Compilation of short MORNING THOUGHTS on Facebook.

Previously posted.

For the whiner, today (Thanksgiving) is the day of wicked tribal blood and a day of poking wounds with family. Life is smothered with hate. Ah. I am old. I keep unhealed pains, too. I may not forgive but I have forgotten. Usually those who have wronged others have more to say to defend themselves due to guilt. I also hurt some but I’d rather forget, hushed. I thank God/dess that I am still breathing. Sports TV, dogs and cats, few friends, and Netflix help. Thank you! 🍎?☮️

Then, those in the fringes, underground, or the idiosyncratic were simply called “different.” Your unique existence has a community, reserved just for you. Goth, punk, gay, Communist etcetera. These days people are pressured to accept the “new correctness.” Refuse, speak up against it, you are shamed and lose your job. I wonder, do some people ride with the politics of New Left mindset to be cool, safe, hot? Do they really believe what they seem to profess? 🤨🗣👥

Popular meme: “Teach your son that cooking and cleaning are basic life skills not gender roles.” Cooking and cleaning… Interesting. I was born into and grew up in a culture where men cook on a daily basis. Primal truth. We learn to cook rice, not aided by “rice cooker,” by the time we reach grade school age. Takes skill to cook rice correctly. Cleaning? Each child has a housework task from sun-up to dusk. Boys and girls. No “gender roles,” whatsoever. Life as is. 🔌⏰🪠

Obviously, hooked I’m on sports. I savor and relish an entertaining game. “Tanking” in sports refers to the practice of intentionally employing weak player combinations to take advantage of league rules that benefit losing teams. In NBA, losing teams get to pick high or first in next year’s draft. Hot talk is 18-year French 7’2” talent Victor Wembanyama. So by mid-season, teams start to “tank.” I don’t dig this. Unprofessional, selfish, and takes so much out of sports enjoyment. 👎🏀👎

I heard news about situations when a patient was operated on by A.I. and it went awry. Machine punctured the wrong spot etc. I had a major surgery, at least once in my life, in 2000. I was given the choice of continued medication or go “under the knife.” Right there, I chose the latter. Yet if that choice meant A.I.? Nope. Not a fan of automation as alternative to what human hands/brains are still capable of accomplishing. Pilotless plane? Don’t even ask. 🩻🤖👎

My favorite time period in movies/TV series is way back in history. Apart from the obvious that my thirst of knowing starts with looking back, I do believe women in the past, body shape in general and especially per fashion, are sexier. These days, I don’t think/feel lots of exposed skin is sexy. Thongs and Victoria’s Secret lace, tight jeans, body huggers. Nope. Leggings are fine but these have been “overworn.” Sexy stimulates the mind. Imagination, mystery. Sensual. 👗🥿👘

I am a TV/movie addict, zealot, freak. Been involved in moviemaking, wrote film reviews, and still, on my old age—glued in front of a TV series or 12! Except when I am critiquing cinema, films are easy entertainment to me. I don’t overthink it. However, I notice there’s been a lot that are shot in insane dimmed background. Lighting is irritatingly dark. Not a night sequence. Dude brushes teeth, family dinner, people on a board meeting, grocery store frames. Dark. WTH?!? 🤨🎥😡

These days the word “traditional” is conveniently connected to/with “conservative.” Which I find ignorant, if not idiotic. When you are “old-school,” you’d be auto-judged as uptight/religious, right-wing populist, and irrelevant. And so on and so forth. If you ask me what’d be a stark difference between “traditional” and “modern,” based on current political mindset per academia? Consumer products. These days, we buy more stuff. And swallow more pills. 👈💊👉

Loss and Love

“CAKE” (2014, Jennifer Aniston film) is an emotionally-charged little indie movie that deals with pain—from physical wound and most especially, pain from the loss of a loved one. Loss of a son. It could also be loss of wife, husband, mother, father, very close friend. This kind of pain, although I may not have experienced the deepest of it, I believe—is a pain that is the worst. It's like you are alive but “dead” inside. I lost my mom in 2005 and still, I am grieving her—yet I couldn't imagine losing a child forever. Especially to a mother from whose body and blood the child came out from.

       When my son was maybe 5 years old, I “lost” him in a frenzy in the open market back home. I used to bring my kids to the market when they were little so we could choose together what's up for dinner and then rent some videos for the weekend. Suddenly, Duane was gone—as we entered a video store. I was in panic, I was hysterical inside. The next 20 or 30 minutes—I scoured the market, frantically asked vendors, ran to the police station—it was like I was suspended on midair, all oxygen in me was gone but I was moving in all directions. I froze yet my body was on a rush like I was driving 100s on a highway. My heart, my mind were all about Duane. I just didn't know what to feel, what to think—I just wanted him back.

       Then, a jeepney driver told me that Duane rode another jeepney to our house! Amazingly, my son knew what to do, where to go, and which jeepney to ride on to get home. He was already home when I got there. I held my son and just calmly said, “Never get lost again. Never.” 

       And on my 47th birthday in 2007, while here in Asheville, Duane contracted a deadly virus from most likely, eating street food following flooding/typhoon in Manila. The virus was eating him up fast and rendered half of his body paralyzed in few hours. He needed shots or 5 or 7 vials of antibiotics badly, if not, he'd die. In those hours of waiting, on the other side of the (telephone) line across continents, I felt I died. I didn't want another year in my life, no more—just give those years to my son. I can give my life to my son anytime. He was 21 at that time.

       In 1995, I messed up my lungs so badly from overworking, not sleeping rightly, forgetting to eat, exhaustion. I collapsed, brought to ER and ICU. “Dead” for few minutes. In the haze, I cried out loud in that life-death stupor, “If there's a God and you are witnessing this—pull me out of this shit right now. I cannot leave my kids. Let me live for my kids, please!” The nurses and doctors later told me that it was close to a miracle that I survived. There was even a parish priest on my hospital bed. 

       This is drama, I know... But hearing and listening stories of friends who lost their loved ones is no drama. That is life. That is love. That is humanity. That loss will stay in their heart and mind as they live. All my kids, now in their 20s, are healthy and intelligent, and so young and motivated. Any dreams that I built when I was young are dwarfed by the dreams that my kids pursue for themselves. Their joy and success bring more life to me. They are my heartbeat and my spirit. My life. 

       “Cake,” the movie, fortunately ended in a good promising note. The grieving mother only had to accept that she was a good mother, she was—and she deserves life after the loss of her son. That life is a gift, not a bitter pill. Life is love. We will only embrace life after loss (of a loved one)—by accepting that good memories stay after they left. Only good memories. And those memories are the inspiration that makes us see light again. 💖🍰💖

Photo credit: Psychology Today.

All the Love in your heart.

Written years ago.

THIS little rumination is meant to friends who asked for my thoughts in regards the subject of love gained and love lost—as though I am a shrink or Dr Phil. Well, I am not—I just write silly love poems, that's all, LOL!  

       When two people break up, many times we hear one accuses the other of being a loony or crazy or “not well” (schizophrenic, bipolar, passive-aggressive etc etc), and vice versa. Of course. Let it rip, for the time being—that is frustration, disappointment. But when the smoke has cleared—try to understand that there are two people that got entangled in such a bittersweet mess, not just one. So when either starts pointing fingers, we say, oh well... 

       That is the hard part—how to get up from the accusations, harsh condemnations, and still believe that you are still significant, beautiful, and worthy to love and be loved. If you are deeply affected by his/her vitriols just because the relationship didn't work, then you remain a broken person, a failure, a piece of trash... Which you are not, unless you are committed to mental asylum after the fact upon diagnosis. But maybe you are a beautiful human being within, it's just that the perceived chemistry or attempted synergy didn't work. 

       Humans are a bunch of expostulating atoms, unpredictable hormones and hot/cold body fluids—at the same time, we are a set of sensibility and sensitivity that act and react to given situations and circumstances. Relationships are not easy... That active atom, that innate ability to love can always find its fit when it fails—you can still find a parallel wavelength and aligned energy. Don't give up... Situations didn't work out, situations that many ignore or downplay in favor of the blades and missiles hurled as both vainly try to survive a gasping relationship. When you lose this one, move on—don't listen to whatever is hurled by a finished relationship. It's over. 

       If you believe you have beauty in your heart, then let it be open—one way or the other one will enter again. Or maybe there's someone out there that you may have ignored because you were so busy exploring what you thought was the real thing... Let love heal, don't let human foible open wounds. Heal with the next shudder in your chest, don't break. Meantime, be happy, while alone. I recommend, cook yourself a nice paella, uncork a chardonnay, and go check out Netflix. Spring is here. ☮️☯️☮️