Easy like a Sunday morning March 8, 2009
Posted by bobbetrevilla in Comfort Zone, Family, Here and Now, Memory, Visuals.2 comments
You woke up after an eight-hour sleep and felt breezy. Spotted two wild birds resting on the fence just outside the screen of the dirty kitchen. Wasn’t that a good sign of things about to happen during the day?
Maybe yes. When you have all the time in this world, you can literally smell the flowers and blend the fruits. That I concretely did this morning, one Sunday when Summer began to unfold like a seasonal guest.
Went to LB after late mass this morning to pick up some fresh flowers Mommy asked me to buy for our altar. I bought some too for empty vessels waiting for fresh blooms. I love Summer! Because flowers bloom and smell extra good.
On my way home I dropped by a fruit stand and bought some fresh mangoes and bananas to have them processed as fruit shake, good sip while working this hot day. You know it’s summer…
Summer reminds us of good old days. When chimes get swayed by the wind. When we can literally eat lunch outside under natural canopy. When reading gets the best out of us in the lull of afternoon with nothing but your book, rocking chair, and pillow to transport you to the thrill and riveting flow of life.
And the day isn’t enough to read, frolic, and laze around because it’s Summer and to be idle is guilt-free.
A writer’s journal February 14, 2009
Posted by bobbetrevilla in Family, Here and Now, Memory.add a comment
Sometimes I have to force myself to write. Like now. Because only in writing can I make events alive and their memories documented.
The week that was. It was an exhaustive week. We sat in the conference committee of Ikatlong Tanghal, the National University Theater Festival hosted by Letran-Calamba from 10th to 14th of February. It was a delight listening to voices of theater artists, managers, mentors, and students all over the country, along with some foreign delegates, expressing one common passion: arts. National Artist for Literature Dr. Bienvenido Lumbera stayed during the entire duration of the conference-workshop-festival to synthesize in the end what direction the University Theater in the country should take.
New book. What a nice Valentine’s gift! My good friend Pearl gifted me with Michael Crichton’s State of Fear, a fiction that sounds like the sci-fi-thrill-genre of Dan Brown: always moving, relentlessly suspense-full, mysterious. I’ve started the first few pages this morning, and I know I can’t stop flipping through the remaining pages when the story reaches the height of its twists and turns. Crichton is the author of such celebrated sci-fi books, the most popular of which is Jurassic Park. He is also the creator of the equally popular TV series ER. This book, by the way, is part of the bulk of books brought home by Pearl from the United States last Christmas season.
Funny V-Day message. From co-author and good friend Nina, I got this funny Valentine’s (or Valentime’s) message:
If only for the soul and believing in the heart, love flows in a river–sweet of heartache.
True.
So let it be said that what seemed to know that it should be… forever. Happy valentime. Hehehe.
Feb Fair. Tired from our aero session and just had fun from eating our Valentine’s dinner together, we trekked to UPLB’s Feb Fair. It was virtually a fiesta. The entire campus was filled with all kinds of people walking, having fun, frolicking, eating, dating, singing, dancing, buying items, taking photo ops, and a lot more. My nieces and nephews and I couldn’t feel comfortable with the massive crowd, we decided to get out of the campus and dropped by McDo-Vega where there were lesser people. We were one of the last customers of this food stop. No wonder it was almost 12 a.m.
We walked on our way out of Grove. We met familiar faces, most of whom were my Letran students, hehehe. We had fun strolling that wee hour. They laughed at me running after jeepneys because I was sort of worried we couldn’t go home on time for the curfew set by their parents. I was their mere chaperone you know. They wouldn’t be allowed to get out to the Fair without me. But it was fun, more so when rains suddenly poured down on our way home until we transferred to a tricycle delivering us to our gate. All’s well that ends well.
House of Memory January 23, 2009
Posted by bobbetrevilla in Angst, Memory.add a comment
In the Booker-Prize winning novel The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy calls it the “history house.” That’s where our memory resides.
No matter how we elude or forget it, our memory, though fleeting [ephemeral], persists, lives, and is born anew even with the slightest trigger.
This week, Facebook did the provocation. It brought back to life memories of college through a former classmate, to whom I shared angst-full of experiences writing the critical drafts and meeting the deadliest deadlines… under the calachuci trees at LB [hehehe].
Our visit to FPRDI at Forestry yesterday also triggered, to a certain extent, a memory. The Canossian bug. The project leader whom we talked to is a fellow Canossian who remembered me, to the detail, despite the distance of age and time. Funny that Canossians are truly blessed with the gift of memory that transcends barrier of years or forgetfulness. Proofs are those old classmates who have recognized, and whom I have recognized too, through online sites that link us more than two decades later.
Without memory, what would that make us of? Shallow individuals maybe without any trace of good and rough times, of fun and serious faces, or of striking events that all make us become what we are now, warts and all.
Without memory we are like cold machines rotting out, growing old in use, dying in oblivion. But we are not. As persons capable of recall, we get excited about meeting the pigments of our past, whether s/he is an old buddy or schoolmate, and celebrating the gift of memory! On a tired, worn-out day, this truly gives a certain amount of joy.
