Talentless Hack

1.Ballet

There's a home video of a brightly lit stage, filled with rows of little girls in sparkly, shiny tutus. The camera shifts its focus to an adorable dumpling, a roll of white encased in leotards. The recital goes well for a while. Suddenly, there's a loud crash, and a similar creampuff girl is seen stumbling at the edge of the frame.

The clumsy girl is you, and the one behind the camera, your dad.

Go figure.

2.Voice
All your cousins have been in choirs. Your friends do theatre, and glee club, and intermissions in school programs.

Like them, you love to sing. You have an entire repertoire that ranges from Broadway to Backstreet to Beastie Boys. You automatically sprinkle your conversation with lyrics. Alas, you are tone deaf, and people wince when you open your mouth.

In this, as in other things, you blame your mother.

3.Horseback riding
Some of your fondest childhood memories were going up north, and riding ponies (nags) while your parents followed in cars. Visions of wielding lances or befriending unicorns pranced in your head.

A few years later, as your father's face turned alarmingly red and he started gasping for breath, you found out why they needed cars.

And there went your equestrienne dreams.

4.Theater

Despite your (absolute)(deplorable) lack of singing talent, you have a streak of melodrama and flair for the fabulous. Sometimes, it comes in handy—you're a far better actor (LIAR) than anyone knows. But it's a sneaky skill that comes and goes, as you found out the one and only time you joined a drama club.

Under the hot lights, in front of your Mean Girls peers, you employ nothing but a deer-in-the-headlights gaze.

5.Painting
Of all the lessons, every summer, the ones that stuck with you the most involved pigment and paper.

Now, ink often stains your fingers, and the smell of acrylic has replaced bygone turpentine and coffee grounds. Every chance you get—which is now, once in every blue moon—you sketch and glue on makeshift canvasses.

Centering your soul on the brushstrokes.

A Trip to the Ayala Museum with Mimi

All photos taken from Ayala Museum's Website. Because I am Lazy.

Gold

Sometimes, people look in askance. Despite your mother’s business, you hardly wear jewelry—and if you do, they’re nearly always plastic.

You do appreciate gems, of course, just not in the way most people expect. As you stare at the glass cases, with sheer sheets of metal woven into intricate braids, you can almost see your ancestors’ lives imprinted in the yellow gleam. They’re in the richness of the royal regalia, the little circles and hoops of the elaborate earrings, the delicacy of paper-thin diadems…

Then you see the golden chastity guards, and your thoughts come to a screeching halt.

Diorama

All the world’s a stage, and all the men in it merely players.

You agree with Shakespeare, and thus, as you stare at the models depicting key moments in your country’s history, you think of the lives before you. The unsung heroes of unfinished revolutions. The statesmen, poets and statesmen-poets forever etched in the annals of elementary textbooks as black or white.

A brief glance at the full-scale heights of founding fathers makes you smirk.

Hey! You were taller than them! Haha!

Painting

Nothing transfixes you like a painting.

Even if your mother and those two art galleries say you’re talented, you know you haven’t got the skill or the time to produce a real face (or even a decent cartoon), so you stare at oils of pastures and beautiful women with a burning longing.

You imagine, in another place, another time, maybe you’d have packed your bags to dwell on the C’ote de Azur, or perhaps Paris, and live the life you’ve secretly always wanted, perfecting your art at the risk of all.

But then, you’d never survive as a starving artist, so when you come home you merely stare at your abstracts, and resolutely pick up the pencil.

Fossilize

Listening to “The Last Man” while thinking about 3-million-year-old three stumps is not a good combination.

It makes you think about life, and time, and how insignificant you are, in the scheme of things. It makes you dream about reincarnation, and Troo Luv, despite your Catholic upbringing.

And a line from a Rupert Brooke poem makes the romantic in you squeal:

“One mote of all the dust that’s I shall meet one atom that was you.”

Pottery

There are a lot of ceramics in glass cases.

It kind of makes you want to be a bull.

You chuckle out loud.