Supreme satisfaction
Almost five years ago, two girl friends and I sat in a corner booth of what was then a new bar along Emerald Avenue in Ortigas. We hadn’t been night owls and party girls for a while (having left all that in those post-college days when the newfound-purchasing power supplied by newly minted entry-level jobs), so the cocktails were making us heady at 7:30 in the evening. Drink after drink, the cold cocktail glasses left damp water rings on the brown paper placemats. There, under the watchful eye of a framed John Cusack carrying a dinosaur of a boombox in The Sure Thing (who, unlike our gimmick-girl habits, we had not yet outgrown), we drew the lives we wanted to have on the placemats. On the back of each other’s drawings, or what many people call “vision boards”, we signed notes of support.
My drawing had airplanes (to summon more travel into my life), books (to help me imagine future volumes to my name), and of course, and a house on the beach surrounded sand and palm groves (after all, who doesn’t want to live by sea?). And because we are who are friends are, my two girl friends, Maya and Apol, had similar aspirations on their drawings — adventures in foreign lands, stories and books (written by them) and other passion projects, and interesting times in love and life.
Five years and many drawings later, I am amazed at how the power of visualization can help us write our own personal narratives. Five years since that night, I am amazed to find that we are living the lives we had drawn with crooked lines, on flimsy brown paper. In October, Maya, who is now based in Singapore as an editor of a travel magazine, is also launching a novel to be published by Marshall Cavendish in Singapore. Maya is the author of Summit Book’s bestselling chick lit novel, The Breakup Diaries. I can’t spill the beans just yet, but this much I can say: Her new book, entitled Undercover Tai Tai, promises unrelenting fun in the world of espionage, glamour, and super deluxe spa sessions.
Apol, on the other hand, must have drawn her travel images pretty clearly five years ago — she has moved several time zones away, and into the postcard perfect region we’ve all come to know quite well via Peter Mayle’s books: Provence, in the South of France. She’s always been a no-holds-barred kind of girl, so when the time came to transplant herself into married life, in a new place with a whole new culture and an entirely different language, she became the very embodiment of nangangareer. In less than three years, she learned the language and acquired the lifestyle, set up a business of handmade products (drool over them at www.lapomme.etsy.com), and even wrote a book about it. Provenciana, which chronicles her adventures — both hilarious and moving — in the South of France, is set to hit bookstores in Metro Manila this month.
As for myself, every week I’ve found a way to try to do as my friends do and contribute to the greater narrative of the Pinay — for better or worse — in a space called Yellow Light in Supreme. A year later, perhaps the column head needs a little bit of explaining. The goals I set for myself have always been flashing the green light (whenever I feel the weight of frustration bear down, I whisper to myself, no matter how worn and raspy-voiced from trying too hard, “Go lang nang go!”). A yellow light allows me to pause, think, consider alternatives, or just wax philosophical to buy myself more time.
It’s been a year of almost weekly pausing and thinking, considering the alternatives and waxing philosophical about life as a thirtysomething in the city, and whatever these thoughts may amount to, they’re all part of the a process of finding personal satisfaction. And perhaps part of a future book. As the great Nora Ephron says, “Everything is copy.”
