Log 19

Eid Al Adha and Some Life Updates

Listening to: Only You by Alison Moyet

We celebrated Eid Al Adha a couple of days ago. We got up extra early and made our way to the Mosque to find a glorious line ( of about 300 meters long) waiting for us. Mother and the sisters made it inside easily. "Very few women prayed for Eid this year", she later reported. But the men's section was filled as always, spilling all the way to the outside yard where more then a dozen rows were prepared for prayer. And I'd swear my vision got hazy by the sheer amount of perfume application the men put on that early morning. The mosque was impossibly filled with perfume scents.

Historically, traditionally, the ancient Arabs used to "bathe" in frankincense. Fanning onto them clouds of incense smoke much like beekeepers use smokers to draw out bees from their honeycombs. That got passed down and spread to all Muslims, even reaching our humble city. This is the fourth subdued Eid I've been part of (because of the pandemic). But there were still many hugs and kisses, despite the social distancing protocols.

The Eids are the only two permissible occassions Muslims are allowed to celebrate. There's the Eid-il-Fitr, the Holiday after the Fast, after the long, hard month of Ramadan. There's the Eid-al-Adha, the Holiday of the Sacrifice, to commemorate Abraham's willingness to sacrifice hi son by command of God. Looking at it in our modern lens, it seems a monsteous thing to do. But I suppose mankind has celebrated worse atrocities.

To those who can afford, we slaughter either a cow or a goat. Father can afford a cow. And the young boys of the house got to cleaning the meat on the ground sprawled with Banana leaves.

Have you ever tasted cooked meat just hours before the livestock was slaughtered? I used to but now I can't. So I couldn't eat the spicy beef stew our aunts had cooked. It was the thing I most craved when I was younger. I suppose I no longer have the stomach for it.

While the celebrations went on and on throughout the day, I spent most of the hours in my room contemplating this, my next blog. And yesterday, just as I was reviewing what I've written, I received an email from my dear pen pal, Scott, who's living in Japan. I asked him if there are young adult Japanese looking for online English tutors and he's currently helping me with it. And he also suggested that I start setting up a payment account for my Substack. You see, I've long been thinking about setting that up for years. I get scared when I think about monetizing my writing [directly?] and still want the old route of receiving finance from publishing institutions. And at the same time, I don't really like publishing institutions all that much. But yes, sooner or later I would really want to have a bit of money coming from my blog. What's good about Substack is it's the easiest to set up the payment method. I haven't really thought about Patreon but I'll look into that as well.

There's a lovely Anime show called Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken with three lead characters: Two artists who don't know a thing about money; And the third which, shall we say, is the producer. The operations manager and one who handles the money. Her drive to whip her friends to work comes from her deep love of money. It's really comical! But she said something insightful about money. Money ensures good performance. It's a measure of how good you can make good things. That's my thoughts for the time being 😅

AND!

Please let me announce that I've promoted my blog to some Reddit and I got SIX new subscriptions! Wuhooo! And that includes fellow Substack writer Miss ZM Spalter, whose lovely project, the substack blog Occasionally Impervious shares her lovely journey in Japan from the eyes of a Brooklyn Mommy. Love love love her writing. Also, I'm about to submit my short story to a big Philippine publication so wish me luck!

Thank you for reading.