Clarikitikitik en a Blue-Black Sheep

Is it true, yes or no? This is my ate-ate-ate (though yes, she looks much younger than I!). Poster paint and india ink on illustration board. Size: 11 in x 8.5 in.

Sikat!

(L) FPJ's deathmask (R) FA 221 sculptor-wannabes at the home of titser (si Vik ang may hawak ng camera)

Class last Saturday was quite interesting. It was an instant field trip to the home of our workshop teacher, Napoleon Abueva. From the white lincoln with NA plates to the ferris wheel of paintings, to the mobile bookshelves, to the swinging house--not to mention the moulds and art-utility pieces that decorated his home, it was all rather surreal. Can't wait to start chipping away at my piece of wood next Saturday. If only I had a design ready...

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Oh, and guess who's one of friendster's top searches (in my network anyway)? Buwahahahahaha. Sikat.

Daddy di do du

Poster paint and india ink. This is my daddy-di-do-du! He's turning 61 next Saturday, and is quite eager to start using his senior citizen's card. *mwah* Happy Birthday daddy-o.

Closing Cycles

Closing Cycles
By Paolo Coelho

One always has to know when a stage comes to an end. If we insist on staying longer than the necessary time, we lose the happiness and the meaning of the other stages we have to go through.

Closing cycles, shutting doors, ending chapters whatever name we give it, what matters is to leave in the past the moments of life that have finished. Did you lose your job? Has a loving relationship come to an end? Did you leave your parents' house? Gone to live abroad? Has a long-lasting friendship ended all of a sudden?

You can spend a long time wondering why this has happened. You can tell yourself you won't take another step until you find out why certain things that were so important and so solid in your life have turned into dust, just like that.

But such an attitude will be awfully stressing for everyone involved: your parents, your husband or wife, your friends, your children, your sister, everyone will be finishing chapters, turning over new leaves, getting on with life, and they will all feel bad seeing you at a standstill.

None of us can be in the present and the past at the same time, not even when we try to understand the things that happen to us. What has passed will not return: we cannot for ever be children, late adolescents, sons that feel guilt or rancor towards our parents, lovers who day and night relive an affair with someone who has gone away and has not the least intention of coming back.

Things pass, and the best we can do is to let them really go away. That is why it is so important (however painful it maybe!) to destroy souvenirs, move, give lots of things away to orphanages, sell or donate the books you have at home. Everything in this visible world is a manifestation of the invisible world, of what is going on in our hearts and getting rid of certain memories also means making some room for other memories to take their place.

Let things go. Release them. Detach yourself from them. Nobody plays this life with marked cards, so sometimes we win and sometimes we lose. Do not expect anything in return, do not expect your efforts to be appreciated, your genius to be discovered, your love to be understood. Stop turning on your emotional television to watch the same program over and over again, the one that shows how much you suffered from a certain loss: that is only poisoning you, nothing else.

Nothing is more dangerous than not accepting love relationships that are broken off, work that is promised but there is no starting date, decisions that are always put off waiting for the ideal moment. Before a new chapter is begun, the old one has to be finished: tell yourself that what has passed will never come back. Remember that there was a time when you could live without that thing or that person. Nothing is irreplaceable. A habit is not a need. This may sound so obvious, it may even be difficult, but it is very important.

Closing cycles. Not because of pride, incapacity or arrogance, but simply because that no longer fits your life. Shut the door, change the record, clean the house, shake off the dust. Stop being who you were, and change into who you are.

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I got the above text from Agatha's blog. Maybe someday I will discover the reason for my fascination with endings. With finishing things. I suppose it's like the excitement and anticipation of seeing a completed artwork.

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Walking along Paseo to lunch this afternoon, I saw a big orange cat occupying the sidewalk. It was sitting in the middle of a cluster of vendors, looking very much in place--actually looking like it owned the place. It was sitting/lying, the way cats do when engaged in licking bodily parts we wouldn't even imagine reaching ourselves, looking--nay, sizing up the people walking past--the way cats do while observing minions. The fat orange cat looked like some sort of lord being attended to by his subjects, possessing every right to occupy that portion of the Makati sidewalk. Natuwa ako sa kanya.

When you give a child a chainsaw...

Raya had fun with the chainsaw at the Bangis shoot. For more photos, check this out.