Inspiration From Barbara Gonzales

I send in my vignettes to Barbara, and wrote a fan mail. My first.
(Read my Blue and a Lesson for Marilou writeups, October 2007. For some reason my hyperlinks don't show on this blog. Must be the background color?)

Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 20:11:44 +0800
Subject: Re: Thank you
From: "Barbara C. Gonzalez"
To: "76 Armi

Armi, thank you for sharing all this with me. You are a wonderful person.

The worm of pain that squirms inside you, weep, cry over him, but after a while you will stop. Keep crying for as long as you feel it necessary. Then one day it will be all over, just a memory.

Thank you once more.

On 10/11/07 2:43 PM, "Armi" wrote:

Hi Twee,

This may be spam to you, but I'd like to let you know that so far, I look forward to my Saturdays because of your class. I even fore go of a Boracay trip with friends this weekend because I love being in your class (and I'm glad I wont miss the class on Oct 20 when you'll be off to a wedding, because I will be off too- in Bangkok). I would like to share with you how I thought of the class, as we progressed.

Finally, I would like to say Thank You, for having this class, sharing your talent, and inspiring me to be a more courageous woman.

10/1/07

We sit in class enraptured by the lines read by each one, all full of emotions, and sometimes ending in tears. Here we are, strangers in the room, baring ourselves, sometimes letting go of feelings so raw, you almost cry in empathy. Sometimes we'd all erupt in laughter, closing our eyes while we listen as the words are read, and it is played out in our minds. Sometimes, when a good vignette is read, we clap our hands, and people remark, sigh, "That was good." I realized this class is not just about writing, but about journeys in life taken by each of the participant, and we are witnesses, as each recurring theme of our lives slowly reveal itself as the weeks go on. This is for Marilou, who is more heartbroken than me, struggling to keep afloat, as her writing keeps leading her back to Frank, her husband, whom she recently lost. She is unsure how to go on with life, with young kids and not enough experience with life's struggles to be really confident that she can make it alone. This is also for Bernadette, who chose to stay in a marriage that is keeping her hungry for self expression. We have 3 guys in class, a Dentsu advertising guy, a 60 something doctor, an 18 year old boy who is so full of angst we all think there's something wrong with him, a 24 year old virgin, a married woman with 3 kids whose poem is about Maybe I'll Lose Weight, another twentysomething girl who also seems restless and is in transition, and my favorite, Tita Nida who writes about Growing Old means Growing Soft, and Maybe If I'm Thin I'll be Mean..

I think there will be more arguments next time in class, and yes, even more tears. In the meantime, I dedicate this to my classmate, Marilou.

( I actually wrote about A Lesson in Letting Go inspired by her struggle, and of course, from mine.)


10/8/07

Believe it or not, all of us, though solely interested in our own progress in creative writing, looked forward to each one’s readings. We know each one has their own style, and slowly, we can already hear the difference in our works from the past weeks. Twee said, “I can now hear your voices. This is what clustering does to your writing, you find your own voices.“

The doctor has now slowly used less medical terms as he described the color white telling a story about a patient friend describing a very bright light at the end of the tunnel. We saw the marked difference in his writing and still, he would express his discomfort about writing the "natural way". Twee tells him to stop censoring, to tell his left brain to shutdown. Bonnie, the creative guy read about A Lesson in Photography, and as I listened, I closed my eyes as he keeps repeating the line, “Tell me a story” to create recurrences in his vignette. I saw each one of the pictures as he read it, even with my eyes closed-- now that is what photography is all about, telling a story! Bonnie is very creative and when asked to write about color, his vignette was, “The Darker Side of White”, deprecating white vs brown sugar, white rice vs brown rice, and so on..

Marilou still wrote about Frank, while Bernadette (the 40 year old married to a 70 year old) read A Lesson in Letting Go, which is more aptly titled “A Lesson on Coming”. (Yes, that kind). I sat next to her, so I tell everyone I am not reading my Letting Go piece, and instead chose to read the Driving Lesson. Marilou requests I read both, but no, I have decided already after majority of the votes I took from friends said hands down, I should read the sadder, melancholic one. Twee wanted me to read the Letting Go piece too, but I figured she must have written about it a thousand and one (better) ways (more on that later). It was fun to read my inspirational piece, and as I looked up to the men (as I read the line about being undmindful of how men see girls drive), the doctor’s eyes were twinkling, and when I finished everyone clapped and Twee said it was good. Ysabel, the 24-year old Povedan alumna told me she loved it, “It’s really all in the mind noh?”, and I remembered Puto, my staff, who is trying to learn how to drive who said she printed this poem from my blog to inspire her to drive. Go girl, you can do it!

Marilou also intimated to me that she only learned to drive after Frank died; she had no choice (Ahh, that is why she always asks to be led out of Salcedo to Ayala Avenue every Saturday. I drove ahead, leading her this week, and we wave goodbye at AIM).

Even Ysabel started using wonderful words, as she used Tumble Down for her recurring piece, and it was great to listen as she used these two words to describe how she should live her life. Tumble Down, make a mess, let go, have fun, don’t be afraid to make mistakes, she seemed to say.

***
I borrowed Twee’s book, “How Do You Know Your Pearls Are Real?:On Single Parenthood and Other Ms. Adventures.”

Last night, as I lit up my green tea home fragrance oil after insidiously, viciously cleaning my toilet, prepped my feet up, fluffed up the pillows and turned on the airconditioning, I started reading. She writes so well, all these feelings associated from everything, from the mundane to the ordinary, to the gut-wrenching emotions pulled from girth, the knife-sharp images about her separation, the end of her marriage, and her fight to be alone, earning her own money and coming into her own as a woman, brought alive, from pages of her diaries, her poems, lessons she learned about her men, and put out there for everyone to see. I text her that I can now understand why she chose to hie away to Cebu the day her book was released in 1991. I also told her I could relate, and that I am stopping reading her book for the next few days because they started to make me feel the scars and the writhing, living worm traversing inside my blood that I kept asleep, thinking it has gone away, flushed out of the tear ducts that now remained dry. I was so wrong.

I started weeping and realized it will leave me scarred forever.


Armi