The Sound of Story

power

2012-02-15T15:48:00.000+08:00

“I kind of define power now by having theconfidence to make your own decisions and not be swayed by other people. And bebrave and fearless to know that even if you do make a wrong decision, you madeit for a good reason.”
— Adele, photoshoot for Vogue, 2012

Honestly, I don't know if letting you go was a right or wrong decision for me. I was never given the chance to decide before I committed the act. The circumstances stopped me from weighing the pros and cons. You did not give me the luxury of time. You did not tell me you were leaving.

I'm not writing this because I want you to know about how I am thinking right now. That is the least of my concerns. I'm writing this because I want myself to know that it's fine if I made some life-changing actions without having thought about it. I'm writing this because I want to tell myself that it's ok to have risked letting go without actually knowing why.

I have no idea if somewhere along I'd find out the answers. But one thing is sure,this life can't wait. I, too, have my own journey to continue.

But in case, just in case, you know, I won't be too far yet.

Reading signs

2012-02-13T15:18:00.002+08:00

I used to think that God spoke to me through signs. For a long time in my life, I believed that He communicated with me through things and symbols. Pachelbel canon rang in the forthcoming connections with my first love, floods in my dreams connoted a problem in the family, disrupted schedules of activities with a special someone meant not-for-each-other, disinterest to show up to an event meant something wrong is going to happen, etc. etc.-- assumptions which, in retrospect, proved to be right.

But somewhere along my journey, I have gradually lost touch with my sign-reading capacity in certain important areas of life.

While reading today's gospel, I felt that indeed, I now have difficulty decoding signs. Sometimes, God is already shouting His message to me, but I have gone deaf to them. These days, I tend to think about things my own way, relishing the new-found independence I've gotten from being a young professional. I have forgotten about my focal point-- His Love. Fear of rejection, fear of being out-of-control, fears conjured from bitter experiences all the more make me lose focus, hence, my losing of the gift of reading signs from my Father. Something got me blinded-- myself.

And knowing this, from this point onward, I'll try to mend my blinded eyes by clearing away pride, fears, and false courage. I recognize that alone, I cannot make it. And that I have a Father God.

Two kids crossed the street this morning

2012-02-10T14:37:00.002+08:00

They were holding hands. In my normal Ate mode, I would have freaked out at the fact that they're walking the street unguarded by their parents. But no, at that moment, what captured my unguarded attention was that those toddlers were holding hands while crossing the street, walking along with a number of strangers, including me.

The scenery evoked a smile on my lips, triggering an old memory.

I was in college then, homeward bound after a morning class. As I was walking along, I saw a very old couple, they seemed like they're already on their 90s, with their crooked spines, crossing the street, holding each other's hand as they trod the pavement with their trembling knees. For a while, my world halted to take a longer look at the beautiful , rather magical, scene in front of me. In that few minutes of watching the old couple walk from one side of the road to the other, a dream was born.

And that happened also, days before Valentine's.

Just because

2012-02-09T16:52:00.002+08:00

There are words that I say just because.

Like I feel cold right now, it must be the aircon in my room.

There are words that I write because they're meant to be read.

Like yesterday, I spent time with great young people

and realized that each youth has a reservoir of power within her, waiting to be tapped.

There are words that I can't say just because saying them gives them life.

Like I know that I can't bring back time, only memory

which also is bound to leave

There are words that are just born, they can't stand by themselves.

Like I miss you.

-h

In the mode of missing old friends. See, I'm not really a good friend-keeper. Just today, I got a call from my close girl-friend. We were supposed to meet and catch up tonight, but then my bad, I forgot to tell her earlier that I have a meeting scheduled tonight. So I ended up pleading (for the nth time) to move our dinner to another date. Priorities. I know my relationships are more important than the tasks I have in this world. But then, this forgetful mind of mine. I feel so guilty. I know if I continue walking along this line of prioritizing tasks over people, I'd be alone in the end. Urgh, Hilda! Wake up, sleepy head! T_T

--
Saw this in my file storage:

Sa(d)yang tinanggihan ko ang alok mo
Noon sa Bao Park
Kung iba ang sinabi ko
Nadagdagan sana (nga) ang kaunting mga sandali
Ng Burger McDo at French Fries
Ng mahabang lakaran at tawanan
Papunta sa boarding house ko
Kung saan naghihintay ang dilaw na sofa

Sa(d)yang nanaig ang pride ko
Kaya di ko na natikman ang kakaibang lasa
Ng fried lumpia ng Jollibee
Kapag kasabay kitang ngumunguya

Sa(d)yang kinabig ko na parang isang baso
Ng Regular Coke ng McDo
ang sa(d)yang dala sana ng
Kaunting mga saglit.

-h, Sa(d)ya
19 April 2011

Mag-asawa ka, ne

2012-02-07T18:20:00.000+08:00

Ngayon ko lang ulit nakausap si Lola nang matagal. Naging sobrang hectic ang mga araw ko na hindi ko na siya halos nakakausap. Noong estudyante pa ako, tuwing hapon, kung wala akong inaaral, kinakausap ko si Lola. Ang bawat session kasama siya ay isang uri rin ng pagkatuto.

Ngayong bago mag-dapit-hapon, sabi niya sa'kin, "Mag-asawa ka, ne." Nag-umpisa 'yun nang sabihin kong ang dami kong pamangkin. Ang dami kong pwedeng alagaan. Akala siguro niya balak ko na talagang maging taga-alaga. Sabi niya mabuti raw ang may sariling anak dahil galing sa iyo yun, sariling dugo at laman. "Galing sa puso mo."

Gusto ko naman talagang mag-anak. Gusto ko naman talagang mag-asawa. "Lola, gusto ko pong magpamilya pero hindi pa ngayon." Sabi niya kaya ko na raw. Sabi ko oo, kaya ko, pero kelangan ko munang buuhin ang sarili ko. Pakiramdam ko ang dami ko pang gustong gawin na di ko magagawa kung magkaanak na ko. Gusto ko kapag nagkaanak na ko, sa kanya na lang umiikot ang mga pangarap ko. Magagawa ko yun kung tapos ko nang paikutin ang sarili ko sa sarili kong mga pangarap. Gusto ko buo ako kapag nagbuo ako ng sariling pamilya. Idealistic akong tao, oo, sa maraming aspekto. Siguro dahil lumaki ako sa hindi magagandang realidad ng buhay.

Hindi ko naman bibiguin ang Lola e, pero gusto kong siguruhing kapag dumating na ako sa puntong 'yun, wala akong panghihinayangan.

Dahil kaya ko.

2012-02-06T21:17:00.004+08:00

Sisimulan ko sa hapon ang araw ko. Bakit hindi, kaninang umaga e nakadikit lang sa kama ang katawan ko. Ang lamig kasi sa Manila. Parang nasa Baguio lang ako. Pero nung bandang hapon, uminit ang araw.

Papunta ako sa lugar ng meeting namin para sa isang formation program para sa mga empleyado na niluluto ng opisina namin. Nakatabi ko sa jeep ang teacher ko sa MSEP (Musika, Sining, Edukasyong Pangkatawan), si Ma'am Christine Ornido (tanda ko pa sya bilang kamukha talaga niya ang isa kong tita). Nagkwento siya tungkol sa pagreretiro ng mga magagaling na teachers sa public school na pinasukan ko noong grade school. Wala na raw si Ma'am Tesoro (yung terror naming Science teacher), kakaretire lang daw. Principal na raw yung asawa niya sa ibang school, at siya patuloy pa rin ang pagtuturo sa grade school namin. Sabi niya, ibang-iba raw ang mga estudyante ngayon kaysa sa batch namin. Magaling daw talaga kami kumpara sa mga bata ngayon. Masyado raw kasing maikli ang attention span nila kumpara samin. Sabi ko naman, malaking bagay ang dedikasyon ng mga guro sa pagtuturo. Naalala ko noong panahon namin, pagkatapos ng morning session sa klase e may out-of-classroom sessions pa kami kasama ang mga teachers sa major subjects. Ngayon daw, parang tinatamad na ang mga bagong teachers.

Dun ko masasabing ang swerte ko dahil kabilang ako sa henerasyon ng masisipag na mga guro. Kung noon, halos manginig ako sa kasungitan ng ilan sa kanila, ngayon nagpapasalamat ako dahil ang pamamaraan nila sa pagtuturo ang nagpabuti sa landas na tinatahak ko. Naaalala ko, magagaling talaga ang mga naging guro ko, madalas silang makapag-train ng mga estudyanteng pang-regional ang kapasidad sa subject proficiency. Madalas kaming manalo sa mga district at division contests sa ilalim nila. Sa ngayon, halos negatibong lahat ang nakukuha kong feedback tungkol sa mga bagong guro at bagong henerasyon ng mga estudyante. Hindi ko maiwasang malungkot para sa alma mater ko.

Kaya nga inalala kong lalo ang bilin sa'kin ng paborito kong class adviser na pumanaw na, "Patunayan mong kaya mo, kasi alam kong kaya mo. Just be strong and be humble."

Patutunayan kong tama ang mga sinabi niya at ng mga naging guro ko tungkol sa akin. Sa ganitong paraan, magpapasalamat ako sa kanila.

Nag-igting ang kagustuhan kong ayusin ang mga pagkukulang na nagawa ko sa nakalipas na taon. May oras pa ko, at maraming umasa sa akin noon na kaya ko.

Why you are beautiful

2012-02-01T12:29:00.001+08:00

You’re beautiful because you’re stronger than anyone thought. I didn’t think you were at first. I expected the pain of your wrecked relationship to eat you alive. I expected you to burst into tears spontaneously every day for the next decade, stop washing your hair and only smile faintly when someone asked how you were doing. I thought you would still be wearing the ring alone in your apartment, self-medicating to the point where it was no longer a #whitegirlproblem but an actual problem. But you pushed through it. You’re happy and healthy now, and you refer to yourself as “I” rather than “we.” I couldn’t be prouder of you.

You’re beautiful because you take risks. You substituted “who cares” for “what if” and stopped talking into your beer about how you were going to do it and actually did it. You weren’t afraid to take a crazy stupid chance on your crazy stupid dreams, kind of like that chick in Eat Pray Love except you didn’t have to become an ashram-cleaning cliché to find yourself and didn’t leave me with popcorned fingers and a diminishing sense of pre-packaged optimism. You’re an inspiration and you’re real.

You’re beautiful because you just don’t give a damn. You don’t need everyone to like you, agree with you or approve of you to feel good about yourself. You know that “good enough” is subjective, and that more often than not the subject doesn’t really matter anyway. I know you’ll never wake up suddenly 45 and nowhere, half your time and potential wasted on following someone else’s idiot advice. That’s the kind of thing that gives me hope for myself.

You’re beautiful because you taught me something invaluable that I would never have come to know on my own. You taught me that there are some things love does not conquer — that you can love someone with all your heart and skin and organs and it will change completely nothing. You gave me a practical lesson: that a relationship cannot be carried by only one of its halves. You made me realize I am not special, and that’s important because I spent a good part of my life thinking I was. Assuming Keats was right and beauty is truth, you are beautiful.

You’re beautiful because you take pride in ironically showcasing that you’re not. You laugh at the silly standards of conventional beauty and elevate armpit hair, blue-veined pallor and Chucks held together by luck alone to a whole new level. You will never be the one to drop six grand on an anti-aging cream made from red algae and gorilla spit because when you’re eighty, you will be proud of the history that gave you those wrinkles. The thing is, you are absolutely stunning.

You’re beautiful because you’re brave. You know there’s more to life than measuring how long you have — you came face to face with your own mortality and turned to look the other way. Everyone knows cancer is a big deal but somehow it’s an even bigger deal when someone close to you gets it. You’re the one with the cancer but for some reason you still hold me when I cry. How you still manage to look miles better than most “healthy” people is beyond me.

You’re beautiful because you believe in things. Even when it’s easier to be cynical, skeptical, hyper-rational, you keep believing because you know believing in things is what makes them real. You’re beautiful for that reason, because you can do something lots of people can’t. I know I can’t. I admire you and sometimes I’m jealous.

You’re beautiful and you shouldn’t wait for someone else to tell you. You already know it, just see it.

taken from: http://thoughtcatalog.com/2012/why-youre-beautiful/

What I cannot change

2012-01-30T13:10:00.003+08:00

During last night's mass, Fr. Manny, our parish priest, delivered a very fitting homily regarding the power of Jesus to cast out demons. He started off with a story of a woman who was presumed to be possessed by a bad spirit, which he later found out as having been possessed with another "spirit". It turned out that the woman was having some sort of a nervous breakdown because she was hiding something from her parents-- her pregnancy. Fr. Manny shared this with the woman's parents who fortunately celebrated the coming of the baby into their family. The woman must have felt desperation and hopelessness in her situation, which led her to act as if she was being possessed. She thought her unwanted pregnancy would cause bitterness inside her family, but it turned out that her parents knew better.

Fr. Manny wrapped up the homily with the assurance that God is in control of our lives. And I know, He is.

As he was delivering his homily, I was introspecting, trying to connect the words he was saying to the thoughts and feelings in my heart. The voices around which claim my alone-ness are lying. My God is in control. I'm glad I cannot change that.

Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish

2012-01-28T21:06:00.004+08:00

This is the speech delivered by Steve Jobs (Apple Founder) during the 2005 Stanford University Commencement Exercise which always inspires me:

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope it's the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.

(taken from http://news.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html)

Kaibigan

2012-01-28T19:25:00.000+08:00

Nagbasa ako kanina ng paborito kong columnist. Topic niya ngayon ang tungkol sa halaga ng kaibigan sa buhay natin. Totoo namang mahalaga ang mga kaibigan at masasabi kong maswerte ako dahil marami akong kaibigan. Sabi nila, magkaroon ka lang raw ng limang matatapat na kaibigan, ok ka na. Ang swerte ko dahil lagpas pa doon ang meron ako, sa tingin ko.

Karamihan sa mga kaibigan ko madadaldal. Pero merong ilan na sobrang tahimik. Maingay man o hindi, mahalaga sila sa buhay ko. Sana, makasama ko sila kahit sa pagtanda ko. :)

--
Naaawa ako sa naiwang pamilya ni Iggy Arroyo. Ang gulo kasi ng sitwasyon nila.Hindi nila alam kung kanino mapupunta yung katawan niya. Hirap kasi ng higit pa sa isa ang napangasawa e. Malamang malakas ang laban nung Alicia Arroyo kasi siya ang legal wife. Kahit na mas minahal pa kamo ni Iggy si Grace, iba pa rin yung may pinanghahawakang papel. Ang sakit siguro noon. Alam mong mas minahal ka, pero hindi mo mapaglalaban yun. Kasi sa bandang huli, sa papel lang din naman nauuwi ang lahat. Hindi mo pwedeng sabihing mas minahal namin ang isa't-isa, sa akin siya naging masaya. Kasi hindi naman 'yun ang basehan kung kanino dapat mapunta ang isang taong patay na. May mga batas na umiiral na nilalagpasan ang pagkilos ng pag-ibig. Ganyan sa totoong mundo.

---
Pinag-iisipan ko nang husto ngayon kung magpapalit ba ako ng choice na law school. Naeengganyo na yata akong mag-Ateneo dahil sa ilang mga praktikal na kadahilanan. Pero kelangan kong timbangin nang husto. May oras pa ko para mag-isip. Tutal isang taon pa ko halos sa masters degree ko.

-h

Habang nagsesepilyo kaninang umaga, naisip ko

2012-01-27T14:52:00.002+08:00

Huwag mong hayaang hawakan ng ibang tao ang spirit mo. Oo, fair lang na ibahagi ang sarili mo sa isang taong nakakapagpasaya sa’yo. Ibigay mo sa kanya ang puso mo, pero huwag ang buo mong pagkatao. Para kapag umalis siya, masaktan ka man, umiyak ka man, hindi ka mababawasan. Oo, may kulang kang mararamdaman, pero ang pagkatao mo, ang values mo, in-tact pa rin.

Huwag kang magmumukhang kawawa. Huwag kang magpapaawa. Dahil mas malaki ang halaga mo kaysa sa pag-ibig na iniwan niya sa’yo. Tandaan mo ‘yan.

At huwag mong kalilimutang mag-floss pagkatapos magsepilyo.

-h

Dear Mr. Kupido

2012-01-26T18:03:00.002+08:00

Nag-archery training ka ba talaga?
Nagtataka ako sa'yo e.
Madalas kang dumaplis.
Kahit si Anne Curtis, napakanta mo.
Walang-hiya ka raw at nasira ang schedule niya.
Same here.

-h

Ano na?

2012-01-26T11:51:00.001+08:00

Nakakamiss rin pala yung may kaaway.

May hinahanap akong kanta

2012-01-25T16:54:00.002+08:00

Pelikula ang buhay, bawat eksena may background music.
Kahit katahimikan ay musika, kung makikinig ka lang.

Outrance

2012-01-19T11:51:00.001+08:00

Kagabi nakausap ko sa telepono yung ideal boss ko. Inaya niya kong magsulat. Siyempre, gusto ko! Excited na akong magsimula ng bagong kabanata. Cliche na kung cliche pero totoo pala talaga ang mga cliche. Every ending marks a new beginning.

May natapos mang bahagi ng buhay ko, meron namang nagsisimula.

Minsan nasabi ng isang teacher sa Ateneo High School na maganda ang lobong de-patpat, pero mas gusto pa rin daw niya ang lobong de-tali. "Maganda nga ang lobong de-patpat pero hindi naman lumilipad."

Sa nakalipas na mga taon, pakiramdam ko lobong de-patpat ako. Maganda naman ang kinalalagyan ko pero hindi ko naman magawa ang gusto ko. Gusto ko yung mga ginagawa ko, pero hindi gustung-gusto. Tamang gusto lang.

Pero sabi nga ni Karen Kingsburry, "Life is too short for half-hearted connections and meaningless run-throughs." Napaikli ng buhay para makontento na lang sa kung anong nandyan.Kelangang sumugal ng tao hindi lang para maging masaya kundi para maging lubos na masaya. Kelangang sumubok ng tao para kuhanin ang pinakamakakapagbigay kahulugan sa buhay niya. Hindi lahat ng pagkakataon ay pagkakataong maging lubos ang kasiyahan kaya naman kapag dumating ang pagkakataong nagdadala nun, dapat lang na sumugal.

Alam kong tama ang desisyong gagawin ko.

Because today, I've no words to say

2012-01-18T12:08:00.000+08:00

Samal Island, 2008

Bantay-Bata ang eksena

2012-01-17T18:04:00.001+08:00

Ginagamit siguro talaga ng Diyos yung mga problema at sakit para lalo akong mapalapit sa kanya. Hindi naman siguro siya sadista o anuman, pero sa tingin ko mayroong kakaiba sa sakit na nakakapagpalapit sa akin sa Kanya. Parang bata, kapag natatakot, lalong humihigpit ang kapit sa kamay ng kasamang matanda. Hindi naman kagagawan ng matanda na mapunta sa nakakatakot na lugar ang batang inaalagaan niya. Hinahayaan lang niyang magliwaliw ang bata sa malaking parke tapos kapag nakakita ng nakakatakot na anuman yung bata, tatakbo siya palapit sa bantay niya. Ang Diyos ang bantay, mabait na nakatunghay sa akin. Ako ang bata--- nagliliwaliw. Sa mga oras ng takot at dilim, alam lang niyang sa kanya ako babalik. Pwedeng bukas pag-ibis ng takot, aalis ulit ako para maglaro. Pero nandyan lang Siya, hindi umaalis.

On loving

2012-01-17T15:29:00.002+08:00

Below is something I said to a friend via private message last year. In the conversation, he was asking me whether I was in love.

Hindi ko alam. Mas malalim na pag-iisip ang kelangan diyan. Kapag sinabi mong gusto mo ang isang tao, inaamin mo na may mga bagay sa pagkatao nya na kinagigiliwan mo. Pero kapag sinabi mong na-in-love ka na sa isang tao, ibig sabihin nun pinagkasundo mo na yung puso at isip mo sa isang desisyon na pwedeng magpabago ng buhay mo. Napakalaking bagay ng pagiging in-love. Sa ngayon, hindi ko pa masasabing niyakap ko na ang napakalaking (at napakagandang) bagay na yan. Marami pa kong kakaining bigas. At ayokong mabulunan.

To My Extraordinary Lover

2012-01-17T12:42:00.004+08:00

Your extraordinary love keeps me sane these days. It's your love that keeps me moving forward, even if deep within, I want to stop and sob. It's your hand that holds mine so I may continue creating my own path, the one that you desired for me from the beginning, way before I've known happiness and pain.

In family and friends, in dreams and works, in realities and possibilities, you never fail to make your presence known. So even if the ground below shakes, and I don't know which step to take, my heart is at rest because you are with me.

May your extraordinary love take me to where I should be.

-h

Don't touch my hand and call it love

2012-01-17T10:44:00.002+08:00

No, I'm not pertaining to anyone upon hearing this song. Don't feel guilty. This is not about you.

In pursuit of a map

2012-01-16T10:28:00.002+08:00

I am struggling to find something these days. That something I don't know what but when I find it, I'd know. It may read weird, but that's how I describe it in my head. You know that feeling of wanting something you don't know yet? That's what's been lingering in my head lately.

I feel a sense of restlessness, of wanting to go to someplace else in pursuit of something. Perhaps satisfaction? Because most of the things on my lap right now are dissatisfying? Perhaps answers? because what people give are just cues to them? Perhaps courage? Because I am no longer sure where I want to go? I have this vague idea of where I want to be in life but I don't know how to get there. And that sense of not knowing frightens me.

Or do I have to go someplace else to see these things? Can old folks be lying when they say that things I need in life already lie within me, in a reservoir of light waiting to be tapped? If so, is there a map to go within me so I can finally access it? Or should I just rely on trickles and glimpses of that light?

I'm clueless, restless, in a breathless mode of unknowingly wanting. But I'm moving, walking towards somewhere.

---

For this week, the theme is finding lost things and lost selves. Replays.

This is the thing

2012-01-15T11:08:00.000+08:00

This is the thing: When you hit 28 or 30, everything begins to divide. You can see very clearly two kinds of people. On one side, people who have used their 20s to learn and grow, to find … themselves and their dreams, people who know what works and what doesn’t, who have pushed through to become real live adults. Then there’s the other kind, who are hanging onto college, or high school even, with all their might. They’ve stayed in jobs they hate, because they’re too scared to get another one. They’ve stayed with men or women who are good but not great, because they don’t want to be lonely. … they mean to develop intimate friendships, they mean to stop drinking like life is one big frat party. But they don’t do those things, so they live in an extended adolescence, no closer to adulthood than when they graduated.

Don’t be like that. Don’t get stuck. Move, travel, take a class, take a risk. There is a season for wildness and a season for settledness, and this is neither. This season is about becoming. Don’t lose yourself at happy hour, but don’t lose yourself on the corporate ladder either. Stop every once in a while and go out to coffee or climb in bed with your journal.

Ask yourself some good questions like: “Am I proud of the life I’m living? What have I tried this month? … Do the people I’m spending time with give me life, or make me feel small? Is there any brokenness in my life that’s keeping me from moving forward?”

Taken from: http://m.relevantmagazine.com/life/whole-life/features/25956-11-things-to-know-at-25ish?start=1

Ang Dining Table.Bow.

2012-01-15T10:25:00.001+08:00

Sa PPC planning and evaluation kagabi, habang naghahapunan, napag-usapan ang isyu ng pag-aasawa. Bagong kasal yung nasa harap ko, sina Kuya Gerry at Ate Sweet, sa gilid ko, si Tito Gary, yung isang church leader namin na matagal nang may-asawa, at isang pari, si Fr. Ferdi.

Pinansin ni Father ang magkatabing bagong-kasal.
Father: Ganyan talaga kapag bagong kasal, di mapaghiwalay. Pero paglipas ng panahon, 'Doon ka, dito ako." (Sabay tawa at tingin sa'kin.) Ikaw ba, may asawa ka na?
Ako: Wala pa po.
Father: Sayang naman ang ganda mo. Ano'ng sabi ng boyfriend mo at di ka pa niya pinakakasalan?
Kuya Gerry: Mali po yung tanong, Father. Dapat, bakit wala kang boyfriend?
Father: Wala kang boyfriend? E di lalong sayang ang ganda mo!

Ngumiti lang ako at tinuloy ko lang ang pagkain.

Maya-maya, kinuwento ni Tito Gary na nung bagong kasal daw sila, wala silang dining table. Lumabas siya ng bahay para maghanap, nang makita niya ang isang bagong-sarang restaurant. Pumasok siya sa loob, at bumili ng isang maliit na dining table.Yun ang naging dining table nila ng asawa niya.

Father: Ang cute! (Sabay tingin sa akin.) Ikaw ba, hindi nangangarap ng ganun?
Ako: Ng dining table po?

Napuno ng tawanan ang hapag.

Makalipas ang ilang sandali, tumayo na si Mama mula sa kabilang table para ayain na akong umuwi.
Father: Kaya naman hindi magka-boyfriend ang anak mo, palagi kang nasa likod.
Mama: May oras para diyan, Father.
Father: Sayang naman ang ganda niya. E di sana ay napamana na niya ang gandang 'yan.

Ang weird dahil kasama ni Mama ang mga amiga niya ng oras na 'yun. At sumasabay rin sa pagsasabing maaga pa para sa pag-aasawa.

Ang cute ng mga matatanda. :)

Chill lang kayo, darating din tayo diyan. Mag-eenjoy muna ko sa dining table, mukhang marami pa akong kwentong gustong marinig habang nagsisimula ako ng sariling dining table tale.

Susubukan ko ulit ngayong araw

2012-01-13T10:50:00.000+08:00

Susubukan ko ulit na ayusin ang buhay ko. Malaki-laking trabaho ito, alam ko. Marami akong napabayaang mahahalagang bagay. Mabuti na lang nagising ako ngayong umaga, pwede pa kong bumawi.

Kaninang umaga, paggising ko, nakita ko agad yung baby kong pamangkin. Naisip ko, ang bawat araw ay bago para sa kanya. Hindi siya nag-iisip ng mga nangyari kahapon at nagsisisi sa mga nakalipas na pagkakamali. Nabubuhay siya nang bago sa bawat araw. Susubukan ko 'yun ngayon. Itutuloy ko ang mga kailangang simulan at tatapusin ang mga kailangang tapusin, at higit sa lahat, magsisimula ng mga bagong simula.

Susubukan ko ulit ngayong araw.

A new year for the PYM

2012-01-11T13:35:00.000+08:00

We'll be having the first core team meeting for the youth ministry of our church this Friday. I can't wait to get the balls rolling for this year with the rest of the team. We have done quite well last year and with the dedication each of us has, I'm pretty sure we'll make it again this year.

Sta. Maria della Strada PYM made it in the last three years, it will in the years to come. I'm sure of that. AMDG.

Good morning, beautiful.

2012-01-11T11:33:00.002+08:00

I start the day with Brad Paisley, my favorite country singer. Hopefully, this day turns out beautiful for me. :)

On the top of my head, I still recall the tea talk we had with a Jesuit priest yesterday, he has the ability to read someone's eyes. He looked into my eyes and said, "In your eyes I see work, work, work. You're in a work phase." I smiled and nodded. Then he added, "I can't see the bedrock happiness. Or you must be tired?" I held my breath for a while.

The old Jesuit priest was right.

Still, I say, "Good morning, beautiful."

2012-01-05T13:43:00.001+08:00

This is not a New Year post. This post brings with it last year's feelings dragged on to the changing of the calendar. I freakin' miss you.

This, pretty much

2011-10-01T10:27:00.003+08:00

To me, you are the buzz on the back of the neck and the Cheshire Cat-smile after two generous glasses of wine. You are the brush of fingers against each other, if only for a moment, as I’m handed the glass. You are the flutter of the heart when the soft, dewy skin touches skin for just a millisecond too long.

You are the swell of my chest when, at all of eight years old, I look across the playground and see the best swing–the one I’m sure will send me over the bar and turn me inside-out forever–completely open. You are the pebbles scattering under my tennis shoes as I race past the monkey bars and under the slide. You are that first big swing forward when my legs stretch out in front of me and I can see over the roof of the next house over.

You are the warm, happy din that settles over those perfect house parties–the ones where all the friends you haven’t seen in a while are all back together in one place. You are the clink of glasses against each other as we toast to something absurd and obscure. You are the arms around shoulders as inside jokes are laughed over, as people pass around nostalgia like a peace pipe in the kitchen of a friend’s house.

You are the wind blowing gently over the beach, that thin layer of traveling sand that brushes against me as I fall asleep to the sound of the waves. You are the ice cubes in the lemonade, the condensation, the little breath I take in when I press the cold glass against my neck to fight the heat. You are the suntan lines I wake up with, the freckles that show up on my shoulders as I go to sleep. You are summer vacation.

You are the heady rush I get when, lying on the floor surrounded by torn-apart wrapping paper on my 10th Christmas morning, my parents tell me there’s one more present behind the couch. You are the delirious, happy coma I fall into as I agonize over which toy to play with first. You are the shiny, light brown glaze on the ham as my father carves the first slice. You are A Christmas Story on a 24-hour loop.

You are the first day of school, when all of my pens and notebooks are perfectly organized and even the little dividers are labeled with the little pieces of paper in their colored slots. You are the promise of a pencil case filled with fresh ink and unused erasers. You are the satisfying snap of a three-ring binder as you place your first papers neatly inside.

You are laughing, laughing so hard I can’t see through my tears, laughing so hard I need to sit down for a moment. You are the happy ache in my side from laughter that comes in gales and waves and only gets worse as you try to stop it. You are that moment when I’m being held down and tickled and legitimately wondering if anyone has ever died from being tickled too hard. You are the cries of “Stop it!” that can barely be understood through the squeals of open laughter.

You are all of these things, you see. But I’ll be polite; I’ll resist the urge to grab you and shake you until you see yourself the way I do. I want to show you the Polaroids and postcards of images you embody, the snapshots of our lives we want to save in a shoebox and pass down to our grandchildren–but I won’t. I won’t. I’ll let you go on thinking you’re just some ordinary human, if you want to. I understand, it must be easier that way.

- What You Are To Me

Mountain climbing

2011-09-26T16:58:00.002+08:00

I know, there's an adventurous streak in me. People from my childhood could attest to my fondness over outdoor adventure. I recall that when I was a little kid, I would sneak out every siesta time to catch dragonflies by the grassland or bathe in the rain. Books triumphed in diverting my attention and curiousness to the written word, which is why I ended up being immersed in the journey within than beyond.

But wisdom does not only reside in published works. I knew, from my childhood, that the nature has its own share in molding one's existence and perceptions of the world. Nature also has power to transmit knowledge beyond words could capture.

Last Saturday, I was brought back to that realization.

I and five of my church friends went on an ocular at Pico de Loro, Nasugbu, Batangas, where once again, I rode on a trip towards the splendid nature. The trip was long and butt-burning. We traveled at about 120 kilometers off Manila, passing along green fields and forests, modern and old houses, young and old province settlers, cows and carabaos, fresh and no-so-pleasant smells. The nearer we got to the rest house we were considering as a possible venue for our weekend camp, the more excited I was about how it looked. When we finally arrived there, we were met by an old man who turned out to be the husband of the caretaker. I and my church friends at first thought he resembled Mang Pasyo (the caretaker in our previous venue), only that the manong who met us was thinner and had a smaller frame. This manong led us towards the unexpected journey we never thought we'd go through--- we climbed a mountain.

My high-heeled white sandals did not stop me from climbing that mountain. I was even the first to arrive at the top! (Well, Oli, one of my church friends, was a little behind me. But then, I think he was wearing a walking shoes whilst I was trekking with a sandals, with the plus factor that I was a woman, and my pants were tight...) So there, we reached the top of the mountain where the air was pure and smelled of grasses. Down yonder, we saw the plain of Batangas--- an exhilarating view it was! I would have wanted to suggest that we wait for the sun to set while standing there, but then I thought that we didn't have much time since we still had to return to Manila in time for a band rehearsal. Nevertheless, I felt that that stint on top of the mountain was one of the best unplanned of experiences I had for this year.

I fathom, the adventurer in me hasn't left me after all these years. And I realize I should let her surface more often so I can experience the other side of life as well. Nature reminded me that I am naturally adventurous and that yes, there's thrill in finding out who you are by just laying yourself out of your comfort zone...

I should do more of re-visiting my child-me days to grow more not only in knowledge but in wisdom.

Jaypee, me, Ferdi, Oli and Gerald at the summit

That's me in pink top, trekking ahead with manong.

Jaypee, Ferdi, Gerald, Krissy and me at the start of the ascent

The path to loving one's parents is simple

2011-09-24T11:29:00.001+08:00

It's the point of life when I realize that parents also need our parenting. When we were younger, it was expected of our mom and dad to take care of us, to give us what our hearts desires. But when finally we grow up, we have to give some part of their hearts which they gave to us back not because of obligation but because of plain, simple love.

Last night, I had a conversation with a fellow youth ministry member. He shared with me his current misunderstanding with his mom who works away from their family. From his eyes, I saw the hardship he was going through. His mom blamed him for the mishap that happened to his elder sister who got pregnant out of wedlock, and even went to the extent of suspecting that he was not prioritizing his studies. I could sense the breaking of his heart, one part leaning towards comforting himself, and the other one wanting to comfort his mom. As a young man, I saw that he was struggling to put the concerns of his mom first before his.

And then I came to reflect about the way I have been relating with my own parents. I wonder if I have been loving them the way they deserve to be loved. My parents love me so much. Their love is something I have never doubted in my whole life. And I love them. But last night took me wondering-- have my actions and words been loving enough to contain how much I love them? What have I done so far to ease them of the earth's burden? What have I done to show them that I am grateful of their love?

The young man I talked to last night showed his love by deciding to put his mom's comfort over his, despite the unbelief in him created by the distance. This young man decided to still push through with what he promised his mom-- to be good in his studies, to serve God. From my viewpoint it seems that he clearly sees the path towards loving his parents, a path which not everyone walks on.

Love is

2011-09-22T10:38:00.002+08:00

"Love is saying, 'I feel differently' instead of 'you're wrong.'" -Unknown

The Sacrament of Waiting

2011-09-20T15:23:00.003+08:00

by Fr. James Donelan, S.J.

The English poet John Milton wrote that those who
serve only also stand and wait. I think I would go
further and say that those who wait render the highest
form of service. Waiting requires more discipline,
more self-control and emotional maturity, more
unshakable faith in our cause, more unwavering hope in
the future, more sustaining love in our hearts that
all the greatest deeds of derring-do go by the name of
action.

Waiting is a mystery - a natural sacrament of life -
there is a meaning hidden in all the times we have to
wait. It must be an important mystery because there is
so much waiting in our lives. Everyday is filled with
those little moments of waiting (testing our patience
and our nerves, schooling us in self-control). We wait
for meals to be served, for a letter to arrive, for a
friend to call or show up for a date. We wait in line
at cinemas and theaters, concerts and circuses. Our
airline terminals, railway stations and bus depots are
great temples of waiting filled with men and women who
wait in joy for the arrival of a loved one - or wait
in sadness to say goodbye and give the last wave of
hand. We wait for springs to come - or autumn - for
the rains to begin and stop. And we wait for ourselves
to grow from childhood to maturity. We wait for those
inner voices that tell us when we are ready for the
next stop.

We wait for graduation, for our first job, our first
promotion. We wait for success and recognition. We
wait to grow up - to reach the stage where we make our
own decisions. We cannot remove this waiting from our
lives. It is a part of the tapestry of living - the
fabric in which the threads are woven to tell the
story of our lives. Yet current philosophies would
have us forget the need to wait. "Grab all the gusto
you can get!" So reads one of America's greatest beer
ads - get it now! Instant pleasure, instant
transcendence. Do not wait for anything. Life is short
- eat, drink and be merry because tomorrow you will
die. And so they rationalize us into accepting
unlicensed and irresponsible freedom - pre-marital sex
and extra marital affairs - they warn against
attachments and commitments - against expecting
anything of anybody, or allowing them to expect
anything of us - against dropping any anchors in the
currents of our life that will cause us to hold and
wait.

This may be the correct prescription for pleasure -
but even that is fleeting and doubtful - what was it
Shakespeare said about the mad pursuit of pleasure -
"Past reason hunted, and once had, past reason hated."

Not if we wish to be real human beings, spirit as well
as flesh, soul as well as heart, we have to learn to
wait. For if we never learn to wait, we will never
learn to love someone other than ourselves.

For most of all waiting means waiting for someone
else. It is a mystery, brushing by our face everyday
like a stray wind of leaf falling from a tree. Anyone
who has loved knows how much waiting goes into it -
how much waiting is important for love to grow, to
flourish through a lifetime. Why is this? Why can we
not have it right now what we so desperately want and
need? Why must we wait - two years, three years - and
seemingly waste so much time? You might as well ask
why a tree should take so long to bear fruit - the
seed to flower - carbon to change to diamond. There is
no simple answer - no more than there is to life's
other demands - having to say goodbye to someone you
love because either you or they have made other
commitments; or because they have to grow and find the
meaning of their own lives - having yourself
to leave home and loved ones to find your own path -
good-byes, like waiting, are also sacraments of our
lives.

All we know is that growth - the budding, the
flowering of love needs patient waiting. We have to
give each other a time to grow. There is no way we can
make someone else truly love us or we them, except
through time. So we give each other that mysterious
gift of waiting - of being present without asking
demands and rewards. There is nothing harder to do
than this. It truly tests the depth and sincerity of
our love. But there is life in the gift we give. So
lovers wait for each other - until they can see things
the same way - or let each other freely see things in
quite different ways.

There are times when lovers hurt each other and cannot
regain the balance of intimacy of the way they were.
They have to wait - in silence - but still present to
each other - until the pain subsides to an ache and
then only a memory and the threads of the tapestry can
be woven together again in a single love story. What
do we lose when we refuse to wait; when we try to find
shortcuts through life - when we try to incubate love
and rush blindly and foolishly into a commitment we
are neither mature nor responsible enough to assume?
We lose the hope of truly loving or of being loved.
Think of all the great love stories of history and
literature - isn't it of their very essence that they
are filled with this strange but common mystery - that
waiting is part of the substance -the basic fabric
against which the story of that true love is written.
How can we ever find either life or true love if we
are too impatient to wait for it?

Waiting is a good thing only if something is worth
waiting for. How will you know if it's worth it? Gut
feel. What if you don't trust your gut? Pray. You will
be enlightened. Trust me. Is it wrong to expect while
waiting? It's not wrong, but it will increase your
chances of heartbreak and disappointment if things
don't work out in the end. Is it good to expect while
waiting? It is better to HOPE. What's the difference
between hoping and expecting? HOPING means you're open
to either side of the coin landing though you're more
inclined to believe that things will turn out well.
EXPECTING means you're thinking single-track... which
won't do you much good at all. What's the difference
between waiting and expecting? EXPECTING is waiting
for something TO DEFINITELY HAPPEN. WAITING is staying
where you are, but not necessarily expecting something
to happen definitely.

Do you need assurance from someone you're waiting for
while you're waiting? Ideally, yes. But realistically,
do you really want assurance from this person? It's so
easy to just point at something and make that the
reason why you're waiting ("Because she said..."
"Because he told me that..."). With WAITING, all you
really can rely on are three things: your gut feel,
your heart and mind. Just YOURSELF, not anyone else.
So should you wait? What does your gut say? How does
your heart feel? What does your mind think? If they're
saying different things, keep asking yourself these
three questions (and pray!) until you get a solid
answer.

THEN you'll know if he or she is worth waiting for.

Growing. Here.

2011-09-15T12:57:00.002+08:00

Somewhere along the way I lost my drive to do the things I love doing. I lost my drive to write, to plan in the mornings, to plot out my life, to sketch my dreams. I look around and try to look at people my age, seemingly, they too are lost like me.

But this is a good kind of lost. The lost that makes you feel confident that someday you’d find your pot of gold, whatever that pot of gold is for you. This is the kind of lost that gives me a sense that I am where I am needed, where I should be. Sometimes, I feel that I am only making excuses for the unrest, but most of the times, I find that life is about making the most of what you have, where you are.

As a young adult, the world challenges me to always look and dream beyond but in some wiser moments, I face the greater challenge of facing what is and making the most of it. Why? Because I want to expand from where I am.

And I believe that’s growing in the present is better than chasing the future, for eventually, we all end up there.

Naaalala, maaalala.

2011-09-13T12:47:00.001+08:00

naaalala ko sya at ang mga palihim niyang ngiti tuwing nag-uuwi kami ng tagumpay mula sa mga paligsahang pang-akademiko.

naaalala ko siya at ang pag-utos nya sakin bumili ng pan de sal bago sumikat ang araw para turuan akong maging maagap sa pagpasok sa eskwela.

naalala ko siya at ang madalas niyang pagbanggit sa mga sinabi ni Jose Rizal.

naalala ko siya at ang araw-araw niyang pagpapa-eksam sa EKAWP

naalala ko siya at ang malalim niyang tinig habang sinasabayan kaming magbasa mula sa mga pahina ng Voyages in English.

naaalala ko siya at ang tuwina niyang pagpapayo sa akin ng, "Just keep it up."

naaalala ko siya at ang madalas niyang sabihing, "I know, you can do it."

naalala ko siya at ang madalas niyang pagtayo sa may corridor ng second floor kung nasaan ang homeroom class namin

naaalala ko siya at kung paano niya tinanggap nang buong pagpapakumbaba ang mga medalyang siya ang nagturong magsuot sa amin.

naaalala ko siya at ang mga minsang palitan namin ng text messages noong makatapos ako ng kolehiyo't nag-tatrabaho na.

naaalala ko siya at ang malapad niyang ngiti nang imbitahan namin siya ng ilan kong mga kaklase para mananghalian at magkwentuhan sa labas, makalipas ang sampung taon nang kami'y makatapos sa elementarya.

naaalala ko siya.

At kahit wala na siya, maalala ko pa rin.

Salamat, Sir Ed. Salamat.

This

2011-09-10T00:22:00.000+08:00

I hate the way you talk to me,

and the way you cut your hair.

I hate the way you drive my car,

I hate it when you stare.

I hate your big dumb combat boots

and the way you read my mind.

I hate you so much it makes me sick,

it even makes me rhyme.

I hate the way you’re always right,

I hate it when you lie.

I hate it when you make me laugh,

even worse when you make me cry.

I hate it when you’re not around,

and the fact that you didn’t call.

But mostly I hate the way I don’t hate you,

not even close…

not even a little bit…

not even at all.

-10 Things I Hate About You (1999)

2011-09-09T23:53:00.001+08:00

I wish to tell you today that sometimes your words break me. And this is one of those times. Sometimes I wonder how come I still remain despite the tremors when I could just lay safely inside my cocoon in plain hibernation.

Ink

2011-09-09T13:44:00.000+08:00

I always have ink stains on the edge of my left hand.
This is good. It means I have written something.

Commitment Circle

2011-09-08T12:13:00.005+08:00

Kasi nga commitment.

Masyadong naging madrama ang mga kanya-kanya naming buhay.

Nang maging duty na ang lahat,

nawala na si desire

nang mawala si desire

nang-iwan

nagtangkang mang-iwan

naiwan.

Nangibabaw ang mga linyang:

Kung gusto mo pa, malaya kang manatili

Kung ayaw mo na, malaya kang umalis

Kung ayaw mo na sakin

Di na kita pipilitin

pero alam mo naman kung nasan ang PYM

Baka sakali

At nagbalik sa iisang desisyon.

Mananatili.

Aalis sandali pero babalik.

Umalis pero bumalik.

At nangakong di na muling aalis.

2011-09-07T00:21:00.001+08:00

2011-09-07T00:00:00.000+08:00

I would love to hear the words that are not spoken
I yearn to read not just between but through the lines
Let me.

Restless

2011-08-31T13:50:00.002+08:00

It is that perennial immateriality dwelling between living and dying
crouched in the corners and grappling by the hinges
only to remain unseen;
We weave our web of what we believe we understand
of the relationship of our acts and events
only to remain misunderstood;
From that odd wisp of steam of heated discussions
to the urgent hiss of a new page calling;
I teeter on that thin ice --
That single space of uncertainty --
And I ask
“What am I doing here?”.

-Cecilia Borromeo

I can. I will. Watch me.

2011-08-30T23:57:00.000+08:00

I can untangle the immense chaos I caused this thread
I can free myself from the prisons of no's and what if's
and I will.

Watch me.

Journey

2011-08-15T22:51:00.002+08:00

Ah, could I lay me down in this long grass
And close my eyes, and let the quiet wind
Blow over me—I am so tired, so tired
Of passing pleasant places! All my life,
Following Care along the dusty road,
Have I looked back at loveliness and sighed;
Yet at my hand an unrelenting hand
Tugged ever, and I passed. All my life long
Over my shoulder have I looked at peace;
And now I fain would lie in this long grass
And close my eyes.
Yet onward!
Cat birds call
Through the long afternoon, and creeks at dusk
Are guttural. Whip-poor-wills wake and cry,
Drawing the twilight close about their throats.
Only my heart makes answer. Eager vines
Go up the rocks and wait; flushed apple-trees
Pause in their dance and break the ring for me;
And bayberry, that through sweet bevies thread
Of round-faced roses, pink and petulant,
Look back and beckon ere they disappear.
Only my heart, only my heart responds.
Yet, ah, my path is sweet on either side
All through the dragging day,—sharp underfoot
And hot, and like dead mist the dry dust hangs—
But far, oh, far as passionate eye can reach,
And long, ah, long as rapturous eye can cling,
The world is mine: blue hill, still silver lake,
Broad field, bright flower, and the long white road
A gateless garden, and an open path:
My feet to follow, and my heart to hold.

-by Edna St. Vincent Millay

Mga Karunungan mula kay Miles

2011-08-15T22:20:00.000+08:00

Kasalukuyang nag-rereview ngayon si Miles sa tulong ng isa ko pang kapatid.

"Favorite ko ang topic na identity. Kasi 36 + 0 = 36. Madali lang."

Tapos napapansin niya kay Bibe habang tinuturuan siya...

"Lumalayo ka sakin at humihina yung boses mo, tinatamad ka na."

2011-08-11T23:03:00.000+08:00

“Sometimes, divine revelation simply means adjusting your brain to hear what your heart already knows.” - Dan Brown

Happy as the sun, lighter than a feather

2011-08-10T13:06:00.002+08:00

Let Me

2011-08-07T11:26:00.001+08:00

Dive

2011-07-31T10:35:00.002+08:00

Lyrics | Steven Curtis Chapman lyrics - Dive lyrics

Ito ang araw

2011-07-30T11:33:00.001+08:00

Ito ang araw na ginawa ng Panginoon.

Kahit naman binabagyo ngayon ang Quezon City at medyo malungkot ako dahil sa mga walang-kasiguraduhang bagay sa mundo, masasabi kong ito ay araw na ginawa ng Diyos.

Sa kasalukuyan, naguguluhan ako sa nararamdaman ko tungkol sa mga bagay at tao sa paligid ko. Bakit? Hindi ko alam. Sa totoo lang, wala akong alam na dahilan para maguluhan. Nag-aaral ako, sigurado akong gusto kong maging dalubhasa sa komunikasyon. Nagtatrabaho ako, sigurado akong gusto kong mapagbuti pa ang sarili ko bilang empleyada. Nagsisilbi ako sa simbahan bilang youth volunteer. Kung titingnan parang ang ayos-ayos ng mundo ko. Alam ko kung saan ako nakalugar sa halos lahat ng aspekto ng buhay ko.

Pero may mga bagay na alam kong hindi ko mapanghahawakan.

Parang tubig sa palad. Kahit anong pilit kong kuyumin ang mga palad ko, malaya pa ring kikilos ang tubig. Ayoko ng mga bagay na walang katiyakan.

Bakit ganun? Parang sa mga walang kasiguraduhan pa yata naiimbak ang kagalakan.

Red, red roses

2011-07-28T10:31:00.000+08:00

Last night I dreamed of red roses laid down on my feet. I was lying on my bed, curled up inside my blanket, when I felt a soft something brushing underneath my feet. It was a bunch of red, red roses! I got them and they overflowed in my arms.

A splendid dream it was!

After a While

2011-07-27T22:44:00.002+08:00

After a while you learn the subtle difference between holding a hand and chaining a soul.
And you learn that love doesn’t mean leaning and company doesn’t mean security.
And you begin to learn that kisses aren’t contracts and presents aren’t promises
And you begin to accept your defeats with your head up and your eyes open
With the grace of a woman, not the grief of a child.
And you learn to build all your roads on today, because tomorrow’s ground is too uncertain for plans and futures have a way of falling down in mid-flight.
After a while you learn that even sunshine burns if you get too much
So you plant your own garden and decorate your own soul, instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers
And you learn that you really can endure…
That you really are strong
And that you really do have worth
And you learn and learn
With every goodbye you learn.

-Veronica Shoffstall

She never gives up, and she never gives in, she just changes her mind...

2011-07-22T12:34:00.002+08:00

And now to wrap the week up...

I won't let go

2011-07-18T10:51:00.002+08:00

Here's a song to start the week. I hold on to my faith that God will hold me tight and won't let go.

Dear Sugar

2011-07-15T10:15:00.002+08:00

Dear Sugar is a weekly column from Rumpus.net that I have been religiously following since column #64, which incidentally happened to be my favorite column. Sugar is an internet friend I turn to while looking for answers for questions life throw along the way.

Libertad

2011-07-14T22:08:00.000+08:00

Nothing much happened today. Well, maybe except for the fact that for the first time in my life a member-of-the opposite-sex-friend asked me about the sensitive and ever-personal-issue of my own take on virginity before marriage. I have tried answering the same question before only with a really close woman buddy. Never did I expect a man to ask me that. Not that I really care about this gender thing. No, I've grown up not giving much thought on my friends' genders since I don't base my closeness with them on their gender preferences. But for that particular curious moment I just felt--- unguarded. But never backing away from philosophical questions, I answered nonetheless. One unusual question answered today. That was nothing much, but a liberating act it was.

and the cutest thing I've seen today...

2011-07-13T22:42:00.000+08:00

Isyu niya, isyu ko

2011-07-13T18:35:00.000+08:00

Naglalakad ako pauwi galing opisina kanina. Tutok na tutok ako sa libro ni Elizabeth Gilbert na binili ko kagabi sa National Bookstore, nang biglang kumirot ang mga daliri ko sa paa. Napulikat ako! Nasa gitna ako ng LS Square. Nag-slow-mo ang mga tao at sasakyan sa paligid ko hanggang sa tuluyan nang huminto-- ako. Hindi ko alam kung sinong santo ang tatawagin ko para mawala ang sakit.

Pinilit kong maupo sa isang upuang semento, sakto dahil malapit lang ako dun. Tinext ko ang isa kong kaibigan na madalas kong kausap. Naisip ko makipag-usap na lang ako para naman hindi ako parang kawawa sa gitna ng LS Square. Tinawagan niya ko pero nagmamadali ring binaba ang telepono. Di niya sinabi kung bakit. Kaya bumalik ako sa binabasa kong libro.

Medyo kumalma na ang mga daliri ko. Nandun ako sa parteng sinasabi ng author na abstain daw muna siya sa mga lalaki. Ayaw muna nya ng relasyon dahil buong buhay niya e di na yata siya nawalan ng boy (o man). Convincing naman ang argumento nya, isyu niya na hindi na niya tuloy nakilala ang sarili niya dahil sa kaka-adjust niya sa personalities ng mga lalaking nakarelasyon niya. Sabi niya, she "disappears into the person she loves".

Nag-twitch ulit yung mga ugat ko sa paa. Kung hindi agad magbabalik-normal ang mga paa ko, paano ako uuwi nito? Ang dami ko pa namang dalang papeles (kung bakit kasi naisipan ko pang magtrabaho ngayong gabi!) at mga folders na pinadala ni Mama.

Seryoso na 'to. Kelangan ko ng boyfriend.

2011-07-12T14:39:00.000+08:00

Current LSS ko ngayon ang After All ni Peter Cetera. na-inspire ako ng isang kambal na lalaki na napanood kong kumanta nito sa Pilipinas Got Talent. Bukod sa nakakaaliw nilang boses ay na-inspire ako sa maganda nilang kwento. Pero hindi ako magkukuwento tungkol sa kanila.

Ikukuwento ko ang tungkol sa kakaibang nararanasan ko nitong mga nakalipas na araw. Tungkol ito sa pag-ibig. Hindi 'yung pag-ibig sa pagitan ng dalawang tao. Ang tinutukoy ko ay ang pag-ibig sa trabaho. Sa totoo lang, nararamdaman kong nasa stage na ko na malapit na kong bumitaw. Alam na ito ng mga malalapit kong kaibigan. Pero hindi ko pa yata nasubukang isulat ang karanasang ito kaya heto...

Katulad ng mga relasyong nagsisimula pa lang, excited ako nung una akong pumasok sa trabaho ko. Punung-puno ng pananabik at inspirasyon ang bawat araw. May mga pagkakataong takot akong magkamali, pero mas maraming pagkakataong gusto kong sumubok ng mga bagong diskarte para mas mapabuti ang ginagawa ko. Ni walang araw na nalate ako ng gising para pumasok. Ni walang oras na wala akong ginawang hindi mabunga.

Pero lumipas ang mga panahon. Dumating sa puntong nakita ko na yung mga pangit na aspekto ng ginagawa ko. Ang naging mantra ko ay: "Kahit sa pangit na bagay, naroon ang Diyos." Napausad ako ng paniniwalang iyon. Pero hindi rin nagtagal ang epekto niyon.

Ngayon narito ako sa punto kung saan nasa mukha ko na ang katotohanan araw-araw. Ang trabahong dati kong mahal, naging obligasyon na lang. Routine, sabi nga nila. Nawala na yung "spark". Nakikita ko pa rin ang halaga ng ginagawa ko, pero nagsisimula na akong magtanong kung mahalaga nga kaya talaga sila para sa akin? Ito ba talaga ang gusto ko?

Kakayanin ko pa kaya? O susuko na ko?

Tumutugtog pa rin ang After All sa isip ko. Sa mga sandaling ito, nagsisimula nang pumasok sa isip ko ang isang bagay... after all, kelangan ko ba talaga to? Iyan ang tanong na naliligaw sa utak ko ngayon.

Pagmumuni-muni

2011-07-03T13:38:00.000+08:00

Habang nag-aayos ako ng mga papel sa study area ko, nahalungkat ko ang mga articles na naisulat ko nung huling taon ko sa kolehiyo. Natuwa ako sa mga isinulat ko. Ganun pala ko mag-isip nun. Iyon pala ang mga pinoproblema ko-- pagtatapos ng college nang may honor, pagsasubmit ng thesis sa tamang oras, pagbabasa ng classics, paglalakad, lovelife na walang life. Dati akala ko iyon na ang pinakamatinding mga problema sa mundo. Hindi pala.

Ang lahat ng mga bagay na pinoproblema ko nung nasa kolehiyo pa ko ay sneak preview pa lang pala ng mga darating na problema. Mas marami pa palang mas mahalagang bagay sa mundo kesa sa inaakala ko. Hindi sinabi ng mga college professors ko na ganito pala kalawak ang mundong pagtatapunan nila sa amin...

Great Perhaps

2011-07-02T20:10:00.002+08:00

Sabi ko ayoko na ng mga "what if's". Pinangako ko yan sa sarili ko simula noong nagdesisyon akong bitiwan ang isang posibilidad na matagal na panahon kong hinawakan. Hindi ko sigurado ang kalalabasan ng magiging desisyon ko pero ayoko na ng mga tanong na habambuhay na magmumulto sakin, lalo na sa mga bagay na alam kong mahalaga para sakin.

Ngayon ko lang to gagawin. Susugal ako. Hindi ko kabisado ang patakaran ng laro dahil nga sa madalas kong pagtakas, pero susubukan kong tumaya.

Malay ko,baka sakali.

The Future has an Ancient Heart

2011-07-02T19:48:00.000+08:00

"There is so much ahead that’s worth seeing; so much behind you can’t identify at top speed. Your teacher is correct: You’re going to be all right. And you’re going to be all right not because you majored in English or didn’t and not because you plan to apply to law school or don’t, but because all right is almost always where we eventually land, even if we fuck up entirely along the way." - from Dear Sugar

2011-06-30T16:45:00.002+08:00

Dati pinagmamasdan ko lang ang paghalik ng tubig sa lupa
Pumipitik-pitik sa tenga ko ang lagatik ng
sabay-sabay na pag-indak ng mga mumunting butil
Nakakainggit ang tubig na sumasayaw-sayaw.

Sabi ng nanay, bawal ang magbasa sa ulan.
Hindi na malinis ang tubig ng langit
dala ng polusyon.

Hangin kang nagtulak sa aking lumabas
Tinuruan mo kong umawit sa gitna ng pagbuhos ng ulan.

You say it best when you say nothing at all

2011-06-30T13:53:00.000+08:00

Lucky, I was able to bump into this unique, and I suppose original, version of When You Say Nothing At All. :)

Marinated Grilled Shrimp

2011-06-26T12:20:00.000+08:00

3 cloves garlic, minced
1/3 cup olive oil
1/4 cup tomato sauce
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
2 tablespoons chopped fresh basil
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
2 pounds fresh shrimp, peeled and deveined
skewers

-on for Sunday cooking. :)

I and my sister decided to put on a Sunday project-- cooking. I can't wait for it to kick in.

from Letters to Juliet

2011-06-26T11:19:00.002+08:00

The greatest love story ever told is your own.

2011-06-24T20:35:00.000+08:00

I can't promise you the calm after the storm but you can be sure that I will swim back with you to the shore.

2011-06-22T09:54:00.000+08:00

I heard this song last night before going to sleep. The moment I faced the computer today, it's the first item I looked for in the web. That man, I hope finding him is just as easy as Google search.

2011-06-15T12:45:00.002+08:00

From an Atlas of a Difficult World

2011-06-12T11:29:00.000+08:00

I know you are reading this poem
late, before leaving your office
of the one intense yellow lamp-spot and the darkening window
in the lassitude of a building faded to quiet
long after rush-hour. I know you are reading this poem
standing up in a bookstore far from the ocean
on a grey day of early spring, faint flakes driven
across the plains’ enormous spaces around you.
I know you are reading this poem
in a room where too much has happened for you to bear
where the bedclothes lie in stagnant coils on the bed
and the open valise speaks of flight
but you cannot leave yet. I know you are reading this poem
as the underground train loses momentum and before running
up the stairs
toward a new kind of love
your life has never allowed.
I know you are reading this poem by the light
of the television screen where soundless images jerk and slide
while you wait for the newscast from the intifada.
I know you are reading this poem in a waiting-room
of eyes met and unmeeting, of identity with strangers.
I know you are reading this poem by fluorescent light
in the boredom and fatigue of the young who are counted out,
count themselves out, at too early an age. I know
you are reading this poem through your failing sight, the thick
lens enlarging these letters beyond all meaning yet you read on
because even the alphabet is precious.
I know you are reading this poem as you pace beside the stove
warming milk, a crying child on your shoulder, a book in your
hand
because life is short and you too are thirsty.
I know you are reading this poem which is not in your language
guessing at some words while others keep you reading
and I want to know which words they are.
I know you are reading this poem listening for something, torn
between bitterness and hope
turning back once again to the task you cannot refuse.
I know you are reading this poem because there is nothing else
left to read
there where you have landed, stripped as you are.

-Adrienne Rich

Brida

2011-06-10T20:42:00.001+08:00

Read this book by Paulo Coelho last May. Wala muna kong sasabihin tungkol sa libro. Irereserba ko muna ang neurons ko sa pag-aayos ng mga bagay-bagay para sa Sabado at Linggo. Pero promise, babalikan ko ang post na ito para magkwento tungkol sa libro.

and just like that...

2011-06-06T11:14:00.000+08:00

Some people have the power to drive you to the end of the rainbow and back and back. Be thankful for them.

Thank you.

-h

Read between the Lines

2011-06-03T13:23:00.002+08:00

Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,

A medley of extemporanea;

And love is a thing that can never go wrong;

And I am Marie of Roumania.

Comment by Dorothy Parker

2011-06-03T13:20:00.000+08:00

Lately, I feel like a little child again. Mystery and happiness mix well. :)

Hold your head high, heavy heart.

2011-06-02T10:00:00.002+08:00

Pagninilay sa Pagkalas mula sa Bilog

2011-05-31T12:01:00.001+08:00

Sa kanya-kanya nating paglalakbay sa buhay, may kanya-kanya tayong dalang bigat sa ating mga puso. Paminsan-minsan, may mga bagay na sa tingin natin mas madali kung bibitiwan na lang. Katulad ng paglilingkod sa Kanya.

Ganyan ang pakiramdam ko nung bago ako umakyat sa Dizon House. Gusto ko nang bumitaw. Pakiramdam ko kasi kay rami-raming hinihingi sa akin ng Diyos. Kay rami kong dapat isaalang-alang sa lahat ng desisyon na kailangang kong gawin.

Bilang pinuno ng aming youth ministry sa parokya, maraming mga bagay ang dapat ay natutugunan ko ng pansin. Maliban sa mga gawain na kailangang mapagtagumpayan, nariyan pa ang mga kapwa kabataan na kailangang samahan. Sa gitna ng mga gawain, kailangang mag-ingat na wala kang nasasagasaang damdamin dahil anuman ang maging reaksyon ko ay may malaking implikasyon sa buong grupo.

Sa lahat ng oras, kailangang maging maingat at sensitibo sa pangangailangan ng lahat. May mga pagkakataong may mga nalilimutan akong pagtuunan ng pansin na humihiwa sa pagkakaibigan. Gayunman, maraming bagay ang tumatawag pa sa aking atensyon—trabaho at propesyon, pag-aaral, pamilya at kung anu-ano pa—kung kaya’t tuluyan ko nang naisasantabi ang mga ilang mahahalagang bagay. Oo, maging ang aking sarili.

Kung kaya’t hindi nakapagtatakang dumating ako sa puntong gusto ko nang magbalot ng mga gamit pabalik sa Quezon City nang hapong iyon sa Dizon House. Sa isip ko, kaya na nilang pasulungin ang youth ministry. Hindi na nila ako kailangan. Hindi ko na rin kailangan ang mga hirap na pinagdaanan ko. Kailangan ko nang magbawas.

Habang nakapiring ang mga mata ko noong isinasagawa ang circle activity, iisa lang ang tumatakbo sa isip ko, “Ayoko na. Hanggang dito na lang.” Hanggang sa tinawag kami upang kapain ang daan pabalik sa bilog, hindi ako gumalaw mula sa kinatatayuan ko. Matunog ang mga salitang “Ayoko na.”

Hinila ako ng dalawang malalakas na kamay ng mga kasama ko na kapwa naghahanap ng daan pabalik. Naramdaman ko sa mga kamay na iyon ang pagkukumahog na mabuo ang bilog, simbulo ng pagkakabuo ng aming youth ministry. Habang malayang nag-aalpasan ang mga patak ng luha sa mga mata ko, hinayaan kong dalhin nila ako. At pagkatapos, kinapa ko rin ang iba pa. Iisa lang ang gusto ko ng mga oras na ‘yun, gusto kong mabuo ang bilog.

Nang alisin ang mga piring, isang malaking bilog na pinagtali ng magkakahawak na mga kamay ng mga kabataang may kanya-kanyang bigat sa buhay ang nakita ko—mga kabataang piniling maglingkod sa kabila ng hirap at pag-aalinlangan, mga kabataang naglakas-loob talikuran ang sarili para harapin ang kapwa at ang Diyos.

Naitanong ko tuloy sa aking sarili: Ito ba ang grupong bibitiwan ko?

Tiyak ko na ang sagot: Hindi.

At tulad nila, mananatili akong bahagi ng bilog.

-h

(Ang post na ito ay bahagi ng serye ng posts na naglalaman ng aking sariling pagmumuni-muni tungkol sa mga naganap noong 27-29 May 2011 sa Dizon Farm kung saan ginanap ang Teambuilding ng aming Youth Ministry. ♥ )

Run!

2011-05-30T11:37:00.003+08:00

Kinda wish I had the courage,
A bit of bravery.
So tired of waiting on a man
to come and save me.
Wishing I had everything,
Or something really.
Hard to admit it,
But now I’m thinking freely.
I’m going to open my mind to all these,
New found exciting possibilities.

I’m making all my own plans,
Throwing all my old ones away.
Gonna grow up, Be someone.
Draw a map, find a path.
Take a breath and run.
And run.

Filling my head with words to encourage me,
Gotta get my act so straight so I can truly believe.
That what I’m waiting for, is really worth the wait.
Stop bringing myself down,
I gotta know what makes me great.
I’m going to open my mind to all these,
New found exciting possibilities.

I’m making all my own plans,
Throwing all my old ones away.
Gonna grow up, Be someone.
Draw a map, find a path.
Take a breath and run.

I am trying to get past this,
Be better than I once was.
Tired of waiting, on someone else.
I am trying to get past this,
Be better than I once was.
Tired of waiting on someone else,
I can fix it by myself.

I’m finally taking a stand,
I’ve learned from all my mistakes.
I’m making all my own plans,
Throwing all my old ones away.
Gotta grow up, be someone.
Draw a map, find a path.
Take a breath and run.

"And Run"
He is We

2011-05-30T11:35:00.000+08:00

"I’m making all my own plans,

Throwing all my old ones away.

Gonna grow up, Be someone.

Draw a map, find a path.

Take a breath and run.

And run."

Weird shot, this is.

2011-05-27T13:39:00.001+08:00

For some reason, the photo above reveals a different side of me which the camera rarely captures. I don't know what words to put in that expression. Flashing a peace sign with a face like that. Ironies. My life is filled with them.

In Praise of Reading and Fiction by Mario Vargas Llosa, Nobel Prize for Literature 2010

2011-05-27T11:44:00.000+08:00

I learned to read at the age of five, in Brother Justiniano’s class at the De la Salle Academy in Cochabamba, Bolivia. It is the most important thing that has ever happened to me. Almost seventy years later I remember clearly how the magic of translating the words in books into images enriched my life, breaking the barriers of time and space and allowing me to travel with Captain Nemo twenty thousand leagues under the sea, fight with d’Artagnan, Athos, Portos, and Aramis against the intrigues threatening the Queen in the days of the secretive Richelieu, or stumble through the sewers of Paris, transformed into Jean Valjean carrying Marius’s inert body on my back.

Reading changed dreams into life and life into dreams and placed the universe of literature within reach of the boy I once was. My mother told me the first things I wrote were continuations of the stories I read because it made me sad when they concluded or because I wanted to change their endings. And perhaps this is what I have spent my life doing without realizing it: prolonging in time, as I grew, matured, and aged, the stories that filled my childhood with exaltation and adventures.

I wish my mother were here, a woman who was moved to tears reading the poems of Amado Nervo and Pablo Neruda, and Grandfather Pedro too, with his large nose and gleaming bald head, who celebrated my verses, and Uncle Lucho, who urged me so energetically to throw myself body and soul into writing even though literature, in that time and place, compensated its devotees so badly. Throughout my life I have had people like that at my side, people who loved and encouraged me and infected me with their faith when I had doubts. Thanks to them, and certainly to my obstinacy and some luck, I have been able to devote most of my time to the passion, the vice, the marvel of writing, creating a parallel life where we can take refuge against adversity, one that makes the extraordinary natural and the natural extraordinary, that dissipates chaos, beautifies ugliness, eternalizes the moment, and turns death into a passing spectacle.

Writing stories was not easy. When they were turned into words, projects withered on the paper and ideas and images failed. How to reanimate them? Fortunately, the masters were there, teachers to learn from and examples to follow. Flaubert taught me that talent is unyielding discipline and long patience. Faulkner, that form – writing and structure – elevates or impoverishes subjects. Martorell, Cervantes, Dickens, Balzac, Tolstoy, Conrad, Thomas Mann, that scope and ambition are as important in a novel as stylistic dexterity and narrative strategy. Sartre, that words are acts, that a novel, a play, or an essay, engaged with the present moment and better options, can change the course of history. Camus and Orwell, that a literature stripped of morality is inhuman, and Malraux that heroism and the epic are as possible in the present as is the time of the Argonauts, the Odyssey, and the Iliad.

If in this address I were to summon all the writers to whom I owe a few things or a great deal, their shadows would plunge us into darkness. They are innumerable. In addition to revealing the secrets of the storytelling craft, they obliged me to explore the bottomless depths of humanity, admire its heroic deeds, and feel horror at its savagery. They were my most obliging friends, the ones who vitalized my calling and in whose books I discovered that there is hope even in the worst of circumstances, that living is worth the effort if only because without life we could not read or imagine stories.

At times I wondered whether writing was not a solipsistic luxury in countries like mine, where there were scant readers, so many people who were poor and illiterate, so much injustice, and where culture was a privilege of the few. These doubts, however, never stifled my calling, and I always kept writing even during those periods when earning a living absorbed most of my time. I believe I did the right thing, since if, for literature to flourish, it was first necessary for a society to achieve high culture, freedom, prosperity, and justice, it never would have existed. But thanks to literature, to the consciousness it shapes, the desires and longings it inspires, and our disenchantment with reality when we return from the journey to a beautiful fantasy, civilization is now less cruel than when storytellers began to humanize life with their fables. We would be worse than we are without the good books we have read, more conformist, not as restless, more submissive, and the critical spirit, the engine of progress, would not even exist. Like writing, reading is a protest against the insufficiencies of life. When we look in fiction for what is missing in life, we are saying, with no need to say it or even to know it, that life as it is does not satisfy our thirst for the absolute – the foundation of the human condition – and should be better. We invent fictions in order to live somehow the many lives we would like to lead when we barely have one at our disposal.

Without fictions we would be less aware of the importance of freedom for life to be livable, the hell it turns into when it is trampled underfoot by a tyrant, an ideology, or a religion. Let those who doubt that literature not only submerges us in the dream of beauty and happiness but alerts us to every kind of oppression, ask themselves why all regimes determined to control the behavior of citizens from cradle to grave fear it so much they establish systems of censorship to repress it and keep so wary an eye on independent writers. They do this because they know the risk of allowing the imagination to wander free in books, know how seditious fictions become when the reader compares the freedom that makes them possible and is exercised in them with the obscurantism and fear lying in wait in the real world. Whether they want it or not, know it or not, when they invent stories the writers of tales propagate dissatisfaction, demonstrating that the world is badly made and the life of fantasy richer than the life of our daily routine. This fact, if it takes root in their sensibility and consciousness, makes citizens more difficult to manipulate, less willing to accept the lies of the interrogators and jailers who would like to make them believe that behind bars they lead more secure and better lives.

Good literature erects bridges between different peoples, and by having us enjoy, suffer, or feel surprise, unites us beneath the languages, beliefs, habits, customs, and prejudices that separate us. When the great white whale buries Captain Ahab in the sea, the hearts of readers take fright in exactly the same way in Tokyo, Lima, or Timbuctu. When Emma Bovary swallows arsenic, Anna Karenina throws herself in front of the train, and Julien Sorel climbs to the scaffold, and when, in “El sur,” the urban doctor Juan Dahlmann walks out of that tavern on the pampa to face a thug’s knife, or we realize that all the residents of Comala, Pedro Páramo’s village, are dead, the shudder is the same in the reader who worships Buddha, Confucius, Christ, Allah, or is an agnostic, wears a jacket and tie, a jalaba, a kimono, or bombachas. Literature creates a fraternity within human diversity and eclipses the frontiers erected among men and women by ignorance, ideologies, religions, languages, and stupidity.

Since every period has its horrors, ours is the age of fanatics, of suicide terrorists, an ancient species convinced that by killing they earn heaven, that the blood of innocents washes away collective affronts, corrects injustices, and imposes truth on false beliefs. Every day, all over the world, countless victims are sacrificed by those who feel they possess absolute truths. With the collapse of totalitarian empires, we believed that living together, peace, pluralism, and human rights would gain the ascendancy and the world would leave behind holocausts, genocides, invasions, and wars of extermination. None of that has occurred. New forms of barbarism flourish, incited by fanaticism, and with the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, we cannot overlook the fact that any small faction of crazed redeemers may one day provoke a nuclear cataclysm. We have to thwart them, confront them, and defeat them. There aren’t many, although the tumult of their crimes resounds all over the planet and the nightmares they provoke overwhelm us with dread. We should not allow ourselves to be intimidated by those who want to snatch away the freedom we have been acquiring over the long course of civilization. Let us defend the liberal democracy that, with all its limitations, continues to signify political pluralism, coexistence, tolerance, human rights, respect for criticism, legality, free elections, alternation in power, everything that has been taking us out of a savage life and bringing us closer – though we will never attain it – to the beautiful, perfect life literature devises, the one we can deserve only by inventing, writing, and reading it. By confronting homicidal fanatics we defend our right to dream and to make our dreams reality.

In my youth, like many writers of my generation, I was a Marxist and believed socialism would be the remedy for the exploitation and social injustices that were becoming more severe in my country, in Latin America, and in the rest of the Third World. My disillusion with statism and collectivism and my transition to the democrat and liberal that I am – that I try to be – was long and difficult and carried out slowly as a consequence of episodes like the conversion of the Cuban Revolution, about which I initially had been enthusiastic, to the authoritarian, vertical model of the Soviet Union; the testimony of dissidents who managed to slip past the barbed wire fences of the Gulag; the invasion of Czechoslovakia by the nations of the Warsaw Pact; and because of thinkers like Raymond Aron, Jean Francois Rével, Isaiah Berlin, and Karl Popper, to whom I owe my reevaluation of democratic culture and open societies. Those masters were an example of lucidity and gallant courage when the intelligentsia of the West, as a result of frivolity or opportunism, appeared to have succumbed to the spell of Soviet socialism or, even worse, to the bloody witches’ Sabbath of the Chinese Cultural Revolution.

As a boy I dreamed of coming some day to Paris because, dazzled by French literature, I believed that living there and breathing the air breathed by Balzac, Stendhal, Baudelaire, and Proust would help transform me into a real writer, and if I did not leave Peru I would be only a pseudo Sundays-and-holidays writer. And the truth is I owe to France and French culture unforgettable lessons, for example that literature is as much a calling as it is a discipline, a job, an obstinacy. I lived there when Sartre and Camus were alive and writing, in the years of Ionesco, Beckett, Bataille, and Cioran, the discovery of the theater of Brecht and the films of Ingmar Bergman, the Theatre National Populaire of Jean Vilar and the Odéon of Jean-Louis Barrault, of the Nouvelle Vague and the Nouveau Roman and the speeches, beautiful literary pieces, of André Malraux, and what may have been the most theatrical spectacle in Europe during that time, the press conferences and Olympic thunderings of General de Gaulle. But perhaps I am most grateful to France for the discovery of Latin America. There I learned that Peru was part of a vast community united by history, geography, social and political problems, a certain mode of being, and the delicious language it spoke and wrote. And in those same years, it was producing a new, forceful literature. There I read Borges, Octavio Paz, Cortázar, García Márquez, Fuentes, Cabrera Infante, Rulfo, Onetti, Carpentier, Edwards, Donoso, and many others whose writings were revolutionizing narrative in the Spanish language, and thanks to whom Europe and a good part of the world discovered that Latin America was not the continent only of coups, operetta despots, bearded guerrillas, and the maracas of the mambo and the cha-cha-cha but of ideas, artistic forms, and literary fantasies that transcended the picturesque and spoke a universal language.

From that time to this, not without stumbling and blunders, Latin America has made progress although, as César Vallejo said in a poem, Hay, hermanos, muchísimo que hacer [There is still, brothers, so much to do]. We are afflicted with fewer dictatorships than before, only Cuba and her named successor, Venezuela, and some pseudo populist, clownish democracies like those in Bolivia and Nicaragua. But in the rest of the continent democracy is functioning, supported by a broad popular consensus, and for the first time in our history, as in Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, Peru, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, and almost all of Central America, we have a left and a right that respect legality, the freedom to criticize, elections, and succession in power. That is the right road, and if it stays on it, combats insidious corruption, and continues to integrate with the world, Latin America will finally stop being the continent of the future and become the continent of the present.

I never felt like a foreigner in Europe or, in fact, anywhere. In all the places I have lived, in Paris, London, Barcelona, Madrid, Berlin, Washington, New York, Brazil, or the Dominican Republic, I felt at home. I have always found a lair where I could live in peace, work, learn things, nurture dreams, and find friends, good books to read, and subjects to write about. It does not seem to me that my unintentionally becoming a citizen of the world has weakened what are called “my roots,” my connections to my own country – which would not be particularly important – because if that were so, my Peruvian experiences would not continue to nourish me as a writer and would not always appear in my stories, even when they seem to occur very far from Peru. I believe instead that living for so long outside the country where I was born has strengthened those connections, adding a more lucid perspective to them, and a nostalgia that can differentiate the adjectival from the substantive and keep memories reverberating. Love of the country where one was born cannot be obligatory, but like any other love must be a spontaneous act of the heart, like the one that unites lovers, parents and children, and friends.

I carry Peru deep inside me because that is where I was born, grew up, was formed, and lived those experiences of childhood and youth that shaped my personality and forged my calling, and there I loved, hated, enjoyed, suffered, and dreamed. What happens there affects me more, moves and exasperates me more than what occurs elsewhere. I have not wished it or imposed it on myself; it simply is so. Some compatriots accused me of being a traitor, and I was on the verge of losing my citizenship when, during the last dictatorship, I asked the democratic governments of the world to penalize the regime with diplomatic and economic sanctions, as I have always done with all dictatorships of any kind, whether of Pinochet, Fidel Castro, the Taliban in Afghanistan, the Imams in Iran, apartheid in South Africa, the uniformed satraps of Burma (now called Myanmar). And I would do it again tomorrow if – may destiny not wish it and Peruvians not permit it – Peru were once again the victim of a coup that would annihilate our fragile democracy. It was not the precipitate, emotional action of a resentful man, as some scribblers wrote, accustomed to judging others from the point of view of their own pettiness. It was an act in line with my conviction that a dictatorship represents absolute evil for a country, a source of brutality and corruption and profound wounds that take a long time to close, poison the nation’s future, and create pernicious habits and practices that endure for generations and delay democratic reconstruction. This is why dictatorships must be fought without hesitation, with all the means at our disposal, including economic sanctions. It is regrettable that democratic governments, instead of setting an example by making common cause with those, like the Damas de Blanco in Cuba, the Venezuelan opposition, or Aung San Suu Kyi and Liu Xiaobo, who courageously confront the dictatorships they endure, often show themselves complaisant not with them but with their tormenters. Those valiant people, struggling for their freedom, are also struggling for ours.

A compatriot of mine, José María Arguedas, called Peru the country of “every blood.” I do not believe any formula defines it better: that is what we are and that is what all Peruvians carry inside us, whether we like it or not: an aggregate of traditions, races, beliefs, and cultures proceeding from the four cardinal points. I am proud to feel myself the heir to the pre-Hispanic cultures that created the textiles and feather mantles of Nazca and Paracas and the Mochican or Incan ceramics exhibited in the best museums in the world, the builders of Machu Picchu, Gran Chimú, Chan Chan, Kuelap, Sipán, the burial grounds of La Bruja and El Sol and La Luna, and to the Spaniards who, with their saddle bags, swords, and horses, brought to Peru Greece, Rome, the Judeo-Christian tradition, the Renaissance, Cervantes, Quevedo, and Góngora, and the harsh language of Castile sweetened by the Andes. And with Spain came Africa, with its strength, its music, and its effervescent imagination, to enrich Peruvian heterogeneity. If we investigate only a little we discover that Peru, like the Aleph of Borges, is a small format of the entire world. What an extraordinary privilege for a country not to have an identity because it has all of them!

The conquest of America was cruel and violent, like all conquests, of course, and we should criticize it but not forget as we do that those who committed pillage and crimes were, for the most part, our great-grandfathers and great-great-grandfathers, the Spaniards who came to America and adopted American ways, not those who remained in their own country. Such criticism, to be just, should be self-criticism. Because when we gained our independence from Spain two hundred years ago, those who assumed power in the former colonies, instead of liberating the Indians and creating justice for old wrongs, continued to exploit them with as much greed and ferocity as the conquerors and, in some countries, decimating and exterminating them. Let us say this with absolute clarity: for two centuries the emancipation of the indigenous population has been our exclusive responsibility, and we have not fulfilled it. This continues to be an unresolved issue in all of Latin America. There is not a single exception to this ignominy and shame.

I love Spain as much as Peru, and my debt to her is as great as my gratitude. If not for Spain, I never would have reached this podium or become a known writer and perhaps, like so many unfortunate colleagues, I would wander in the limbo of writers without luck, publishers, prizes, or readers, whose talent – sad comfort – posterity may one day discover. All my books were published in Spain, where I received exaggerated recognition, and friends like Carlos Barral, Carmen Balcells, and so many others were zealous about my stories having readers. And Spain granted me a second nationality when I could have lost mine. I have never felt the slightest incompatibility between being Peruvian and having a Spanish passport, because I have always felt that Spain and Peru are two sides of the same coin, not only in my small person but in essential realities like history, language, and culture.

Of all the years I have lived on Spanish soil, I remember as most brilliant the five I spent in a dearly loved Barcelona in the early 1970s. Franco’s dictatorship was still in power and shooting, but by then it was a fossil in rags, and especially in the field of culture, incapable of maintaining its earlier controls. Cracks and chinks were opening that the censors could not patch over, and through them Spanish society absorbed new ideas, books, currents of thought, and artistic values and forms prohibited until then as subversive. No city took as much or better advantage of this start of an opening than Barcelona or experienced a comparable excitement in all fields of ideas and creativity. It became the cultural capital of Spain, the place you had to be to breathe anticipation of the freedom to come. And, in a sense, it was also the cultural capital of Latin America because of the number of painters, writers, publishers, and artists from Latin American countries who either settled in or traveled back and forth to Barcelona: it was where you had to be if you wanted to be a poet, novelist, painter, or composer in our time. For me, those were unforgettable years of comradeship, friendship, plots, and fertile intellectual work. Just as Paris had been, Barcelona was a Tower of Babel, a cosmopolitan, universal city where it was stimulating to live and work and where, for the first time since the days of the Civil War, Spanish and Latin American writers mixed and fraternized, recognizing one another as possessors of the same tradition and allied in a common enterprise and certainty: the end of the dictatorship was imminent and in democratic Spain, culture would be the principal protagonist.

Although it did not occur exactly that way, the Spanish transition from dictatorship to democracy has been one of the best stories of modern times, an example of how, when good sense and reason prevail and political adversaries set aside sectarianism for the common good, events can occur as marvelous as the ones in novels of magic realism. The Spanish transition from authoritarianism to freedom, from underdevelopment to prosperity, from third-world economic contrasts and inequalities to a country of middle classes, her integration into Europe and her adoption in a few years of a democratic culture, has astonished the entire world and precipitated Spain’s modernization. It has been moving and instructive for me to experience this near at hand, at times from the inside. I fervently hope that nationalism, the incurable plague of the modern world and of Spain as well, does not ruin this happy tale.

I despise every form of nationalism, a provincial ideology – or rather, religion – that is short-sighted, exclusive, that cuts off the intellectual horizon and hides in its bosom ethnic and racist prejudices, for it transforms into a supreme value, a moral and ontological privilege, the fortuitous circumstance of one’s birthplace. Along with religion, nationalism has been the cause of the worst slaughters in history, like those in the two world wars and the current bloodletting in the Middle East. Nothing has contributed as much as nationalism to Latin America’s having been Balkanized and stained with blood in senseless battles and disputes, squandering astronomical resources to purchase weapons instead of building schools, libraries, and hospitals.

We should not confuse a blinkered nationalism and its rejection of the “other,” always the seed of violence, with patriotism, a salutary, generous feeling of love for the land where we were born, where our ancestors lived, where our first dreams were forged, a familiar landscape of geographies, loved ones, and events that are transformed into signposts of memory and defenses against solitude. Homeland is not flags, anthems, or apodictic speeches about emblematic heroes, but a handful of places and people that populate our memories and tinge them with melancholy, the warm sensation that no matter where we are, there is a home for us to return to.

Peru is for me Arequipa, where I was born but never lived, a city my mother, grandparents, and aunts and uncles taught me to know through their memories and yearnings, because my entire family tribe, as Arequepeños tend to do, always carried the White City with them in their wandering existence. It is Piura in the desert, mesquite trees and the long-suffering burros that Piurans of my youth called “somebody else’s feet” – an elegant, sad name – where I discovered that storks did not bring babies into the world but couples made them by doing outrageous things that were a mortal sin. It is San Miguel Academy and the Varieties Theater where for the first time I saw a short work I had written produced on stage. It is the corner of Diego Ferré and Colón, in Lima’s Miraflores – we called it the Happy Neighborhood – where I exchanged short pants for long trousers, smoked my first cigarette, learned to dance, fall in love, and open my heart to girls. It is the dusty, pulsing editorial offices of the paper La Crónica where, at sixteen, I stood virgil over my first arms as a journalist, a trade that, along with literature, has occupied almost my entire life and, like books, has made me live more, know the world better, and be with men and women from everywhere and every class, excellent, good, bad, and execrable people. It is the Leoncio Prado Military Academy, where I learned that Peru was not the small middle-class redoubt where I had lived until then, confined and protected, but a large, ancient, rancorous, unequal country, shaken by all kinds of social storms. It is the clandestine cells of Cahuide where, with a handful of San Marcos students, we prepared the world revolution. And Peru is my friends in the Freedom Movement with whom for three years, in the midst of bombs, blackouts, and terrorist assassinations, we worked in defense of democracy and the culture of freedom.

Peru is Patricia, my cousin with the upturned nose and indomitable character, whom I was lucky enough to marry forty-five years ago and who still endures the manias, neuroses, and temper tantrums that help me to write. Without her my life would have dissolved a long time ago into a turbulent whirlwind, and Alvaro, Gonzalo, Morgana and the six grandchildren who extend and gladden our existence would not have been born. She does everything and does everything well. She solves problems, manages the economy, imposes order on chaos, keeps journalists and intrusive people at bay, defends my time, decides appointments and trips, packs and unpacks suitcases, and is so generous that even when she thinks she is rebuking me, she pays me the highest compliment: “Mario, the only thing you’re good for is writing.”

Let us return to literature. The paradise of childhood is not a literary myth for me but a reality I lived and enjoyed in the large family house with three courtyards in Cochabamba, where with my cousins and school friends we could reproduce the stories of Tarzan and Salgari, and in the prefecture of Piura, where bats nested in the lofts, silent shadows that filled the starry nights of that hot land with mystery. During those years, writing was playing a game my family celebrated, something charming that earned applause for me, the grandson, the nephew, the son without a papa because my father had died and gone to heaven. He was a tall, good-looking man in a navy uniform whose photo adorned my night table, which I prayed to and then kissed before going to sleep. One Piuran morning – I do not think I have recovered from it yet – my mother revealed that the gentleman was, in fact, alive. And on that very day we were going to live with him in Lima. I was eleven years old, and from that moment everything changed. I lost my innocence and discovered loneliness, authority, adult life, and fear. My salvation was reading, reading good books, taking refuge in those worlds where life was glorious, intense, one adventure after another, where I could feel free and be happy again. And it was writing, in secret, like someone giving himself up to an unspeakable vice, a forbidden passion. Literature stopped being a game. It became a way of resisting adversity, protesting, rebelling, escaping the intolerable, my reason for living. From then until now, in every circumstance when I have felt disheartened or beaten down, on the edge of despair, giving myself body and soul to my work as a storyteller has been the light at the end of the tunnel, the plank that carries the shipwrecked man to shore.

Although it is very difficult and forces me to sweat blood and, like every writer, to feel at times the threat of paralysis, a dry season of the imagination, nothing has made me enjoy life as much as spending months and years constructing a story, from its uncertain beginnings, the image memory stores of a lived experience that becomes a restlessness, an enthusiasm, a daydream that then germinates into a project and the decision to attempt to convert the agitated cloud of phantoms into a story. “Writing is a way of living,” said Flaubert. Yes, absolutely, a way of living with illusion and joy and a fire throwing out sparks in your head, struggling with intractable words until you master them, exploring the broad world like a hunter tracking down desirable prey to feed an embryonic fiction and appease the voracious appetite of every story that, as it grows, would like to devour every other story. Beginning to feel the vertigo a gestating novel leads us to, when it takes shape and seems to begin to live on its own, with characters that move, act, think, feel, and demand respect and consideration, on whom it is no longer possible to arbitrarily impose behavior or to deprive them of their free will without killing them, without having the story lose its power to persuade – this is an experience that continues to bewitch me as it did the first time, as complete and dizzying as making love to the woman you love for days, weeks, months, without stopping.

When speaking of fiction, I have talked a great deal about the novel and very little about the theater, another of its preeminent forms. A great injustice, of course. Theater was my first love, ever since, as an adolescent, I saw Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman at the Segura Theater in Lima, a performance that left me transfixed with emotion and precipitated my writing a drama with Incas. If there had been a theatrical movement in the Lima of the 1950s, I would have been a playwright rather than a novelist. There was not, and that must have turned me more and more toward narrative. But my love for the theater never ended; it dozed, curled up in the shadow of novels, like a temptation and a nostalgia, above all whenever I saw an enthralling play. In the late 1970s, the persistent memory of a hundred-year-old great-aunt, Mamaé, who in the final years of her life cut off her surrounding reality to take refuge in memories and fiction, suggested a story. And I felt, prophetically, that it was a story for the theater, that only on stage would it take on the animation and splendor of successful fictions. I wrote it with the tremulous excitement of a beginner and so enjoyed seeing it on stage with Norma Aleandro in the heroine’s role that since then, between novels and essays, I have relapsed several times. And I must add, I never imagined that at the age of seventy I would mount (I should say, stumble onto) a stage to act. That reckless adventure made me experience for the first time in my own flesh and bone the miracle it is for someone who has spent his life writing fictions to embody for a few hours a character of fantasy, to live the fiction in front of an audience. I can never adequately thank my dear friends, the director Joan Ollé and the actress Aitana Sánchez Gijón, for having encouraged me to share with them that fantastic experience (in spite of the panic that accompanied it).

Literature is a false representation of life that nevertheless helps us to understand life better, to orient ourselves in the labyrinth where we are born, pass by, and die. It compensates for the reverses and frustrations real life inflicts on us, and because of it we can decipher, at least partially, the hieroglyphic that existence tends to be for the great majority of human beings, principally those of us who generate more doubts than certainties and confess our perplexity before subjects like transcendence, individual and collective destiny, the soul, the sense or senselessness of history, the to and fro of rational knowledge.

I have always been fascinated to imagine the uncertain circumstance in which our ancestors – still barely different from animals, the language that allowed them to communicate with one another just recently born – in caves, around fires, on nights seething with the menace of lightning bolts, thunder claps, and growling beasts, began to invent and tell stories. That was the crucial moment in our destiny, because in those circles of primitive beings held by the voice and fantasy of the storyteller, civilization began, the long passage that gradually would humanize us and lead us to invent the autonomous individual, then disengage him from the tribe, devise science, the arts, law, freedom, and to scrutinize the innermost recesses of nature, the human body, space, and travel to the stars. Those tales, fables, myths, legends that resounded for the first time like new music before listeners intimidated by the mysteries and perils of a world where everything was unknown and dangerous, must have been a cool bath, a quiet pool for those spirits always on the alert, for whom existing meant barely eating, taking shelter from the elements, killing, and fornicating. From the time they began to dream collectively, to share their dreams, instigated by storytellers, they ceased to be tied to the treadmill of survival, a vortex of brutalizing tasks, and their life became dream, pleasure, fantasy, and a revolutionary plan: to break out of confinement and change and improve, a struggle to appease the desires and ambitions that stirred imagined lives in them, and the curiosity to clear away the mysteries that filled their surroundings.

This never-interrupted process was enriched when writing was born and stories, in addition to being heard, could be read, achieving the permanence literature confers on them. That is why this must be repeated incessantly until new generations are convinced of it: fiction is more than an entertainment, more than an intellectual exercise that sharpens one’s sensibility and awakens a critical spirit. It is an absolute necessity so that civilization continues to exist, renewing and preserving in us the best of what is human. So that we do not retreat into the savagery of isolation and life is not reduced to the pragmatism of specialists who see things profoundly but ignore what surrounds, precedes, and continues those things. So that we do not move from having the machines we invent serve us to being their servants and slaves. And because a world without literature would be a world without desires or ideals or irreverence, a world of automatons deprived of what makes the human being really human: the capacity to move out of oneself and into another, into others, modeled with the clay of our dreams.

From the cave to the skyscraper, from the club to weapons of mass destruction, from the tautological life of the tribe to the era of globalization, the fictions of literature have multiplied human experiences, preventing us from succumbing to lethargy, self-absorption, resignation. Nothing has sown so much disquiet, so disturbed our imagination and our desires as the life of lies we add, thanks to literature, to the one we have, so we can be protagonists in the great adventures, the great passions real life will never give us. The lies of literature become truths through us, the readers transformed, infected with longings and, through the fault of fiction, permanently questioning a mediocre reality. Sorcery, when literature offers us the hope of having what we do not have, being what we are not, acceding to that impossible existence where like pagan gods we feel mortal and eternal at the same time, that introduces into our spirits non-conformity and rebellion, which are behind all the heroic deeds that have contributed to the reduction of violence in human relationships. Reducing violence, not ending it. Because ours will always be, fortunately, an unfinished story. That is why we have to continue dreaming, reading, and writing, the most effective way we have found to alleviate our mortal condition, to defeat the corrosion of time, and to transform the impossible into possibility.

Stockholm, December 7, 2010

Translation by Edith Grossman

Book visit

2011-05-27T11:10:00.000+08:00

On my way home the other night, I passed by National Bookstore to buy the book my youngest sibling requested me to buy for her. As I searched through the shelves in the kids' books section, I suddenly felt the excitement that was almost nostalgia for me. It has been months since I last visited a book shop. In fact, I could no longer recall the last time I bought a book.

Holding a book with my bare hands is one of my life's greatest pleasures. I acquired it when I was still very young, before I officially went to school. The first book I touched was an orange hardbound book on English Literature. In it was the poem Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll, the first literary piece I ever read.

As a child, reading was play for me. My heart would jump for joy in the sight of a book. Mama would always come home with a book for me. Those were such blissful moments. As I grew up, my love for books grew up with me. The school library is my favorite spot in all the schools I've gone to. During spare hours, I would be seen sitting in one of its corners, skimming through pages which I would later on digest in the corners of my own room. I recall that one library card did not suffice for one semester.

The habit of reading did not fade away when I stepped out of school. But lately it's wading. Perhaps, the desire got burried underneath other plans and activities. But it's never hard to rekindle it. My love for reading is easily evoked by a mere sight of a book.

That is why, I couldn't leave a bookstore without taking any book out and a resolve that return I surely will.

Reading summons me back.

Paghabol

2011-05-26T10:55:00.000+08:00

Kanina, nasa bahay yung mga pamangkin ko. May hawak na baril-barilan yung apat na taon kong pamangking lalaki, sabi niya, "Tita, babarilin ko yung bag mo!" Napatigil ako at tiningnan ko siya, nagsasalita na ang dati'y tahimik lang na dumedede sa isang sulok ng bahay namin. Napatingin ako sa mga kapatid niya, ang lalaki na nilang lahat. Suot ng panganay yung isa kong sandals habang naglalaro. Halos matakpan na ng buo niyang paa yung sandals ko.

Umuusad na ang mga taon.

Madalas kong banggitin nitong mga nakalipas na araw na tumatanda na ko. Yung mga problema lang dati ni Mama at Papa, iniisip ko na rin ngayon at siguro, sa dami ng plano ko pa sa buhay, higit pa. Pakiramdam ko bigla ay naghahabol ako. Dati nauunahan ko ang panahon. Ngayon, mas madalas kong nahuhuli ang sarili kong naghahabol dito.

Hindi ko na maalala ang oras na nagsabay kami ng orasan. Parang hindi yata nangyari yun sa buong buhay ko. Kung di ako nauuna ay nahuhuli naman ako. Nitong mga nakalipas na araw, mas nahuhuli na ako.

Sinusubukan kong bilisan ang mga hakbang ko, pero hindi ko naman alam kung saan ako dadalhin ng mga ito. Ang alam ko lang, kailangan kong habulin ang oras. Ang pupuntahan ba ng buhay ay isang pagkakataon o isang lugar? Naisip ko kanina, baka mali ang hinahabol ko.

Jean, Jean

2011-05-26T10:29:00.002+08:00

Come out of your half-dreamed dream, Jean, Jean.

2011-05-19T13:30:00.000+08:00

In the midst of life's clutter, expect great things.

2011-04-22T13:51:00.000+08:00

Why do we put hope in a string?
Don't we know that a string could be cut in a snap of the scissors?
I was looking for the word "faith" and failed to find it
But I heard it spoken somewhere
I just forgot where.

2011-04-22T13:46:00.000+08:00

Girls are taught a lot of stuff growing up. If a guy punches you he likes you. Never try to trim your own bangs and someday you will meet a wonderful guy and get your very own happy ending. Every movie we see, Every story we're told implores us to wait for it, the third act twist, the unexpected declaration of love, the exception to the rule. But sometimes we're so focused on finding our happy ending we don't learn how to read the signs. How to tell from the ones who want us and the ones who don't, the ones who will stay and the ones who will leave. And maybe a happy ending doesn't include a guy, maybe... it's you, on your own, picking up the pieces and starting over, freeing yourself up for something better in the future. Maybe the happy ending is... just... moving on. Or maybe the happy ending is this, knowing after all the unreturned phone calls, broken-hearts, through the blunders and misread signals, through all the pain and embarrassment you never gave up hope.

-Gigi, He's Just Not That Into You (2009)

A pack of french fries and a ride for crying

2011-04-22T13:31:00.000+08:00

The McDo BFGF commercial used to not impress me. Yes, the characters were cute little kids playing adults. But more than the medium is the message. I do not like the way it weaved into the viewers' consciousness the complications of a woman's mind and the idea that a relationship is worth a pack of french fries.

The McDo BFGF commercial used to not impress me until last night.

He brought me french fries saying he thought of the ad while he was on his way to see me. It means a lot when you know someone is willing to go out his way just to hear you cry, doesn't it? And a pack of fries bought with you on mind, could make you stop from crying. Believe me, last night, it worked for me.

Thank you, AHAN.

Isang kahong lihim

2011-04-19T10:50:00.001+08:00

Isang kahong liham

na nakatambak sa isang gilid

ng buhay

Mga liham na isinulat

sa mga pasikdo-sikdong panahon

ng katapangang

hanggang papel lang

Kung mahanap ko man ang mga

padadalhan

Hindi magkakaroon ng sariling paa

ang mga liham

patungo sa kanila

At ako

hindi maglalakas-loob

Aanhin pa ang katotohanang

Naiwan na ng panahon?

-h

Photo editing

2011-04-17T16:46:00.000+08:00

I am currently editing the logo of our parish youth ministry and in between, wondering. How easily you make me forget.

You ask me a lot of questions. I seal the answers right away. They keep fluttering inside my stomach and would not let me sleep the whole night.

2011-04-17T13:01:00.002+08:00

"When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares."
— Henri J.M. Nouwen

If

2011-04-15T11:51:00.002+08:00

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream---and not make dreams your master;
If you can think---and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same:.
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build'em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings,
And never breathe a word about your loss:
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings---nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And---which is more---you'll be a Man, my son!

Rudyard Kipling

2011-04-13T11:12:00.000+08:00

April showers bring May flowers.

Dream deferred

2011-04-13T11:06:00.003+08:00

What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?

by Langston Hughes

2011-04-07T09:39:00.002+08:00

The Mad Hatter: You're not the same as you were before. You were much more... "muchier." You've lost your "muchness."

Alice: My "muchness?"

The Mad Hatter: [Points to Alice's heart] In there.

2011-04-07T09:10:00.002+08:00

"Words are like nets - we hope they'll cover what we mean, but we know they can't possibly hold that much joy, or grief, or wonder. Like falling in love or finding god, if it happens to you, you know what it feels like. But try to describe it to someone else - and language only takes you so far."

— Jodi Picoult (Change of Heart)

2011-04-06T11:42:00.000+08:00

Words could be overstated
and understated
at the same time they are uttered.
Like Love.

2011-04-05T16:40:00.002+08:00

"Do you know how sometimes - when you are riding your bike and you start skidding across sand, or when you miss a step and start tumbling down the stairs - you have those long, long seconds to know that you are going to be hurt, and badly?"
— Jodi Picoult (My Sister's Keeper)

Give up saying "I can't"

2011-04-02T21:17:00.001+08:00

Inventory of normality

2011-03-31T22:53:00.000+08:00

An Excerpt from Paulo Coelho's blog (with some personal commentaries)

in “The winner stands alone”, by Paulo Coelho

1] Anything that makes us forget our true identity and our dreams and makes us only work to produce and reproduce. (Check.)

2] Making rules for a war (the Geneva Convention).

3] Spending years at university and then not being able to find a job. (I'm afraid this is true. A university degree doesn't equate with finding a job especially here in our country.)

4] Working from nine in the morning to five in the afternoon at something that does not give us the least pleasure, so that we can retire after 30 years. (I honestly don't want this to happen with me.)

5] Retiring only to discover that we have no more energy to enjoy life, and then dying of boredom after a few years.

6] Using Botox.

7] Trying to be financially successful instead of seeking happiness.

8] Ridiculing those who seek happiness instead of money by calling them “people with no ambition”. (In short, judging.)

9] Comparing objects like cars, houses and clothes, and defining life according to these comparisons instead of really trying to find out the true reason for being alive. (Once in a while, one really has to take a step back and see from a wider lens the things that really matter.)

10] Not talking to strangers. Saying nasty things about our neighbors.

11] Thinking that parents are always right.

12] Getting married, having children and staying together even though the love has gone, claiming that it’s for the sake of the children (who do not seem to be listening to the constant arguments).

12ª] Criticizing everybody who tries to be different. (Again, judging.)

14] Waking up with a hysterical alarm-clock at the bedside. (Alarm clocks don't work for me.)

15] Believing absolutely everything that is printed. (Duh?)

16] Wearing a piece of colored cloth wrapped around the neck for no apparent reason and known by the pompous name “necktie”. (Why, this made me laugh!)

17] Never asking direct questions, even though the other person understands what you want to know.

18] Keeping a smile on your face when you really want to cry. And feeling sorry for those who show their own feelings. (Being honest with my feelings? Oh. I need to practice more on this to reduce normality level.)

19] Thinking that art is worth a fortune, or else that it is worth absolutely nothing.

20] Always despising what was easily gained, because the “necessary sacrifice” – and therefore also the required qualities – are missing.

21] Following fashion, even though it all looks ridiculous and uncomfortable.

22] Being convinced that all the famous people have tons of money saved up.

23] Investing a lot in exterior beauty and paying little attention to interior beauty.

24] Using all possible means to show that even though you are a normal person, you are infinitely superior to other human beings.

25] In any kind of public transport, never looking straight into the eyes of the other passengers, as this may be taken for attempting to seduce them.

26] When you enter an elevator, looking straight at the door and pretending you are the only person inside, however crowded it may be.

27] Never laughing out loud in a restaurant, no matter how funny the story is.

28] In the Northern hemisphere, always wearing the clothes that match the season of the year: short sleeves in springtime (however cold it may be) and a woolen jacket in the fall (no matter how warm it is).

29] In the Southern hemisphere, decorating the Christmas tree with cotton wool, even though winter has nothing to do with the birth of Christ.

30] As you grow older, thinking you are the wisest man in the world, even though not always do you have enough life experience to know what is wrong.

31] Going to a charity event and thinking that in this way you have collaborated enough to put an end to all the social inequalities in the world.

32] Eating three times a day, even if you’re not hungry. (I so agree with this. Why do we have to be timed with the clock?)

33] Believing that the others are always better at everything: they are better-looking, more resourceful, richer and more intelligent. Since it’s very risky to venture beyond your own limits, it’s better to do nothing.

34] Using the car as a way to feel powerful and in control of the world.

35] Using foul language in traffic.

36] Thinking that everything your child does wrong is the fault of the company he or she is keeping.

37] Marrying the first person who offers you a position in society. Love can wait.

38] Always saying “I tried”, even though you haven’t tried at all.

39] Putting off doing the most interesting things in life until you no longer have the strength to do them.

40] Avoiding depression with massive daily doses of television programs.

41] Believing that it is possible to be sure of everything you have won.

42] Thinking that women don’t like football and that men don’t like interior decoration.

43] Blaming the government for everything bad that happens.

44] Being convinced that being a good, decent and respectful person means that the others will find you weak, vulnerable and easy to manipulate.

45] Being convinced that aggressiveness and discourtesy in treating others are signs of a powerful personality.

46] Being afraid of fibroscopy (men) and childbirth (women).

47] And finally, thinking that your religion is the sole proprietor of the absolute truth, the most important, the best, and that the other human beings in this immense planet who believe in any other manifestation of God are condemned to the fires of hell.

Namimiss ko na ang hardcore na paglikha

2011-03-30T22:28:00.000+08:00

Ibig kong sabihin, ang pagsusulat, namimiss ko na. Yung pagsusulat para magpahayag ng katotohan.Noong kolehiyo ako, journalism ang kurso ko. Gusto ko ang pagsusulat at ang mismong propesyon ng pagbabalita. Hindi nga lang iyon ang pinasok kong propesyon dahil sa academe ako tumuloy. May kinalaman man sa komunikasyon ang trabaho ko, alam kong malaking bahagi ng inaral ko nung college ang hindi ko na nagagamit sa trabaho. Sinusubukan kong punuan ang kahungkagan sa pamamagitan ng pagba-blog, ng pagsusulat at pag-eedit sa aming parish newsletter, ng pagsusulat at pag-eedit ng mga letters sa opisina, pero alam kong lahat ng ito, hindi kayang tumbasan ang bigat ng pagsusulat para sa pamamahayag na dala-dala ko.

------

Ang lahat ng bagay may kapalit. Dahil gusto kong palawakin pa ang kaalaman ko sa akademya, nag-aaral pa ko ngayon. Kaya nga hindi ko pa mabitiwan ang comforts ng academe. Sa pag-aaral ko, inaasahan kong mas magiging mahusay ako sa field ng communication. Pero hindi maiiwasang magtanong ako, ano kaya'ng meron sa labas ng bakuran na ginagalawan ko? Ano kayang meron sa baba ng burol?

Gusto ko nang bumaba mula sa burol pero alam kong hilaw pa ang oras.

----

Hindi daw nagloload ang site ko sa laptop ng isa kong kaibigan. Literal :( .

I wish you enough

2011-03-30T22:08:00.001+08:00

I read the following article from author, Paulo Coelho's blog. I particularly liked it because I, too, believe in the law of moderation.

Recently I overheard a father and daughter in their last moments together at the airport. They had announced the departure.

Standing near the security gate, they hugged and the father said, ‘I love you, and I wish you enough.’

They kissed and the daughter left. The father walked over to the window where I was seated. I tried not to intrude on his privacy, but I could not refrain from asking:
‘When you were saying good-bye, I heard you say, ‘I wish you enough.’ May I ask what that means?’

He began to smile. ‘That’s a wish that has been handed down from other generations. My parents used to say it to everyone.’
He paused a moment and looked up as if trying to remember it in detail, and he smiled even more.
‘When we said, ‘I wish you enough,’ we were wanting the other person to have a life filled with just enough good things to sustain them.’
Then turning toward me, he shared the following as if he were reciting it from memory.

I wish you enough sun to keep your attitude bright no matter how gray the day may appear.

I wish you enough rain to appreciate the sun even more..

I wish you enough happiness to keep your spirit alive and everlasting.

I wish you enough pain so that even the smallest of joys in life may appear bigger.

I wish you enough gain to satisfy your wanting…
I wish you enough loss to appreciate all that you possess.

I wish you enough hellos to get you through the final good- bye.