Postcards from the blocky desert

I did say I'd work on some things during the break, but Mon finally got me and Mikko into Minecraft, and we were instantly hooked. We spent a lot of time playing together in a LAN world that Mon set up for us. It was like the LEGO and make-believe games we would play as kids.

I also discovered that Mon has some pretty cool natural architectural ability. He showed me his private Minecraft world, and the design of his various houses and the sculptures he made out of whole mountains just blew my mind. The monkey skull with lava falls coming out between its teeth was my personal favorite. I wish I'd taken screenshots.

He was also very sweet, giving me gifts that he thought I'd find useful in the LAN world: a nearly unbreakable sword, a kevlar vest, a book and quill for noting coordinates, a horse and saddle. When I asked him why, he said it was because I kept dying, which I took to mean that he cared.

He left for school just a few days before I did, and playing was a lot lonelier without his and Mikko's constant joking and trash talk. Here in my grandmother's house in Makati, before my flight to Singapore tomorrow, it's even lonelier without them both. I actually find myself wishing for their pranks, like the time they filled my house with cows. I had to wreck a wall just to push them outdoors, and since I lived in a dense forest, there were cows in the trees for days. I've set up my own private world to explore and build in, and I've built three houses already, but it's almost no fun without my brothers' offers of housewarming gifts (i.e. lava).

I found myself in the desert the other day and thought I'd try going for scale. Maybe a huge arch. I liked the idea of an arch in the middle of the desert, the sign of travel and civilization in the middle of nowhere, now witnessed only by skeleton archers, zombies, and the occasional witch. Designing and building it was both soothing and challenging. Afterward, I flew and walked around it, doing nothing except watching the shadows change as the sun and moon rose and set.

I don't know how he knew, but Mikko seemed to know what I had in mind even before I left home. "What are you going to do now that Mon's gone? Probably build your temples and stuff," he'd said.

I wish he and Mon had been there, even just to laugh at how sad it was, building an arch in the desert — a monument to builders who were no longer there.

(For scale, a player-character is two to three blocks tall.)

JRL

Three years ago, I looked out of an MRT window, saw a huge public library building, and was filled with the hunger to live in a place where public libraries were a thing, where they were as much a part of the people's lives as places of worship, shopping malls, and schools. My family and I were just heading home from a day at the Science Centre, and I was already awed at the fact of the Science Centre, the fact that people lived, worked, and played in a place with such a Science Centre, and the fact of the public transport one could ride to and from it, when that building came into my field of view.

It rose over the pale grass on that hot day. There was construction on one side and nothing remarkable on all the other sides, but it was there. Here we were on the less developed, more industrial, and possibly poorer side of the country, and it had one of the biggest public library buildings I'd ever seen.

I loved the public library system in our short years in the US, and I've been extremely lucky to have gone to Philippine schools with good libraries. But back home, once school was over, my life with libraries was over.

I saw that building and remembered, realized everything I was missing. The day I saw that building was the day I realized that people didn't have to live the way I was living. Public libraries were definitely a thing. They were in people's lives. People could live around them. I wanted to live around them. I wanted it so bad, and that want was a pit that buried itself inside me, took root, and started giving me ideas about the future — ideas that led me here.

Today, I finally got to walk into that building for the first time. I stayed for nearly five hours, working on a project, and I didn't realize how long I'd been there until I got up to go. On the surface, there wasn't anything wondrous about my going there; I was just another student at the local library, going about my business and then going home. And that, the very ordinariness of it, was what made it special. I was there, in the library, like all the other people there. Maybe it was even the first time I felt I might belong here, if I'd like to.

It smelled like peaches.


P.S. – I also found the place where my family and I got lost on our way to the train station. We had to walk through apartment blocks, a hawker center, and a small tiangge. There are malls and corporate centers now, but the hawker center and tiangge are still there. Passing through that same corridor was like time travel. I'd never expected to be back there or to even be able to recognize it, and then suddenly, there I was. Maybe the fact that we were lost there made it stand out to me.

I miss everyone.

Next

Word is slowly getting out, mostly via my mom's Facebook status updates, but I thought I'd wait until I'd told most of my close friends, superiors, and colleagues before making any kind of announcement here.

I'm leaving the country in about a month and a half to attend graduate school in Singapore.

A few years ago, I started to feel that I needed to learn more about my field, but I didn't want to jump from company to company to do that, so I started looking at graduate programs and scholarships. Since Philippine universities didn't offer the kind of thing I was looking for, I figured, why not look outside, check out the programs in other countries, and maybe land somewhere all this Mandarin I've been studying might actually come in handy?

I didn't get a scholarship, but I did get into a good school. I understand that going will mean joining the legions of young adults with student debt, but given my age and the other plans I have for my life, this is a now-or-never thing. I'll just consider it an investment in my future, including the part of the near future that will involve working the debt off.

There is some hope for a scholarship, but it basically requires out-nerding everyone in my program to come out with the top GPA. I've never been the most insightful, original, or hard-working student, and I won't be surprised to meet classmates who know much, much more than I, but I have more motivation to chase grades this year than I ever have in my life.

I have a little over a month left to work things out with banks, get all the necessary paperwork done, and pack my bags. As far as my emotions are concerned, the last is the biggest deal right now.

I've often mentioned that I never fully unpacked in my current apartment; now I can say that it's mostly because I believed in the chance that I was simply going to leave again. All the stuff I never bothered to arrange just stayed in a huge pile on the floor; now, I just have to put everything back in a box.

I recognize, though, that "everything" is basically the past six years of my life, however you'd like to frame it — the first half of my 20s, the post-college wandering, the passage into adulthood, etc. — and all the associated heartache, triumph, and growth. I now have to decide how much of that I get to take with me — how much will be necessary and comforting, and how much will only literally and figuratively weigh me down.

Knickknacks will be wrapped in newspaper and cushioned with clothes I no longer wear. Appliances and furniture will be sold off to add to my small pool of funds. (Does anyone want a ref? A twin bed? A small cabinet? A drop-leaf table with matching chairs? A small rice cooker? A toaster oven? Modular Stack & Rack shelves in white?)

The diaries are going to be sent home, along with a prayer that neither my parents nor my lola will take it into their head to crack any of them open. I recognize that, like the diaries I left behind when I went to college, the diaries of the past six years must now enter my poorly hidden archive at home in Kalsangi. You can only carry your past around for so long.

Most of my books will be sent home, too, with the hope that those, someone will read. But as with my old diaries, seeing my books' spines on my shelf today calls back the version of myself that first read them. I've actually done a bit of rereading in the past few weeks, and it's easy to see that I can't make room for everything, however much I love it, on the shelf I'll be allotted in a month or so.

Off the top of my head, the things that I do plan to bring are a much, much smaller collection of books, a piece of sea glass from Sarangani Bay, the same photos of my family and friends I've had since my days at Eliazo Hall, my small collection of postcards, my ocarinas, some card games, my craft knife, and maybe a small bag of LEGO. I know those things aren't exactly necessities, and I expect I won't have a lot of time to make brick creatures or annoy my roommate with the shrill high D in "Danny Boy". But I know I'll like having those things with me.

I'll like having Cris with me, too. He was awarded a full scholarship to a different program, but at the same university. I know I can't expect to see him all the time, with all the nerdery I intend to take on, but I think living and studying in a different country with him will add new dimensions to the growth of our relationship. The adventure I'm about to go on seems even grander, knowing I get to go with him.

(For those of you clutching your pearls, we applied for slots at the dorm, and only married couples get to cohabit.)

I really can't express the gratitude due to my family for their support. Barring (great-)grandchildren/nephews/nieces, they haven't laid any demands or expectations on me, but I so want to make them proud.

Wish me luck.

"yer heart's desire."

I don't know why, but no matter how sick or sad I feel some days, I can't bring myself to leave work. I don't consider myself a workaholic at all; I'll honestly say that on some days, I just phone it in — figuratively.

There are days when I wake up and don't want to get out of bed, but somehow, I find myself on my feet anyway, making breakfast, getting dressed, and grumbling but, eventually, finding myself on the road and then at my desk. I completely understand the feelings people have when they decide to call in sick when they aren't or drop everything and head on the next bus to the beach. But I just find myself unable to do the same thing, no matter how much I want to.

A few years ago, I saw this interview with Hugh Laurie. Jay Leno asks Mr. Laurie if he had fun hosting Saturday Night Live, and Mr. Laurie says:

Where I was brought up, sort of fairly strict Presbyterian household, fun was viewed with suspicion. Fun was not a good thing. Pleasure was a questionable goal. It stayed with me. I don't see fun as a goal ... I think I may actually be incapable of having fun. So when I went there, and people said, 'Oh, you know, just have fun!', to me, it's like saying, 'Just have a baby!' It's that ridiculous. I'm just sort of not put together that way.

Later in the interview, he goes back to it, when he's asked about people saying he's difficult to work with:

I suppose I have this, somewhere in my head, I have this idea that if a thing is pleasurable, it can't be any good.

The interview is really funny, maybe especially because Mr. Laurie doesn't smile much in it.

In another interview, he says:

I had some pretty bleak times, dark days when it seemed like there was no escape. And having a very Presbyterian work ethic, I was determined never to be late, not to miss a single day's filming. You wouldn't catch me phoning in to say, 'I think I may be coming down with the flu'.

But there were times when I'd think, 'If I were just to have an accident on the way to the studio and win a couple of days off to recover, how brilliant would that be?'


So when I beat myself up about turning down something good because of work, I think of Hugh Laurie, and I wonder about how this kind of thinking got wired into me, too.

And then I think of my dad and those years that he was in that one department where you had to drop everything if the plant needed you. I remember my mom telling me and my brothers that it was Dad's job that let us live in our house and have food on the table, etc. I also remember seeing that other kids' dads got to come home Saturday afternoon, and mine didn't. I remember that one Father's Day I walked out of church and cried in the car because it was time to honor the dads, and he wasn't there for me to honor with the ribbon or the mug or whatever it was the church had come up with for us kids.

But mind you, the whole time I was crying, I was also lecturing myself about being a melodramatic baby. I did used to be a big crybaby, and I think people at school knew this and would make me cry on purpose. So some part of me saw crying not just as an expression of weakness but as an invitation for others to pick on that weakness.

Maybe I deserve to cry, I told myself in the car that day. Maybe crying is for wusses, I also told myself.

My dad showed up, still in his uniform, while I was still in the car. He was smiling when I hugged him. But, I felt extremely embarrassed.

Anyway, enough of the trip down backstory lane; I'm at ~700 words now and still haven't gotten to the good part of this post.

I've been stuck in a no-fun holding pattern for the past eight or nine months, and it's been, well, no fun. I told myself I couldn't have certain things I wanted because it was not a good time. Friends, family, and Cris complained that my job took me away from them. I had to tell myself, it's your job that lets you pay your rent and bills, have food on the table, have something maybe impressive to put on that grad school application, and have bosses who can give you references for said application. I told my loved ones, "Well, it's work."

I tried telling myself not to want things because it would just set me up for the disappointment of having to turn them down. The problem is, I hadn't recognized that telling yourself not to want things doesn't actually stop you from wanting them. You think you're doing the Christian self-denial thing or the Buddhist shunning-desires thing (take your pick). But, it's impossible to drain yourself of your wants. The wants don't go away — you can either act on them or change them; it's denying that they're there that makes them stronger.

You want to know what it gets you, denying your wants because you think you shouldn't have fun right now? Tonight, my family is flying to Europe without me. I could have gone with them, and all I would have spent would have been for personal stuff, like meals and souvenirs. Who turns down a semi-free trip to Europe because of work? This idiot, that's who: the one who didn't ask for leave because she told herself she wasn't allowed to want it.

This great epiphany came at around 1 AM as I cried my eyes out — for the first time in ages, I might add — because my plans with Cris for a consuelo trip to Pinatubo fell through. After months of telling myself I couldn't have what I wanted, I acknowledged that I wanted this little thing, and disappointment had immediately swooped in.

It wasn't just the disappointment, though, it was the disappointment on top of knowing that my family was about to leave, and I would be left behind because of my own quote-unquote work ethic, which nobody in today's world gets a cookie for, really.

I can't live like this (I told myself); I can't not want things. To want is to live, because you act or you change — and, goddammit, you actually have fun sometimes. I'm not having any fun; I'm just becoming sadder and more isolated the more I try to want less.

I'm done. I don't want to wait anymore.

The other day, I got some news that I'd been waiting for. I told my dad, and he offered to loan me the money I'd need, "if this is yer heart's desire."

(Another reason I still value work ethic: it's helped get my dad to where he is, able to fund family trips to Europe and offer to finance heart's desires.)

It's a cheesy phrase, often used at my old church as a euphemism when people pray for someone to make the singles not-single. But, I've taken hold of it. I cup it in my hands like a secret and relish knowing that, yes, I have it, and I'm allowed to have it, a "heart's desire" — something to live for.

Mon

I flew home last weekend to see Mon graduate from high school.

I have so many hopes for my youngest brother as he gets ready for college and so many fears, too.

He never did get grades as high as mine at school, but his social skills are lightyears ahead of mine — he'll be high-fiving the school janitors one day and walking the GM's daughter home another. He's handled a breakup with a maturity I didn't gain until much later. He's witty, which means he's smart; he speaks well, he's learned to cook much sooner than I did, and the girls and the boys all seem to love him. I think this will do more for him and his future than his report cards ever will.

And yet, all this is why I'm a little afraid. I mean, you remember being 16 or 17 and feeling bigger and stronger than anything, and you remember the times life proved you wrong afterward. You always look back on them with bittersweet gratitude — thanks to that, I know better, but shit! if that didn't hurt.

I played photographer at the ceremony last Friday, and this is my favorite shot of Mon. He's just received his diploma and is confidently walking forward to take a bow. This is the boy who wants to do both college and culinary school and who says the college thing he looks most forward to is meeting new people. He wears T-shirts with Bible verses on them to church and helps man the sound booth. He loves pizza and video games. His drum skills are killer.

Of course, in entries like these, I'm expected to tell you that this is also the boy whose stroller I used to push, or that I was the first person to see him sit up by himself (it was in his crib, and he was wearing a blue-and-green striped shirt). But I decided to stop addressing him as Momon a year or so ago; today, I'm talking about Mon. I'm long past waxing nostalgic about the little boy he used to be and more interested in the young man he's becoming.

All I want is some kind of assurance — and all I can ever really hope for is — that he'll always have a reason to smile the way he does in this picture.

These days.

These days, I’m just waiting. While everyone around me seems to be getting on with their lives, I’m waiting.

It’s not like I’m waiting for nothing. I applied to a grad school. Results don’t come out until July. If I get in, I’ll get to live in another country for at least a year and study some things I believe a regular job in this country wouldn’t show me. If I don’t, I’ve got a long list of Plan-B things to do.

In the meantime, though, the frustrations pile up. A few weeks ago, Cris and I visited an animal shelter and saw so many dogs in need of a home. We could give one or two a home, but that requires a basic certainty or permanence that our lives don’t really have right now. Dogs, according to our favorite show on Animal Planet, are, at most, a 15-year investment. You can’t take home a dog — previously abandoned, at that — and then give it back after four months because grad school’s come a-callin’ (Cris has applied, too).

My apartment still looks like I just moved in. I put up my shelves and unpacked the books, but I don’t see the point of getting everything set up given the possibility that I might have to leave again. It isn’t like my old apartment, the one with the treetop view that I loved, where I thought I’d live for a few years. I’d planned decor, I was going to get a proper couch, and I was going to replace all the dorm-era bedsheets I was still using. Then, I applied to grad school. And then, I took this job and had to move closer to work.

My dad offered to finance a trip to Europe, particularly so I can go with him and Mon to visit Mikko in Barcelona. The time he set for the trip was the Easter weekend plus two weeks, which is when Mikko is on holiday from school and can tramp around Spain and maybe Paris with us. But because of some changes at work and my fairness thing that other people say I should ignore, I didn’t ask for leave and didn’t apply for a visa.

That fairness thing: Since I went on leave at Christmas while our complement was already understaffed and overworked, I feel someone else should get to go on leave at Easter. This is not actually a rule at work but one of those conscience things. It now looks like nobody is actually going to file for leave, but it’s too late for me to do that now, since visa appointments have to be scheduled months in advance.

Meanwhile, my friends are traveling, or planning to travel, to places nearer than Europe but still some great distance from here. I want to do the same but hold back because I might need the money for school.

I have one more shot to see Barcelona this year, but again, it depends on whether I get into school. My dad says that, if I get in, he’d give me the money that would have gone into my trip to set myself up as a grad student in that other country instead. If I don’t get in, I can go to Spain with my mom, when she visits Mikko in November.

I almost don’t know if I still want to go to school at this point.

If I don’t get in, I get to move to a different place, somewhere with a lower noise level and a pet-friendly landlord. Maybe I can get a new bike, an electric one. Maybe I can look into long-term projects at work. I’ll definitely plan a trip, not just one to Europe, but to all the other places I want to visit.

If I do get in, I get to move to a different place, somewhere with decent public transport and city parks larger than a half-block or a road island. I get to study, feel horribly inferior to my more experienced and more talented classmates, and remind myself that I’m lucky that I even get to be there, learning. Maybe I can get a bike, a second-hand one, handed down by a previous batch of dormers. I’ll bike around the city without fear of getting catcalled or run off the road by jeepney, truck, and cab drivers.

Waiting is the pits. It’s a weird uncertainty where the ifs are a lot sunnier than the but really right nows.

Eh. It’s just a couple more months.

Letter No. 26

I’ve been thinking a lot about how alone we all really are. It’s something I’ve believed for a long while, but the feeling of loneliness that usually comes with thoughts like, We really are alone, has been heightened in the past month or so.

My brother Mikko is now in Spain to study, and that makes me, once again, the only member of my immediate family living in Manila. Even though we went to the same college and lived in adjacent dorms for a year, I never really made an effort to see or talk to him. Today, I wish I had, but I guess I was too consumed with senior year, then the struggle of figuring myself out and the challenge of the first attempt at a grown-up relationship.

When I think back now to those years of tears, I wonder, Why didn’t I just head north then to see Mikko? If I missed my family so much, why didn’t I seek him, my own brother, out?

I guess I thought he wouldn’t understand. I was the older sibling; I was supposed to know what I was doing. So I was surprised to find, after he moved to Makati and we started meeting for church every Sunday, that he could actually be a good influence on me.

I put something like this in the letter I gave him shortly before he left: Being around him helped to ground me. I'd spent the past couple of years alone, making decisions about the kind of person I wanted to be. Mikko's presence allowed me to check those decisions and that person against my family's attitudes and expectations. He didn't ask me these questions; just hanging out with him, walking around, and chatting about his own post-college adventures led me to ask myself: Am I really okay with how different I'm becoming? Am I being good; am I a good person?

I only saw Mikko once a week, but the clarity I got from those Sundays was such a great addition to my life. I decided that I wanted to elicit with my life the kind of pride that I already felt for my younger brother.

(And when it comes down to it, having family around helped me deal with how I felt after that first grown-up attempt at a relationship crumbled like a soggy cookie.)

Now, I'm on my own again.

The thing now is, for all I've learned about my brother, and for all the time I've spent with Cris, I can't help thinking that you can't really know somebody 100%. There's always something about yourself that feels like something known by you and you alone — you are alone in your knowledge.

For all I know about his dreams and his quirks, I know that there's still stuff going on in Mikko's head that I will probably never see, just like there's stuff going on in my head that I wonder if anybody else can see. When I'm in the car with Cris and we are quiet, or when he's watching TV while I'm playing a computer game, I feel as though the hands of my brain are trying to reach into his skull and his chest to try and get a hold on some of the mysteries waiting in there.

When I peel away layers and layers of my own identity — childhood memories, sense of humor, favorite colors, love of pizza and sashimi, family ties, anxiety upon anxiety tied with a bow of anxiety, scars self-inflicted and not, my oldest friends, grammar, languages, left-handedness — and see what's left there, staring back at me, I wonder if anyone else can see that, especially if I can't describe it to them anymore. So it makes me wonder if I see other people the way they'd like to be seen — if I ever can or will.

And even if I must accept that I'll never see another person 100%, is there a certain percentage of them I should be able to see, to be able to say that I know them? Why is it that, for all the lunches, blankets, hopes, and fears I've shared, I still feel like I can't be seen 100%?

Or should it be enough that, despite how little or much they do see, the people I love make me feel that it's okay to be 100% myself? Is it better to be content to give and receive that kind of compassion than to keep picking at all the layers in the hopes of finding whatever's really underneath?

As an early birthday present to myself, I bought a copy of The Sims 3. I know the game came out years ago, but I haven't had the right computer for it until now — and it's not even my computer; Cris just lets me use his every now and then.

I find the game eerily realistic in that the Sims claim to have good relationships with one another yet spend nearly all their time on their own pursuits. The family founders had a whirlwind romance and then barely saw each other after they got married and had kids, yet whenever one entered the room, the other's mood would rise. The eldest child is grumpy, neurotic, dislikes children, and spends most of her time writing or jogging, but she seems to enjoy family dinners and isn't above changing a niece or nephew's diaper if necessary. The son-in-law knew his mother-in-law for only a Sim week or so, but he bawled like the rest of them when she passed away. Should I aspire to be more like the people I've made, happy to simply be with each other, even if they don't seem to actually know each other?

Letter No. 19: Moonscapes and Postcards

My camera's pictures tend to look foggy or gray, no matter how I fiddle with the settings, so I usually fix the colors on a computer before uploading.

While working on my photos from the Easter weekend, I found myself pushing the saturation sliders farther than l usually do. Yes, it's a simple trick; similar effects are so used in apps like instagram that it can be cooler to scoff at them than to even think of using them. But when you like something, you like something.

So I like how a little desaturation can make descending through the clouds look a little lonelier, & a lot can make a swimming pool disappear, or a tree seem it's on the moon.

Oversaturation, on the other hand, can set quiet grass on fire.

And of course, there's the vintage effect, where desaturation makes a photo look older and overSaturation recalls the travel posters of the early 20th century.

Technology is a big help, of course; it gives me the benefits of techniques that older photographers had to learn with film cameras and darkrooms. But while software, whether smartphone app or desktop program, has been this big equalizer, it's also given me better appreciation for both amateur and professional photographers who choose unique subjects and angles.

Online photo essay feeds such as the excellent TIME Lightbox also gift me with access to photographers and photos I might never have seen otherwise. And when these lensmen and women are quoted about their work, I understand it a little better and, in turn, start to ask myself what I'm looking for within the frame of my own humble point-and-shoot.

Returning to saturation, I've also come to appreciate black-and-white better. Silence replaces fussing over correct hues when they are gone altogether, leaving only the subject as it was and how you decided to look at, frame, and remember it that day. By removing color, you see light, movement, & texture better and thus experience the image — interact with the subject — more intimately.

Perhaps because black-and-white is associated with age, it brings temporality to the fore of a photo. The lack of color makes me see the way my father's skin rests on his cheekbones; what that means can't be far behind.

In black-and-white, landscapes are starker but also more alien, more removed from you in time as well as space. Without color or caption, this Sebastião Salgado photo might as well be of something on Mars, and there's no real telling when it might have been taken.

It's an obvious conclusion, and others have arrived at it before: photos are images of past people and places; postcards to yourself from a previous point in time. The moment after you take a photo of a hillside, the hillside is already different; blades of grass, the branches, and the farmer have all moved on, into the future. How much more different will it be if you get to go back a year, five years, decades from now?

I don't always get to go back. In my case, desaturating, de-coloring my photos heightens the sadness I feel over leaving; it drives in deeper the idea that the images and their contents are forever behind me. I will never see the sea, the sky, these trees, or my brothers this way again.

It's a mood thing. My usual pre-upload process actually includes increasing the saturation of my photos, making them brighter and more alive, filling in the gap between fog and inaccurate white balance on one side and memory and reality on the other. I miss my family.

things-a-week 13 and 14: Easter eggs and April's birthday card

I almost didn't get to work on something crafty last week, as I went home for the Easter break. But, on Saturday night, my mom asked Cris, my cousins, and me to prepare some eggs for the church egg hunt the next morning.

Mine are the island egg, the zigzags-and-dots egg, and the egg with the flower in the bottom left corner of this photo. Cris did the globe and some others (sorry, Cris; the globe's the one I remember best), and my cousins Paolo and Trixi did the rest.

As for this past week, it was April's birthday, so I made another birthday card.

Letter No. 18

Somewhere near B Street.

I'm looking for home in the trees of another town. I'm looking at the sky above and through the leaves and wondering if it's as blue, or if, like the trees, it's just a shade of what I've just left behind for the hundredth time.

It's supposed to have gotten easier. But there are always corners of home I didn't spend enough time in, people I didn't spend enough time with, and things I didn't get to do, or do enough.

You'd think it would be easier to have your loved ones in one place, but over four short days, I've realized that it can just make your choices clearer and thus more difficult. You want to keep your boyfriend company on the bank rocks, but that means not playing with your younger cousins down-river. You want to hang out with your brothers in the living room, but that means not chatting to your lola as she putters around in her bedroom. You want to check in on your childhood haunts and remind yourself that the past really happened, but that means not being present with everyone else who stayed indoors.

Meanwhile, the future and the city are just three days, two days, one day, and then one plane ride nap away. And if you take even just one moment to stop and change your mind about one of your choices, or even if you don't, you will always wonder if you're making the good ones.

In the city, I look for home in shorter, thinner trees. I tell myself that good or bad, the choices were made, and mine. Cris says, "Hey," kisses my hand, makes me laugh, and brings me into the present. The sun is shining. Traffic is light. The sky, despite everything else, is blue.

Cris squeezes my hand, and I know that at least one of my choices has been a good one.

Letter No. 17

In a few days, I'll be taking Cris home with me to Socsksargen. He's been pretty busy with work and other things, so he says it hasn't sunk in for him yet. But I've been looking forward to it every day this March, because I've been looking forward to bringing him home since last year, and now we actually have a date, and that date is in sight.

I don't expect him to like everything, of course. In fact, I really don't know what to expect. A lot of good-natured ribbing from my brothers, to be sure. A lot of walking, maybe some hiking. Definitely some swimming, as my parents want to drive straight from the airport to a Sarangani resort for the first two days. Dad's birthday. Maybe Nadie's chicken and some blackened tuna. Cousins over for Easter. A little church.

I'm most looking forward, though, to the walking — taking Cris to all my favorite places, showing him my school, walking under the old trees, and basically giving him the grand tour of my home planet.

Home is a part of me that I, unlike a lot of people I know here, can't just show people by asking them to come over later for dinner. It takes patience, cash, good timing, and a copy or a bookmark of one of those long weekend calendars floating around, especially if you have to watch for airline promos. And ever since my job made me more office-bound, it's become harder to plan trips home. So, every trip I get to take is precious, and the people I get to take with me are precious, too.

When I do invite friends to fly home with me sometime, or when my parents say I should bring them with me, I always warn my friends, "There's nothing to do there. There's no nightlife or anything like that. If you want to go to a bar, you have to drive 45 minutes through the dark pineapple fields to General Santos, about 60km away. We will probably just walk around a lot, eat, and sleep. You'll probably have all the pineapple you want, though, and we will probably get a tuna jaw for lunch or dinner sometime." Walking around a lot, eating, and sleeping is basically my dream life, but of course, it's not for everybody.

The timing for this trip is actually not that great; between Sarangani, the cousins coming, Dad's birthday, and church stuff, I don't really know how much time I'll get to walk around with just Cris. But it's the best we could get, given how unpredictable this year promises to be. I look forward to it all the same; for however briefly, I'll be home, and he'll be there with me.

Letter No. 16

It's time to go.

I've loved every minute I've spent in my apartment. I've loved making my simple meals, working on my crafts, admiring the trees outside my window, watching the elderly take their walks in the park below, falling asleep to the dull roar of the city, and waking up to the birds. I've loved having a south-facing window, a livable building temperature despite not owning an aircon, and quiet but genial neighbors. I've loved having a landlord, building management, and lobby guards who all minded their own business but also took great care of the building. I've loved feeling safe, independent, and, well, at home.

Unfortunately, as the end of my lease nears, I have to start looking for somewhere else to live. My plans are becoming more concrete, and they include saving more money than my current rent allows. Living this dream is just too expensive, at least in this neighborhood.

I'm not too sad about it; it's a little step on the way to bigger things. In the meantime, I'm looking forward to exploring a new part of the city and finding a new place to live.

In other news, a little dream came true for my brother last week, as the Barcelona grad school he'd been eyeing e-mailed to declare his acceptance. He'll need a scholarship to actually go, but just knowing that they'd like to have him makes us pretty proud.

Letter No. 14

We know Dad for his sense of humor and his mechanical knowhow, but he's stoic when it comes to pretty much everything else. The e-mails he's sent in preparation for and during this trip to the US offer strange but welcome glimmers of his head. I take note of what he notices; it allows me to imagine what he might be thinking or feeling. I can't help feeling a little sad myself. There's something haiku-like about his plain sentences, but that might just be a little undercurrent of melancholy.

Dad notices that his brother's voice sounds hoarse.

Dad says it's awkward to discuss his brother's funeral arrangements with said brother, my Tito Bo.

Dad says he's glad he'll get to see Mon in the school play before he flies to the US but will miss out on seeing Mon get ready for junior prom.

Dad gets to drive around the California town where we lived, and he recognizes places where he took Mikko and me when we were small.

"Those were fun times, looking back."

Dad says his goal is to bond with KB (Tito Bo).

Dad tells us what the collar of his jacket smells like now.

Dad describes playing with Ethan, Tito Bo's first grandchild.

Dad describes the cold in Chicago.

Dad goes out to get some pho with Tito Bo and Tito Vic. They stop at an auto supply store, and Dad experiences falling snow for the first time.

--
I feel that a personal update to this blog is overdue, but given everything that people around me are going through, it also feels inappropriate or insensitive to panic some more about not having kids or muse about my future in general. The impulse to do either has subsided since other people's concerns have come up.

I like this little thing on Thought Catalog, though, about what happens when you're 26. I found myself nodding at the last three things in particular.

My brothers are really cool people, and I feel regret every time Mikko brings up something I did or said when I was petty or pa-cool. There are certain people I haven't stayed friends with, and I don't regret that at all. And while it exerts a weird kind of pressure, the increase in engagements, weddings, children, job changes, and other life changes among the people I once went to school with just helps to sharpen my own perspective on where I'm going.

Mostly, though, right now, I miss my dad.

Letter No. 11

Earlier this week, I made this emo (does anyone still use that word) tweet, "why are all the people i love getting old?"

The night before, I'd had a disturbing dream about my family, and it only made me feel even more torn up about living my life here while they are over there.

I thought I'd finished feeling that way, because it was clear from earlier visits that they had their own lives, could take care of themselves, and, despite their ages, were pretty active and happy.

The next thing I'm going to write sounds so stupid and obvious, but I'm going to write it anyway. Nine months later, when I went home for Christmas, they all seemed older.

While in some families, the adult children have taken over the cooking, delivery and other bits of Christmas prep that grown-ups do while the kids play, oblivious to just how much work goes into Christmas, in my family, my parents — Mom, in particular — still take care of everything. And just because the kids are older doesn't mean it's getting any easier, because my parents are older, too.

It freaks me out.

In response to my tweet, Dom Cimafranca said, "because you are too." But that's not how I feel at all.

I feel like my life is just beginning. Around the corner are all these things I'm going to do — work, study, travel, settle — and I finally feel old-young enough and clear-headed enough to fully enjoy them at my own pace. Then, the fatigue in my mom's eyes tells me to hurry up, because she, Dad, and Lola won't always be there to enjoy those things with me. All the crasian-mother-inspired digs about my cold ovaries felt like only half-jokes; "I want grandchildren because I'm getting old" suddenly sounds like a valid request, because they really are getting old.

Maybe I'm not supposed to say this next thing, because it's so gruesome, but the reality of my parents' inevitable death dawned on me at Christmas. I saw myself in the future, standing over my own child and telling them to get off the holoscreen to deliver this cake to the neighbors, and then receiving a phone call I could never be ready for. It once seemed so distant an event — come on, Dad regularly bikes x many kilometers, and Lola just took an international trip abroad by herself at 88 — but the reality of their ages, as much as Mom might protest, can no longer be ignored.

"Don't worry about us," my mom would say. "Just live your life; enjoy yourself. We will all be fine..."

... basta you should give me apo before you turn 30."

--
Chinese class is starting again tomorrow, and my attempts to cram-review this past week make me uneasy. I don't feel ready. I read fine and listen okay, but my speaking skills could use a lot of work, as evidenced by last night's pitiful exchanges with Cris's friend Ken. Writing and then reading aloud a dialogue is all right, but I still can't say more than three or four words when asked a quick question, and my confidence is shit.

We ran into some of Cris's Chinese friends on the street one day, and when I told them what level I was about to enter, one of them said, "Oh, so we should speak Chinese to you, because you should be able to understand." I probably gave her the scarediest fake smile she'd ever seen.

To make matters worse, I was placed in a class on a different campus. I've got this grade-school-level fear of being the only new kid there, plus this performance anxiety from knowing that most of Cris's Chinese colleagues will be there — and he won't be.

Oh, well. Why bother learning Chinese if I don't actually use it, right?

Letter No. 10

The other day, I realized that this is the longest I've been home in about two years. For the last two visits, I was here for just three to five days. This time, I'm home for ten.

I thought the fact that I took the briefness so well before meant that I'd adjusted to life away. But it turns out that the longer you stay, the longer you want to stay, and the more painful it is to think about leaving again.

Maybe it's just as well. It's a test of the heart, and it's been a while since I've thought seriously about what I want to do. I thought I'd been doing just that toward the end of the year, but somehow, sitting on top of the monkey bars and listening to the birds and the wind and the bugs sort of stretches out your vision, so you see more paths, and more branches to those paths, than you thought you had.

I can't help rethinking my childhood dreams whenever I'm here. More than ever, I see that I had no clue what getting those dreams entailed.

For some reason, I've been thinking about one of my classmates who seems to have settled here. I imagine her driving her truck to work past the pine trees, working in the same little hospital where we had our school physicals as kids, and maybe having dinner with her boyfriend (who works at the plant? in the next town?) before driving home to her family in the house where she grew up.

I know other classmates who've also stayed home and who also say that this makes them happy. And really, I can see why. It wasn't really that long ago that I wanted the same kind of life for myself, and the jungle gym alone is enough to remind me that some part of me never really stopped wanting.

Last year, one of my friends said something on Twitter about deciding what to leave behind and what to take with them into 2012. I actually thought it was silly; this person had a great life. But here, I can see that even a great life needs re-evaluation. That scares me.

I wrote the above two days ago, and it's now just 45 minutes into the new year. This year's celebrations are even more low-key than the last. At midnight, I kissed my parents and my lola to greet them Happy New Year, and then Cris called to greet me, too. All of my friends are gone for the holidays, so, with no one else to hang out with after the fireworks at the neighborhood party, I decided to go home.

The stars were out, and the wind was a little chilly, but I was warmed by thoughts of my family, friends, and Cris, even if they weren't with me. I walked under the trees and past the playground, and as if on cue, I looked up and saw a shooting star. When I got home, I let the dog in, made myself some hot chocolate, and knew that the feelings of the past several days were what I wanted to take into the new year.

I want to stay conscious of the way I relate to my family. I see them less and less every year, so every moment counts. I want less twinges of regret over something I said, however small, or the tone of my voice, and more certainty that I'm treating them the way they deserve.

I want the mixed rush and relaxation that comes from being outside — from spacing out on the monkey bars, taking a long walk around my tree-filled neighborhood, hiking across the pineapple fields and up and down gullies with my family, watching the clouds drift over the swaying trees as the sun sets, and finding that weird balance between calm and inspired twitchiness under the open sky. This is something that might be really hard to recreate in the city, but I'd really like to try.

I want more openness to doing things for other people, just because.

I'd like Cris to be able to share more of these things. Things have been going at a pretty comfortable pace, and for the most part, it feels like we're still getting to know each other. For the past few days, I've been getting back in touch with parts of myself that he's just begun to see, and I can't wait to bring him back with me later this year.

There's more, but it's now 2 in the morning, and I should get some sleep. For now, here's all hope for a happy new year.

Letter No. 9

Last night, I went to Letters Out Loud (LOL), a sort of open mic project by Candy editor-in-chief Marla Miniano. It's basically to encourage people to write more to other people, and to be brave about reading that writing out loud.

Most of the readers wrote/read about romantic relationships — breakups, waiting for someone, waiting for someone new. I think the standout in that category was Omi Castañar, who addressed his lovely Tagalog letter to his girlfriend Laila about how he'd remain ("Mananatili ako... Nananatiling iyo, Omi") while she went to Australia to study.

Then, there were three readers who wrote other things: Chinggay Labrador started what sounded like a really bitter, "I'm so over you, I'm moving on with my life, and yet I'm writing this letter" letter and managed a neat twist when she revealed that the ex-boyfriend was cancer.

Lia Cruz had a sweet letter to her mother about growing up, womanhood, and coming to see things from her mother's point of view.

Then, of course, there was the reason I was at LOL at all: Cris, who had been pressured by Marla (his friend from college) to read something. He read one short letter from him to friends in the Philippines while he was in China, and one to friends in China about the difficulties of getting to know someone through a shared second language:

"It really frustrates me how the meaning of everything is dumbed down to the textbook vocab and grammar that we conveniently string together during our conversations. We want to sound smart and witty, and dazzle each other with our eloquence. A line from a song here, a movie quote there. This is how i feel about you today. We want to say exactly what we mean. More importantly, we want to let each other listen to what is unsaid. But we still haven't learned the cues in this language yet."

Reese Lansangan closed the event by singing Exploration No. 5, an original song, and playing her cool box ukelele.

Anyway, once I'd stopped being Judge Judgey McJudgerson, I actually enjoyed the event, and it got me thinking about the letters I'd like to write:

+ To all the lonely and waiting, before you write a letter about how you're lonely and waiting
+ To two people whose overtures of friendship I've ignored
+ To everyone else; I apologize for being unfriendly; do not be surprised if I end up an old lady alone
+ To my brother Mon, on his 16th birthday

Yesterday was also Mon's 16th birthday. I texted and then called him but didn't really know what to say. Whenever I think of him, or try to think of something we can talk about, I only see how poorly I know him. I just know he likes computer games, plays the drums, doesn't read much, and doesn't talk much, so any other information I get is secondhand.

I know that because I've been living, studying, and then working in Manila, I haven't seen him get through the past eight happy/horrible years of middle school and high school. So I don't know how he and his friends hang out, how he gets along with teenage girls, or even what he's really good at in school. This time next year, he'll be waiting for college acceptance letters, and I have no idea what he's hoping to study. And when I go home in a few weeks, I have no idea how to start conversations about these things without it being really awkward. Maybe awkward is the best I can hope for, though.

Other things: the other night, Cris joined me, my dad, my uncle, and Grama for dinner, and I thanked him. He thought it was weird for me to thank him for what I guess is a standard girlfriend request, but I found myself explaining that it was because —

I'm trying hard not to compare Cris to my exes, particularly to Martin, or to boast or gloat about how great things are with Cris. I'm trying not to let the past dictate my hopes and expectations. But more than once in the past year, I've found myself explaining to Cris, "Well, I said this / I think that / I assume you won't agree to this because I got used to being treated a certain way / to things being arranged a certain way." And it wears me out.

I'm definitely in a better place, I'm definitely doing better things, and I'm definitely — okay, fine, I'll compare — with a better man, so I think I'm done with a certain way of being. Then some little thing, like feeling like I have to thank him for joining me and my family for dinner and having a good time, makes me wonder if there isn't some old crap I still haven't sweated out, if I can't enjoy the good things in this relationship without the sad specter of the old one there for dramatic comparison.

I want this stupid ghost to just go away already. I'm trying to be busy being happy, and it does nothing but reopen cuts I went through hell to heal. I want it to just leave me, leave us alone.

Letter No. 5

This time tomorrow, I'll be in Beijing. I'll probably be having breakfast in the hostel cafe, listening to Cris plan our day aloud, and trying to get my head around the vastness of the things he's about to show me (“Tiananmen Square is how many hundred Bellarmine Fields?!”). I'll probably be a little groggy and achy already, considering how late our flight will have arrived. And I'll definitely know whether I brought enough clothes for the single-digit dark-hour temperatures.

This will be my second trip abroad since my family returned to the Philippines 15 or so years ago, and my first trip abroad without them. It's also my first trip anywhere with Cris. It seems like a major milestone, a big deal, another important experience on the way to getting older. But I'd rather not overthink things more than I may have already.

I'm just looking forward to the break from regularly scheduled life. I'm going to put it out there: I've been feeling burned out for the past couple of months. My head's been in a fog, and I haven't been doing so well at work; I've been underperforming and letting people down. Our tickets to Beijing were booked months ago, when I hadn't expected or realized that this was where my head would be, but I'm glad now that we'd planned this far ahead, and doubly glad that we're actually going now. Shambling from task to task and trying to pinch and press myself into renewed productivity hasn't been working, so maybe I just need to go away for a while.

I've really gotten into Glitch, but I won't deny that a lot of it has been escapism. There's always something new to do in the world of Ur: a new region to explore, another interesting character to meet, another quest to fulfill, another skill to learn and test, a weird new thing to eat or drink, and even a tiny moment of beauty and enlightenment every day – and every day lasts just four hours, so there's always a new day around on the horizon.

It's time now, though, to really wake up in another place, for real-life exploring, real-life people-watching, real-life new-thing-tasting, and maybe some real-life learning and inspiration.

I'm really grateful that I'm about to take this trip. I know that not everyone can be so lucky or blessed, whichever way you want to look at it, so I really want to make the most of the time. I'm looking forward to seeing the sights – the Forbidden City, the drum tower, the Great Wall – but I'm also looking forward to just chilling out at Houhai, maybe riding a bike, and getting to know a place that Cris loves and sometimes loves to hate.

They say that travelling together is a great test of any relationship, and some might say Cris and I shouldn't be taking this trip so early; we haven't been together a year yet. But I don't want to overthink that, either. For one thing, we didn't plan to take this trip alone; we planned it with friends who, sadly, had to back out at the last minute. I'm not about to back out myself just to satisfy some vague convention. If this trip is a test, then I'm glad it's come sooner rather than later. But, I'm sure we'll be fine.

I guess that's it for now; I still have to finish packing. 再见!

Letter No. 2

Call them signs, an emerging theme, God talking, or coincidence. Within a week of my birthday, life was showing/telling me, I'm bad at being with other people; better to get better at connecting while I'm still young.

I don't know if this is normal, but I have problems with episodic memory. This was embarrassingly clear to me when my high school barkada was complete for the first time in months, maybe years, for just one night last weekend. And I could not detail an anecdote from our shared adolescence to save my life.

"I remember when there was a luau. They let us decorate. And Kat pushed Lei into the pool."

Really? I found myself thinking. Then, Oh, yeah. But, I couldn't remember any of the details, just the dim fact that I had indeed pushed Lei into the pool.

The remorse, on the other hand, was pretty fresh; how bad I felt immediately after I'd picked on my water-hating friend, that I can definitely remember.

There are other memories of memories I don't recall. Once, when I was in high school, my senior homeroom teacher told me that she remembered when I was 10 or 11 and threw a tantrum over a lower-than-expected science grade. I kicked like a little kid, she said. I have no memory of this at all and refused to believe it had happened, though I did have a reputation for tantrums back then.

More recently, my lola recalled how my lolo spent his last Christmas in the hospital, and I was horrified that I could not remember this, either. I was there that Christmas, but I don't remember the hospital at all.

I thank whatever seized me at nine years old to start keeping diaries, and I go cold at the thought that I was thinking of shredding them earlier this year. The first thing I'm going to do when I go home is dig them up and take them back with me.

What's wrong with me? I'd like to know. Cris marvels at my ability to learn songs in a snap, but I'd much rather be able to remember scenes from my own life, shared with my nearest and dearest, no less.

Now that I look back and try to pull out specific memories, I'm frustrated to see how wrapped up inside myself I've been. I can remember how I felt and the thoughts I liked to think, fancying myself special. But specific events I do remember can be separated into two main categories: the times I was by myself and felt mostly awesome, and the times I was with other people and felt different shades of bad. A third category, happy memories with other people, is pitifully sparse in comparison.

It's not to say that nobody cared about me; I think it's that I haven't cared much for other people. My memories feature mostly me because I focused on mostly me. I chose friends, crushes, and people to date for mostly selfish reasons: they made me feel good about myself. I probably felt horrible around other people because I was always wishing they'd treat me the way I wanted, instead of simply enjoying their company, much less making them feel special also.

How cold I must have been.

Somehow, I have friends like my friends and family members who are still interested in spending time with me. I would have ditched someone like me a long time ago — and I don't blame the old friends who did. Realizing just how wonderful some people can be is why, in the middle of the sensory overload that was Cafe Juanita on my birthday, I felt so unworthy I wanted to cry.

There's something else that makes me panicky about my lack of connection. Between my mom in physical therapy for some mysterious back pain and my grama recently admitted for appendicitis, plus how bird-like my lola feels whenever I get to hug her and how more defined my dad's face is every time I see him, I can't help seeing how old my family is getting. Dad has more hobbies now. It's my turn now, to — what?

Grama was admitted Monday. I visited her Tuesday, and she told me that it was the first time she'd been hospitalized for anything other than the births of her children. She also told me that with her children grown and scattered, she was thankful for her friends. It wasn't a slight against my dad, my aunt, and my uncles; I think she was just stating a fact. Her friends constantly checked on her. One of them spent the first night with her there in that little ward, before the surgery.

I immediately thought of my own friends, the girls I'd had a slumber party with the weekend before, as well as the few friends I've [barely] kept in touch with since college. Perhaps selfishly, I wondered if, with all of them scattered as well, I'd have anyone like them the way Grama had her friends that Monday night. Again, I cringed at how bad I've been at keeping friends.

And of course, it wasn't until later that I thought about being there for them myself.

I guess the saving grace is that I'm still young, and it can't be too late to be better.

As for my terrible memory for good things, I'll have to be more conscious of the present and my present company. Remember this good thing happening to you and these good people you get to share it with, Kat. Then maybe, when they ask you about something great you did together, you have something real to say.

--
This letter features a soundtrack: two songs that came to mind while I was writing, and one that followed after I fed the first two songs into Grooveshark. Call it a sign, God talking, or coincidence.

1. Only if for a Night, by Florence + the Machine
The grass was so green against my new clothes / And I did cartwheels in your honor / Dancing on tiptoes, my own secret ceremonials / Before the service began / In the graveyard / Doing handstands // And I heard your voice / As clear as day / And you told me I / Should concentrate / It was all so strange / And so surreal / That a ghost should be / So practical / Only if for a night // And the only solution was the stand and fight / And my body was bruised, and I was set alight / But you came over me like some holy rite / And although I was burning, you're the only light / Only if for a night

2. A Better Son/Daughter, by Rilo Kiley
Then you hang up the phone and feel badly for upsetting things / And crawl back into bed to dream of a time / When your heart was open wide and you loved things just because
...
And you'll be better, and you'll be smarter / And more grown-up and a better daughter / Or son and a real good friend / You'll be awake, and you'll be alert / You'll be positive though it hurts / And you'll laugh and embrace all your friends / You'll be a real good listener / You'll be honest; you'll be brave

3. It's Cool to Love Your Family, by Feist
And someone loved them once / And someone loves them still / And someone misses them / And someone always will // It's cool, it's cool to love your family

Letter No. 1

On her 88th birthday, a few weeks ago, my lola told me, "Being old is fun."

I think I knew this from watching her eat ice cream at a recent family dinner. I could hear it in her voice, too, as she shared her travel plans for that week over the phone. But, actually hearing her say those words was an affirmation — you can live so much and so long and (still) be happy.

Tomorrow morning, I will have completed another trip around the sun. I won't be as old as my lola just yet, but I look forward to this new year as much as I look forward to my 88th. This feels like a kickoff to top off all the kickoffs I've made in the past year:

- got over a grown-up breakup
- biked around Metro Manila and didn't die
- learned Mandarin
- saw my kirigami featured in a magazine
- made new friends
- opened my heart again, with the help of someone wonderful
- made peace with the city
- realized how much I (still) love and miss my family
- moved to an apartment
- gained weight
- survived my first year as supplements editor
- saw my own faith staring me in the face

With blogging and other fun online things recently re-banned at work, the days leading up to my birthday have been as good a time as ever to be more thoughtful about a lot of stuff: what I post here, how I think, how I relate to other people, and what I want to do next.

- finally go to Beijing
- go home for Christmas
- make and write more things for myself, and make them well
- stop worrying about the future
- invest in the stock market
- read more books
- buy that box of plain Lego bricks
- turn the added weight into abs
- be less disconnected
- be less afraid
- be grateful
- get old
- have fun

Here we go.

Wake / Sprawl House

My great-aunt Luz Reyes died last week. I wasn't very close to her, so I didn't expect her wake to raise all these questions.

One of her former colleagues from Maryknoll/Miriam was there at the wake last night, asked how old Auntie Lutz was when she died (89), and proclaimed, "She lived a very long time."

Immediately, I saw the ratio of my own age to hers, saw my childhood flash before my eyes, and wondered if I was up to enduring about three more turns of my life so far. Then, I looked at my lola, Auntie Lutz's sister, sitting next to me, and thought of all the things she'd experienced in her own life: childhood, adolescence, war, heartbreak, the academe, marriage, children, more teaching, grandchildren, more teaching, the death of her spouse, and now, a quiet life of reading, solving crossword puzzles and sudoku, and occasionally travelling.

Could I live that long, and that much?

I imagined her at my age, then tried to figure out how old she'd been — how long she'd already lived — the day I was born (63; on the brink of retirement), wondered what she thought of her own life, wondered what she was thinking as she sat before the coffin of a sister who'd been just a year older than she, wondered — I'm just going to say it — when will my lola die?, and tried to remember what she'd once said to me — or was it to Mikko? — about death.

I wish I could remember, did she say that she was ready?

I don't fear death, but I want to know, how can one honestly say that they are ready to die?

And I looked at her white hair and her face and her tiny frame in that silvery gray sweater, and I wondered what it was like to be old.

--

This is a study of a building layout that's sort of possessed me lately. When I first posted the photo on Tumblr, I captioned it, "Small house on the water," but something like "Sprawl House" might be more appropriate.

I don't actually see a house or other structure that itself sprawls. I suppose it could, but really, I'm thinking of the house in great, sprawling environments:

• Stilt house, with a winding wooden dock, over the water of a vast river or the sea;
• Remains of an ancient temple, or Atlantis, or Pompeii;
• Small chapel or shrine set into the rocky red cliffs of a desert, like Sedona or Joshua Tree;
• Lonely shack in the middle of endless woods;
• Little cabin on the green prairies or purple moors that stretch on to forever; or
• Tiny scientific research outpost in the Arctic Circle, during the quarter of the year that the sun doesn't set.

Perhaps my isolated village wasn't isolated enough for me; growing up, I enjoyed stories of people surviving alone in the woods, or of fairy tale heroes finding healing or wisdom in some wizened crone's secret cave / magic hut. I was also a fan of the "Boxcar Children" series, which started out with four orphans making a home for themselves in an abandoned boxcar (also in the woods), as well as "The Little Prince," "The Island of the Blue Dolphins," and the perhaps less grand but no less entertaining "Baby Island." Also, many of the stories and games I made up, whenever I played by myself, involved living on a raft or in a one-room house.

Lately, those tingly, make-believe hermit feelings have come back, and instead of stories, I have this layout, as well as the tantalizing idea of much, much bigger paper.