today and yesterday

One of the perks of being an orphan is that you can do almost everything you ever dreamed of doing when your parents were alive. You can drink as many Slurpees as you want, even if you have been coughing and sniffing for three whole days. You can dance in the rain and see your brother watching you surreptitiously from an open window before he joins you minutes after. You can stay up late, watching Somewhere in Time over and over again and no one will come up to you, serving sermons on gilded platters about health and the dangers of romanticism. You can sit and stare at absolutely nothing for hours and no one will come to envelope you in a furious hug, saying that for them, you exist. You are loved.

******

One of the moments when I wished I had a digicam or any camera of any sort was yesterday, when, upon leaving the apartment, I saw a large orange tabby glaring at me from a neighbor’s doorstep. It was so beautiful and sleek that I was really tempted to steal it and hole it up in my room for a day.

******

The new owner of my father’s ancestral house was kind enough to let us take some furniture from the house. He said that it would help us remember. I wonder if he thought that he was doing us a favor.

Here are some treasures that I found:


1. I unearthed a writing table from my uncle's old room. It probably was an antique mahogany sewing machine (sewing table?) that belonged to my grandmother, which was later fashioned into a kind of writing desk, now unpolished and a bit dusty. I fell in love with its intricate foothold patterns that scrolled and unfurled, like so many wild vines.

Time to take out my writing cap. I will not be blamed for future Dickensonian entries.


2. I also found my mother's other painting- a still life composed of apples and peaches and round patterns swirling on large jars.

Her name on this one is C. Usebio. My mother rarely signs her name on her paintings. She said she used other names on most of them. This will make the ones she sold in Japan and the other paintings of hers hard to track down, even if I do get to become a billionaire. She has had too many lives, too many secrets lost in the wailing wind.

********

Two books that I've read over the weekend:

1. Lady Oracle : Margaret Atwood

The reason I enjoy Atwood books is because I believe that I am a narcissist. No matter what people say, everyone likes seeing themselves in black and white, in another person's clothes, hidden in a heart. Atwood's characters successfully elucidate parts of me that, to use a cliché, I have never chanced upon before. When I read her, I feel that I am on a treasure hunt. In her characters I see my plots, my hands, my tired, black heart.

2. The Wayward Wife and Other Stories: Alberto Moravia


Two movies that I've watched (they're really good. but don't take my word for it.):

1. My life without me - Isabel Coixet

"I am classically in love!"

2. Garden State - Zach Braff

"What's the word that's burning in your heart?"

***********


You won't feel pain immediately after a fall. You first think about what you would've done better if you haven't stepped on that particular railing. You were forewarned but you decided to be a regular troglodyte and risk it. A few minutes after the fall, you feel your knees go slightly numb. You lift your skirt an inch and you see pinpricks of blood adorning flesh. You press a finger to the scar, lightly trace its irregular pattern. You laugh at your instability - at your penchant for accidents happening even before the journey. You try to divert your attention from the discomfort so you watch the wipers on the windshield mechanically move from side to side, as if the movement will heal you, will make things disappear like rabbits in top hats. After a while, you notice that the pain has stopped. You imagine yourself victorious. You are a riot of dry autumn leaves spinning around, finally happy. But you lift up your skirt an inch and see how red the prinpricks still are.