Not a Lola Anymore

Backache gone and cured. No thanks to those meds the doc gave me. Just made me extremely sleepy. I even slept on my office chair and was told by my officemate I drooled. I doubt that's true but I do believe my mouth was hanging open.

Anyway nuff of that. The good news is after almost 3 weeks the darned pain is gone.

Backache Lola

I must be getting old. :( I've been having this persistent backache for days. Not yoga nor massage can seem to get rid of it. Perhaps the fruit of being mostly sedentary. You'll find me walking around with a hand on my lower back, like a cliche grandmama. Sigh.

SM...Did they really cut those pine trees?

A few weeks back, pictures of trees being cut went viral on Facebook. The caption points to the mall giant SM as the culprit. Apparently, SM Baguio began cutting down the pine and alnus trees during midnight to avoid getting caught by the public.

I googled everywhere for news to confirm this event, but found nothing but allegations. Inquirer reports that SM snowballed the trees and not a single pine or alnus was cut down. The process of balling allows the trees to be transplanted to a new location. But even this report seems to be in question among Filipino netizens. No one is sure whether SM cut or snowballed the trees, and even if the mall giant did the snowballing, there have been experts who claim that the chances of survival for the transplanted trees is really slim due to the fact that pine of that age/maturity would have widespread roots by now. Snowballing them would require cutting down many of the outlying roots.

When I opened my gmail, an ad greeted me, with the headline "SM Baguio Pine Trees":

Hmm something smells fishy here.... Or wait is that shit? I wouldn't be surprised if the content of the news is just a load of bull, paid for by the sorry Filipino version of mafia/yakuza/chaebol. And now they're just cleaning up after themselves by circulating this "I'm innocent" press release. The Filipinos are a forgetful bunch after all. After one big scandal, we move on to the next big thing to work up our lazy hearts and asses.

Published in Ph Free Press; Upcoming in Ribbons: Tanka Society of America

"Tunnels" can now be viewed at the website of the Philippines Free Press. According to EIC Joel Toledo they expect the publication to be back in print by this year, otherwise it will remain fully online. Though of course it would be nice to be like the good ol days, where the magazine had national distribution. *edit* the magazine's site seems to be down, so I'll post the poem here so it's available.

Tunnels

We dug

hollows

into the earth

into her heart

called these tunnels

so we could pass

back and forth

to and from our destinations

to and fro

day and night

in rumbling vehicles that echo

this hollow being

and this is how we shape the world

in the image of our hearts.

I got an acceptance letter for one of my tanka today from Mr. David Rice, the editor of Ribbons by the Tanka Society of America. David suggested several revisions, which let me understand more the importance of the economy of words in poetry. This is even more important in short forms like the tanka and haiku. The poem is set to appear in the spring/summer issue of the magazine.

Thank God for the good news. I've been getting lots of rejection slips lately and was starting to wonder whether I should go on a hiatus muna.

BV

Angry, though I wish I wasn't. And I'm not usually angry. Only when I feel like I was treated unfairly. Not that I always treat people fairly. Sometimes I forget what my friends like/dislike. I forget to comfort someone grieving. I'm too busy to congratulate someone on his/her success. I almost lost these friends to whom I committed these faux pas on.

While in this rotten mood, I got thinking about this thing called "expectations."

They say one should get rid of all expectations. Sometimes I believe in this, when I'm fighting off feelings of disappointment. But sometimes I just end up questioning things. No expectations would mean we have free reins on everything. Nothing can be called good or bad. Wrong or right.
In a sense, it nullifies everything one tries to achieve in life.

No expectations = no need to pass that course in college. no need to work for a better life / future. no need to cherish friends and take care of them. no need to find a career. no need to fight for what you believe. I could go on forever.

To expect pertains to the future. What one wants to happen. What one believes he/she will get. In a sense it also involves trust. You believe that the expected thing will be done or will happen (as if life owed that to you). So what exactly is wrong with having expectations? Does it merely set the ground for being unreasonable?

I dunno. All I know is I got really angry when the faux pas was done to me. And am not liking this feeling. No wonder my friends reacted that way to me.

What brightened my day was an acceptance letter from the Philippines Free Press notifying me that my poem "Tunnels" will be published tomorrow.

Horray.