Cellular Cruise II: Notes and Denotations

A cruise on mental repercussions


I.
Life is but fair. We undergo situations that hone us. Tests are meant to shape us. But before we are shaped, we are crashed and pulverized first so that in the end we'll stand triumphant - picking up the pieces to make us whole again, able to do what others did to us. Need not to effort for a vengeance.


II.
Mike Murdoch-make your everyday a masterpiece momentum--moving without the slightest effort. It wasn't the perfect birthday. It wasn't as if I expected nor longed for that day to come. But when everyone who knew you seemed excited about making you feel that it's your special day and that you are especial, even for that one fine day, who wouldn't be moved?

I am not big on birthdays, though I am not appalled at the site of cakes and candles, I am sick about being reminded that I would eventually grow old--in numerical terms.

It was sheer semantic that we have to embrace ageing because there seemed to be a consensus that everyone has to go 1 notch at a time in the mundane world of getting older. It was as if the biological manifestation weren't enough, we overzealous and order-freak humans even padded the process up to affirm yet another status we assume.


III.
I dropped the four year old drama of the self, doubting each perplexing reality. I embraced what I hated and questioned what I earlier marveled at. Clear to the ocean's bed, each facet I have eagerly devoured on are the nightmares that now consume me. Embittered, I rebelled against myself. Unhappy, I crucified myself with all anxieties. Clueless, I sauntered my way out of the labyrinth to no avail. I felt so STUPID.

Now that I am building on new grounds, trying to recapture what in my early days have been intimately fed to me. I zeroed in the chance that it'll be harder for me to digest the marrow as it is frustrating to sip from an empty cup. Gradually, I am reorienting my sight.The system much needing an overhaul now gets its dire needed attention.


IV.
Hours from now, we'd be back to Puerto Princesa City. The 5 days I've spent in Cebu was a reordering of perspective, reminiscing of experiences, and bonding moment. Cebu is a nice place. Found it to be an eclectic mixture of Baguio and Manila.


V.
When I look into your eyes, I want to see my image. Though my eyes are blind, my heart would pierce into your soul's sadness and solitary longings. Reaching to your bosom, love conquers lust. Until we meet again. Until your soft parched lips find its way back home to mine.

Celullar Cruise I: Five Poems

A cruise on mental repercussions

I.
What am I supposed to
do with a love i have
never found yet?

I know it's within
me, wanting to
break free,

but is always
captive to
fear.


II.
I am highlighting the moment:
Ours is a friendship not dictated by force.


III.
Tonight I am losing grip,
and I could hold on to no one
except God.

In this moment of uncertainty,
I cast my doubts aside and bank
on my faith in HIM.


IV.
DEATH-a sinister,
perhaps a nasty traitor
to the fountain of anima.

Dashing a little particle
of its fine, well-crashed feather,
it looms even to the tiniest
of holes and the deepest
of trenches.

And if only he could listen,
he'd tell you how much
he longed for those unkind
words to be spoken.

But he can't do it now,
and even before.

For who would have the guts
to ask someone to speak
what he wants to hear?
That would be demanding!

DEATH is a universal
truth, no one can fully fathom
until some one goes away.

And it will still remain,
undeniably.


V.
Ray of light enveloped
me cold,

surging, flirting through
my veins.

Second later, felt I'm in a
deep trance.

Piercing hard around
my destiny,

was a misty cold air
breathing fire.

Couldn't move. Numb, in a
deep trance.

Of Rare Kind, A Generation To Extinction

we are of a rare kind
a generation close to
extinction, fighting a battle
without deathly armors,
facing a world of pluralism.
zilch authority.
no common worldview.
pestered by the status quo,
we trail blaze to seek
new answers to old questions
and more questions
to impending answers.
new routes, we explore
spelunking to the deepest
of the earths, and diving
the bottom of the oceans.
the yesteryears see us so
indifferently, without sense
neither sensibility.
indifferent, we are branded,
so closely identified to apathy.
failed they are to realize,
internalize even, that we
stand up to standards
we call our own; that we
simply perceived, gone are
the ways of the yesteryears
to approach present
dilemmas; and that what
we seriously need is a
dialogue of faith, and
respect of differences.
for we are of a rare kind,
a generation close to
extinction, thriving not
for distinction but to make
things better, at least,
far better than we've
found it, far not bitter
from the legacy of the past.

vanilla skies & re-creation

i soared beyond the vanilla skies,
glided along the sticky edges
of a sundae cup, and found
meaning in solitude.
lest, i invoke the parameters of
mt. sinai to siphon off
tablets of clay-injecting me
a sense and self-worth:
i will be a new creation,
again.

RANTING (raw/unedited/experimental)

I am so used to doing different things before. One good thing about stopping for a while and reliving some moments is that you get to compare what you were before and what you have become. I guess, that's basically the essence of introspection. What Socrates called self-evaluation is a much needed thing that everyone has to at least do once in a while.

Funny, since the time I got down from the plane last Saturday for a week-long break, all I did was to take time to check on myself. It might crossed your mind, "it's about me again." Ahem! Not for some narcissistic reasons but heck, don't I deserve to slow down and think about myself just for once? It's not everyday that I get to assess where I am and what am doing. Though it's pretty much obvious here since almost 90% of this blogger is about eternal, cyclical rantings.

Perhaps lately, I have so ranted about a number of things. I don't have any defense because it's one of the few things that I either just got used to doing or simply love. Of course, whether you like reading about my rantings or not is irrelevant. Just like you, I somewhat disgust myself for failing to overcome this side of me. You see it's a good thing that I don't get to blog often, at least, I also don't rant that much. chuckle. chuckle.

Hahahaha ranting (while looking at some ehem!). Before I went home, Joyce and I met at Coffee Bean. It was actually a quick decision after we just saw each other online. She asked me to go out. And since I was pretty bored because I was alone in the house (thanked God I didn't falter to the flesh's utmost desire!), I put on a shirt and trousers then went off.

Point being is that in moments like this that I am very much ALONE traveling, I am not quite used to, yet. I mean these are moments that I get to think more about myself and reflect, then rant. In fact, I despise being alone while in a crowd. Perhaps I just view the world as a stage where I perform. And with the stage fright that I have... Imagine how hard it is for me to mingle with the rest of the world.

The moment I stepped down from the FX, I immediately went off to browse some books over Fully Booked's shelves. I had to wait for Joyce, who came in shortly after. Woah! When I saw her, it seemed she got smaller, which of course I immediately withdrew from commenting. Until she herself blurted "you seemed to have grown taller". With utter disbelief, I replied, "oh come on! you seemed to have vertically shrunk." (Not the actual words of course). We laughed then went to have our coffee.

Alright. Alright. I know I am going somewhere else. I just had an impulse to write down what really transpired that day as some sort of a record. The bottom line really is that our conversation is reduced to a not-so-unfamiliar world of ranting: our pan-idealism against the unforgivable reality, our theoretical foundations versus hard-core science, and our past lives (not to mention how we come to embrace the destinies that await us. The last part, I quite got some goose bumps.

So here, about ranting! (finally. my apology) I just have two points.

First, ranting makes you look at the world negatively, perceived reality as something incoherent with your own perception of things. In a way, it is very much subjective. It is very much like when I get to touch on subjects like frustrations and depressions. I pour out my thoughts as it would rain cats and dogs. Most of them substantial, but totally unaware, it's often my narrow-minded outlook.

The Oxford Dictionaries define rant as to speak or shout at length in a wild, impassioned way. The word traces its origin from the Dutch ranten, referring to 'nonsense talk, rave'. To rant is also synonymous with the verbs vociferate, pontificate, and bellow among others.

To prove point 1, I'd explore on the words impassioned and pontificate. Most bloggers, I observed makes ranting a habit in their own spaces. It's about their own reflection on basically everything under the sun. Sometimes, well-written reflections, but more often a piece of wordplay throwing childish tantrums pointed toward almost all existing societal institutions.

Here, let me inject properly the word "impassion." Passion, more often, is always associated with the term emotion. Out of passion, comes out mostly from experiences, especially those undesirable ones which have evoked some very strong emotional response to the person involved. A clear example would be the time I blogged about how I hate how people have come to tarnished the concept of coffee houses into a gossiping center. For me it's a disgust to the intellectual atmosphere that coffee houses should embody. In one way, I felt that like any other commodity, it was commercialized. And yeah blame it to the workings of the capitalist! This posed a very good example of how I've responded emotional-turned-intellectualized to a stimuli brought about by the recent mushrooming of coffee houses. Impassioned I am to say the words I wasn't even supposed to have blurted out.

Next, pontificate? Oh God! The term actually originated from the Catholic Church. The term meant to express "one's opinions in a way considered annoyingly pompous and dogmatic" (Oxford again). When one rants, especially if directed towards a certain institution or company or a particular person that has caused trouble, irritation, or dissatisfaction, annoyance, and even nuisance, the RANT-er may have the tendency to assume an all-knowing stature, perhaps an omniscient point of view. I must say it is kind of arrogant to have "textual-ized" what one has directly experience in the sense that it is focused entirely on how the rant-er was put into a very much awkward, frustrating or unforgivable situation. It's more of like a payback time, without the actual person or entity involved knowing. (Funny, isn't it?) Oh yeah, pontificate! It is very much like when the the Church assumes the greater role as the sole harbinger of knowledge and wisdom. They tend to say this and that. Until the time came that a man raised a question which almost brought down the whole institution. Bottom line, the ranter becomes the center of the Universe.

Second and last point is that, ranting per se poses an assessment of a problem but NEVER is the solution to that. Perhaps an endless enumeration of ending the enigma may ensue, yet that will only serve as a quick emotional response. It's like when you get to entangle yourself with a heated argument. And with uncontrollable sudden surge of blood in its streams, you become flared up and enunciate a litany of sort. What better way to define ranting, thus, but a self-expression derived from a strong emotional outburst.

And as we ended up our conversation. I got the chance to situate in a broader spectrum the issue on ranting. Perhaps, it's a great great tool for evaluation that furthers situate the ranter to look inwardly at the same time outwardly, since he or she may be directly involved or attached to whatever he or she rants about. I, for so long has been ranting about my sense of purpose, my own emancipation, my definition, and my own viewpoint of reality. At one point, I processed everything to my mind up until I was unconsciously building up my own identity. I grasped what I want and what I don't want. And I've known myself better based from how I acted or reacted upon any situation. So, as pessimist as this whole thing may sound about ranting, I can say it helped me somehow...

I am just at a breaking point, where I seen a crises of sort--the crises to have some balls to ACT and stop WHINING like a kid!

Divine Sweets

I am seated at one of the local cafes here in Puerto Princesa, the newly emergent better choice of the only two cafes, so far. I am here to finish up my exams due this week until the end of October. I am little pissed off at myself because I can't muster the tenacity to seat down like this and do what I am supposed to do-the very thing where I get paid. Honestly, I have back logged for almost a week by now. I am a week late of the mastery exam, and two days, and counting, of the periodic exam. On top of this I still have to consolidate my class records. By consolidate, I meant, filling up the sheet with the names of my students and their grades. Other than the grade sheet, I also have to finish up a little research work I was tasked to do as per my research assistant assignment to the recently hired school consultant. It was a laying the foundation kind of thing. From the time, Ms Consultant left, the only thing I have done is to do the reading. Argh! Meaning, I still have to work on consolidating the materials and putting everything on paper... within... Guess what? 24 Hours.

I admit I was a little lax the past days, weeks... Err, over a month by now since the convergence. And correction it's not little. I am geared up for a heavy, hefty coping. Well, I would be proud to enumerate a multiple number of reasons that has accounted for this laxity cum inefficiency hovering over my psycho-disturbed thinking. Mind you, the reasons are valid as that of entering inside the classroom usually unprepared, relying heavily on the wisdom of the Spirit. Lucky Me!

Just this morning, I had consumed my time assuming the role of an adviser slash concerned citizen of the nation. I made a little lecture of what awaits them after High School. And clear as the sunny skies this morning, I told them they might end up as call center agents or worst, a bunch Japayukis or a wife of a foreigner striding along the streets of Puerto Princesa, or security guards and house maids. This happened to some of my grade school classmates. Oh God! It could very much happen to them considering the current rate of unemployment and underemployment in the country, which could, in a logical projection manifested in the present political status quo, go on for another couple of years. I also emphasized to these kids how important their preparation for college is. If they really want to go somewhere else, now is the most opportune of time. I tell you, I took the extra mile consuming my time to stress out something of major importance -- to say the most how the rest of the class is hindering the other half to attain where they are supposed to be right now--soaring and knowing more than what they have right now. A little selfish, or more so devilish, but point of the matter is, they have to help each other out because they are so behind compared with the rest of the world. In this Information Age, it is really a crime not to know!

From backlogs to lectures, I admit it... bottom line is I might be a little frustrated of what's going on right now. I am pissed off at myself for being so dense and fragile. Or perhaps from the little to zero output that I have since I accepted this thing because of trying to embrace the concept of Hell, err, teaching I mean. Funny thing is when I embraced this job because it is the supposedly only way for me to survive here, I ended up not doing the thing I was supposed to do that it slipped of my hand and now is assigned to somebody else. Oh where will I situate myself now? I have been directed into a line that is oh so verdant in the coming years but is oh so annoying at this moment.

But i think, the more relevant question will be--WHAT'S THE F*CKING WRONG WITH ME! Can anyone out there tell me, please?

In Captive

In my one last desperate attempt to look, I’ve found myself weeping the way I thought I would never do. This was not me. But the tiny drops of tears, I feel them real as each tear promenaded its path along my face. How sad! That at that very moment I’ve wished I held on strong, I was released in the midst of a wide, empty space. How disappointing! That at the instance I thought I was owned, I am all at once freed. How could it be that though liberation seemed much like a panacea, it’s saddening and frustrating to know that after a little while, it is just another, captivity?

desynthesizing sickness

temperature rising
over and underfleeting feeling
afloat several seas
feasting behind sheets
fasting upon glories
heat waves after
zero to negative
beyond comforts and
sheer protection
immuno at level
low tolerance

After a while

The clock ticked almost light year before he was able to pressed-pound the surface of the black-coloured keys again-when his thoughts glided with the letters and the letters created a visual, perceptible image of his thoughts.

The past weeks were a little hectic than usual. It was as if work equaled life and life meant work. The two words merged to the point that he rendered himself an automaton deliberately surrendering himself a slave to a Master.

A Question

where am I?

Cloth for Nothing

There's so much to say of a story that no one bold enough dared to speak. To some it's a casualty. To others it's a feat. Doubtless though it remains, the story was etched in the hands of time. Gone with the swift, gentle blow of the wind. Kept silenced forever by the guardian of the night.

This moment,
I write the saddest line.

I rummaged it up
from a dirt-laden,
stockpiled pieces of cloth.

I used to wear them
once even felt so
relaxed on my bod.

In fact, I used to look
good on them.

I loved to flaunt them,
as a calvin klein
or a dkny hunk would.

The skimpiness
of the cotton fabric
touts my slender fit.

How i admired it,
plus adored and deified!

Now stained and blooded,
ripped and tattered,
I'll use it for the last time

Just to sort of remember
that the saddest line
was once the Happy one.

Boring Class Wears Prada

Class was boring this morning. I was somewhat lethargic. I didn't know the exact the reason why. I was thinking if it's about the other one leaving today or I am just basically feeling languished.

I felt I was babbling. And I don't make sense. If I did, maybe my class didn't understand my discussions.

Oh crap.

One thing I disgust is to be caught unprepared in front of a crowd. Though those people in front of me are 4 years my junior, and they basically may not have any effing idea of what's running inside my head, it's an awful feeling that I was like taking baby steps trying to make sense.

I am not really ranting here but my God, I was making a way to reach out because I will be spending my time with these kids for ten full months, and at this point I am like lost child in the wilderness.

On the other side though, what I am doing right now is pretty much exciting.

For one, I am exercising something I have often shrugged off before - to talk in front of people. I am looking at this as some kind of a training, some kind of an obstacle course I have to pass thru to reach a certain end. Not bad. Let's just say, I am like trying to improve myself in within a structure that is compatible with my capacity. Argh. That's pretty bad. But oh well, that's just it. I have to do something about it.

Another is that I am liked involved in a science project-experiment. I as the scientist and my students, the hamsters.

Hmm. Nasty.

But why not? This is the first time I going to teach seriously. This is the first time I am going to handle an advisory class. This is my chance of becoming an, err, a mentor. Big words for a growing kid.

I resolved that bottomline, changes that I want to make for the future lie in the input that I gambled in feeding on tomorrow's generation. Yikes. So much for someone who's internal struggle is bigger than what it appears to be. So much for my patriotic, love-of-country side.
I may not know what's going on inside my students' heads. But somewhat, somehow, I want to be part of it. Take a peek on it. Hold it. Perhaps, control it. So devilish, but so like me.

Darn, I watched the Devil Wears Prada the other day. I found myself understanding the world better. Simply put, there are things that we do not want to do and there are things that we are compelled to do because we have to. Our emotions, our interests become irrelevant because we're left with no other choices but to take what is already before us.

What we don't understand is that though we are just being pushed to do something, we are learning throughout the process. The way may be hard. The road may be very steep. Still, in the process we don't actually lose. In fact, we end up with our own gain.

The world we live in is so demanding, like Miranda. So cunning. So controlling. Andy succumbed to Miranda's will simply because she's her boss. Andy hated it. In fact, she was ranting like hell. But as she ranted more, she achieved more that eventually Miranda clandestinely liked the way she worked. Miranda even chose her to go with her to France over a more seasoned employee.

Andy eventually loved her work. Or let's just say she was consumed by every nitty gritty of her job. She let herself be dominated by her boss until a life of her own vanished into thin air. Only then did she realize, after she had gained almost everything she never wanted that there are more important things than that-her relationship with her boyfriend. After her character developed throughout the "tests" she went through, was she able to get a life of her own and gain her dignity.

Ah. Sweet plot. True enough, no pain, no gain.

The Destiny of a Paperboat

Work is the absolution from pain, an escape even from
the menial of burdens, and a temporal release from a
baggage of pestering thoughts.

Work officially started last monday. It was a
hodgepodge of emotions that I felt. I was excited at
one point since I can now channel some repressed
emotions in favor of doing a handful of jobs. There was
a struggle at the other side, whether I am doing what I
am destined to do. I believe that I am meant for
something else.

And I have to content myself that this is just a means
to my end. An end that remains unthinkable at the
moment.

Right now, I am teaching. I took. Nah. I was assigned
to take part-time teaching load in the school that the
organization I am currently affiliated with manages. By
the way, it is a Christian school. Which perhaps gives
you a drift that I am working for a Christian
organization.

And I am beginning to be proud of it. Why beginning?
Because it took me quite some time to dig into the
conduits of my brain and accept that I am somewhere
across the far-flung area of the Philippines, took a bold
step to search for a territory totally unfamiliar to me,
and pushed the limits of an internal philosophical
debate to revert back where I began: the facet of my
faith.

Going back to the assigned thing. It wasn't really my
cup of tea to handle a boardmarker and strike it on the
white board to reiterate that a subject always agrees
with its verb in number, or that writing any research
paper requires you to have a topic first. It wasn't my
choice. But I don't have any other choices because
somehow, somewhat I have to earn a meager sum
here in the other side of the world in order to sustain
my deviance.

Let me clarify that point. It's not that I don't have any
choice at all. That would be too pitiful of me to
become. I don't have any choice because I am trying
to reconciliate a choice that is purposeful. To leave,
therefore, and go back to Manila and embrace a
callcenter-ish bread and butter rests afar my
imagination.

Now I could say I am pretty much enjoying what I am
doing here. Or well, trying to enjoy? Or making myself
believe that I am enjoying. Whatever. Point is at least
there is something that I am keeping myself busy with.
The operative word here is BUSY.

Just like an empty trash bin, an empty time is likely to
be filled by clutters. In fact, at the moment they start
to flux, it would be barely possible to out-breath them.
The freer the time, the more chances of looking back,
tracing back, and mulling over things passed. Things
that will NEVER ever get back.

A logical, thinking mind would say that it is so pathetic
to just sit down on an empty corner and to savour the
emptiness induced by the turbulent waves of time.
PATHETIC. So it is. But could it be that staying without
any reason at all is pathetic as being suaded by the
most irrelevant of experiences and the top among the
me-wants-to shrug it off phases in life?

Which leads me to what and where I am right now. I
am piece of paperboat drifting and drifting across a
tranquil ocean whose depth remains unmeasured and
whose temper will always be vulnerable. I am a piece
of paperboat ambling amidst the vastness of the
ocean, trying to seek for an island which will finally
quench my longing--to finally find a place I will call my
HOME.

One Cold Night

There was no cooling system in sight. Not even a fan was at a-hand’s-grasp to relieve what supposedly had overtaken my body. Funny! It was a summer night. But it felt like it was seven months after. I could still hear the feathered-creature humming outside my windows. They muddled with the strings the almost un-heavenly chorale of cicadas produce. They all confuse my senses more.

Should I shift my attention to the numbing cold or in protecting my ears from that discordant sound?

Coping WITH (not UP)

"What doesn't kill you, makes you stronger"
-Friedrich Nietzsche

A stab with a knife is more tolerable than a loved one's intentional (or unintentional) hurting. The pain it causes exceeds the boundary of emotions; the physical gets terminally ruined.

After my mom's parting, after my rethinking of what to do with this effing life, after undergoing a depressive state, I wasn't ready to find out that another revelation would blast me to bleed-profusely.

I would have ended it instantaneously; but I was so masochistic to do so. I savored its venom, even dried the fang.

And in the process of sticking with it, I started to get a grasp of reality:

That second chances are imaginary attempts to recover what was not originally there.

That if one could hurt himself, other people can even surpass in greater height that self-inflicted pain.

That holding on to some one, whatever the connection may be, is like waiting for a rain in the midst of drought. It's empty. It's vain; and,

That I take pleasure in being hurt, even bliss in hurting myself more.

And if this is my last chance of coping, why not take the risk?

Hurt me more...

PointBlank

Many times, silence is my escape.
But rarely, silence has been my refuge.
My thoughts haunt me.

---

Pass the gust of the cold desolate shadow,
I've struck the golds and writhed with perpetual wallow.

Dark as the night whispering thru my ears,
I've stood still, covered by the primeval beast.

I remained wounded by the heat of an open fire,
clasping, grasping, running out of breathe.

Coffee sip

is not just about taking inside your gastronomic bag the blend of that fine, pure liquaeous substance pressed from a dark-brownish bean, of that steamed extremely white milk (whether fat-free or not), and of that glucose-enriched crystals

is beyond the sheer pleasure of urgently satiating caffeine-deprivation

is beyond the sheer pain of having to wait to get a caffeine fix.

is about conspiring with time and rhyme with its tick and tack while slowly filling your senses with its potential- the rich aroma haled profusely inside your nostrils, the feverish-like temperature it emits to your palm, and the petite sight of its miniature scale (or depending on the size of the cup preferred)

instantaneously may lead you to a ripped, burnt tongue. You don't have to be reminded with that because coffees are always pre-cautioned to be hot. Worst thing you get is the failure of noticing the best that coffees are made of.

Babblings.

The rivers' started turning dry; your lips, getting burnt by the scorching hot wind. Scarced by water and plastered by the dust, would you let yourself suffer more? To whom shall they be? To the soul who's ever-longing, listening to those heartbeat faraway in a distant shelf. Or to the one you yearned for a million light years, but shows no sign of returning? Are you waiting for your haughtily self-proclaimed saviour? Or to the one who stands mightily to self-worth? Grey skies' far from returning. The mist to quench you un-dry's still at a point of no return. Pick-up or you shall never have the chance again.

Geared Up for a Change

I could use the hands of time to plunge deep into the seat of my memories and unlock the messages therein lies. Veritably at my own predilections, I could turn the tide into my favor and exhaust it 'til it summons for more oxygen to achieve equilibrium.

But in the past, I succumbed even to most finicky of whatever lies inside the corners of my mind. I succumb to self-inflicted pain. I mastered the art of self-pity, mulling over the unecessaries. I fancied over the illusion of ghosts and vampires I created.

All these are perfectly impressed in the memento of my soul. And it was as if that isn't enough. I started recording each blow, each fatal encounter, each misery-turned-absurdity into this virtual prism of visuals and pixels.

With words adjunct another, I created a mixture I have called profound but in truth shallow, mischievous, and loud--a melange that others tiresomely peeped through.

There are a fingerful who noticed me, who heeded to my subconsious desire for attention. In fleeting seconds, they penetrated my angst, read my soul, and reacted either mildy or harshly at my rantings-cum-vexations.

But like any larvae who had to undergo metamorphosis and fulfill its awaiting destiny, I too, must have my own share of a transformation that I craved for so long. From here, I could smell the sweet scent of emancipation. I could taste the sumptuous dish of freedom prepeared before me by the gods.

The favor is on me. I sense serenity popping any minute by now.

More than ever, I am now ready to use the hands of time to plunge deep into the seat of my memories and unlock the messages therein lies. I am never gonna let my past haunt me more. I'm gonna grasp smartly the uncertainties that my future entails.

What To Do Now?

Here comes a point where understanding is too much elusive; and thinking perpetually amusing.

I have been undergoing a major overhaul lately. Too many things caught me up thinking in circles. After my mom died two weeks ago, I certainly had to do a lot of reorientation of priorities. It is not easy. And right now, I don't think I could muster the courage to grasp it all at once.

Honestly, my state right now is like the ocean shore or the sea shore or whatever. I know when the tide is coming up or low. But I am uncertain of how high or low it could be. In short, I am lucid but still my bottoms' are shaky.

For one, losing my mom when translated practically would mean I had to position myself to be a quasi-head of the family. Dad will be back in UK so I would assume responsibility of tending over my siblings. But of course, I just had to, oh well, act as an overseer. I always believed in a no-too-hands-on caregiving for I am in no position to rob off others with their own life experiences and discoveries.

So there I am, standing on subtle soils. Of course, I just can't shrug the fact of what to do with my own life given the circumstance that my parents would have wanted me to go to law school. And so it resurfaced. Oh well honestly, the reason why I decided not to take it is pathetic. I think I can't do it. I thought I am not for its rigors. Hence, I delimited my capacity even before I tried it. But it was also aggravated by the family's financial status and my own drifting to somewhere else.

And the complicated thing right now is: career or vocation? My stint in Palawan is not something I could easily give up on.

One, I had seen so much potential in it that I know I am going to grow with it perspective-wise. It can be about defeating what my college professor once said: that the youth of today cannot totally customize to what the great Rizal envisioned them to be because they have to watch over their lives first. On the contrary, the great sacrifice will be: even if you don't have and amidst all odds, you still pushed through it all.

Second, in my principle the things of this world are obviously meant to just lure you and it can't go in immortal. The phase is even a vicious cycle of acquiring and losing. It's about petty triumphs and significant failures. Oh well, that is the basic dynamics of life.

Third, what I started there I have yet to form a strong foundation. I haven't finished anything yet nor proved my worth to leave and start another. Besides, if I'm gonna retract I had to be certain where to go even though its murky.

One thing is sure for now: no one's gonna make things certain for me, I had to make it myself.

My Unguarded Wings.

Because of your love, I am born; Because of your life, I live to love

And I’ll be putting you in the marrow of my being
the curves that shape your pretty face
those tinted eyes moistened so often by tears of joy and pain
those trembling lips that spoke of substance and love
the velvety black hair that stands aglow the purple skies

All those I have encoded quietly,
for I don’t want to lose the chance
nor just wait and let the autumn leave fall.

Because you are my light,
a heavenly creation that dazzled in perfection.
You enveloped me with your wings, let those be
calloused by rough hitting winds
struck hard by the lightning’s fury
and pierced by the sharpest of thorns.

Those wings of yours, once pure and illuminating
suddenly were coaled by iron ore
were blackened by the midnight’s sorrows
and ripped by rebellious hands.
It’s all because of me.

You felt cold while I was warmth;
You were hardened so I could be tendered.
Armored by your firmness, I have gone protected,
Bound by your selfless love, I savored the best
And graced by your presence, I am nourished.
It’s all because of you.

Unconditionally, everything flowed from you generously,
until nothing is left for you to consume.
You didn’t complain, even once.
You contented yourself with the cold,
lying unprotected in that empty space,
unrelieved inside that emaciated burrow.

While I remained inside your mighty wings,
comforted in all eternity.
While you exposed your finite humanity
into the deadly venoms of the earth.
I was in heaven amidst this world’s imperfections.

And now that time has come for you to fly –
to spread those calloused wings, soar above the pristine skies
You left me with tenacity to stand against the currents
You prepared me to face the world’s empty promises
You delicately formed in me the seed of love, immortal.

You might have not realized your own dreams,
nor achieved that professional success
that you aspired of since you were born;
You might not have experienced full the lures
and caprices of this substandard human world

Yet you have fulfilled the greatest mission there is –
That of sacrificing your life, your dreams
to rear your blood to be functional and principled,
to found a family of worth and dignity
That of becoming a MOTHER beyond compare.

In Memoriam
Maria Liwayway Nadal-Abril
25 May 1957 - 13 February 2007
my mom
my inspiration
my strength
my all

The Puzzle.

If Neruda can write the saddest line for a lover's lost,
why can't I write the happiest line for a lover not yet found?

Someone told me that I had to start picking up the pieces of the puzzle I am trying to solve. All this while, I have been thinking about Sphinx's riddle and digging into the passages of this wandering. It was a task neither easy nor dull. Solving it made me twist myself until I can't breathe any longer. I was suffocated. I thought I was going to burst and die from asphyxiation. Little did I know, there's nothing left to burst. The last drop that could fell has already passed by even before I realize it. The only consolation left to my despondent weariness was that the puzzle never made my life dull. Each time that I had to stretch my brains was a learning opportunity in disguise. It was a stretching situation that made my deciphering painful, yet exciting; baffling yet, intelligent; and critical yet redeeming. It wasn't really bad after all. All the while it was my outlook that made me missed the greater purpose of the puzzle. It's a good thing that someone told me that I had to start picking up the pieces of the puzzle that I am trying to solve. If not, perhaps I have been brooding eternally upon how to do it, when all I should have done is to pick one up and fit it with another one.

Love Found.

And she kissed him on his soft-parched lips. It was so tender, a brush on a midnight stroke of light, and smooth, like a perfectly brewed latte. They have been wanting such moment to come that the world would stop churning and the season would come to a halt. He gently held her in strong arms. And they were kissing against the moon, which seemed to have forgotten that its light doesn't come from itself. Played at the backdrop of Shakespearean's CXVI, the intensity of a deep human emotion forecloses.

"So long have I waited for this moment," he lightly revealed quivering in the cold. "I always hoped for this, even dreamt about it many times. But I was afraid, too much afraid that once I say this that tiny little would would vanish away in thin air." Listening intently to him, she lightly loosened from his grip and relaxed her voice, "I prayed for this moment when you can hold me in your arms, when I can just be with you, when I can just be me and be with you." She was grasping his moist palm. Her voice started to break, "From the time I wake up to walk along the red bricked road, to the time I sip my coffee, until the light shuts itself, I have asked that you'd be given to me. I have loved you... even before you knew it."

Shifting Sands

There is light sheer joy
in seeing the sands
shift with the waves.

It was as if forever
it is destined to do
the same over
and over again.

There is a convulsing impetus
at the sight of the sands
shifting at the shore.

It was as if
they are traveling on
and on to reach
the ocean's floor.

There is sheer contentment
in seeing the sands
move from space to space.

It was as if it
has a life of its own
But the wind and the water
push it, swerve it,
move it from space to space.

Freewill.

Our freewill is a gift given out of God's love. It's a gift, not a curse, as most people may think. It's a blessing; not a vehemence. God gave us the ability - not the power - to choose because he initially graced us with rationality, that ability to process information and concept and decide after. It is in our blueprint to think, to decipher rightness and wrongness of a thing or action. But of course, what good is it for us if we could only decipher and differentiate but can't choose which side of the coin to go, and which path to tread on?

Exercising freewill on the belief or unbelief of God for instance is a direct manifestation of this precious gift. But the more important thing about this is that it shows that as much as God wants us to be on his side always, he did not coerced nor forced. He wittingly left us to our own thinking devices and capacities because he trusts us.

Choice therefore means learning. As we make choices, we are flooded with many opportunities, chances we can take to either turn things to our favor or let us be consumed harshly. And choice slash freewill slash freedom just proves how God works to make us understand the reality of this physical world - the lightness or heaviness of beings, the bearability or un-bearability of passions, and the rhythm or stillness of moments.

Often, we say his ways are magnificent; his works, a wonder. But how many of us truly understand this? Statement-wise, it is the visual that overpowers our senses. We've never really tried to dig into the reasons of how things work.

Why in times of trouble we often think that God abandoned us? Why is it easier to put the blame on him? Why do we question his credibility when things go against our liking? Perhaps, it may even not our choice that they happen, that we just randomly meet them along the path we tread on. Have it ever occurred to us that in a snap, God may command the heavens, the earth, and the seas to conspire against us? But of course, he wouldn't do that. Not in an unintended, purposeless manner.

So God, that omniscient and omnipotent being, left us instead with choices and to make choices for us to learn by ourselves, for us to realize the consequences of our own choosing, for us to personally navigate into the depths of our humanity, and for us to intentionally choose him and accept that we are his most beloved creation.

Imagine a world where we can think but we can never choose, where we can believe but can't fight for nor negate such, and where we are just like any other forms of animals - living each day by internally recorded instinct.

Letting Go.

There was a time in my life that I was lost, sauntering blindly in a path so thorny, so dim. I felt betrayed, consumed by the thought that I am alone - always. No one stood by my side to lift me, to inspire me, and to bring me back to my senses. Not even my parents were there. Neither my friends - or they were there but I didn't mind them being there.

I was inches close to self-destruction. Everyone conspired against me; even my self. One blow I would've been shattered into pieces. Literally. I was no better than broken pieces of glass, forcefully banged and finely crushed. It was nearly impossible to construct myself again.

Until that one fine day I finally decided to move on and let those build-up simmer into vapor. I was never the same again. Much to my favor, the past is just a memory now - still lingering, yet controllable; lamentable but diffusable.