meetjopeblack

Tita Fe, over lunch today, was telling us about her dream when she was still young. A disclaimer was laid clear at the onset, saying she too did not understand where she got this from.

She narrated that at her youth, she'd dream of having a daughter whose name is Melodia and a boyfriend by the name of Jeffrey. She grew up not marrying but she said her dream came into fruition when her nephew got married to a Melodia, that is Ate Millette for us, and her niece to Geoffrey, me--a variation of the name Jeffrey. Now, dreams do come true in some form, she beamed and I smiled within.

I don't know what got to her, what brought that particular memory back but it affected me positively. I'm not even sure if it's her way of affirming our (both Ate Millette's and my own) existence in the family or just one of those funny, amazing, or cute blast from the past stories she'd narrate all too frequently. Whatever the reason (or the lack of) of that narration, that was a good omen. Nothing to brag about but, I'd like to think that, contrary to what I've been feeling the past few weeks, I have a place in Tita Fe's heart--a place dedicated by cosmic forces long before I met my wife. (Now, that's pushing it. But then again, it's true! Bah. Enough.)

Welcome to me in their family! I don't know where this is headed--expectations? responsibilities? more of them? For now, it's enough to just savor the good chi from Tita Fe.

Plugged into: Paris Hilton's Stars are Blind

meetjopeblack

Last night, I was awaken by sobs from the person beside me in bed. Was she having nightmares? What's scaring her? What's bothering her? Was it something I did or did not do?

I gave her a tight squeeze and a warm hug--the most I can do to assure her that I'm right by her, beside her. That there's really nothing to be afraid of.

I asked her what's wrong. Part of me was laughing inside as she said it was nothing; another part was extremely anxious. What made her cry? What made her that sad?

In the morning she said it was because I left her for another woman. Was it about the future? Was it a blast from the unconscious? Was it an interpenetration of our unconscious selves?

Whatever the cause may be, she needed that release. For her to handle adult pain and pressure from work, relationships, and internal struggles so early in her life, the few seconds of uncontrolled emotional overflow is something she needs, something she deserves. And good that it happened in our deep sleep so she won't be bugged by me psychoanalyzing her or philosophizing her struggles.

I just hope that last night's touch of assurance was something consoling and not another pressure to burden her with.

Plugged into: P. Diddy's Last Night

meetjopeblack

There are two sides to a coin. Or more accurately, the number of sides depends on the shape of the coin. If you remember the old two peso coin--the octagon shaped one (or was it hexagon?)--the number of sides is as many as its surfaces. If you trust my basic counting skills, there arer 10 sides to an octagon-shaped coin.

So it is with reality. We experience the same thing but our perception of it is as varied and diverse as the number of persons experiencing it. One may see life as rosy while others may see it as devoid of meaning. Take cleaning the bathroom as an example. One may see it as part of regular home-hygiene. For others, cleaning it is similar to staying in a concentration camp--a suicide room--exposing one's self to cancer-enducing ritual due to exposure to deadly chemicals. And the list of perceptions can go on and on.

Which one of these then are right? All of them are. And the only reason we are able to understand each other is because we agree to call a thing such. We agree that calling a table a table is rational enough, coherent enough to make our world a little less absurd. That becomes our truth.

We call a relationship romantic (and loving and happy) because we agree to understand it according to that paradigm. But it can also be hell and a self-flagellating experience because we get ourselves trapped in a piece of paper or a declared vow. We accept something from a loved one as gift (oh so sweet!) but it can also be seen as a bribe or an incentive. Whatever we want to call it by or understand it with is a matter of faith and trust.

We agree by force of habit, or to avoid conflict, or to do exactly the opposite. Love, hate, peace, economics of war, heaven, hell, they are but variations of the same thing. It's up to us to choose what attitude to life we wish to run our lives by.

I've outgrown my Dungarees for Viktors but it spoke to me while I was hanging it out to dry:

This is what you can do to your regular pancit canton for a twist:

L'extraordinaire Pancit Canton
Good for you two

INGREDIENTS:

• beef steak (tenderloin or sukiyaki cut)
• 2 tablespoons dark soy sauce (just enough to smear the meat with)
  
• 2 teaspoons chinese cooking wine
• 1 teaspoon cornstarch
• 1 teaspoon sugar
  
• 1 inch piece ginger, peeled & shredded
• 2 packages Lucky Me Pancit Canton noodles
• boiling water
• Broccoli Flowers
• Sesame oil
• 3 tablespoons oyster sauce
• 2 teaspoons cornstarch dissolved in 2 tsp water
• dried chili (optional)
• lemon or calamansi
  

Break noodle blocks into boiling water.

Heat oil in a wok. Toss in broccoli, sprinkle with salt. Stir until it turns dark green. Set aside. Add a little sesame oil to the wok, stir-fry beef on ginger until no longer pink. Add the broccoli back to the wok. Add oyster sauce to the skillet and bring to a simmer. Stir in the cornstarch mixture and cook until thickened.

Throw in the drained noodles and stir and cook until evenly coated and heated through. You can crack dried chili onto the skillet for spice. Squeeze a quarter of lemon or two pieces calamansi for that citrusy bite.

Serve immediately in a bowl with two sets of chopsticks. There's your instant meal for two.

Lucky you if you have a partner who can share in your life's bowls of pancit. Lucky me I have one. I'm an ordinary pancit with pancit-y idiosyncracies and a pancit-an background. But with Cathy, this pancit is no ordinary pancit. I'm a Chow Mein.

Wo-yeah! Woof!

Plugged into: Jason Mraz's "I'm Yours"

meetjopeblack

This has been the point of my prayer this morning. Actually, I've been trying to pray over this question since last week and I'm having great difficulty in coming up with one answer.

My relationship with my wife, I suppose, is my answer. I can only look back at our wedding day and the months leading to it, all those times made me really happy. However, my memory serves me fuzzy images of what happened. What I have is a head-level answer; that seems to be the should-answer. With much effort, I still have to dig deep into my memory before I can unearth the bounty of colors and emotions in our wedding. I'm worried, I say in my prayer, that I'm forcing the answer out of me. Why can't I back it up with concrete memories in a snap of a finger? Why must I wring it out first before they come vivid again if indeed they give me greatest happiness?

Truth is, I have lost my memory. And I rationalized my ineptitude with a philosophical snobbery that all events in our life should equally make us happy and to classify them as being good, better, and best simply would destroy the richness of experience. I agree but that begs the question and the point of my prayer. What really gives me the greatest happiness? I have to answer this question. Wedding, my answer, for instance. I have to recall my wedding, not through dull images (mostly shots by our wedding photographers), but with live colors and scents of a really happy wedding because I know, I was truly happy at that time. I don't want a myth of happiness, I want a concrete real thing because the myth was and is real.

Perhaps, the reason why I lost precious memories is because I do not get myself wet in the experience or let the feelings linger and then bask in them especially when I am most happy. Sure, my life is generally happy but I don't allow myself to soak in them good times much. In the process, happy times fade into nothing and what's left is an ungrounded concept, i.e. h-a-p-p-y, happiness.

In my ardent desire to win back my memory, a frightening question came up: can I allow the ugly past to sit beside my happy memories? Selective amnesia is both unhealthy and unrealistic, we were taught. If I want my memory back, either I swallow them whole or nothing at all. THAT, scared the shit out of me.

Can we just bury our sordid past and leave only the good ones alive?

But before I relapse into the philosophical again, I focus on the question: What gives me the greatest happiness? This first before any thought of the dark and past mistakes. What gives me the greatest happiness? What. Gives. Greatest. Happiness. Greatest. What. Gives. Happiness...

The answer lies in my ability to linger.

Linger. From the Middle English word, lengeren which means to dwell. In tagalog, manahan, tumahan from tahanan. Home. To be at home is to be your self. To be your self is to be at peace. To be at peace presupposes happiness. To be happy is to be at home.

Had I lingered on my past encounters with God, I could have easily reconnected with him in the present. But I hopped and skipped through crucial moments of divine epiphanies in daily life thinking they're no extraordinary revelations. Worse, I dwelt on something else. Now I cannot find my way back home. I'm lost in the darkness of my unappreciative forgetfulness.

What gives me the greatest happiness? I ask for the grace of memory. I beg God for the grace to linger so I can return to my center, be at home, and be really happy again.