinning her own cocoon, until she was transformed into a beautiful butterfly. Of course, it is a happy ending as Yellow waits for Stripe who realizes in the end that he must spin his own cocoon to become a butterfly and get the chance to reach the sky.

      I am not a good storyteller but this book is highly recommended to those who have no patience in reaching their goals and, most especially, those who cannot be satisfied as well as those who give up easily.

      The Velveteen Rabbit is a beautiful story about being real. I gave this book to my daughters when they were in their pre-teens. 

 

      My favorite excerpt – 

      “Real isn’t how you are made. It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play    with, but really loves, then you become Real.”

     “Does it hurt?

      “Sometimes. When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.”

      It has been a long time since I read a book – a printed one I mean. My daughters Ghiselle and Pee Ann gifted me with an iPad and they seemed to have uploaded a whole library in its iBooks for me. There's even a stack of Archie comic in it. I don’t really miss the feel of a paperback because I think it’s more like what you are reading – whether you are turning the pages made of paper or touching an iPad screen. I have hugged my iPad a couple of times when carried away with a passage or an excerpt – like those, among others, from Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat Pray Love: “People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that’s what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that is holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life.”; and Stieg Larsson’s The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo: “Love was that moment when your heart was about to burst.” – the way I did with a paperback and it feels just as good. Again, it’s the book not the medium used.

 

       Right now, I am reading – alternately – The Wedding by Nicholas Sparks and The Cardinal of the Kremlin by Tom Clancy. And as early as page 26 of The Wedding, I already placed my iPad near my chest when touched by a romantic passage … Surely, you know how Mr. Sparks writes – as in The Notebook and A Walk To Remember, among others.

 

‘GREEN’ LEARNINGS

      Then it was time to attend to our small garden … 

      In between the holiday rush, Ghiselle and I went to Manila Seedling to buy garden soil and some pebbles to make our garden a real garden again instead of a mini forest, which it has become. 

       My brother Abe, who has a green thumb, volunteered to beautify my garden again as his Christmas gift and he did this on the 30^th. It was fun having him around the house as we laughed, looked forward to the New Year, talked about family and common friends, and anything under the sun, including those crazy politicians. 

       He also danced with a group of senior ladies who came to visit the neighborhood in a yearend carolling. Upon request – even if it was meant to be a joke – the graceful ladies, who reminded me of our mom, obliged to dance Gangnam Style.

 

      In giving my garden a makeover, my brother got rid of all those overgrowing plants and I sort of worried that they may not grow back. He assured me they will and right now new plants are sprouting once more, including the weeds. But they’re beautiful … anything green is beautiful.

 

      This brings me to that episode in The Voice – caught it in its replay on AXN also during the week of waiting for 2013 – when one of the hosts, CeeLo Green, sang Bein’ Green with Kermit the Frog [as seen in the photo below from www.nbc.com/the voice/]. I especially liked the following lyrics –

   

It’s not easy being green

It seems you blend in with so many

other ordinary things …

But green’s the color of Spring

and green can be cool and friendly-like …

And green can be big like an ocean,

or important like a mountain,

or tall like a tree …

      Green is indeed cool, being the color of nature and life itself. I find it relaxing to just sit in my monoblock chair – soon it’ll be my dad’s rocking chair because I’ll have it repaired shortly – and look at my small garden and appreciate every leaf, stem, stalk and sometimes, every flower that grows in it.

     Thank God for small gardens for they signify growth and the green colors mean that life is always fresh and flourishing.  

 

      And so 2012 is history and we’re done waiting for 2013. The New Year is not so new anymore and it’s the Chinese’s turn to wait for their Year of the Water Snake.

      Ghiselle and I, together with Abe, waited for the New Year at Eastwood City, and welcomed it with fireworks, some noisemakers and confetti and drinking and dancing and simply enjoying the festive atmosphere. 

      The last time we spent New Year’s Eve in the streets and with strangers was in 1999 along Ayala Avenue and the three of us were joined by Pee Ann, niece Rica, and cousin Robert.

      The first day of 2013 started for us with a buffet breakfast still at Richmonde Hotel Eastwood and then off to St. Peter Parish along Commonwealth Avenue for my thanksgiving mass. I had a lot to thank God for in 2012 … actually, I thanked Him for the entire 2012 and requested Him that all the good things will continue in 2013.

      My clearing operations continue as there are just too many in the apartment that must go. Too many memories but these are just the physical part so it’s time for us to part ways.

 

      In ending, I’d like to go back to that episode of The Voice with the celebrity hosts – Christina Aguillera, Blake Shelton,  CeeLo and Adam Levine [I just love this guy and he is the reason why I watch the reality singing contest; and the photo below from www.nbc.com/the voice/ showing him sitting comfortably in his chair with one leg resting on the chair’s edge is one of my favorite among his many positions while watching the contestants perform]– singing Time of Your Life by Green Day. I think its lyrics are a fitting Auld Lang Syne to a great 2012 –

It’s something unpredictable but in the end

It’s right, I hope you’ve had the time of your life

So take the photographs and steel frames in your mind

Hang it on a shelf in good health and good time

Tattoos and memories and dead skin on trial
For what it’s worth it was worth the while.

    

     Indeed it’s a wrap for 2012 … and 2013 is rolling forward – and fast!