BLUE SKY

Blue Sky
painting - 36" x 36", acrylic on canvas
drawing - 11" x 17", pen and ink on paper

“Hay naku. You actually made the drawing into a painting?!" exclaimed Andre when he saw the finished piece while fiddling through his bag for a cigarette.

"Well, might as well do it. It's already time to put it on canvas you know," I told him.

"Sigh... that painting just reminds me of the past," he added with a grimace as he flicked a lighter to light the cigarette he stuck between his lips.

"Look at it this way. You're still alive and "growing"... well, more like around the waist," I joked.

"HMPH!", was all he said as he raised an eyebrow and puffed a long trail of smoke out the window.


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(I wrote this old post on February 24, 2007 for a pen and ink work of the same title above.)


"I AM TIRED OF MY LIFE” is an oft-repeated statement of someone I know dearly. It’s a statement that I can’t blame him for mentioning.

He lost his house twice. He lost a chance at romance. He lost a niece and almost lost his mother who is now groping for her sanity. Now he’s battling for his life in a hospital. There’s not much of a happy moment in between these tragedies, and no matter how much cheering up I or anyone can give him, his is a life full of it. One can even say it’s already his middle name or it’s an invasive twin attached to his side.

For the past few years, he’s been battling a tsunami of emotions predicated by a proportional seesawing of his weight. The last time he had a full and hearty laugh of joy is now but a distant memory for him. Months and days have been spent crying and cursing at the life he leads.

“When will this fucking hardship end? If this is God’s idea of a joke, then He’s much too cruel.”

I am left dumbfounded at the face of this person’s despair. I, who thinks life is hard enough trying to survive running after an elusive dream, merely has to look at this person just to humble myself.

“Do you know why the sky is blue?”

“Aside from a Yahoo commercial I have heard about why it’s blue, no, I don’t.”

“It’s His way of mocking people like me – prisoners of our own tragedies. It’s like you’re in a ten-by-ten foot prison cell with nothing but rough bricks and bars around you. Then there’s this small window above your head and the only thing you can see through it is a tiny piece of blue sky. That’s Him saying, “You can only see this, but you can’t touch it.”
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A few weeks have passed. The operation saved his life and I got this message from him, “Am okay. Got out of the hospital and my mom’s doing better. I guess I won’t see you for a while until I get to sort things out. Take care.”