CONVERSATIONS WITH SELF

Understandably these twilight years bring diminished capabilities and mobility, resulting in almost bunker-like existence.  Shrinking one's world and ken even more as days are piled under, with attention laser-focused on eternity in general, but day-to-day living in particular. 

Thus, we are not even in the midst of family life.  We are simply alone, an old man with his wife by his side eking out solitary existence.  The rest of the family now on their own with their own families and concerns. 

Moments like these when one begins to converse with one self rather than with other people. They are our Says-I-To-Me moments, with your consciousness on one side and your still-thriving mind on the other.

In these instances you quickly learn introspection and reflection if you have not already.  One begins to ask profound questions about oneself.  In the shortened drive to eternity, what are your purposes in life?  However late-term they may be, what are they and how may they be pursued and accomplished?

Though short and straightforward the question may be, no easy answers can be deduced.  Best then to just go through all the things one does and see where they lead if they make sense at all.  Brainstorming is always a good start.

In the rush to eternity, what have I been doing and for what reasons?

In no particular order then, here are the things and chores that had occupied my time as we speak.

With great preparation and financial effort, I have been able to publish a book of almost 500 pages.  So much so that a second volume is in the works.  Is my purpose as an author then?  Anyway, I am now a registered author and my book now has a unique  ISBN number  assigned to it.

During my grade school I had always had a predilection for doing sketches, starting early with imitating caricatures in comic books, newspapers, and magazines.  I can recall the first time I did it and felt proud of my sketchy work.  I had imitated the caricature of then Phil. President Elpidio Quirino whose default caricature was that of a big-nosed and heavy-set man sitting on a padded seat with one heavily bandaged foot raised on an ottoman.  The guy suffered from a bad case of gout.  I imitated that sketch and even got an admiring nod from my taciturn mother who in turn relayed such joyful discovery to relatives.  And to this day in some kind of compulsion, I continue to do sketches, this time specializing in busts of famous and notable personalities.  I probably have accumulated a collection of about 400 pieces.  Am I an illustrator then, slavishly pursuing that path till the end? In this regard, I also am both a numismatist and philately collector, accumulating about 2000 pieces of coins from various countries.  Being an avid Elvis Presley fan, I can also boast of a modest collection of memorabilia comprising mostly of books and MP3 files.

I was an employee for about 37 years, and earned my essential living being one.  Was able to raise family and provide for our retirement years.  In hindsight,  I do put value on what I did as such and am grateful for what it afforded us as a family.  Clearly it was pursued with earnest as a necessity, and not because I liked doing it.  As a matter fact, I can confess that I was only too eager and happy when employment stopped.  Now it is regarded simply as a past phase of my life.  Nothing less, nothing more.

Indeed, right after employment I wasted no time looking for the path to self-employment or entrepreneurship.  Commenced earlier even before retirement by getting license as a real estate agent.  And engaging formally in the business for at least 3 years, the initial validity period of my license as i recall.  And after that, secured another state license as personal financial analyst which served me well personally.  Then in a very serious way, the IT bug got me, and I could not help myself learning as much as I could digest about it.  So did a lot of serious self-study to secure license as a network and sysadmin technician.  Our eventual return to the old homeland cut short any attempt  of securing that license, though with regard to subject knowledge I had gone through the wringer of learning and researching.  And I considered myself as ready as I could get.

It was back to the old homeland when the entrepreneurship bug caught me.  Started with planting high-value crops on rented agricultural  land.  And eventually buying some plots with agriculture in mind.  Also went into real estate investments, with residential apartments and commercial spaces for rent. Established 2 bakery sites, and a water-refilling station.  And even tried a piggery fattening business. 

And now in a tad grandiose way, established a resort/retreat patterned as a farmhouse model with lodgings available and spaces and structures available also for functions and events.  And in the works will be an inn for more accommodations.  And by the way, we also had much earlier started a coffee orchard with about 2000 trees, which are now fruit-bearing.  At least two harvest seasons have been had.  We also have little fishpond, seeded with tilapia and catfish. We also plant flowers for show and for sale, too. So is entrepreneurship the purpose for this existence?  Definitely, we are in the thick of it with construction projects still ongoing.  So indeed we are into entrepreneurship.

On another front, this time using social media as tool, I have engaged in what I call my truth-telling advocacy, especially because nowadays fake news and deliberate misinformation are so prevalent in the institutions we have long regarded as trustworthy and reliable.  But have now gone to the dark side.  So I spend considerable time, disseminating and dispensing truth where I find it, and assist to make known the emerging personalities who are also committed to the same task.  And for this, I consider myself a citizen journalist, tasked with a very noble and admirable purpose worthy of effort and maybe, worth dying for.

With all these confusing choices, what reasonable deduction can one draw in reply to the initial question?

I can't say.  So maybe best to just let things slide.  Let the chips fall where they may.

But then even holy books warn that one cannot run away from oneself.  So always best to confront and resolve.

So if that be the case then let me pursue all of the above for all men.  And continue on with what are being done.

Amen.

In The Nature of Man

The deep-longing desires for permanency, perpetuity, and preservation are I do believe innate in man, encoded deeply enough as to be part of his DNA.

It is in the very nature of Man to create, pro-create, build and preserve.  Not to destroy and lay waste, both his creation and himself.  Thus, we find generally no logic or justication in suicide-bombing, or even just suicide.  Or for that matter any act the default result of which is one's own demise without a decidedly greater cause.  Thus, we can justify greater love than this when a man gives his life for his friend.

I myself shudder at the thought of any destruction, whether real or make-believe.  I hate watching movies where things are blasted away like buildings or cars, or even the most petty of things.  But I beam in pride and glory at the sight of things being built and becoming reality.

We are hardwired toward creation and self-preservation.  Though at times this gets short-circuited along the way, and thus in our insanity  temporarily  set aside.

In a nuclear war nobody wins because everything is destroyed.  All potential combatants know and understand this.  Everybody is resigned and committed to this eventuality in the event of any nuclear exchange between two opposing nuclear powers.  There are no two ways about it.

Ergo, the country or people who are most committed to create and preserve are the least likely to start a nuclear war.  And vice-versa.

Some Unforgotten Childhood Chore

 

                                                                                      

Living with a large family allows an accumulation of memories that tarry on and refuse to go way.

This is one such hardy memory that had kept me anxious during  my last afternoon nap.

Living and growing up with my large family in that old house along Del Mar and Victoria Sts, I had chores like any other siblings, though in hindsight I wonder why I felt undue brunt on many of them, being only the 5th child in a brood of nine.

On the ground floor of that very cramped house, tucked between my parents' bedroom and the bathroom facility was a small enclosure called the kuwartito.  It was intended as the help's quarters, right next door to their tiny and dark bathroom facility.  The room was also limited in space by the fact that it was partly under the stairwell leading to the 2nd floor.  That throwaway space was used to store odd stuff - like tires, clothing and rags, cardboard, etc.  As if that these were not enough, there was built another compartment made of wood and amakan and situated flushed to the outside wall.  It was at least 5 feet high and maybe 2 square meters, with a small opening on the top..  It was used as storage of palay.

The story of the source of the  palay merits another separate account. For now, let us proceed to the chore.  In effect, the palay was our household inventory and supply for the rice that we needed each day for our meals.  Every time our supply of rice would run low, the family dipped into that supply.

My chore was to load palay to two big jute sacks, using the kerosene "taro" to scoop palay from the enclosure into the 2 sacks.  This was one "prickly" chore since exposure to the palay made one very itchy all over, aggravated by the intolerable heat in that very cramped space. But it had to be done.

The sacks were then loaded to a tartanilla and delivered for milling to  Buhayco rice mill somewhere along Real St. near its intersection with either Gomez or Luzon Sts. One retrieved one sack of milled rice for the two sacks brought. Then back to the house. And this chore was repeated as the need arose.

Initially none of us young kids in the house raised any question about the source of the palay. .As I got older, certain things began to add up, and not because we started asking questions.  But simply because one added to another.

One very vivid recollection I have as a kid  is of a trip we made to a place in Opol, riding in a relative's  shiny Ford sedan.  Our uncle and aunt who were our next door neighbors, brought some of us siblings together with their only son for the trip.  It was to be  a day long trip, where food was brought and handled by a helper who came along for the ride.

The trip was among other things memorable because of the number of times we had to disembark during the entire trip.  Not that the car was not reliable, but because it was determined that the precaution was critical for our protection.

First, from the house in Victoria driving to Carmen, we had to disembark as the car negotiated the steep downgrade leading to the makeshift ferry docked near the City Hall.  The old bridge bombed during the last year was not restored yet.  And then on the disembarking procedure was repeated for every bridge all the way to Opol.  Can't remember how many.  But understandably it had to be done since all the bridges then were made from coconut trunks that were not considered reliable.  So each time we disembarked, we walked behind the car as it negotiated the bridge, then back inside on the other side.  This was the routine.

We reached Opol and were thrilled to see irrigation canals running parallel and vertical to the highway, with clear and cool waters flowing noisily.  We were told that they were fit to soak in, which we did without a moment's delay.

Later, we learned that our uncle and aunt were visiting their basakan in Opol and that our parents also had theirs in the same location.

Back to the house, on occasion we would get visits from a soft-spoken and kindly old man named Iyo Unque.  And we would overhear conversations about palay production and how much we could expect.  Pretty soon sacks of palay would arrive and they would be unloaded into our little stash..

Th equation therefore as best as I could figure out was  that Iyo Inque took care of planting and harvesting palay from basakan owned by my parents, and the production was shared between the two parties.

So ends a clear enough exposition of one particular arrangement consenting people had during those times.  Arrangements that ostensibly benefited all parties concerned.

One last lingering thought on the whole thing. I can only imagine the rat problem we were initiating because of that palay storage right on the ground floor where it is very accessible.  And so to this day the scourge of that little neighborhood  is, you guessed right, the rat problem.