life

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.

Fluidity and freedom

/ RCRuiz

After the first LIMBO of 2024, I find myself eager to see how future LIMBO’s will unfold. We started the first LIMBO with some discussion and reading and from that discussion and reading we went on to write our own letters inspired by some readings from The Letter Q: Queer Writers Notes to their Younger Selves. For those interested, some of these letters are available on poets.org.

The letter writing was a divergence from the workshop theme/plan which I had in mind, but in coming to LIMBO, I felt what was important was to find out first where the discussion would lead us. Every announced aspect of the session was a placeholder for what might come up as being more important or beneficial to the participants at the moment. I think the fluidity of conducting meetings in this way might be more helpful/fruitful than creating a set program with activities we nudge participants towards. I think of how participants might come up and say: can we do this instead? Or can we work together on something? I’m curious as to that last part as I do want to try something at a future meeting.

For me, LIMBO is an ongoing process and it’s one that I find quite joyful. I do wonder how workshop culture would change if we shifted our approach and started asking ourselves: what is it that those coming to the workshop need in this moment? Is it be possible to make room for a different approach and would a consumer-minded society be willing to embrace a workshop that doesn’t clearly label itself from the get-go?

For all the complexity that comes with it, I find LIMBO to be freeing. No doubt there will be difficult moments but LIMBO is about working together to hold and keep this space wherein we can all just be (as one of the participants so beautifully put it) just be human.

Here’s a challenge that mirrors what we did: Read one or two letters from the Letter Q out loud. Give yourself 30 minutes and write a letter to yourself: could be your younger self, your present self or your future self. No editing. No passing judgment on yourself. Just write. Afterwards, read out loud. Ask yourself: what surprised you?

Blessings and peace to you who read and may you find yourself joyfully surprised.

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.