Garfield Minus Garfield Moments

Larry’s find- http://garfieldminusgarfield.tumblr.com/

-- and we realized we are Jon in these strips, oh well, sometimes. Here are my own “without Garfield” moments:

1. I sit on the floor and try out the ‘how to fold a t-shirt” instructions that someone found on the net (in Japanese, no subtitles). I show my friends how to do it.

2. I watch Home Shopping Network and I am compelled to get the food processor so I can turn spinach into a form that I can swallow. But wait there’s more…

3. My dreams appear in the form of powerpoint presentations- before the next frame appears, I have to click the next button first.

4. I carry on conversations with myself, sometimes out loud, if I don’t catch myself in time (now, who doesn’t?). One time, I was on a public utility jeep, and the tail end of my conversation with myself slipped out—I said “…I don’t want to talk about it”. Good thing it was my stop.

5. If I can’t sleep, I really try to count sheep, the ones that jump over the moon. No kidding.

6. I watch Hallmark channel on lazy afternoons and Crime/suspense in the evening.

7. I am taking sewing lessons so I can add sewing curtains and repairing ‘ukay’ finds to my Garfield minus Garfield moments.

8. I take down notes when I watch Barefoot Contessa.

9. I think about my Garfield minus Garfield moments.

10. I blog. (hehehe)

Greetings for the New Year

In 2007, I said goodbye to smoking, and except for one minor lapse one drunken-night among strangers, have never smoked cigarettes since; watched my parents walk down the aisle on their 40th wedding anniversary; swam with the Butanding one summer weekend and saw Mayon Volcano for the first time; met and made new friends; met newfound cousins; was unexpectedly told I am loved by a dearest friend, which drove Tita Gigi to tears when I told her about it; walked the ruins of an ancient city in Thailand; was happy to see an aunt recover from breast cancer and prayed fervently for the recovery of another good friend; spent 6 months getting an open water diver’s license and spent oh so many weekends by the beach and 60 feet underwater, was treated to a weekend in Las Vegas by very good friends whom I have known since grade school and I finally realized what ‘handsome’ is while watching Chippendales; was blessed with my parents’ good health and unwavering good sense of humor; drove a mini cooper in suburban roads of Amherst and enjoyed an spectacular solo early morning drive from Tagaytay to Batangas; was excited to welcome a cousin’s new baby; felt for a friend’s grief over a recent loss; finished reading many good books while spending so many hours in many different pre-departure areas; enjoyed a night of music and heard my favorite song ‘Smile’ played with a passion that resonated from deep within; shopped for cds in Quiapo; cheered on friends who got engaged, sang many love songs on videoke with good old singing and drinking buddies; said goodbye to my home of three years and anxiously moved into a smaller place that I could now call my own; sadly watched my dearest housemates pack up and move into their own little places; found a new home for my dog; climbed the 268 steps to the big Buddha in Lantau and offered a prayer for my brother on his death anniversary; laughed out loud so many times, cried a few times; celebrated my birthday with an after dinner party with friends closest to my heart while missing those who could not be there; and capped the year with a quiet time with Papa, Mama and Mana Adette, all of us grateful for this time together while never forgetting him, whose absence will always be felt.

With deep gratitude I say goodbye to 2007 and look forward to 2008! May the New Year bring you love, peace of the soul and mind--

There was a time when my nephew, Mika, asked everyone he met how old they are. His mom explained, “he is currently obsessed with time.” He followed this up with a morbid statement, “people die when they grow old.” His young mind still cannot grasp the vastness of space and time between him and the “old”, between the tangible and a mere memory, between now and permanent absence. But he continues to ask, 'how old are you' or ‘wawa are you old?’ As if the numbers would give him comfort. I smile and say, “don’t worry Mika, I am still young.”

In a Vogue magazine article, I learned that Vladimir Nabokov also liked to talk about time.

“In what way?”
“In the morning, he would look at his watch and say, ‘I make it out to be 8:15; what do you have?”

Nabokov’s lifelong preoccupation, the article went on to say, was memory, things lost but still present.

While I, I am currently obsessed with freezing time--in digital pictures, in videos, in notebooks that I lug around, in all my documentation tools. I often find myself in the middle of a joke that had everyone laughing, or in between sips of wine at a family dinner, just taking a moment to commit everything to memory—how they laughed, what he said, what they said in return, what time of day it was. And I wonder, will I remember this exactly as it happened?

Or maybe, it’s just how Joel said it in Chronos (http://rambling-soul.blogspot.com/2007_10_01_archive.html) --

And it goes on and on, this pattern of forgetting,
like the erratic beating of hearts.
The learned calls it Pi, the endless, as if

the mind has no need to negotiate with time.

Of private shows and orphaned slippers

Three Sundays ago I rediscovered the pleasures of driving alone. Well, I drive myself to work and back home everyday when I am in town, but it is a short drive, down the familiar route of Kamuning, then across EDSA, and then Kamias. Occasionally, I would drive to far away Makati or Manila on some very important ‘business’ (otherwise you won’t find me there) but I would have company for those drives, if not on the passenger seat beside me, then other drivers in cars that are too close for comfort in the usually jam-packed lanes of EDSA.

On that particular Sunday, a series of fortunate events happened that led me to make that drive from Tagaytay to Batangas alone. I woke up a little past 4 am (my body clock was not tuned properly yet) and decided to start out early. I was looking forward to the drive since the last time I drove alone at day break, the experience had been magical that it is permanently imprinted in my mind. It was still dark when I set out and went down Magallanes Drive but by the time I reached the turn to the zigzagged mountain road that would take me to Lemery, morning had already started to break.

What I so love about early morning drives is the dawn to sunrise show. The thing that makes sunrise (and sunsets too) so dramatic is how the display of light changes so fast that you actually witness the landscape transform before your very eyes. It is like watching the scenes change through a viewfinder (remember that toy from our childhood?), something different at each click of the lever, and in my case that morning, a different view at each turn of the bend.

That is what made that drive special-- being the only car on that strip of road at that particular time of the day meant that I had once again gained access to a private show. There is a stretch on that road where the cliff to my left gave me a clear view of the valley below, where there was a splay of orange on bluish-grey skies over Taal volcano, whose shape was still muted by fog. Breathtaking.

What made it even more overwhelming was the thought that at that particular moment, I was probably the only one in the world who would have seen that view. That car that I met a few feet later would have seen a different view by the time he reached that bend I just came from.

A few seconds later, as I turned another bend, the scene had changed: the sky was more orange than blue, the fog had lifted a little to reveal the top of the volcano. By the time I reached the national highway, the turn from night to day was complete, the show was over. But what a show…Wish I could say that it would have been good to have you there, but then I would be lying—I intend to make drives at daybreak my solitary pleasure.


************************************************************************

This weekend, I participated in the International Coastal Clean-up day. Picked up garbage underwater. Partied after. But the most interesting thing about that weekend was the kind of garbage I collected down under.

Half of the garbage I picked were footwear, all missing a pair—a little boy’s rubber shoes, black sandals of a size eight woman, pink slippers of a young girl, the sole of size eleven basketball shoes, and more. The coast was also littered with washed-up footwear.

There must be a good story behind the pair-less footwear underwater. Or someone can spin a good story around them.

Around who owned them. Around what happened and how those pair-less shoes got there.

For me, I can only wonder.

For a friend, who is far away from home and says he misses the rain...