Oh My God!!! ¡Tantas lunas!

It's October 2009. About time to say SOMETHING, right?
Well well well. I found "salisipan" in the dictionary of Real Academia de la Lengua. We Filipinos can always count on the Spanish dictionaries to preserve the words in our language whose meanings we no longer know. Here is the definition -- I had no idea it was a rather scary word:

salisipan.
1. m. Embarcación peculiar del sur del archipiélago filipino, que solo se diferencia de la panca en que lleva realzadas con nipa las bordas, a mayor altura, y en este realce unos palos delgados y paralelos donde se fijan las rodelas que sirven de reparo a los bogadores contra las flechas y venablos. Es barco de piratas y navega a fuerza de remo con extraordinaria velocidad.


My Translation: A vessel peculiar to the southern Philippine archipelago which is only different from the banca in that its sides are raised higher and made of nipa, and from these enhancements slender parallel sticks protrude to which discs are inserted that protect the rowers from arrows and javelins. It is a pirate ship powered by rowers that travels at an extraordinary speed.

SO MY BLOG IS NAMED AFTER A PIRATE SHIP. COOL!!!!!!!!

THIS IS A ROGUE BLOG!

yeah, sure.

bueeennooo....

Things have happened since 2008. The stock markets crashed, the banks went into meltdown mode....but for us little people, it's just more of the same....we're poorer, but so what. We are still here, hey, you fat cats can still keep stripping us.

This is the Mystery. Just as mysterious as how, despite the weeping and gnashing of teeth and the bravado of "On the Road to Recovery" on CNN, things are not much different for the Business As Usual World.

The natural world, Nature, though, is going into hyperspeed destruction of all in Her path mode. Nature is gathering up her ire and making humans feel it. Of course, the ones who feel it are mostly the already blighted....although some rich people in southern California, and some middle-class homeowners in middle class countries like Australia have been punished. And in general, we are all getting kinda upset over what is happening to the animal world, the weather is getting weirder and weirder, and so on and so forth.

In Chile although we have a lot of volcanoes and we are sitting on some major tectonic plates, we have been relatively spared. But of course anything can happen. We have been wondering when the next Big Quake will hit, since the last major one was in 1985.

We are high up in the mountains so we are safe from tsunamis, at least so far. But I have heard on CNN that in the Peruvian highlands winter arrived three months early. Somewhere there. Actually Peru is Chile's neighbor and we are just beginning spring and so should Peru be doing. Typical -- I watch TV, hear news and I don't really LISTEN.

It is really horrendous what has happened in Indonesia, the Philippines, Samoa. Earthquakes, mega floods, tidal waves. I gave thanks that Parma did not hit Manila again.

I am a translator (it's how I make my living, though if I didn't have any savings I could not get by on what I earn) and work has shrunk very noticeably this year.

I am also a therapist. I practice Biomagnetism and Psychobioenergetics, and recently I took a workshop on Radiesthesia (dowsing), which is also useful for helping people heal themselves.

My activity as a therapist dovetails very well with my translation work. When I have lots of translations, the patients disappear. And vice versa.

The part that suffers most is my writing. Apart from my journal, I have precious little time to write fiction, which is what I want to do now. No more essay writing. Journaling is easy because you just scratch out a few lines before you lose consciousness. My eyelids literally crash down.

There isn't enough time to be caught up on the rigmarole, the insignificant affairs which, if you neglect them, will turn your life into HELL double quick. So the important things are pushed back on the farthest burner.

However, somehow .... somehow .... I also live in the realm of the magical, of the things I really and truly love. The people and the beings who matter to me more than anything. And life and the secret worlds keep sending me gifts and the keys to new discoveries.

Naturally I can't talk about that stuff here, in a blog! I don't have the courage. I don't want to put it out there for strange eyes to peruse and then glaze over as per the usual again.

You hide the most precious things. And there are things more precious than expensive jewelry and money. More precious than title deeds and stock certificates.

As a writer I have to time my revelations. I can't reveal my sources ... not naked, no, never. I have to dress them up and play a little hide-and-seek with my reader. It's unfair, but that's just the way it is.

Your sources speak to you and then you transmit their messages to the ones they are meant for (after you, that is), as you are moved to transmit them.

Sorry about this, sounding like a sphinx.

But yes, there are realms of language, of communication, worlds of meanings that are not meant to be put out there like journalistic pieces. Not like fast food reading.

Funny but having said that, I realize that blogging still has to do with my wanting to communicate from time to time, with my needing to.

Just to send a signal: hey, blip blip blip. I'm still here. I'm still "holding the space". What is that space?

Memory. The Past. The Beloved Ones who died before you and I were born. Whose stories we never were told. But about whom...bit by bit...little by little...we suddenly hear about, or dream about, or imagine coming back and speaking to us in a gentle whisper.

And so I just heard that a good friend in the Philippines will send me a copy of a documentary on the Philippine-American War of 1899. Out of the blue, just as I told him I was ready to send him a copy of Rizal According to Retana.

This is long enough!

Until next blog my dears.


Isabel de Ilocos


with love from Santiago, Chile.