59. reblogging: your love is like a red umbrella

the once trendy online platform multiply has announced that it will be letting go of all its social networking aspects to fully focus on its marketplace service. so i thought it would be nice to give new life to some of my old multiply blog posts such as this weather-apt one, (and maybe even work on transferring everything here eventually in snippets) posted in 2009 and an ode to a love that endures bright and simple to this day.

1st published Nov. 2009

walk the streets like Cinderella

        everyone can see it on my face 

let it rain

it's pourin' all around me

let it fall

it ain't gonna drown me

after all --

i'm gonna be okay

So let it rain. 

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i suppose the first concrete indication for my fondness for umbrellas was when i was in college and had named one out of impulse. "glare" (which is short - and trendy! - for "glarissima") was so named because other than me having a thing for old-fashionedly creepy words that evoke darkened cobwebby hallways and a violin weeping in the distance (see how i get carried away?), it also sported a shiny holographic, totally contemporary color at odds with its name, that was neither pink nor blue but a moody melody of both (it was a pretty purple combination that shone on sunny days, and a sorry, sodden, but useful, mess on rainy days).

i have thus been naming its successors with the same sarcastically friendly nickname ever since, no matter that i have stuck to solid colored ones after that. 

the current bearer of the name is a silver foldable my father bought for me at sta. cruz. a curiosity that needs to be pleated and arranged upside down, present "glare" has caused me several close encounters with what i think would be the first death-by-umbrella newspaper headline (that would be just so anticlimactic, wouldn't it, in a country always famous for the tragic things?), and while i (have obviously?) survived, i always seem to be heroically drenched afterwards. 

so why do i love umbrellas? 

well, i love how taming it back to dormant status gives me something to do with my hands. i think it's the same way people look to establish routines, how these daily tasks that we come to know by heart give us a sense of control, at least for some moments, of life. it's something absentmindedly tangible, no matter if seemingly inconsequential. 

but rediscovering faith hill's song (above) makes me think that i can love umbrellas for a deeper reason, too. 

these days, i am happy my parents are with me, happy with the people i work with, the work i'm doing for the country i ultimately serve. but i am also sad for a whole plethora of reasons that defy reason, most of which i would be too embarrassed to admit.

but i also have something else: a red umbrella of joy (so unexplainable when i have been so weak) that takes away the weary bones of a quarter day's travel, the meandering ungrateful thoughts, the second guessings, the petty filth from running the rat race, the nostalgic hard candies of the past. 

Photo via

i'd like to imagine that years from now (but always always sooner, i hope), i will be holding a red umbrella over my head as i stand under london rain. while i finally compare what i see with the long-drawn pictures in my head as i splash through glittering puddles and breathe in the heady scent. sana naman, di ba? 

let it rain, Lord! let me feel You in the rain.: )

*PS. present glare is a bright orange sony ericsson freebie too large for my bags (so i hold it like a scepter) and too wonderfully sturdy for ordinary rain (which is why i love it despite often clashing with my outfits).