Into Chapter 14.

Thursday, Thursday

Oh, to paint the colorful world of my novel using only words and without the aid of pigments and brushes!

Good morning, Cubao!

The sky is the repository of unrecalled dreams.

Into Chapter 13.

But, I'm calling it a day for writing.

Into Chapter 12.

Into Chapter 11.

Whatever and whomever you are against, they will always be there, wherever you go, no matter what time of day or night, and even when the tides turn.

Just be.

Become.

And let things happen.

Because, ultimately, it is your enemy who will destroy himself.

Writing a novel is the perfect respite from painting, and vice-versa.

Artists are always vindicated for their works--if not in their current lifetimes, in the next.

Good noon, Cubao!

The clouds are mounds of sticky rice cakes.

Into Chapter 10.

To prevent your hands from shaking and/or your voice from trembling when you are nervous, visualize a shaft of golden light shooting up through the soles of your feet, through your entire body, and out through the top of your head, then downward, then upward again.

Into Chapter 9.

Writing a novel is like knitting a bed cover.

But I think I'll rest now.

Lunch at home with the granddaughters.

Now feeling quite sleepy.

Into Chapter 8.

Good morning, Cubao!

The clouds are repairmen's tool belts.

Cherry just informed me that my granddaughters have no school again tomorrow, due to the second day of the transportation strike.

Into Chapter 7.

But it's about time I went to bed.

My target for this novel is 23 chapters. I am in the middle of Chapter 6, but the novel is already writing itself.

It has come to that point when, even when I am already in bed and about to sleep, my computer screen suddenly turns on in my mind and I see the sentence where I left off while writing my novel. I see, also in my mind, the succeeding passages being completed, with my eyes closed. My subconscious remembers everything. When I wake up the next morning, all I have to do is encode those passages from memory.

The werewolf went out and ate an avocado ice cream cone.

Into Chapter 6.

My mind is like a light bulb that won't switch off.

At the age of 64, when I retired, I also discovered that I could finally choose the people I want to be with.

At the age of 64, when I retired, I suddenly realized that I'd finally become a full-time artist.

A quiet day in Cubao due to the transportation strike.

Proceeding with my novel after lunch.

Am able to write and paint under any condition and circumstance, whether it is quiet or noisy.

Value not the reader who spontaneously gushes out praises on you, but the reader who ingests your work and seriously ponders it.

Wearing Elizabeth Taylor's Passion for Men.

Never make political affairs your religion.

Two cups very black arabica.

Good morning, Cubao!

The sky is embellished with silver bugle beads.

Now into Chapter 5.

Dinner at home with Angelique and Aubrey.

No school tomorrow due to the transportation strike.

Three-hour, deep-tissue massage.

Into Chapter 4.

Stopping to rest now.

Good morning, Cubao!

The clouds are white coffee cups in a resort kitchen sink.

Into Chapter 3.

But tomorrow I might decide to rest and do absolutely nothing.

When you decide to compete with a genuine artist whom you truly admire, know that you cannot surpass him using shortcuts or cheap PR tricks. Years from now your works will be obsolete and dull, while his works will continue to shine like stars in the firmament.

When children ask you to buy them things, they sincerely believe that you have the power to buy anything.

Brief, straggling, rain shower over Cubao.

Your Messenger message:

"Hi sir Tony, sorry i had to ask you this. Had a dream early this morning after i arrived here in baguio. My dream was that my wife came down from our room to check on me since i slept in the sofa so as not to disturb them. Suddenly, my son ___________ woke up also and started to come down as well. Halfway through the stairs, my wife and I saw a dark figure starting to move from the main door to the stairs. We were startled and cant even talk. When the figure came near our son, it is like he embraced him and somehow our son disappeared and all we saw was a dark shadow standing at the stairs. What could this mean? Thank you so much"


My reply:

Hello ____________!

It is nothing supernatural. You recently saw your son manifest something you do not like (a habit? a deficiency? a speech defect? an attitude?), denied it, and pushed it all the way to the bottom of your subconscious. Your psyche is now telling you to face your displeasure--or do I mean your fear?

Children have shadows, as adults have shadows. If, however, what you saw is something that is not socially acceptable and will potentially hinder your son from his personal progress and success, you, as a parent, may yet have time to correct it. With your son's consent.

Angelique off to college. Gave her more than a thousand to buy that portable book stand that she wants and she needs.

I am a man of leisure.

I write and I paint.

I cannot wear my rings when I am painting lest I get linseed oil, turpentine, and paint on them.

I cannot wear my rings when I am writing because they prevent me from encoding faster than usual.

Good morning, Cubao!

The sky is a swollen sponge waiting to be wrung dry.

Looks like a long, drizzly night in Cubao.

I remember nights like this when I was a Grade School boy and our house was one of only a few houses on the street. That was long before insecticides and other chemicals were the cologne spray of the city. There were frogs and turtles in the garden, and beetles that we could keep in boxes for pets. Whenever I looked out the front door that opened onto the porch, I would see only darkness.

This is the Cubao I can only write about and can never explain in full to my children and my grandchildren.

Angelique studying in the dining room.

As for myself, I am into Chapter 2 of my new novel.

Rainy night, my kind of night, in Cubao.

Allow housework and your children/grandchildren to interfere with your writing and your painting, for they are exactly the psychological breaks that your mind needs.

It is unwise to pirate anyone, for you will only end up pirating a compleat traitor whose main concern is his personal convenience.

Your Messenger message:

"_______ I know you are a busy person , it does not come easy for me to just invade your time, but then I cannot trust any other one.
"It is no secret with you that my husband and I parted ways ________ ago. Around this time I believed I've moved on, the sting had gone. Even when I learned he now have a __________ year old daughter with that woman as old as my ___________ daughter, I did not mind at all, in fact I felt relieved...that means he is not coming back.

"Thus I am wondering why I have couple of dreams about him recently. I even dreamed of his place/ ___________ in ________. _________ is the place where big _________ for export are placed. He supplies exporters/ restaurants here in ___. I remembered the place vividly even if I had not been there. I asked my son about the place as he visited his father a month ago. Exact was his term when I described the place, even the church close to it which was situated left side with concrete steps.Why is this happening _______. You see I am afraid of my dreams like this, if you are not so busy, can I pls. hear from you."

My reply:

Hello ________!

Dreams are almost always about the dreamer, not about other persons. Unfortunately, when you say that you had "a couple of dreams" about your husband, you did not record or narrate what those dreams were.

It is possible that your husband recently has been thinking about you. You are, after all, a part of his past. Since you had relations, you are psychically connected as twins usually are. I would place no urgent meanings to those dreams.

Fake statistics are just as bad as fake news, and just as easy to produce.

Always demand footnotes.

If you believe in spirit guides, then you should also believe that, when a person dies, his/her spirit does not become earthbound. It is EASY for spirits to guide the newly-deceased to the light.

Now that I am home it has begun to rain again.

Tony Perez's Art of War: You are vindicated by your enemies' misery and ill health, and the nice thing about it is that you had nothing to do to cause both.

What is the point in keeping friends who challenge what you believe, if you can very well live happily without them?

Back from jalan-jalan.

Will first sit back and rest with a cup of tea rather than dive into mid-chapter of my new novel.

The worst moments in every aging actress's life is looking at old footage of times she was trying to be cute.

No one can tell you what to write.

And no one can tell you what to read.

Cubao rain.

Know this, that creative writing and painting are passions that will not make you materially rich, and that you have to be well off before indulging in them.

Otherwise you will have days and nights of want, and so will your family, and what good is an artist who lives without responsibility for self and for others?

If only human beings could live healthy lives through the age of 150, they would be as wise as the greatest masters.

Going jalan-jalan later. It is a pleasure that I love and that I would never deprive myself of.

Good noon, Cubao!

The sky is a glass labyrinth.

Never go down in history for your minor works.

Everybody home.

Doing random calculations while resting. It takes me 19 days or less to complete a painting and approximately 88 days to complete a novel.

If I live long enough to enjoy 15 more years of retirement, I'd have hundreds of paintings and hundreds of novels and plays to add to my oeuvre, while other writers and painters who cannot afford to retire will still be slaving at full-time jobs and churning either minor works or one major work a year, and in their spare time.

I no longer produce short works. Some months ago Ateneo's University Press asked me to contribute a short piece for their alumni anthology. I had nothing to give them and had no interest in producing one on the spot.

Aubrey at a post-prelims celebration with her friends. Angelique and J. arrived and had Subway sandwiches and a late dinner at home.

The werewolf ate a vanilla-and-chocolate ice cream cone.

Tonight I go to sleep with the characters of my new novel.

Filled a leather folder with my granddaughters' abandoned K-12 notebooks this morning. I am using these to jot down my novel, a chapter at a time, before encoding it, also a chapter at a time, in my computer.

So far so good. Everything seems to be going smoothly. Organized my existing notes before commencing Chapter 1.

Done with the first page of my new novel. It will proceed with a gentle flow, and then rage forth like water through a broken dam.

Two cups very black arabica.

Slept nine hours last night.

Good noon, Cubao!

The sky is the inverted valley of a blue, stoneware wok.

Angelique and Aubrey came back from a study session at a Starbucks branch in Cubao this evening. Aubrey taught an elderly woman how to type on her cell phone. The woman bought her an unexpected slice of cake.

Tonight the granddaughters are holding another study session in the dining room. Aubrey has two more prelim exams tomorrow.

I particularly enjoyed the previous nights, when the granddaughters were studying in the dining room and I was painting in the adjoining studio. Now that the painting is done, I'm just rereading Judge Dee at Work in my captain's cabin bedroom. 

Hiatus. Still deliberating whether to write that new novel already or commence yet another painting.

Happy 27th Birthday, Karla!

Your birthday messages:

1) Happiness is never found in physical beauty.
2) Be aware of three things that you are this year, that you were not last year.
3) Peace of mind is always the result of maturity.
4) Do not look below your station, neither should you look above it.
5) Consider graduate studies.

Early evening downpour in Cubao as I was leaving the house to go to the hawkers' stands.

Quite strange. In "He Came With the Rain" in Judge Dee at Work, which I am currently rereading, a heavy downpour also occurs while Judge Dee is walking in the street.

I used an Embassy umbrella, Judge Dee is using an oilcloth.

Dennis is done cleaning for the afternoon. I had him clean and bleach the tiled walls and floors of the ground-floor laundry room and toilet and bathroom.

Last week he did the same in our kitchen.

When you completely merge with what you are reading, your actual time of day or night becomes the time of day or night of what you are reading.

I miss Eminem's unique beat. It was tangible, primal, and physical. You could always reach out, touch it, and grab it. There will be no other like it, and I am unimpressed with other musicians' deconstructions of it.

Never test other people's loyalty to you, because they have every right to be loyal or not loyal, and that is none of your business.

Around the age of 50 I became very sensitive to and aware of personality "types". I saw or met different people whose faces looked alike, and I studied them closely. I was CERTAIN that their similarities went beyond the physical, and I was right.

Today, whenever I meet a new acquaintance or a new student, I search my mental picture files and compare them with others I'd known who look like them or fall within their type. Now I know whom to take in and whom to drive away. And I am never wrong about this.

I think, one must be in midlife in order for this ability to be activated within oneself. The only other writer I know who believed in this--and wrote about it more than once--was Agatha Christie.

Our Game of Thrones thermal-Houses-design mug arrived yesterday afternoon. Aubrey tried it out with a glass kettle of piping hot tea.

Love that grinning wolf!

Good morning, Cubao!

The clouds are empty bottles of rectified turpentine.

The best part of my morning is having two, slow cups of black coffee while sitting at my bedroom window and watching the world plod on to their daily grind. Every retiree should experience this because it is most centering. These are moments when I truly feel like a creative writer, that I can author the rest of my day whichever way I want, and that time is finally at my command.

My mind and my heart are at peace because, at 5:00 PM today, I finished revisions on Storyteller (Portrait of Christine Bellen). I posted a photo of the unrevised work on my art blog yesterday afternoon, then saw four things that displeased me. I worked on the painting yesterday evening and all of today. A photo of the revised version is now on my art blog. Not everyone will be able to tell what changes I made.

Now back to rereading Judge Dee at Work.

My granddaughters now study at their favorite Starbucks branches from time to time. This is fine with me, especially since we're about to collect stickers for our 2018 planners.

Dinner with Aubrey. Then Angelique and J. arrived from college and had dinner.

Everybody home.

Alone on the ground floor; everyone else is upstairs.

The werewolf ate a chocolate ice cream cone.

Rainy afternoon tea. Elline's Loyaltea in Meeko's mug. Used an infuser ball this time.

Question: Why does a butterfly flapping its wings in New Mexico cause a hurricane in China [even if NOT at the right moment]?

Answer: Because all winds are interconnected--they are parts of one, giant Serpent that entwines the earth multiple times. That is why it is only convenience that makes us give it different names every year.

Question: Why are you asked to kill the Buddha when you meet him on the road?

Answer: To prove to yourself that you cannot kill the Buddha or any other god, demigod, or archetype. Your human arrogance makes you believe that you can, and that is what you ultimately kill.

Question: If a tree falls in a forest with no ears to hear, does it make a sound?

Answer: Yes, because sound is a product of the sender, with or without a recipient.

Question: What is the sound of one hand clapping?

Answer: Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh!

The sound of two hands clapping is the sound of lightning. The sound of one hand clapping is the sound of the gale.

If you never wear your pearls, they might just as well have stayed on the ocean floor.

Good morning, Cubao!

The sky is a double-sided hand mirror.

Our fabric rose inside a glass cloche, an image taken from the fairy tale "Beauty and the Beast", always reminds me that, whenever my children and grandchildren ask me to buy them something, they are asking me to bring them a magical rose--whether it is a bag of chips, a candy bar, or some other item.

The werewolf ate a chocolate ice cream cone this morning and a purple yam ice cream cone this evening.

Finished cleaning my brushes and palette knives.

Now I can wear my diamond rings again.