Trying hard to feel positive
Here I sit staring into a light blue sky with not too many clouds. This morning when I woke up it was raining hard. The wind blowing wonderfully strong.
I thought that the weather would last the whole day. But in about an hour the rain stopped and a hot-tempered sun came out to punish all of us with its heat. Now I’m sitting at my lopsided antique table—my daughter’s, actually, that I seem to have inherited—staring at the pale blue sky wondering what I should write about.
To be honest I don’t feel like writing or doing anything today. I woke up in a fairly good mood but I think I just swam along with the weather. First I felt cool, and sat down to craft the rosaries that were ordered by a lady from down south. The weather was fine when I began but now at three in the afternoon, I am feeling so hot, so bothered, so cranky. I turned on the air conditioner, which we hardly use these days, but it’s taking so long to cool. Something cool, I wish to order something cool, what’s-her-name, the wife of what’s-his-name, two old friends who once came to my house in Calamba in the hot sultry summer. She sang me that song on the bridge over my fish pond. I remember their faces but not their names. In this heat, I feel every minute of every day I have lived. I am now old.
“Write something positive,” a friend texted. “Stay away from being negative. Nothing good comes from negativity.” He made me smirk. Today the smirk turns into a frown. I don’t feel positive today. I wonder if I should eat a chocolate bar. No, I don’t feel like it. That won’t do my teeth any good. If I’m going to do something positive, I’d better take care of my teeth. You will not like what you see if we run into each other accidentally and I give you a dimpled, totally toothless smile. That will throw you down the pit of negativity.
I don’t believe it but I think I’ve just developed a massive headache. It must be because the air conditioner is on my right but the sun is shining directly into the wine cooler (that my husband once bought though we now use it as an extension of our refrigerator) on my left. A bright ray of sun hits a clear bottle of water and sends a glare into my left eye. It’s horrible to feel cool on your right and hot on your left. Crazy to say the least.
I guess we all have maddening days, days we just need to survive. This is my first such day in 2023. If a robber came into our flat with a revolver and asked me to turn over all my jewelry (by the way, they are all fake now) to him or he would shoot me dead, I would tell him to shoot me please, and make sure you shoot me dead. That’s a lesson I learned from my mother who, when she used to farm in Los Baños, had a snub-nosed 38 caliber revolver. She tried to teach me to shoot but I simply refused to learn. I think it’s because she said, “Remember, when you shoot anyone, you have to shoot him dead or he will one day come back and shoot you dead.” I didn’t want to learn or play that game.
Got up, walked 15 steps to the water cooler, walked 15 steps to where the Paracetamol is and popped a pill. Walked back 10 steps to where my computer is. I sit again, trying to stare back at the cloudless sky but my eyes rest on my orchids. Yes, I attempt to grow orchids near the window of our apartment. They are the latest white butterfly orchids that I received for my birthday. It’s called Phalaenopsis orchid. Lovely because I just received it. There’s the colorful yellow and purple orchid I bought myself that still has kept its bloom even though it has been there for a month. There’s the beautiful coral mini-cattleya I bought that never bloomed in my hands. It’s alive but it doesn’t bloom because I suspect I don’t know how to care for it. But never mind. One day I bet it will surprise me.
There are days like this for every writer, I know, so I resign myself. My headache is fading. The paracetamol is starting to work but I still sit biting my lips staring blankly at a cloudless sky of the palest baby blue.