life process

On my mind today

/ RCRuiz

One of the marks of a good leader, my father said, was the capacity to encourage others to make full use of their talents and to make others grow into their gifts. It’s not about having the loudest voice or being the most visible, it’s about thinking on how we can help others discover and become their best selves.

My Mom also used to tell me that the sign of being a good teacher was when your student outgrows you and no longer needs you.

I think about these things because one of the writers who came to attend the six week workshop I gave for Other Futures (and who I’ve been mentoring a bit since then), was accepted to the Clarion Workshop. It is quite a milestone moment and I feel like a proud mama bird watching a fledgling spread their wings.

Last Saturday, I got to do one of the things that brings me joy. I got to work with young people again. This is a thank you to Lana Jelenjev and the Neurodiversity Foundation for inviting me to give a workshop to young people between the ages of 11-17 as part of celebrating Neurodiversity pride day.

There’s something about the way young people approach the act of creating together that makes me so hopeful. I saw the will to encourage one another, the willingness to compromise and make space for each other, and the readiness to help when the other person gets stuck. As Lana’s husband said afterwards, we could all learn a lot just by watching the kids work together.

It makes me think of how we all have that capacity to create and work together within us. Maybe it’s just that some of us didn’t know that we could just go about it, or we’ve been so programmed with this idea of individualism (mine is mine and yours is yours), we’ve been trained to think so much in boxes that we forget the joy of collaborating. And then, there is this soul-killing thing which I’ve sometimes observed in the grown up world where people think the important thing is to be better than someone else, win the most awards, have the most fans, make the most money, sell the most books…that sort of thing.

Life and art and the creation of story are not a competition. It’s not about having the best words or the coolest ideas, it’s about feeling safe enough to share what you love that make life and art and creation beautiful. What I loved about Saturday’s workshop was how I got to see young people bounce ideas off of one another in a space where they feel safe from being judged or found wanting, they just went ahead and talked about things they loved or were passionate about and they made space for each other to include those things in the worlds they were creating.

This method of creating together is a practice not only in worldbuilding but also a practice in bridge-building, in compromise and collaboration.

We could certainly do with more bridge-building and collaborating in these turbulent times, because it often feels like we have forgotten concepts like meeting each other halfway and compromise. We think we have waited a long time for change to happen and we would really like for change to have happened yesterday. The problem is, we live in a world that’s run by systems and systems are slow and resistant to change. As a good friend said to me: “you think maybe by being in the system, you can change the system, but it’s such a complex thing because by being in the system, you somehow become part of it.” I really don’t know what the answer is. We can only do what we can to the best of our abilities and hope that the little that we do will create some change no matter how small.

This week, I was in conversation with a dear friend, we also talked about this same thing. She told me about how she learned to think in terms of “good enough”. Perhaps it’s not the ideal change, perhaps it’s not the big change that we wanted, but maybe it’s good enough for now. How change happens in increments of time, by checking in and finding out whether a recalibration is needed. Maybe we can move forward a little bit more or it could be that we have to just be satisfied with good enough until the next check in moment.

I think about the words “good enough” when I have the conversation with my oncologist later in the day. I ask my questions and she patiently explains her interpretation of the data. It’s not yet where we want to be, but it’s good enough for now. And while the ideal would be to be completely rid of all the tumors, nodules, lesions and bad cells floating around, a stable or chronic state for a long period of time would be good enough.

It may sound like a strange comparison but I make these jumps in my head because that’s how the brain works. I think: it’s okay to not achieve the ideal all in one go. It’s okay to take it step by step. The important thing is to remain open and curious, interested and ready to look into options and points of compromise. Yep. I’m making the body and world parallel again.

Today, I’m speaking to my body. I’m thankful because I have a strong and sturdy body that has withstood a massive operation and all the treatments so well. I am thankful that I am able to work at regaining the strength and fitness that I had before it all started. I am thankful for the spirit that lives in me, that reminds me to take it one day at a time. I am thankful for today. Thankful that I can hug my son and tell him how proud I am of him (he’s having a bit of a tough time atm). I am thankful for friends who have reached out to me, for loved ones and for people from surprising places who tell me they are sending healing thoughts or praying for me. There’s always something to be thankful and joyful about.

As long as we have life in us, we are not without purpose. We are here to make as much of a difference as we can make. Sharing our stories, passing on our experience, strengthening and encouraging others to spread their wings and fly–discovering things, making memories (all those other things) remind us we are alive. As long as we are in the world, we can make every moment count.

Agyamanac Unay for stopping by. Blessings and peace to you who read these words.

the cancer update

/ RCRuiz

It’s been a really hard week for us as we received news that the hormone therapy that had been keeping cancer cells from spreading was no longer doing it’s optimum work. I now have two nodules in my left lung. It’s not yet life-threatening (my oncologist makes sure I understand this). On the scan, you can see that compared to the mass of my lung, the nodules are pretty tiny. But those tiny things, if not contained, can spread and so to stay ahead of it, my oncologist suggested that we take part in a new study for a monotherapy which combines a protein and a chemotherapy targeting the cancer cell. For homework, we were given a bunch of papers to read so we would understand all the risks involved.

For the first time since diagnosis, I find myself struggling. Uncertain about which direction to go. I wonder if going through another round of chemotherapy will help. When I went through it the first time, we ended up having to postpone treatment three times because my leukocytes were tanking. It got so bad at one point that I had to have a blood transfusion. Weirdly, I was still quite energetic and healthy. A puzzle for my oncologist who thought it was strange that I wasn’t more tired. Looking at my values today, I noticed how hormone therapy did lessen disease activity drastically. However, the scans say the hormone therapy is no longer as effective as it was at first. Hence why we are considering this idea of going through chemo again.

I think that when we’re facing something for the first time, when we don’t really know what’s going to happen, we just go through things trusting that all will be well, but having gone through it and knowing what to expect, we start to weigh things a bit more. Do I really want this? And if there are other options on the table, maybe it’s worth looking at them again before making a final commitment to this trial? My doctor says that the length of effectivity from our existing options are a bit uncertain compared to this new treatment that she’s hoping I will get. But then, again, the trial is a lottery. So, I still have a lot of questions for when we next meet and I think it’s okay and it’s important to ask those questions.

By itself, the infusions don’t hurt. I made it through chemotherapy quite well, except for the final two sessions when I lost all my hair, including my eyelashes and my skin turned slightly grey. I kept teaching throughout treatment (except for days when I felt really sick), I still got to play with the band, and I made art. (And oh yeah, I wrote my first Dutch language SF story.)

I think of how in my work, I’ve sometimes used the body as a metaphor. Here, the body is a world. An anomaly has appeared in this world, it’s one that holds the possibility of taking over the world and consuming it. You just don’t know what needs to be done or how to go about it. Is burning it all down the right approach? Are there gentler and kinder approaches that will allow the body to find equilibrium and balance? What approaches will allow me to contain this anomaly so it doesn’t spread and kill everything else that’s healthy? How do you keep the systems that are healthy in that state of health? (Because I am clearly quite healthy except for existing nodules and small tumors.)

Yesterday, we had a visit from a friend who told us that maybe we have to let go of the hope of a cure. That I may be hoping so much for a cure that I forget that life is more important than the cure. And it had me thinking: if the doctors tell you they only hope to keep the disease chronic for as long as possible, what does that mean? Is it like having high blood pressure and having to take pills for the rest of your days? I don’t mind taking pills. It’s just that I never liked needles and I have developed a sort of traumatic response to being pricked by one. It doesn’t hurt, but I still cry. I say to the nurses: it’s the body that can’t help crying.

A part of me rebels against the thought of letting go of hope of a cure. Like: hello. There are advances being made everyday and all these new studies coming out. But at the same time, I also understand that nothing about this disease is predictable and what works for one patient may not work all that well for another. I understand the gravity of the situation and why I have to take it seriously. Which I do, except I get easily distracted by other things…like how all of what’s going on is great research. And I am still working on this novel draft and I am close to 70k. And hopefully I can finish this draft so by the time treatment starts, I don’t have to worry about the details but can focus on the rearrangement of certain things and filling in blanks like place names and character names.

According to studies, someone spontaneously getting healed from cancer without any treatment happens once in 100,000 cases. We still can’t explain why it happens or how, but it does happen. I’m not thinking of ditching treatment, btw. I just can’t help thinking about this fact that none of us knows just how long or how short our lives will be and none of us can predict what happens next.

We often think life is ours for the saying–we look at the future and it seems to stretch on into forever and we think we’ll just keep on going and doing and planning and racing from one moment to the next until we are faced with the truth of how life is ephemeral and we are ephemera. So, what does it mean to live and what do we mean when we choose life? What kind of marks are we making in the spaces we occupy?

I’m not yet sure what path of treatment we’ll take, but I do know that I would like to still be here on earth for a good while for the sake of my boys who have already lost so much. At times, I think that it just isn’t fair. And then, I think but we were never promised fairness in life. What we were promised is strength for the journey ahead.

Agyamanac Unay for stopping by. Blessings and peace be with you.

End of our week at Gladstones Library

/ RCRuiz

It’s hard to believe that it’s Friday. I can hear the tolling of the church bell from the church that’s right beside the library and it’s just finished bonging out the 10th hour of the evening. Ah. It really is the last evening of our final day at Gladstones Library.

Being here has been a wonderful and enervating time for me. Being among the books reminded me too of my family and how books played such a huge part of our growing up years. My sister and I spent so much time in books, and much later, when we were older, we found ourselves discussing books and arguing or agreeing on the virtues or the failures of particular novels or stories. When my sister went for her Masters in Theology, we had long discussions about theology and politics and I do miss my sister’s outspokenness over matters patriarchal as well as the wrong interpretation of scripture.

‘Where does it say that in the Bible?’ She would say, when someone was inclined to lay down some ancient patriarchal thing as word of God when it really wasn’t. When I discovered myself sitting between stacks on theology and philosophy, I couldn’t help thinking of how much my sister would have loved it here. What kinds of conversations would we have had about Reinhold Niebuhr or Kierkegaard? (I confess to feeling quite learned right now. I mean, my sister probably would know who Niebuhr was, but I read him here for the first time. Kierkegaard is a familiar name, but I hadn’t read him until I was sitting next to a stack with a number of shelves with books by or about him. I admit something Kierkegaard says did give me an idea for a horror story. So….I don’t know that my sister would count me as learned, considering how I have this tendency to turn serious things silly.)

Here at Gladstones, I have been well fed. Not just with the books and with the writing, but also with rich conversations around the dining table. Milford writers are just the best and it seemed to me as if the words spoken and the knowledge shared–all the conversations and all the warmth and kindness worked to open up a portal to that realm where the good words dwell.

I think of this time with so much thankfulness. Who would have imagined that I would be able to fly and travel on my own again? Or that I would write so many words in the space of week. Or that I would finally get around to properly organising the novel.

At tea with friends, I shared how it felt to me like I was waking up from a long amnesia and it was like I was remembering to write what I love to write the most. Worlds and worlds and the undying hope for change and a better future.

Follow where your heart takes you. If you’ve tended it well, your heart won’t lead you astray. You’ll always end up exactly where you are meant to be.

Blessings and Peace and Agyamanac Unay for stopping by.

What does it mean to flow without borders?

/ RCRuiz

I have had in my mind this thought which I came back to me and seems to become more concrete as I try to put it into practice: what do we mean when we talk about a world without borders? Or what do we want to see? Or how might that experience be like if there were only superficial restrictions in place and if we could — as Glissant expressed it, move through to taste the atmosphere of a place. I have to go back to reading Glissant because a lot of things are mixed up in my memory (chemobrain) but this definitely stuck and remained with me and I was reminded of it again when in one of our latest LIMBO meetings, some of the participants asked why is it that we have to put borders in place? Why all these restrictions? Doesn’t the world belong to all of us?

I went home thinking about borders. How do we see borders? Are they protection? Who is protected by these borders? And who are we protecting ourselves from? And why do we need to keep others out in order to feel protected or safe? What do we mean by safety? What do we mean by security?

I asked these questions of myself because I live in a country to which people from other countries migrate to or flee towards to ask for asylum. I live in a country in which the discussion around migrants and asylumseekers is so fraught that one actually risks losing friendships in the process.

I don’t have the power to make change happen on a big scale and I don’t have the power to go out into the large arena and make discussions happen but I thought on how to bring that practice of flowing through borders into a very small space.

For this month’s LIMBO, I thought of asking participants to work together to fill up white space with writing or drawings, with lines or curves or symbols, with whatever they can think about to express their presence in the world. The invitation being this: if someone puts down a mark, how will you interact with it? How will you cross the borders? How do you enter space where you didn’t put a mark first?

It’s an exercise that I find myself wanting to repeat with others. Without our realising it, we have our own concept of borders, even on something as small and simple as a piece of paper. Creating on a space reserved and marked yours feels different from creating in a space that says–this is for all of us. Leave your marks, interact with other marks, there is no one artist, no one author, no one creator, it belongs to all of us.

There are questions that arise from this exercise that I also want to think about and which I find myself curious about: how does it feel to cross over into another space? What changes once you make that decision to leave a mark there? To interact with something that’s there? How does it change the way you perceive the work?

I didn’t get to ask this of the group, but I find myself wondering: How do exercises of collaborative creation change the way we see the world and the way we interact with one another?

In talking about this with a dear friend who is a fellow artist, activist and also a writer in the field, I expressed a vision of a room that becomes filled with doodles and maps and words and drawings. And how, it would be interesting to discover how willing we are to layer on top of what is already there and how that space would not be a work attributed to any one person but it would be attributed to all who collaborated whether the person is invited or comes upon it by happenstance, where those making marks can also be living creatures that we take care of.

Writing this, I realise that I am writing about the world we live in. We are all in the process of creating or re-creating, making or re-making, building or re-building–perhaps we layer over what is already there–we bear witness. We see how systems put in place have shaky foundations and how those who benefit from these systems try to prop them up. We bear witness, we offer criticque. But is offering criticque enough?

Marking the empty page to make something together can involve some risk. Stepping out into the world, making a decision to make or leave a mark involves much deeper and more thoughtful movement. What kind of mark do I want to leave? How will the mark that I leave affect those whose spaces or whose lives I live a mark on?

In any case, for me, the question strikes closer to home and makes me think that if I have marked my children with love and care and the ability to be thoughtful and considerate of others, then some of what I am meant to do has been done.

I wish I could share the picture of our collaboration, but it belongs to the group. But perhaps it’s an exercise some of you who read this blog might want to try on your own. Just take the step. Make the invitation and see where it takes you.

Agyamanac Unay for stopping by. Blessings and peace to you who read this.

memorials

/ RCRuiz

Today is my elder sister’s death anniversary. I considered posting about it on FaceBook which is the social media thing for a lot of Filipinos, but something in me rebels at the thought of remembering my Ate and having people put likes on the post. I know the intention is always good, but my insides just don’t feel in tune with doing that. (But still I’m writing this post because I didn’t want this day to pass without remembering her in some way.)

For a long while, I blamed myself for my sister’s passing. I thought: how could I not have seen it? She was here with me in the months after my husband died. How could I not have seen it? I blamed myself for being so preoccupied with my life and my sorrows at that time–if I hadn’t been so self-absorbed, I might have been able to do something. I don’t know what I blamed myself for not seeing. She spent three months with us and one month after she arrived back in The Philippines, I got a phone call telling me she was gone.

It wasn’t until about a year ago that I had the courage to ask my brother what the diagnosis was. It turns out my sister had sepsis. Something had entered her bloodstream and poisoned her. Sepsis goes so quickly that by the time it manifests, it can be too late.

The cancer I was diagnosed with is also something that doesn’t manifest. It doesn’t show up on blood tests unless you’re looking for it, and because I was pre-menopausal, what might have been warning signs could just as easily be pre-menopausal stuff. That it was found came about because I remembered my sister had a non-cancerous fibroid that was causing her some trouble and I wondered if that might be the same for me. When we sent the test away, we were perfectly confident it would be nothing–but it was something after all. A part of me wonders if it was still my Ate, looking out for me.

We measure grief in moments of time. How many days has it been? How many years? We light candles or we carry out rites of remembrance. We post pictures on social media, we try to find words for our grief.

And yet, for all that she’s no longer physically here, my sister is with me. When I am on the verge of giving up, it’s her voice I hear scolding me. She was really strict with me about not giving up. Ano ka ba? She would say. Okay, if that’s how you want to end up as. (The implication being that if I give up, it’s not her fault if I get called someone who gave up.) Even though she’s no longer here, she still remains my number one cheerleader.

Losing my sister was painful because of how sudden it was. It was painful because there was so much still left unspoken and undone. (We were still going to Paris. We were going to travel together. We were going to grow old and talk about all the books we had read.)

Sister relations are never simple. My relationship with my sister was complex. We were at times adversaries. I remember her banging on our shared bedroom door while I listened to Queen or to David Bowie–and I remember her telling on me. ‘Mom, Rochita’s listening to rock music again.’

But even so, she was also my staunchest ally and my most trusted friend.

Grief softens with time (they say). And it’s true, it does. The sharp edges are gentled. But the missing remains. When I think of my sister, I no longer feel as if I am held fast in that dark moment where the world has lost all meaning or context. I think of how she would want me to walk forward and to take on life and live it as ferociously as I can with as much courage as I can.

Today, as I remember my Ate, I make the decision once again to keep embracing life. Everyday, I make the choice to embrace life and live life. I am present here and I am present now. Now is when I can do what I need to do. Tomorrow will take care of itself.

Blessings and peace to you who read this. Agyamanac Unay for passing by.

some thoughts on boundaries and flow

/ RCRuiz

Yesterday, I attended a workshop called Envisioning 2024 which was organised and led by my LIMBO partner, Lana Jelenjev. I didn’t make the first part of the session as I have students to teach but I was able to join the second half of the workshop in which we were led to think on what Flow and Boundaries mean to us and what kind of response thinking about Flow and Boundaries produces in our bodies.

Thinking on boundaries, I was surprised to discover how my feelings towards boundaries had shifted and changed and how I’d come to see boundaries like an embrace that keeps me from using up all that I am. Boundaries are there to protect and not restrict and so when someone tells me where their boundaries are, it also makes me see that this isn’t a rejection of myself, but it is the other person asking me to recognise what I can do to take care of them too.

I think of boundaries in terms of the culture that exists within the Filipino community where there is often a tendency to cross over and push beyond boundaries set by a person. ‘Sige na’, we tend to say or ‘kahit saglit lang’. It’s harder when the person pushing is an older person because respect for our elders is so ingrained in us that sticking to our boundaries can be made to feel like disrespect. I want to say here that it is not disrespect to say “these are my limitations”. And saying yes to every ask or crossing our own boundaries can be more harmful than helpful to us and to others.

During the course of my treatment, I’ve had someone ask me to be present at gatherings and in response to my “no”, I’ve sometimes been told that just showing my face should be enough and I should remember this is my community. It’s a response that isn’t worth an answer because it tells me enough about the person saying it. I do not always have to be present and if my absence means I am no longer part of the community, then perhaps the community never considered me part of it. It may sound harsh saying it like that, but my community and my family are those who understand why I can’t always be there. Why I can’t always say yes. Why retreating into my shell is necessary for me and how not being present is also part of my healing.

There is a beauty about the way in which the community I am in, right now, approaches this. An offer is made and it is up to the person who needs to come up and say: now, I need. Or now, I want to be present. Or now, I am ready to speak or to be in the group. It’s not that you are forgotten when you don’t speak or are not present–people do check-in from time to time just to ask how are you today. But the beauty of this is how it is absent of pressure that often leads to stress.

Thinking on this, my thoughts circle back to LIMBO and how much being in this space has enriched my understanding of the kinds of worlds that are possible if we allow ourselves to let go of existing learned systems. I think of communities where care is central–not just care for another but care for the self.

You don’t always have to have the answer. You don’t always have to solve the problem. You don’t always have to be present. You can always say: I hear you. I acknowledge your need. But in this moment, I need to not be present. In this moment, I don’t have the answer. I don’t know. I don’t have the answer. And maybe not knowing or not having the answer or not being able to do anything makes us feel vulnerable, but maybe this kind of honesty opens the door to the other so they too can be vulnerable and free.

Blessings and peace to you who read this and Agyamanac Unay for stopping by.

Bucketlist

/ RCRuiz

There was a time when I was a struggling university student that I used to go with a girlfriend to one of the high-end shops in Ayala. My girlfriend was tiny and fair-skinned and looked like a princess and while she had to make do with her allowance (just like I had to) it was quite obvious that she was from a well-to-do family. In the Philippines, fairness is associated with wealth and my darker complexion as well as my non-fairylike appearance made that people tended to associate me as coming from a lower economic bracket. Not that I cared. But well…anyway…my girlfriend liked window-shopping and so we would window-shop at those high-end stores.

We had a planned dialogue, my girlfriend and I. She would try something on, come out of the changing room and ask me what I thought and I was supposed to say that I wasn’t quite sure if it was really her thing. Of course, she would later on squee about how much she liked it but as we were struggling students, just being able to see what it looked like on her was just as good as buying things.

During one of these outings, she proposed making a list of things to buy. She showed me her list and said I should write one too. To humor her, I also made a list of things which included a watch from some upscale brand. We later parted ways and as tends to happen, we lost touch.

I have to laugh today because I just sat down to write a bucket list (entirely different from the list of things to buy…but it had me thinking of her). She had a pretty long list by the end of one year and I never found out if she went back to buy anything.

The bucket list I’m making seems to keep on growing and I find myself wondering how many people have bucket lists and what happens to those lists should they go uncompleted?

Just this week, I had a long talk with my GP. It was a great talk because we talked about my diagnosis and the implications of where I am in right now. One of the things she said to me was that I had the happy characteristic of being someone who was able to see the good in life no matter the circumstance. I suppose it’s true. I can’t control or change the circumstances, so I don’t really see the point or the use of crying or complaining about it (although I do sometimes grumble about it).

In the meantime, I’ve started on my bucket list and it’s already got thirty things on it. I think of something someone said to me–this is someone who went through a cancer scare and had the works and is now clean. He told me that his partner made a portrait of him while he was in hospital. It was a portrait in pencil, but his eyes staring out from the portrait are striking and full of life. He said to me that his partner had said: Oh, your eyes are good. They’re full of life. You’re going to be okay. I think to myself: but look, I am still full of life, aren’t I? And I think: I am still okay.

Today, I am preparing for tomorrow. Today, I am writing a list. Today, I have the energy to go out and bring things away. Today, I can pick up groceries and cook and prepare for the weekend. Today, I can be present for my youngest son who is still at home. Today, is full of possibility and there is still a lot of today left.

So, today I decided to share on here a close-up detail from one of my paintings. I liked this unexpected detail because it made me think of how while we only see the now moment, we don’t know how today affects everything that unfolds around us. So, let’s just keep on living and doing all that we can today.

Blessings and peace and Agyamanac Unay for reading.

Evolution

/ RCRuiz

There’s a Dutch phrase that captures the emotion for what we have gone through–het laat mij niet in de koude kleren zitten. Which means that all we’ve gone through as a family, all I’ve gone through as a person, these things have not left me unchanged or unmoved.

It’s a good thing to be moved and to be changed because it means I am still alive. I am still feeling, I am still living and I am constantly in transition, evolving, changing, not standing still. I think about this as I find myself surprised at how this season, this moment of being in a state of limbo, has feed the creative in me. I write, because I love to write. I make music because I love to make music. I teach because I love seeing how those I teach bloom into their potential. And I make art because a lot of times, when I am making art, I find myself in conversation with my maker.

Before 2022, I never imagined I would be making art as I do today. Or that it would become so important to me or that it would help me talk about what I am going through or that it would be a pathway to growing and knowing myself better. (I used to say that I write because I can’t paint or draw and am basically useless at art.)

When I told my Mom about my diagnosis in 2022, her command was for me to go ask God what his purpose was with me. At that time, I had no words for writing anything. I couldn’t even speak about what I was going through. Imagine being a writer unable to write or say anything about the storm going on inside you?

This was one of the first images I made which expresses what I was going through at the time. It was hope and agony and my soul just crying out. It was: God, if you really see me, then do something.

From that moment, telling the story of that time happened through images. Sometime in 2022, a friend proposed that I should try making use of acrylics. My first approach to painting was to simply splash color on the canvas. To try and put on the canvas or on paper what was in my head or in my heart at the moment.

This stormy canvas was just me saying: here I am in the middle of this storm and the storm is so big, I can’t even begin to describe it.

Making something visual happened because I had no words. But when you are without words for more than a year, and when you are engaging with art making almost everyday for a year, your work changes. One day, early this year, something told me that the way I was working was going to change and so was the art.

I think about the process of art making and how making art led me back to writing and how art that’s on the canvas tells a story just as the words on a page tell a story. We create because we have stories inside us that we want to share and stories will find their way out of the person bearing those stories. If not through words, it will be through other means of telling. (Just consider the plethora of youtube stories, audio stories, film stories..etc., etc.)

The more we engage with telling stories, the better we become at them. The more we engage with a certain medium, the better we become at that medium. Before my diagnosis, I would never have dreamed that I would someday tell stories through painting. After diagnosis, I thought I would never be able to tell stories through words again.

There are a lot of famous saying about life and art, but for the life of me, I can’t remember a proper one at the moment, but I do believe that art and life are intertwined. If anything, being diagnosed has made me more conscious of how important it is to live a life with purpose. To create marks with deliberation and care, to engage fully and be present in the moment, to look–really look, to really see and to also rest and be in the moment and allow moments to flow over me and change me and transform me so I can bring that back to whatever I am working on at the moment whether it is on art, on writing or my relationships.

I keep thinking of that friend who said to me “if only we knew how much time we had”. The truth is, we know. We know our time on this planet is not infinite. We know it, we just don’t want to acknowledge it.

I think about this as I contemplate the story of my life and I find myself wondering about the overall arch and how the completed story will read like or look like if it were in a book or hanging in a gallery. When we are in the process, we only see now. We only see this moment.

This is one of my latest works in progress (yup, I have more than one). I’ve been working on it for almost two months. I do a little work. I put it away. Think about it. Work on it some more. Right now, it’s missing one more element which I am thinking about.

I can honestly say that I don’t know why I am writing this or sharing this at this moment. It just felt good to do so. I don’t know what 2024 holds. I don’t even know what will happen tomorrow or next week or the weeks after that. Today, I am heading to the hospital. I am getting a CT scan. I am doing what I can to keep my body healthy. I am spending time with my kids and with my loved ones. I am writing. I am alive.

Blessings and peace to you who read this. Choose life.

A restless time of year

/ RCRuiz

I’ve recently found myself feeling quite restless. Perhaps it’s because the year is coming to a close, perhaps it’s because the novel I wanted to finish this year is stuck in second draft around the 30,000 word count (there’s still time to finish it though).

I am looking forward to 2024 when I hope to be able to attend the MILFORD writer’s retreat and spend time immersed in the writing (as well as catching up with good friends).

I find myself thinking of liminal spaces and how there’s this restless energy found in that space of being in-between. While it’s good to be in liminal space, to remain there for a long time can sometimes be more harmful than helpful for the creative spirit. I think of a passage from Stella Adler’s book where she writes about “life being out there” and how engaging with what is out there, engaging with life and with the world is what makes us grow and thrive as artists.

Energy that we cultivate in the liminal space has to find an outlet. As a person who was given a diagnosis and is in treatment, I can make a choice to remain in liminal space or I can choose to take the energy I’ve harvested from liminality and put it to use as I engage with the world and step out into life.

I ask myself: what do I want to do? How can I do it? What do I want to achieve? How can I get there?

For me, it starts by going back to the waiting page.

Life continues. I teach. I write. I make art. I make music. I share what I can. I mother my sons. I pick up the threads of life and make a decision to keep on living. Circumstances may change the course of our trajectory, but what matters is what we do and how we respond.

It’s strange how having written these words makes me feel more rooted somehow. I may not know and yet I know. And that’s enough for now.

Blessings and peace to you who read this and may you find strength in your own journey.

Reflecting on what was and what is now

/ RCRuiz

Today, I think of my father standing in the only hospital in Banaue, right after an armed conflict between the government forces and the NPA. (This incident took place during the martial law period when my dad was the only doctor in the mountains.) I think of him being made to choose: Doctor, if you treat one of theirs, we will shoot you. And my father, who was the only doctor in the mountains at that time said to these men: I don’t see government military or NPA, all I see are wounded in need of care. You can shoot me, if you want, but who will take care of your wounded?

And he took care of all the wounded, and in that space of time when he was taking care of their wounded, while they were waiting for him to do his work, the hospital compound became neutral ground.

We are grieving. We grieve for the ones who suffer the consequences of war. We grieve for those who are lost, for those who suffer, for those who have lost. We grieve for what is broken. We grieve for the innocent and for the loss of innocence. We grieve for the brokenness that is in the world.

I think of these things as I prepare for LIMBO, and I think of how we keep spaces safe and how we hold space for those who are vulnerable and need this space. I don’t have much power but I have now and I can ask: What do you need now? What do you need today? How can I help or facilitate or support in such a way that this need is met in this moment that I am with you?

From this point of beginning, I can think in possibilities. I think of mapping the world we dream about, of making visible what is strong and resilient and hopeful and beautiful inside each one of us. I think of how, in a world where conflict has become the norm, liminal spaces are necessary spaces.

Of course, we knew that when they left the hospital, some of my father’s patients continued on with their conflict. We heard their guns in the distance and we knew there were places where it was not safe. But for a moment, when they were in the hospital compound, there was peace.

I want to walk in my father’s footsteps. To say: I am here to serve. If you leave this space feeling stronger, feeling more hopeful, feeling a little more able to face what life throws at you, feeling more connected than disconnected, then that’s good enough for me. I wish I had the power to right all the wrongs in the world, to heal the pains and the illnesses, to bind up what is broken. I don’t have that power, but I can say: I am here in this now. I am also here for you.

This post is more of a personal reflection than one that offers solutions. Because all things in life are connected, because art and life flow seamlessly into and through one another, it becomes inevitable that this too makes its way into my own work.

May lovingkindness surround you and may peace be with you who read these words.

*Having written this, I am thinking of how my father’s stance was an act of resistance. In choosing not to take a side but to address the problem, he opened a path to neutral ground.