Unshackled

 I realized not too long ago that when you’re a retired senior and no longer answerable to people or an organization, you are free to open a gate which allows you to release your pent-up frustrations and you no longer mince words to express them! Colorful language, while shocking to others, especially if they’re coming from normally prim and proper you, is only an exercise in coming up with puns and hilarious and witty comebacks for those who make you suffer! 

On the other hand, your creativity and imagination is also allowed to run free because you are no longer afraid of criticism and consequences! Even if people will probably not heap praises on a creative work, you do it anyway because it makes you happy! That’s all that should matter! Clumsy works can always be excused on account of your advanced age and inexperience with something new, you reason! So like the child that you were 6 decades ago, you go ahead and paint a mythical land where blue trees grow flowers of very hue and dragonflies that are bigger than birds flit about.

A friend said that it was like being in the garden of eden because of the “colors, the sense of calmness and awe that it inspires in me!”  For me, it’s my way of welcoming people to my garden of retirement! See you soon! 



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Like butter, slowly melting

Time to sip chamomile tea... Oh so deliberately Time to really listen to the music ... Word for word, note for note Life, not gulped by the cupful Memories of first love, savored Like watching butter slowly melting on oven-hot rolls Like watching the soft blue of clouds Seamlessly turn to orange And then grey Solace, at the end of day
Read more

The Fear of Excess

Image
"You must not fear, hold back, count or be a miser with your thoughts and feelings.  It is also true that creation comes from an overflow, so you have to learn to intake,   to imbibe, to nourish yourself and not be afraid of fullness. The fullness is like a tidal wave which then carries you, sweeps you into experience and into writing. Permit yourself to flow and overflow, allow for the rise in temperature, all the expansions and intensifications. Something is always born of excess: great art was born of great terrors, great loneliness, great inhibitions, instabilities, and it always balances them."                                                                                                                                                  - Anais Nin I have always thought of myself as being creative ( as distinct from being artistic ). Facing limited resources in my growing-up years presented many opportunities to come up with alternatives to things I wish I  had or
Read more

Falling out of Love?

Image
Tree in the Academic Oval For the last 17 years, I've been having a affair... with teaching... at UP. Being a teacher at UP has always made me feel like I'm in a forbidden romance. Many days, I  feel giddy just being here but for an equal amount of days, I feel unworthy to be part of such an illustrious institution.  As an undergraduate student,  I was in awe of my professors. There they were, up in the star-decked sky and I could only marvel at their brilliance from my place among the riffraff of the academic world. Although I grew up helping my teacher mother with her preparations for class,  entering the academe was never part of my plan on how to conquer the world. I admit, once in a while, I did imagine myself in front of the classroom but never actually believed I could do it in real life. It was like having a secret crush on that gentle-looking hunk in the library but knowing it would remain just that because he was someone else's boyfriend. And even if he we
Read more