Watch what happens

Do I really believe in feng shui? I don’t think so but I like to read it and see the tendencies. I need a guide. I live alone, remember? So every day I have a conversation with God, who, I sometimes suspect, guides me through my feng shui book. It’s a bit of fun.

What does this year hold for me? That is the question that sort of follows me around these days. Of course, I have no answers. I know it will be different from what it has been these past two or three years but how different is impossible for me to predict. So I begin by cleaning my house. Yes, I am still doing that between sitting down to knit or lunching with my grandsons.

Pow, my oldest grandson, called me to say he was leaving the next night. Could we have lunch? Certainly, I said. I’m the grandmother who is crazy about her grandsons, all of whom are taller than me now. Every time we walk together I feel like I have two or three good-looking men as my dates. But sometimes it’s impossible to go out with all of them together.

This year was the first time all of them were here in 10 years. They were so young when they left and now they are all so grown up. Natalia and Mikel left last week. I don’t know when I will see them again. The oldest, Pow, is the last to leave. He loves this country and hopes to settle back here. I hope it happens soon, while I’m still alive and strong enough to enjoy his company.

Where do you want to eat? I asked. He said Abe. Oh good. I can have the pla-pla with balo-balo. I love that. Plus, Abe is at The Fort. I can stop over at the feng shui place and buy myself my little fortune book. Every year for four years now I have been buying myself this little horoscope book by Lillian Too for no other reason than because I like it. At the end of the year, which is coming up soon since Chinese New Year happens to be in February, I throw it away and buy this year’s edition. See, feng shui changes every year so every year I buy the book. And every year it has gotten more expensive but it is one of my standard luxuries.

My Chinese horoscope sign is the Monkey. On the first page it reminds me not to forget the three Ws – wit, wisdom and wealth – brought together and actualized into practical reality by a mind as quick as lightning! This describes the sign of the Monkey. That’s what the book says. Need I desire more? It looks like I am going to have a highly successful year. Doing specifically what, I still don’t know.

Do I really believe in feng shui? I don’t think so but I like to read it and see the tendencies. Then I forget about it and just proceed with my life the way it presents itself. But having the little book lightens me up. It just makes me feel like I have a guide. I need a guide. I live alone, remember? So every day I have a conversation with God, who, I sometimes suspect, guides me through my feng shui book. It’s a bit of fun.

I stopped making jewelry for a while. I got bored with it. Either that or I’m just resting. That’s the kind of person I am. I get bored quickly and when I am bored that activity must stop either for a while or forever. Who knows? Anyway these days I am just cleaning house, sorting through everything, my clothes, my dishes, my papers, my books, everything, waiting for a bright idea to pop up, something new I can do and enjoy doing all over again.

Until then I clean during the day and read at night. Right now I’m reading a novel called The Round House by Louise Erdrich. It’s about American Indians who live on reservations. One thing I have learned: American Indians are much like Filipinos, not in the food they eat but the way they are. It takes them a long time to solve a crime. They live on the border of reality and superstition. They elect someone to be head of their reservation. The minute he takes office they gossip about him until he gets annoyed enough to pack up and quit. Then they are relieved. They elect somebody else and do the same thing. Then they go to the first person they elected and beg him to return. It sounds like us.

So I think it’s the result of a culture damaged by colonization of a fairer race. Our colonizers Ñ the Spanish and the Americans Ñ were both white people who turned pink under our hot sun, never brown like us. They were white, asserted themselves as superior. We in our innocence just gawked and believed them. When they left we stepped into their shoes and ruled in the same way. They were corrupt but we failed to see that.

Oh well, nothing I can do. Am too old to do anything about it. Let me just quietly, peacefully, even joyfully clean my house. Maybe tomorrow something will come up and I will have new things to do.

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