A seven-year itch of writing

Beginning this year, I am resolved to write 10 pieces of literary outputs, quitting on the seventh year when they might be widely shared.

The image of the “seven-year itch” comes from a movie where the psychological insight that the passion on anything, particularly in marriage, wanes after the seventh year. This would be a psycho-interest span akin to the attention span we use in classrooms. Statisticians point out that the current mean time for marital divorces hover at the 7.2 to 7.4 years.

While used here as a metaphor, it is also going to be looked at as a chronological marker. At the start of 2014, I started the venture of memoir writing, the first being a bio-profile draft for my grandchildren in case they wish to know more about their “other grandpa” when they grow older. Though very limited in circulation, I have gotten word of caution about the use of actual names since the “letting-it-all-hang-out” tone of the narrative does not fit well with those who wish to keep their privacy away from reach to those who might consider possible abuse and harm.

However, it gives me a time frame of when I will definitely desist from laying my fingers on the laptop’s keyboard, and say, “I’m done.” To date, there really had not been anything “missional” about our wordsmithing. Good friend Jun at BoE once commented that the reason Jaime writes the way he does is so that BoE members are encouraged to use their dictionaries more often. That was a good cover for the deficiencies in our syntactical and vocabulary tableaus. It also means, however, that though we think we are serious, we should be taken with a fizz of seltzer!

The Torah has Ten Commandments, 10 being a convenient number and tool to recall anything, and there being (usually) 10 digits on one’s hands and feet. On my Seven-Year Itch, I aim to write in some format of writing-made-easy so others can do likewise. My bio-profile got the ball rolling. Here’s a targeted list:

I ‘Sang Pinoy tatak ordinaryo j’aime la vie for my grandchildren on my 86 years of existence;

II Pinoy sa Puso is on the affairs of the heart and other places, a TY “to all the girls I’ve known before”;

III Pinoy Saipan chronicles life with the United Methodist Church on Saipan, being part of STaRPO (Saipan, Tinian and Rota Parent Organization), our writing stint in the Opinion section of the Saipan Tribune and 10-years of lounging with an imaginal beer by Saipan’s lagoon;

IV Pinoy SVES is a journey through the art & discipline of pedagogical maintenance (no relations to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance) with PSS and San Vicente Elementary School;

V Pinoy Chinoy recalls travels to Sichuan, Chung Qing, Manzhouli, Yanji, Lhasa, and Urmuqi, the last place two places still on hold being a foreigner not allowed in those places until the foreign affairs office feels that political stability is restored;

VI WangZhimu, James V in Zhonghua, is the imaginal Journey on the famed trail of Santiago de Compostela, once a distinct physical possibility but now kept only as a fertile romp in the mind;

VII La Liga Ekumenika details my participation in church renewal post-Vatican II before the institutions of Christendom kicked the bucket, along with my tepid efforts in the field of human development and spirit life, EI/ICA/O:E version (Ecumenical Institute, Institute of Cultural Affairs, Order:Ecumenical);

VIII Pinoy Hemingwei is a personal journey of meaning and oblivion, a womb-to-tomb introspection reminiscent of but not patterned after Ernest’s “the old man and the sea”;

IX Pinoy englisCHe is oral English pedagogy with CH as “Chinese characteristics” issued as an expanding notebook for anyone wishing to improve their spoken English; and finally,

X Pinoy Journal collects 366 quotes for 366 days (written on and for a leap year) with 366 world-wise and street-smart reflections.

Obviously, the above list is a projection subject to change in the next seven years. If you can bear with our literary neuroses and idiosyncrasies, it will be fun to journey together. You might consider getting out that tablet and start hacking your own, in words and/or pictures, one-page, one-year, at a time. Curious on the current state of mine, send me an email.

One can begin this week with how we process the news of the downed MH17 in Ukraine. My first response was, why was it flying off course, and why do the media keep referring to it being downed near the Russian border when it was clearly downed in Ukraine far from the Russian border? And if Obama, the Pentagon, NATO, and EU appear helpless to influence the course of events, what makes them think Putin can? One can use this as a practice run on describing the facticity of the event, my emotional response to it, the cognitive conclusions my intelligence arrived at, and the decisions I make as a consequence.

I made this reflection in the eerie atmosphere of flying from Canada to China on the weekend via Air Canada and Air China, just as Typhoon Rammosun (Glenda in the Philippines) raged in the Philippines and ravaged Hainan and Guangdong. Am still around.