“To the delirious eye, more lovely things of Paradise and Love-and all our own. Than young Hope in his sunniest hour hath known”-Edgar Allan Poe
September 9, 2007 at 9:08 am · Filed under perspective
She told me to write it down. She told me it would be fine.
So I write it down. But still it isn’t fine.
She told me it would be good practice anyway.
And so I write.
Write (or type) without much thought.
Every Sunday, I try to cram jam and stuff in my often stubborn head all the words I hear and see on the pieces of white sheet in front of me. Words running across the pages. I scribble on the perfectly lined paper of my notebook. I work around the borders. Underline underline underline. Until my papers are beyond recognition with arrows and lines and dots and words and little drawings.
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. I buy the newspaper. Sometimes I feel it makes me look a tad smarter. I read. I read the headlines. Sometimes I don’t even bother skimming or even glancing at the awfully toxic-smelling newsprint. I just buy. Again, I guess, out of impulse.Out of habit. Out of the fact that I feel that I try. That I try to keep up with this world, that I try to remind myself that it’s not always about me. Sometimes I forget. Sometimes I wish the world would just sloooow down so that I could catch up. And not feel so out of place.
I hate Mondays. There’s always a feeling of foreboding.
Tuesdays are so-so. I remember sunny side ups. Tuesdays feel yellow.
Wednesdays are fine. Mid-week is good. I think of barbecue and red.
Thursdays. The day I go to somewhere.
Fridays. Who doesn’t love Fridays?
Saturdays are peaceful.
Week after week after week.
Same old.
And then, there’s everything else in between. The falling in love, the meeting friends, the mind-numbing commutes, the eating, the little office chit-chats, the wishing to be some place else, the thinking, the talking, and the socializing. In no particular order.
And sometimes you wonder if you’ll ever feel as giddy or amazed or as fulfilled as the first time, when you first "fell" in love or took one hell of a photograph or even talked a geniune talk.
Sometimes I begin to doubt.
Because it’s all the same. Re-runs, re-makes. Repeat repeat again and again. It’s an obsessive-compulsive state. It’s an obsessive- compulsive world. Yeah.
September 1, 2007 at 11:33 am · Filed under it's on top of my head
I am…
These days drifting.
In a constant daze, nothing really in mind.
Just wishing today is tomorrow and tomorrow, the day after tomorrow.
A contranym wishing it were decided. Wishing it had one meaning.
Songs constantly play in my mind, background to the outrageous and sometimes mindless conversations I have in my head.
That’s a picture of how my life is lately. A shade of unresolved nonsense.
If my brain were a muscle it’d be experiencing muscular atrophy.
Every day’s (former) dynamism, now a stale hackneyed drama.
But I guess this is all some sort of conditioning for whatever is to come. Patience is a necessity, one that I don’t readily possess. Perhaps my transition from the world of academics to the wrath of everyday work has been everything but dynamic or spectacular. But don’t get me wrong. My life is dandy. But dandy isn’t necessarily happiness for me.
I miss the passion in the things I do.
And the thrill and the rough edges.
Maybe I’ve become a person of faith. The kind of faith that sits around and waits for fate. Or the kind of faith that trusts in a better tomorrow. If that’s great news or what, you tell me. But I’ve found myself often waiting and eagerly hoping that possibly the next day would prove more fulfilling to me. But waiting sucks. Waiting around for something that isn’t certain at all sucks even more.
And I don’t think that’s what faith is about. It’s not about quietism and submissive acceptance.
I think it’s more of actively pursuing things (which I fail to do) and to be more resourceful and dedicated (which I sometimes am). It’s like swimming for me. In order to touch the gutter, you need to take in gulps of air, hold your breath, reach out, kick and push, and keep your eyes open. You don’t float.
I’ve been floating for quite sometime and I feel as if I’m in the middle of nowhere.
I still don’t know when I’ll get out of this rut. I still don’t know how I’ll get to where I want to go. I still don’t know where I want to go.
But hey, I’m quite bent on this aim-high-and-work-for-it mantra. The hardest part of a challenge always come first and I’m just getting started.
July 31, 2007 at 7:38 am · Filed under hmmm...
I want to take the most breathtaking photographs
I want in to swim in the sea without caring about the damn sunburn
I want to travel to each of the seven continents, go to the Killing Fields in Cambodia, visit Singapore, tour Spain, fall in love in London, enjoy the food in Greece, go ice fishing in Alaska, shop in Paris, appreciate Australia, take a train to Germany, enjoy the African wildlife, watch a football game in Korea, chill in Brazil, you get the picture…I want to see the world!
I want to go to Law School and prove to myself I can and will succeed
I want to learn to fly a plane
I want to learn to speak Spanish and Mandarin
I want to be the best ate and the ideal daughter
I want to learn to control my temper
I want to be more than fine, more than dandy, more than great
Because right now, I’m here, standing in the starting line, wondering how far I can run, I can take in, I can appreciate, I can taste, I smell, I can breath before I break into a run, half-sprinting for the finish line.
Because even though we often do not notice, we walk by Everyday so fast. Too fast. Without really getting anywhere so quickly. I realized I’m still close to where I started 21 years ago, my life still before me with so much to do, so much to see, so much to live for. I refuse to acknowledge that complacency of convincing and patting myself on the back for being where I want to be. Although I am thoroughly enjoying myself right now, I refuse to accept that this is as good as it gets.
I want to be one of those people who say with confidence that this is it. I want to say with an honest smile that "at this moment, I am content", that, as gruesome as it may sound, I could die at this very second with no regrets or bitterness.
I may not be able to do all those that I want to do, but at least I can say I never gave up, I tried, because that’s where the secret lies, in the will and optimism and attitude to finish what’s been started. It doesn’t matter whether you cross the finish line unscathed, what matters, for me, is how much you’ve matured, you’ve learned, and even loved along the way. And maybe what enters to many of your minds at this point is the old folk saying that it’s not the end of race that counts, it’s the getting there, the in between.
Many have contested to that though. Maybe I agree with them at some point. Personally, though, it makes finally reaching the finish line so much sweeter and fulfilling if you’ve been through heaven and hell to get there.
From Here to There, I am lost. Lost in a pool of so much to-dos, and so much plans, and lost in so much thoughts and possibilities.
From Here to There, I can see only so much.
But from Here to There, I transcend time yet I am so real. This is my moment, my time and no one else’s.
July 27, 2007 at 11:39 am · Filed under Uncategorized
I sat. I stood. I sat. I took a peek at the tiny hole on the gate. Desperately, frantically waiting for the sound of gravel, of an engine, or of the slow braking of tires. I felt useless and hopeless and frustrated. Waiting for her arrival seemed to drive me into an obessesive-compulsive state of checking every now and then.
Upon seeing the car drive up to the parking space, my feet felt like jell-o. I felt glued to where I stood. And the subsequent events all seemed to be echoes of heartbeats, and worry, and relief. relief, mostly.
And somewhere in between the pacing and the panicking and the waves of sighs and thank-yous, I felt powerless. Like some rag doll tossed carelessly about. I felt myself being stripped of control, of a sense of certainty, and confidence. I was slipping. I was in every sense of the phrase, losing my grip.
And all this time I thought I had it under control. All in a neat tight perfect bundle, my life without the rough edges and loose strings. The life I’ve so worked hard to construct, to polish, to perfect. And maybe just because I’ve convinced the voice inside my head that I’ve mastered myself, I’ve naively formed the impression that I could control indirectly the actions of others, protecting those dear to me, comforting them, helping them at a moment’s notice like some comic book superhero.
It’s foolish I know.But maybe only when you feel so bare and so helpless that you realize how insecure you actually are, how limited your reach is. Only when the gravity of a situation hits, you realize that you can only do so much. Only when confronted with the possibilty of losing someone close to you slaps you on the face that you start to feel so grounded and so unguarded. The finitude of it all.
A defeat that makes you feel more human. That makes ME feel more fazed and disconcerted and shaken to the core but nonetheless makes me feel more alive in the most unexpected way possible.
I’m no superhero, my goodness. But in each of us, I think, lies this tendency, this inclination to display hero-like (heroic) intentions that makes us stand out , that make us special. I guess in order to be a superhuman being in our own right we have to acknowledge and address our shortcomings and graciously accept that there are things we cannot change and that there are facts we have to face. Even the ever popular Superman dealt with his match.
And in my defeat, I find that I am more able and determined than I’ve ever been.
July 26, 2007 at 9:21 am · Filed under it's on top of my head
Things have never been the same after I left Bournemouth.
I’ve since missed a number of people. My two "sisters"- Bihter and Sue- the walks, the running after the bus, Castlepoint. My friends. My classmates. BBSI. The shopping. Paul. Fish and Chips. The arguing with Gelo and Joby’s Spongebob-like voice… It’s horrible when you miss so much but you can’t seem to do anything about it. Two months have passed and still I wish I could go back there so badly.I miss the beach, the nights out, the rain and the wind. It’s a vacuous, insane, desperate feeling and longing for something you know to be a thing of the past. And it’s by far the most stupid thing I’ve ever done, to hold on to something that’s so fleeting, that’s so impermanent. It’s ridiculous and embarrassingly maudlin. Close to crazy, even. But for some unknown and utterly irrational reason, I’m still holding on.
Maybe I’m still waiting for something. Indefinitely.
Or maybe I just have to move on. And accept that it was the best time of my life (for now), that it was the most memorable, and most tiring ever.
I’ve been in touch with some of my friends from back there. They miss Bournemouth just as much, and perhaps, like me, they’ve promised themselves to go back there maybe for a holiday at one point in their lives.
Amazing how that tiny vacation town has changed the way people live, how people see things.
I miss it so much. Or just too much.
July 25, 2007 at 9:11 am · Filed under Uncategorized
"What comes into your mind when you see stars?" Kristian asks.
And I pause to process his question. "Stars? As in stars in the sky?"
And I imagine a nod.
I don’t wait for any further reply.
"Burning masses of matter…lightyears away", I absently but matter-of-factly state.
Philosophically he adds.
"Oh."
That each star is unique.
That they somehow seem to follow some kind of physics.
There’s this law in physics that two objects cannot occupy the same space, that even if you put one on top of the other, it wouldn’t count as "the same space"…you get the picture…and I am quite certain that this law of physics is applicable to those twinkling seemingly miniscule dots in the heavens.
Curious and magnificent how the laws of physics transcend space and time in this aspect.
But I, being so poor in physics, couldn’t really explain quite intelligently. Perhaps an attempt philosophically would be more Me.
So science of the stars aside, stars also represent hope.Or greatness.Or a reminder of how insignficant we proud beings are. It represents a kind of calculus, and in Quentin Lauer’s words, "always approaching but never achieving a complete grasp." They are simply out there too far to hold, grounding us, telling us that we can never really attain utmost perfection because it is merely an ideal.An abstraction. Have you seen perfection? I know I haven’t. But that does not discourage us from seeking it, as the proverb goes, "hitch your wagon to a star". Yet you may argue that it is then futile if there exist no perfection. But in seeking perfection, in striving for it, we become approximates of it, possibly fleeting reflections of it. If you think about it,if all the powers of the universe and beyond conspired with you to make you all perfect, what’s next for you? Would you simply float and boast of your ultimacy? You would become nothing but stagnant. Nothing anymore than the adjective perfection.
But hey,there’s a tad of stardust in all of us, believe it all not. And maybe there’s hoping that possibly someday we’ll reach the stars, literallly or figuratively.
I don’t know if I’m making sense…hehe…
It all started with a simple question.
Stars.
And Kristian laughs amused.
June 30, 2007 at 12:09 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
I have seriously considered "abandoning" this blog not because I’ve lost interest in writing but because my blog has slowly become so distant, to the point that even I felt alienated from my own blog. A few friends of mine, Sey and Reuter, to name a few, have made me reconsider my intention. So I’m giving this another shot.
For the first time in months, I’m once again broadcasting my thoughts and feelings to readers who may scrutinize me, judge me, or scorn me…or otherwise but to their criticisms and conclusive comments, I pay selected attention to. What affects me more is how I begin to appear so vulnerable and so transparent in the computer screens of many I don’t know. It’s both exciting and scary. Exciting because this, for me, is my way of getting out there and making myself heard. It’s an opportunity for me to voice out my views and to hear of what others have to say. Scary because the possibility of revealing a "version of marga" is so real that people may come up with preconceived notions of me without actually knowing the real me. And if you think about it, it’s sort of unfair on my part.
The "real" me is a tough topic to handle. Even I it don’t know the real me. In psychology, I constantly assimilate and accomodate myself in terms of knowlegde, experience, and insight. One thing’s for sure—I have changed. Maybe not for the best but for the now.(Forgive my brevity. I warn you, this will be one loooong entry and I advise to stop if this doesnt sound like your thing.) For the now because this attitude and outlook I am adapting at the moment is what is MOST appropriate for my situation, at this point in my life. The best word perhaps to describe it is aloofness. The kind of aloofness that entails a detachment from being too maudlin, or being too dependent on people. I’ve learned that getting too attached would only lead to one’s downfall. Having said that, the famous psychoanalyst, Sigmund Freud, also believed unhappiness is a result of refusing to let go of memories. And these past few months, I’ve done nothing but hold on desperately and pathetically to memories. The kind of memories that make me smile and cry and make me wish that the world would simply stop because I willed it to do so.
So now I’ll just sigh and say this entry ends here and conclude that ultimately we have, in one way or another, tried to stop change, to be gods of our destiny. But change knows no one and submits only to Time. We may be masters of our actions but we can only control so much. It is such a paradox for us, the human race, to be catalysts of change in trying to stop change. What we often fail to realize that in the attempt to stop change, we change change therefore producing change unintentionally. The inevitable.
April 3, 2007 at 12:00 pm · Filed under it's on top of my head
Left with the month of March being free free free (seniors get March off)…I had a whole checklist of things to do. Make all these schmaltzy thank you cards, clean my room, catch up with friends, make a scrapbook, travel…etc etc. But I ended up doing only a fraction of that so-called to-do list. Though, ironically, I ended up getting more than what I bargained for. And only now am I recovering from everything, from the Starbucks nights to the early mornings at Somethin’ Fishy.
I’ll spare you overly-analyzed details but I will share my recklessly candid thoughts on these past events…
When you feel like you’re leaving this certain period in your life you tend brace yourself for the impact. The impact of something totally uncertain and possibly foreign. You’re psyching up yourself to expect the unexpected (i.e. The Worst), you try to futilely make some sort of feeble sense of the little information or knowledge of have of the what’s-to-come. You struggle, perhaps. Not the sort of struggle that entails the clashing of fists and all that but maybe the sort of turmoil that happens in the heart and in the mind. Emotions that refuse to be understood. Thoughts that simply cannot rest. I guess biologically, that’s how we were built. To be on our toes, to be alert, to be ready. But the question still lingers…"Be ready for what, exactly?" Ahhh, the anxiety and innate curiosity the future brings.
But maybe in that bracing of ourselves for the Unknown, we unconsciously try to take in every single detail, mercilessly try to cheat time to letting us savor the remaining certainty we have. I have many times tried to encapsulate my emotions, tried to hold on to memories, tried to breathe a little slower to take it all in. To take a single flash of a zillion happenings all in a brief moment. Too much to digest. The mind can only take in so much, unfortunately. Thank God, for technology.
Drawing a mental picture, it seems that you try to protect yourself from the looming Unknown but at same time, you render yourself utterly vulnerable by trying to take in everything. Unfiltered. So real. In motion. And there you are in middle of two seemingly opposing forces. And there you lay more perplexed. And that is how I feel. So overwhelmed. Like a tidal wave. That in one swift encompassing motion, stuns me. Drowning. An overkill.
Beautiful.
Free of regret.
And in processing everything that’s happened, I’ve come up with fragmented happy pieces. And the giddy emotions and the vivid memory re-makes. But for sure, in my moment of drowning, in that moment of confusion and shock, I’ve learned to love even more, to give more generously, to live more passionately, to laugh even louder, smile more sincerely, and to hope unrelentingly because on my way to recovering those little bits and pieces, I’ve become someone I’ve never thought I could be at this point. More mature perhaps. But definitely, someone braver who’ll face the Unknown with the knowlegde that I’m living the way I wanted to be.
In the middle of all this hum-drum, I’m happy I lost myself somewhere.
Tomorrow may be shit. But I’ve come too far, why stop?
March 7, 2007 at 11:46 am · Filed under perspective
Hmmm…Ok, someone asked me to write an entry with this title. I’m not so sure though if it was ‘meant to last’ or ‘made to last’. Sorry hehe…
Anyway, for me to come up with an entry with such title, I had to wait for the right moment which included thoughts or experiences that made the title meaningful and coherent. So here it is.
Well it’s a fact, everything is so temporary. So fast and fleeting, from the breaths we take to Time itself. The moments we futilely try to hold on to, the people we try so hard to keep, thoughts that keep racing through our heads, emotions that are just so volatile.
Maybe, I’m in the best position now to talk about impermanence. The kind of impermanence that involves the uncertainty of what I’ll be doing hours from now, days from nows, months, and even years from now. Everything is just hanging so precariously. Like in Limbo.
Perhaps it just comes with graduating. Yep, I’ll be graduating this March. And as the 30th draws closer and closer, I try so desperately to hold on to the remaining days of my college life and make some sort of sense out of it because I’m off to the "real world". And the unpredictability of Tomorrow drives me crazy! Reflecting on the how Time can be so hypersonic and how change is so inevitable, I realized that we’re powerless to change certain situations and cirsumstances but we CAN do something within the context of time, the attempt to encapsulate, to capture moments and make them real, to make them count and not allowing them to become some hazy blur of color, perhaps artistically beautiful yet remain undefined and muted nonetheless. We try to hold on, I try to hold on. Like I wrote in a prayer for class, "Teach me to let go of both what I have and don’t need that open palms receive Your blessings"…there is bound to be something or someone who’ll make you see the moments that are spectacular and alive and not as something transitory and vanishing. Instances that’ll teach us that letting go is not a sign of helplessness or inability but a mark of courage and our capacity to hope and have faith.
"Change is choice" goes this month’s Metro magazine editorial. I couldn’t help but nod and grin upon reading that line. To an extent, we still have the capacity to choose what we change unwilling to let the uncertainty of the Future get to us.
Maybe tomorrow…
I’ll bag the best job ever
Maybe tomorrow…
I’ll discover a hidden talent of mine
Maybe tomorrow…
I’ll fall in love
…because I choose to see what the maybe-tomorrows may bring over the bland impossibility of despair.
I choose to act lest hope becomes half-hearted possibility.
February 28, 2007 at 9:58 am · Filed under hmmm...
An essay written as my exercise for my THEOLOGY class on Christian Commitment:
Commitment. That undying pursuit of that something we’ve dedicated ourselves to. A personal mission we all seek to fulfill. Things like getting in shape and staying in shape or finding a job and holding it, things that matter to us, these entail a certain amount of commitment. In understanding commitment, it is important for me to be able to distinguish it from obligation. The former involves a passion, the giving of self, a free will. On the contrary, obligation may be done out of a sense of gratitude or duty, which isn’t at all bad. Commitment may constantly find itself in shaky ground which tempts the person to give up. It is understood in terms of how much of ourselves we give to something that matters to us, that is undeniably of value to us, it is thus seen in the context of how much pain or how much sacrifice a person has undergone and the extent one has attempted to reconcile the loose ends. Commitment is most commonly revealed to us within the framework of love. That exchange of an unspoken agreement between two people. That even when things turn sour or go wrong, you still find in the situation the reality of the possibility of working things out. Commitment is the failure to give up. When you love, it isn’t all about the melodic love songs and the dreamy moments, it’s about the heartache and the arguments and the misunderstandings and lost opportunities. It’s within this commitment that we attempt to not simply right the wrongs but also to understand our capacity to love, our capacity to be true, our capacity to be ourselves, and to find ourselves, most importantly. In doing so, we find that all we need is something to believe in. A belief in yourself. A belief in something worth every loathsome moment and every smile of contentment.
Commitment is not about getting a hold of someone or something, or is it about control. It is often said in our Theology classes that freedom would be useless without commitment because in being free individuals, we make the choice to commit. Choosing otherwise would mean allowing freedom to waste away in a world of endless possibilities where none would actually materialize, with that, even the existentialist would agree with me. Think of muscle atrophy in which, due to disuse, the muscle size is reduced.
Yep, everything is but a possibility. Yet to be realized. It’s up to you. But once you take that plunge, I think commitment is indispensible, whether consciously chosen or not.
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