The story of a postcard girl and her red-and-blue checkered shirt

I bought the red-and-blue checkered shirt from one of the baratillos that had sprung up all over the city, taking over prewar buildings and filling them up to the rafters with straight-from-the-factories QC rejects. That $130 Nike shoes you are undecided about? Those are made in the Philippines and they are selling it at $15 in the baratillos. The shirt was a buena-mano buy: early morning first sale, to give the vendor good luck.

I didn't really need the shirt, then. I was more entranced with the idea that I could impart good luck to some stranger. I hope I did.

In the mid-90s I was a community organizer, living in farming communities and a witness to the painstaking process by which farmers organized themselves. I had brought the shirt with me.

The shirt became part of my daily work-clothes. I wore it when I went out to the fields with the women’s group, to pull out weeds from the corn fields, not so much as protection against the sun (I was in my 20s and when you are that young, you are indestructible and immortal) as against the corn leaves' very fine hairs (trichomes, they are called, according to Wikipedia) that made our skin itch like no one's business.

The weeds that we used to pull out were of two kinds: the easy ones and the malicious ones the farmers called bergansosa. It was a malicious weed because it grew mean thorns that do not grow out like normal thorns do, which was upward and towards the sun but downward, towards the roots, so that when you pulled them out the thorns would sink into the skin of your palm and break-off. If you were allergic to its sap, your hand was bound to swell even after you’ve dug out the thorns one by one with tweezers.

The women told stories of carabaos getting caught in a bergansosa patch (it can grow up to 3 feet high) and as thick-skinned as it was, the animal couldn’t move until its farmer came, armed with a bolo to hack away at the clump of pure nastiness.

I’ve learned to pull out bergansosa the way farmers did, which was to grasp the weed firmly and tightly, thorns and all, and to twist then pull quickly, never slackening the grip. Its roots were thick and spread deeply underground, so pulling at it halfheartedly wasn't exactly a bright idea.

So, there we were, me and the farmer’s wives and daughters, in our identical long sleeved shirts, bent over or squatting between rows of corn plants, synchronically pulling out the weeds, listening to radio soap operas about star-crossed lovers (he was rich, she was poor, or, for variety, she was rich and he was poor), the almost-noonday sun beating hard on our heads.

We could have made a real cute postcard picture for tourism, selling the exoticism of backbreaking and thankless backward farming systems*.

And you could have been reading the blog account of a famous postcard girl and her red-and-blue checkered shirt.

But you are not.


* The ‘planting rice is never fun’ one is a turn-of-the-century tourism crap. Advertisement has evolved: We need new crap.

Packing

Boxes. Boxes. Boxes. Currently putting everything into boxes.

Books.

Notebooks.

Cups.

Candles.

Two years’ worth of memories in that stuffy little hole; 9 months’ worth of unravelling.

Blankets.

Pillows.

Stuffed animals.

I’d like to bring the laughter and the whispered conversations. No, leave the ball of misery and frustration behind, let the new owners sweep it out. But, hey, let’s bring the twisted sheets that has the ghost-smell of sweat and sex and your shampoo.

Hairbrushes.

Pens and pencils and paperclips.

A tea set.

The world map.

Square blank spaces on the wall where van Gogh’s prints and my drawings used to hang in their identical frames, your birthday gifts to me. Remember how unoriginal we were at gift-giving and gift-receiving? You pretended it was nothing special. I pretended I did not know it was for me.

And books.

Books.

and some more books.

I got 7 boxes of books already, sweety. I want to put everything in boxes. I do too, you said, But can we go to bed early tonight? I want to snuggle.

The color of light is pink

Yes we are moving apartments.

No, that's imprecise: We are abandoning the cubicle for a decent apartment.

For various reasons.

One being that it has become too stifling for me. It was my darkness, the bed I did not want to get out of, the echo chamber that still reverberates with my angry, sad thoughts. It is time to move on, to move out into the sun, to move.

Another reason is that it is a fire hazard. It's stuck in the middle of a haphazardly-planned apartment complex and is part of the owner's old house which is made mainly old wood. We have only one exit: through the front door of our cubicle and then through the front gate. I spent not a few hours imagining what if the neighbor's afternoon (daily, come rain or typhoons) bonfire (composed of garbage and leaves) catches the bamboo wall that separates their yard from our back porch. Or, what if the family in the apartment next to ours forgets to unplug their electric flatiron. I kept thinking: Shit, I won't be able to save all my books. I took to sleeping with a bucket-full of water in the bathroom. Just in case.

Paula may have other issues with the place. One it being the main thoroughfare for cockroaches and mice when they hold their nocturnal conferences for world domination. Or when they are feeling neighborly and bringing a bowl of whatever diseased dishes they make to the new rat family that had just moved in across the floor hole.

Also, there's this particularly ornery and spindly spider that took up residence in the corner of our bathroom which just freaks the sweetheart out. For the information of everyone who has an arachnophobic girlfriend, the same girlfriend who likes to start her morning ablutions at six: she will jump into bed with a cry and will wake you up to take issue with said spider. You just fell asleep after working on the *screaming in the head* yearend narrative report until 3AM? So? GET YOUR ASS OUT OF BED AND DEAL WITH THE SPIDER!

I don't mind spiders so I do the regular demolition of the squatter's abode.

But the spider had 9 months of peace when Paula was in the States; I took to reading aloud to it sitting on the toilet bowl with a copy of The Atonement. When I had to demolish the spider's home again, a week before Paula arrived, I was comforted in the thought that I was responsible for its partially (we did not finish the book) acquired taste in literature.

We have to get out before the month ends, when our last rent is paid out. Boxes have to be bought and duct-taped, the books needed dusting, and we are currently looking for a new apartment. She found one she likes, yesterday. I still have to look at it tomorrow. But it sounded promising: a small yard out in front, two bedrooms, some shelves, and apparently was not flooded during typhoon Frank. She said the whole place felt light. It must have to do with the fact that it is painted white, with pink trimmings.

Roughage

One late afternoon, at the grocery store:

P: What do you want, chocolate or Kettle corn?

K: Kettle corn.

P: distractedly I need the popcorn for roughage.

K: Roughage?!? You don't need Kettle corn for roughage. I can give you roughage.

Meanwhile, I am getting intimate with Maccy. I am constantly amazed with her interface e.g. when I click an icon on the dock, the icon jumps up and down like that overzealous kid in grade school who knows the answer to all the questions. I also know where Maccy was made and when (Shanghai, between February 25 and March 2, 2008).

Now I want to get down and dirty with her and I am looking for hardcore Mac geeks who can explain to me this screenshot

Those random numbers and mysterious yeses and noes must mean something. To me it looks like a portal to another universe where the magic password is composed of integers and an unknown number of strategically-placed zeroes, which come to think of, is kind of real cool.

Closeted

I was cleaning out my closet this morning, getting rid of stuff I haven't worn for at least a decade and what do I find, but these:





Hmm. Interesting, no? I decided to give the flannel shirt away and to keep the shoes.

I am back. I am okay. But my routine's all in shambles. Between relief work, Paula and moving apartments, I barely had the time to read a book-page or write a post.

Ah but one thought

Mending a broken heart is painful.

There is nothing much to say

I've been having disturbing dreams of getting out of the apartment and riding a public conveyance without a shirt on. Then after realizing that I am half-naked, I'd get upset and couldn't wait to get back to my apartment.

I feel that I am shutting up. Or at least my brain is shutting up. No longer baring.

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Astronomer

Light never grows old.

What a wonderful concept. How I would like to just sit on the beach where my mind would become lean and spare, unburdened by disquietitude and materialism, and just think of magical thoughts like light never growing old, mass distorting space and time, and a universe that vibrates.

notes on The Elegant Universe, by Brian Greene