Today I saw my life flash before my eyes.
It is Holy Thursday, everybody else is out on a holiday. It is so like Christmas. The spirit of the religious holiday gets trampled as people scramble to leave town.
Not me, uh-uh. Not when I am likely to lose my cool under the pressure of last-minute shopping, packing, jostling with others for tickets, hailing a cab and haggling with the driver, jockeying for the best slot in the bus, boat or plane. After two or three days this insane process is repeated for the journey back.
I will be leaving the country in seven weeks anyway. Perhaps on the longest holiday and adventure I will ever have in years. So here I am at home. To do an inventory of possessions to dispose, keep, or bring. I need to sweep away the cobwebs in my mind, unload the emotional baggage that is weighing me down, and get rid of the clutter in my life. Starting with my meager possessions
There's not much. A carry-over from the impermanent lifestyle of my college days when we checked in and out of the dorm every school break; and those bygone apartment-hopping days early in my career.
There's not much. Spent most of my earnings on traveling, dining and going out, treating friends and buying presents. What I invested in is tied in company stocks, pension plan and real estate.
There's not much. No fancy car , no late-model appliances or gadgets, no expensive furniture. Instead I have a second-hand jeep with scratches and dents in the front, back and both sides. Instead I have a second-hand 486 laptop. Instead I have an 8-year old stereo component. Instead I have an inkjet printer. Instead I have a piano, a present from my mother. I am selling the jeep. Jane is getting the computer and Mom is taking back the piano for her two granddaughters. My two younger brothers can keep the stereo set and printer.
INSTEAD I have clothes that no longer fit, shoes that pinch my toes, bags gathering dust, CDs and cassette tapes which I can't play on a defective player, and pocketbooks turning yellow with age. Instead I have a filing cabinet crammed with newspaper clippings, documents and print-outs. I have drawers filled to the brim with utility bills and credit card receipts. Drawers cluttered with letters and cards, prayer booklets and horoscopes. Snapshots and postcards scattered in every nook and cranny. And drawers holding aerobics outfits, baseball caps and gold and pearl jewelry that I stopped wearing.
I attacked the filing cabinet first. The bottom drawer held brown envelopes. Out of "Local Destinations" were brochures, articles and package rates to resorts in Palawan, Boracay, and Davao. Another envelope contained materials about foreign destinations like Indonesia, Thailand, and Australia. Places and trips that I planned with friends but which we never got to do. I threw these in the trash bin.
Separate envelopes bore names like Kota Kinabalu, Hong Kong, Singapore, and the U.S. Places and trips that I did take. Without peeking I knew the contents include ticket stubs, receipts, checklists, postcards, and brochures. I'll throw these away, too, but later.
"Newspaper clippings" took me many years back. The headlines and titles tell different stories but in a single thread wove a seamless tapestry of my various interests in the world outside. When spread on my bed these revealed a bigger picture of paths I took long after I cut out the idea from a magazine, of the detours I have chosen, and the road I still have to take. It tells a lot about the phases I went through.
Many articles have found their way into my homepage. Thought-provoking, light-reading, and rib-tickling materials about being a Filipino. Women abuse and empowerment. The traffic mess. Land use and housing issues. Politics, history and national identity. Environment and development.
More articles, those that are too disturbing, too trivial, and too embarrassing to share with others were kept aside for reference. Like the full-page article about the first and only gay bar in town that features performances by male strippers and drag queens. The advice column of Margie Holmes about sex, love, and relationships. Interviews with children who eke out a living peddling candles, washing taxi cars, and selling bottled water. Fashion and 90's etiquette guides for the right moves, the right clothes, and right accessories to get ahead as a career woman. Art. Literature. The information technology.
Love and romance. There was not a dearth of reference materials. From articles I clipped out of magazines to photocopies contributed by friends. I have a folder of the emotional pourings of a hopeless romantic who wrote of lost loves, regrets and picking up the pieces. The contributed pieces are about recognizing our soulmates and meeting Mr. Right. More advice material for successful marriages and happy relationships. Blushing, I junked the whole bunch, then hastily retrieved these for unknown reasons.
Passing interests that I once gave a serious thought leave their mark in other envelopes. "Ads" contained glossy, colorful clippings of advertisements that caught my eye while I was still a copywriter. Artworks that jump out of the page. Smart and memorable copy. Their overall effect still moved me, I put the envelope back in. "Marketing," on the other hand, didn't evoke any reaction and so I tossed it into the bin along with "Public Relations in the 80's.". "Breast cancer" didn't have its own envelope but I collected lots of reference materials since lumps were first discovered in 1988. With scars on both breasts I don't need any other reminder.
Odds and ends include recipes for pasta, Thai and seafood dishes, a piece about communicating with color, and articles about the herb St. John's Wort as natural alternative to Prozac in treating mild depression.
I rediscovered I had this lifelong on and off fascination for teaching when I stumbled on an article dated 1996. I have two envelopes and three folders as well on masters degrees, scholarships, education, and distance learning. Another remarkable revelation was that the negative impact of backpacking, trekking and eco-tourism activities have been documented long before I put on my hiking boots.
There. My room looks brighter now with half the mess out of the way.
The pocketbooks will go to my eldest brother who can rent these out from his video rental shop. I have at least a hundred bestseller titles by Clancy, Grisham, King, and Crichton. A boxful of Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh and Ed McBain already found its way to Surigao last month. He can also keep my Entertainment, Premiere, Life and Action Asia magazines. After my brothers pick their choices I will distribute my music collection - rock and roll, soul, folk and ballad, jazz, New Age, New Wave, 50s-70's favorites, classical and movie soundtracks -- to my friends. Ditto for my clothes, belts, shoes, and bags. My mountaineering and swimming stuff will also be given away, except for the flashlight that my best friend Radel gave me. I wonder if I can bring the machete that was my mom's gift last Christmas.
What I'd like to keep are my photo albums and published articles. Letters and cards from family and friends. And my Asterix, Garfield, Calvin, Ikabod, Pugad Baboy and DC and Marvel comics collection. My happy memories, thoughts, relationships, inspiration and humor. My tools for survival.
"You sound as if you're going away for good," my father sulked, "don't talk like that."
I'd like to think I'm turning a new leaf and reinventing myself. Twelve years is too long a time to spend in Cebu and the corporate world. I have been seduced into a false sense of security by the comfort blanket that I both loved and hated in San Miguel. My spirit has been yearning to break out from this mold, to be free of the social pressure from family and friends to settle down. Going abroad is only the visible step in this direction, but my journey has already begun.
I shall travel light. I shall pack the essentials and take only what I can carry. By the time I set foot in America I would hope that I have left behind my bad habits, prejudice, and hang-ups. Jobless, homeless ... a thousand miles away from my roots among strangers in another country, it would be like starting all over again.
My spirit is poised ready to take off.