Netnet Camomot “HERE comes the rain again/Falling on my head like a memory/Falling on my head like a new emotion.” But it's not exactly “again”--the rain was as rare as a blue moon for many months, there were times when the brown leaves almost inspired you to enter the monastery--brown habits, anyone? Or to wish for rain to fall already. But when it does fall, there's that one particular request: Puede ayha ra moulan kung naa ko sulod sa balay? And that happens to be the balay where the househelp has started to rearrange the furniture and decor, probably in preparation for that day when you finally have time to do that yourself. For now, you're looking at the time again as you try to follow your sked. Last hurrah. Whew. Should have started this last month. But you still had projects last month. OK, last week, but you still had projects last week. Whew. The last hurrahs that never seem to last. And there's that rainy Monday to tempt you to extend your weekend, slowing you down to the point of Zzzzz. A friend advised to do this one particular work from 5 am to late night, and finish it all in one day. Wishful thinking. By 5 pm, that work was only 25-percent complete. Talk of hinayhinay basta kanunay, according to another friend. Should have followed EIC Herbie Gomez’s advice: to join the Press Freedom Week celebrations. But you know you couldn’t savor any celebration with this work and its deadline in mind. This is probably the first Press Freedom Week where I would be absent the whole week. I always tried to join at least one activity in the past. But duty calls in this one area of my life. After this, I can go back to absolute columnizing again: read, write, watch, listen, absorb. Change is coming! And that change has started with the weather. Mornings are cool again, I could hear the neighbors' help sweeping leaves off their areas of responsibility. No, they don't transfer that to the next-door neighbor's area of responsibility. Haha. The neighborhood starts to stir as the sun creeps up from the east. And this is progress for me--there were many times in the last ten months when I forgot to watch, listen, and absorb as my focus was immediately on the tasks at hand from 5 am onwards. For a night owl to start working at 5 am proves that there's no such thing as a morning person or night owl--it's a matter of forcing, er, disciplining yourself to start working already or else. Oh, it's passion, not work. And all along I thought I had passion only for one thing, and that's... writing. Hehe. Friends, who are familiar with my night-owlish sked, would call me at, say, 7:30 am and ask, Net, mata ka na? Well, expect that question for one used to waking up at 9 am or even later. And I'd stare into space as dilemma hits my minute brain: Should I reply with, Yup, I've been working since 5 am. Or simply say, Yup, as I pretend to stifle a yawn. Make it look easy. But then, I write about it, and the revelation transforms the illusion that it's easy to the reality that hard work is always involved in any endeavor. Even the rain that began to fall on Monday was the result of many months of what, prayers? Weather experts of course have an explanation for why the weather is as it is. And that's also the result of hard work--they spent years in college and in training in order to become experts in that field. Even this column is the result of writing since the '70s when pen pals were still the fad among the young ones. There's no such thing as an overnight anything. It takes months, OK, years and it takes a village to make something happen. The column could be written and finished in an hour because the subconscious already has some data to prop it up. Kind of a eureka moment: Rain falls on your head on a Monday, and you remember many other rainy days and Mondays. The wet season has probably arrived for Pinas. This is not exactly the change that every Pinoy is waiting for, but the season for umbrellas is here anyway. “I want to walk in the open wind/I want to talk like lovers do/I want to dive into your ocean/Is it raining with you.” Sigh.