Ay, ay, ay, ay, ay . . .

Whenever I feel mishandled by the world, I find myself retreating to a safe and small space where I can control the chaos raging without (and within) with a simple closing of a door. In this perfect square of a room is a haven where I can curl and listen to the soothing rustle of the wind through the trees outside as it says, It's all right . . . it's all right. Here, the sun, too, cheerfully spills through the window and the birds twitter as energetically as always. I realize, life, in its resilience, goes on. However much I try to escape from the external and the helter-skelter, I simply cannot shut the door to life. It will, again and again, attempt to intrude and herein lies its beauty. It simply implies that the world will not give up on one who will not give up on the world.

I don't know what is causing me to feel out of sorts lately. Maybe it's the full moon. Maybe it's the depressing topic of the manuscript I just finished working on. Maybe it was Pico Iyer and his insistence on finding the lonely and dismal in his travels. Maybe it's because I'm constantly getting news of people dying or getting sick or people getting sick and dying. Maybe it's all of the above. So as a way of coping I again feel this need to withdraw, to crawl into my hole, and nurse myself into some semblance of equilibrium.

In the face of ugliness my natural inclination is to seek beauty, always beauty. I pawed through my books and films in search of the perfect escape and found it today in re-watching one of Almodovar's films. As before, I see myself identifying with the character who often cries when confronted with the "exquisite." There was a time in the past when I, too, was moved to silly tears during a scene in a stage play that I was watching. It was so true and wonderful, it wounded me. My tears just kept falling and falling and I found myself squeezing the life out of P's hand because I just didn't know what came over me.

As I got to the part in the movie where Caetano Veloso rendered a slow and touching version of "Cucurrucucú Paloma" and the character that I identify with once again cried, it dawned on me that contrary to what others might think, we are really not alone in our misery.

Loneliness, too, like love, is universal.

What fresh hell is this?

People are wondering about this infernal heat. Why, they say, does it feel like summer when it’s the start of the “ber” months already (otherwise known as pre-Christmas time in Pinas and characterized with the cooling of the weather and the onslaught of Yuletide-song playing). As soon as September 1 rolled in, I heard Christmas carols being played in department stores and I couldn’t help smiling at the Pinoys’ eagerness to get the Christmas spirit going.

According to PAGASA, the heat is caused by a high-pressure area and that we (in the Philippines) can expect “fine” weather by day and thunderstorms at night. Temperatures have reached fever proportions in Q. C. at 37ºC recently. Honestly, this is the warmest I’ve felt this year. Not even the sweltering summer a few months ago, which got everyone talking about global warming, El Niño, and water rationing, got me complaining this much. One can really stir the air with a spoon, it is that heavy. I told Nanay (my grandmother), this must be how a heat wave feels like! I’m absolutely debilitated by it!

My agony is worsened by the coming of a cold, which I probably contracted last weekend in Clark when I had to repeatedly dash from and to the car trying to avoid the rain because P kept forgetting to bring our umbrella. I woke up today in a foul mood, having slept for only two hours, and immediately blamed P for my condition. I moaned and groaned and said to P: “I wish I could ask you to stay and take care of me, but you’ve already been absent from work this week (we attended a funeral).” To say that I’m impossible to deal with when I’m sick is an understatement. I simply don’t believe in suffering in silence. I cry, I whine, I complain, I toss and turn. P knows that the only way to shut me up is to baby me. He took out a mentholated rub from the cabinet and spread some on my back, chest, and neck. “Not too much,” I whimpered. I felt P rolling his eyeballs. He then lay beside me, although he should be getting ready for work already, and rubbed my legs with his (we call this “kiskisan”). I immediately fell asleep and woke up cheerier than a few hours earlier.

I say thank God for husbands, thank God.

Ilyot in Manila.

*Gets panty out of a twist*

Elliot Yamin is coming to Manila this September. YES! He was our bet in American Idol, but lost to Taylor Hicks aka “The Silver Fox” (my sister and I still chortle over this) and Katherine McPhee. No matter, that’s a good sign I guess as all Idol winners so far, save for Kelly Clarkson, have not really “made” it internationally. But, we have high hopes for Elliot (we fondly call him Ilyot at home) and had been waiting for his album release in Manila for what seemed like forever. Now it’s here, produced by Sony BMG, and our Ilyot will be promoting the album in a series of concerts in Ayala Malls: TriNoma on Sept. 21; Glorietta, Sept. 22; Market! Market!, Sept. 23; Ayala Center Cebu, Sept. 26; and ATC, Sept. 28.

P excitedly told me that he saw a billboard announcing the concerts and asked if I wanted to see one or maybe all. I said, “Hell, yeah!”

I immediately told my sister about the events. Our convo went:

Me: Huy, si Ilyot magko-concert dito. Nuod tayo!
Sis: Hell, yeah!
Me: Panuorin natin lahat!
Sis: Sure! Ang pogi na n’ya, ha!
Me: Oo, ang ganda na ng ngipin n’ya . . .
Sis: Kulot na rin ang buhok n’ya . . .
Me/Sis: Hekhekhekhekhek . . .

But makeover or no makeover, what we are really sold on is his talent and his tortured-soul/artiste look (he is reportedly deaf in one ear, has diabetes, and has wrestled internally with himself in terms of whether or not to pursue his artistic dreams). But, what a talent! He said in one of his interviews that he’s more confident now in his singing and expressing himself. Honestly, he started so wonderfully in the first few A. I. elimination rounds, but my family thinks that he choked in the last, deciding rounds. We kept waiting for him to bust out, you know, raise the ante of his performances—in short get crazy—but he never did. We were aghast when he lost to Katherine McPhee, but was comforted by the belief that he’d find his own spot in the music world soon enough.

I know his new album features original songs, but I hope he also considers remaking some jazz tunes in the future, similar to the songs he performed in A. I. In fact, I would love to buy a recording of the songs he sang in A. I.

Well, Ilyot, dear, dear boy, you've finally arrived!

Go ahead, shine, bebe, shine! 

"You never see a bald man with gray hair."

How true is the belief that a person’s white hairs represent his or her myriad worries? See, at 31, I have a smattering of them already—20 strands or more plus those at the back of my head that I can neither see nor count—and I wonder, is it normal to have this much white hair at my age or have I been inordinately worried the past years?

I started noticing one or two white strands five or so years ago and I’ve gotten to the habit of plucking them since. It is believed that plucking “gray” hair causes two to grow back. But then, men of science have declared this to be a myth. According to them, “graying” is simply a result of the aging process, something to do with hair losing color due to a decrease in melanin production.

This leaves me with the theory that hair turn white due to worries. I try to recall some major heartaches in the past that may have been the culprits to my “graying” and part of this list was my uncle’s seven-year battle with cancer (which ended in 2004). Since I’m a natural worrier (my philosophy is that if I worry and obsess about something enough, maybe it wouldn’t happen), I still worry over trifles, but things are so much better for me now that I wake up thanking God everyday for my good, uneventful little life. 

So, how to make peace with these unsightly, stringy white hairs on my head? Some say to look at them as signs that one is growing in wisdom; others say that they are simply signs that one is growing old. Me, I guess I’ll start regarding them as badges—markers that I’ve survived this much and this long. Others my age have unfortunately perished for some reason or another: poverty, illness, bad luck. Some have simply given up. But, me, I’m alive, in one piece, none the worse for wear, a bit banged up, yes, but ultimately still optimistic, happy.