Keep the Fête

Saturday.

It was midnight and the road to the Lot was still long. I leaned back on the passenger seat and looked up at the pinpricks of white light in the inky firmament - the only thing that kept still as we dashed from one city limit to another.

As we hurtled past Azerables, H wondered what JM was doing. Probably taking his socks off and wondering where we were at the the same moment, or putting away the food his wife made, after rashly expecting we would be around for dinner. He had become so used to us stopping over on our way to the south; but it would be hours before we could rest, and dinner would later come in the form of convenience store sandwiches at a gasoline station (surprisingly) full of Filipinos, who turned out to be (not surprisingly) on their way to Lourdes.

With us was my brother in law, L, who owns the car but couldn't drive because he worked until ten in the evening. An hour's worth of doo-wop medleys kept me awake, challenging me to sing each and every song. At 3 am, H pointed to the deep blue sky outside that terminated in a dull glow of street lights watching over the rest of creation while it slept. It was so different from the orange-blue sky we'd been accustomed to in Paris, which is mainly condensed water vapor, pollution, sweat, lies, disappointment and regrets all rising up from an old and very tired city.

The next couple of hours were a blur. By luck, I was able to reach our bed and sleep for a few hours until lunchtime surreptitiously crept and we had to go say bonjour and salut to the rest of the family. After the repast, the brothers disappeared to get their father his birthday gift (I got the card to go with it, so my part was done) and I went to the clearing behind the woods next to the stream to read, and failing that, fell asleep on the grass.

It was the sound of my father in law's lawnmower that roused me back. I waved to him and went back into the house to wash the flowers from my hair and came downstairs to the clinking of champagne glasses. We sang happy birthday to him and had Swiss-style raclette from the wheel of cheese they got from Switzerland just the day before (which I realized was a far better technique than French raclette, and truer to the real sense of the word, which means "scraping"). Dinner was a blur, thanks to the copious amounts of alcohol I put away, with a wee gulp of digestif at the end to soothe my gluttonous belly.

I had yet to recover from dinner when the brothers and some kids from the village drove to the next town for its yearly fête. These little hamlets each have their own summer festival, perhaps a tradition passed down from medieval times, when troubadours hopped from town to town spreading melodious gossip and troupes of actors were the superstars of the day. In fact, I could imagine how the scene before me would have appeared in an earlier time, with simpler music and with people garbed in vintage guises. These modern trappings couldn't hide that they are essentially the same souls, concerned about life, love, money, family... we have not evolved much, you see. And the teenagers who did most of the showing off were no different from the teens who showed up at these festivals centuries ago, whose main goal for the night was to get someone in the sack.

A be-mulleted band played renditions of French and English tunes onstage while the rest of us drowned ourselves in beer, iced tea, sodas and Perrier. It was at 2 am, when the DJ got the party started, that we also drowned ourselves in soap suds care of the foam machine.

Meanwhile, in a river in Washington, the cremated remains of Kurt Cobain coagulated into a semblance of the human form just so it could turn over after sensing a rhythmic pounding in the ground reverberating from across the Atlantic where, in a small French village, his "Smells like teen spirit" was publicly being slaughtered by the nimble fingers of a local DJ named Felix.

It was almost morning when we got back home. The clear outline of the Milky way was close to disappearing. H's brothers croaked on the sofa at the pool house, and my legs were dead from my vain attempt to dance.

And then, just like that, it was Sunday.

La Tristesse

I've always found sadness profoundly beautiful, and ironically, summer has always been a sad season for me. It makes me struggle with a bout of existentialism, which can get embarrassingly emo.

Confusion? Argument? Revelation? Moment captured at Breakfast In America...

after time spent at a limited-time-only exhibit on impressionism made us think: BURGERS.

Ever since I stared up at the ceiling during summer break between grades two and three and suddenly becoming conscious of the long road ahead, suddenly realizing my youth is fleeting, suddenly imagining the challenges that lay after, of entering a good university, finding a job, raising a family and growing old, of watching my parents whither away, and me following suit, or perhaps failing one (or all) of these steps and ending up without any clear direction, realizing time is ephemeral and chances lost are impossible to regain... ever since that summer night I've had an obsession with impermanence. There are no pills for eight year-old life crises, so my father put a Nikon SLR in my hands instead.

A kiss, a transitory display of affection, a short-lived moment, a speck in time.
Memories of it, however, are not.

We borrowed L's car at the start of this week so we can see H's relatives in the north before our so-called "big trip." It was bittersweet. Like any family, theirs had its share of misfortune and heartbreak, with some of the drama continuing up to now. But it was a chance for him to mend ties with estranged kin and say a proper farewell to those too sick to come to the Philippines, with a promise to return in perhaps a year or two. To H's shock, instead of saying "au revoir" his bedridden great uncle bid us "adieu," which is an archaic way to say your final goodbye.

The seaside cemetery at Sainte Marguerite sur Mer.

After two days of being fattened up by H's granny and her patissier husband, we went sight seeing in ancient Normandy and ended up at the door of H's friend near Deauville. The morning after, their cat proffered an unnecessary display of homage to me: a dead bird. H was doing the dishes so I took the little sparrow outside for a funeral. It was so fragile; with eyes half open and one inadequate claw bent, it looked oddly peaceful to me. So I took a picture of it. (If you are disturbed by death, the next image might shock you so look away now. But if you've helped an injured bird before then the sight should be familiar.)

Sorrow for Sparrow.

When H saw me taking pictures he asked if I was sick or something...

Sick?! Where did THAT come from?

I had to make him understand why I found it lovely. I had to explain what his wife found so moving in  snapped claws and that frail, lifeless shell that it had to be immortalized in pixels.

It is not the residual of time served in prime time TV pornography journalism, I'm not even going to hide behind the all-encompassing excuse that is art.  Call it morbid, but the thought of death makes me appreciate this brief life even more. It is the sadness, la tristesse, that makes you want to drink up every minute of happiness without wanting to waste a drop.

Without it there would be no poetry, no art, no excuse for religion. Paint would never meet canvas to immortalize the ephemeral. Earthly man will have no desire to dream or hope. Without sorrow there is no joy.

And that is just sad.

2010 2ème Partie

This is the second part of this entry. Just so you can't say I don't finish what I start :)

June.
This was the month of running around like a headless chicken. In one day I would be zipping about from Pasig to QC, Mandaluyong to Cavite then Bulacan, QC to Marikina then Makati to Subic... and other seemingly impossible permutations. But I made it through alive (with a smile on my face). Hallelujah!

 

I went from my pre-wedding seminar to a friend's wedding shower, then from my gown fitting to a friend's wedding, I had shoots lined up while hunting for shoes (and then finally settling for having one custom made in Markina) and making headbands for Agay's wedding, I dealt with orders for my sideline business, requirements for my family's visa application, and hurrying off from meeting to meeting like the White Rabbit. There were also spur-of-the-moment reunions with The Dwarfs (what we called our gang in La Salle) after one of us got sick, and the JPREMS (my high school posse) for the funeral of Patti's Dadad.

An unexpected reunion with some of my oldest and dearest friends.
Sadly, it was a tragic event that reunited us.

But most unforgettably, my family and I went to Cavite to check the repairs on our first house. My dad was supposed to oversee it until we found out about his cancer and then we didn't have the money or the heart to finish it in 2009. By some miracle (and financial wizardry), my mother found the money to finish the house just before I left, on the anniversary of my father's passing.

Visited dad for the last time before getting married.

July.
After months of fretting, Mommy, Allan and Girly finally got their Schengen visas! It was the last, most important thing I needed to handle. After making sure that the bridesmaid and the family of the bride can follow in August, I got my signal to start packing. I cleaned my desk at the office and gave away what I could bear to part with.

Allan seems to be happy, but I'm not so sure :-\

Like a condemned woman I ate everything I could think of that I would miss, and said goodbye to the people I would miss even more than the food.

Jeyn and Patti of JPREMS (Pau and Jen still owe me pictures of our meet-up).

My fabulous lunch bitches.

The Legendary Yakkers. (Picture borrowed from Calvin)

The gorgeous dwarves and dwarfettes who cast their lot at my mini bridal bouquet toss.

Writers, poets, lovers of words! (Picture borrowed from Cathy)

Office friends throwing me a bridal shower! (Pic borrowed from Cathy.)

Probe farewell (pero reunion) party

And this is how I prefer to remember July: drink in hand and not crying! (Pic borrowed from Mark)

August.
There isn't enough space to write the highlights of August because every moment of every day there was something new and exciting that made me giddy like a fifth cup of coffee. 

H and I traveled a lot, and I saw and learned more about France. I swam in the Mediterranean, explored medieval cities, lived on a boat, saw the coast from an enthralling vantage point, woke up to gorgeous sunrises, had dinner under shooting stars, showed my family around Paris and the rest of France... 

 
Too many things. After a few weeks I began speaking a bit of French!

Trying on hats down the road from the coliseum in Arles. It's a Provence thing.

But best of all, in a matter of weeks H and I went - 

We clean up pretty well, if I do say so meself :)

From the official wedding photo album by Jenny (Soon to be uploaded!!!)

To be continued (soon, fingers crossed!)