A bag's life

So once a year  we get to reflect on what's working and what's not. Revelations came breaking down my door on a very plain, raw beach where camping is the life-slash-resort which is a surprising find of a good friend. Made me think about many many things.... The Beach Walking on the shore maybe twice a day made me think of the Footprints on the Sand because it was all we could see. No flags...no frills...just plain beach and the simplest fishng boats and huts you can imagine. It's raw. With no internet and without electricity it might have been the time when our parents would try to secretly meet up. Life here is that simple. So back to the Footprints...the beach has many of it. With prints on the sand are tracks of ATV's , making an imprint more ephemeral than usual. Coming closer to the shore, I make better imprints on the sand but the surf-ready waves washed them away quickly. What do I make of this? No matter how heavy I get to make a deeper...

Photo robbed from Ninang Carmen Dulguime's  photo bucket on Facebook!  The Great Barrier Reef is home of the best anemene…ann…ameneme…anone…? Anemone! It’s easy enough to capture and set as a background for computer screen…or a lazy lit aquarium as we have in the house. For some reason though, today, the aquarium look more massive than other days. I wasn’t just peering through the squeaky clean glass – I was swimming among Malakai’s goldfish and clown fish. His janitor could not be disturbed at the bottom of the tank and the other smaller fish played tag, chasing each other across the wide, open sea!!! I was peering down the bottom of the sea, with my goggles on and wearing the orange life vest they give away during a shipwreck or a plane wreck. Everything around tasted like salt – Is this good for me, I wondered . The water was cold all around and the blue of the water seem to be takjng on a darker and darker shade as I floated forward, but ...

Aquarium 13B safely sits in the balcony of our half house in Sunnette Villas. I say “half house” because its not quite a full house, with strangers just moving in the other duplex door. But its a comfortable haven for Aquarium 13B. Its tenant with the longest tenure, Goldie Ho, has seen a couple of fireworks when the year turns into new one. He moved in with three dabarkads in the summer of 2011, and has seen all three go up into “The Happy Place” one by one – Geena just gave up after a long bout with depression, George thought the other side of the glass wall was a better place so he jumped out of their cool, spacious abode into nothingness and Gino, my love, was driven by so much ambition, he could not handle the limited routine and he burst right in front of Goldie’s googly eyes. He’s a chronic eater when he’s tense, you know. And so it goes, that for the next two years, Goldie will swim through Aquarium 13B on her own, monopolizing the space and the food. “At least, ...

Doctor X: You’ve got aneurysm. Me: a new what? Aneurysm. Defined by Wikipedia as a localized, blood-filled balloon-like bulge in the wall of a blood vessel, they can commonly occur in arteries at the base of the brain and an aortic aneurysm occurs in the main artery carrying blood from the left ventricle of the heart. Doctor X: When its size increases, there is a significant risk of rupture, resulting in severe hemorrhage, other complications or death. Aneurysms can be hereditary or caused by disease, both of which cause the wall of the blood vessel to weaken.... I was swiftly brought back to four years ago when they said I had a tumor in my brain that they had to take out. Surreal. I did not know how to channel my reactions – these things only happen in movies. Since when did I get on the Truman Show? Avant art? No. This is a CT Angiogram of my cerebral arteries. Doctor X: You have a 2% risk of rupture and it will increase at that rate every year that you leave it alone… A ...

photo by: Carmie B. Dulguime And it hit me like a boulder tonight... In the darkness of my room, I weep a year's worth of emptiness and sadness. I fall into an ocean of regrets at what could have been and what I should have done in the first place to keep him safe. My loathe to self heightens and my endless 'why's' resurface.  And with the sound of deep sleep to keep me company, I can only shake my head and sob some more.  I thought I was okay already. Work keeps me occupied. And in idle time, I take refuge in baking fruit pies which I give away if the sweetness at home goes beyond acceptable levels. I focus on Malakai's needs in school and I am more visible inside Dasma these days. It seems to motivate Kuya to study harder, which is a good thing. And on days that I feel like waking up earlier than Daddy, an interesting feast graces our breakfast table.  I've fallen into a routine of visiting bunso on weekends at the Shrine...and towards end October, I...

A child was asked to write a summary of The Holy Bible. This is what he came up with. It’s hilarious, especially near the end… And I can so imagine Kai coming up with a similar, if not a worse version than this one…enjoy! (I did!) XD The Children’s Bible in a Nutshell In the beginning, which occurred near the start, there was nothing but God, darkness, and some gas.  The Bible says, ‘The Lord thy God is one, but I think He must be a lot older than that. Anyway, God said, ‘Give me a light!’ and someone did. Then God made the world. He split the Adam and made Eve.  Adam and Eve were naked, but they weren’t embarrassed because mirrors hadn’t been invented yet. Adam and Eve disobeyed God by eating one bad apple, so they were driven from the Garden of Eden…..Not sure what they were driven in though, because they didn’t have cars. Adam and Eve had a son, Cain, who hated his brother as long as he was Abel. Pretty soon all of the early people died off, except for Meth...