WRITE FROM THE HEART
By Marivir R. Montebon

Welcome to OSM! Janet Villa and Diane Fermin Roeder!

To have somebody as deep but easy as Janet Villa as a writer is truly exhilarating. OSM! is honored to have her. Mothering Heights is OSM's latest section, and we will travel digitally, reflecting into our lives through Janet's mothering experiences as we relate or affirm them with our own.
In one of our exchanges in private message, I told Janet, yes, mothering is scary. But it makes us who we are, most of the time.  I remember how I dreaded the thought while staring at my newborn daughter in her crib that this was now my real womb to tomb responsibility. As the days turned into years, mothering has always been a mix of joys and horrors.
OSM! shines further with the classy and vibrant Diane Fermin Roeder as our fashion and marketing guru. She debuts her Bamboo Stiletto for us with a keen fashionista eye on the Olympics 2012 uniforms of the athletes. It is an honor to have you with OSM!, Diane.  Thank you, Ms. Bessie Salomon for bridging OSM! to wonderful people.

We feature in our cover today an awesome person, a Judge and Poet rolled into one. Finally, we have an awesome man for OSM! It was difficult enough finding one, an awesome male subject, as I told Digital and Content Editor Leani Auxilio.He definitely writes from the heart. And so does Janet and Diane, and everyone else who are able to glue my eyes into their copies.

I love how Judge and Poet Simeon Dumdum Jr. puts it, "whether one becomes a celebrated writer or not is for the future to decide. Art makes one rich, not materially but spiritually."

Indeed, great writing comes from the heart.  It is spirited and sincere.  Each topic is a solid eruption from the heart, that did not happen in one magnificent touch of a wand, but of the writer's complex mix of joy, salvation, angst, sincerity, contradictions, and finally, confidence. Each written piece is a result of the revolting emotions and truths. Writing, like birthing, is never easy. Once it is finished, the writer feels she has given birth again, one more time.

Let me close with a poem by Judge Dumdum, which I print with his permission.

The First To Love

Always she is a step ahead.
When I think of giving her flowers,
She waylays me with wine-red roses.
And if I get up in the morning,
Pulled out of bed by the idea
Of a long walk across the fields,
She would be there, lacing her shoes,
The coffee, which was on my mind,
Filling up the room with its presence.
But one day, when there was a downpour,
I made sure I would be the first
To suggest that we have a race
In the rain, but she turned me down,
And I saw in her smile that we
Were too old for such recklessness.
But that afternoon, the sun blazed,
And she asked what just then had crossed
My mind, that we both go outside.
The road was a patchwork of water.
I wanted to help her across
A rain puddle, forgetting that
Her legs were longer than mine.

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