It was disheartening, to come to a conclusion that maybe I was never meant to own a pen that I intend desperately to keep for life. So far these pens came to me almost like ghostly manifestations, and not once by my own will of acquisition. They were doomed to be lost from me.

It was sometime until I came to a decision, to aggressively claim for myself a working pen and – just in case – its substitute. And that was how my bakhaw pen and its standby bamboo, with the solitary grass stalk etching, came to be. I still carry a pen – my new bakhaw – around, but in a banig envelope, as a measure.

As for parchment, I have lived on page refills for close to a decade now, using my old leather notebook cover our late lab once converted to look like regurgitated steak. Grandmother, who knew that I’m never without a notebook, had a notebook cover of tanned leather edged with leather string made for me.

Although I didn’t exactly agree with its sparse floral accents, I have long ago given it a personal touch by extending my prose unto it with remembered quotes and phrases. My attachment to my notebook has grown so strong that mother once confiscated it in her desperate attempt for power play. Until it was returned by grandmother’s intervention, I suffered badly from the abrupt withdrawal, and have never completely forgiven mother for that episode.

However, it was a signal for me that a fresh blank page is always a great place to start anew. And it was also then I realized that I have to devise an incoherent innate chronology to safeguard against further mishaps. So I junked most of the literary canons to cloak my material from prying eyes, the pair that sneaks a read over the shoulder.

Now, the loose pages of scratch paper I consider still fit to be recycled that I have fastened unto the paperback notebooks give my ruled canvass a crazed constitution especially when littered with my unfinished business. Leaf through and it will be a swan-dive into my hidden insanity. Of course, this is no invitation.

My prose is a different matter altogether, as I write in English, in Hiligaynon, in archaic Baybayin, and lately in jumbled verse. I consign to paper whichever hand I deem most appropriate for my train of thought at the moment.

My husband never on a single occasion braved to venture into the world within. Perhaps my son would browse the pages some morning before he opens his schoolbooks over his steaming rice and omelettes, and for the rest of his class day try to decipher mama’s jumbled conceptions. I might just let him, for even this early in his first birth year my son has taken to sneaking his doodles into my notebook, favouring it over his own pads and books which he keeps free of any writing. And it is always my pen for his scribbling, grasping it in his right hand with the slant of the point resting on his third forefinger. I absolutely beam; he holds the pen better than any other kid his age!

It is thoroughly gratifying, having at least an ounce of sympathy apart from my own for a craft, a skill, a process I have for always defended and now I am finally happy because my son shows just enough enthusiasm for starters.

I have defined my life as a woman smeared with ink although I cannot guarantee the chronology of my pages. People can say I don’t understand much about life for writing has consumed me.

Yet I say otherwise; in the end, I am so overwhelmed with life that I cannot help but write about it, being a woman as I am who has been through much discretion as was tagged to the process, whose two-dimensional hang ups and joys quite definitely mirror those we deal with in life.

Just read between the lines.