SABBATICAL NOTES. 16 JAN 2014 N4

SABBATICAL NOTES. 16 JAN 2014 N4

SO THIS MUST be it, I am telling myself everyday. 

It is this feeling of not being rushed, of having your own way of doing things, of biding your own sweet, sweet time even if you are the designated unpaid family driver each morning. 

The distance between family service and sabbatical freedom is just a few miles away, and I can take that any time. 

But even as the days go by so quickly--pressing things come to the fore, like speaking engagements in some places.

Preparing for these engagements eats up so much of my time and swamps me with earthly concerns about how best to make the conference participants dance the Electric Slide Step Number 9, one dance Sra Lydia Pavon, would not even want to try.

I would not like to look like a moron, that mindless dishonorable man of an idiot who lives in a senatorial palace somewhere in Valle Verde, Wack Wack, or Corinthian.

Include here as the setting of one's idiocy the Loyola Heights villa of a past president who did nothing but harm and a senator who makes a rehab czar unable to exercise his being a czar.

Let us see.

Life in the home country is a surprise.

Always, it is, with husbands going berserk, husbands who encourage their wives to go live on the Internet in order to be employed by the international syndicate on live sex.

Is this the same as the torero and torera days of the past when Bomba films were used to numb the radicalized machos so that instead of them going to rallies and demonstrations, they would rather go to cinemas and watch those actors who have declared war on any of the clothing companies? Add the actresses to the equation and we have a pop culture that makes us forget about the injustices and iniquities our leaders call as democracy, Philippine-style. Except that, of course, there are more poor people now, and their numbers are increasing each day.

But so much for this.

I open the boxes on the side of the dining table, and throw away many things as much as I can and the boxes are never empty.

Are these some kind of a living spring of notes and notecards that will never go dry? This situation has become too biblical for me!

Yesterday, a daughter wittily said: we have to have father's office built as soon as we can so he will not have to occupy the dining table and his study table and the living room table. Let us make it sure that we lock outside so he will never be tempted to bring those boxes out.

Of course, the son is grown, and he exhibits the same stamina and fever for collecting books and what-nots, and his room is a librarian's nightmare too, with books on the floor and on every shelf there is in his kingdom come.

So much for bad behavior.

And so much for thinking about the next book or poem or essay to write.

WPH, HI/
16 Jan 2014