Anticipation

Timepiece. From Dr. JCP's uber cool
Balinese inspired clinic. April 2011.

Ooh…I love quickie lists!

For fun, if I had more time I’d probably…

Read Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita (someone told me the story one time and I want to read the tragicomedy myself), or Anna Karenina (which apparently takes one whole summer to finish), or heck, all three books of Lord of the Rings (because it’s so cool, and I haven’t had the time to do it?)…

I’d also learn how to speak in French, because baby, I don’t want to be the little cherie whose only claim to fame in the world is that I know what Je ne parles pas francais is. And besides, it’s fun.

Which also should be followed up with maybe I should learn how to do sign language. Which reminds me, one of my co-residents presented a case for grand rounds about her treating a psychotic patient who was both deaf and mute. Can you imagine how much of a challenge it must be to communicate with a patient like that one? (It’s a hard enough challenge to help someone to get well by talking to them about it…how much more if they can’t say anything. (I’d probably be unstoppable.haha)

Maybe I’d also like to put all the pictures I took ever since I started being a mad shutterbug (2005) together into a collection, because frankly, I never have gotten around to doing it.

I’d also like to Finish watching my six seasons of “The Sopranos”. ‘cause it’s a really cool show. *big grin*

And maybe play more tennis? Cute playmates optional.

Oh, and not just because I’m a fan of the Philippine Azkals, but I’d also give more time to learn  to love football. What can I say, I love the energy and enthusiasm, and I love the man.

J

Hmm..what else? Oh, learn how to cook inun-unan, and other useful meals besides. To be perfectly honest, I don’t even eat breakfast anymore… I have boxes of milk in my fridge, and I just grab one on the way out the door, and that’s instant breakfast.

Write out my notes and study all day is also another fun thing to do, if I had more time.  ;-)

Ooh, and I want to join a show choir too! ‘cause it’s not always fun to just keep singin in the shower all the time! I would love to break out into song every once in a while. :-p

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Time is a treasure, yes, but having money would be more fun too.

So here’s my  tick-off list:

·       Get a house for my family, with lots of space and fun stuff…and wide wide open spaces.

·        Get my own fun condo for living in. because I’m loving city living so much these days. ;-)

·        Have a good psychiatric rehabilitation facility with a sustainable medication program and psychosocial skills training  and community psychoeducation in my home town (‘cause there’s none officially to begin with, sadly.)

·         Lobby for government insurance covered psychiatric care for Filipinos (sorry, I can’t help the psychiatry causes plug.:-p).

·        

          Buy me books for a library.

·    OR…buy an Ipad2 with gigabytes worth of ebooks. Of course.

·   Buy the local elementary school a library (yes, I’m all for books for kids. J).

·   To walk in absolutely any store and buy what I want without having to look at the price tag.

·   And with that, to be able to pick out any place in the world to go to, with as many people as I want to, to go there. (super fun idea, especially if you have fun family like I have.)

·        

And well, I’d like to have some surgery (the best) done.

 Specifically: elbow joint replacement surgery. Tendon transfers. Ulnar nerve Neurorraphy. Scar surgery on my left arm.

Well, it’s not really an issue, but I kind of miss having a normal arm. And a good backhand. And maybe to not keep bumping my forearm into stuff (loss of proprioception happens sometimes.). and maybe to feel what it’s like to hold hands and touch my face with the left.

J Oops. Wish list, not Whine list. My bad.

Cheers!

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I’ve been having a strange feeling these days…

When I was kid growing up, I had big dreams.

(I still do.)

I always wanted to be doing something…I always wanted to be something bigger…be somewhere else.  I was a ball of energy, always wanting to explore, always wanting more than what I had, even to the point of dreaming of things near-impossible. So much so, that I remember that my mother’s constant admonition was that we should not dream too big.

For a time, I resented that, because I felt that there was really nothing I couldn’t do, nor achieve unless I put my mind to it.

Ah…the energy of youth is boundless and perhaps foolish at times.

It was only just recently when I realized that my mother didn’t necessarily mean that I shouldn’t dream big…I could now swear that she meant to dream big foolishly, but to have a plan to carry it through, and do it all, and get it all, at the right time.

Perhaps I was too impatient then, that I didn’t realize right away that everything that was meant to happen will happen…once you’re really ready for it. I’m still far from being contented with my lot in life now, that I’ll settle for whatever I have now.

But instead of discontent, it’s more of a feeling of…anticipation. I have this pent up energy now, but it is not borne of a need to covet more and more, I am just in wait. (I don’t know if you get what I mean…it’s like, basta, I know something good will happen.)

Yet, even in this semi-content state, I still probably wouldn’t mind the wish list I did for Gaya’s blog entry fun. And that, Ladies and Gentlemen, was my entry for Gaya’s Blog Rounds Extravaganza, episode 2.

J

The Anais Way

“Like a hot knife cutting through butter…” was a friend’s description of the smoothness of Inoxcrom pens.

A pen lover (and member of a group of pen lovers online), he knew his pens, complete with names and models, like cars. I love pens too (to a fault), but not in that way. I was more of the “feeling” type, i.e. “if it feels right, it must BE right” (I use the same rule for love and  grammar, but that’s a different story).

We had just gotten our bi-annual salary bonuses, but instead of blowing a substantial amount on clothes and shoes (as single people my age are wont to do at some time or another), I held onto it for a considerably longer time…and successfully bought, as my first ever purchase, a puncher.

Yes, the kind that makes little holes in paper.

J

And then, I got myself what my grandmother would call, a souvenir. My grandmother is a fan of the lottery bets recreationally, with a couple of “steady numbers” memorized. Whenever she wins, she buys something special (usually a housedress, a duster in bright colors) to celebrate her good fortune.

I did the same. But not with a housedress, of course.

I bought…a pen.

Nothing too fancy, that's for sure, but it was a stainless steel Inoxcrom pen that [literally] had my name on it. I had it engraved with “Stephanie Eloisa”, and although it seems like a frivolous purchase, I assure you, it is not.

(No, you can’t wear a pen, and no, it is not JUST a pen, and yes, it was well worth it. :-p) 

I’ve been writing a lot of stuff these past few days, with my job being like it is…a never-ending recording of my patients’ life stories. It is a painstaking process to churn out voluminous chronicles of their lives, and though I may exaggerate somewhat, this is all true. And, writing it out with a great pen makes the difference.

Anais Nin didn’t write with a Panda. Or a Dong-A sign pen in her prime. She probably wrote with an…Inoxcrom. :-p

In her crazy lifetime full of living and loving, Anais Nin probably had to be able to sit down and write out her thoughts and do so enjoyably because of a good pen and paper. I’ve been reading snippets of diary entries (she’s most known as a diarist) and I’m halfway through Henry and June, a book tagged by some as extremely erotic. (Although I didn’t think so, because I was more fascinated by her accounts, by her wit, and by that way she described people around her with such palpable, and yet technically superior grace.)

Which is why I could not imagine her on twitter, though. Or on facebook. (Although her quote, "And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom."  Would seem to sound awfully cool as a status update on FB, don’t you think?)

I feel the same way, I suppose. Although I enjoy twitter’s urgency and immediate fulfillment of one’s urge to document one’s little life events and current preoccupations, I for one, can’t fully embrace it. 

And in terms of status updates on Facebook, you can only say so much. Instant gratification of our need for posterity seems to be the norm nowadays, and I have nothing against that.

For a more pleasurable writing experience, I recommend a dose of Anais Nin.

To write. To sit down with pen and paper, to think, and rethink, and put your thoughts in order…with nary a thought for whether your current piece is going to be “popular” or not (Although if it is, then it won’t be quite so bad, either. ;-)).

I am not a blogger. Nor am I a writer just yet.

I, well… I just write.

I breathe, I live and I tell my stories.

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"We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect."

                                                                                    — Anaïs Nin

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Hi. This is my entry for the rejuvenated blog rounds, Round 2. Major Props to Doc Remo for hosting and getting the ball rolling again. We needed a jolt (a.k.a. a much-needed defibrillation to get our blogging hearts restarted again), right?

I’ve only started reading Anais Nin on and off since last week. After reading about her diaries and writing from a book about journal writing, I got really curious, mesmerized by her gift for describing people. It would come in handy for my job, I suppose, as we deal with detail… So I looked her up, and I got my hands on a copy of Henry and June, a sexually risqué piece of work, or so they say.

LOL. I mentioned this to a friend, and when he looked it up online he was aghast and adding the other ebook I shared with him, he commented, “Is this the type of literature you’re into?”. What can I say, he wasn’t a writer…and judging from his reaction, he may never understand the beauty of the words, the mellifluous harmony of writing which marks Anais Nin’s pieces.

Tsk tsk.

Admittedly, I’m not a big fan of her way of throwing herself at life without reserve, and of her loss of 

control on certain issues, but by golly, can she WRITE…and what style!

 She is a thin, permeable membrane of emotions and lusty love for living…which makes it almost scary to want to be like her. Yet, I know my limits. I want to live life to the fullest and write about it and all that, in a style like hers, but I can never fully let go.

(In the same way that I can’t overshare on twitter, facebook, and blogger. But this comes pretty close.)

Good morning. :-)

~ S. 

Thank you, Dorothy

"Ok, give me a smile..." The photographer guy coaxed me gently. 

I remembered my mother holding my brother by the hand, looking on while my picture was being taken. I was sitting on a box, coached by the photographer, on how to pose. There was a flash of light, and then, "Ok, very nice, that's it..."

I was maybe 5 or 6 years old when the picture on the left was taken. I was in the second year of kindergarten at St. Paul's...and it was for our yearbook. It was my first year in a private school (as I had done preschool in small public schools twice already), but I had been studying since I was 3 and a half years old, according to my mother. I was underage, so they didn't let me get in kindergarten, until I was about to turn 6.

I was in the usual Paulinian uniform; white top with the sailor collar, and starched black and white checked skirt with the matching neck tie shaped like a diamond (for our year level), complete with a laminated card of an orange carrot, with my picture and name on it. 

My teacher was Miss Orlina, and she was a nice young lady who was pretty and petite, and had curly hair. I remembered how she'd always start each afternoon class with a prayer, and had us cross our arms when she wanted us to behave. She had a way with kids...we were hardly ever rowdy. Years later, when I was much older and had seen her with her class, I saw that she could make each little pony-tailed tot cross his or her arms, and stay in line, and even walk a certain speed with just a simple command. They followed her instructions to the letter. (Clout with kids, I call it now. :-p)

This week's blog rounds had quite an amusing topic, and honestly, it was an unexpected surprise. I haven't talked about my time in Kindergarten ever, and I had to think about how I'd write an entry on it.

So what was kindergarten like, for me? Well, I only remember little bits and pieces of moments in the past, here and there, but they are very clear anyhow. :-) It was my first time in a private school, and my first time to "mingle"with city kids. I think I was a very quiet kid then.

The lessons came easily for me, as it was the case in kindergarten, and there wasn't any difficulty to it. The "entrance exam" involved being asked to identify shapes and colors and to put blocks in certain places. After the exam, I remember feeling, "Is that it?" Well, that was it. It was kindergarten, after all.

There was one time when I was seated at the same table as a girl named Lilibeth and Lyndi. Lilibeth was a chatterbox, and Lyndi was a pretty girl who had waist-length wavy hair and always did her hair in two pigtails, the coveted hairstyle for 5 year-olds, I remembered. Anyway, one afternoon, they said some mean things, but i didn't do anything about it. And the next afternoon, when Miss Orlina asked me what was wrong, I told her that the two girls were mean to me (meaning the other day), and the girls vehemently denied it, and said that they didn't do anything,

It was a love-hate relationship at that table, because, in that afternoon, when I took out my jumbo crayons from Australia, they borrowed some, we were friends again. Oh, and also, I remembered a Spanish kid named Joshua who borrowed an orange crayon that afternoon (and even asking him, "Didn't you bring your own crayons?", which was mean of me too, of course). He was a cute/good-looking guy, in a time before I knew what cute/goodlooking guys were. :-p

I suppose it was stressful for me, because one afternoon, without my meaning to, I peed in my seat and wet my skirt through. Miss Orlina took me to the back room and took off my wet skirt and cleaned me up. I didn't bring extra underpants, so my teacher borrowed some from another kid's locker. I remember putting on a pair of white shorts with psychedelic multicolored prints with my sailor uniform and traipsing around the halls, black maryjanes and fluffy socks in all.

She said I should go over and thank my classmate, Dorothy, for loaning me her pants. So I did.

:-)

I think I loved writing back then, and I remember this essay we had to write in our workbook. The theme was, "How did you spend your weekend?" I remembered writing, in big thick pencil lead, "I did not go out to play, because we have a..." I thought for a bit, hmm.. and  nudged my seatmate, asking him, "Hey, how do you spell television?" He didn't know either. So, i put in... 

"I did not go out to play, because we have a televihon."

Bad spelling, but it was a thought. :-p

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I still wonder what I would've done if Dorothy didn't have any spare shorts that afternoon. yikes.

Of Pens and Pixels

My pockets are always bulky. 

My right would contain my beloved camera and my breast pocket would contain my handy pens.

 These two things are rarely out of my reach. Whenever I need them, I am confident that I’d be able to find them and use them for whatever I needed them for.

 My camera is a Canon SX100 IS, black and compact, but sophisticated enough to take pictures that satisfy me. My pens are a variety…and I have to have them at all times, or I wouldn’t feel “complete”, and at a sense of unease. How so? Well, I need a retractable black pen for the usual official hospital documents we have to make, an orange or yellow (sometimes both) highlighter for marking names, a pencil for writing certain little notes here and there, a green soft-point pen for underlining [important] things in my books and fifth, but definitely not the least, a pen of White-out (liquid eraser), necessary for the little mistakes we can patch up as needed.

 I take a lot of pictures, by nature, and I write a lot.

 Ever since I was little, I had this desire, although in varying degrees, to preserve things that were happening around me, or to me. When I was seven years old, I started a diary where I wrote every little important thought, every little sparkle of inspiration that hit me deep.

 From an early age, I was akin to scribbling away on little notebooks. I was a bit of an introvert most of the time, taking liberty in slowing things down and observing things more closely that I should have at my age.

 I would then write about what I thought about certain things, without concern for syntax or rightness, neither caring whether or not my entries were too corny. Which they undeniably were, of course.

 When I was seven, I wrote in a diary about this boy in class that I thought was particularly interesting and good-looking. An older cousin, a girl, playfully teased me. My father overheard, and he got irked and muttered something about how I shouldn’t be having a boyfriend because I was only seven.

 Thinking back on it, I have to laugh. How preposterously overboard can a dad get, huh?

 (Quite a bit, actually. :-p)

 That taught me to keep my thoughts to myself, to cherish them and remember them, but to keep them and put them away for a later time.  My memories, and a good part of my young heart are stored in pages and pages of smooth notebook paper, kept in a box deep in a cabinet. Reading a few lines brings every happiness, every hurt, every mirthful laughter back in crystal clear detail every time.

 My camera serves the same purpose. I take pictures, lots of them. Never ever to embarrass anyone by posting them online, but to serve as visuals for moments in life that meant a lot. Or didn’t.

 My camera serves the same purpose as my pen. I don’t snap away because I’m a photographer who documents every event…rather, I take pictures because I want to remember faces, and happiness and triumph and precious seconds of joyous or sorrowful emotion that no other medium would allow me the freedom to.

 Basically, you could think of me as a chronicler…a storyteller who takes the little moments of life, whether they be serious or not, seriously.

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 When I was younger, I had this silly dream of being a lovely old lady, in my sixties or seventies, being surrounded by little grandchildren who wanted to hear stories about “how things were like way back when…”. And in my dream, in answer, I’d smile, with a twinkle in my eye, and pick a random story, and maybe tell her about the time, once upon a time, when I found myself standing at the foot of a very big ferris wheel, with twinkling lights, holding the hand of a boy who I had loved then, with all my heart, and how it turned out to be not so scary a ride, at all? Or that maybe, I could tell her about the people I had met in the hospital, who had, in one way or another taught me about life? Or, I could tell her about the time, when  she was born and that I had helped deliver her?

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I can’t wait, really. :-p

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When Ligaya put up the topics for this month’s blog rounds, I was initially excited…the  theme was so…free, and it felt like I could write anything at all, and not be encumbered by any “theme”, so to speak. As I sat in front of the pc, with fingers poised over the keys, I realized that…yes, my fingers had remained that, poised over the keypads, waiting for some divine inspiration to hit me and set my words into flow…

Like life, writing doesn’t come easy… a blank piece of paper that we all start with, puts us on the brink of a new challenging beginning. As with every other project, every major undertaking that comes our way, we have to start with a plan. And we have to start with a clean sheet.