I wake up in the morning and wonder — do I go to work or to the doctor? Dr. Marissa R. Torre is a medical doctor who gives alternative treatments. She is one of a growing breed of new doctors. I chose her because I don’t like chemical drugs. She gives natural treatments and is empathetic to my complaints.
She gave me a little bag of activated charcoal with these instructions: Mix with enough water to make a paste then apply to the area of your lump. Then take another tablespoon, mix in eight ounces of water, and drink before bedtime. I made the paste immediately and applied it but it took me a few days to find the nerve to try and drink the fine black powder, finer than Boracay sand.
Finally one night I measured a tablespoon and left it in my bathroom. Then I turned off the light and fetched eight ounces of pineapple juice. I put the two together and tried not to notice that I was drinking black ink. The flavor was not bad but the texture . . . it felt like I had licked sand. I hated it and did not do it again but continued to do the paste even if my bedsheets and pillowcases had been smudged with black.
One morning I decided to feel my lump. It seemed to have gotten smaller. I went to the doctor and told her only that I did not want to drink the charcoal. “Are you making the paste?” she asked. I nodded. She wanted to feel my lump. “It has gotten smaller,” she exclaimed joyfully. So it really did get smaller. It was not only I who felt that. We smiled at each other happily. “Don’t drink the charcoal,” she said, “but continue with the paste.”
She sent me to a doctor across Lourdes Hospital to have something analyzed. As a child I used to live in Old Santa Mesa so I decided to return to the neighborhood. It has gone to pot. It is full of motels now and empty, abandoned houses that are falling apart. The walls are painted over garishly with political slogans. We used to take our Dalmatians for walks here when it was still a lovely, gracious neighborhood.
The road of what was once a gracious compound was no longer lined with gravel. It was cemented. The building across the houses had turned into a tenement. Our house at the end had changed completely. It had a new tall green gate at an angle beside the old orange gate and over and above the tall gates were swirls of barbed wire. Our neighbors’ houses looked the same but were old and decrepit. They needed coats of paint and major repair. The front gardens were uniformly roofed over with brown rusty sheets and there were old wood louvers that were falling apart. The old iron gates were gone, replaced by newer ones and topped with barbed wire, telling me that the back portion of the homes must have completely turned into slums and maybe there was much thievery in the neighborhood these days. That’s why these swirls of barbed wire. It was no longer the house of my dreams.
After work I go home to my messy dining room table and try to make jewelry, which will go on exhibit at the Carl Jung Circle Center’s third annual art show at The Pavillion, LRI Design Plaza, N. Garcia (Reposo) St., Bel Air, Makati City. The show will open at 6 p.m. on Oct. 25 and runs until Oct. 27.
The show is titled “Mandala Atbp.” The mandala is a complex circle, which symbolizes the Self, the path to wholeness, my big thing. Twelve artists will exhibit their work — Dido Gustilo-Villasor with her art deco-influenced works, Alain Austria with his pen and ink pieces where Filipino mythos meets Buddhist iconography, Astrud Crisologo’s bold mandala art installation where mundane objects become magical, Alex Tee with his reflective and high affect sculptures, Len Fernandez with her lyrical watercolor paintings, Nina Lojo with her naturalistic paintings, Denise Weldon with her delightful mixed-media new works, Ditas Dominguez with her classical realism paintings, Kim Nygaard with her mandala-inspired nature photography, Riel Hilario with his sculptures infused with soul from his dreams and visions, and Oliver Roxas with his surprise-twists on food art installation pieces and me, attempting to make funky jewelry in the whirl of my work, doctor’s visits, writing lessons, atbp. I guess I will get the atbp. right.
Every night before sleeping I find my mind in a whirl. What should I do first tomorrow? That question runs wildly around my brain. I try to calm myself down. Just before I turn off the light I say — tomorrow, you will know tomorrow, you will know what to do in the morning.
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Please text your comments to 0917-8155570. Dr. Marissa Torre’s phone numbers are 553-7289 and 508-6440.