the Earth-bound adventures of the Lost and Found

"The Economy of Nightstand Dreams" aka Amor Fati 😉, mixed media on canvas (acrylic, ink, permanent marker, chalk pastel, tinted charcoal, liquid chalk, colored pencil, dryerase crayon, and a tiny bit of washi tape). I painted this two weeks ago (seems so much longer than that!) when I thought it would take me several more weeks before I could walk outdoors by myself again. I was going through my menu of ways to cope with stress that did not require more use of my (cognitive) brain, and art was one of them 🥳 This was my first time to paint after having started the  self-mastery work . Instead of just relieving mental stress, I was so happy to discover that the process of making art was also a great way to explore my feelings of (aesthetic) discomfort, and to practice just feeling them rather than try to make them go away. For example, I don't particularly like geometric art (much less create it!). But I decided to follow the lead of my subconscious--as well as whichever...

Because it was my everdearest mother's birthday last Thursday, I had to come up with a gift idea that would surpass last year's (a scrapbook of her trip to Davao, personally hand-delivered to New York). Especially since she's been asking me to go visit her again, but I just couldn't leave in the middle of the semester :P My mother, you see, is the type who keeps what her children gives her in her bag so she can take it out and show it to everyone she meets until it's all ratty and torn. Thats why I have to give her something I've made every year--poem, story, photo, drawing--for birthdays, Christmas, etc. Maybe this is also why, for me, the most precious gifts are handmade, not bought. Time and effort are the best expressions of love, after all, more than any amount of money ;) (although money's not so bad, either :P). And so, in the midst of "hell month" (because the semester's deadlines are, as I write, crashing down all around me) and the co...

the greenie patch (#2) by Jeneen R. Garcia published on February 12, 2006     Just a few days more and it will be Valentine’s Day! Flowers of all colors and shapes in gardens everywhere will be swept up in lovely bouquets.   Sure, flowers make the air smell sweet, but what if you could give cool, fresh air to your parents and beloved friends instead?   In the United Kingdom, people can “buy” or adopt an acre of tropical forest for £30 (about P2,800 or roughly 50 one-piece chicken meals!) through the World Land Trust, a British organization, and offer it as a Valentine gift to their special someone.   The trees in the piece of forest they buy will be protected from loggers. Then the trees can keep producing fresh air for everyone on the planet for a long, long time. Now isn’t that a cool way of saying “I Love You”?   Good news, kids! Even if you don’t have enough money to buy an acre of forest, you can still give fresh air as a gift to your love...

the greenie patch (column #1) by Jeneen R. Garcia published on January 29, 2006 in Sun.Star Kids 'R Us   Hey kids, can you guess what important day is coming up in February?   Nope, it’s not just Valentine’s Day. On February 2, people all over the globe are celebrating World Wetlands Day.   Wetlands are the Earth’s naturally wet places, like marshes, lakes, mudflats, mangrove forests, and cora l reefs. They cover approximately 6% of the Earth’s surface.   Wetlands are very important because this is where fish lay their eggs to keep them safe from bigger creatures that could eat the baby fish. Wetlands are also rich in nutrients, so animals like crabs, shellfish, and migratory sea birds like to stay here and eat. Plus, wetlands are Mother Nature’s way of protecting us from tsunamis, floods, and droughts. They act as a natural filter to help keep our drinking water clean.   So imagine what the world would be like if there were no wetlands! We would hav...

i'm finally done! this is what i've been doing today. finished drawing and coloring the last cartoons and put the text into the lay-out. lay-out's a bit cramped and weird, but i hope you get the flow. can't say i didn't do my best getting everything to fit. i'm posting the tagalog version here. we have a cebuano version, too =) this will be distributed in small poster size to our partner communities in cebu, bohol, western visayas (negros occ and panay) and eastern visayas (the leyte and samar provinces). and maybe northern mindanao and palawan. that is, if we get a budget for printing, or even just ink for the printer =P pathetic huh? we used to have monthly posters. now we've decided to make it quarterly. visit the ELAC website if you want to help our cause (we welcome donations!). hmmmm... now how do i make the picture bigger?

and it's 3 a.m.... i'm not really supposed to be wasting time on this anymore. but the computer was on tonight, and the files were just beckoning to be revised.... anyway, i've decided that glass is the best material for this because we can etch and color the art on one surface and etch the text on the front surface. i saw a plaque today that did that at... eden nature park. that's where we went this afternoon for papa's birthday. of course, everything there closes by 4 or 5 pm if you're not staying overnight, plus it started raining on our way there up to the time we finally left at eight. we were waiting for the rain to stop but it just poured harder and harder... anyway, at least we got to swim in the pool. underwater pix to come.

well, it's almost 4 a.m. and i'm still here online. of course, when i'm home i'm usually online only after 1 a.m., when prepaid internet's cheaper. so sorry, my brain's a little slow at this hour of the night (or day, depending on whether you're a night owl or a moring person) and you won't be getting much out of me about kadayawan. i'll let the pictures tell the story. unfortunately, i haven't had them developed yet. i used up 5 rolls of film in my 5 hours of walking on the streets under the afternoon sun just to get good shots of the Indak-Indak sa Kadalanan or tribal streetdancing. you have to understand, it's the first time i have a camera in my possession during kadayawan. all those other years after high school i was away at college or at work. *TRIVIA* believe it or not, i was actually part of our high school contingent once for the streetdancing, dancing all around downtown in the heat in full costume. i don't think our school pa...

August 6, 2004 Cebu Provincial Charter Day mwahahaha! now i have a new obsession: HTML. i was browsing through the blogs of some of my contacts' contacts, and i noticed that they were able to change their fonts and even add buttons to their entries! i've always had an idea that with HTML, you can manipulate how anything appears on the web, but this afternoon, as i took advantage of the free Globequest wireless internet in ayala, i decided i should know at least enough HTML to be able to do things in my blog. so here it is--the result of some of my experiments. i mean, sure, i know i can still do this (and much more) by just formatting my document in Microsoft Frontpage and then copy-pasting the HTML code, but it's fun knowing how it's done from scratch. and now i know how to interpret the basics of this language =) i don't need to blindly copy the source code from websites i like anymore. now i can copy intelligently. How I Did It everything's explained step-...

since i'm posting my "artistic rendition" of a fishkill here, anyway, i might as well add some educational stuff about it, too, since i also researched on it for the comic strip. Ok, here goes... Fishkills can be caused by three major factors: toxic discharges (chemical), diseases (biological), and oxygen depletion (physical). Usually, though, the cause is a combination of these (that is, when the environment is critical for fish because of low oxygen or poisonous pesticides, for example, they're more vulnerable to disease). Oxygen depletion is the most common cause, a result of TOO MANY algae or plants in the water (when the water turns really green) because of fertilizers or sewage that run off into the sea from the land. Algae and plants are essential food for the fish, but when they die, the decomposition process uses up the oxygen in the water. Also, when there's no sunlight (cloudy or nighttime), plants use up oxygen instead of producing it. The solution? Pl...