ON BUTTONS, LACES AND CRYSTALS
By:  Iris P. Concepcion

I embarked on another one day sojourn at Kelantan, Malaysia and had come across a little nook named Cintra, a small palace of potpourri with stairs blooming with makeshift flowers and dainty drawers of buttons and laces.

My eyes were, again, opened to the opportunity of unlocking the hidden secrets of modified hems and sewings, of stitches and embroideries, of gowns and well-dressed men in castles.  The table covers were intricately handwoven with designs that matched the railings of zigzagged stairs in Grimm's and Hans Christian Andersen's Fairy Tales.  Kelantan, by this time, is suffused with materials for accessories and embellishments for production designs, the very things that I have seen and utilized productively in a small village at Yala, Thailand.  This enclave of learning educates young people the rudiments of being productive. I had interacted with them one day, fashioning randomly a short tale of a kid hugging a goodlooking buffalo with a wide grin on his face. It sounds like a poem when recited.

Connecting the two places (Kelantan and Yala) that I now call my sheltered inn for existence has given curves to my stories with fascinating settings.  Before, I could only create verbally adept talkers with impressive dialogues in conducting their conversations.  Now, these characters can sit in cushioned sofas that look like bags, drinking water from handpainted porcelain glasses, invited by gracious and hospitable hosts that remind them of Sleepy, Smiley and Dopey, the lovable dwarfs in Snow White.

The magic carpet, at this hour of the day, has yielded gentlemen of genteel stock with refined, instead of coarse language.The cakes of Angry Birds have emotional and evocative eyes, using circled chocolates as their orbs.  The almonds of pastries now bear the fruits of kiwi, strawberries and peaches.  Young men with adventurous spirits are jet-skiing but are surrounded by the lush greens of the wilds, gliding in between lines of water trees.

The Chinese are very engaged in their chatters while regally eating their french fries; the Muslim women's fish balls have grown thrice their sizes; the bread had been leavened and became bigger.

The television set was showing a spade of dramatic and zombie stories, of people rising from the dead, of shirts declaiming: "The Brain" and "Certified Freaky".  Tim Burton would find a cluster of amusement in these productions, with gorgeous kids crying over heavy-soled shoes, pacified only by colorful football shod in blue and white (witrh spikes).

The women were buying  gifts for their husbands and kids; calf skin had suddenly turned into a shoe ornament; the watches are set on their proper time frame by turning their clock tuners.

This brings me to the wonders of interactions and how creativity works, especially on children.  The small village I had mentioned earlier has teenagers who can converse in English. Their rooms are equipped with camera projectors.  They were given free lunch (European boarding school impetus) and were taught the art of confidence in a wholistic manner.

My hosts for one day are mild-mannered with well-bred customs and traditions.  I was made to write my impressions about my stay in a photo album-like story book.  I scribbled my own simple poetry, using the theme of fruits that had been served on the table: sweet watermelons, tasty Mandarin oranges and crunchy apples.  Their chicken dish is close to Philippine adobo, spiced with green chilis.  Table conversations revolved around the literacy competence of children, comparing their levels of comprehension.  The children, without being instructed, know ho to pose before the cameras properly, for them to look elegant in photographs.

It is charming in a way where the education of "School of Rock" is transferred in reality to remote villages where students can draw helicopters with sound effects (provided by their Acer projector screens).

It is here where I saw the buttons, laces and crystals of kelantan designed and embossed on tissue holders, placed on the dining table of my village hosts.  The tissue holders, in short, were fully clothed, like the noble men of the olden times.

These experiences encapsulate the adage that I had always written in my blog site: Creativity shoots off from everywhere, including swanned ponds.