-Have you been looking at your life lately and asking yourself, “is this all there is?”

-Are you in between jobs, relationships, careers, dreams?

-Do you find yourself feeling you’ve reached a dead-end and can’t get to the next stage of what or where you want to be?

-Are you sapped of energy and can’t “get into” living the rest of your life? If so, then read on.

At the risk of being accused of peddling, I am pleased to announce the 23rd run of TAPPING THE CREATIVE UNIVERSE Workshop. This cutting edge workshop I have designed (and which I facilitate) will awaken the inner joy and creativity that you were born with and will introduce practices that will make you creative and unblocked for life. Dozens of students, office types, CEOs, artists, religious, housewives, teachers, parents, etc. have taken this workshop and can vouch for its effectiveness in their rediscovery of their power and creativity. It runs for 6 days at two hours per session. If you want to invest in your own happiness, here’s how:

WHEN: January 26, 28, 30, February 2, 4, 6

WHERE: Rockwell Club

TIME: 7 to 9 PM

COST: P5,000

Snacks will be served.

Please call 426-5375/ 929-0230 for reservations and inquiries and ask for Ollie. If you wish to receive a syllabus, please give me your email and I will gladly send you one. Incidentally, I teach a slightly different and extended version of this as an elective subject at the Ateneo Communications Department.

Thank you.

There’s something that I’ve been wanting to share in this blog for the past two months but have hesitated. The reason for this is it’s about my Significant Other who is quite a private person. But since so many strangers have been coming up to us showing concern, here it is.

Lydia has breast cancer. After our New Zealand-Australia trip with APO and wives last November, she went for a check up and the doctor told her that a cyst on her left breast was malignant-stage 1. Not long after, she had two lumpectomies done. Luckily these days, mastectomy or total breast removal is not standard procedure anymore for breast cancer cases. They ended up taking out an almost two centimeter lump. Even if the prognosis is good, knowing that she has cancer was quite traumatic especially for her. And that seemed the easy part.

Tomorrow she begins chemotherapy. We are all quite anxious about it since chemo can really take a toll on the body. The chemo fluids enter the body and destroy the cancerous cells. But in the process, it also kills the good with the bad fast growing cells. Immediate effects can be vomiting, mouth sores, a debilitated body with extreme discomfort for about two days after chemo infusion. And yes, hair loss in two weeks! She will be getting 4 rounds of chemo (one every three weeks). After chemo, she rests for a month and then begins radiation treatment which will run for 32 days. The doctor says that pain-wise, radiation is a cinch! It’s the chemo that’s worrisome.

Cancer is a strange thing. One can be detached and clinical about it–that is, until it hits home. It reminds me of what an uncle said many years ago about Martial Law. He said, “Martial law is OK until it happens to you”.

But strangely enough, as I have a more direct and extensive understanding of my wife’s case, I find myself NOT falling apart. I am rather calm and collected about it and so can concentrate on being supportive and patient as she goes through her doubts and fears about her condition.

In all this, I see excellent opportunities for greater spiritual practice– of compassion and yes, detachment. While I will be present for Lydia and will be there for whatever she may need, I will also work on accepting the new realities that we will have to cope with as our bodies become more mortal in the coming years.

For Lydia and I, our three kids and all our friends, it is a time when connections, friendships and intimacies can be cultivated in deeper ways. On the one hand, attachments are made, but on the other, one must let go of expectations and allow the course of things to unravel without clinging to outcomes. This is the paradox of existence. You may love as much as you want, but must do so without expectations.

I am convinced that in the end, God really does not give importance to the things our bodies hold dear–youth, vanity, health, wealth, fame, comfort and all that. While His/Her value system seems based on intangible stuff, I am sure it is no less real–probably the only real stuff there is..

Just the same, I pray that if we cannot have the outcome we want, we may have the peace to accept whatever shows up!

I don’t know if it was the same with you but these people/events of 2003 got me emailing, commenting, cursing, applauding, laughing, crying, arguing, seething, clapping, etc. They were, to be sure, responsible for the level of sanity we now find ourselves as a people.

They sure stung us bad. Let’s hope it wasn’t fatal! As a way of saying goodbye to them, please sing the lyrics below to the tune of Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start The Fire”

Candidate GMA, Ping Lacson, FPJ,

Brother Eddie Villanueva, Senator Roco

Noli, Danding, Kris and Joey, Brat pack of the NPC,

Grin-go, Oak-wood, senate inquiries

REFRAIN: We didn’t start the fire. The world’s been burning since the world’s been turning…..

Jose Pidal, Bishop Yalung, Mike Arroyo, Ted Bacani,

Typhoons, flash floods, disaster in Leyte

STDs, SARS scare, coup d’etat, junta,

Peso devaluation, 55 to 1

REPEAT REFRAIN:

Kidnappings unabated, Supreme Court versus congress,

SMC Boycott, bombings in Davao

MRT, Jingle stations, number coding, midnight madness,

Sea Games, PBA, Go Manny Pacquiao!

REPEAT REFRAIN:

Back in court once again, Kuratong Baleleng,

Quezon City judge says Ping is innocent!

Computerization, Camacho resignation,

Al Ghozi executed, Commander Robot amputated!

REPEAT REFRAIN

Traf-fic, gar-bage, air pollution, demolition

Terror at the airport, bombings in Iraq

George Bush, Ka Blas, 10% amusment tax

Jemaiya Islamiya, and Abu Sayyaf

REPEAT REFRAIN

ABS-CBN, GMA Channel 7,

Sex Bombs, Ocho-ocho, and spagheti song

Station wars heat up, ratings, scandals

Midgets on Television, Mura at Mahal

S-Files, The-Buzz, Morning Girls, and Sis,

Chinovela, F4, I CAN’T TAKE IT ANYMORE!



REPEAT REFRAIN

Did I miss out on anyone?

GOODBYE 2003. HELLO 2004!

TEEN LESSONS THAT STUCK FOR LIFE!

By Jim Paredes

(This article appeared about two months ago in a teen magazine called NEXT. I thought it would be good to share it with the young visitors of this blog. If you don’t think it applies to you, I promise a more adult entry next time.)

I remember being a very confused teen with angst written all over my face. I was a very intense young man who worried constantly about everything—from my pimples, my low grades, my “awkwardness” aggravated by self-consciousness, to my constant lack of money. Furthermore, it seemed I was almost always thinking of sex, or at least imagining having the ideal girlfriend. Looking back at how I was able to tide through my troubled teens, I zero in on a few things that made a difference. These were things I did which shaped me in big ways. Somehow, as I embraced them with passion, they gave me solace then and wisdom later on. Here are some things I must have done right as a young man then.

1) Reading—I always liked reading as a kid. But I took to it in a big way after I was assigned to read Pierre Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye in high school. I thought it was a book written for me. Then I started reading anything I could get my hands on—even books by Ayn Rand and Nietzche. To this day, I am a voracious reader sometimes devouring 5 books at a time. It has helped me grow emotionally and intellectually and it has expanded me in all ways.

2) Learning the guitar—This is a big one! The Beatles had the greatest influence on my generation. I loved the Beatles and I memorized every song they had. I felt that they spoke for me. Learning musical chords and expressing my moods and emotions through music gave me a rare glimpse into a parallel world where I could talk without words. I learned to not only play the guitar which made me popular and gave me confidence but also wrote songs which helped me cope with my teen angst! Music has served me and my family well as it not only gives me great satisfaction to this day but pays the bills, too!

3) Having had a deep spiritual experience—I hated retreats that a Catholic school upbringing forced on me. But I remember spending a weekend with my classmates in the very first Days With The Lord sortie. This intense religious experience gave me an anchor that helped me cope with the loneliness. I felt His presence and I KNEW there was a God watching over me. While my religious beliefs and convictions have changed since, I would like to think they have for the better. My acceptance and tolerance of other religions has spurred my spiritual growth and understanding of my own faith.

4) Having close friends of the opposite sex—I had two intense relationships in my teens. At least at that time I thought they were intense. I can only look back now and smile at what seemed then as very serious love affairs. There were many good things I learned about women and the sexual attraction and tension their presence brings to men’s lives. It is important that we know how to handle them. This is truly a life skill that requires never-ending learning throughout life. And I don’t think we can ever master the subject completely! My early relationships with the opposite sex as a teen gave me valuable insights on the meaning of love and the importance of friendship plus a deep appreciation and respect for women in general.

Reading, music, spirituality and relationships “saved” me from burying myself in self-generated angst as a teen. Sometimes, I wonder what I would have been if not for Pierre Salinger, John, Paul, George and Ringgo, that religious weekend and the first girls I loved who weren’t my sisters!

To all my students in both classes (Creativity, and Issues in Performance and Practice),

As I mentioned, I will not be showing up for classes this Tuesday, the 16th. On Thursday, please bring something for an “exchange gift” activity to mark the Christmas season and to spread good cheer. Some suggestions: a CD you are willing to exchange, or any gift not costing more than 20Pesos.

See you then.

(I am at the moment saddled with work and will not be able to write anything new. Upon the suggestion of Mike Palacios, I will, from time to time, be reprinting some of the stuff I’ve written for different magazines and books. At least there will be something new to read for people who visit my blog. I hope you enjoy this one).

Modern Day Beatitudes

Blessed are the strange, the weird, the people we laugh at, those who do not fit our mold, especially the socially wretched and despised. By their presence in our lives, they expand our reality—on our part, reluctantly and on theirs, so painfully—by forcing us to look at them in the hope that we see the God in them.

Blessed are the depressed and the addicted for they are called upon to demonstrate the healing miracles of God through their own awakening.

Blessed are the broken, those who fail, those who fall below our expectations for they are asked to show the rest of us that not being perfect is part of the human condition—that accepting our imperfection is the first step in our realization of the divine perfection of all that is.

Blessed are the nameless, the faceless the dispossessed—the refugees, the homeless and the poor for they point us to the way to compassion. By their sheer numbers, they tell us that ultimately, the experience of compassion is inescapable.

Blessed are the cruel, the calloused and uncaring, for on some deep unconscious level, they choose to delay their own liberation so that others may be ‘enlightened’ by their example.

Blessed are those who arouse us to anger, who bring out the worst in us, for they force us out of the denial that we harbor within—that we are hooked on them, that they resonate with something hidden inside us, and to break free, we must let go of our misguided moral superiority.

Blessed are those who cause us to suffer repeatedly by their mistakes, for they are our tutors who spend valuable time so that we learn our lessons well.

Blessed are those who do not seem to have a life, and especially those who do not have a choice—those who are physically debilitated, paralyzed or in a coma and cannot move, for they bring us a message that is lost in this age of frenzy—that to be worthy of God’s love, we need not strive to do or achieve anything, but simply be.

Blessed are all of us, for whatever condition we find ourselves in, we can choose to remember our true nature, our original blessing, our timeless

grace—anytime, any place, and always—and be happy in our Oneness.

(Lifted from ‘Between Blinks–More Random Takes on Everything’, by Jim Paredes , Anvil Publishing Inc., 2000 and updated October 2002)

I have just come home from the Metropop thing. Man! I continue to be amazed even if this is my fourth participation with this contest. The 1st time was in 1981 where we (APO) won second place with the song Ewan. The second was in 2000 where we did not place as interpreters. The third was as judge two years ago, and the fourth was tonight.

Arnel, I thought (and everyone backstage, performers and composers agreed) did such a great rendition of my song Parang with his Don King hairdo. But alas, we did not place even if everyone thought we would. To be honest, I had no expectations. I purposely, deliberately did not allow myself to cling to any. Although the temptation to do so was great because of comments backstage and the thrill of competion, I’ve seen enough Metropops to know that it’s an anything goes kinda thing. I absolutely loved Bayang Barrios’ Malayo Man Malapit Din song and expected it to garner a top place. Agot and I were betting on it. and it did.

Working with Arnel and Ernie Baladjay (my arranger) was such a joy. That was the real reward. I felt I had understood Bhuddhist tenets and practice of non-clinging tonight by not putting any conditions to that. I was happy no matter what. Win or lose would not change it. And I feel good writing this because I pretty much stayed the course of non-conditionality without being aloof. or indifferent. “Be in the battlefield but be not the warrior”, ika nga ni Arunja sa Bhagavad Gita.



The thrill of meeting a lot of new friends and working with good musicians is immeasurable. I recommend every songwriter reading this to join Metropop. It’s one of the few things in the Philippines with integrity still intact. It is an honest contest which does not defer to stardom or seniority or reputation in choosing its winners. We may agree or disagree with their decision but I think we can all say that it is a REAL contest.

Mabuhay ang OPM. I’d like to know what you thought of the contest. Feel free to criticise. I take it rather well.

I will end this now cuz I’m reallly sleepy. One consuelo I have is that at least I don’t have to skip Sunday lunch and be in SOP to be congratulated again as a winner! Ha ha. Why do I imagine snickers from readers of this blog?

I’m excited about a few things coming my way soon.

This Saturday, my song Parang will participate as one of the finalists in the Metropop Song Festival. Arranged by Ernie Baladjay and to be interpreted by Arnel Ignacio, this 40’s inspired song with a jazz touch will be on slot 12. I am so happy with the way things have turned out. For one thing, I submitted this entry on the last day of submission simply because a friend had recorded his entry in my studio. Nakisabay lang ako. I got in, he didn’t. Months later, I was surprised to get a call from a friend. I had even forgotten that I had joined and so was surprised when informed that I got in as a finalist!

The whole story of how Arnel Ignacio became my interpreter is a story in itself. I saw him on SOP when we were presented to the public as this year’s Metropop finalists. He was wearing drag for a novelty song he had just performed when he approached me and asked to audition as interpreter of Parang. (Just try to imagine what an effort it was on my part to take this man wearing a woman’s dress seriously when he asked me if he could try out for the song). I politely nodded and told him to show up the next day. He was the last to audition among 3. He just blew me away when he sang. Few people know that funny man Arnel is a music major and sings jazz very well. He listens a lot to Harry Connick, his favorite artist.

Everything about this song has been pleasant from the time I wrote it (ages ago) to the present. Working with Ernie and Arnel has been something else!. Things just seemed to blend seamlessly. To be honest, win or lose is not even important anymore. I already have a nice song and all I am looking forward to is a great performance on Saturday night. I will sit and enjoy this to the hilt!

The other thing I am looking forward to is my upcoming creativity workshop which will be on Dec. 1, 3, 5, 8, 10, 12 at 7 to 9 PM each night. It will be at Forbes Park on this run. The last time I did this was in San Francisco. This will be the 22nd time I run Tapping The Creative Universe, an unblocking of creativity workshop. So far, I have 18 students and I am expecting more to sign up this weekend.

This workshop gives me such a big high. How can it not? I meet new people from all walks of life–housewives, CEOs, artists of various disciplines, nuns and priests, students, expats, etc.. The workshop guides them as they rediscover their lost creativity. The breakthrough process is something to see as they meet their blocks and overcome them. The individual and collective “AHA” is palpable.

And it is always heartwarming to hear that days, weeks, months after the workshops I have given in the past, I often hear that some of them have applied the principles and practices they had learned to their lives in major ways. Some have suddenly become painters, entrepreneurs. Some have published books and poems they had long wanted to do. Some had done “walk the edge” stuff they had always wanted to accomplish but could not in the past.. In short, their creativity, now restored had allowed their dreams to take flight!

I could keep on giving these workshops forever. In fact, I may run it in Melbourne in the coming months. Sana!

If you are one of those who are attending this monday, see you soon!

I’ve been reading a book called Life On The Cusp, an anthology by more than 20 assorted writers including Sylvia Mayuga, Randy David, Jaime Zobel de Ayala Sr., Ana Alejandrino, Mariel Francisco, yours truly among others. What is fascinating about it is each writer’s description of what life is like for them now, and most interestingly including the journey that led them to the present. Throughout the narratives, the reader learns not just tidbits about the writers (Randy loves motorcycles, Jaime Zobel scuba dives, Ana Alejandrino teaches Qigong, etc..) but about the wisdom culled from the pathways, and highways of their life’s journey. Lessons learned from disappointments, turning points, failures and successes abound.

If you want to read about people in our midst and their extraordinary take on life, buy the book. Wisdom, insights, disappointments, joy everywhere. And yes, great writing too.

The range and breath of experiences are something else. One can read about the lives of a monk, activist, educators, late-blooming people who took radical turns in their lives. I am not sure though if the reason why the book resonates with me is because I am in my early 50’s and so I identify with people who have had a more or less long journey time-wise. If you’r ever in a bookstore, do take a browse. You may like it, or know someone who will.

I just came down from Baguio last night ((thursday). I left at 2:00 in the afternoon, right after APO did its performance for the Manila Bulletin-sponsored lunch during the weeklong Ad Congress. I dreaded the thought of getting stuck in monumental traffic jams within Baguio and on the way back to Manila and so opted to leave soon after my work was done. It was a good show considering that aside from the three songs we sang, we basically just conducted a raffle–not one of my favorite activities.

Baguio weather was pleasant–not too cold and not warm. But the hordes of delegates and their smoke emiting vehicles were just too much. Parang naging Divisoria! As a Baguio resident ( I consider myself one since I own a house there), I find it obscene how the lowlanders can just come up, drive the prices of goods in the market sky high, spread the smell of diesel everywhere and just trash this city of pines. Alas, this magical place seems destined to rot as commercialism dangles money to monopolize Baguio’s charms which were once offered freely. Its once quaintly narrow streets have become tight roads lined with parked cars on both sides, its trees and posts filled with advertising. Many honeymooners, boy and girl scouts, and ordinary lovers of nature know what I am complaining about–they who go there for the air, the greenery, the sights, the charm of a small city and not the circus that is the Ad Congress.

One may ask what right I have to be pontificating about what other people do in Baguio? Mind you, it is certainly not just my ownership of a house there! I spent many, many summers there, not to mention countless visits as a young man in pursuit of fun and frolic with barkada and special female friends. In fact, I honeymooned there and I still do occasionally when Lydia and I can escape and leave everything behind. I’ve also had many retreats, campings, concerts and long walks all over John Hay, Burnham Park, and its many trails, tried many of its small and big restaurants, met many of its artists, etc.. In short, Baguio is part of the biography of my heart and spirit, and so holds sacred meaning to me, and to countless others

And so, instead of partying away with the crass set, I opted to retreat to Manila. But I look forward to going back when all is once again quaint, quiet and fresh , a condition in Baguio that admittedly, even without the ad congress is sadly becoming a rarity.