And now for something completely different

When you say “Para-i-ba,” the “i” is pronounced as it is in “Italy.”  I was attracted to this stone because it combined blue and green in an extraordinary vividness that reminded me of the calm and crystalline jewel lakes of Jiuzhaiguo (pronounced “Joo-Jai-Go”) in the Sichuan province of China.

Paraiba is mined in Brazil and was named after the state where it was first discovered in the 1980s.  It is the only tourmaline quartz that is described as “completely different,” with the color of a radiant turquoise — a swimming-pool blue — that is so unique it sets it apart from the other tourmaline quartzes that are usually in rainbow hues of rose/pink, watermelon, chartreuse, yellow, brown, and even black. Copper in the stone makes it sparkle and take on the beautiful colors of emerald green, sapphire blue, indigo, bluish-purple and purple.  If cut with more facets, an unusual fire is brought out that makes the stone glow even if there is very little light.

You wear tourmaline to help increase flexibility, objectivity, compassion, happiness and serenity. It is a stone that is very helpful for channeling and enhancing tolerance and understanding. Tourmaline is often associated with the heart chakra, where it opens one to accept love.

Green tourmaline is said to calm fears, help bring joy to life, enhance creativity, aid the immune system, and help with psychological problems you have with your father (this is interesting). It can regulate blood pressure, help asthma and eliminate conflict within, aside from assisting you in remaining objective, tolerant and understanding.

Meanwhile, blue tourmaline keeps the lungs, larynx, thyroid, and parasympathetic nerves strong and aids in self-expression.

How green are my jewels: A pair of dangling Paraiba earrings

Now imagine if we could harness the energy of the blue and green tourmalines as dramatically combined as in Paraiba.

A stone is good to own if one can energize and use it in one’s life with all its fun, ripples of laughter, glory, struggles, love, compassion and triumphs.  

One joy in living is to stay in touch with your loved ones like my kid brother in California, who has been sharing some classic movie scenes on his Facebook profile that bring back some of the most gripping and exciting times in movie watching.  He was always a movie buff.  I remember him cutting classes to catch a blockbuster but he still managed to earn a degree, I suspect, because of his impish grin.  He attached the classic car chase from the movie Bullitt, the final hand in a game of blackjack, a one-on-one match between a young Steve McQueen and Edward G. Robinson in Cincinnati Kid, the ending scene in An Affair to Remember when separated lovers Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr make true love triumph at the end and the wedding rehearsal party singing I Say a Little Prayer with Julia Roberts in My Best Friend’s Wedding.

That gave me the idea to look for some of my favorite movie scenes and when I found Camelot on YouTube, particularly the scene with Richard Harris singing How to Handle a Woman, and I quickly posted it on my Facebook page.  Aha!  It caught the attention of my writer friend, also a romantic poet-cum-cusinero and funny man, Ricky Soler.

Ricky said, “Letty, dear, Bunny’s (Ricky’s cherished ladylove) favorite songs almost all came from Camelot. Her favorite was I Loved You Once in Silence. We saw the first Broadway presentation and after that she fell in love with Camelot and we saw it many, many times. Your post reminded me, thank you.”

And I replied, “Hi, Ricky. Somehow, listening to Richard Harris always brings back those days when your ladylove can do anything she wants and the king of hearts sighs and lets the whole rigmarole begin. Don’t you just love it? Do live Camelot in your heart, promise?”

And Ricky concluded, “In my soul, Letty, I promise.”

Sparkle in the dark: Paraiba tourmaline and diamond earrings from Hiyas Jewelry

So there you are.  How many ways can we keep the fire of love burning if not its memory? This gave me a chuckle as I remembered my young love sending me yellow long-stemmed roses while another sang to me, “I give you my heart and my own true love that would last a whole lifetime.” And get a load of this, a self-confessed hypochondriac thought of giving me this needle-pricking blood-sugar test kit when he found out that diabetes was dominant in my genes, at a time when any self-test was not done in Manila.  Another gave me a handsome, practical Parker 45 gold-dipped fountain pen that I used every day at school.  I imagined that it brought me good luck, enabling me to shade all the correct answers and write an essay to awaken the romantic stirrings in my English professor, Mrs. Sevilla.  When I agreed to be a bride, my best friend was fully convinced that it was not the choco-malt balls nor the shoestring potatoes nor the fresh lobsters and the cucarachas (pink crustaceans found in the deep waters of Mindanao) that did me in but his Elvis Presley sideburns.  Honestly, I didn’t even notice those sideburns.

To this day, I enjoy skimming through thick books on famous pieces of jewelry and wonder why I never demanded diamonds, rubies and pearls from my heartthrobs.  But it’s never too late now that I’ve discovered Paraiba.  It is engagingly different and, as we say in Tagalog, “tanging naiiba.”