Now We're Lightyears Away

Before we go to sleep, we are astronauts. The bed is our spaceship. Wrapped in the sheets, a flashlight spinning on the top of our heads, we count to blast off.

Here with you, we didn't need to go very far to be in outerspace.

In the moon, we have a picnic. We brought tomatoes and sandwiches, until we realize we can't take our helmets off.

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A week or two ago, we saw a blue moon. A few months back we saw the blood moon.

Last July 1st, there was a conjunction of Jupiter and Venus. Best we can, we told you about the scientific view of orbits and conjunctions. And then we told how mighty Jupiter, coming from far away, crossed our galaxy to gaze at the beauty of Venus. That evening, we saw the planets waltz in the night sky. That's how our world moves us, we told you, to persist in finding what fascinates us.

On your fifth year on earth our fascination is fueled by planets, the constellations and the cosmos. We often sing songs about the planets in our solar system.

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Sometime last July, the New Horizons mission reached the edge of the solar system, surveying Pluto, the farthest its been 10 years into its journey. We had real time updates and high-resolution pictures as we scroll through smart phones and tablets. How only some years ago, Pluto was a planet, then science contradicts itself saying Pluto is no longer a planet. Earlier this year, re-analysis suggest that previously declared uninhabitable planets are now potentially habitable.

Our knowledge only seems vast.  Our lives are really just minuscule. But the love under our sheets, in our pretend spaceship, I am certain that it is infinite.

---

We always go back home.

It's Okay I'm Asian (Too)

A Thousand Years of Good Prayers
By Yiyun Li
Paperback,  205 pages

Why is it that award-winning books by non-American authors are often about patronizing America? Or even stories about non-Americans in America are always patronizing (Recently read – Dave Egger’s “What is the What?”) And it's easy to see in movies, too easy to see in films that win the Academy Award's foreign-language category.

An author, it appears, will have a fatter chance of getting published if they are biased towards American culture by nurturing an anti-communist, anti-socialist, anti-middle east, pro-American agenda.

Yiyun Li is undeniably a gifted writer who wrote a charming collection of short stories for her first book, regardless of her agenda. She has the ability to comfortably and swiftly glide the reader through one generation to another, crossing the gaps, telling in a wonderful clarity instead of preaching or judging. She can swing you from one perception to another. We relate to her stories in the way we are renounced, and then redeemed. In the way we all thought that our parents did stupid things until we do these stupid things ourselves.

Outside the school gate, Sansan finds her mother leaning onto the wooden wheelbarrow she pushes to the marketplace every day. Stacked in a it are a coal stove, a big aluminium pot, packs of eggs, bottles of spices, and a small wooden stool. For forty years, Sansan’s mother has been selling hard-boiled eggs in the marketplace by the train station, mostly to travelers. 

There were a lot of sacrifices told in her stories. Stories about families, uncles, husbands and wives, our parents and their seemingly inscrutable reasoning.

This writer is most remarkable in the stories that heartfully explores and precisely describes the sibling-parent relationship. Even if we choose to fall far from the tree, forces find a balanced way to mend.

No matter how non-American authors appear to patronize America, the more insightful and forward-thinking of us will see through it. We will see beyond what many in the West sees as happiness. We will do right by those who came before us, of how self-centered happiness is not the only life-affirming legacy.

Patronizing America is a writer’s sacrifice.

We Glimmer

We were excited for July because of a shallow, artful reason. Gustav Klimt's "The Kiss" was coming up on the calendar. Whenever I show I. the the picture, I tell him that this is what happens when we embrace and love, we glimmer bright as gold, we burn like fire revealing the truth.

The real one is Vienna and our poster-calendar by the door is an aid to our playful imagination in bridging the problem of proximity and the problem of fare money. Activated and powered by freshly-ground, pressed barako coffee in a rainy Sunday spent with family, my memory jogs back to February. The association game is on. The sky's gray but it didn't rain. We had a nice drive to Tagaytay. At the restaurant's reception, we stand before a Klimt-looking painting. I recall the feeling that while we will never be rich as Croesus, or rich at all, once in a while we allow ourselves to feel all golden. Here we glow and glimmer as in a Klimt painting.

I had one of the most delicious meals of my life that day. We started with a mushroom cappuccino, along with salads, farm-to-table, with foie gras. For mains, we had medium-rare mayura steak and rack of lamb, fruit sorbets in between, panna cotta and souffle for dessert. And for all of it, we had each other, celebrating six years of marriage with a honeymoon that persists.

We stayed the night in Tagaytay, in a bed and breakfast about 20 minutes away from the restaurant. There was a swing in the playground, where we spent the afternoon pushing against the cool wind.. Right before sunset, I had a chance to run around the Tagaytay-Mendez area. I was, after all, training for an upcoming 32k long run. Some of the roads were uphill, some of them nice and quiet, and I tried to avoid the busy main roads. The altitude was relatively higher, and my lungs enjoyed the rich oxygen from trees and late-afternoon mountain air. On the way back, I hit a road on a residential area with a stray dogs and I got a lot of heavy barking. I got chased by one too. I kept thinking how dogs can smell fear. I kept running along with a thankfulness in my mind, and that our fears, the loneliness that will constantly haunt us, evaporates little by little in beads of sweat, the salt in my skin masking the smell of fear, if not diluting it all. That evening, we diluted it some more with Russian Standard Vodka and apple juice before sleeping in a king-size bed.

When we woke up in the morning, we swam in the cold pool. I.'s lips were turning purple from the cold, so we let him warm up a little, as he insisted on swimming some more. The Tagaytay breeze was still powerful against the sun. It felt all good, because we probably really glowed, our truths burning us up inside.

Pinagtagpi-tagping Pagkakaton Kung Kailan ang Buhay ay Parang Masining na Panaginip

Biyernes ng hapon, at may pagkakataon na dumungaw sa bintana para panoorin ang paglubog ng araw. Kung saan sinabi ng gusali sa kapwa niya gusali, "pahinga tayo."

Ipinaliwanag ko sa iyo kung ano ang photosynthesis, ang kahalagahan at proseso, ang kahalagahan ng detalye. Muli ko din natuklasan ang tunay na may kahulugan, kung ano lang talaga ang ating kailangan.

Limang taong gulang na si Iñigo at ambisyon niyang palitan si Rizal bilang pambansang bayani. Hangarin niyang ayusin ang mga sirang tren sa Pilipinas at ipadala ang mga bata sa mahusay na eskwela. Tinawanan namin siya pero tunay ang aming ligaya. Nagdiwang kami ng kanyang kaarawan kasama ang mga klasmeyt niya, na nagsalo sa keyk na may temang mula sa paborito niyang "Where the Wild Things Are." 

Sa gabi ng kanyang ika-5 kaarawan, nakatulog si I. na walang hapunan, tulad ni Max as kwentong "Where the Wild Things Are." Ilang beses namin siyang sinubukan gisingin para kumain, pero napakahimbing ng kanyang pagtulog. Napansin namin na tumatawa siya't ngumingiti. Nakabilang ako ng tatlong pagkakataon na tumatawa siya habang tulog. Isang klase ng ngiti at tawa na ikinatuwa namin kung ano man kanyang paniginip. Naalala ko din na hangganan ang kanyang paghagikgik nung Sabado at Linggo, habang naliligo sa dagat! Napaginipan niya din kaya ang mga alon na humalik sa buhangin? Naging malikhain kaya ang kanyang pag-iisip at tulad ni Max, sumakay sa maliit na barko, naging hari ng wild things, at nag-"rumpus"? 

Sa gabi ng kanyang ika-5 kaarawan, natulog si I. na higit sa labing-tatlong oras. 

Retirement Plan

The books settled on this shelf are witnesses to my plead: this life is thoughtful.

There are a few books there I haven't read, a small percentage to the tune of roughly about 5% These are mint-conditioned cultural surpluses shipped from other countries to our shores, landing on the bargain. They were too precious to be sitting there, and giving them due dignity, I got them, for a quarter or less of their original value and much less than their price tags in regular bookstores.

Aside from that, I have 60 or so books in ePub format that I acquired but haven't read yet. Who can tell, though, if the epub formats will stand the tests of time? Many of the the physical books are the same ones that filled my shelves in 2013. I picked up an old one, and it had a dedication dated 1996. I picked up another one and it was signed last 1998. This only reinforces the logic of why I tend to hoard physical books. While others consider the unread in their shelves as backlogs, I see them differently.

I look at the shelf and I see how was I then, how am I now, and how I"ll be in the future.

I look at the isolated portion of the 5% I haven't read. I see an old man reading.

Anchored

Here comes another sunset.I sit out the remaining coding hours after work, reading in a coffee shop. The book takes me to Sudan during its civil war, when the murahaleen was burning Dinka villages and adolescent boys from South Sudan were joining the SPLA. It's both enraging and depressing, and while I take no pleasure in the suffering of others, I secretly feel grateful for my own lot in life. My own country, myself, we've had our own plight. But right now the sun is in my face. I have another serving of a sunset.

I set the book down and let the day's last rays of gold activate a memory. It hits spontaneously, like a potent, mnemonic drug.  It was the same sun that fell on us when we were at the beach, with D. and I. I was also reading then, happy hour beers clenched in my fist. It was the same sun that fell on the steep roads we were driving to Tagaytay. I see a view of the mountain, yellow and purple flowers in sight, so much green all over. I taste mango dressings, organic salads, a rainbow in my mouth lifted from heavy plates on a cooler, late afternoon weather. It was always with great company. Especially with D. and I. It's nice to remember that when you're all alone. I remember runs during sunset, and grateful for the time and strength covering an 80km total distance last month.

A story goes in my head. A ship is lost at sea. It found this island, set its anchors and saw this sunset. Profusely thankful, I write repeatedly about this light.