maximine and minerva’s owl

Flamenco is so much fun! I’ve been taking lessons for three weeks now (once a week for one and a half hours). I’m planning on quitting tennis and just concentrate on flamenco; i think my body mass won’t be able to handle the physical strain from both. Two hours of tennis and 1.5 hours of flamenco are just too much for my poor fragile body to handle. That doesn’t sound much if I don’t count 40 minutes of bike ride to the train station everyday.

I don’t know if it’s true but according to my mother, my great-grandmother (her grandmother) was a semi-famous flamenco dancer in Spain back in the days. She said she came from a town or city called Cadiz and that at a very young age she had been trained to dance flamenco by her aunts who were also professional flamenco dancers. My grandmother was a spanish national but with portuguese and french pedigree; they came to the philippines in the early 1900’s. I remember her as a big breasted woman with fine and long curly hair tightly pulled back and impeccably coiffed above her nape. She actually looked like a flamenco dancer, you know, like those that you see on postcards or posters dancing alongside with a matador/toreador and a bleeding toro.

There are seven people in our class, five are middle-aged Japanese women all suffering from empty-nest syndrome, me, and a newly married ex-JAL stewardess who looks ten years younger than her age of 26. The teacher is a Japanese, in her early 60’s, I think. The instruction is done in Japanese of course save for the counting, uno, dos, tres… ole!

The summer is beginning its end, i can now feel the gentle cool breeze of autumn but it’s making my fingers dry and chappy; my lips too. i don’t know but the autumn breeze brings me a certain sadness, something i can’t explain and it happens all the time, every year- that is. autumn is my favorite season. there is something about it, something very special which is inexplicably inexpressible. the changing of the color of the trees/foliage is what i like the most, and the late afternoons that are dim but peaceful. i like the cracking sound dry leaves make when i step on them. apples and persimmons are aplenty and am looking forward to baking a tasty apple pie.

the acropolis in athens and wooden horse in troy, turkey  

i can fly

This is a poem by the late Czech poet Miroslav Holub - it’ s one of my favorite poems and one of the few that I know by heart:

We have
a map of the universe
for microbes,
we have
a map of a microbe
for the universe.
We have a Grand Master of chess
made of electr0nic circuits.
But above all
we have the ability to sort peas, to cup water in our
hands, to seek the right screw under the sofa
for hours.
This gives us wings.

climbing mt. fuji 

the old believe everything: the middle-aged suspect everything: the young know everything.

totoo nga naman.

i do research on mental handicaps with main focus on people afflicted with autism, so i’m with this group of individuals two or three times a week when i’m not working as a part-time language instructor/translator and/or doing chores around the house or tending to my husband’s every whim (not!). one of my case studies is a female named mika, a 42 year-old with severe autism she has the intellectual capacity of a 4 year-old. she collects minnie mouse paraphernalias: dolls, pins, bags, wallets, pens, etc., and her responses to certain stimulus depend on what minnie mouse trinket she has in her pocketbook. an only child, she is doted upon by her parents both of whom already nearing 80, they like travelling overseas and have done so a number of times in the past, they often took her with them. recently, i’ve been pondering about her:

For M

She mimics and utters unintelligible words
And gently rocks back and forth
When she’s nervous or agitated. Her defense
Is to take all her little Minnie Mouse
Dolls, plastic and stuffed–about twenty,
Out of her big tote bag
And line them up on the desk.

“Good morning Mika” I’d greet her,
“Good morning Mika” she’d greet me back.
And her father never fails to correct her greeting
Me properly and yet it has been the same;
For the past two years that I have known her.
Always the same even her yelling of “it’s tea time”
When she sees the clock at exactly ten forty five.

Her mother has done everything for her
Even the simplest things as straightening
her camisole and buttering her toast.
They have taken her to places as far
As Tibet and showed her the highest mountain,
The pyramids in Egypt for her to see man’s great capabilities
To do things, and yet she can’t even tie her shoelace.

She’s past her forty first summer this year;
Her father is old and her mother’s memory
Obliterates.

yesterday, i was riding my bike to go to my station at around 6 a.m. and since it was a sunday and an early morning at that, the street i often take was virtually empty thus crossing it without pushing the stop light button was permissible. i pushed it anyway, habit i guess; besides it’s better to be safe than sorry because you’ll never know. like what my dad says “always look both ways even if it’s just a one way street” - that applies to all aspects of life as well. never ever assume.
now back to the story:

as i was saying, the street was virtually empty, no cars, no pedestrians except for one person- an old woman (80-ish) - who was also crossing coming from across where i was. i didn’t really pay attention to her at first until we were at about 2 meters in distance sidewise from each other, that’s when i took a quick glance at her face. it looked so abnormally pale, sickly-bluish pale. she was looking straight, head and body erect, both arms folded on her stomach, and walking slowly, very slowly. she was of small frame and rather thin, a little under 5 feet in height, short hair and wearing a yukata (a kind of kimono japanese women wear in summer). i had reached my side of the street and curiously (i didn’t feel frightened because i’ve seen many such sickly-looking old japanese women before) turned my head back to catch a quick look at her again, she was still walking slowly but nearing the traffic light post. i wanted to know which direction she was heading so i continued looking; as soon as she got by the post, and i saw it with my two eyes: she faded away! i mean “evaporated” like smoke biglang NAGLAHO! i couldn’t make sense of what i had seen. it’s something that i saw and i saw what i saw. i’ve never seen a ghost before, felt yes, several times. one such time was on my birthday in ‘99, it was also the day my sister was buried; i had been in bed trying to catch some sleep at maybe 3 o’clock in the morning when i was awakened by something that felt like static electricity on the big toe of my right foot, it lasted for about 5 seconds. i was lying down facing up so i was sure it was not a leg cramp or ‘foot sleep’. it really felt like “nakuryente” but very mild and not unpleasant. maybe she was greeting me happy birthday. i told about it to her son who then was about 17 or 18 and he said it had happened to him too. many times especially in the middle of his sleep. he would feel it on his shoulder, hands, feet, and mostly on his face.