A Post about Nothing

Beautiful Boracay at dusk, gorgeous photo borrowed from Chewy Chua's flickr photostream. It's exactly how I remember it, though perhaps colored by nostalgia too

Imaginative title huh. Well no need to be clever, this really is a post about Nothing, sort of like a Twitter-post which will overshare what I’m doing in cringing detail of no interest to anyone except me But then blogs are mainly exercises in self-absorption/vanity aren’t they? For me, it’s a journal to reconnect with the past and make sense of the present. The audience I write for is my family, since sometimes it’s so much easier to verbalize something publicly than it is privately. Plus the act of just writing about nothing often reveals things to me in unexpected ways, even as I write. Small things, wonderful things, and that’s enough motivation.

So back to twitter-posting about nothing. I’m taking a PB& J break from work, thinking about Boracay. A high school classmate just sent a picture of the resort she manages with the fine suggestion that we should have a reunion there, and I am awash with longing, suddenly sitting right on the fine white sand on the beach near Nigi-Nigi Noo Noo.

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Actually I’m at home working, as I have been for the last two weeks because of construction at the office where they are building us a new bathroom and a conference room. This work from home set-up is growing on me though i didn’t much care for it last week. Now I think it should be mandatory at least once a week, I’m sure many people will agree. I’m lucky that my company is pretty flexible about schedules and accommodates stay at home moms and other “life happens” things. Life is busy and busy is virtue and to do nothing is a guilty pleasure. Sometimes I catch myself feeling fluttery with wings beating in my chest, my heart pounding slightly faster than normal. Or I feel out of breath, almost always disheveled, like a hurriedly made bed. Made, but haphazardly. I don’t know exactly why or where the time goes, I don’t have kids which are universally acknowledged by parents here to be major time suckers, adorable and beloved as they are. (Not true in Manila, where people and kids seem more relaxed to be sure.) But still I feel it. So much so it’s become my default state, after five years here I am as highlystrung it seems as many Americans.

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And so I run to relax. When I run I have to consciously make myself BE in the moment, to enjoy looking at my shoes one over the other, the running, the state of it, my feet connecting with the ground, my face to the sunset. I don’t think about the miles or the time or the goal. I don’t run with an iPod. I don’t want the time to fly. There is no goal but to run and be quiet. Sounds like a Nike ad

Running after the sunset

Running is one of the things I’m looking forward to doing in the next two weeks when I am off for a vacation– hooray! Flying out to see my sister for a bit then heading to the beach a week later. The prospect of lots of lazy days DOING NOTHING is making me giddy. That’s not entirely true. I’m looking forward to lying on the sofa. Playing with my niece and nephew. Eating my sister’s food (I still am not cooking!) Sewing my jeans (eight pairs need hemming). Making jewelry and handcrafting tiny beaded girly clutches I’ve been dreaming about for weeks. Reading. Lazing on the beach for hours on end. Sounds like a lot of stuff to do, but they’re NOTHING really, nothing at all, as enjoyable a state and an act as drinking iced tea on a summer day.

Doing NOTHING is really something.

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Alta Vista Resort managed by highschool classmate Jess

And summers, the long hot days of it, the best time to stay still. When I dream of nothing summers, I dream of Boracay, still my favorite place on earth, just like right now.

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Here’s a beloved childhood summer poem I know by heart, from the Little House books my dad gave us smaller kids when I was seven:

In the starlight, in the starlight
At the daylight’s dewy close
When the nightingale is singing
His last love song to the rose

In the calm, clear light of summer
When the breezes softly play
From the glitter of our dwelling
We will gently steal away

Where the silvery waters murmur
By the margin of the sea
In the starlight, in the starlight
We will wander gay and free