as if i didn't have enough chat time with nanay, there was the late afternoon phone conversation to tell her the good news that her daughter, for once, was mindful enough to look at the nooks and crannies of her other room - yet one more time - to find that elusive bunch of keys and that planner with the important cheque. all it took was a minute.

i swear to you i looked over and over those two places where i found them. maybe someone's playing a trick on me.

no tricks, honey. you just weren't mindful enough to see them as they were, where they were. you can take care of the cheque on monday.

my financial stability for the next two months is assured.

then i regaled her with stories from my lunch with ginny and annette. as what is always exchanged with up orphans finding themselves at another school, it was about the mother ship and the fallout from the recent literature conference (depends on who you ask). then the uncovering of posers, flakes and those who exoticize what they don't know. then the oppressors, control freaks and cloistered gnuts. then came to sick mothers and stubborn husbands (but dear, don't you know by now? your husband is your eldest child!) and dreams for little daughters.

i think my inability to, well, relate, was evident enough because i was greeted with a smile: amy, it's been a long way from the classes with mallari, hasn't it?

i tried to present my own travails in life but in the end, i was faced with the realization that such travails are, really, none. a golden thought: fundamentally, i had no problems.

now that's a novel thought.

when i told that to nanay, it's as if she wanted to reply, i told you so.

imagine that.

* * *

i like to follow the career paths of people who, by conventional wisdom, do things most people think are impossible.

one of them is steve jobs. another is rick rubin, the shaman-esque guy in jay-z's video 99 problems. there is a profile on rubin in this week's issue of time magazine and the article is proof of how in music, it's really about feeling good about and believing in what you do. rubin makes it happen for many musicians. i won't make a laundry list of what the article mentioned about him but one fact that struck me is that rubin is not a sound engineer and therefore does not know how to manipulate those buttons in a recording studio. another source of disbelief - he does not read notes.

i wouldn't call him a producer. enabler is a better term.