In the Province

Provincial.

[jerardeusebio]

The Funeral Run

I feel ambivalent about naming inanimate objects. For one, it feels counter to non-attachment, a Buddhist philosophy I’ve embraced and committed to practicing to the best of my ability. Another reason is the implied materialism of such an action. Again, it feels incongruent with the narrative I’ve created about myself. But a few weeks ago, the "death" of my five year-old running watch surprised me. I know this sounds bizarre, and the strangeness starts with its intensity and climaxes in the way I responded to it.

I bought the most basic running Garmin in 2019: the Forerunner 35. This was about a week after my iPhone 5S, which slid out of my running shorts, got run over by a tricycle. Intimidated by the price of iPhones, I decided to buy an Android. What I saved from settling on a more affordable phone would allow me, for the first time in my then nine years as a runner, to buy a running watch. Since moving back to my home campus a year prior, I had renewed my commitment to the sport and was logging considerable miles. A GPS watch made perfect sense.

One fine Sunday, after several days of research on running watches, I marched into the Glorietta 5 Garmin store and bought the thing. I wore it for the rest of that day at the mall. I caught myself glancing at it, trying to catch the minute turn, checking to see how it looked on my left wrist, preening in the mirrors and windows I passed, happy to have assumed this new self. Before the purchase, my vision of who I was and what I did was clear: educator, writer, and runner. Now, I was still all three, except now I was a runner with a GPS watch! In an effort not to name my things, I simply referred to it as “Garmin.”

That day at the mall, there was just no way of knowing what was to come. By my best estimate, Garmin had accompanied me to about a thousand runs since its purchase. Not just this: it had seen me through two falls (the scars from which have already faded), the COVID-19 pandemic (and my shortlived shift to cycling), my tenure, four heartbreaks, countless lectures (both given by me and given to me), classes, students, faculty meetings, committee meetings, meetings with big wigs, awarding ceremonies, speeches, and a whole lot of firsts that would be impossible to contain here. Garmin has monitored my heart rate, informed me every time I hit my step goal, and congratulated me—six times in the past year—when I breached the half-marathon distance.

Garmin stopped working on the morning of June 9th, 2024. My family was in Taal for my parents’ 37th anniversary celebration. Confident of its durability and the many instances I’ve swum with it, I wore it to the pool, ignoring the peculiarly intense scent of chlorine as we approached the water. My guess is that it suffered undue pressure, being caught in between my arm and my mother, whom I lifted from the water as a dare. The high chlorine concentration must have ruined the already worn-down waterproofing. When we got back to our room, I was distressed that it no longer showed the time. I held on to hope for a few days. I buried it in rice. Left it under the sun. Wore it to work for two days despite its uselessness. When I was convinced it was safe, as my last try, I charged it. I left it in an upright position on my bedside table. It still didn’t work when I checked it after an hour. And my heart sank when I saw a little pool of water right where I had picked it up.

What ensued was an intense week of mourning. My attachment to Garmin was such that on the day I accepted its death, I decided to run with it for the last time. One for the road. I ran a kilometer for each year it had spent with me/I had spent with it. At kilometer three, looking at its blank screen and remembering our years of togetherness, a lump began to form in my throat. Cooling down, I held my left wrist up before me, Mt. Makiling in the background. As I studied Garmin, my now really dead inanimate running watch, I whispered a thank you. I then pressed it to my right cheek. It stayed there for a while, as the tears rolled down my eyes.

Back in my room, I placed it in a rectangular black box, where my other old dead timepieces were. Each of them displayed their time of death, clear and final. Only Garmin had a blank screen, its time of death a mystery. Later that night, I stared at the ceiling, awake in the darkness, wondering about my strange behavior, my absurd response. And in the end, I understood the things I was grieving for and over: unrecoverable versions of myself, time and distance past, and the end of a story that brings with it the excruciating, inescapable start of another.

[jerardeusebio]

Running Into Remembering

There was a time in my life when I was running eight miles a day, six days a week, at home, in the college town of Los Baños. And I couldn’t have been running all the time there without seeing the same set of characters. These were the ones who ran on campus with me, on the same pavements, at the same hour, from dusk to night. And so, during these runs, I regularly encountered certain faces, all of them I had—whether knowingly or not—committed to memory.

One of them was this girl, a classmate from literature class, who impressed me with her dramatic weight loss. I saw her most often in the upper field, circling her way to less and less of her old self. Before the year was over, her once plump profile had become defined, reshaped by her own resolve. The last time I saw her was at the beginning of summer. She, running in the opposite direction, at one point glanced at me. There was no hint of recognition in her expression and so continued on her way, her figure fading into the browns of the field. She must have graduated after that because I never saw her again.

There was also see this guy, distinct from the rest of the runners because of his thick, modern spectacles and knee-high socks. He was fair-skinned and I almost would bet he spent his days in front of a computer screen. I also knew him to be the son of a prominent parish official. I only discovered this bit because I’ve actually been to his house once as a caroler, not to serenade his family into contributing to our fundraising activity. It intrigued me how I’ve never seen him join any of our other religious activities outside Sunday Mass. On campus, though, he’d be everywhere. Dusk seemed to be his preferred running time. He would run farther distances than most people, run where only a few would—like me.

I was an adventurous runner. Being off the beaten path was my way of exacting my own world. Mapping random, unusual routes was how I facilitated resistance to everything else out of my control. Mostly though, it was to avoid the crowd. By myself, there was no need to nod at anyone I knew, no need to feel threatened by someone else’s faster pace, and no need to feel like the world was slowing me down. So, I would take quiet, narrow streets. Whenever I felt extra solitary, I’d run uphill and stop right where the trail for Mount Makiling’s peak started.

It would only make sense, then, that when I first saw the elderly man, I was running alone. I had been passing a row of charming post-war wooden houses on Viado street, a quaint and shade road completely hidden from the campus crowd’s view below. It stretched perpendicular to the slope of what was already the foot of the mountain. Trees and wild vegetation grew from both sides where they were interrupted only by these houses. I had been soaking in the quiet of that late afternoon when I saw him standing on his porch. Easily in his late 50s, the man had dignified, silver hair landing on his shoulders. His most striking feature was his lived-in face. As I came closer, I realized he was stretching and in his running attire. Pre- or post- run, I couldn’t tell. It was then that he looked at me. Apart from a friendly white dog and free ranging chickens, this street had been, up until this point, almost always deserted. One of the reasons I loved passing this way was because it gave me the creeps, which upped my pace considerably. So right then, locking eyes with a stranger who vaguely reminded me of the sick man from The Skeleton Key, and with the onset of the ominous buzz of the cicadas, I stopped myself from further engaging with him. I just stared back a split second and turned my gaze back on the road before me.

In the weeks and months that followed, I would instantly recognize him even from afar. His hair spoke to me from a distance. His lanky physique was unmistakable. His gait gave him away. After some time, he stopped creeping me out. He became a familiar face, as familiar as the paths I took and the giant trees I gawked at and greeted on my way. We would run into each other in all sorts of spots, in all permutations of weather. At one point, I even remember telling myself he was the future me—running solo, daily, rain or shine, with no care in the world about age. Sort of like Murakami.

In the next five years, I found myself running less and less in my hometown, having to relocate to the city for graduate studies. I did try to keep my devotion to the one sport I actually liked. I pushed running in the city more times than I could bear, slicing through the smog, joining in the noise, and moving along with the traffic. But they must have been too few, because faces didn’t become familiar. And the quiet, narrow streets of the city—I realized—weren’t as narrow, weren’t as quiet. Running finally took a back seat when I looked for and landed a full-time job to help fund my graduate studies and city living. Every now and then, though, I would remember and wonder about those years of running.

Just a few days ago, I came back home to spend a full week there, a break from the life I had so far led. I planned my week and vowed to pick up running again. I shook the dust off my running shoes, put them on, and was back on the familiar pavements. I was out of shape, needless to say, but it gave me the good kind of exhaustion. And at the end of my run, cooling down in front of the building where my parents first met, I spotted a face I recognized. The elderly man from the quiet, narrow street emerged before my sight. Still in his running attire, he seemed to have rejected the concept of aging. I stared at him until we were close enough to see the terrain of each other’s faces, the closest we have ever gotten. And then, right before passing me, he gave me a nod. I nodded back and got a smile in return.

They say running is all about muscle memory. These days, I’ve been given to remembering. The years between who we—that man and I—were and who we are have been many and long. And perhaps—in the years we had not seen each other, in the absence of presence, in the intransigence of remembering—we have nevertheless become familiar. And when an aged and nameless runner is able to give such things to me, how could the image not imprint? How could it not stay? And how else, how else could I have repossessed this story, if I hadn’t already once let it slip into the gorges of memory?

[jerardeusebio]

I had a tender moment with my mom at lunch today. It was just the two of us in my office. We were already done eating. I had already washed our utensils and was wiping them dry when she broke the quiet.

She took me back. Of course, I remember. That was the same building where we’ve had many life-changing conversations. That’s where she and my father met in the early ‘80s, where my brother and I spent many days playing until we were too old for games, and that’s where I came out to her in 2007.

“Are you crying?” she finally asked.

“Nagulat naman kasi ako sa realization mo, Ma.”

My mother is retiring in December of this year, after more than four decades of service to the University. Her last bid to serve was to take on the BS Math and Science Teaching Program Coordinator post, which she had filled, with great hesitation, before the pandemic. The role has allowed her to move into an office at the CAS Building, right next to the Dean’s office. And just this month, I joined her in the same building, on the same floor, four doors away, as I assumed the Coordinator role for the LITE Program.

“God really provides,” she responded.

I let go of her and saw tears were about to fall from her eyes. She continued, “Parang things aligned for us. Nandito na tayo pareho sa building na ‘to for the rest of the year.”

And that’s when I cried, not just because I knew our days as “colleagues” were now numbered. More than that, in spite of our cat-dog relationship, I was crying because I was being reminded of what I have always known—I’m ridiculously lucky to have a mother and a best friend in one person.

[jerardeusebio]

Bohol, Philippines

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Puka Beach, Boracay

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Here’s a speech I delivered a few weeks ago at my high school:

𝑷𝒖𝒓𝒔𝒖𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒅𝒓𝒆𝒂𝒎𝒔 𝒊𝒔 𝒑𝒖𝒓𝒔𝒖𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒍𝒊𝒇𝒆 Jerard Eusebio 24 June 2022 South Hill School, Inc.

Hello! To everyone here, the guests, family and friends of the graduating class, to the board, staff, and esteemed faculty of South Hill, and of course to our graduating students, good afternoon. It’s great to be back here.When ma’am Osie reached out to me if I’d be interested to speak to my fellow South Hillians, I immediately said yes. It was only after that I wondered, Wait, where are my more successful batch mates? Kidding aside, I’ve been looking forward to this all week. Thank you for this opportunity.Here is one of my treasured photos from high school. Taken 2002, during the sports fest. I was 13, a sophomore from Mt. Caraballo under ma’am Osie’s advisership. I’m the one up in the air, there, in the middle. We’ll get back to this in a bit.

Today’s theme is “Pursuing Dreams and Fostering Resilience in the Face of Adversity.” It seems meant to be. Even at 33, I’ve come to know a few things about dreaming, resilience, and adversity.

My main message for you is simple: pursuing dreams is pursuing life. The two cannot be separated. I believe that if you’re not dreaming, you’re not living. And I’m not just talking about big dreams here. I’m talking about dreams of all sizes: from getting into your dream university to meeting up with your friends after two years of lockdowns. Twenty years ago, I dreamed about being able to do air splits. I wanted to contribute to our cheer dance. So I obsessed about it. For many weeks! I trained, did the stretches, and eventually I was able to. The culmination of all this effort was this day. We got second place, but it didn’t matter, I was able to do air splits. That was a dream fulfilled. And then, I moved on to a different dream.This the thing about dreams. Big or small, dreams change. And that’s okay. How many of us have said we dream of becoming doctors when we grow up? Or engineers? Lawyers? How many of us would actually stick to that dream? Fresh from high school, I wanted to become a landscape horticulturist. But after college, I didn’t practice that, but instead went into research on trees.

And after two years in the laboratory, I realized I was taking someone else’s spot at that office. So I left Los Baños and sought education, and pursued a new dream. Because dreams change, more often than we’d like to think, there is no arriving. You know the expression, “You’ve made it!” Sure, but only up to this point. Big picture: We never truly “make it” because the finish line always moves. The finish line is a horizon. Like today, we’re spending a few hours to celebrate your graduation, and deservedly so! But this ceremony—organized to formalize you “making it”—will run for a few hours and then end. The living, the dreaming—that’s never going to stop. What’s next? College? What comes after college?

Pursuing dreams is pursuing life. And since life naturally comes with challenges, we will need to be resilient. It’s part of the package. Now I can’t say how you can become resilient. That’s something we learn at our own pace. But, I can share who and what I think could help you face all the chaos and joy up ahead. 

There are three: 

Family and friends. I won’t elaborate about family anymore, instead, I’ll talk about your chosen family: your friends. Do your friends have your back? Do they inspire you to do better in school? Are they as kind and respectful to the janitors as they are to the principal? If they are, then these are the people you want to keep in your lives.

A strong sense of self. As my favorite author Toni Morrison once wrote, “You are your best thing.” Every day is a chance to get to know yourself better, to mold your beliefs and values, to embrace your strengths and weaknesses, to grow in the right direction, to listen to your conscience, and check if what you do when no one is watching is consistent with who you are or with who you want to be.

Gratitude. Here, I’m talking about the little things. Being grateful for things like a good breakfast, a nice conversation with somebody you just met, or finding money in your pocket. Gratitude shifts our perspectives. By being grateful, I think you’ll have a happier time.

And just as you can shift perspectives or think of a new dream, you can also create your own definition of success. You get to define what success looks like to you. Maybe to one of you success means graduating first in class, then in that regard, one of you is successful. But maybe success to you looks like this: after a depressing two years of remote learning, in spite of all that you’ve had to overcome during this pandemic, you are graduating senior high school! Face-to-face, even. If that’s true for all of you, and I hope it is, then you should be enjoying this success.

When I was 13, I had a dream of doing air splits. Success looked like this photograph. And then I moved on to do other things. You dreamed about this day and you got here. In a few hours, days, or weeks, you’ll be off to pursue other dreams. Take a moment to be grateful. I want you to look around, this right here, you are living a dream you once pursued. But this dream is done, now you can continue pursuing more of your life.

Thank you.

[jerardeusebio]

just your typical anniversary rant

Dylan and I have been married many times. At least this is what I know and what I’ve been thinking about as we enter our ninth year of being in a relationship. He is in the shower when I ask him, “When did you know you wanted to marry me?” 

We throw the M word around often enough, even if it doesn’t serve a function in our lives. It’s not a touchy subject. We’ve talked about getting married countless times. I’ve even made us a Pinterest board for it. This board is now at least four years old—our little toddler.

“Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you,” he says, “But it’s always been like that for me. I was always looking for a life partner. So, I can’t answer your question because it was more of my disposition.”

I begin to curl floss on my index finger. “I think you’re talking about my disposition, not yours.”“Nope,” he quips. “I was always like that. I wouldn’t have committed had I felt you weren’t husband material.”

I realize it’s Day 2,921 of quibbling over semantics. Okay. I sigh and then reply, “The whole entire world can tell that I’m the more romantic one.” I joke, but it’s true. I have, on many occasions, confessed to him that he’s the love of my life. 

“Wow.” He gets the Mariah song reference in my reply. Of course he does.

“Well, then let me rephrase my question,” I say. “When did you realize that we were going to be a lifelong thing?”

“Uhm,” he responds. His hands appears from behind the shower curtain to grab his towel. “Early days.”

“Within our first year? First few months?”

“The first week.”

I bask in the moment. “Same.”

He walks out of the bathroom as I finish brushing my teeth in silence.

At least in the social sense, we’re as good as married. We’ve built our lives around each other and each others’ family and friends. That was a nonnegotiable for both of us, right from the start. But we also know this is not good enough.We still want to get married (not in the religious sense) because we want to enjoy its legal and economic implications. For one, it would be nice to have our assets from hereon be conjugal. We want to be each other’s heir when the time comes. And when faced with having to make tough decisions in the hospital, we want the other to be our default health care proxy. It would be nice if these concerns were automatically taken care of by being married. But since we can’t, and in spite of our impassioned resistance against scarcity thinking and excessive anxiety over what the future may bring, we’ve made attempts to get around these issues by creating a joint bank account, writing our holographic last will and testament, and telling our family about our wishes.

Sometime after our bathroom talk, we find ourselves in bed, browsing Netflix titles on my iPad. We check out the preview of this reality show where men and women are made to date without having them see each other. A literal wall is placed between would-be couples and that’s how they talk and “date.” In the preview, apparently, some of them will get engaged later on. That’s when the fun part starts, too, because then they’ll have to deal with finally “seeing” who they’re engaged with. Drama!

We don’t finish the preview. It is great misfortune enough to be able to easily imagine how a show like that could end, with the winners tying the knot, only to end up being on some tabloid for calling it quits some months later.

“The straights are at it again,” I blurt out.

Dylan shakes his head. "Ridiculous.” 

We finally find something else to watch. A comedy. Somewhere between the laughing and the snickering, I get distracted. My eyes move away from the screen and land on our photo on the wall. Taken on Christmas Eve of 2017 at the Angkor Wat, in the frame we are caught smiling as little flowers from a nearby tree fall around us. I sink a little bit, at the thought that we may never get to really marry, that this was it for people like us. We can accumulate property, grow our joint investments, bring the other to the emergency room, travel around the world in matching luggage, buy each other’s parents the fanciest gifts, rescue all the kittens caught in a ditch, bury dead pets together, appear in each others’ family portraits, care for each others’ relatives, nurse each other in our old age, sleep in one bed for the rest of our lives and still never really get to be recognized by the state as a union.

What a fucking joke.

Happy anniversary to us?

[jerardeusebio]

2007 Call

been listening to myself of 15 years ago— recently. he wasn’t  quite right and wanted to end things. tonight,  I send him a message.  ‘it gets better, but you’ll have to  choose, at every turn, to say yes to day,  no to night.’ 

and I’m still— here because he’s  heard me.

[jerardeusebio]

After living in Pasay for more than five years, Dylan and I said goodbye to the city and the rest of Metro Manila sometime in 2019. He was set to begin his sabbatical. I had already moved back to Los Baños mid 2018 to start my dream job. Our last day there was spent loading a jeepney with all our possessions, which were to be split among our two homes, a mere 50-minute drive apart.

I personally felt relieved that we moved out of the city. I knew we had both finished our business there. Of course, we brought with us the memories and traumas of living in Metro Manila. There was no escaping how sad and oppressive living situations could be in the Philippines, and city living had its own brand of sorrow. Oftentimes, things were as polar as ever. I only have to look back at my McKinley Hill job: I grew numb seeing, on a daily basis, a wall (a mere line!), between the squalor of Taguig’s informal settlers and the opulence of my workplace, an area where even ambulant vendors were not allowed. These years spent in the Metro, as they were bound to do, immersed us. 

Looking back, Pasay had been our Point A for many of the sociopolitical events that we joined, like Pope Francis’s 2015 visit and the People Power Monument protest against the burial of Ferdinand Marcos in the Libingan ng mga Bayani in 2016. Even in bed, we went online to fight off trolls before the May 2016 elections. Pasay was also where we were as Duterte’s Drug War raged on, as our ever-buzzing, ever-lit neighboring funeral homes were quick to remind us for countless nights.

This weekend, we seem to have gone full circle—back to Point A—as we converged with people, hundreds of thousands of them, in this fight for good governance. 

[jerardeusebio]

Happy Wednesday!

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Sa Gobyernong Tapat, #AngatBuhayLahat.

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Bye, January! 👋🏽

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3️3️ today!

[jerardeusebio]

Privy: A Bedroom Tour

Prologue

The house I grew up in was built by my great grandfather, Lolo Juan, in the '80s. When I say built, I don't mean he sat by the construction site and looked at the construction workers as they toiled away with their spades and trowels. With his own hands, he raised from the ground what would become his wedding gift to my parents. And though that house went through an expansion in the late ‘90s (construction work was so major we had to move out of it for a few months), the idea still amazes me to this day, every time I notice the original walls—thick and uneven in places—ever so conspicuous to a trained eye. These days I still see those walls, when I go there to eat and spend time with my family. I have to “go” to this house because I moved out of it in 2005.

When my family pooled enough funds to renovate the other house (we call it kabila)—an older, slightly smaller building within our family’s compound—adjacent to our home, I didn’t realize it was going to change things for me permanently. For many years, we had leased it to a lovely and dear family, but since my cousin from Mindoro, Jelina, and I were about to start attending the university here in Los Baños, we felt it was time to reclaim the space. And because adding an extension to the first house was out of the question, the grown ups decided to renovate this other house. We soon found out, Jelina and I, that we were not just getting a bedroom each, but a fully functional house with living and dining areas, a kitchen, two baths, and even a ping-pong area. (Our family does not play with college.) I felt that I was  just the lucky tag-along because Jelina and I were thick as thieves. This is the short version of why I presently have a house of my own, and why I live one rambutan tree away from my parents’ house. Jelina has since become a lawyer and a mother. As for me, well, I stayed in our house.

It has been 17 years since I moved into my bedroom, meaning it has also been that long since I started the task of transforming it, making it my own. This compulsion to transform spaces is characteristic of me, an established fact known by those who peopled my formative years. I imagine, though, how it could be new or perhaps confirmatory to casual acquaintances and friends. To illustrate: the first real dream I had for myself was to become an architect and/or an interior designer. (As a kid, I did not know the difference between the two.) And while this dream was short-lived, ceremoniously dashed by financial and logistical limitations, I never stopped being a frustrated interior designer. In fact, when we finally got cable when I was about 13, it was the Lifestyle Network and the HGTV specials, which aired on it, that I was glued to. And every so often, I would be moved by inspiration into sprucing up our home, a place totally unspruced by an electrical engineer and a physicist who seemed, to my uninformed eyes, beleaguered by other unworthy concerns. So as a child, I rearranged furniture, pointed to our good china and brought in potted plants whenever guests were expected. And for my visions that I couldn’t make real, I drew. I drew and fantasized about spaces and pretty things. Some of my fondest childhood memories come from being able to gussy up what little space I could, to make a thing of beauty out of the seemingly random things we owned. 

This flare for design was what I used as the strongest motivation to stay in my undergraduate program, BS Agriculture. I struggled with it at the beginning, but in the end was able to specialize in Landscaping. I felt that that was the closest thing I could get to an education in designing. The thought was potent enough to see me through graduation and even some recent passion projects. And this flare would never subside.

It took almost two decades and venerable strides to financial independence in order to fund this transformation, which really was a journey in itself. I initially wanted to just share the photos and leave it like that, without any of my narration, but I soon felt that this sharing was more than just a reporting of the present.

All about the journey, this is an account of the past and an ode to the future. I’m only capturing my space right at this particular moment, a blip along the long in-between. It just so happened that, now, my room is at its closest to looking and feeling like a reflection of my taste and personality. It feels like a good moment to pause.

Here, I hope to make you privy to my personal space and the stories about the things I willed to stay near. 

Though my house was wielded into existence for two college students, those two college students didn’t really get involved in its planning. We were just too young and couldn’t prospect enough to know better. In hindsight, though, it would have been nice if the two bedrooms were a lot bigger, even at the cost of a having smaller living area and kitchen. I say this because if asked today, I’d prioritize bedrooms over entertaining space. It is, after all, the one room in the world where we shed layers of ourselves and be completely vulnerable in, a liberating and frightful idea. But alas! The concrete has been dry since 2005, and my room has kept its original dimensions: 3.0 x 3.5 meters. 

At the center of the room is the bed. It’s there because I don’t like sleeping too close to the windows (scary stories from childhood leave their marks), and I have two windows: one facing the north and the other west. The bed’s location has worked for me in the long run. It’s made me feel centered, even as I sleep. The placement also gives primacy to what the bedroom is really most for. Having stuck to this idea, I wake up and the first thing I do is fix my bed. This is a source of pride for me. It becomes the first task and accomplishment of the day. As William McCraven once said about making one’s own bed, “If you can't do the little things right, you will never do the big things right.”

The bedstead was my gift to Dylan, back when we kept a flat in the city, when we were both still working in Makati. In our city days, Dylan and I slept on a foam mattress. This was something I didn’t prefer, being that I’m a child of one Rose Eusebio, who engraved in my mind pithy expressions like, “You spend a third of your life sleeping, invest in your sleep.” So the mattress under these navy blue Akemi sheets is new. It’s orthopaedic and so is, as the word “invest” suggests, one of my most expensive purchases from last year.

Next to my bed is a wall of photographs, arranged to give a semblance of a family tree, though, it really isn’t. I do feel like an elaborate arrangement like this takes away from the focal point of a bedroom. Not a smart design choice. It also adds to the rooms “museum” feels, as one of Dylan’s colleagues put it. But I justify it, to myself at least, using my sentimentality. 

This wall of photographs is my favorite spot and my most personal display. Here are descriptions of the images, from top to bottom, left to right: my parents at Christmas 2006; my brother Marky with our first dog Jana (Yuh-nuh); me eating dinuguan for the first, and most likely the last, time (what can I say, it was an event); a portrait of my sister Thea taken by me; a photo from the day of my baptism in Adelaide, 1989; my 25th birthday portrait; me with my late Grandma Sally; the males of the family in our garden, c. 2004;  the females of the family in Lucban, Quezon, c. 2004; me next to my late Grandma Lety and a Mer-nel’s cake in honor of my First Communion; a faded photograph of me on my 2nd birthday next to my late Ninang Gloria; and, lastly, a photograph of me and my mother.

Below the wall of photographs is a desk. I consider it to be a prized possession for a handful of reasons. For starters, I painted it its cream color in 2013. I also added the gilded scallop detail on its front and the similar gilded trimmings on either side (unseen). I was told this used to be my grandfather’s typewriter table. This means it’s old, which to me translates to being storied and precious. And because its height is odd (lower than a work desk should be), it has prevented me from working on it. This is desirable. I believe, more than ever, that work should stay outside the bedroom, especially if it could be helped. So the desk acts as my nightstand, holding books I am or should be reading, this champagne colored lamp (my only source of light at night), and a framed photograph of me on my mother’s lap. The image was taken by my father, when I was less than year old in Adelaide, South Australia. 

I am also told that the desk came with this chair. Both of these pieces were originally brown. But unlike the table, the chair was almost a goner. One could have been easily forgiven for dismantling it, using its parts for kindling. But I  refused do that, repairing and refurbishing it with the vigor of a procrastinating graduate student. I painted it to match its desk, and even upholstered it myself with this bird and orchid canvas from The Fabric Store. Today, I sit there to read or write down notes in my planner. In the photo, on the chair is a teddy bear, which I rescued from being thrown away. Dylan and I named it Akemi (after the bedsheets) as a joke, really, but for some reason it stuck. I saved and kept Akemi because he reminds me of one of the first (and saddest) books I’ve ever read as a child in the school library, The Velveteen Rabbit.

If you’re still reading up to this part and haven’t yet picked it up , then let me just come clean: I am cloyingly sentimental.

More proof of this comes next, with what I choose to keep above my head when I sleep: a framed copy of my first broadsheet publication. “A beautiful heart” was written and published in 2011, back when I was still working in a basement laboratory (my first job!). Its coming out into the world proved to be a pivotal point in my life. Just this one essay connected me to so many people who would later be instrumental in the shifts and changes in my life, and the overwhelming response I received from friends and strangers who read it was what pushed me to decide to get an education in creative writing. I had none of that whatsoever when I wrote the piece. Because of its significance, the essay is honored this way. Every year, on its anniversary (October 1), I read it here and reflect on the growing number of years between then and now.

Across the desk would be the reading nook. As a personal rule, this space is dedicated to reading books and materials for leisure, though in my line work, the distinctions blur every now and then. The bookshelves were built and installed around 2008 by an exceptionally skilled local woodworker we called Mang Roland. It’s pretty high, and one needs to stand on a chair to access the books, so I really only store books that I’ve read there. My favorite ones, which I usually also use as references for my creative writing classes, are either on the living room shelves or at the office.

The posh looking seat here, “The Chair” as I’d like to call it, is the newest addition to the nook and the room. I got it a few days before Christmas 2021, and I’ve just been smitten with it. As a kid obsessed with Mariah Carey and her infamous MTV Cribs episode, I feel like pieces such as this epitomize glamor, and I’ve moved past caring about being perceived as pretentious or gaudy or colonized. Looking at “The Chair” everyday since it arrived has given me much joy, and mostly for what it signifies I do have now: financial stability and independence. And “The Chair” being in my cart for a good four months before I decided to, you know, live a little, is proof enough that I really weighed things before I decided for it.

I consider reading to be a form of traveling, and so on the walls of this reading corner are two of my favorite travel photographs with Dylan. The left picture was taken by his brother, when we traveled to Samar in 2016. You can’t tell it at first glance, but we’re actually holding hands. The photograph on the right was taken on Christmas Eve 2017. We were touring the Angkor Wat Complex in Siem Reap as part of our unforgettable Indochina tour, and I just needed to frame the moment this way.

In between the framed travel photographs and the books is a special shrine. It’s what me and my friends call my Mariah Altar. Basically, it’s my Mariah Carey collection of concert tickets, mementos, and the CDs of hers I’ve amassed since I got my hands on Rainbow (1999)—my first official Mariah Carey CD—back in 2001. 

I credit Mariah for a lot of things, like pioneering rap artists and verses on mainstream songs and having had a number one single every year from 1990 to 2000. Oh, and she has also saved my life countless times. Apart from what I just mentioned and many more that I can’t possibly get into right now, she has also influenced my sensibilities, language, and style. Outside of my family, Mariah has had the most impact on my life. Her music has literally been the soundtrack to my whole life. And I giggle to admit that my bedroom’s decor is a budget, developing-country version of her Tribeca apartment in New York, photos of which appear in the November 2001 issue of Architectural Digest and November 2007 issue of Glamour.

Because my bedroom is probably only the size of one of Mariah’s bathrooms (no doubt), I can’t really have a walk-in closet. Not that I would want or even need one. When it comes to clothing, I believe, my sensibility and Mariah’s finally diverge.

Along with the built-in bookshelves, Mang Roland also created a custom armoire for me. I designed the entire thing, from the moulding outside down to the interior’s layout and measurements. Unfortunately, the wood-borers got to it. And after only about seven years, it had to go. I had to say goodbye to it, as I did Mang Roland, who passed away shortly after. 

Because the custom armoire was irreplaceable, I went for another built-in wardrobe. This time, I designed a bigger built-in steel frame. I used steel so, just in case the wooden parts get infested again, the structure could still stand. It was fabricated in 2019. Shortly after, the sliding mirror doors were added to it.

The most common compliment I get when I pull these doors open for family and friends is about how organized all my things are. (The only preparation I had to do before taking photographs of my room was to clean the mirrors.) Related this, I want to share two of my secrets: First, I read and applied Marie Kondo’s philosophy and techniques. And here I have to thank Dylan who seems to be always ten steps ahead of most people. He shared Marie Kondo’s books years before she even had her own Netflix show.

The second secret is my key takeaway from Marie Kondo’s books as well as the conclusion to many of my reflections on Stoicism and Buddhism: letting go. Right after I read Marie’s book, I gathered all my clothes, embraced and thanked them one by one, and then proceeded to let go of the items that no longer served a purpose to me. I still do this occasionally. I found that what happens next is that these things are given a chance to find their purpose and a home elsewhere, and that I’d end up with items that all have their purpose and proper place with me. This, ultimately, is how I have avoided clutter in the spaces I keep, and in my life as a whole.

On the right side of my wardrobe hangs my short-sleeved and patterned shirts. On the shelves below are the pamabahays—top and bottom matched and folded as one unit (another trick I learned from Dylan), all arranged in old shoe boxes. One side is for me, the other is for Dylan. On the middle shelf are the folded t-shirts arranged by color, and folded using a folding board. For this, I repurposed plastic certificate holders. (I got a ton of those during my first year as a UP faculty.) Doing this allows them to take consistent shape and form, and so stacking them is so much easier. The effect is also pleasing to the eyes. 

The lowest shelf is for shorts and pants, which I prefer to store in rolls. I use the same technique for my towels and bedsheets, which are stored in another room.

Though not really by design, the left side of the wardrobe has become the more formal side. Just like all of my clothes, the plain shirts are arranged by color. 

My brother Marky, in one of our many heated and passionate discussions, claimed that at least half of all my dress shirts are from him. I vehemently rebuked his statement only to find myself frowning in the mirror and at the truth, and admitting as much to him days later. It’s not a family secret that my brother has too many dress shirts. I’ve proposed multiple times about how convinced I am that it’s probably a clinical disorder. But while the discussion is not yet broached, I am the willing recipient of shirts he feels could help my style. (“You’re a UP professor, and should dress the part,” he would say, and I’d remind him to concentrate on the “UP” part of his statement.) Caught in this photograph are thirteen shirts, eight of which are from him. To my credit, I did spend a considerable sum having them altered for my svelter frame, and at least now I’ve publicly acknowledged it.

Under the shirts are these native boxes I got towards the end of 2020, through a Facebook seller, back when I was too ignorant to check out what Lazada was all about. That transaction was a first for me. I had to drive to a gas station (and through a bit of downpour) along SLEx to get them. And it was interesting, too, because the sellers were therapists. 

Now I have seven of these to hold various group of things like toiletries, underwear, socks, and out-of-season shirts. Having these boxes works for people like me (here’s another tip) who want to maintain the appearance of order. Things could stay chaotic inside these boxes and it won’t show. Managing an anxiety disorder for more than a decade has taught me clutter often triggers it.

I have two bigger versions of these native boxes below. They have lids, and so in them I’ve stored my backpacks and some older bags I use for travel. On top of these native boxes are displayed several bags, majority of which I received as gifts after finishing college and graduate school. As a reformed bag fiend, who once accumulated more than 20 bags and addressed the ridiculousness of it all by donating a dozen of them to charity, I’m proud to have held on to only these. Most of the year, particularly during the rainy months, I keep these bags in cloth bags for protection.

As you can tell by now, I’m a huge fan of using photographs to decorate my space. I believe I have amassed more than a hundred picture frames since 2005, some of which are next door and others are stored for ‘seasonal’ use. This is another testament to my sentimentality. (It’s becoming clearer and clearer that my sentimentality will be the ruin of me.) 

Beside the cologne bottles is a photograph of me and my godmother, Mary Lou, who’s also had tremendous influence in my life. She’s influenced my taste, my style, and has also given me access to hard-earned wisdom, culture, and material things, specifically ‘Stateside’ stuff, like the bags and scents I have, and all the other finer articles of clothing I keep in my wardrobe, at least the ones I didn’t get from Marky.

Far right is an ornately framed photograph of my family in a park in Australia. It’s one of the first photographs ever taken of us as a family. The golden butterfly ornament thingy is actually a face cream holder, and belonged either to my late Grandma Lety or Ninang Gloria. I keep it in near to remind me of both them.

On the side of my wardrobe are more framed photographs with the ribbon details. This series shows more tender moments in my life arranged, top to bottom, from younger to older. It’s the first thing one sees when they open the door, and it’s  sort of a tribute to time.

On the other side of my bed is this vanity stool that once belonged to Ninang Gloria. I reupholstered it to match the typewriter table’s chair. Below the seat is more storage space, where I keep my pandemic staples: alcohol, masks, and disinfecting wipes. On the seat are the books I’m currently reading and a basket to hold products I use at bedtime. 

One of the newer features in the room would be the Bluetooth speakers, cleverly hidden on either side of the bed. (A portion of is captured in the photo below, one will just need to zoom in a bit.) The placement and speakers were Dylan’s early Christmas gift, and we’ve already tested when we watched a horror flick over the holiday break. On the weekends or after a long, rough weekday, I play Mariah nonstop. Of course.

Epilogue

These days, whenever I contemplate my room, I can’t say I feel like I’ve made it. There are still so many things I wish were different or could be better about it. I still wish the room was bigger. There isn’t one great photograph of the whole space here because the camera I used, with its fixed 35mm lens, wasn’t capable of capturing everything from any angle. And there also aren’t any pictures of the windows because what we have are louvre windows, a design choice by the grownups I’m still trying to reconcile with. I dream of tearing down the north wall so it could lead me to an indoor garden. And so many days of last year were spent complaining about our rowdy neighbors and the business of the street nearest the bedroom. I’ve known for quite sometime now that the it does not exist. Or if it does, it is an ever-moving target.

I also don’t think that I’ve accessed some level of “success,” although maybe I have, at least relative to Little Jerard. What I do think of, almost daily at meditation, is about how all of this is headed to chaos and oblivion. Daily, I accept this to be the truth. I bring to mind so many things: Lolo Juan’s house and how it has changed beyond recognition; our dear neighbors who gave up their lease; Jelina, who’s now on a different island; my BS degree; all my old clothes and bags; Mang Roland’s armoire; and just all the people I love, gone and never coming back, their faces forever frozen in photographs in my room. Bringing to mind all these—everything and everyone I have ever loved and lost—I marvel and cower at life’s mysteries.

One of the reasons I decided to write this entry was to catch and honor this particular moment, a point in my life where I recognize an overwhelming gratitude for the space I have created for myself. I’m writing this while I can still jot down these bits of stories and thoughts, while I have the memories as fresh as they’ll ever be. I do this because I am certain that I and all of this—we—will have to go one day. And that’s fine.

Not to say I don’t often ask questions like, “Who will take care of this room when I’m gone? Who will guard these mementos? Who will keep these ribbons dusted, glued, and 3M-ed to the wall?” For many, the worst answer to these questions would be “no one.” But I’ve long accepted this to be the most likely answer. I can’t see how I’ll have an heir, apart from my younger sister. And she may not even want to keep the room as it is. However it’ll be, all of these things I have collected and curated so painstakingly will, piece by piece, be disposed of. Maybe not in a day or a month, maybe not even in a year, but they will all eventually get there.

Meditation has helped me confront and embrace grim thoughts such as these by accepting them as possible, as happening. And then I lead myself to see how these thoughts ultimately—fortuitously—don’t and won’t matter at all. Coming to terms with life’s impermanence and our brief stay in places—some we even get to call home or my room—and embracing them all the same, has allowed me to be most grateful for what I have, both fleeting and lasting, and be most content with where I find myself presently: here and now.

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Birthday portraits from the last ten years (2012-2021)

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Have a safe weekend, baby!