Illustration Friday - chmod

Finally! My UNIX fundamentals class is over. I would be a liar if I told you I understood everything, or even 1/2 of what we discussed but the instructor was a wonderful man and excellent teacher, he loves UNIX, and therefore the experience was a positive one for me which will enable me to review and learn on my own without any hang-ups. Chmod, change mode or modify; and the instructor pronounced it "Sh-mod". Oh that is so sexy. I was able to relate to it.

chmod

From http://www.perlfect.com/articles/chmod.shtml

To set/modify a file's permissions you need to use the chmod program. Only the owner of a file may use chmod to alter a file's permissions. chmod has the following syntax: chmod [options] mode file(s)

The 'mode' part specifies the new permissions for the file(s) that follow as arguments. A mode specifies which user's permissions should be changed, and afterwards which access types should be changed. Let's say for example: chmod a-x socktest.pl This means that the execute bit should be cleared (-) for all users. (owner, group and the rest of the world) The permissions start with a letter specifying what users should be affected by the change, this might be any of the following:

u the owner user
g the owner group
o others (neither u, nor g)
a all users

This is followed by a change instruction which consists of a +(set bit) or -(clear bit) and the letter corresponding to the bit that should be changed.

Examples:

$ ls -l socktest.pl -rwxr-xr-x 1 nick users 1874 Jan 19 10:23 socktest.pl*

$ chmod a-x socktest.pl

$ ls -l socktest.pl -rw-r--r-- 1 nick users 1874 Jan 19 10:23 socktest.pl

$ chmod g+w socktest.pl

$ ls -l socktest.pl -rw-rw-r-- 1 nick users 1874 Jan 19 10:23 socktest.pl

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If the above does not mean anything to you or is completely foreign, don't worry, it was for me too but now it is starting to stick.

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Here's the real chmod!

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Yesterday evening when I got home, I was mentally exhausted from class so I decided to take a nap. I told my family that I was going to bed. It was early. I ate an early dinner and got ready for bed. I decided to start a new drawing. I started getting very sleepy. I put aside my drawing measuring 14"x17" on the bed. I went to sleep. I woke up in the middle of the night and chatted with someone very important and dear to me. I decided to draw again for a few minutes before I went back to sleep and BEHOLD! I noticed my drawing has been altered. It is a drawing of three women I am calling "Bedtime Tea For The Monkey, Dog and Monkey". The women are supposed to be lounging in the clouds in their pajamas. Just clouds, however, I noticed that SOMEONE drew a pillow beside the woman with a pachyderm necklace. CRAP! It was not in pencil. It was done in Micron pen! I thought the Epsilons were up to their tricks but they denied touching my drawing. The Viking would never dare touch my drawing, unless he wants to get tortured. The pillow outline was drawn to scale, dimensionally correct and quite impressive although it looked like it was done with an unsteady grip. I was becoming very upset that no one would fess up! There were also scribbles on the drawing to differentiate some areas. It made a whole lot of sense EXCEPT the pillow obviously did not belong there and covered the background I intended to look like stardust.

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DAMN! No one owned up to the act. I was becoming very upset and so were the kids because according to them I was falsely accusing them. So I don't know who did it but I ended up modifying the design of the entire drawing. It will now take much longer for me to finish this drawing. I thought I'd be done in a day. Instead, it is going fishing with me next week.

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I don't know how this happened, and this is quite upsetting, in fact most disturbing. I am completely puzzled.

Overloaded F-POT

Overload

Micron pen on 14"x17" Bristol Board

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Oh my goodness!!! My F-POT is extremely overloaded. I am brain-dead this evening after the first full day of a technical fundamentals class. We are migrating our clinical system database to a new operating system. I am in class this week. Terse language does not bide well with me. I like verbose so my mind has to adjust to commands like "mkdir" instead of "make directory". You think, since I can't type, I'd welcome it but my mind likes completely spelled out words instead of shortcuts. That is why I hate text messages. Except now you are probably asking the meaning of F-POT. Well, my dearest friend Bella Sinclair explains the meaning of F-POT.

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This week, I can't hang around much. I need to make room in my brain for more lectures and laboratory exercises. I have a whole week of these classes. I need to rest. Then next week I need to decompress before I have another bundle implementation. It never ends, still I am grateful for work.

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Also, I have been cleaning house. Hestia has taken possession of Epsilon II and she has been begging me to organize the house. I spent two days on the living room alone. It's amazing, we now have room to tango. Epsilon II helped me. We finally put away her dollhouse, it took three hours to dismantle it. It's a good thing I kept the assembly instructions. She also found so many books (they were always there) that made her remark "I just need to be home-schooled. All I have to do is read all these books." Argh! So many books indeed but I want to hang on to them. Who for example would get rid of Nicholas Copernicus's "On The Revolution Of The Heavenly Spheres" or Martin Luther's "Three Treatises". Yes, she can probably stay at home and educate herself on US government by reading the Federalist Papers and the writings of Thomas Jefferson, brush up on literature by reading Shakespeare and all the great literary authors in gold trimmed books where a special page is dedicated to the choice of the font and the fabric on the cover? Yes, I love books. I even have a book about books! Yet, after cleaning, I was exhausted that the only book I can afford to open as I relaxed was a biography of John Muir and even then, I concentrated on the photographs. Epsilon II found a book that excited her so much, a geography book titled "Our World Today" published in 1932, devoid of political correctness and revisionist history. She has a stack of books beside her bed now and yesterday she started doing Math exercises after she found a workbook. In the meantime I found the book that Epsilon I swore he returned or never took home in 8th grade. I have a $54.00 bill from his high school registrar for the book. See, it pays to clean!

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Oh I almost forgot. Yes. above is the modified drawing seen on my previous post. There were too many white spaces. Ah "white space". We also learned about that today. Oh! If you can make it out, something happened to Daisy this weekend. And another thing, I terribly miss Bella Sinclair.

Illustration Friday - Idle...NOT!

Not Idle At All!

14 in. x 17 in. Micron pen on Bristol Board.

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Okay, so I did not stay away for weeks as planned, but Illustration Friday's theme just begged to be taunted. The theme is Idle. Hahaha! How do you illustrate that? How can I? Even my trees are not idle! Something's always happening, changing. Even my header changes sometimes several times a day. So there it was, Idle. It needed my interpretation. Here it is. I hardly have been idle. I have been under so much stress writing a rule about multiple drug resistant organisms. I was de-stressing last night. Can you see? Maybe not. Those of you looking for names for your children, if you are pregnant, here's a suggestion, never pick up a medical record while you are in the hospital. You see a word like Placenta and you think it sounds so cool. Well chances are, you are "stoopid"! I did prepare a baby once for post-mortem care. As I filled out the death certificate, I asked the mother for the child's name. She replied "Virginia" As I started writing it, she corrected me. She said there was no "R'" and she spelled it for me: v-a-g-i-n-a. I stopped writing, looked at her and looked at the baby. I hope God will forgive me for I exclaimed within myself as I looked at the lifeless body of the baby and I was about to cry "Oh my dear child, you had everything going against you, your angel may have saved you." Who am I to judge? I cannot judge but surely, a name though it may just be a name, make it something a child could write with dignity. Edwardsiella, Shigella, Plesiomonas and Serratia for example sound passable but they are names of microbes and sometimes drug resistant microorganisms.

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They say you can judge a book by its cover. Well, you can judge a woman by the content of her bag. Go help yourself! I could not draw everything. For example, there are actually three reading glasses in my bag with varying diopter. I use the higher diopter when I write rules. This recent rule I wrote had 172 logic templates and 42 action groups. It printed in 47 pages in size 10 font and 33 pages in size 8. During initial testing, it failed four times due to typographical errors which I combed through every individual character. Now you know why I have three pairs!

Go Back Where You Came From

In The Palm Of Your Hand

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Overheard in a dream:
“Ah I heard she is retired.
Now she does the work she always wanted to do.
She volunteers and has many projects.

She lives in the rural mountains in the island where she was born,

Where she has a humble yet comfortable home

Overlooking the mountain and volcano.

She prays the volcano will not erupt during her sleep.

She lives with her maids and a chauffeur.
And a foreigner she calls The Viking.

She owns the coffee house that also serves batchoy, by the highway.

That does not really make money,

And people just come because they are curious

For they hear that it is owned by an eccentric woman who paints

And draws with fine pens and a magnifying glass

And reads obscure authors like
Faraday, Newton, Aristotle and Galileo for the fun of it
Or books written in languages she cannot understand and

She tries to decipher the root word
And looks at every other word meaning in the translation dictionary.

And she target shoots with a riffle

And slashes bushes with a machete

And chops banana trunks with a sword

And has a Bowie knife slung to her waist

She is friendly even though she keeps mostly to herself,

She smiles a lot

And bows to her elders.
And speaks gently.

But can swear like a sailor.

And she hates abusive and manipulative people.
And macho men.
Her house is a refuge for battered women.

She lectures once a month at the nursing college where she graduated,

And she is a Girl Scout leader

She set up a scholarship at the local high school
I wonder where she gets her money?

She and The Viking live a simple life with few material possessions.

Her clothes! Oh you should see what she wears.

She wears long skirts over boots

And untucked t-shirts

And wears tailored oxfords shirts unbuttoned with collar up

And wears a fedora and she always wears pearls.

Her hair! Her hair is wild and waves away all over the place

Like Medusa's reptilian hairdo!

And she loves to sit under the mangifera tree and play the banjo.
And grow giant grass called bambuseae

I heard she used to work with computers
Now she writes letters with a fountain pen.
Her children and their families are coming to visit.

I wonder what they will do?

They don't have a television set or a computer.”

Man oh man! It took me forever to do this drawing, especially the bamboo! If you click on these images, the enlarged view magnifies the pen strokes! Ack! I was ready to give up!!!

Not Hollow

Out Of The Hollow Branch. Pigment ink on 14"x17" Bristol Board

A meme is a cultural practice or idea, that is transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another. It originated from the from word Greek mimēma, meaning something imitated, from mimeisthai, to imitate. So it's like a chain reaction. Talking about chain reaction there's one about to happen above. Can see it? Click on the image to enlarge to see what triggered it. This was an illustration I made for the Illustration Friday prompt "Hollow". It isn't so hollow anymore, is it?

I can't help it. What was intended to be simple ended up like this in a matter of 24 hours. Deborah, Midlife Poet tagged me for a meme to share six secrets about myself. She did not start it, she was only tagged. And so she selected me. I must say it's an oxymoron, for how can I share six secrets, they won't be so secret anymore, right? So I'll do my best to enumerate some facts that sound so secret and mysterious when really, they are not, but these are some of the things that punctuate my world:

1. I once assisted a woman in delivering her baby in a hospital elevator full of people. You think the elevator is full and there is no space until someone delivers a baby. It's amazing how ten people could get so cramped in a corner while the woman and I had all the room to deliver her baby! I also helped a woman deliver her baby in the backseat of an SUV.

2. I was seventeen years old when I wrapped the first dead child I had for a patient. He had marasmus kwashiorkor. He was literally skin and bones with an edematous abdomen. Prior to hospitalization he had nothing to eat and apparently was eating dirt as in sand and the ground for two months. That summer, I heard the mothers' wails in the halls whenever a malnourished child died. Everyday there was a child dying. When I close my eyes I still see myself walking the halls and I remember the stench.

3. I will give the shirt off my back, but I hate being taken advantage of and I definitely will not stand for abuse. I have literally stripped my clothes. Once I visited some relatives in the Philippines, one of them liked my shoes. It was my only walking shoes. I gave them to her anyway. She gave me her flip flops. Then another cousin liked my shirt and even though I was already wearing it, she really wanted it so she gave me a clean t-shirt that was an advertisement for an auto parts supply and we swapped shirts. Then a niece liked my blue jeans and I took it off and they gave me a pair of cotton poplin pants. It was checkered and looked like pajamas. They liked everything I had including my lipstick and sunglasses. After the visit, I had no money left and they had to give me ten pesos for the fare because I rode the public transportation which was a jeepney. I looked like a sugarcane field laborer except I was wearing lipstick and had nice hair so people in the jeepney stop or "paradajan" gave me strange looks. I got off the corner from my parents house and walked towards their home. The neighbors recognized me but were puzzled by my outfit. When the maids opened the gate they did not recognize me at first but they knew what happened. My mother was not very pleased with my relatives for stripping me but I told her that I was the one who gave my clothes away. Anyway during that visit, I had a full suitcase of clothes and came back to the US with only a carry on handbag and some presents for the children. My sisters had to give me clothes and shoes so I would look decent for my return flight and also gave me money.

4. I had my internship as a rural health nurse in the mountains when I was nineteen years old. There I met a 34 year old Chinese millionaire who owned everything (gas stations, bus lines, shipping line, grocery stores, auto parts stores, movie theaters, who knows what else). He was a bachelor. He asked me to marry him but I did not love him. It was also during that internship where I met so many poor people, in poverty. I made many home visits and sometimes people's homes would be a one room shack. I was called to see a sick woman. When I got to their house she had hemoptesis and was coughing up bright red blood. She was so skinny, she almost looked like a skeleton. I had her admitted to the provincial hospital's TB pavilion but she died a few weeks later. I was so afraid that the family might blame me for her death!

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5. I had a classmate in high school who was very smart. She was a Math whiz. She and I were very good friends throughout high school. During one of my visits back home my husband and I went to the beach and stopped by a roadside hut selling cool drinks. The woman who tended the store looked very familiar. Her eyes reminded me of my classmate. The woman also kept on staring at me and for a while we just looked at each other. She looked very familiar and my heart was pounding. I did not recognize her because she had no teeth and she looked destitute but I acknowledged her with a nod and a faint smile. She just looked away. Her face haunted me and the following day I talked to my younger sister's classmate who was then the school principal and asked her is she knew the woman. It was my friend. I felt very sad . I think she recognized me but she looked away. I think I wrote about this before.

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6. While assisting a delivery, it took the woman a very long time for the afterbirth to be expelled so I just sat there waiting and holding on to the cord. Then she expelled the placenta right flat on my face when I least expected it! My OB clinical instructor told me it was my baptism by fire! I had to take an emergency shower.

Artist Profile No. 1

Aimee of Artsyville. Pigment ink on 11"x14" Bristol Board.


Hello My Dear Blog Friends And Visitors:

I was very ambitious last week. Too much time being recumbent in the sickbed made my brain go on overdrive. I thought about drawing profiles of my favorite bloggers. Then it dawned of me, there are so many of you. So I said I will pace myself, meaning I will only do five profiles a day, HAHAHAHA! Just kidding. I am not that talented. I got snafued on the second one when I had to draw a girl with big head and small feet. Man that is the most difficult thing I have done. I ended up cheating on that one. So I promise these will be simple and focus on the artist. Here's my first one.

I have always admired this artist. I was sort of intimidated at first because she is so talented and such a brainiac, mental ninja, a lot of brain power with her art! Her creations are fabulous word artistry that capture and captivate your mind. She is ultra-creative and quite prolific. She also has a beautiful photographic eye. She might as well be a photographer too. She is an incredible illustrator, just look for that t-shirt she designed when she was seventeen years old! MAGNIFICENT! She is a wonderful woman, a mother who presides over ARTSYVILLE her artistic domain. She is right when she says "MAKE TIME FOR YOUR ART!". We are the lucky recipients.

This is Aimee of Artsyville. I tried my best to do her justice. Bella Sinclair did it once with adorable and fabulous result but above is my rendition of the great and talented, mental ninja, fabulous artist Aimee! Please visit Aimee and say hello. I promise, you won't be disappointed.

One Moment Please...

Isabella Wellesley is putting on her face, clothes and shoes.

Saying Yes And Fishing With The Viking

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When you are in love or when you love someone, you tend to say "yes" a lot. In fact I hardly ever say no because saying yes, tends to make me happier. So after I married The Viking and realized he loved to fish I knew that my vision of weekends where I played the happy hostess or wife satisfactorily having quiet weekends in the lanai reading newspapers or swimming the waters instead of fishing them would be rarer than what I had to do when I agreed to be his fishing partner.
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Big Muskellunge Lake, WI and North Padre Island Coast, TX
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Instead I've learned to wake up at midnight to wade in mucky waters before the crack of dawn, learned to bait live shrimp and fish and leeches, take showers in public places, endured sunburns, thirst and distended bladders, being one of the few women in a fishing ship full of men, puking my guts out in front of people, smelling fishy...then clean and cook the fish! I've had it where the seawater rose and filled my waders and had to be tipped over in the middle of the bay by fishermen so I don't float; I've been stuck in the muck, I've stepped on sea snakes and other creepy crawly objects. I've cast my line and hooked other fishermen instead of the fish. Still I am game and a good sport for I have on a few occasions had to jump the boat and change the chemical composition of the water without demanding that we go back to shore.

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Gulf of Mexico and North Padre Island, TX

Lake June, FL and Flounder from Galveston Bay

Lake Laura and Crystal Lake, WI

Catch from deep-sea fishing at the Gulf of Mexico and below right, Sarasota Bay, FL.

Crystal Lake, WI and Lake Okeechobee, Fl

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I have paid my dues. These days I get my fish by calling my favorite fishing outfit in Alaska. They deliver to my doorstep flash frozen trawl and line caught king salmon and halibut, cleaned, cut and ready to cook.

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But I miss seeing this:

Lake Hartwell, SC

and this:

Fallison Lake, WI

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So this summer vacation I said "Yes" to fishing. Wish me luck, but

I am entitled to change my mind...and I am no longer cleaning the fish!

My Dearest Epsilons,

During the times I was pregnant, I wrote letters to my unborn children. I even gave them names. I remember calling Epsilon I the nickname of Zy, short for Zygote. I wrote letters to him the moment I found out I was pregnant. I continued my letter writing to them through journals that I would create for special reasons, events and travels. This entry was taken from my the journal I wrote when I went home to take care of my Mother.

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Do you know why my husband and I call them Epsilons? In Mathematics, the Greek alphabet "Epsilon" is used to represent "vanishingly small" quantities. The great Mathematics genius Paul Erdos called a child an Epsilon. When my children were young, a very good friend of ours, an electrical engineer and mathematics professor stayed with us in the winter and spring. He was not particularly fond of little children but he adored our precocious little ones. One night he and my husband were discussing mathematics but were distracted by the children playing in the living room. They stopped their discussion and Dave announced, just like Erdos when he saw a child, "Epsilons!" "Epsilon - vanishingly small quantities." The title stuck. My husband and I referred to them as espilons especially when we had to talk about them in front of them, until they realized we were talking about them. Today, they are epsilons, no more.

3:15 PM Eastern, November 1, 2002

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Dearest M and Em,

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I am on board flight 71 en route to Nagoya, Japan. The flight will take 13 hours and 45 minutes. The flight was delayed in taking off for over half hour because the inbound plane was diverted to Anchorage, Alaska due to a medical emergency. We are on board a plane that came from Amsterdam.

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Thank you for taking me to the airport this morning. I know it is an effort to wake up early in the morning; I appreciate you both for being good natured about it. I wish you were able to spend some time with me at the airport, but you wouldn’t have been able to come to the gate. The security was tight and there were airport screeners everywhere. Sometimes I question the logic of their random checks. They screened an elderly gentleman who looked arthritic. They made him take his shoes off. I wasn’t selected. I was prepared for it that’s why I packed my lingerie and undergarments separately in see through plastic bags, in case they made me open my lingerie bag. I do not want anyone touching them.

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On the plane from Houston to Detroit, I met an elderly lady in her seventies. She was carrying a red bag that seemed very heavy and she needed to get it in the overhead bin. I offered to do it for her --- it weighed about 45 pounds!!! She was very pleasant. We chatted for a while. She lives in Sugar Land with her daughter who worked as a nurse at the medical center until last year but I did not know her. The lady, Mrs. Bales asked me for my final destination. I told her I was going to Bacolod to see my mother, your grandmother. Mrs. Bales looked upwards and uttered her thanks to the Lord for having met me. She said she was nervous and it made her comfortable to know we were taking the same trip. She asked me if she could tag along with me.

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The flight to Detroit was uneventful. I drank a cup of water and a cup of tomato juice on board. The flight attendants offered everyone on the flight two nut bars. It had two grams of fat and I only ate half of one. We deplaned in Detroit through Gate A3. It was at the end of the terminal. I looked for my continuing flight and I saw that it was departing from Gate A38. Mrs. Bales was tagging along with me carrying her heavy red bag. I noticed she did not walk well.

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A38 was a long way from A3. I asked Mrs. Bales if she needed assistance or a ride in one of those airport carts – the same one we took in Atlanta when our gate was changed. That was the same time M got separated from us --- do you remember that incident? You were both very brave. Your Daddy and I were so proud of both of you. M, you kept your presence of mind and did not panic. Your Dad and I and Em tried to catch up with the train by running. Em ran so fast, we knew she was tired but all she said was “I hope Brother is alright.” And you were! We finally found you waiting for us at the gate where we told you to wait. There were a group of people waiting with you --- we did not know they knew you were separated and they kept you company and made you feel safe. Had we known we could have thanked them. Your brother’s guardian angel sent them!

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About Mrs. Bales, I offered to carry her bag. She declined at first but I told her she can hold on to the handle while she rested the bag on my wheeled carry on luggage. I told her I will walk very slowly with her. She was still holding her travel documents and I told her I will wait until she puts them away safely. Then we walked to Gate A38. Detroit Metro has changed since I last stopped over on my way from Japan en route to Houston. That was last year when I went home to the Philippines for my father’s - your Lolo’s funeral. I am on my way to the Philippines again, this time Lola is sick. My brothers and sisters are all going home. Auntie Fre went home a week ago. I will be gone for two weeks...

It's All Relative

One day while waiting for a connecting flight at Narita Airport in Tokyo, an overhead announcement was made that the gate for my departing flight to Manila was changed. Not only was it a different gate, it was a different terminal. I was traveling alone and as I listened to the announcement, I noticed a nervous young woman pacing. She caught my glance and locked her gaze at me at which point I bowed my head and smiled faintly in polite acknowledgement. I looked away but soon she was standing beside me and asked if she and I were taking the same flight. I said yes and she let out a huge sigh. She explained that she was traveling alone for the first time and she just came from Dubai and if she can tag along with me to find the gate. Okay. We walked to the terminal. I was quiet with my head and heart heavy with the thought of my Father. I was going home to attend his funeral.

While en route to the terminal, the young woman who looked like a teenager was actually 36 years old and worked as a domestic helper in Dubai for two years. By the time we got to the terminal, I knew her life story, the names of her children, her husband’s name and what he did, where they lived, where she went to school, what her employer did in Dubai, how much she earned and how much money she carried. She could have been lying to make me trust her and pour my heart out to her and likewise tell my life story but I was almost mute and just kept saying “yes, really, is that right, wow, I can imagine, I can’t imagine, oh my goodness…etc.etc.” You get the point. Some people just love to tell their life story to strangers.

Sometimes I look at myself in the mirror and see if there is a sign that reads “Talk to me”. There is none. I once considered myself a bad listener for being impatient. I also do not suffer fools gladly but maybe I am a good listener because throughout my nursing career, I have people tell me more than their complaints, their signs and symptoms. In fact I had patients return to the hospital just to say hello and tell me about how they are doing or introduce their children and grandchildren they told me about during their hospitalization. Once, while on another international flight, I found myself surrounded by traveling merchant mariners at Nagoya. They excitedly told me about themselves and their families and their work. I just listen and smile to occupy myself during the long wait.

So back to the woman who tagged with me. She was starting to feel relaxed which was good for her. I wished she would be quiet so I can write on my journal but she showed me some of the things in her carry-on luggage that she planned on giving to her children. I smiled and told her she’ll make a lot of people happy when she gets home. At that time she still did not know my name because she was content on calling me “Inday” which means sister. I was satified being Inday throughout the conversation.

I think she finally realized that I have been quiet all along and so she started asking me questions like, my occupation, where I lived, if my husband is American – meaning is he white, if he is rich. Some cultures have a different idea of what is considered private information. I have learned how to deflect these questions without seeming antisocial, after all, I sat there listening to her. So at this point it is good to take a walk to the gift shop or buy a drink or even get ready to board.

She got up and gathered her things. I smiled at her and she looked at me, told me I was very nice for talking to her (was I?) even if she was "just a maid". Oh no! This is my clue to chime in. I told her, she was not just a maid, that she was a hardworking woman who sacrificed two years without seeing her children and husband so she can earn money for her family. She should be proud of that. She has sacrificed too much to feel inferior to anyone. I grabbed her by her arm and she was surprised, I whispered to her, “Do not tell anyone how much money you make or have. It may be how much you will lose to a swindler!” She was shocked. Two years working abroad has not made her worldly wise, she was still provincial. I wished her luck as she boarded before me. Two years, I calculated, she earned $181.25 a month after taxes. I thought how long will four thousand one three hundred fifty dollars last in Samar when all of her relatives come to welcome her. But that was a lot of money, more than some people will earn in their lifetime.

It's Quiet Here...

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Undoing A Bad Dream And Thought

The mind is a very funny thing. It conjures visions and ideas that we try to comprehend and interpret according to our experiences. I am not well. I am in bed recovering from a very bad respiratory infection. I have been to the doctor and the prognosis is very good. But a dream and a comment from two very spiritual people made them stop and listen and tell me, sent me into a state of subdued hysterics (is there such a thing?), ah yes, I call it worry. I ended up with a breathing treatment to alleviate my shortness of breath as I was not getting oxygen from severe congestion. I was worried to go someplace I did not want to go.

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Undoing A Bad Dream and Thought

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I am in bed with not much to do

But cough like a dog

and wheeze like a didgeridoo

So I start to draw but I start to sneeze

And I don't want to ruin my tree masterpiece.

So I lay down and close my eyes

And pretty soon my mind ventures

Into dreamland

Except they are not my dreams

They are dreams and thoughts I am trying to undo,

of drowning and dying.

With logic and reasoning and critical thinking.

Which none exists in a state of dream.

So it is with relief that I see myself in a bus

with strangers en route to a certain destination they are sure of

But I am not.

I am in the front seat

Right after the disabled section rows

wearing a dark blue suit and Italian loafers.

Damn! I look good and with just the right make-up and lipstick.

And it's a good hair day.

The conductor is a fat jovial fellow.

He is the only one who understands me but he does not say anything,

he just smiles.

The driver never speaks at all.

He just looks at the road ahead. I don't even see his face but it is dark.

And I can't see his eyes because it is covered by a visor.

The passengers are all talking to one another

and they look like foreigners but they understand one another,

but I cannot hear them well. Their voices are muffled.

And when I speak to them they ignore me, they just look at me

As if I was speaking English to Mexicans who don't speak English.

I did not belong in that bus

so I ring the Stop button

And everyone looks at me with annoyance because I disrupted their journey.

And it stops to let me off.

I gather my things and disembark

Only to find I brought along a canary yellow sweatshirt that does not match

my dark blue navy suit.

Clearly I brought a lot of things with me.

I even have a bulky down comforter

which was not needed in that destination or along the route.

I gather the sweatshirt and comforter.

The driver lets me off a quiet road with overgrown grass

that obliterates the sidewalk

I look around and realize that it is a path seldom traversed on foot

And I am the only one in the road.

It's a flat land with nothing on the horizon but barren land with grass up to my knees.

The road is not paved and the light is subdued.

I see the bus go until it is just a little dot in the distance and soon it is gone.

And I feel my leg pants brush against the grass

But it is wool gabardine and I easily shake off the grass pollens

that clung to the fabric.

I take a side street and it is paved.

I am in a certain section of a city

that leads to an overpass that I climb

The weather is cool and breezy

And so I don my canary yellow sweat shirt

that makes me look so bright

I don't know what happened to my comforter.

It was dark blue and now it is cream colored

Ah yes, I removed the comforter cover because it needs to be washed

and the down comforter needs to be dry-cleaned

and I put it on the ledge of the overpass.

And then I meet some people

who speak English

I ask one of them why the street is called the Lincoln Parkway

Because it juts into the entry of the Lincoln Tunnel

But it was a conversation, not a question, like I am talking to a fellow analyst

who analyzes everything and questions the logic of a building

right next to the freeway.

We smile and agree that there are so many stupid things around us.

And we cross the bridge, It is a very pleasant day

Soon I see my sister

And everything is fine

Because she knows her way around and

She scolds me for taking the bus and going off for no reason

Then I wake up

And I have slept long enough.

And I hear Daisy whine.

Happy Birthday Nanay

I have this facial expression when I am alone which others mistake as frowning. My Mother called this the "Physics look". She told me, "why do you look as if you are tyring to solve a physics problem?" She shortened it to "Physica". I just now realized, I had the look then. Look at that, some infant being carried by her mother and the infant performing a physics equation!

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My Mother. I love her very much. If I am bad and I know I am bad and want to get out of it, I try to think what my mother would react and if in my mind I see that she has raised an eyebrow, I will stop. I dare not even disrespect her in memory.

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Today is my Mother's 90th birthday anniversary. She passed away in 2002. I miss her very much. She was a very good mother, a loving wife to my Father, a loyal friend to many, a phenomenal woman, truly a wonderful human being. She was altruistic, an eloquent and intelligent woman, well read and knowledgeable in history and the arts (she told me about Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci when I was preschooler), herbs and herbalism, gardening and was a spiritual woman. She was not an idle woman, she created things, she planted trees, lots of trees! She kept a verdant and productive garden. She sewed all of my dresses including my nursing uniforms when I came to the states. She read everyday between 1PM and 3PM and again at night when my sisters, brothers and I all did our homework. Before my younger sister and I went to school, she required us to join my brothers and sisters and read our own books quietly. She and my Father read quietly in the dining room with us. We read together just as we ate together. She made sure we always ate together.

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She was faced with so many adversities in life, her mother died when she was only ten years old and she and my aunt had to live with distant relatives who were not the most nurturing, loving nor generous when my grandfather remarried. She went through war and the Japanese and Korean occupations of our country, two of our houses burned down and we lived in a country with a corrupt government.

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Mother always believed we can do anything we set ourselves to do. She never once said it was impossible for any of us to be what we wanted, even though we did not have money. She always told my younger sister who wanted to be a doctor, that she will be a doctor. My sister is a doctor.

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She had two sons and six daughters. I am the seventh child and the fifth daughter. I was also her most defiant and foul-mouthed child. Maybe I was adopted...no, I look like my father. My sisters told me that I drew all the time, even on the walls. Mother did not scold me for drawing on the walls. Mother let me bring my drawing books to the dining table.

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My sister, also a nurse, and I went home to take care of our mother during the last weeks of her life. She was in the hospital. I told my husband that I needed to go home and take care of my mother and he agreed and so he took care of our epsilons. They were 9 and 7 years old. I did not have any vacation time and so I told my director that I needed a leave without pay for I really thought that my nursing career did not serve me any purpose if I could not even take care of my own mother. It was unnecessary for me to explain for my director was a most kind and gentle English woman. So it was comforting to leave work, which is an important part of my life without the added worry. When I arrived at the hospital, my mother asked me why I left my children and husband, I had to explain and assured her that I married a most loving and capable man.

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I started a special journal and a diary for my trip home. It is a thick spiral notebook, I think it is about 200 pages and by the time I returned to my husband and children, there were but a few pages left. It is a very intense and emotional diary. Each entry was a letter to my son and daughter. I remember crying when I wrote some of the letters, but they gave me so much comfort.

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I chronicled my mother's last two weeks and her hospitalization. I also wrote down a lot of my thoughts and reflections. After Mother died, when everyone else went to sleep and it was my turn to keep vigil and pray during her wake, I took time out to write down some memories of my childhood. I remember sitting in that room in front of my mother's casket, it was a very strange feeling to know that inside was the lifeless remains of the most important woman in my life. I did not need much to comfort myself, for I felt my mother so alive in me, I vowed never ever to forsake her and carry with me everything that she struggled to impart to me, for I knew I was her challenge and her most difficult daughter. Here are some of the things I wrote. I noticed I could not bring myself to use the past tense for my Mother then. We called our mother the Ilonggo title for mother, "Nanay":

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"Last night your Auntie Ched and Lec and I were together at Auntie Ched's dining table. She said "We know Nanay is gone because we are sad and quiet. We are a loud and happy family."

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"When I was a young child, I was full of mischief and was very naughty. My mother would tell me to be good --- no response; then she would scold me --- defiance; then she told me "Someday you will have a child who will be just like you." I told her that maybe she was a naughty kid because she had a naughty kid. My Mother would be philosophical, she let me be and she said, "You are so different from your siblings." I always thought she was most patient and persevering with me."

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"When I was sick, Nanay gave me oranges, tangelos, grapes and apples. I love the smell of orange peels."

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"Nanay rubbed our faces gently and ran her fingers through our hair to comfort us. She would sing lullabies."

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"Nanay would gather all eight of us and feed us dinner from one plate. We would sit around her. Inday Ched was older, I think she was in college but she still joined us, I think that practice cemented the bonds between my brothers and sisters an me."

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"Nanay always reads. She would read books, newspapers, magazines. She especially loved National Geographic and history books. When her eyesight deteriorated she used glasses plus a magnifying glass. Nothing can stop her from reading."

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"Nanay loved gardening. When she planted a fruit tree she would call all of us and ask us to cling to her back as she planted the t tree. She said it will make the tree bear fruits abundantly. Everything she touched grew. She knew every plant in her garden, every cutting. Once the maid threw away a plant that barely had leaves. Nanay looked for it. She said she was nursing that plant. She was not very pleased that it was discarded - she was angry. No one said anything. We were all quiet. I think the maid felt very sorry but she dared not say anything." (We all looked for that plant everywhere and found it in the compost pile).

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"She would tell us stories of her childhood and how she met our father. She told us stories about the war and how the house in Smith Street was ravaged by fire. How they all got separated and how they ended up together at Rizal Elementary School.

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"When the city was ravaged by fire Tatay and Nanay gathered all of us. Nanay told us to take a few clothes and bring our most important possessions. My younger sister and I took our doll (we shared the doll). It was a plastic doll Inday Ched bought for us when she became a teacher and we named it after her. Nanay saw what my younger sister and I packed - she never told us it was unimportant or to bring something else. Nanay gave us instructions to always be together - to watch out for each other. She gave the older kids responsibility to watch for the younger ones - then she told Inday Ched to look out for all of us children, in case we got separated we were to go to the river at our uncle's house." (I was five years old).

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"Nanay told us to never start a fight and never to retreat from one when our honor was at stake."

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"Nanay let us fight with each other at home, to tease each other as long as we did not hit each other in the face." (None of my brothers and sisters had fistfights with one another. I started all of them with my brother but they were very few, I think only once when I broke his ukulele (left) and another time. It was always me attacking all of them and they just stood there mostly physically controlling me and never hitting back).

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"Mother was exasperated one day trying to stop me and my brother from fighting. We were having a fistfight. We were about six and eight. Mother gave each of us a dull dinner knife and said "Here finish each other off". My brother and I were stunned - we stopped fighting."

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"Mother did not want us to swear and speak bad words." (I knew all of them.)

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"Nanay always prayed."

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Happy Brithday Nanay!

Do You Want To See My Bed?

All these years that I have blogged I have seen people share photographs of their homes, gardens, freezers, refrigerators, closets, beds, etc.etc..

Well on my first blog, I showed my closet after I de-cluttered but I made sure it just focused on the clothes, I did not even show the walls. I don't know why other than my living room, kitchen and dining rooms which are accessible to the public when I invite my friends over, I am so over-protective of my private space.

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So, about my bedroom and especially the bed. I would either be drunk (very unlikely) or on drugs (even most highly unlikely) that I will show my bed. However, for the past three days, except for the brief four or five hours that I spent in the kitchen baking the cherry pie, I have been glued to my bed. So having spent a lot of time on the recumbent or low Fowler's position, my aversion to publicly sharing my very private space was starting to wear off. After all, guess what I was doing or am doing? I was taking support calls from my bed and drawing.

I promised someone I will draw her a scaled illustration of a Quercus lobata specimen on a get this, 19x24-inch Bristol Board. Yes, I just lost my mind! That is a poster size.

See those black and white drawings around the white board? Clockwise from left they measure 14"x17", 11"x14" and 12"x9". The white board measures 19"x14". If you want to see a better scale here's something tangible for you - that's a penny and a 6-inch ruler on top of the board. Why I am making such a big deal out of this is because, I can't carry the drawing everywhere I go, so the time I spend on this drawing is going to be deliberate. However, look at it this way, the possibilities! See those three images in a row below? They belong to the 14"x17" drawing. I had to use magnifying glasses and lenses and .008 nib that needed to be dipped on the ultrasonic cleaner continuously! Then I promised that I will draw each individual leaf rather that coarse squiggles. Well, I started doing so but in the end they look like, well, a branch full of leaves that are hard to outline - but I am drawing each leaf individually. Why am I doing this? because no one asked me to do it. No more ado, here's my bed (below) and available details of the current drawing project (left):

Okay, what about me without make-up and lipstick, maybe some grey hairs? Alright, you did not really expect me to show you my bed, right? Come on! :)