Trees

i consider myself lucky to be able to see trees outside the bedrooms i have had in the past few years.

they bring me back to days past when i lived the wild life my teenage years brought with it.
i have no regrets about those days.
i was in and out of school then for a couple of years.
in and out of our home as well.
my dad couldn't put up with my long hair, my friends, the drugs and the booze and my craziness.

some lessons learned came out of it which i carry, my baggage.

there was a short period when i lived with some prostitutes.
didn't meet them where they did their work. i had friends who were their boyfriends.
they took me in when they found out i got kicked out of our place.
some of them could relate cause that 's how they got started.
you say they could have done better than be what they ended up in.
easy to say. hey, some people today do worse.
anyway, it was to be a short stay. their "handler" found out and shot us out of their "house" early one morning.
yes. a couple of trees helped in our getaway and saved us from the gunshots fired at us.
ordinary trees, just.
i have never thought of prostitutes other than people who just don't have the same kind of luck we all were given.

i'll cut short to the next incident where trees made me do a turnaround.

my dad had given up on me. nothing he did worked to make me give up my "friends".
one day, instead of the usual screaming he just walked me out to our front yard where there were a couple of trees and a lot of smaller plants.

he admitted he was tired of me and his scoldings. i was a hopeless case.
(i finished high school and college and never attended graduation ceremonies which most parents look forward to. what for ? that was the end of the show, like the credits you see at the end of a film. now don't you guys walk out when they come along ?)

anyway, my dad then told me the trees and the plants around us were in a lot better shape than i was. they were stuck in the ground and yet each day they were able to do something with themselves and their situation. oh yeah, of course, it's the only way they'll survive.

but back to my dad. he said they were better off because they had something, leaves a-borning and a-falling, flowers and fruits showing. compared to nothing i could show for my daily, nightly excursions, incursions.

don't ask - it got to me. after he left i made up my mind i was going to finish school and get out of his face. after all he also told me he would still pay for my college education ( as well as for my four siblings. yes he did - debt-free.)

flash forward. when i was finally able to buy some land for my own home, first thing i had done was have some trees planted.

years later. were it not for the sight of those trees on the small plot of land, i would have sold it and not have the house i have on it now.

today, i think of my dad as another tree. he, inspite of our issues, has turned out to be a tree of sorts, holding us all together.

and so, every morning that i wake up, my eyes see the tall trees outside my bedroom window.
they seem to have followed me around from that time in my "friends'" yard as well as ours.

and, yes, Tony, the trees you are planting may well be enclosing me after i've breathed my last.

thanks Ton. let me thank you for all those people you say won't know you had planted trees which would outlive you, us.

they may just be trees.


you see me today and you wouldn't think i had done some wild things.
i'm sure you know some people who have similar experiences and you wouldn't know.
i know how you feel Ton.
you are dead on about those trees.
given the chance, they would be mute witnesses to the follies of man.

Mortality

found out about a friend's death last night.

brought back a lot of good memories as well as reminded me of our mortality.

everyone knew him as DonDon and appreciated him for his sparky personality and creativity.

we met while working for a bank in a desert kingdom. he found me.
a colleague at the bank told me i should meet him cause i somehow reminded him of Don.
for one we were taller than our compatriots.
and i think because i had a nasty sense of humor, much like Don, when a need for such humor arose.
we worked in different areas and we wouldn't have met had he not made the first move.
i'm glad he did.
for over the time i spent with him, he would provide me, as well as those who knew him much needed comic relief for the very restrictive lifestyle the kingdom enforced on everyone,
and more.

below are some of the memories of him i have and will continue to carry.

once, late at night he walked into a supermarket in shorts. no, you don't do that in public in this kingdom, men and specially women. got away with it. never did it again.

clogged up a kitchen so that the landlord would get some needed repairs done on the apartment he shared with a friend. he got found out and he and his friend moved out at the end of their lease. yes, we three found ourselves a better apartment and shared living arrangements for quite a long bit of time. i have not regretted doing so.

liked blue and white ceramics. yeah, for a while, i bought some. but he just had to have them all the time.

usually found a use for ordinary things for either decorative or utilitarian purposes.

gave good parties or had good ideas for them.

he termed women lacking in good looks "simpatica" after an embarrassing situation at a party.

never threw away leftover food until it had spoiled. said he learned it from his mom who told him it would bring bad luck as there are people somewhere who don't have the luxury of having enough food to get them thru the day.

taught me about his views on karma.
he believed whatever good or bad deeds you do would come back to affect you the same way, maybe doubled. ( i learned "every action has an equal and opposite reaction" from my high school physics class, and much more.)
don did as many good deeds as he could not thinking about whether he would get the same back.

gave one of my sisters a gold ring which she still wears everyday and which still gets "nice ring, where did you get that" comments from people who notice it. (they just met once when Don was on one of his annual vacations.)

he sometimes wore different colored or patterned socks not because he was setting a style trend. happened either because he was in a rush or he was dressing up in the dark.
how did i find out ? i called him at work once to tell him about my own booboo and he told me how often he did so.

one time he teased someone about getting a cat so he could practice for the eventuality of bachelorhood in his older days. don saw this colleague sitting in a rocking chair stoking a cat on his lap. yes, the guy took offense as he said he didn't have any plans of going thru life alone.
(i don't know if he has married. such is life, we move on and away from people who can't take our jokes.)

and the first gulf war. we were there.
the first time saddam's army sent in one of their bombs, we found ourselves sitting beside each other outside one of the apartment's bathrooms.
we were having coffee and cigarettes (typical of us then, i no longer smoke now) waiting for the effects of that bomb, (which fell a few miles away from us).
i told him that, worst case scenario, if he survived that bombing or any following it, to please tell my folks i was thinking about them to the last moment. and he asked me to do the same for him.

we both survived. and i am still here.

and such is life. people dear to us pass away and we're left with the memories.
we move on. we have to, like it or not.
i know. i started losing dear ones early on.
i'm still here, still hoping that i would grow old with people dear to me.
if not, then i just would like to be around to help people left behind move on.

and so, mortality.
we always forget that we could be gone anytime.
i'm guilty of it. we all are.
i wonder how it's gonna come for me.
truth is no matter how you want to, it will just happen.
we have no control over it.
but we can control how we live our life and how we affect the lives of people dear to us.
and the best thing we can do is to make it easy for them while we are able and when we're gone.
that's a good eulogy you can leave behind.

Flying brings out words starting with the letter 'S'

stranded.
stupid.
shameful.

if nothing stupid happens, life would be boring.
if the character or characters in a book don't do something stupid, there would be no story worth reading.
so i thought while waiting for a plane to take me to a family holiday reunion.

got stranded this week for 10 hours at one of Texas' bigger airports, and not because of a weather related issue. got stranded due to the ineptitude of a flight crew of one of the supposedly bigger and better airlines in the USA. they didn't update their flight log and the subsequent crew flying the plane just didn't want to do so for safety reasons. and no, we, the passengers, were not told until we were about to take off.

i couldn't help but write about it. i thought about complaining about the incident with the airline's management but what for ? it's not going to change anything that's already happened. or maybe it will for other passengers on its future flights.

i have to laud the pilot, who happened to be a woman, finally flying us to our destination, for telling us exactly why we were not able to fly earlier. it was the same plane we were supposed to be flying on. but the earlier flight crews gave us "mechanical issues" as the reason we could not leave as scheduled. yes folks, two flight crews twisted the truth so they could hide the ineptitude of their fellows.

i know, it's galling. they didn't have the decency to be up-front about the problem. then they didn't even have the decency to alleviate our inconvenience - zif, nada.
after all, they already had our money.

they claim they're not profitable. but they continue to operate and continue to lack a better excuse to give us when they make mistakes. or compensate us for putting up with their mistakes.

i look at it this way. let the other passengers complain.

here's my complaint and take it as you want to. the airline is american airlines.

i'll try my best not to fly on them again. and when people ask me why i'll recount this unexcusable event. word of mouth is a worse way of death.

yes, you would have heard a lot of foul words starting with the letter 's' coming out of my mouth during the incident but i thought it wasn't the worst thing that could have happened.
it was just a temporary inconvenience.
a co-passenger put it to me this way : he would rather have the problem on the ground than up in the air.
yes, i got lucky and got stuck with some of the nicest people who decided to be civil about it, show their best behaviour and it made all the difference.
so to them i pass on my thanks, as well as to the pilot who told us, as well as showed us, what the "real" problem was.

and, yes, there are a lot of good words which start with the letter 's'

s . . . . .

s . . . .

s . . .

A Sunday Sermon

yes, i go to church on sundays. that is, when i can.
and lately, it's been almost every sunday.
i have to be honest - i'm a "lapsed" catholic, if there is one.
i've questioned my faith, some of the Catholic Church's practices, but not enough to be a heretic.

occasionally a priest's sermon would touch a nerve in me as so happened yesterday.
my sister nudged me when the priest mentioned something about family issues.
yes, our family has its share.
the priest was right in saying that some of the "crosses we carry" are self made,
self imposed.

i thought he was right in saying that we could resolve some of our issues by ourselves,
no need for third party intervention.
it's a matter of admitting or realizing our errors and doing something about it before it's too late for any resolution.
it's a matter of letting go of our self inflicted pain and accepting things we can't control or change.
and moving forward.

the sermon i heard yesterday was something i had to, i was meant to hear.
(we could have gone to a different church, but my almost 5 year old niece wanted us to go to this church, this particular sunday. and she has no idea of our family issues.)

it provided a moment of clarity, of looking at an issue or situation in a different light.
it made me consider "what ifs" and "why nots".
as well as reminded me that some wounds take time to heal.

just a sunday sermon.

Put It Out There

put it out there. and i don't mean or refer to your garbage. far from it, please.
i'm talking about your dreams, your thoughts - the good ones mainly.

it all starts with a thought.
most of the time followed by a "why not ?" rather than by a "why ?".
only later on will it be followed by "what made you think that ?" or "how did you think it up ?".
if you had thought about the follow up questions first, you'd end up not doing anything about your thought (or idea, or whatever you would like to call your epiphany of sorts).

but really, i woke up early this morning wanting to go to the bathroom. moments later my head just started churning out thoughts and you're reading (one of) them now.

put it out there.
sometimes you can and sometimes you can't. you sometimes have to hold on to a thought because it may not sound right or because of "timing" issues and concerns.
and sometimes you just have to put it out there and just go with the wind that takes it where it goes.

put it out there.
and go with the magic of it working the way you imagined it, whatever it is.
i've seen it happen. i've done it a number of times. geez, you've done it so many times.
that sudden instinct to do something, no thoughts required.
sometimes it's a hunger. sometimes it's an itch.
sometimes it's just something you have to do.
and sometimes they're not new imaginings.
or they may even be someone else's.

put it out there.
if you have to pray about it, go ahead.
i believe in prayers being answered. but be prepared.
not all prayers are answered immediately.
but they are, if you believe.
not in the way you want or in the way you imagined.
just be prepared.
life is filled with surprises - some pleasant, some not.
but it's all worth it.

put it out there. be surprised.

GO !

Sponges

i've noticed how people would sometimes ask me "how did you find out ?" or "how did you know ?" whenever i would tell them something they didn't know about or they didn't know i knew about.

you have time to do that ? is a common thing i would hear after i tell them i found out from the newspaper or read it online or heard it on the radio.

it's easy. i just notice things. it's all out there if you just paid a bit of attention, sometimes you don't even have to.

it's also sponge-like behaviour. we're sponges.
we have a tendency to pick up things by osmosis, just like plants.
it's how we were when we were kids.
notice the way you talk, or walk or what you eat and think.
you picked most of it up from the people you grew up with.
it's repetitive behaviour.
before you know it, you become like them or become one of them.

scary, but true. we'd like to think of ourselves as higher forms of being.
but we do things at a baser level.
we really have to think about how we do things or why.
we want to protect a way of life, of seeing and doing things.
we may deny it as much as we want to.
but when you turn on the radio or television, or read the front pages of the newspapers or your chosen webpage, you will see how much people everywhere are doing the same thing, operating at the same level of intelligence or intolerance.

we're all the same - sponges.

and wonder not when someone asks you why you think or act a certain way or why you know certain things and adhere to certain truths. you've sponged off your elders' way of life and thinking and watch out how your kids will turn out.

Serendipity

Serendipity.

just finished reading Mitch Albom's For One More Day. it's about one "ordinary" day anyone might yearn for to make good with and/or seek forgiveness from a "lost" loved one.

i learned about the book while reading someone's blog last week.

soon after i tried to get a copy on Amazon but put it off thinking it was just another unnecessary expense.

the one i just read was borrowed from the local library yesterday after i accompanied my niece to return and borrow some books. take note - i wasn't thinking about borrowing the book. i just found it while browsing while i was waiting for my niece.

this past saturday's local paper, the Austin American-Statesman, carried an article in its Life and Arts section about an austin-based writer named Edmund "Bud" Shrake.

in it, the article's writer (Patrick Beach), started his piece by mentioning Mr. Shrake's mystical experience which occurred in September 2001. he had surgery on a cancerous tumor in a kidney. after getting medication for his pain, he had what he calls an "after-life experience".

he woke up in intensive care. one of his visitors, a former nurse, found him "dead" and revived him with cpr. he was told that he was "dead" for several minutes.

during the time he was out, Mr. Shrake remembers realizing he had a soul. he found out that life is the gasoline that runs y/our engine and death is right there, just like your elbow. he also realized that the universe is made of bits of information and that the universe is no fluke.

Mr. Albom's book is about death and dying too. and on an ordinary saturday afternoon i just happen to read about the subject from two unrelated sources: one factual and one supposedly fictional.

what strikes me most out of these recent readings is what the other author (Mr. Shrake) had to say about the universe being made up of bits of information.

Serendipity.

makes me wonder less about why i blog or why i read other people's blogs.