violins and beethoven

Enrique and Prosy were visiting A&H too. We spent he hot afternoon getting to know them again. I had worked with Enrique years ago with a civil rights group, but last night I realized how little I knew about them. When I knew them, I was one of those new "youths" coming into the activist scene. In the hours that we spent there chatting and cooking, I learned more about the two the them than I had know in the years I had worked with them. The only time the TV was turned on was to watch the pamanhikan video. Something to be said about simply sitting and talking.

In my early 20s I had spent a lot of time doing community work and various campaigns and activism. I learned much and met a lot of interesting people who often had a great deal of passion. As of late, I have felt like I've fallen away from that and have been trying to find a balance, make choices in terms of the kind of activism and advocacy I would like to pursue. But listening to Enrique and Prosy, I got a better sense of how activism could be more than what I had known in my 20s of political campaigns and protests, though they did that too.

Prosy told me her recipe for leche flan that her aunt had passed to her. I was honored to receive such a family recipe. She knew this too and entrusted me with flipping the flan out of the pan and onto the plate. Flipping flan is a BIG deal! It can be a big mess or you can crack the flan and mar its smooth complexion. I missed the center of the plate, but at least it made it onto the plate in one piece with room to spare. I had often thought that making flan was difficult and complicated, but she broke it down quite easily and it didn't seem as daunting as I had imagined. She cooked nilaga for dinner and talked of how she likened it to painting and wanted to add things that brought certain colors: corn, greens, potatos as if she was painting a landscape.

After dinner waiting for the flan to cool, Prosy gave us bargaining tips. She didn't realize her daughter had been watching her bargaining technique until her daughter travelled to China and was dubbed the "bargaining queen" by her travel group. (She scored a pair of jeans for $2). As she tells of us of her triumphs: the fridge for nearly half off, her car, their bed, she reveals and analyzes how she does it. When she asks for a price, people tell her, "You can't have that price." to which she replies, "Yes, I can. This is the price I want." You have to have the attitude that this is the price you not only want, but that you deserve that price. The funny part is that in the end, they give her the price she wants. We're told that January is a good time to get the big ticket items too.

The SO and Prosy compare stress related ailments tied to their jobs. She quit and went into retirement. It just wasn't worth it. I hope that we can plan it some day so the SO doesn't have to work any more jobs that make his right eye twitch.

Later I find out that Prosy is taking a short story class and how she doesn't feel that she is a writer. We discuss with H about our product oriented identities, that we must have a product to consider ourselves something. For me, I came to understand that being a writer, is the same as being a woman or a Filipina, who is to say that you are not, when you assert that you are? Prosy talked of how her stories were coming out in Tagalog and H mentioned how reading poetry often helped her longer writing.

Enrique talked about how he had to upgrade his cultural references for his new classes. The new crop of college kids were born in 1986. He can't refer to actors, movies, and things that happened before then. They just don't get it. This is the generation that never experienced the Cold War and MTV stopped playing real videos.

At the end of the night, I delightfully discover that Enrique has been taking violin lessons for the past 5-6 years. We manage to coax him to play something. It takes a few notes for me to recognize Beethoven's "Ode to Joy." Next he plays "Bayan Ko." You could tell this was a song he felt in his heart, the way his fingers found the proper tones, how his bow hand was long, fluid and sure, with moments where he could close his eyes and feel the song he played. So different from the "Ode to Joy" that was awkward and a bit stuttered. He tells us that he wanted to play "Ode to Joy" because all the kids played it and that well, he wanted to say that he could play Beethoven. He could care less about playing any of the other classics.

As usual, we never really plan to stay and visit people for that long, but then it just seems to extend on and on (especially when they ask to stay for dinner), well past dinner. I can never get myself to say no, say we have to be going because there are other pressing matters, but I can't because a part of me knows that what could be so pressing in our lives to forgo spending quality time with people we have not seen in a while. There will always be laundry and chores, but how often is there "Bayan Ko" on violin and flan?