the Earth-bound adventures of the Lost and Found

May 25, 2005. At last, photos of my mother on my website =)

i had planned to write a journal entry on my last hurrah for summer, what with the flurry of travels i've had lately. been wanting to write an end-of-summer piece since last year (that was one glorious summer, too, with its extreme ups and downs), but i never got around to it.   when i learned that ana , my Weekend columnist soulmate and ka-WILA, wrote about summer waning in her column last saturday, i decided to turn mine into a column, too, for this saturday. so here it is, also as a sort of update on what i've been up to lately.   ========= lost and found (#20) by Jeneen R. Garcia   As Summer Ends   By the time you read this, the frayed ends of summer will be further unraveled, disintegrating under the June sunlight like a dream.   The memory of last summer’s long, languorous walk on the shores of Siquijor , the sun moving unhurriedly across the sky, finally sinking behind the mountains, the tree house by the beach, a motorcycle ride around the i...

published as lost & found column#19 on May 14, 2005   Whenever I fall into conversation with married couples who come from different provinces, or different islands, I always ask for the story of how they met. It fascinates me how, for example, a girl from Bukidnon would end up with a guy from Coron in northern Palawan . Or how a woman from Bohol ever got together with her husband from Ilocos.   Usually it’s work, or school, or a conference or vacation that brings would-be lovers together. Sometimes it’s common acquaintances—a classmate’s sister’s ex-boyfriend’s roommate’s best friend—the six degrees of separation at work. Through the internet, it’s even easier to discover who knows who, through Friendster, or my personal favorite Multiply, and a host of other networking sites.   Some people hook up closer to home. A psychologist calls it the architecture of relationships—the people closest to our hearts are usually the people who move in the same buildings we enter...

hay naku. because none of the people (writer friends) i sent this to made any comments, i'm posting this here, bahala na. this is the first poem i've written about my mother. i actually got the concept back in college, in our ecology class (i love the poems inspired by my textbooks. i have one on chemistry, and another on calculus. psych is a good source, too), but somehow i couldn't write the poem.   but after the IYAS workshop in bacolod, poetry isn't so scary anymore. there i actually got to revise my poems, and write a new one. this is the first one i've written AFTER the workshop. because i realized poetry isn't all inspiration; it's hard work, too. i don't need to wait for (or expect) the words to drop from the sky onto the page in perfect order.   the idea or feeling that moves me to write is itself a gift. the poetic impulse will always be there, because poetry is a way of seeing and experiencing the world (sort of like photography, or filmma...

Category:    Clothes & Accessories Ah i haven't lost anything in awhile, which is a good sign, perhaps (because it may mean i'm just losing things inside my head...). But i DID lose something last March. I probably lost it when I was at the Talaandig village in Bukidnon . It was given to me on Independence Day last year, an accessory made by Kadangyan . What makes the anklet different from all the other anklets I've ever had, though, is that it survived me for more than 6 months! And because it matched most of what I like to wear, I wore it every day, trekking in the mountains and waterfalls , kayaking at midnight and then rappelling 100 feet off a bridge , and diving 50 feet underwater . (Come to think of it, I DID have more than the usual miles of travel last year). The anklet was made of the usual beads and thread, so I don't know how it lasted that long, or why it took me so long to lose it. That was a world record for me. And I haven't found another one lik...

April 25 to May 1, 2005. IYAS Creative Writing Workshop , Balay Kalinungan, University of St. La Salle, Bacolod City.

Start:      Jun 4, '05 Location:      Benedictine Monastery, Malaybalay, Bukidnon wedding bells are ringing for a lot of my batchmates this year. alma , my ever-loyal friend, high school classmate, and college dormmate from Valencia, Bukidnon, is getting married to Jules, the love of her life since 3rd year college (right, almz?). may you live happily ever after =)

Start:      May 25, '05 Location:      Mercy College, Manhattan, New York City my mother dear is finally graduating from her master's in special ed, after two years of studying (mostly A's =) in downtown New York AND teaching a special ed class in a public school in the bronx. if she were your mother you'd be really proud, too =)