meandering 0001
for some reason, the line kept ringing in your head... what do you know, the truth really hurts...
here's an unsolicited rundown of some harsh realities and sad truths about life...
- things do not turn out as you have always planned and imagined, it's always better to have plan B (some even take it to Z)
- the people you love have the greatest power to hurt you (read that somewhere...)
- some people choose to remember, others choose to forget
- never measure the love you give, most of the time, you will feel you're giving too much and getting too little
- life is waiting. period.
- who said life is complicated? we are all closet masochists--feeding our own fears, inflicting our own pains
- people do not think the way you do, they do not see things from your perspective, and if it doesn't help their cause, they wouldn't really care
- everybody lies -- Gregory House, MD
- people get hurt because someone hit a nerve, your vulnerability to pain is subject to the truthfulness of the things thrown at you; in any case, stepping into pain is always a good first step in overcoming pain at its very source, sooner or later
- not every person you know and care about can spell r-e-c-i-p-r-o-c-a-t-e
yep, the truth always hurts...
how to numb the pain away? maybe you can tell us.
When the smoke clears and your nose gets enough soot to last you the whole year, you take some quiet time with yourself before finally signing-off, and calling, the first of January of the grand spanking new year—a day. Everyone welcomes another year, some spirituous, nonetheless sober enough to remember all the many wonderful things to be thankful for the year they have just done with.
Despite all the detours and rough roads you went through, you gladly acknowledge that 2005 has been good not only to you but to all the people you care about. Staring at your list of “what-I-should-have-done-by-the-end-of-the-year”, a smile glimmers through your lips when you realize most of the things you wrote down exactly one year ago, actually happened. Talk about writing your own story. There was spending quality time with family and real friends; finding all the people who matter to you healthy and happy; securing the job you have so animatedly aspired for; getting through tough times a becoming a better person; simply being able to do the things you really love and experiencing life with the truly significant people in your life…and so on.
You remain to be overwhelmed by the reality that indeed, another year has passed. Then it hits you. How do you count the days? How do you measure and really quantify the blessing of every waking moment you are once again given with the start of a new year?
Some people count the days through accomplishments at work, how much deals they have closed in a year, the clients they have served. Others find delight in tenderly counting the days as precious moments with family; still, there are people who count the days by how much they have shared to others, whether material possessions or even just a modest part of themselves, a little bit of their time. Some families count the days, always as a chance for healing and strengthening relationships. Those who have extra-special people in their lives must be counting the days through their “firsts” with their significant-other, or perhaps frantically trying to keep the days they spend together seem an eternity. (Oh so mushy…) For new parents, it must be through every milestone of their darling little baby (who hopefully grows up still a darling)—his first smile, her first giggle, her first words (was it mama! Or dada! Or was it milk?). Your own parents must be gazing at you as your life gives substance and meaning quite unfathomable, to their own, taking pride in your every accomplishment, always believing in the things you can do; parents watching their children grow, guiding them and letting them become their own selves.
Children count their days through schooldays; you wonder, perhaps teachers do the same (looking forward to the next holiday break or the end of terms). Students count their days by the weekly exam they hurdle and the endless reports they have to submit. Other people are happy counting the days simply by the number of books they’ve read or perhaps how often they’re able to add to a personal collection of essays.
There are easily many ways of counting the days. 365 days may be quite a number, yet the days may not even be enough to accommodate all things you’d like to do, well, how many times did you wish that a day wouldn’t last in 24 hours?
As we all start another year, there is this simple wish that we can all make our lives. No matter how hopeless certain situations lead us to become, may we all remain resilient and ever-enduring. Perhaps it could help to visualize, put into writing the things you want r-e-a-l-i-z-e-d. It’s like making a personal agreement with the Universe that all things shall be right where they should be and that your hopes and dreams will become part of His greater plans for 2006.
Auld lang syne plays in your ears…so-do-do-re-mi-re-do-re-mi-do-do-mi-so-laaaaaaa!!!!
Barely sleepy with just a bottle of mudshake to drink, you force your self to hit the sack, only because you have to wake-up in 4 hours, make that 2 and a half, for you just noticed that 4 hours and 22 minutes of the new-year have already gone and you need to be up by 7am. What a way to welcome the year. Good morning, goodnight, have a great year everyone!
--original entry written on new year's 2006
Save for Wolverine, Clark Kent and perhaps Narda (Whatsersurname?), everyone must have had a scab at some point in their lives. No matter the size (piso, benchingko, diyes, etc.) or even the shape (before the thunderbolt scar, there had to be the thunderbolt scab eh?), people get cuts, burns and scratches thus, the scab.
The moment you break your skin in any part of your body, the platelets start working and stick together to glue the cut, giving birth to a clot. This handyman-clot acts like a bandage to keep more blood and other fluids from flowing out—bleeding you dead. If the clot is Helga (of Hey Arnold!), then fibrin is her Arnold, the stuff that helps Helga put herself together, despite her denials… (haha! What show of metaphoric genius…) When Helga the clot becomes hard and dries out, our hero—the scab—forms.
These scabs are usually crusty and dark red or brown and they make themselves useful by keeping away microbes and a gang of other microorganisms out while giving the underlying skin cells a chance to heal.
More than just a splotch of a scab, beneath the surface it speaks so much about life’s simple truths.
· a scab may look nasty, but one has to experience nasty things in order to get a fresh start—a fresh layer of cells
· a scab on the face may spoil your blemish-free visage, but surely that is not all there is to the person that you are
· no matter how difficult it is to resist picking on a scab, it is always better to leave it alone, some things have to wait, you can never rush the natural process of healing
· you can look at a scab as a transition phase: you do get hurt, but you try to keep yourself together, and you manage to come out intact, even with an add-on scar
· scabs serve their purpose in reminding you that you are vulnerable
· scabs don’t last forever, scars do (although technology does magic…), nevertheless, actual hurts should never linger, only the memory of the hurting remains…
· you may be a masochist, but when it comes to others, avoid rubbing salt on other peoples wounds
· after a scab, you get ready to become injured again, it’s not to say you never learn from your blunders, perhaps it’s only one way to dodge disappointments
So the next time you cut yourself… grab yourself a topical antibiotic before you sit down and wait to appreciate your scab in all its crusty glory. That would look weird…just make sure nobody’s looking…
thermal paper
thought you were something special
amazingly smooth, reasonably pricey, but you can
never keep what’s written for eternity
**
obituary
sketches of a lifelong journey
can a few words really capture one being?
whose final quest –a memory
HAIKU
**
chocolate
your hugs and kisses
are better than calories
from a bar of Twix
**
fixation
stillness becomes you
as though ensnared, by unseen
forces around you
**
epicurean delight
refined at its best
but how can you satisfy
my hunger for real
**
leaf
falling off a tree
under the auburn sunlight
warming your sad eyes
**
words
soft utterances
disengage a raging storm
in your quiet mind
**
dung
they say, it happens
allow it not to ruin
a promising day
**
an epitaph
here lies a body
of crashed idealisms
your one passion –dead
**
song
invisible thread
sailing through oceans parting
you and your lost soul
**
words (II)
whose strength and power
lie largely in the meaning
liberating truth
**
hero
a revelation
of gallantry illusion
when false heroes die
**
beginnings
the end of a bend
commenced a straight path ahead
embarking anew
**
ikebana
heaven, earth and man
more than just an arrangement
life encompassing
**
silence
a double-edged sword
a flailing machinery
of misconceptions
**
rain
washed away and drenched
mem’ries of your bitterness
a parched spirit quenched
**
lies
cast a masquerade
steer clear from a stropped dagger
bless the blameless one
**
On Boredom
You may be bored but you’re never boring…
Wedged in a lackluster routine, you refuse to declare a state of boredom calamity. Still, you manage to pull yourself together and set-off to another day. Jumpstarting with caffeine, you can almost feel the hot coffee homogenizing with the boredom churning in your insides.
You wonder why you even drink the same black concoction with the same laxative effect the moment you feel the need to put anything in your stomach gone sullen from the 12-hour overnight fast. The strong bitter taste you fancy does not even come close to overcoming your own bitterness.
You flick the radio on, tune-in the same station, pretending you are actually amused and somehow loosened-up by the pulsating sound waves. Then you hit the shower with hopes of washing out every speck of boredom clinging in and through your skin. You take your time, too proud to concede that you are indeed a slave of your own making, a dray horse of what some people call mechanical time and for the next five hours set yourself to the task of finishing a particular load at work before you go out for lunch at exactly the same time, at the very same dining hall with your friends at work.
Between morning and noon, time seemed to stretch an eternity. You trick yourself that you are in fact enjoying what you’re doing, even sharing a few laughs with your friend on the other side of your cubicle. Then again, just when you thought you’ve dashed your way 100 meters from it, boredom stealthily inches closer, fortunately, your day is almost over.
But what have you been looking forward to at the end of each day anyway? And why do you end-up dragging on a drudge still feeling awkwardly pointless? Perhaps, folks simply need to go through such slumps to better appreciate the splendor of normalcy. Even so, when you get the impulse of wanting to experience anything close to the extraordinary—go buy yourself a one-way ticket to break away from boredom and for once, frustrate the company of misery.
Now, that’s my kid, bored but never boring…
OBITER DICTA
On our way back from the hospital, my mother and I were comfortably seated at the passenger’s seat when a passing pedicab plunged me deep in thought. To the pedicab’s rear, this blameless one-liner was written: Apparent loss is real gain.
Cynics out there must be screaming. The aphorism is swelling with optimism to be real. Well, what can I do? Aside from the obvious economic downturn to a “road to perdition” our country is facing, just recently I received this message from a dear friend: “I find nothing more depressing than optimism.”(Paul Fussell)
Apparent loss is real gain. From the quasi-optimist point of view, it would be wonderful to believe that indeed, some of “God’s refusals are His real mercies”. That nothing can be all wrong because, “even a clock that has stopped running is right twice in a day.” If a little bit of Hollywood trivia could convince Cassandras out there, you must be familiar that most of the characters in Friends, were cast off in some other popular TV shows then? Take Chandler for instance, according to sources (huh?), he wanted to be part of the Melrose Place, hoping to snatch the role of “Billy” but was R-E-J-E-C-T-E-D
Apparent loss is real gain. It’s now calamity howler’s turn on the rostrum (huh?). Quit wearing your rose-colored spectacles my child. Everything is not what it seems. Why fool yourself into believing that you can actually make things happen? Come-on, you surely have seen the worst. People are born losers and you’re not about to drown yourself with quixotic ideas and end-up deeper in the mud…
Static…I hear static…I’m losing signal….
If we judge this based on the previous depositions, perhaps you’d say, the master Pollyannaism wins. Then again, the Cassandras insist, it was merely due to a lack of more ‘physical evidence’.
‘guess we have just witnessed a concession and we now rest our case.
The Plagiarist
If everything’s been said, then one way or another, we must all be guilty of plagiarism however unintentional. After two weeks of reviewing literature on a particular research project, you can only say you’ve had enough of trying-to-be-careful-not-commit-plagiarism-blues to last you a lifetime. Okay, that’s a rather inflated verbal exercise especially if it was your choice to be doing that anyway. Now, is it even about making a choice?
Going back to our opening statement, anybody can disagree. Ever heard about that girl, Miss H, trying to get exclusive rights, some sort of a patent for the expression “That’s hot,” which she utters with an apparently expressionless tone. Look at how commercial this age has gotten. What gives? Does she expect people to purchase her words? Poor consumers.
If everything’s been said, then what’s the use for saying it again? What do you even get for saying anything for that matter? A case of plagiarism is one thing. Giving people the wrong impression is another, but didn’t someone say, “To be great is to be misunderstood?”
With so much going on around, your personal woes are the least of the world’s concerns. Every time you watch the television, or when you read a book, you get the feeling of how little you know about the world and life as a whole.
And yet, everything’s been said.
You could say it doesn’t matter if everything’s been said (or written) the one who speaketh makes the difference.
Ever heard of this joke? Use king and queen in a sentence. Shoot: “Dali! Dali! The Queen is in a hari…” You’d probably trade your favorite mudshaker to anyone who’d spare this gag a few laughs sans the sarcasm to the one who delivered the pun.
Pun or no-pun, you wonder, why is the queen in such hari? Making the question a little more collective: why are we oftentimes immersed in such hurry?
Every day of our fleeting subsistence, we go about our daily grind in a superficially ultra fast speed. You have your instant coffee (or milk or tea), fast food in every street corner, boulevard or avenue, one-stop convenience stores; instant noodles, ulam, etc. They say everything is part of being global—the world is swiftly becoming smaller by the nanosecond, and people should adapt to the changing times. Amid the advent of new technologies, everything you need is right at your fingertips. Or so you thought. (And what do you really need? Guess that’s another story…)
Perhaps some people would call it adaptability. We are compelled to make haste because of the need to keep up with everything else that surrounds us (Don’t they say, haste makes waste?). In these times when we are swept by social controversies and personal struggles, who would care to take things slow and as others would put it—take time to smell the roses…? The man on the street worries about his kids’ next meal while one lady has a country to run, albeit devoid of authority. You have your own work to do. Deadlines to beat. People busy themselves with a lot of things. The next-door neighbor has children to feed. The others have babies to nurse, machines to operate, businesses to manage. Some have work-ups to examine and patients to attend to and an entire sashay of hard work for just about everybody (at least for those fortunate enough to even be employed, that is). They could actually be right: in the real world and in these times, one must come out geared up, primed and all-set, ready to face the monstrosities ahead, but isn’t there such a thing called moderation?
No matter how pretentiously and overly idealistic it may sound, we do need to slow things down from time to time. (Think David Blaine’s Vertigo special—literally standing still in the busy streets of New York, talk about pure irony.) It’s not to discourage an equally substantial amount of drive and passion, but what do you think, life isn’t just about what most people think as consequential concerns of making a living. How about trying to make a life? Yes. Let’s make our lives. At the end of the day, what runs in your mind? Probably a more interesting question would be—what adds value to your every waking moment? The answer would most definitely vary. You daresay it would all depend on what one person deems important.
It could be finishing first in class…getting that dream job…moments with your inamorata…a well-deserved increase…long-drives with your family…reading a good book…a nice warm bath after a long day of bummers…a child innocently waiting at your doorstep, giving you a warm hug after a day’s work…occasional good news from the television for a change…waking up happy and energized by no more than the sight of the one person you chose to spend your eternity with…beating the traffic…a sweet note from your sister…your mother’s touch…your baby’s smile…a slice of your favorite cheesecake…having real friends…good food and great music…receiving an unexpected call…doing what you love best…extending help to a stranger…listening to a friend…forgiving the person who hurt you…getting a second chance…giving a second chance…coloring the world with your kindness…trusting again…loving again…hot chocolate, instant or not, on a rainy morning…a walk with a friend… cheerful conversations with longtime friends…sharing a hearty laugh…a word of encouragement or affirmation…a calmly deep slumber…simply having the feeling that you are right where you are supposed to be…
This list could go on forever but one thing becomes clear, life indeed, is still worth living.
All of us are friends, that is, we are all friends to somebody. This is why the experience of building and nurturing friendships is something everyone can relate with. And it is the nurturing part where things can get tricky. They say friends are made by many acts and lost by just one. So here’s a close look into the one act—probably familiar situations of how friendships are choked up by weeds and are altogether hurled to forgotten-land.
Drifting firewood. This is the most overused defense people say when dealing with lost friends. We simply drifted apart. Our interests became more and more different and our circle of friends never had a chance to get tangential. You discovered that you no longer liked your friendship color of pink and yellow. No matter how hard you tried to keep the friendship, there was this seemingly unseen force brought you farther apart. Perhaps too much likeness can drive people away from each other. Talk about “opposites attract”. Still, there are inspiring stories of friendships spanning decades without a single inch of drifting apart.
Broken glass. Trust is the gravel and sand of friendship. It is something earned, deserved, and preserved. Earning trust is incredibly tough—deserving it is a prerequisite and preserving it takes a little extra effort on the part of the one trusted and a lot of faith for the one who trusts. Take away the gravel and sand; the concrete becomes a non-entity. And you can never expect things to be the same ever again.
The crossover-move. “Crossover? That’s my move.” (Now, what ad was that?!) This act often beleaguers heterogenous friendships (probably even homogenous friendships in extraordinary cases). Girl falls for guy best friend and vice versa. You can supply the roles for the extraordinary cases, who falls for whom etc. Some friendships endure this act, but figures generally suggest a very low survival rate.
Green-eyed monster thriller. You first met the green-eyed monster in your childhood neighborhood or perhaps your classroom and spotted it again at the university and in the workplace. Envy and jealousy are two cast-iron weeds smothering away nubs of friendships; even the most deeply rooted ones. Once the green-eyed monsters secure their spot, no amount of boxing up can stop them from causing damage.
Stone cold pilots. Ever met them? These are the friends whom you simply can’t get through. They willfully build towering walls around them but are oblivious of their friends trying to see through them. They can drive you nuts every time you try to understand them and still end up the one shut out. These are the people who have the slimmest of mementos to remind them of friends from their childhood, even through later life, because the best thing they do is to turn people away. Now, what else can you do about that?
Mr. and Mrs. Bogus. Their names speak for who they are and nobody wants to keep bogus friends. The moment a person shows indications of Mr. and Mrs. Bogus-syndrome, you know that prevention is always better than cure. It’s not to encourage misanthropic vibes but one must really be shrewd when it comes to choosing friends.
All people make mistakes. Nobody is unrestrained when it comes down to committing blunders. Big or small, they are part of what we become as a person. Hence, the basic truth that to err is human makes you want to believe that you are capable of freeing yourself from detesting anyone—not even those people whom you considered friends… and erred.
There is that tired expression, which tells something like, “All we need to know we learned in kindergarten.” Bored stiff people scoff at the cliché asking, how trite can anyone get?
Nonetheless, you choose to gratify yourself with what you believed you could at least call your own and got back to your personal musing.
Then, as if by some stroke of genius, the non-conformist in you launches an attack. You begin to argue that playschool, i.e., kindergarten cannot possibly teach you everything you need to know. Otherwise, you would not have worn yourself out learning and relearning things outside kindergarten. Of course, you’re just being too disgruntled to acknowledge what the truism really meant.
So, you tell yourself, and even try talking others into the impression that there is much more to learn after kindergarten—
For someone who wears glasses most of her life, the shirttail must be the trusty handyman for all occasions. In the absence of the hanky (or the Kleenex for those too squeamish about the idea of keeping a piece of cloth in his/her pocket for later use, which takes weeks for some...), or the flannel that goes with the eyeglasses (which come in pink, blue, green, yellow, etc.)-- the shirttail saves the day every time you get your fingerprints on your lenses; or when unwarranted raindrops give the unwitting traveler that is you, the sullied vision you have long wanted to get rid of. It only takes tugging your shirttail and everything is comme il faut--as it should be.
Those who are lucky not to wear glasses, perhaps you still get the picture. More than a flanky (flannel and hanky) substitute, this shirttail is more than just your ordinary shirttail. You two must have really gone a long way. It was there during your edgy moments--when you couldn't help tugging it due to anxiety over a very important school presentation (probably that was until high school, college was a whole lot different--the feeling was more of wanting to hide under your shirttail--tugging it just wasn't enough--in the middle of your thesis defense)
The often disregarded shirttail stood as a tacit witness to the mortifying events of your life. Those times when you didn't feel capable of raising your head because of humiliation, shame or simple frustration. During these low points, your shirttail was there, unassumingly staring back, needless to utter a word. Nonetheless, it was comforting to have this one thing that endured the brief moments of disgrace with you and never made you feel that any damage was done permanently.
It's great knowing that you have your shirttail just about any time you need it.
In a world where most people would die to prove they are indispensable (such irony of life) and at a time when people find so many things indispensable, we seldom appreciate things we think we can readily dispense with but are in fact the more delightful morsels of the scrumptious pie of life. The shirttail is just one of the many things we too often take for granted and at this point, we only know too well that we should not take anything for granted. These moments with your shirttails may altogether be insignificant. Yet, here we are, speaking of the grandeur of the shirttail, now tell me, for quite some time, you've never felt this good.
