How Deep Do Ferns Grow?

There was a fern that wanted to attach itself to a tree, the way an orchid hangs off driftwood. But ferns (such a goofy thing to be called) are supposed to sprout out of dirt, unkempt, like a full head of curly hair. The tree told the fern so. And anyway, there wasn't anything that the fern could do; it was not a vine that could creep along and wrap itself around the tree. It was staying where it was.

The fern dug its roots deep, long tendrils of root snaking their way deeper and deeper into the ground. Maybe the tendrils snaking underground could wind a path to the roots of the tree, and meander up, around the bark, latch on, and not let go. The fern had no idea that its roots can only dig down, and not all the way across another part of a garden. Maybe the tree had roots deep deep underground that the fern's roots could tangle with eventually. But how could the fern be sure? Do fern roots go that far?

The pain of the whole thing is that the tree was just there—had the fern been a weed, it would take only a week or so to cover the ground and join the tree's base. Had the fern been a vine, it would have been a matter of nothing to crawl over branches of the one or two plants between them, and say hello. (Or would it? The fern really wasn't sure; it was a fern and not a vine.) Best yet, if the fern had been a sunflower, it would have faced towards the sun, period. No more orienting itself towards a tree, perhaps. Needless to say, if only the fern had been a whole host of things that it wasn't, things would have been different. And needless to say, amidst all of this, the tree was just there.

The fern didn't even know what was so important about growing on the tree. It had never wanted—does not want to be—an orchid or any other aerial plant. A fern it is, and a fern it intends to stay. Just growing on a tree.

And so the fern digs its roots down, knowing that it is digging down, and not across to where the tree was (just there). Someday, the fern would learn that some things grow in pots, some things grow in water, and not everything grows on trees.

My Cat and I

I'm not a fresh 19-year-old anymore. Yesterday (Sunday) I went to Moonleaf. I've only been there once or twice before, so on a whim, I settled on a peppermint milk tea in the only size they have (which is huge).

In other milk tea shops, I would order only 25 or 50 percent sugar. This was a hundred percent. I sat down on one of Moonleaf's low benches, put my feet up and read some stories on my phone while sipping. Thirty minutes in, and I haven't even worked through a fourth of the liquid in my plastic cup.

I thought something salty would help me finish my milk tea, so I found a place to order a 5 o'clock dinner. By the time I had eaten as much as I could of my chicken (and some fried rice, which was oily, as fried rice always is) the plastic cup was three-fourths of the way empty. It was only six pm then. I went home, threw the rest of the tea away, and did not eat anything else until the next morning, i.e. today.

I woke up dry-heaving and dizzy. I spent the better part of the morning this way, heaving but having nothing to show for it, so I decided to just go on sick leave. I know how incredibly lame "sugar overload" looks on a sick leave form---only toddlers and probably midgets get that, for God's sake. I put in "dizziness" instead, which is no less lame, come to think of it, and slept off my sugar hangover until it was too late to even go on halfday to work.

Bedridden from sugar. When just last May, I was chugging two liters of Gatorade a day and it didn't faze me at all. I quit my Gatorade habit when June rolled in, and only less than a month later, here I am, getting stuck in bed for pigging out.

And how did I spend what was left of today? Oh with nothing much: just folded my clothes, picked up my laundry, then went to Globe to get my postpaid plan downsized because I find it wasteful. Maybe next week, I'll find a tai chi class in a park, get healthier. Then I'll get fitted for dentures and find a lawyer to finalize my will.

Coincidentally, my pet (and spirit animal) Letty, must be feeling the onset of undue age, too. Letty has this habit of climbing into my mother's bed when she isn't there, and gets all whiny when we take him off it. Now that bed is really luxurious, and really important to my mother. Our whole family can fit comfortably into that bed, and it's fitted with this huge orthopedic mattress that's so heavy, you can drop it on someone you want dead. When I see my mother sleeping in the living room, I suspect that she has sinned, maybe gossipped at the office or something, and doesn't want to lie on the mattress until she has confessed to a priest.

And today, Letty got into that bed, and pissed in it.

This is so unlike Letty. There was a time when he almost came into the house with a rat. We all yelled our disgust and refused to let him in, and he seemed to understand, because for the next few days he kept strictly to the floor, a deviation from his habits. And during typhoon Yolanda, when it was pitch dark and really really windy and stormy outside, he still begged to be let out to do his thing. And at two years old, he's no candidate for bladder failure. Besides, cats won't piss in the same place they like to sleep in. What's going on?

I tell my sister that Letty is probably angry at something and is letting us know about it. My sister says Letty just has an attitude problem, and wants the big-ass bed all to himself. My mother is just---

Reportedly, Letty has been banished to the box of shame, an empty, rectangular laundry basket that was lying around the house. I don't know if he feels punished though. Cats love boxes.

On Carrying On

It was one of those days when everything seemed determined to go wrong. I woke up late; while putting on liquid eyeliner my hand slipped and i got a zebra line running up to my eyebrow (and this after I've put on eyeshadow); the bus I was riding to get to work was tailing an asshole of a bus that stopped quite lengthily in the middle of Edsa (to drop off a bunch of passengers), stopping diagonally, taking up two lanes (God typing that phrase made me really, really angry); I forgot my mp3 player at home and had to listen to "Sana Ay Ikaw Na Nga" in the bus (and I emoted, which made a good song a bad thing); and last but not the least aggravating, I got late for work because of the office building's elevators, which were probably programmed by a piece of shit. By the time I got to my desk I was just ready to die. Time check, 10am.

I tried to finish all my pending work, because next week I want to attend a 2-day seminar, and I havent even finished a third of what needs to be done. I edited from 10:30 to 12:45, went to lunch, came back at 2, and lost my work by 4, when MS Word crashed. I decided to stay at work until 8:30, to redo everything. My work is unfinished.

On the bus home I caught myself grinding my teeth so I decided to go to Friuli to make myself feel better. I ordered a three-cheese pizza, that emerged as everything I love: earthy, salty, gooey and soft. Problem was, a really really loud group of three were at a table beside mine, laughing really really loud. If I could, I would beseech Satan to reserve a circle of hell for people who don't even try to not be loud in crowded spaces. (On a sidenote, if such a circle exists, it's probably full of Filipinos. We're a noisy bunch.)

The loud group was laughing because apparently, a loud girl among them went to a sleepover, to find that she was the only girl attending. Now it seems that I really really needed my peace and quiet, because at the moment I didn't care if the sleepover turned into a full-blown orgy and loud girl would be willing to share the sleepover address for future reference. I started daydreaming of myself leaning over to their table and yelling, "SHUT YOUR FACECUNT." And then I realized that I do swear really colorfully when angry (whether to myself or out loud) and wondered whether I should try to change, once my rage over the level of noise in that teeny tiny restaurant has passed.

I walked home and now I'm in bed, really exhausted. I'm really exhausted but at the same time still really twitchy, which is a really shitty place to be. I was just going to close my eyes and wait for exhaustion to take over, but I remembered that eating lots of dairy before sleep makes dreams really vivid, and even without dairy, I have really vivid dreams that amuse everyone but myself. Given my dreaming track record, I wouldn't be surprised if my dream just replays every single moment of this day, from waking up late to working overtime to getting angry over hearing what sounds like a porno plotline. So here I am, writing it all down, hoping that none of those things make an appearance when I close my eyes.

Instead, I would much rather dream of how my bedroom is, this hour before sleeping: The fan is blowing a cool and gentle wind. It is almost completely dark, just the way I like it. There are no barking dogs or passing vehicles or singing neighbors. Everything has gone quiet. It's as if the world has thrown up its hands, saying, "i'm done with you for today. You win."