Pearls

Not fond of pearls especially the big ones but i am thanking my mother-in-law for giving my daughter Ana a string of southsea pearls! And I am thanking my spirit guides for the advise to borrow and wear it.  Just cannot understand where i got the idea and realized that maybe- just maybe, they had something to do with it.

I was able to walk and not amble hobble around. 

Thinking of the pearl's composition and structure and the energy that was used to naturally create one, is perhaps why it would work on weak support. I mean bones.

Just thinking... 

So i am sleeping with the big pearls tonight. 

#100daysofmusings 1/100

We need fire to forge, shape and reshape.  Raising the young requires passion, determination, persistence and devotion, courage and en"courage"ment.  Let us sing 'em no more lullabye as it will only put them to sleep. They have to be awake to realize their dreams.

So that afternoon of April 25, during our commencement exercises sending off the graduating elementary and high school students, I changed course.  No adoration and sweet talk as this special batch of potential achievers needs to reflect on things that should matter.

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Opening Address

April 25, 2015

“Even the smallest person can change the course of the future” – J.R.R. Tolkien

Congratulations...

To note, for the school year 2014-2015 that is ending, there are 32 candidates for graduation in Grade 6 and 31 in Fourth Year.

This year’s grade 6 is 1 year short of the prescribed 6 years of elementary.  If the K to 12 program  will not go awry or kaput, they will have to go through an extra year as G12. 

Is this batch ready for High School?  They should be.

Let us take a look at the seniors.  Nothing was altered.  6 years in elementary and 4 in high school, but before that,  two to three years in Preschool.  Are you ready to face the world?  This world that will tempt you to try to be different or be like everyone else except yourself?   That is precisely the purpose of your education but how you are going to use it to arm you is something I cannot predict.

One more question:

Will you be a wonderful contribution to your country and fellowmen?   I hope so.

Honestly, do you think that your HEDCen education will matter when you go to your respective universities or to a different high school?

In the years that you were in HEDCen, what was your greatest challenge? Your all-time difficulties?  Whatever it is or was, are or were,  there is only YOU at the bottomline. No devil.  No other reason other than the failure to understand and respond to who you are, your compulsions and demons.  Your nature.  You are your greatest ally or nemesis.  Spiderman knows that.

Another question:  Will you buckle down at the slightest sign of difficulty or will you own up and get up and revise, reinvent or re-align if needed? Will you desire nothing else but to learn from your valuable mistakes to become a better person? a changed individual?

I have endless questions but meanwhile I am not giving you any accolade yet,  just  because you are graduating today.   

Dapat lang. (That is to be expected.) 

Dapat lang na makatapos ng pag-aaral.  (It is to be expected that you finish your studies if you have the resources.)  

Dapat lang na maipagpatuloy sa unibersidad.  (It is to be expected that you continue to tertiary level.) Dapat lang maging college scholar. (It is right to expect that you rise to the highest form of achievement like getting a college scholarship if you try hard enough and if you set your goal high enough.)   Have an ambition.  Do not fear hard work and adversities.

Dapat, ang pag-aaral ay buong buhay – o ika nga “life-long, sa paaralan man o labas nito.  (Education should be life-long whether it be inside a classroom or out of it.)  

Dapat ding umiwas sa masasama, sa pang-aapi, sa pandaraya, katamaran o sa pag wawalang bahala.  Anong tawag dun?  ++++++ (Habitual callousness and  insensitivity to the needs around you should be shunned especially those that take the form of cheating, indolence, or simply the devil-may-care attitude.)

Wag mayabang.  Wag mamili kung sino ang irerespeto. Irespeto ang lahat ng nilalang. Di lang kayo ang maalam.  Huwag maliitin ang inyong mga makakasalamuha.  (Don’t be arrogant.  Don’t choose who to respect or disrespect.  All creatures and beings, including everyone here, YOU deserve to be respected. The lowliest and the greatest share the same air and place under the sun.  

For the people you have hurt or have taken for granted, now is the time to look back with gratitude and to seek their forgiveness, for we must start fresh and clean to be able to carry their blessings on our back when we seek our adventures outside this school.

This is after all,  the essence of the graduation theme that  you have chosen:  "Even the smallest person can change the course of the future".

Enough said, these final notes however, are not by Tolkien...

“May the Force be with you.” and “may you live long and prosper”!   

Have a wonderful life ahead of you Graduates and congratulations!!

Adieu!

 thank you.

2015 Calendar Scam

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I have fondly and in jest, been calling this project my “Great Calendar Scam”.   I have no affiliation with any government or non-government organizations and neither do I belong to any clubs or charitable organizations. 

It just started with a very simple idea of making a compilation of my watercolor paintings in a calendar.  There was nothing romantic or heroic with the concept to begin with.  It was merely another way of selling my works in an art fair.

Some are moved by storm surge, others by an angel’s whisper.  I changed course after a conversation with a friend who has always rallied behind my art.   She said that she would sell the calendars a few hundred pesos more and will donate the extra profit to Yolanda. 

Then I saw the possibility to help and the window of opportunity to put my art to good use aside from it being my personal therapy kit.  That was how it started.  From the plan to donate Php300.00 for every calendar sold to donating the entire profit to Yolanda. 

The goal is to raise a million to build a classroom where children can learn and find joy in discovering their potential, so that they will not always feel sorry for themselves.  After all, education is very close to my heart and its art is my full time job.

I am on my 179^th calendar.  There are 179 people with me in this.

We have neither name in politics nor fame in what we try to do but we know that if all of us nameless and fameless people gather, we are going to build a classroom in a place where the storm brought the sea to where it should not be and snatched lives and erased communities.  There is always hope and a chance to dream where children can learn and move on.

I am such an amateur in what I have embarked on lately but this I found out from the ordinarily godly people that I have encountered in this project:  Great wealth and riches come from the heart. 

Got weight? Get a cat.

There are layers they say, that build up around who you are as you live life, gain experience, suffer loss, disapointments, regrets and fears.  I am not sure if you turn into something like a pearl but the process is very much the same in my opinion.  The irritant starts the layers that would envelop it in much the same way again as how one comes up with a cough- to finally expectorate, regurgitate or expel!

How we wish that this process when it happens to us, would turn us into pearls, but instead it turns us into someone lackluster, full of fats around every conceivable part of our human body.  This form of cushioning helps us to survive but also, eventually... we die.

If it is not in quantifiable volume,  it is the dimensionless anger, spite, envy, wrath, rage, self-pity. fear, disgust, deception in different degrees, single or combined that wrap around a body in catatonic state.  Either way, it makes us fat.

Other people go through an opposite process.  Pared and skinned.  Every layer melts, wilts or shrivels.  The idea is to expunge the entire body - where the negative energy attaches.

Another gruesome scenario is the way our essence is blurred by influences of those who are around us or by our own expectations of ourselves.   In order to survive, layers and layers of masks or plaque build up to deny the painful truth.  Denial like procrastination is laziness in the highest degree.

the law of inertia
We allow ourselves to gather moss like a stone in coma, unless someone kicks us.
Then we are tossed and thrown and we hit the ground many times, bouncing till we stop.

 "For every action, there is an opposite reaction."
Someone, the Great Force has many ways of waking us up from our stupor. Everything is on automatic mode when the world with its universe was created.  The law of nature is a system that automatically kicks in once something is pushed.

This is what I call realization.  Realization happens in ways not always as fabulous as when Prince Charming brings the glass slippers to Cinderella or when the Prince kisses Aurora.  Sometimes one has to kiss an ugly toad to realize that it is handsome after all or dance with the beast to know that she is dancing with one!  Some realizations happen when faced with death or sickness.  Loss in all its meaning and in different circumstances, can be a powerful trigger but it can also bring dis-ease or discomfort that makes one sabotage all his awesome plans.

Such is life's paradoxes.  These can happen to some or to just one person.  One thing may be true to some but not to others.  Important is we keep trying but know when we have to try something else.  I have never succeeded in raising African violets nor in growing lavender and have not lost the last 10 pounds that will make me look good in my 250 peso Alexander McQueen.  I have thought in my younger days that someday, I will be interviewed by Oprah but I changed my mind...



So today, I got myself a cat.  After all these musings, that's what I did.  I got myself a cat and we are communicating.  It is already starting to call me Em-mmawww!

comfort and joy

Someone told me that we are basically cave men.  We retreat in the dark to rest. Should i say that we are like bats too? 

I can understand that.  We all seek some semblance of night during the day once in a while.  Inasmuch as sunlight is healing and cheerful, a bit of shade is soothing and draws inner reflection.

Fireflies love the darkness of night. Responding to the firefly in me gives me the joy of letting my light flicker and shimmer through which is only made visible by that stark contrast. 

How Not To Go To Church on Sundays

 The church bells ring.  But first, the alarm.  One passes through this before one gets to church.

There is no tricycle.
The husband is not prone to drive at 5am.
The overnighters will be left alone.

The driver always forgets.  It's not his business.

I like the 5am mass, not the 6 and the after every hour mass that's available.
Too many people after the 5am mass.

I like going to the Anripolo Cathedral.
It is huge and has a great following.
But I like the anonymity and the company of people who wake up at 5.
Yes, a bit of bad breath here and there but maybe they smell mine too.

No other church gives me the feeling of home.
No other church, especially not the subdivision chapel.

And they have no 5am mass.

But as I have said, there's no tricycle to pick me up.

The Sunday market beckons.
The ukay stores have new blouses or skirts every week!

I have to get some plants and cheap flowers.

I have to buy some organic vegetables.

I have to buy some mangosteen or fruits in season!

So maybe I also pray when I am happy and when I smell the rosal and camias and take them home!

Rosal is Php 50.00
A bunch of camias is 75.
Potted hydrangea 50.00
Mangosteen was expensive last Sunday at 150 per kilo
Cactus is 3 for 100
Louboutin sandals for 1000.00 brand new
Isabel Marant blouse is 250.

happiness is priceless.
it makes me saintly!

And husband likes to drive to the Sunday market
I tag along.

pretty louboutin that I never dreamed of having now in my feet

mangostten, durian and mabolo

hydrangea

The Middle Child

What mystery envelops a middle child?
Is he really more complicated than the first and the third?
Born after the first child who became the first experimental baboon to parents who knew little,
the second one was born with a degree of knowledge and experience which the eldest child provided these anxious beginners.

Then why the supposed syndrome?
This child of woe and complication was raised by parents who knew more, whose mastery of the craft of parenting has afforded them less sweaty palms and armpits.
Then why does this child of complexity raise such challenge and concern?

This child is between two siblings.  One taught him the ways while the third showed him how he is stronger and wiser.

He is not ever taken for granted.  He cannot be taken for granted because he will not allow it.  He is either a child who feels persecuted and thinks that nothing he gets is better than the rest, but he is also the offspring who loves the best, who defends his Kuya and who allows his baby brother to treat him like his toy bear.  He cannot be taken for granted because in the same manner that he gives the sweetest love,  he also demands that he is loved like there are no others.

The middle child can be the rainbow and the bright sun but can also be the thunderstorm.   And when he is all thunder and lightning, how he disarms his mother is a gift.

He prefers the villains over the heroes and sees the excitement and challenge over the despised, evil characters and how the heroes can be really boring indeed!

Yet his prayers are the most sensitive and comes out from him as a natural expression of his heart and soul - "dear God, thank you for the sand in the beach" and after he has taken our breath away and melted us in the warmth of such grace,  he'd jolt us all from revery with "thank you for my BAD brother" with a laughter that can only come from a very familiar and easy relationship with the God he knows. 

He boxed a schoolmate the other day, this middle child.  He said he had been forgiven.  Then why do the adults fuss over the incident?  He cried for an hour when he was told by his mother that parents will come the next day to reprimand him for hurting their son.  He had to learn a lesson and the elders were worried except for his grandfather who took him to his lap with so much love.

We do not know what will work but I know that this middle child will sort it out for himself.  Someone's gotta break 'em rules sometimes, and he is curious and daring enough- except that this time, the principal will be called in her very own office!

Maybe his daddy will see the principal.