Time x space x last day of the year

 (Basco, Batanes)

Today, the last of 2024, is also Day 15 of the Christmas break Sarai and I are spending in the islands. These make today an end, a beginning, and somewhere in the middle of something.

Time is curious, and so is its interplay with space. In this little island of my birth, in the home where my parents live and photographs take up space in a dedicated shelf, time has always stood still. No matter how old I get, I always feel like a child at the same time, standing amidst the furniture I grew up with, curling up in the familiar comfort of my parents’ bed, finding old items right where they were last I was home—six years ago this time, the longest I had been away since I left for university at 16. 

But time won’t be ignored. It screams for attention in the cracks on the walls, in the leak in the kitchen, in my parents’ slowed and careful movements, in streets I no longer recognize, in simna* inserted before a relative’s name mentioned in conversation. 

Space also feels strange in these homecomings. The town feels smaller, but the spaces and corners I have loved since childhood—the row of vaditi trees lining one side of the plaza, the grassy mounds right along the coast in Itbud, the tidal pools of Vatang—loom larger in my imagination. In reality, though, these spaces are changing, eaten away at by fierce winds and waves or else crowded out by structures built in the name of living space. 

Back to present moment, the maddening roar of motorcycles (with the tambutso taken out for maximum noise) outside keep interrupting my attempts at concluding this end-of-year pack of thoughts. Do I really need a closing statement? Whether or not I do, even a crude last sentence is a too lofty aim at 11:37pm. I will take the moment for what it is, accept the mess of thoughts and words in my head, and just let pass into 2025 what will. 

Happy New Year! 

* The Ivatans use the word "simna" before a name to indicate that someone has died

The one with all the questions

"Nanay, I have a question."

"What is it?"

"If there was a planet as big as the sun but covered with water, and near the sun, and the water was evaporated into the sun, would the sun burn out?"

The one with the Sontag book

Decided to leaf through Reborn, the first volume of Susan Sontag's published journals, while cooling down from weekend chores. It was part of last month's haul from a used-books store.

The first line set the tone and it was rather depressing:

Quote: Chesterton #1

"I felt it in my bones; first, that this world does not explain itself... Second, I came to feel as if magic must have a meaning, and meaning must have someone to mean it. There was something personal in the world, as in a work of art; whatever it meant it meant violently. Third, I thought this purpose beautiful in its old design, in spite of its defects... Fourth, that the proper form of thanks to it is some form of humility and restraint... and last, and strangest,... that in some way all good was a remnant to be stored and held sacred out of some primordial ruin."

G.K. Chesterton, The Ethics of Elfland

The one with my thoughts on homosexual love

I've been wrestling with long-held beliefs on the issue of homosexual love. Most portrayals of affection between gay people that I've seen in movies or in written fiction are of the sexual kind, and I've always found it difficult to wrap my head around the mere idea.

But once in a while, I see or read about two people who are so alike (biologically) that they couldn't be together, and

The one with The Hobbit and Lolo's death

I read The Hobbit in a hospital, many years ago, during a shift I took turns in with cousins looking after my Lolo Jose, who was very old and sick.

It was 1991. I was a very timid 13-year-old. As a child I had always found books comforting, and many an undesired social situation or uncomfortable phase were eased through with the excuse of a book in hand.

On that particular week, though,

The one about (sort of) quitting Facebook

Why quit something that's not necessarily evil? Er, we don't know that for sure. Anyway, I've found Facebook to be an easy scapegoat for writer's block, and so I decided to deactivate my account temporarily. It was also in part an experiment on depriving myself of a perverse pleasure (I feel more comfortable commenting on my friends' posts than engaging them from across the table). Maria Ressa likened Facebook to a dopamine shot. I'm not there yet, and I wouldn't want to be. I'm typing now on a blog, aren't I? I'm making progress.

The one with the Alanis song

I did laundry earlier today with music on earphones and an acoustic version of an Alanis Morissette song came on. I remember listening to the regular cranky version of the song on bad days, many years ago. I used to sing the cranky versions with girl friends, with exaggerated emotion as one might with angry girl music. But like I said, that was ages ago. Oh the naiveté of youth—when you think you HAVE problems, when you think you know pain. After you have lived through real problems, and you hear a song with some meaning bursting through from between the lines, you grin inwardly and think, now is the time for such a song. And you have the right stash of emotion to back it up. And one need not have followed everything that Alanis recommended.#

The one with the bad haircut

The only thing I go to salons for is to have my hair cut. I don't have my nails done, I don't get hair treatments (I think these two so far are pretty obvious), and I especially don't let other people do my makeup—not even for my wedding.

And so it makes me very very upset (#hulksmash) when I finally decide to let go a little—after about a year of cutting my own hair—and the professional i was counting on still gives me freshly harvested rice fields when I specifically asked for a very particular (i.e., Carey Mulligan) pixie cut.

I had used all possible aids—pictures, descriptions, a wig—to help my case, but somehow did not get through. I still walk out of the salon looking as if someone was holding a clipper behind me when a firecracker went off.#

The one where i decide to go back to blogging

For the times I want to share in a safe though smaller space.