4.30.2011
4.29.2011
Body Talk
My knee is busted. more than feeling weepy from the pain, i am very pissed! I can't bend it, I wince when I take a seat, even turning to one side during sleep is a burden and i'm limping all over the place. My movement is hampered and i am worried about fieldwork next week.
What pisses me off is the feeling that this may be a long-term condition. Mefenamic acid and ibuprofen don't do their magic even at increased dosages. Despite my refusal to concede older age, I'd even succumbed to taking anti-arthritis and anti-gout drugs only to discover zero relief. I'm afraid it may be a ligament tear manifesting itself two weeks after a hard fall when I slipped on a driveway incline in front of my brothers' apartment and my right knee suffered the worst impact. Turned out many have gone down at that exact spot.
I'm the kind that rarely gets sick. I have only been sent to the ER once and it was because of a funky iced tea I ingested from KFC-Mendiola (blacklisted!). It would have been fine except that I was vomiting, turning white and couldn't sit straight inside the taxi. Embarrassingly enough, I think I also resorted to crying as an involuntary coping response. Also, I rarely catch the flu and I contract the common cold and cough only once a year, if at all. But I am now discovering that the body has its limits.
Only last year, one of my molars was chipped and upon visiting the dentist, I discovered that it needs to undergo root canal. I also asked her to do a thorough checkup and we discovered at least four teeth that need work. I was quite disturbed because although they were not perfect, I took some pride in my set of teeth. I took good care of them, or so I thought. I guess it was normal wear and tear.
Also, the night before leaving for an out-of-the-country trip, I experienced partial deafness and an annoying ringing in my right ear. That would have been fine except it was also very painful and when it throbbed, my head and jaw also throbbed. Sometimes it was a constant pain and my head felt heavier at one side. Sometimes it was as though someone had suddenly punched the right side of my face from the inside. I had my uncle who is an EENT doctor diagnose me through text because there was no more time before the flight to consult one here. The antibiotics cost me two museum entrance tickets. If I was not determined to maintain some amount of cheerfulness then, the trip would have been disastrous.
Again, for three months this year, I had been dealing with a bad ingrown toenail. It came to a point when I had to visit the salon weekly to have a pedicure and couldn't wear shoes. Now my toenails had always been problematic. I have deep-set nails which itch and ache when not cleaned regularly but one wrong move had resulted to a tear and an infection and, after many days of futile bandaging and cleaning with peroxide and betadine and constant fear of being stepped on in the MRT, I had to accept defeat and undergo minor surgery one day before a location wedding shoot. Good thing my flatmate Marielle's dad is a surgeon and even if I had to troop to Paranaque where he practiced, I only paid a minimal amount for ER equipment use and medicine. That was a bummer. I still hate my nails today.
So what next? I hope they don't tell me this knee is beyond repair. I still want to run, move through the commuting crowd with ease, dance, climb mountains. I want to sleep dammit, and I can't right now because the only way I know how is on my stomach, turned to one side with my bad knee folded in a 30 degree angle.
What pisses me off is the feeling that this may be a long-term condition. Mefenamic acid and ibuprofen don't do their magic even at increased dosages. Despite my refusal to concede older age, I'd even succumbed to taking anti-arthritis and anti-gout drugs only to discover zero relief. I'm afraid it may be a ligament tear manifesting itself two weeks after a hard fall when I slipped on a driveway incline in front of my brothers' apartment and my right knee suffered the worst impact. Turned out many have gone down at that exact spot.
I'm the kind that rarely gets sick. I have only been sent to the ER once and it was because of a funky iced tea I ingested from KFC-Mendiola (blacklisted!). It would have been fine except that I was vomiting, turning white and couldn't sit straight inside the taxi. Embarrassingly enough, I think I also resorted to crying as an involuntary coping response. Also, I rarely catch the flu and I contract the common cold and cough only once a year, if at all. But I am now discovering that the body has its limits.
Only last year, one of my molars was chipped and upon visiting the dentist, I discovered that it needs to undergo root canal. I also asked her to do a thorough checkup and we discovered at least four teeth that need work. I was quite disturbed because although they were not perfect, I took some pride in my set of teeth. I took good care of them, or so I thought. I guess it was normal wear and tear.
Also, the night before leaving for an out-of-the-country trip, I experienced partial deafness and an annoying ringing in my right ear. That would have been fine except it was also very painful and when it throbbed, my head and jaw also throbbed. Sometimes it was a constant pain and my head felt heavier at one side. Sometimes it was as though someone had suddenly punched the right side of my face from the inside. I had my uncle who is an EENT doctor diagnose me through text because there was no more time before the flight to consult one here. The antibiotics cost me two museum entrance tickets. If I was not determined to maintain some amount of cheerfulness then, the trip would have been disastrous.
Again, for three months this year, I had been dealing with a bad ingrown toenail. It came to a point when I had to visit the salon weekly to have a pedicure and couldn't wear shoes. Now my toenails had always been problematic. I have deep-set nails which itch and ache when not cleaned regularly but one wrong move had resulted to a tear and an infection and, after many days of futile bandaging and cleaning with peroxide and betadine and constant fear of being stepped on in the MRT, I had to accept defeat and undergo minor surgery one day before a location wedding shoot. Good thing my flatmate Marielle's dad is a surgeon and even if I had to troop to Paranaque where he practiced, I only paid a minimal amount for ER equipment use and medicine. That was a bummer. I still hate my nails today.
So what next? I hope they don't tell me this knee is beyond repair. I still want to run, move through the commuting crowd with ease, dance, climb mountains. I want to sleep dammit, and I can't right now because the only way I know how is on my stomach, turned to one side with my bad knee folded in a 30 degree angle.
4.21.2011
Accidental Lenten Retreat Masters
Dave Grohl and the boys have recently released a new album which I would not have learned of had I not clicked on a video of their bad-ass beatlesque performance at the David Letterman Show. I was blown away. My favorite tracks include the bop-inducing "White Limo" "These Days" which is a poignant and bittersweet recollection of a lost love told in the second person, the singable "A Matter of Time" and "Back and Forth," which sums up in music and words how I currently feel about me, about you and, very strangely, about God. Fitting for the season.
Listen to the album audio stream here. For your Foo Fighters Band History 101, watch the newly-released film documentary also entitled "Back and Forth" here.
4.20.2011
There's Gotta be More
My throat constricts as I think about the things that I have to do for the rest of April and the whole of May. After the case study writing stint with Foundation Z which was tiring but professionally enriching, I recently accepted a referred job documenting a Post-Ondoy and Post-Pepeng Monitoring Study funded by the Big Bad Bank. This will take me to field for three weeks straight which will actually be more hard-core than my previous ARMM assignment. The real catch is that I would have to turn in reports only one day after every five full days of FGDs and interviews. That means 3 reports in 3 weeks. How I am going to pull that off, I don't really know. I do know that it would entail Sting energy drinks and lots of internal heaving.
As of writing I still have to submit some work for one of my usual clients which Lai calls my sugar daddy--someone who gives me cash in advance for future intellectual favors. But that's just kinda sick to consider even for 5 seconds so I'm just gonna call him Data-entry Corp 2. Have to finish this by Monday.
Another thing which gives me the urge to whine like a baby is that I need to decide if I really want to submit my CV to the dark side -- well more like just the wet side. A former colleague recommended me to replace her as head of a community service/events coordination/publications head. Honestly, I am not keen on working there and handling people in a very politicized large corporation. But the adult part of me wants to just try it out for a while just to gain financial stability. They do, after all, pay well and my job would not be entirely soul-less.
My friends and family know that I do not particularly care about monetary rewards, even to a fault. The last 6 years of my working life as a social development worker, photographer, travel writer, social researcher etc has been enjoyable for me in the sense that I have experienced so many things, gone places, was exposed to the daily lives and issues of the common people in the country. I was able to know very inspiring people who, to no avail, have been convincing me to finally take an MA or diploma course in any field, pretty please (another blog topic altogether). But I never became wealthy. I never wanted to. I stayed afloat, lived within my means and just found richness in every experience I had.
But as days pass, I have come to admit that I cannot live like this forever. I need to bloat my savings for future endeavors or emergencies. My parents are tired and not growing any younger. If it weren't for my overly carefree attitude, I should have taken over a lot of things by now. Just a week ago, my Mom and Dad came by from the province for a couple of days to attend my brother's college graduation. They were driving for nearly 15 hours and before going to bed, my dad asked me to massage his back to which I willingly obliged. I remember how my brothers and I would walk through my parents' back as if we were traversing a pilapil when we were kids. It was a nightly ritual. Of course doing that now would break my dad's back so I just resorted to the usual rub. I was so surprised to find out how soft Dad's skin has become. Save for his smoking, Dad is never unhealthy. He eats well and plays tennis daily. Although on the thin side, he was very lithe and had six pack abs in his younger days. Now instead of being supple and leathery, his skin has just gone soft, like there was no flesh underneath, just skin, something else which felt like water and then bones. It was disconcerting. It felt like some mental disease has robbed me of precious years and I had missed out on important events in a loved one's life.
Still, I have apprehensions about doing an 8 to 5. My former colleague says she understands as, and I quote, "free spirits could never and should never be tied down." But I was reminded that there's gotta be more to life than frantic pleasure pursuits. I get that struggle is central in any human's being. More than ever, I am ready for a fistfight. But in order to take the blows and score some punches I first have to identify those for which I will be fighting. Maybe I should write them down and tape them in my daily line of vision, just like when I was 12 and I wholeheartedly believed and proved that nothing ever was impossible.
As of writing I still have to submit some work for one of my usual clients which Lai calls my sugar daddy--someone who gives me cash in advance for future intellectual favors. But that's just kinda sick to consider even for 5 seconds so I'm just gonna call him Data-entry Corp 2. Have to finish this by Monday.
Another thing which gives me the urge to whine like a baby is that I need to decide if I really want to submit my CV to the dark side -- well more like just the wet side. A former colleague recommended me to replace her as head of a community service/events coordination/publications head. Honestly, I am not keen on working there and handling people in a very politicized large corporation. But the adult part of me wants to just try it out for a while just to gain financial stability. They do, after all, pay well and my job would not be entirely soul-less.
My friends and family know that I do not particularly care about monetary rewards, even to a fault. The last 6 years of my working life as a social development worker, photographer, travel writer, social researcher etc has been enjoyable for me in the sense that I have experienced so many things, gone places, was exposed to the daily lives and issues of the common people in the country. I was able to know very inspiring people who, to no avail, have been convincing me to finally take an MA or diploma course in any field, pretty please (another blog topic altogether). But I never became wealthy. I never wanted to. I stayed afloat, lived within my means and just found richness in every experience I had.
But as days pass, I have come to admit that I cannot live like this forever. I need to bloat my savings for future endeavors or emergencies. My parents are tired and not growing any younger. If it weren't for my overly carefree attitude, I should have taken over a lot of things by now. Just a week ago, my Mom and Dad came by from the province for a couple of days to attend my brother's college graduation. They were driving for nearly 15 hours and before going to bed, my dad asked me to massage his back to which I willingly obliged. I remember how my brothers and I would walk through my parents' back as if we were traversing a pilapil when we were kids. It was a nightly ritual. Of course doing that now would break my dad's back so I just resorted to the usual rub. I was so surprised to find out how soft Dad's skin has become. Save for his smoking, Dad is never unhealthy. He eats well and plays tennis daily. Although on the thin side, he was very lithe and had six pack abs in his younger days. Now instead of being supple and leathery, his skin has just gone soft, like there was no flesh underneath, just skin, something else which felt like water and then bones. It was disconcerting. It felt like some mental disease has robbed me of precious years and I had missed out on important events in a loved one's life.
Still, I have apprehensions about doing an 8 to 5. My former colleague says she understands as, and I quote, "free spirits could never and should never be tied down." But I was reminded that there's gotta be more to life than frantic pleasure pursuits. I get that struggle is central in any human's being. More than ever, I am ready for a fistfight. But in order to take the blows and score some punches I first have to identify those for which I will be fighting. Maybe I should write them down and tape them in my daily line of vision, just like when I was 12 and I wholeheartedly believed and proved that nothing ever was impossible.
4.16.2011
You know that feeling when you enter a place for the first time after a considerable while of avoiding it, you become tentative and unsure why you're there again? Well that is how I am now. I'm sort of looking around, feeling the energy of the space, deciding whether I should turn back or face the inevitability and importance of the situation. Because somehow I know that writing again is not only inescapable but also necessary if I want to be grounded again. Not grounded in the sense of a kiwi finally admitting to herself that her species doesn't fly but grounded like a swallow conserving fuel for an impending full migration.
Oh, poo. This is how taking a break from writing does to someone--a resort to lame-ass metaphors. At this stage I don't really care. I am only grateful I am typing this at all.
One of the main reasons I decided to scrap blogging indefinitely at the start of 2010 was so that I could have real face-to-face conversations with other people, especially those whom I consider special or at least are not afraid or don't get easily bored with my company--which automatically make them special! Also, I felt that I was withdrawing too much into myself that thoughts were lumpy, not being sifted and mixed with other ingredients (yup, metaphors). Few things give me much pleasure as having my ideas scrutinized, affirmed or lambasted directly.
To a degree, I succeeded. I met a lot of friends for catch-up sessions, short trips and errand-bonding but I could not bring myself fully into the moment. In hindsight, maybe it was because I wouldn't dare put into the open things which I did not have a good understanding of. I listened of course, but only listening halts the promise of a pithy interaction leading to a full-blown discourse into certain conditions of mankind. Not to make it sound like socio-babble but if you look closely, topics of concern of most people in whatever walk of life mostly relate to human nature and how to best utilize or manage it for the sake of maintaining or altering the existing social fabric.
I write in order to think. And since I did not write, I thought haphazardly and felt uncertain about so many things. There's a kind of uncertainty that exists after you've exhausted all efforts to solve that uncertainty. Then, you are certain that you are uncertain. But there is also the other kind which is uncertainty because you know you haven't thought about it at all. Then you are uncertain whether certainty can be reached, which is the worst uncertainty of all. This had me living like a zombie, just doing the bare minimum to survive: work, spend, cultivate a skill set, amass huge amounts of information, maintain a civilized demeanor, repeat from the beginning.
Suffice it to say, my goal of truly interacting with others was not fully reached. My realization, which I have reached through this mini experiment, is that one cannot engage in real mutually enriching relationships with others without first continually intra-acting, and i'm inventing words here. This means habitually engaging oneself in truth-seeking exercises (writing, in my case) to build certain conclusions ready to be presented to and validated by other people, the operative word being certain. For others, this is all elementary. But my personal pedagogy has always been experiential. I just had to go through this myself.
And this, my invisible friends, is how I convince myself to start writing again.
Oh, poo. This is how taking a break from writing does to someone--a resort to lame-ass metaphors. At this stage I don't really care. I am only grateful I am typing this at all.
One of the main reasons I decided to scrap blogging indefinitely at the start of 2010 was so that I could have real face-to-face conversations with other people, especially those whom I consider special or at least are not afraid or don't get easily bored with my company--which automatically make them special! Also, I felt that I was withdrawing too much into myself that thoughts were lumpy, not being sifted and mixed with other ingredients (yup, metaphors). Few things give me much pleasure as having my ideas scrutinized, affirmed or lambasted directly.
To a degree, I succeeded. I met a lot of friends for catch-up sessions, short trips and errand-bonding but I could not bring myself fully into the moment. In hindsight, maybe it was because I wouldn't dare put into the open things which I did not have a good understanding of. I listened of course, but only listening halts the promise of a pithy interaction leading to a full-blown discourse into certain conditions of mankind. Not to make it sound like socio-babble but if you look closely, topics of concern of most people in whatever walk of life mostly relate to human nature and how to best utilize or manage it for the sake of maintaining or altering the existing social fabric.
I write in order to think. And since I did not write, I thought haphazardly and felt uncertain about so many things. There's a kind of uncertainty that exists after you've exhausted all efforts to solve that uncertainty. Then, you are certain that you are uncertain. But there is also the other kind which is uncertainty because you know you haven't thought about it at all. Then you are uncertain whether certainty can be reached, which is the worst uncertainty of all. This had me living like a zombie, just doing the bare minimum to survive: work, spend, cultivate a skill set, amass huge amounts of information, maintain a civilized demeanor, repeat from the beginning.
Suffice it to say, my goal of truly interacting with others was not fully reached. My realization, which I have reached through this mini experiment, is that one cannot engage in real mutually enriching relationships with others without first continually intra-acting, and i'm inventing words here. This means habitually engaging oneself in truth-seeking exercises (writing, in my case) to build certain conclusions ready to be presented to and validated by other people, the operative word being certain. For others, this is all elementary. But my personal pedagogy has always been experiential. I just had to go through this myself.
And this, my invisible friends, is how I convince myself to start writing again.
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