thezerodraftproject-blog

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Summer Snow

Zero Draft #004

I grew up with a Narra tree.

It held my tire swings, the tire swings I asked for from papa, and he would stow away old tires and good rope from work for me.

I would wait for the Narra’s yellow blossoms to bloom in summer, then to fall like a winter storm in autumn colors, and to find it carpeting the street when I woke up the next day.

It chagrined the mothers on our block, as they dragged their walis tingting and iron dustpans to and fro, morning and afternoon.

To me, it was like snow, but better. I called it my summer snow.

Summer snow, summer snow, I would sing. Papa and Mama would smile. Later, at nineteen, my father would tell me he knew me for humming and singing, would know I was around even without looking.

When our Narra wasn't in blooming season, I would daydream about it. Turning into our street, the Narra in bloom made our common lane look like a postcard, a painting, a dream.

Our neighbors would talk to my father to trim the tree every now and then. The homeowners association backed them up.

Its branches are growing into our lot, next door would say. It makes for too many leaves to sweep, the sweating mothers passive-aggressively hinted.

Papa trimmed it himself with a bolo, but the branches and its leaves would always grow back too fast for it to make a difference.

Our family was different. Mama worked in the city, like Papa, and she didn't like gossip, inadvertently becoming the topic of the mothers’ afternoon gossip melee over burning leaves. Papa didn't drink, and come Saturday night drinking by the block fathers, a tradition held as religiously as some do bible study, he would greet the men and leave a big dish of pulutan before crossing back to our home.

Add a willful Narra into the picture of a non-conforming family on the block, a Narra we insisted on protecting.

Caterpillars loved the Narra. Our garden always had the most butterflies.

In the hazy days before school let out and summer would begin, I would daydream about the Narra coming into full bloom, swilling in the wind, swirling on the ground, abandoning school books and chalkboards to look out of the window and fancying a yellow havoc in the hot March wind.

I did not know how special it is to have a Narra in your front yard, not when I learned it was our national tree, not when it refused to die when neighbors hacked at it when we moved away.

Today, as a mishandled wilting Narra seedling stands in my cement backyard in a makeshift pot, waiting in vain for replanting, with my boyfriend pining over its loss, I learned.

Here in Mindanao, he says, the Narra, along with old rare wood like Apitong and Yakal, is so revered, they are almost deified. Workers instructed by their foremen to clear the soil, even of Narra, would cry out and beg its owners not to, surely we cannot. It is Narra.

Here, he says, it is bulahan. It is like jewelry. Not just any family can say they have a Narra in their backyard. You must be a special family to have a Narra.

Did you say bulawan? I ask. Did you say gold?

Both, he says, it can be both. Bulahan and bulawan. Holy and golden.

My heart warms. I did not know my friend was a treasure. They always hated our Narra.

I daydream of yellow blossoms again.

[thezerodraftproject-blog]

Life and Yoga Learnings

Zero Draft #003

I’m too young for some things, and too old for others.

Advanced in some ways, and behind or just in time on the rest.

I just have to take things as they come.

Tweet/LinkedIn post to self # 1:

One of the best things I learned in yoga: take the space that you need.

You can't keep making yourself smaller or take on heavier loads for other people all the time.

You have to learn how to maintain yourself by taking the space that you need, that you've earned, and deserve.

Whether space means following up on your invoice, asking for somebody to make time for you, or finding a different job because the one you have is pressing at you on all sides too much--

Sometimes it's hard not to inconvenience others because it's at your expense. If it's taking up your livelihood, your career, your mental health, or your personal time, then take your space.

Most of the time, the person at the other end will understand.

And those who don't are usually not worthy of your time.

Take your space.

Tweet/LinkedIn post to self # 2:

My agenda for today was: nothing. I'm not going to work unless it's something I want to do and feel like working on.

Have had a busy day so far. Sometimes the anxiety of having a mountainload of work debilitates us more. Just do what you can. Nobody can and should blame you otherwise.

[thezerodraftproject-blog]

House Arrest on Charges of a Sprain

Zero Draft #002

I’m afraid of never walking the same again.

I sprained my left ankle on an industrious Sunday morning. As usual, I was agitated about cleaning the house. I always feel like I have too little time in the weekends, which is probably true, since I also work Saturdays.

So agitated, that I leapt off the back of the sofa I was tiptoeing on to reach the ceiling cobwebs, landed wrong on my left ankle, and howled as I felt a “pop” and nothing else but white hot pain.

I’d twisted my ankle before, but never with that ominous pop and never with so much pain.

It’s been over a week. I haven’t left the house except to go to the hospital twice. As a notorious lakwatsera, this has been killing me.

I have to bathe sitting down. I can’t go anywhere without a wheelchair or my new best friend: a quad crutch fashioned out of the monobloc chair and a pillow. I can’t cook properly for fear of jumping from the splash of hot oil.

Paranoia and irritation have been creeping up on me quicker than it normally would (am I paranoid and irritated on a regular basis? All told, probably yes).

Most bothersome of all, I’m afraid that the doctor who told me I would be able to walk in two days was wrong about more than the recovery period: that I wouldn’t ever be able to heal properly and would always walk with pain.

I like walking. On a meme with a route across the world in red, with the caption “We all have that friend who says ‘I can walk that far’”, my friend tagged me, and we all laughed because it was true. That’s me. I’m the friend. I usually say that if I can see it, I can walk it, come on, don’t be sissies.

I like to walk. I like getting away. I like new places. I like making my way to that strange corner or that extra mile to discover something new. I like the agency of moving. To go places, to run away, to move forward.

Whenever we visited my grandparents’ house in Batangas, with its long backyard of banana trees blocking the boundaries from view, I would walk into it alone. It was a jungle, and I didn’t know where it ended. The last milestones I would see before entering the relative forest were the big steel basin that held rainwater, where they used to cook up cacao, and the outhouse that held my lolo’s tools.

Countless times, I had tripped on banana trunks, lost my footing on the uneven soil, been bitten by countless insects, soiled by cobwebs and sticky sap, but every weekend trip to San Juan, it drew me in.

I was on an adventure, and the thrill stayed with me until I grew big enough to find the wire fences enclosing the land within 5 minutes of stepping out of my lola’s dirty kitchen, an unimaginable feat previously when I was 4.

But I know I’m being crazy. The summer heat, baking me inside this house, and the paperwork I’ve taken home, baking the inside of my brain--I’m afraid, because I just need air. I just need to see a different place to remember I’m okay. I just need a walk.

If that unknown known jungle scared me but I walked in happily anyway, then maybe I should be able to navigate this sprained ankle with as much verve, with its equal parts of unknown and known both before me.

Once these 4 weeks are over, I’ll raise a glass to this ankle and the strange places it keeps taking me, on foot and otherwise.

[thezerodraftproject-blog]

Zero Draft #001

I’ve been so drained.

Between taking the lead at work and joining new initiatives, I’m put out.

2019 has been a generous year, but it’s also taken a lot out of me.

I feel poised for new challenges, but burnt out at the same time. Restless, but tired.

I’m setting up the Zero Draft Project as a way for me to reconnect with what I really want to do.

In writing, your zero draft is the draft that you make when you’re not sure what and how you’re setting out to write.

It’s just letting yourself flow. The zero draft feels ridiculous and aimless at first. But usually, and I’ve found this to be true in my case, when you read back on that impulse, that flow, that mass of words you’ve written--

You realize you’ve gotten the job done without even thinking so much about it.

There are no rules, only to try to write every day.

Maybe I could look back at this zero draft someday and find what I’ve been looking for all along.