I WAS A FAN of the child star Julie Vega (versus Janice de Belen) so I remember that I religiously watched the TV series Anna Liza when I was in high school.
I remember writing her a fan letter, and she replied with an autographed photo.
She signed it Julie Vega, but her real name is Darling Postigo.
Too bad Julie died very young.
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I’m really a little crazy so I actually speak to inanimate objects all the time.
That is why there is no answer to the question about the last inanimate object I spoke to.
I think speaking to inanimate objects belong to the writerly virtues, so I feel entitled doing it.
At least 30 years ago, I have started to cultivate the same respect to inanimate objects as I give living beings.
It’s part of being mindful of people, and things, around me.
It’s part of my respect for the created world I find myself in.
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I’ve eaten so many strange and weird food in my life.
Depending on which part of the planet I sit or stand to eat, some people find what I put in my mouth revolting.
For example, I like balut, but most Westerners don’t understand eating an aborted duck fetus.
I also like sashimi, and most Filipinos don’t have the acquired taste for raw fish.
Eating fried roaches, or worm burgers, gross some people out.
But I’ve tried everything at least once.
And trying anything once or twice is a motto I live by, and will continue to explore in the next 50 years.
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I will always go back to my 2017 grand tour of Europe as the experience that I would never believed happened if I didn’t do it myself.
Seventeen countries in less than 90 days, and 13 of those in just the 30 days of November.
I mean, I can think of the money involved, the breadth of experience I got, the museums I went to, surviving on an-apple-and-a-banana-a-day regimen.
I can still recite the cities I visited in that sweet November of 2017: Milan, Venice, Florence, Rome, the Vatican, Cinque Terre (in Italy); Berlin and Hamburg (in Germany), Bern and Geneva (in Switzerland); Copenhagen, Stockholm, and Oslo (in the Scandinavia), Vienna, Prague, Bratislava, Budapest (in the south of Germany); Brussels and Amsterdam (in the north of Germany).
The other cities I visited from September to December that year were: Barcelona and Monserrat (in Spain); Athens, Rithymno, Heraklion, and Santorini (in Greece); London, Edinburgh, Liverpool, and Manchester (in the UK); and Dublin in Ireland.
It was an amazing, surrealistic journey for me.
Life transforming really.
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I’m not a foodie.
So I can’t really say there’s a best meal my significant other has cooked for me.
I don’t look at food.
I look at the effort people put in preparing meals for me.
My late husband has tried so many kinds of adobo for me even if it’s easier to just serve me steak.
But I guess I’m impressed that he managed to cook kare-kare, which I haven’t even tried to cook myself.
One time, when I was already widowed, a boy I slept with in Stockholm prepared breakfast for me—just eggs and something simple.
But I still smile big at the thought of it.
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I still think that getting married to another man, and one twenty-two years my senior, and Caucasian at that, was the biggest personal decision I had to make in my life.
Now widowed and self-retired, I also think it’s one of the best decisions I have ever made.
Sure, I missed out on marital conflicts with someone my age (and someone possibly given to extramarital relations), but on the whole, I enjoyed my married life.
I may not do it again with an older man (lest I become a mere caregiver to some old sickly fart), but marriage really becomes me.
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Because I’m from Dumangas, I should really say the aswang is the mythical creature I would most like to encounter in the wild.
But I don’t believe in the aswang even as a myth so I don’t want to dignify it.
So let me declare the unicorn.
There is something sweet about the unicorn, and even with just its name.
I would much prefer a unicorn than a winged-horse — even if its name is Pegasus. (500tinaga@gmail.com/PN)
