Kai's Pen

And I am enjoying my job as an office manager at a law and realty firm

I keep in my heart The goodwill we have for each other Perhaps I will always love you like this from afar Not desiring to be with you But holding on to the sweethness of youth And being happy for your happiness

Best Friend told you just recently How much I like your wife (for you) And how happy I am that you have her

You replied that your wife likes me just as much.

I will rest thinking Of how much you probably wonder What life would have been Had I been in her shoes.

But then again, I will answer The thought I myself assigned to you, That no, my Salvador del Mundo, As much as you couldn't have saved me From the muck and mire of my life, I couldn't have saved you from your dragons, either... The way your wife is able to.

I keep in my heart The peace of knowing That after all these years Our youthful love Has been transformed into This unspoken goodwill That Best Friend says is care

For this old girl Who's given up on searching for love elsewhere, This is quite enough.

It helped a lot that I said those countless Hail Mary's On the Feast of St. Joseph, twenty-nine years ago...

Look, Despite how our lives have diverged We are good people Still looking out for each other's good Sincerely

I like your wife for you And she likes me too.

And you know we both love you

Memories have a way of coming back To tie up two ends of details One from the distant past The other in a certain future Before this present...

The ancient pain is transformed into weary understanding The epiphany is distantly comforting.

Now seeing the dead drunken episodes Manifestations of death wishes From a life lived in desperation.

"Don't blow your own horn."

"Nag patuo man gayud ako sa guinikanan ko."

"Si Máma ang nag pili sa akong pangasaw-on. Dili siya mu angay ug mestizo... mao na iyang na pili si Lolo mo."

"Naa kadto siyay deperensya sa ulo, ingon iyang mga igsoon. Mao kadtong 'ingon adto' kadto siya."

"Duna man usa'y nangulitawo kanako. Pero mga mestizo, wala gi angayan ni Mama."

Me: "Gwapa kaayo ka 'la." Lola: "Dili man, angga. Ingon sila bug-at akong nawong."

"Kaniadto, gapamaligya ako ug puto sa daplin sa Lourdes. Gi yabo sa madre ang baligya ko, mao kadtong gipa eskwela ko si Mama N mo sa Manila."

"Angga, pasayloa gayud ang guinikanan mo."

When getting wind that my boyfriend put his arm over my shoulder while walking in public, she admonished: "Ayaw pag ingon ana, Angga, peligro kana."

While eating, my silverware clinked on my plate: "Angga, ang mga German mu kaon, dili ga tingog ang mga kubyertos."

"Angga, pamolbos usab."

"Ayaw pag lisô-lisô, Angga. Straight body, Angga."

When asked to treat us to ice cream: "Wala akoy kwarta karon, Angga, mag bayad pa ako ug land tax."

"PAHAWA DINHI!" Lola's voice boomed uncustomarily as she slammed the door of her room to my father who yelled at me. "Ayaw pag hilak, Angga. Dinhi ka ra, kay balay mo usab kini."

"Dunay nag hawid sa suso ko kaniadto nga ga eskwela pa ako sa MOGCHS. Na tagboan ko siya sa dalan." Grandson: "Unsa man sab ka dugay, 'la?" Lola: "Mga five minutes siguro."

"Angga, ga ampo gayud ako para sa kaayohan sa inyong pag eskwela ug trabaho. Nga ma successful kamo."

"Tawga a sila kay mag Red Dog na kita. "

Girl meets boy

Girl is an orphaned, penniless, single-mother widow who inherited her late husband's debts, and is later on diagnosed with a brain tumor

Boy is a chaebol (heir to a conglomerate) whose mother needs a liver transplant

Boy almost runs girl over in the street of the restaurant where she works and which he owns...

So the story begins.

Three days after I saw this drama recommended in an IG friend's post, I finish it with tears rolling from my eyes.

Thank God for a good character in the leading man who loved the leading lady beyond the last reel. That's how the story went.

Terminal illness is something I have seen up close and personal over the past nine years.

Most recently, I have seen a friend pass on last February 13, 2020, just before Covid's conquest. It was a peaceful death... she shared a beautiful love with her husband. It was an honor to attend her final rites in December, holy mass officiated in her room. She was emaciated, in pain, always sleeping, drifting from brief moments of wakefulness and sleep... but always cheerful when we'd visit... until in February she went. Physically painful as it looked, it was such a comfort to see how she was loved and cared for by her family and most of all, her husband...

The first death of a friend after I established the cancer group was more poignant... she had family and financial difficulties. Her husband was four years younger and not much in good terms with her family... But, she made peace with the Lord and died in her husband's arms.

Others were not as fortunate... others died lonely, yearning, longing for love and peace, certainty.

Others live on, missions still lined up, lives still to be lived, conquered, enjoyed.

One friend whose husband cheated on her while she was on chemotherapy nine years ago reconciled with the same man - who had a new heart and mind... it is a heartwarming, amazing miracle that he turned away from drugs and wrongdoing... and back into peace of the Lord, rebuilding life with his wife... and never have I seen a happier couple in the second chapter of their lives.

I, perhaps destined to be alone... I cried watching the series... yearning for love, but somehow it seems not for me. I have gotten used to it... I just want peace. I am ready anytime... But it seems, I still have a mission. Just sans background music and romance...

But Ji Hoon and Hye Soo... it was a heartwarming story. But as I'd written, real life has those too...

I just finished my second run on the 2019 multi-awarded Kdrama, When the Camellia Blooms.

Yong Sik (Kang Ha Neul) was what it took for me to grow up and move on from Dau Ming Sz (Jerry Yan).

But before I wax poetry on Yong Sik's virtues, this is what Camellia is about:

Dongbaek, a hardworking, single mother, down on her luck is an outcast in a small, closeknit countryside district called Ongsan. Her only friend is the village leader, Deok Sun, a widow who owns the oldest marinated crab restaurant (which is the Ongsan delicacy). The rest of the womenfolk are jealous of Dongbaek's youth and unassuming beauty and it doesn't help that she owns a bar where their husbands go to unwind.

Enter Yong Sik, Deok Sun's son, a police officer, who is introduced as all brawn but no brain, recently reassigned to Ongson from Seoul for breaching protocol and assaulting a criminal. Yong Sik aspires to wed a "Princess Diana" from Seoul. But having been shipped back to Ongsan, that seems like an impossibility, until he sees a beautiful, distinguished lady reaching out for a book atop a shelf in the bookstore/library. As he beholds her, sunlight is streaming down her lovely face. They bump into each other at the bookstore's entrance.

"Sorry," he says. "That's ok," she responds.

And that is the beginning of a beautiful series...

Camellia is a rich tapestry of slices of life with a dash of mystery that will keep you going from one episode to the other.

I was delighted to find out that it won Best Screenplay on the Baeksang Awards because I kept on thinking, "What an intelligent script!"

The show employs a device of show and tell to us avid viewers: Showing what goes on in people's subconscious through dialogue between characters, and telling us what should actually be done in situations (that tackle the themes). For example, Dongbaek's son, seven year old PilGu, tells us through dialogue what a headache his mother's pitiful life is giving him. He further cries in frustration why he has to keep on defending his mother from the neighborhood bullies. That happens to most characters. In real life, people are more passive-aggressive in dealing with personal issues.

Themes on abandonment, family, fatherhood, motherhood, survival, happiness, condescension/pity, hard work, community are tackled so deftly, again, employing the device of what I call show and tell.

I watched it twice and will deliberately stop watching it so as to avoid crash landing (no Kdrama pun intended) from the underdog's dreamworld to each person to his own's reality...

I am glad I met Dongbaek and Yong Sik. They are so lovable in that they are ordinary folk living ordinary lives... and yet beneath the ordinary exterior of not only Dongbaek and Yong Sik, lie people - with extraordinary stories of survival, accomplishment, the need to belong,the need to love, and that pursuit of elusive satisfaction and happiness.

Well, this ends my Camellia season... as Teacher Venus reminds me, read your own story... I will end the Dongbaek and Yong Sik madness here.

I would have been in another country living my dream of living alone in a different land if not for this pandemic.

March 19, Feast of St Joseph, I got news from my employer that finally my much awaited Certificate of Eligibility was granted by her country. This was the document that would autmonatically qualify me to a working visa in the land of my dreams... But our city declared Community Quarantine in March 17 (and the country, days before that). Countried closed borders to protect their people.

Late August last year, I submitted my application letter to a prospective employer thru one of my new friends in our Catholic Community. My new friend came home for their summer break and incidentally our community had a beach outing one weekend.

In our table, the new friend who happened to work in the land of my dreams shared an experience of how her employer traveled all the way to Moscow to hire a new employee after an interview via video conference. A week after the new employee moved in, it turned out that this person (who had serious psychological issues) wreaked havoc in the workplace to the point of harassing the other employees, my new friend included.

"Oh if only she'd hire me!" I excitedly said. "Gosh I wouldn't cause trouble with you guys."

"No promises," my new friend said. "I won't hold you to anything," I replied. "Just please hand this to her."

Two weeks passed until I received a reply from the employer. Before I knew it, she told me to fill out forms and informed me that I was going to attend training in their capital city!

What?!

I didn't know where in the first place I was going to get money to travel all the way to their country to attend the training... my previous visa was a one-time only visa for a tour a couple of years ago.

But one step at a time, God allowed things to happen:

Visa approval

Trip to Manila for a medical

News that the travel and accomodation expenses for the training were FREE!

For pocket money which I struggled to think of how to get it came through commission from a condominium sale which we had facilitated. And the sale came through just in the nick of time!

What beautiful timing! And my aunt and uncle from NY who were so supportive sent cash for luggage... just wow.

By November, I was in the land of my dreams at the same time Pope Francis was there for an international tour.

I traveled alone, happy and excited!

I was in the capital city for three days, then on the evening of the third day, I proceeded to an inner district up north...

I met my employer face to face for the first time in the train from the capital to the town where the school was.

It was a dream come true.

I came back to the Philippines exactly a week after I'd flown to the land of my dreams come true.

After hours of resting in a presidential suite of a hotel across the Cebu International Airport, I flew back to my hometown.

It was December.

January rolled in... there were a series of earthquakes worldwide, Taal Volcano spewed ashes in their part of the country, JaDine broke up. Then, there was the Superbowl with Shakira and JLo heating up the internet and TV and Kobe Bryant's helicopter crashing, but not before he and his daughter had heard mass that morning. During this time, an exclusive school in our city was beleagured by an incident involving a 14 year old boy who brought a gun to school and opened fire in his classroom, the bullet grazing the arm of his classmate (who happened to be my student when she was in preschool). The previous day, his father was given a military promotion in the capital city, while the boy brought a live grenade...

At this time, news of what was called NCov (en-covee) in China had hit which brought a frenzy of face-mask panic buying.

But just as our side of the world was catching its breath from the frenzy of events in the first month of the year, I was biding time, waiting patiently for the day that I'd finally live my dream...

Life went on: February started off with a quick Pink Ribbon activity - a continuation of keeping the newly enacted Cancer Law alive. Days later, I was able to visit my son who now resides with my former in-laws in a city an 8 hour bus ride away. It was short and sweet... anyway we had the summer break/Holy Week to look forward to.

The approval of the Certificate of Eligibility was approximately three to four months from application. If my employer turned in my application in December, after I'd signed my contract, then at the latest, it would be out by April. Give another month to prepare to leave, I'd be in the land of my dreams by May.

It is May 25 as I write this entry. My son was not able to come home for the Holy Week as planned. Cities had locked themselves in and prohibited traveled and for good measure. My Certificate of Eligibility came weeks earlier than expected, but only two days after our city declared community quarantine. It has been more than two months that we have been living this "new normal".

New normal is living one day at a time. God had taken me as far as the approved Certificate of Eligibility. I had signed my employment contract. Attended the training in the land of my dreams. Traveled to the exact location of the workplace. Traveled alone for free. Earned the pocket money I was going to use for a fairly comfortable trip. Been cleared in my medical exam. Received good accommodation by my employer. Passed my application form. Found this opportunity.

Had Covid not happened to the world, I would have earned my first wage far far away and perhaps stood taller.

But I have not murmured about this. Reflected on the turn of events, sure. But complained, no. Everyone else is on the same storm...

My employer and I were looking forward to working together... I was looking forward to the new adventure. Neither of us blocked off each other...

The delay, the detour, whatever you call it, God allowed.

I wouldn't force myself upon the issue of moving at this point. I do not want to be a burden in a place where I would be the one who would pass through many portals and encounter a random, anonymous nervous set of people in each layover (and there are many a layover)... I will sit this out until it is safe... and until God says move.

God brought me this far to my promised land... but for now, this is where I am... not yet in my promised land... we are all at a standstill... until the pestilence is over...

May 14, 2020

Thank God that today I didn't lose myself in old MTVs and interviews of the Eraserheads... instead, played on repeat the Manila Philharmonic Orchestra's Eheads medley while doing some floral watercolor painting.

Now watercolor painting can be therepeutic annd almost mindless - allowing thoughts to swim into one's mind, just like playing Tetris or Pipe Dream (back in the day - with Eheads cassette tapes on play) - so much so that the dreaded heaviness while listening to Eraserhead's music descended upon me.

Why?

Around five to seven years ago, there was that phenomenon of finding myself in a dark place after the beloved songs would be on repeat as if hypnotically taking me to my subconscious....

Why?

The thoughts behind the songs while fun and hip are all grounded on human understanding of life - merely the storytelling of ordinary tragedies...

Not meant to inspire transcendence of life... But somehow celebrating the mundane which is not in itself bad; in fact, it is what makes their songs hits - but it gets tedious especially when the sadness, the miseries, the ironies of life get to be too much, that escaping to the skies (alapaap) would be preferable but as time has made us wise, not solve the problems...

I now recall that in those five or seven years ago, I had just discovered Spoliarium (after years of being able to sing the sweet and simple, happy odes by heart [think Ligaya, Tindahan ni Aling Nena, Toyang, With a Smile]) - and THAT - Spoliarium - is what brought me to the downward spiral of depression over the death of a nobody who wanted to be a somebody in the hands of several society-somebody's who washed their hands of their wrong doings... making the nobody's death a nothing in a society that prizes who's who, money, power, what will the Joneses think and say- making this country a devil's playground... at least that place where the nobody's and somebodies played...

Music has that sublime influence on one's subconscious... and indeed the devil can make it his playground...

As one Catholic YouTube podcast taught, concentrate on your sphere of influence, do not "entertain" yourself with things you have no control over... the latter will dissolve your energies into nothingness and rob you of productivity.

There you go, self... I needed to write that out loud.

Love you, Eheads... the sheer abandon of their first songs moved my hands to nice florals of a watercolor project I started and almost didn't finish.

Now, I have to move forward until the next Eraserheads season.

May 13, 2020 Feast Day of Our Lady of Fatima

It's been five days since I watched the online streaming of Ang Huling El Bimbo, The Hit Musical.

The exorcist of our archdiocese texted me that he liked the musical because it was relevant to our times. My 21-year old son enjoyed the music and production, but thought the story was "meh" (for what reason, he wouldn't expound). I watched it twice, and couldn't stop listening to their music, watching old interviews, reading magazine articles since.

The time the Eraserheads hit these parts of the country, I was 20 years old and at my most carefree. I watched their concert in '95 with a friend on a non-romantic date. I jumped and headbanged my way from the general patronage admission straight to the front of the stage and lost myself in their music. It didn't matter that I had to navigate the rows of wooden classroom chairs with desks in my lace-up boots (gotten because my neighbor wanted my rubber and velcro sandals and traded her cool leather lace up boots for it). That was an eternal moment of infinite euphoria.

That summer I would lose myself happily in their songs, repeating their first album Ultraelectromagnetic Pop over and over again in that year - and there was no angst, loneliness, longing for anyone while listening... In a world where everybody hated the sosyalan, I felt at home and unthreatened with the nonchalance and the hell I care attitude of the Eraserheads.

I felt like this is where I belonged.

I didn't have a crush on anyone in their band... I didn't want to be Ligaya or Toyang or Aling Nena's daughter, much less Shirley, or the girl in the Magasin. I was content being a bystander, an acquaintance , or perhaps a friend who would sing along to their unforgettable yet simple tunes and lyrics. I resonated with their brand of streetwise wit that incidentally showed people up, mostly the maarte (pretensious/capricious) ones. Their kanto banter appealed to the simple, carefree girl in me who was tired of being pulled in the rat race.

Over the years since then, there would always be an Eraserheads season when their music would accompany my days.

Around five to eight years ago, a friend and I took up listening to their albums again. Strangely, I felt heavy after some replays... so I sadly parted ways with the sound.

Then two years ago, Ely came to our city for a Best Hits concert. I went there with my friends: the girl who traded her boots for my sandals, my best friend, and my son. Filling the concert hall were people from our college days who were aging, putting on weight, but there was an energy that was so eager to be taken back to idyllic times. The exhilaration of jumping to those college anthems was a surge of light in the jaded hearts and bodies of the multitude that longed for the years of innocence. And Ely did not disappoint.

Since then, my friends and I would go back to the video of that concert, never mind that it was recorded by cellphone. One rainy night, that video accompanied my son and me at the laundromat and we had fun singing along while folding clean clothes.

Now, it has been five days since I watched the online streaming of Ang Huling El Bimbo, The Hit Musical. Who would have thought that the earthy, but cool college folksy/pop/rock songs would be covered by the likes of the Manila Philharmonic Orchestra, Lea Salonga, KZ Tandigan, and a cute little girl named Alexa Salcedo in the Voice Kids - and would still sound as fresh as it did in '95? And oh, their legend also reached K-pop land - as a Korean idol famously covered Ang Huling El Bimbo. Wow!

I'm glad that it was their music that I enjoyed. That I didn't fantasize about being anyone's girl (as I did with New Kids on the Block and even Menudo of old). Articles of one band member's domestic violence surfaced through my browsing and it was sickening. Apparently, in a Kris Aquino 1996 interview, one band member was described by a friend (not within EHeads) to be this and that, and christ-less... 1n 2019, this same person allegedly texted his girlfriend: "Charles Manson trip. Labyu." as a statement on leaving his girlfriend black and blue. Creepy and hair-raising...

I asked the exorcist what he thought when I told him about the heaviness I would feel after listening to their songs to no end - and then my discovery of the godlessness of one member... He said to just stop listening when I'd feel uneasy and revert to religious songs. Still gives me the chills.

Perhaps tomorrow, I can let the Eheads go. After all, I should be satisfied being able to unearth a 1996 Kris Aquino interview, when everyone was still fresh in their element: Kris in her airhead, conyo bubble, the EHeads in their innocent irreverence. And a 1997 classy meets cool Mikee Cojuangco with the Eraerheads short movie entitled Harana that brought the 90s kilig feels.

The weight of indignation bore down on me as I beheld from my cellphone screen, the other half of his picture... he, with her. A perfect fit... where I was just a passing figure in their life... and they were stuck like lucky fishbones on my throat...

I racked my brain for reasons of why I was suspended in that triangle, with me sinking into a fit of despair, I might as well have been dead... while they blithely flaunted their love.

When we started out in 2001, I was sinking as well, into a pit of another despair... a publicly failed marriage... but there he was, SINCERELY wanting to know me... his presence pulled me out of the abyss of self-loathing and self-pity.

Sincerity, I have to give him that... He did want me for awhile, for years... even though oceans away... after all, what is this blog about anyway, if not more than half about him.

Until the sincerity, the attraction, not even the friendship could save us from distance, time, and resolve...

And then there were cancer diagnosis, mine - and personal problems, his. Not to mention his lying to me about his status over years (how many girlfriends?), the distress over being bitched out by one girlfriend, etc., etc...

When my grandfather died in 2014, after three attempts at relationships with others, I still sought him, even after he'd left me when I told him I was going to the doctor for a lump in my breast. I told him how disappointed, devastated I was that in 2011, he left me out in the cold - nursing myself back to health with cancer treatment, nursing my bewildered heart after whom I thought was my soulmate left me, my heart, for dead. I told him I couldn't handle drug problems (that's what he told my cousin to tell me)... but still I told him my heart sought him. A bad internet connection disabled me from hearing what he was saying, except I heard "I am mad at you too."

2016, he told my good friend in NY that I was his best friend...

... next thing I knew in the same year, I knew through Facebook hints that he was seeing her.

Why her of all? She, who yes, loved him when she was 12 (and we, he and I, were 11). She showed me the greeting card he mailed for her birthday when she turned 12.

In 2001, she was married. She was just a fond memory to him. I, on the other hand, while I grew up with her, was lukewarm towards her memory. After all, I never saw her as a friend. The thought of her never evoked warm feelings in me. Playmate, yes. As little girls, we were mistaken for twins at one point. But she was far more confident than I. Far more sure of herself. Often, I'd feel that she laughed down on me, for my awkwardness, cluelessness, whatnot. Perhaps that was just how it was.

When I figured that they were together, I felt betrayed by him... He did not know how I felt about her... I would not deign to reduce myself into pettiness - outwardly. But deep inside, I felt betrayed by him, by life, by fate, by God.

The joke's on me again? She wins, I lose, again and again.

It no longer became about how he'd left me, how his sincerity was not enough, how whatever "love" we'd had was just an elusive rainbow, sunset, a beautiful glitch in nature?

It became about the popular kids laughing down at me... And I, being reduced to my former loser self at 11. Still on the outside looking in.

When I saw his instagram post brandishing their affection, I agonized over the pain of losing... It didn't help that the community quarantine gave me more time than usual... but I prayed and prayed to be healed of my memories...

And then God answered...

I had to forgive them... even if they fell in love not to spite me, but just because, and yet they didn't think of me - whom they have known since they were 11 and 12, me - whom he promised he'd wait for... me, whom he professed to be his best friend, even after I'd told him I couldn't deal with drug problems...

I had to forgive them... because after all -

after all, I'd been in her shoes, in their shoes. Inconsiderate of relationships... Inconsiderate of propriety... getting into a relationship I shouldn't have because I got in the way of a friendship; 1996.

The poet's and the man who became my husband.

My soulmate and the perfect gir's instagram picture was my karma.

Just because I prostrate myself God's mercy doesn't mean I am immune to His Justice.

Full circle... The poet must have been just as, or even more bewildered than I... and I turned my shoulder back on him, on my own promises, on our shared hopes, onto an uncertain future starting at the wrong foot with someone he called friend.

I accept the pain, the humiliation, the reality...

I was my own Daisy Buchanan whose time has come. I was rightfully rudely woken up from my frivolous heartache.

And accepting this splash of cold water in my face lifted off the weight of indignation...

Only the sobering fact that what goes around, comes around. We were all sincere at the time we wanted to connect to whomever in what era we're talking about. Sincerity is one thing, self-discipline, propriety are another.

In reparation for my vanity, I kneel in penance for the wrong I have done, for the people I have hurt.