What finds you when you're ready to see

A long time ago, my heart was broken. He was a friend, one whose love I thought I couldn't return, until one day I did, and it was too late. I was distraught; I thought I had finally found perfect love, and, the blind idiot that I was, had managed to lose it.

But I knew nothing would come out of dwelling in my misery. To get over that heartbreak--and, more importantly, to get over hating myself--I went on a mission to focus on life's messages of love for me.

By love, I didn't mean romantic love; I meant the love that says I am always blessed, that I haven't missed out on any of life's joys, and that the happiness that I thought I'd lost was still there for me to delight in, to take as mine, to give to someone else.

Still, even if I didn't mean romantic love, and because I had missed love even when it was staring me in the face, I wanted life to tell me it loved me by sending me, why, yes, hearts. What could be more obvious, more telling, than hearts?

People who know me well now know me to be a collector of hearts. But I don't collect heart-shaped things, at least not in the normal sense of the word. Instead, I take pictures of hearts that I happen upon, like that little heart-shaped leatherette purple patch that covered a hole in the seat of a Cubao-bound jeepney or a tiny red heart that I found in a shoe label in a dusty outlet store in Cubao X.

These are life's messages of love for me; they make me happy. You could say I healed my heart with whimsy.

Early on in this personal mission, I found that you find what you are looking for because you've made yourself ready to see. But I also found that what you think you will find because you've made yourself ready to see is nothing compared to what actually finds you.

A long time ago, one early afternoon when my heart was still broken, I was wading in the low-tide waters of Dumaluan Beach, just feeling the sand in my toes, looking at the tiny little fish, trying my very best not to think of someone and miserably failing.

Send me a sign that it's going to be okay, I whispered to the Universe, tell me it's still love eventually.

In the glimmering waters, a tiny pinprick of light sparkled at me. Is that a piece of broken glass? I thought to myself, pausing for a few seconds before realizing one gentle wave could wash out any hope of an answer. Quickly, I knelt in the water, picked up a fistful of sand, and opened my hand to find a twinkling pink heart-shaped gemstone, so small it could have fallen from somebody's ring.

What could be more obvious, more telling, than hearts?

I am (still) here

A friend reminded me of my blog, asked me, "Didn't you get a domain name because you wanted to start blogging regularly?" All I had were six posts since November 2012, many of them recycled from the old blog.

I felt like a fresh start again, I wanted to delete my posts all over again, I wanted even to buy a new domain name.

But I stopped myself and decided to merge old blog and new blog and move forward from there.

Of course that meant having to read through some 300 posts from 2007, and that meant facing my younger self with her promises of commitment and changes and the turning of new chapters. Confronting myself, my personal nightmare.

But here we are. New template, old stories told, new stories to be written.

Here we are.

Meet Bartender Jhun

We had stopped by for a couple of drinks -- a mojito for me, a margarita for Marchie -- before we called it a night, but we ended up hanging out at the bar, chatting up the bartender. What started out as a request for a shorter straw soon became a telling of his life story. He was happy to serve it to us, too, in between his bartending tasks. He wasn't actually that busy anymore; it was around 11 p.m. on a Saturday night in Taguig City, where curfew closes establishments at 2 a.m., and the bar was already close to empty.

The first thing Jhun confessed was that he used to have an office job: He worked as a collector for Vintage Sports when it still owned the rights to broadcast PBA games. He would collect hundreds of thousands of pesos a week for the company, he said, and he was handling the smallest accounts.

Jhun told us that he was a hard worker, but more than that, he was an eager learner. Once, he broke a computer keyboard in his desire to learn how to use the damn machine -- and it wasn't out of frustration too; he was seriously practicing.

When Vintage Sports aired its last PBA game in 1999, Jhun found himself switching careers: He became personal butler to his boss. He liked that it was something new, and he was really up to the challenge. He learned what he could on the job; he taught himself the art of butlering as he served meals and drinks in his boss' steady stream of meetings.

When his boss decided to open a bar and restaurant in Greenbelt 2, Makati, Jhun was assigned there to be his boss' "eyes and ears." He started out as server and, fascinated by the art of mixing drinks, soon asked to be trained as bartender. Happily, his boss approved his request.

This career shift put him under the mentoring of an expert bartender, he said, one who had had real training, had worked all over the world, and had tended bar for international personalities. One of the names Jhun mentioned was Arnold Schwarzenegger, in perhaps, his Planet Hollywood.

And we come to the part of the story that I like best.

Jhun, ever the eager learner, wasn't content with just learning on the job. He brought home empty bottles to familiarize himself with all the alcohol beverages that would go into the drinks. He put them on a shelf and practiced grabbing bottles and pretend-cocktail mixing. He would also rotate several bottles on top of his television so he would have them in sight when watching TV and commit them to memory.

Complimentary shots of Black Tasha

A few months and a TESDA course later, Jhun was already quite adept at mixing drinks. He was already experimenting, and, if I remember the story correctly, he already had a couple of originals to his name. He shared the recipes and some related anecdotes with us, but I wasn't really taking down notes.

Jhun's mentor soon moved to another bar called Brava, in Serendra. A few months later, he asked Jhun to join him and, after much consideration and partly out of gratitude and largely because he wanted to learn more, Jhun did.

Brava had a more extensive bar list, so Jhun was soon adding more drinks to his repertoire. The Italian bar and restaurant was eventually sold to the owner of the bar that took over, the American bar and restaurant Murray & D'Vine. Jhun was among the staff members that were retained.

He is head bartender there now, and he can mix a mean mojito.

Jhun told us that bartending was his passion. He said he doesn't feel right when he's away for two days from behind the bar. He spoke with a father's pride when he talked about concocting his own cocktails.

He said he used to be very quiet, but he also taught himself the arts of socializing and conversation, and now chatting with strangers comes easily.

I asked Jhun if he ever wanted to open his own bar, and he said that he was more into mobile bars. He has done a couple of gigs with his son, who is now 18 and also getting into bartending. He's done bridal showers and private parties. He said he can do costing, he can source drinks, and he can adjust to clients' budgets. If you want to make sure everyone's drunk at the end of the party, he can factor that in too.

In case we ever needed a mobile bar, Marchie and I asked for his card.

Jhun handed each of us a business card, holding the card with both hands. I saw his hands were clean and manicured; his fingernails were shiny with clear polish. I didn't need to be told, but I liked that the man who made my mojito explained it to me: "A bartender must keep his hands clean," he said, "since we touch many of the ingredients with our fingers."

We left Jhun a generous tip, but I fear I got more from him than he did from us. It's not every day that I get to meet someone completely in touch with his passion, who worked hard to create the life he wanted for himself. He reminded me of what I had set out to do for myself when I moved to UP to take up creative writing.

I left that bar in good spirits. And it wasn't just the drinks.

***

Here's a video of Jhun mixing a mojito:

 

If you need a mobile bar this Holiday season, you might want to consider this guy. I have his number!

Or you could always drop by Murray's & D'Vine and chat with him.

How I know to love you

This is how I know to love you:

I have loved before without question.
I unwrapped its arrival like a gift,
finding leather shoes that didn’t fit
or a maybe a silk shirt in a color I didn’t like.

Yet I accepted the present
for what it was: something in my hand,
a thought so sweet and expectant.
My love was gallant.

I cupped it like droplets of water.
How I loved it, how I burned,
and, burning, how my love faded
with nothing left to return.

This is how I love you now:

I love you in a sea of questions,
or perhaps an ocean,
with question mark
after question mark
leaping in the salty spray.

I navigate with caution
because I want you present,
like water.

I don't want us to lose our way.

So, papercupgirl.com

I turned 35 recently, and I decided to gift myself with a domain name. I chose www.papercupgirl.com for two reasons. Two lines from two songs, to be precise.

First, my recently retired blog's name was inspired by a line from a Beatles song that goes "Words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup." I'd always imagined myself to be that kind of writer, inundated with words that flow endlessly into space that can barely contain it. This may be farthest from the truth now, but I'm hoping this new blog, this fresh
page, will be a cure.

The second reason--and this is something I've explained to only one person who bothered to ask--is the line from another song that goes, "Love a girl who holds the world in a paper cup." On good days, when I remember what I set out to do in this world, I still feel like I'm that
girl.

I have plans to resurrect some of the posts from my old blog, with better labels this time. My goal, really, is to make this blog display content in a more organized way. And then to fill it up.

Please be patient. For many writers, and I am no exception, there is nothing as daunting as an empty page.

All new stories will have a new home

Which is not to say that the old stories will no longer appear. I just wanted to start on a fresh page.

Please continue reading me at www.papercupgirl.com.

It's still a work in progress, so this is the biggest announcement it'll get, at least for now. But please turn the page with me!

<3

35

Wow. I'm in my mid-30s. I didn't plan this far in life -- but it's not too late to begin!

I'm so grateful for everything that has come my way.

And, unexpectedly, a dream of you

I didn't think I would wake up feeling derailed that morning and up to now, two days later. But that dream of you, after many years of nothing, has reopened that hidden part of my heart that loved you so desperately I prayed for you a happy life even if it meant you living one that was away from me. How can I miss you terribly if I still never want what we had back again?

Question

I woke up this morning with this thought in mind: How did I get here?

Going natural

I've been on this raw food diet for five days now. The things I've done to suit my new, but temporary, lifestyle are a little funny: I've brought bunches of bananas to the office; I've bought a whole cucumber and some tomatoes for lunch; right now, I have a big fat mango, a bunch of plantain bananas, and some aloe vera in a basket -- and I just came from work.

Except for that year or two I tried not eating red meat, I've always been a fat-eating, salt-craving carnivore. This, what I am attempting now, is an interesting struggle for me, but a struggle nevertheless. Especially since I don't have a kitchen at the apartment I live in on weekdays.

I'm not sure what permanent change I really want to make to my diet. Do I want to be vegetarian? Do I want to eat raw food forever? I don't know. All I know is that I want to be healthier because, well, I am not. I'm making these changes little by little, and maybe I'll find a health groove I can stay comfortably in.