Practice practice
Am cooking dinner.
How perfectly banal and how perfectly nice that sounds! Am cooking chicken penne vegetabl soup from scratch, and the kitchen smells nice.
Kim says that he has always wanted me to be a housewife. No, no - please stop raising those eyebrows. I myself would’ve wanted to be married to someone who liked being a housewife is I were a man or lesbian. I truly think that keeping a house that looks like those IKEA showrooms is a wonderful achievement, akin to, say, writing good essays. I don’t mean that the house, the home you keep has to have expensive furniture (not that IKEA furniture is expensive, they’re not really) - but to keep the house clean and fre from too much clutter is a feat and something to be quietly proud of.
(As you can tell, some of my values have been influenced by Louisa May Alcott’s ‘Little Women.’)
Anyways, Kim says he likes it that I like keeping house.
I enjoy cleaning the house. I like weilding brush and mop, broom and detergent bottle. I like scrubbing the floor, there is fulfillment in washing the dishes and wiping down the kitchen tile and sink. When I tie the garbage bags, I do with happy firmness (because all the enemy dust and trash are trapped inside).
But I am far from being a good housekeeper. No matter how hard I try, at this point I still can’t get the pots to gleam, or to make sure that there are no water marks on the glasses. The floor doesn’t shine, and there are still cobwebs in some corners. I cratched the teflon pan, and there’s bits of sandwich spread stuck to the bottom of the toaster. Ants still to congregrate aroud the coffee maker and I don’t know why.
But it’s a daily thing. I think am getting better. Practice, practice, practice - the way surgeons do.
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I miss Natalie Merchant and the 10,000 Maniacs. I took out my MTV 10,000 Maniacs live recording tape (tape! remember them? I used to go around lugging tapes with me to play on my Walkman. all that seems so long ago, it’s funny.) and listened to Natalie sing ‘Because the Night’ and "Jezebel.’
To continue to slumbook questions (i was sent them, they’re funny.They’re supposed to make you pare yourself down to the basics):
Seven songs I will always love listening to
1. All songs from the Indigo Girls’ ‘Rites of Passage’ album
2. Innocence Mission’s "Sweep Down Early
3. The Beatles’ "Here Comes The Sun"
3. Camera Obcura’s "I don’t Do Crowds"
4. Orange and Lemons’ "Kailangan Ka"
5. Frank Sinatra’s "They can’t take that away from me"
6.U2 ‘Walk On"
7. Toss-up between something by Tori Amos and Fiona Apple
Am currently reading three books (not at the same time, but alternatingly), Saul Bellow’s "More Die of Heartbreak," Peter Carey’s "True History of the Kelly Gang," and Moviegoer" by Walker Percy. I brought all three from a Booksale branch in Ayala, and I almost went into shock because all three were buried under the stalks and collectively they all cost under P500. I also saw a copy of Umberto Eco’s "Bandolino" for P175, but I already had one so I didn’t get it.
I wish I had the time to start watching the first two seasons of ‘House’ which Kim bought for me last week; but my discipline is still waging war against me so I won’t even begin. Not yet.Maybe come Christmas break - I’ll watch till my eyes pop out of their sockets and I’ve eaten so much kettle corn I’ll get rashes.
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I like to document these small things because they remind me that it is possible to be normal and to live normally. This is what the Kilusan is fighting for — the right for everyone to be able to live normal, regular lives. Meaning there’d always be food on the table, no need to worry about the next few weeks, or months and years even.
Someone I love very much grew up with very little and often had meals consisting of kanin and toyo. If they were lucky and there was money (the father got laid off from the steel factory where he was a machinist. There were frequent money problems in the company, and all the workers were at the management’s mercy all the time), they would buy cooking oil and fry tuyo. He went to college and graduated with honors only with food like that to sustain him. He was a scarecrow, and he had sunken eyes and thin cheeks, but he survived the harshness of poverty.
