“(I amar prestar aen.)
The world is changed.
(Han matho ne nen.)
I feel it in the water.
(Han mathon ned cae.)
I feel it in the earth.
(A han noston ned gwilith.)
I smell it in the air.”
- Galadriel, Lord of the Rings
Are you feeling that change is afoot? I am.
I started blogging over a decade ago, but I never owned it. Like really owned it, shouting up from the rooftops kind of ownership. I worked behind the scenes, hoping to not get any unwarranted attention. I shied away from the spotlight. But deep in side, I knew I wanted to be seen. I had something to say and I knew the world had to hear my voice.
My first blog was about my long distance relationship with my then boyfriend, now husband.
It was not the best situation as I carried a trauma with long distance relationships. My anxious, disbelieving mind said it does not work, but my heart screamed that we could try. I wrote under a pen name, not wanting to expose my deepest thoughts and feelings. I respected and wanted my privacy and so did he. The blog was featured in a local magazine. Hurray! But again, I was unsure of the spotlight.
Three years later into the long distance relationship, we decided to get married. I wanted to desperately to close the distance between us. What was the point in even getting married if we, a childless couple, would spend our lives apart?
I left my prestigious job in one of the world’s fastest growing quick service restaurant companies, one that, despite all the power, financial gain and stability, gave me night terrors and regular inexplicable bouts of sickness. Even when I performed over and above expectations of the job. I packed up two suitcases of my life, leaving everything else, to start from scratch in a new chapter of my life in Dubai.
I then built a food blog because my dream was to become a food writer like Ruth Reichl. After reading a dog eared copy of her memoir “Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise”, which I borrowed from my Tita, I gobbled up every word, satiated and already dreaming of my next meal, my next move. Maybe I can become a food writer like her. Publications can pay me to write about my experience eating in a restaurant. It would be nice to fund a passion like that, or even make it a career, if it was even possible.
But being a Filipino outside the comfort zone of a home, an intricate network of support systems, built over three decades made me question my identity, self-worth and value. Who was I to even dare write about my thoughts about food? Who would even be interested in my thoughts? Could I even make a living out of it? Again, I walked that tightrope with much trepidation of the spotlight. What if I get noticed?
The first food blog died and a new one resurrected. Yet, I couldn’t own it like I should. I didn’t want the entire world to know. I wished that only a few people who I thought mattered would read it. They did, but I still was unsure, uncomfortable that they could see what was going on in my head.
I wrote sparingly, whenever I felt like it, without the consistency. I was constantly worried about earning, making money for a living, close to what I was used to. I had my own resources that did not stop me from doing what I could do and create. So I returned to work in the industry I knew where I could bring value, but without the prestige, power, financial gain and stability.
Punching below my weight, I made things happen.
My temp project based job turned into a more permanent position in the team. My blog writing went to the wayside, putting all my energy into the job. I wrote here and there for a local UAE-based Filipino magazine in my spare time and on some weekends. I built momentum, got comfortable and built a stellar reputation in a short amount of time.
Then as fate may have it, we were to leave the UAE and strike anew in another country - the USA. The Dubai plug pulled, I had to start all over again.
This made me reflect about the 10th card of the Major Arcana - The Wheel of Fortune. It is the midway from the Fool to the end of The World. Considering The Fool, it is the 11th card out of the 22. There is a build up from the easy going, devil may care Fool to the contemplative High Priestess, to the union of the Lovers, the movement of The Chariot and the introspective Hermit.
In the center of the card is a wheel, according to Benebell Wen in “Holistic Tarot”, are the Hebrew letters YHWH or “Yahweh” and “ROTA,” which means “wheel” in Latin. But depending on where you start reading it from, the word changes. According to Rachel Pollack, it turns into ‘TORA” in reference to the Jewish scrolls, or “ORAT” meaning to speak, or “ATOR” the Egyptian goddess of the sky, fertility and love. This wheel is held together by the spokes of the alchemical symbols of mercury, sulfur, water and salt, says Wen.
On the wheel’s edges are three creatures, a sword bearing sphinx, a jackal-headed man and a golden snake. In the background, atop the gray clouds are four more creatures reading books. Pollack continues to note that these creatures are in the Bible, both old and new testaments. The Babylonian astrological symbols of Leo, Scorpio, Aquarius and Taurus . Also representative of the four Christian evangelists - Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
When the Wheel of Fortune appears in a reading, we are presented with a choice. One that is to be made to change the fates or be doomed to repeat itself down the line. One is faced with a crossroad, “two roads diverged in a yellow wood” said Robert Frost, a crucial turning point in one’s life. Which path do you choose? Where does it go? Where will does it take you?
It is no coincidence that The Wheel of Fortune card is the steering wheel card. Imagine the ship’s wheel that steers and controls the boat to the direction the captain wants to take it. We are the captains of our ships, our lives, and the Wheel of Fortune asks us where next to steer.
Starting over again is never easy, no matter how often you’ve done it. One eases oneself into creature comforts after the discomfort of the unfamiliar. One carries the things that once was, but not everything translates. One leaves behind, cuts off huge parts of what once was. Those that are not needed anymore.
I was not that girl in the Philippines, nor that girl in Dubai. I am a different person altogether. I turned myself into one. My choices steered my life into the path that lay before me now.
In the recent years, I realized that though I had money, a job, what was considered a success in this country and in mine and in the world, I was unhappy. A deep setting unhappiness that sent shivers through my nerves like an animal shaking in fear from its predator, hiding behind the hedges of internalized shame and fear I built around myself. No human should live like this. So today, I choose to step out into the light. I choose my dream. I choose my gifts. I choose to be seen.
After over a decade of writing online - blogging, contributing to magazines, newspapers, I finally have my own website. My name as the website name and url, including a collection of the more recent work I’ve done, including gifts I want to share. I officially steered my ship’s wheel into this new direction, a turn into the tides that moved my insides with my name in the spotlight.
I feel everything changing.
In the water.
In the air.
In the earth.
In the fire in my belly.
When we are all gone, Galadriel said “Much that once was is lost, for none now live who remember it.” But when everything is lost, I have a feeling everyone who will be living then will all remember me.
What am I reading:
I finally finished “How to Stand Up to a Dictator” a memoir by the Nobel Peace Prize Winner, Filipina journalist Maria Ressa. I bought this copy last January in the Nobel Prize Museum in Stockholm. I read pages on the flights in between, but found my heart palpitating in a mix of rage, despair and guilt. There were names I knew, people I met in real life, even worked with. I had to step away. The past, an ongoing culture that is fighting to thrive again, shoved into my face.
People question who is the dictator that she stood up to. People point to the previous President Duterte. But technicalities in definition say otherwise. But I think he and others like him are not the dictators we should fight and stand up to. There are the dictators we know, but today, there are forces with extraordinary amounts of money and power that dictate and is changing how we view and move in the world - social media conglomerates.
These dictators are not in some far off palace reserved for the dignitaries and people in power, but they are in our very hands, watching and leveraging on our every move, every share on their platforms, pushing buttons of emotion with the speed and efficiency that seems ungovernable. These forces dictate the pace of our lives and even the way we do business.
But in fact, they can be controlled. They can be regulated. It all is a matter of political will from each and everyone of us, including those at the top levels of those companies who can make a resolute decision, flip the switch and make everything different.
If you’d like to read more about tarot cards and their meanings, head on over to what I’ve written below:
Major Arcana
Minor Arcana