Elline adds two more potion bottles to my cabinet, on the extreme right of both photos.

When I look directly into his eyes, I can read his mind.

Tony Perez's Art of War: Catalysts do not die, no matter how often their enemies kill them.

Did he look exactly as he does in your dreams?

Wishing to regain his importance, he resorts to destroying the reputation of others.

It is all right to have more, but not less, of what you need.

Evening begins immediately after noon.

No matter how simple your food, your dinner table should always be set to perfection, with everything symmetrical, aligned, and in place. This ensures that everyone will have peace of mind and of heart before sitting down to the meal.

Honor earth. It is the dominant element of the coming year.

No one else can love your family the way you do, no matter how hard they try.

A dying person will always seek to go home.

The last traditions that people will give up will always have something to do with food.

Some people choose to flaunt their blessings, others their woes.

There is physical relief, and then mental relief, and then emotional relief, but it is difficult for any one person to be simultaneously free of all three.

Let the fallen leaves on the lawn be there for just a while, so that you can appreciate the patterns they make, as in a Jackson Pollock painting.

Every day, you transit from one significant state of mind to another, but you do not always notice it.

If even one person is unhappy at a dinner, the entire dinner is a flop.

Thanking the Velosos for the gift basket. And I liked everything inside it. And outside it.

A holiday dinner should be meant not to show off or impress, but to satisfy all partakers.

Do not celebrate in darkness.

It is a Merry Christmas for you as long as you ensure that it is a Merry Christmas for your family. 

Within every adult is a child that continues to dream of many wonderful things, and that child never dies.

Lunch at home with Angelique. Aubrey is taking a midday nap in preparation for cooking dinner later.

Quiet neighborhood. Only a few stores are open.

Page-hoppers always think that every message they read is addressed to them.

If facebook is like a magazine with photo spreads and sidebars, Google+ is like a book neatly arranged and with a table of contents.

Thanking the Cusi family for two boxes of pound cake!

Photo from the Internet

Good noon, Cubao!

The sun is a red-hot, electric iron set up on its end.

Night Classes

Night Classes

Record the dream you dream tonight.

The people who know the least about you will always pretend that they know the most about you.

http://tonyperezphilippinescyberspacebook18.blogspot.com/2017/12/never-be-concerned-about-being-published.html

Only a parent knows how to give until it hurts.

You cannot take care of the world if you cannot take care of your own family.

On your altar you must have gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

They are asking why that old man is not passing anything on to his followers. The answer is that he has nothing to pass on. He is not a mage and never was one. He is merely a researcher, and all of his knowledge was derived from sources other than himself.

Aubrey gives Grandpa a coffee mug for Christmas.

The goddess of the storm is my mother.

All Wands with the color black must point to the southeastern sky.

Shared from Getty Images.

Everybody home.

Finished hanging the fairy lights in the small loggia. Yes, we always finish decorating on December 23.

When TV house flippers enter a house they are to work on, why are they always vociferous about their displeasure about what they see? Why don't they just shut up and do the work they are being paid for?

Do they express their great gripes only so that the final result will look much better in contrast?

Angelique and J. have arrived in Metro Manila from Baguio. They traveled some six hours.

Aubrey's turn to go jalan-jalan. She is having her hair trimmed and then doing some minor groceries.

In the meantime Angelique and J. have left Baguio for Metro Manila.

Devils' traffic celebrates everything along with the people.

Begin preparing your big, Christmas Eve dinner on the eve of Christmas Eve, says Adam.

What doesn't look good is not necessarily not-good, but fashion vendors will always want you to think otherwise.

Unexpected guests are welcome to everyone only if they bring more goodies than they take away.

There are more good people than not-good people in the world, but it is safest to assume the opposite.

Your chosen career will either give you much pleasure or much pain.

A person with low self-worth is easily purchased, but he will always pretend that he is not.

All things considered, it is probably much better to be a pretentious prostitute than a suicide.

To every person with a sense of humor, there is no such thing as the absence of free entertainment.

"Do you love me still/
Or do you just mean well?/"

Tony Perez's Rules of Magical Economy:

1. Virginity and innocence are not prerequisites of mediumship.

2. Live without it until you can afford it.

3. Huwag kang magtuturo ng relihiyon o ng kung anu-ano kung nakikikain ka lang.

When a rat eats the poison you laid out, you didn't murder it.

It decided to commit suicide, knowing that it was hated so.

The brains of rats are evolving, as though they made an unexpected step across a line between Eden and East of Eden, as though the Chinese horoscope Rat decided to rear its head and elevate its kingdom, as though the archetype of Rat in mythology and folk tales and contemporary literature and art were suddenly obsessed with giving life to itself.

Rats are now capable of reason, deductive thinking, inference, attempting to bargain and negotiate, recognition, and discrimination.  

Good morning, Cubao!

The sky is a sheet of frosted glass.

M., Dennis, Michael, and Neil are working like elves in the night, repainting the interior of M.'s cafe. Gave them our excess dinner food.

M. hopes to reopen the cafe after Christmas, which is good for me. I would rather feed my guests and the Spirit Questors there, where we are served by waiters, rather than in our dining room, where I am the waiter.

Perils of living--

by the sea: earthquakes, tsunami, and storm surges

on the plains and lowlands: earthquakes, floods, and fires

on hills: earthquakes and landslides

on mountains: earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, avalanches, and forest fires.

Earthquakes are the common denominator.

The Wands should continue pointing to the ground.

No gaudy lights for us this Christmas. We are going with tea lights and paraffin oil lamps inside safe, glass cases.

I did not make plans to go to the beach because I have a seaside threshold of exactly one hour, after which I am raring to pack up and go home.

The friendly guard watching the people falling in line to change dollars to pesos smiled wistfully into space, an expression I see on the faces of good-natured people who are happy that others have a lot of money for themselves and secretly wishing they were the same, but also thinking that, if not, they are content with their life anyway.

When we say that a person burns in hell, what we mean is that his mind is constantly being tormented by the fires of his negative memories and thoughts.

When Sartre said that hell is "other people", he really meant the people who are the characters in our negative memories and thoughts.

I often watch Say Yes to the Dress in order to drift off to sleep. It is my perfect drowser, because it's all about problems that I don't have and is totally meaningless to me.

Some people exist to make other people die of envy. It's like killing people with secondary smoke.

When you curse devils' traffic, the devils laugh at you, because that is exactly what they want you to do.

6:10 PM. Standstill traffic on P. Tuazon Boulevard. We are able to cross the street as slowly as we want.

Saw the Aetas twice today. Been thinking of giving them something.

No more sundry errands, I hope. I want to hibernate inside my captain's cabin bedroom through New Year's Day.

Outside the supermarket there was a long, taxi queue.

I just walked home.

Yes, I had a raspberry holiday drink and a single-shot espresso at Seattle's Best to console myself after the long lines I had to go through. Love the silver, sugar pearls they encrust the raspberry drink with. They're too hard to be crunchy and are like small ball bearings, but they melt in your mouth.

Back from jalan-jalan. Bought stuff for Aubrey that I neglected to buy yesterday: mayonnaise, beef cubes, and dill (the supermarket ran out of packed dill and so I had no choice but to buy dill that was actually growing in an herb planter).

Also bought six, blown-glass globes that can be used as hanging planters or candle holders, and seven Chinese porcelain and clay vessels.

Despite the storm in the south, a hot, humid day.

She went out of her way to pick me up and bring me to their family rest house to scan it because something tragic happened there years ago, but, when I was sitting beside her in her car, I saw that what she wanted to know was whether her husband was finally dying.

You don't wear a costume. It wears you. And so, your choice of costume announces what you are.

Devils' traffic wants you to know that not only are you in hell, but also that you are in hell with your loved ones, friends, and acquaintances.

Being in devils' traffic is like living in a house without a roof.

I have a bad habit of buying brushes every time I am in an art supplies store. As a result, I have about 300 brushes of all shapes and sizes, mostly in storage, and I like keeping them as backstops.

I started painting when I was in fifth grade, and I do recall it as a time when good brushes were not readily available.

Do not engineer Christmas. Allow it to engineer itself.

Why do you have to stage-manage Christmas all the time?

Devils' traffic has a primary message, which is to let you know that you are already in hell.

Had to wake up early to let Benjie in.

We are moving all planters to the roof deck.

Sunlight In Cubao: Friday, December 22, 2017

Your Messenger message:

"Hi ___. Goodmorning.Just woke up from a bad dream.

"I was at my house in ____________.In the middle of the night i was aware that there is a thief someone trying to get in.I went to the kitchen behind turn on my cellphone light and from then small window i saw the silhouette figure on the roof.I turn off the light and find out it still there.So i make my presence known by turning on the light again and shouted 'P____ n___o!!! papatayin kita!!!papatayin kita!!!!
At that point my wife wake me up bcos i was shouting out loud.

"What makes me thinking is this is not the first time..This is the 3rd time happened from the past years if im not wrong.Always have that figure that im ferociously dealing with.

"Thank you ___.Bear me for disturbing you again.

"Could it be myself fighting my inner demons or struggles?"

My reply:

Hello _______!

Yes, inner demons = your Shadow.

In order to become a creative person, every person needs to confront his Shadow and make it his ally.

The next time you dream this, climb up to the roof, greet your Shadow, and ask it how it can help you through life.

Good morning, Cubao!

The sky is an inverted, mermaids' lagoon.

Almost done rereading _The Emperor's Pearl_. Will resume and finish the rereading tomorrow.

M. is having the interior of the cafe painted cream and yellow. (The interior formerly was red, white, and gray.)

She said that the next one will pass higher up on the map.

More suicides.

Alas, people are afraid to come to me for counseling, because my counseling involves magic and the use of psychic abilities. 

I will always remember my Christmas and New Year holidays since my retirement as times of peace of mind, contentment, and fruitful contemplation of my art and literature projects. Retirement has allowed me to be an observer rather than a participant, and this kind of distance and detachment endows me with the greater ability to see things as they are.

When devils' traffic possesses you, no one around can perform an exorcism.

From 2011 to 2016 I used to keep an assistant's writing desk perpendicular to my writing desk. (I did this for two writing desks.) They were meant to be used by the Spirit Questors especially while we were doing research on magic. I gave up that type of desk arrangement in 2016, however, because it works only if the assistant lives in our house and not just reporting on Thursdays.

I enjoy rereading my Judge Dee and Brother Cadfael books and my TinTin comic books very late at night, when everything around me is quiet and still, and the walls of my bedroom dissolve into the worlds of the characters I am reading about.

Benjie cleans the house tomorrow.

Must go jalan-jalan again, though. 

Tony Perez's Rules of Magical Economy:

1. Pewter medallions are designed as mere trinkets and do not have the power that the originals do.

2. You may have only one of each magical implement, but it will serve you well to have more than one wand, because wands cannot be reprogrammed.

3. Huwag kang maging bayaran. Kungdi, mawawalan ka ng layang magtapat ng katotohanan.

I cannot stand people who develop single lectures and deliver them again and again at every opportunity. They remind me of the speakers I used to escort round the country. Though the audiences were different in different places, I had to listen to the same lecture each time.

Once you develop a lecture and deliver it, it already has been released to ether and does not need to be re-released. Publish the lecture on your blog and simply write a new one.

Institutions pay greater karma than individuals do.

When you insist on being in a hurry, make sure you are not in a hurry to your own death.

Sunlight In Cubao: Thursday, December 21, 2017

Fifth batch of T-shirts in the laundry. Feels great to have an empty, steel hamper!

My sister Lourdes sent me this:

https://en.playbrain.me/en12558-pick-a-present-to-open-well-reveal-what-youre-getting-for-christmas/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=vvpage&utm_campaign=pben12558&utm_content=2017-12-20&grt_origin=facebook_vvpage_pben12558_2017-12-20

The only strangers who greet you a Merry Christmas in the streets are beggars and con artists.

Back from jalan-jalan. Went straight home after dropping by Seattle's Best. Wanted to get the fish and the meat into the freezer soonest. Aubrey is now taking stock of all the other stuff I bought.

Done with an early lunch and off to jalan-jalan. Might have two, afternoon, single-shot espressos again. It seems to me that they help me sleep well at night.