120 Boxes

Tita PV and I stood in the empty house on Saturday morning. The house was going to be turned over to the owner. She said the house empty already felt sad, but what a beautiful house it was. It really is a beautiful house. An open plan with green gardens front and back. The plants always lush, the vines red and thick. We had moved out. She asked me "were you shocked at how much you had accumulated?"

120 boxes. That's what we packed up from the house. And that's not even counting the art that we pre-packed and sent to the gallery for storage. When I moved in three years ago, there were twelve boxes plus a bed and a couch. The things collected over the 36 months were exponential. There was so much stuff, and as we had a lot of rooms and storage, they disappeared into the house.

At this point we have given away: a full and a queen bed, my orange couch, a television, three boxes of clothes, one box of shoes, and boxes of smaller items that we had completely forgotten we had. I expect we will be giving away more when we unpack in the adventure called Living Elsewhere.

Tita PV visited Living Elsewhere yesterday. Said it was wonderful, that it was a great find and a great idea. We got a "Congratulations Darling, at may hangin na di ko akalain" from her. Very happy we are.

The rule now is, for every one thing we get, we have to give away two.


Image: Wire Tuazon, Untitled, collage, 1999 (courtesy of Raymond Lee)

October

Dear LFL,

Yesterday, I sat at the hospital watching over D with her daughters. Little did we know that D would be leaving us an hour later. I was glad to have been there, to say goodbye. I told her daughters that of our senses, hearing is the last to go. My last words to her were "Hi D, we will be ok. Whenever you are ready. We will see you soon enough."

It was all over after soon after. I left and her son came in, then her youngest brother and her sister-in-law arrived. Then as everyone was preoccupied with one thing or another, she passed away. It was so quiet, so peaceful, no one noticed until P said "Mama muerta, she's not breathing".

I think it was better that way, not like the monitor countdown we went through with you. The monitor that showed your blood pressure and heart rate lowering hour by hour, then minute by minute, then nothing. I remember the sound of that Nothing. When we all just started crying, lost in our individual grief, falling apart as a family.

So back to D. It was a beautiful death. She was so happy these last few months. I would visit her at home, then at the hospital where she was these last 3 months. She was always so happy to hear what was going on, to feed me; proud of what our generation was doing; and always opinionated about everything.

Looking at her yesterday, I thought she would be with us much longer. She was breathing strong, and looked very calm. Not what you would expect someone who is losing life to look like. Her daughter N whispered to me, 'she's been ready a long time, I don't know what she is waiting for." Maybe she heard N, and figured, "that's right, I'm ready and I trust completely".

Tomorrow, we, your immediate family and the families of your brother and sisters, will meet again at Lolo and Lola's tomb, right near where you are, and say goodbye to D. She wanted no wake, just one Mass, and be buried before the sun set. She was Moslem that way. Well, she is getting almost everything she wanted, only the Philippine bureaucracy takes more than 24 hours to get a death certificate. In our family's burial patch, she will be beside her parents. She is the first of our generation to join you, aside from the cousin we never met who died at the Vietnam War.

An exemplary death, she faced it with incredible courage at the very end. Much the way you did LFL. Resigned and trusting, unafraid. For that, I will remember her. And celebrate her life. Because she has no wake, I am feeling her death more deeply. Appreciating in the beginning how creative she was, how organized, how strong, and towards the end, how simple, how trusting, and how forgiving she became.

We will miss her, as we miss you.

October. The month of your birth, of Lola's birth and death, of Tita Ch's death, and now, of D's passing.

Love,

no.8

Happy Berts

My mother turned seventy-something last week. I am convinced she will outlive her children. Yup, strong and sour that one is.

Inevitable

Back in the day when I was in PGH-land, we would count seven days from heavy flooding and watch, like clockwork, as the leptospirosis folk would be brought into the emergency room. They come in very sick -- highly febrile, with aching bodies especially around the abdominal area. The story is the same: lumusob sa baha (I walked in the flood).

Very few survive untreated leptospirosis, it is a bacterial infection that attacks the body focusing on the kidneys. Muscle aches and pains, generalized sepsis, and kidney failure. Death in a matter of weeks.

The bacteria that lives in rat urine finds its way through the flood water into open human sores. And you know how many Filipinos do not wear shoes? All the more risk at contracting it. Truly disgusting. You can take a pill immediately after wading in the nasty stuff as preventive medication. Ask your doctor.

Hospital cases on the rise, from an average of 1 case a month in PGH, they are up to 20 as of yesterday. The cases in San Lazaro, in RITM, in other hospitals are up too.

Looking at footage from the evacuation centers, it hit me that the people who will survive all this disease may mutate. Like in the cartoons when the toxic sludge falls on a town and everybody zombifies? That's not too far fetched. Some of them are already acting like animals- destroying blackboards, stealing furniture and books, smearing classrooms with excrement. The mutation may not be physical but the Lord of the Flies scenario is already starting.

Thank You's

Bright and early this morning, we were at the warehouse for the first day of construction. R is in charge of the physical construction, I am in charge of cleaning out the space of its long staying unseen occupants.

We get there and our foreman hands R a list of additional items we need: drill bits, gypsum putty, boral, gypsum tape, and two thousand nails and screws. The gypsum boards have yet to be delivered but the walls bars are coming up. If all goes well, we will be moving in in twenty days. By then, my daily ritual would have turned my incense smoke white.

In the meantime, we are incredibly grateful to have had this house, and to our adopted family that lent us this wonderful space.

Looking for the Skyline

This is a photograph by Hiroshi Sugimoto. We love his work. Google the man.

We have not had Blue sky in a long time here. The rains and overcast skies have been relentless. Thousands of Filipinos are losing homes and livelihoods because of floods and lack of relief.

In my own home, it feels like an evacuation center, without the evacuees. All things are consolidated to the middle of the house. A result of packing to move and avoiding leaks from all the rain. We have a fairly spacious house, but right now we have taken refuge in the area adjacent to the front garden's steps. It's got a couch, an electric fan, a tv, and lots of plants. Oh and a bell I ring every morning. They are all we've used in the last two weeks.

Makes me want to give away the rest of our things. We've got too many beds for one. And too many tables. And too many suitcases. And too many .... Really who needs twenty-four beer glasses?

How much do we really need to live comfortably? What can we do away with and hand over to people who really need?

The Internet Connection

Three times a year, all eight of us in the office sit around our conference table and get updated on how our galleries did the previous four months. It is also a time to voice our concerns about the goings on, good and bad. And we do short term goal setting, into long terms.... well, the short term goal set by D, our all around everything and my driver-when-he's-free, was to fix the internet connection which has been on the blink ever since. Not ever since Ondoy flooded Pasong Tamo Extension, but ever since PLDT connected it.

His very insightful, and very Pinoy solution, is to connect our own line straight to the PLDT router on the street (and not to the one in the building). He has followed our line physically and found that it snakes around the back of the gallery, into a clump of indistinguishable wires which are all spliced from one connection. Thus every time there is a problem (no internet), the person PLDT calls is Romy, the taong building. Now, Romy is no genius, and uses a screwdriver as his single tool for fixing everything. Read: he is useless. So D figures, if PLDT calls Romy, then it must be the building that's got a problem. So, why not make our own direct line crossing over our bridge, much nearer to the street than snaking around the building, straight into the box?

Let's see if it works.


Image: Gilda Cordero Fernando, Inang Bayan in Perilous Times, SLab Gallery, Oct 21 - Nov 21 2009

Living Elsewhere

It is going to happen. Signed the lease contract yesterday for the adventure called Living Elsewhere.

It is on the 6th floor with a perfect lateral, and silent, view of planes coming into land at the Manila International Airport. We will have two balconies, one for the laundry area, the other for R and friends to smoke, and me to watch the planes coming in. I love watching planes land. Pilots say it is the hardest part of flying. I have an inexplicable fear of turbulence, but not flying.

There will be a 2x2 meter indoor garden for Tiger.