Can I store in my mind's eye, in the stores of happy memories in my heart, all the peace and beauty I experienced here? Will there be a time just like this again in my future?
Nearing the end of it I feel that I should have written more, done more, thought more of everything that I felt. Then I think, in a way, it was a whole month of quiet, tranquil meditation. Not really a time for thinking but just for stopping. Not for acquiring but just cleansing. I got to be one with the the waves and the wind, fleeting, coming and going, rising and crashing, holding nothing, always ready to let go.
At times I find myself searching for big lessons, opportunities for great deeds wondering if to find naught would be a waste. I am still uncertain but at the same time not worried.
It's almost hard to believe that it's been less than a year since my last post. Yet, as with any span of time in between reflections and broadcasts, the events, lessons, revelations are too numerous to recollect. As always, it surprises me how much change we are able to endure.
My first year in Ankara has been an extraordinary experience, mostly for all the unexpected challenges and rewards. I have been lucky. Summer in the Philippines was equally memorable, with its own share of the fantastic and the all too real: reunions and separations, dreams and disappointments, life and death. All in all I feel as if I've jumped into cold water to find that life is both refreshing and uncomfortable, numbing and stimulating, distressing as well as cleansing. In many situations I felt myself afraid and in most of them I've come out surprised at my own capacity to cope, other people's ability to accommodate and the natural and social laws' dynamic way of keeping things just within reach of achievement and understanding.
I'm nearly falling asleep. Lastly, I've also opened up a channel here: restrictedspace.blogspot.com
In two days I have to say goodbye to some of the best people I know, some students and some co-workers. It hasn't quite hit me with the finality it deserves. I've always avoided saying goodbye by convincing myself that these relationships are merely making a turn, away from constant physical presence to long-distance attentiveness. To a certain extent, I had been rightly persuaded. This time, it is different. Between my students being too young and my relationships with my co-workers a little premature, I see no avenue for continuity. Alas, this goodbye might just be a final farewell.
I never want to forget how I fell in love twenty-five times over, five days a week. There were days I almost cried, trying so hard to contain my anger, only to be softened by one apologetic look. I would revel in the quiet of the holidays, only to find myself emptied and ready to be filled again by their presence.
Twelve months ago I was so uncertain of the future. I had no idea God had such great love in store for me.
I made this one up. When all you have instead of a job are Arrested Development, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and CSI DVDs, the situation really calls for a walk into the inner recesses of one's ...well, insides (although today marks the day of internet at home AND directv - things might just be looking up for little old me). So try this one on for size:
Three things I want in my lifetime:
1. A sound medical practice
2. My own greenhouse and/or garden
3. World peace
(if I could have five:
4. An olympic-size pool
5. three kids)
Three things I want in the near future:
1. A job
2. All the things in my room put away and organized
3. World peace
(if I could have five:
4. more Arrested Development
5. more CSI and Buffy)
Three things I wish for now:
1. Patience
2. Perseverence
3. World peace
Three things I wish I did/had
1. A tape of my grandparents' voices
2. Photos from when I was younger
3. Not quit art lessons when I was 8
I am unable to write. There are too many things yet to be understood, to be said, to be felt and to be expressed. This moment alone can fill chapters. Tomorrow my sister will drive away from Florida for good. Although Florida isn't my home I still feel as if I, too, will be shedding some old skin, for tomorrow's journey will mark for me the beginning of my new life - a life that from where I am now, hanging out by a milestone, is still looking very uncertain. Will I like my first full-time job? Will we find a decent apartment? Will my papers come through in time? What about my friends and the dawn of our time apart on separate trails? How is the rest of it supposed to unfold? Am I going the right way?
There were also the moments with its own bundle of thoughts and questions before this one - Disneyworld, reading the Kite Runner, deciding on a job, graduating, a family reunion, a grave loss, senior week, reading period, falling in love, my thesis - that is only as far back as a little over two months ago...But from the time I started this thing, from last summer, I feel as if I've journeyed through deserts and oceans, climbed mountains and fallen in cliffs with but a vague idea of what it has all meant and where it will all go. Overwhelmed, the writer within me has decided to shut down and rock itself to catatonia - silencing the fear and doubts disturbed only with incomprehensible groans. Nothing is thought out. Nothing is written.
Debilitating is the sense of exhiliration mixed with sorrow from having felt so much or feel like one has done so much but at the same time seeing that I'm not that far from where I was and that there's still miles and miles to go. Debilitating is the thought that each step from here could take me to one of the many tens of millions of possibilities, for both joy and disappointment.
I am stuck in Cambridge, where under ideal conditions, I should be intently working on my thesis.
Less than fifteen days from now I have to turn in a paper that is supposed to be the pinnacle of my academic career (hah!). Sixteen days from now, I have to start looking for something to occupy my time and justify (support?) my independent existence for at least a year after the college lets me go and another body of higher education lets me in. A little over two months from now I will be marching to that heartbreaking song that will take me once again, as it did four years ago, away from my friends, the people that I love and the home that I've come to know. Somewhere between the time my grandfather held me up in the air (I was two or three, my earliest memory) and today (no grandfather, ass-on-chair in front of a computer), on one side of the Pacific and one side of the Atlantic, my life happened. Twenty-one years, and disconcertingly, still going.
At 21 my grandfather got married. In a year his first-born son died. More children. The War.
Even more children. A dream home. The death of a sister. A high position in the government. Weddings. The death of another son. Children leaving. Grandchildren. Retirement. Gardening. That day, when I gained consciousness of myself in time, I was in full view of a giant: my grandfather in his 60s. He was successful, he was happy, he made people happy. He filled my piggy-bank with coins, my head with stories and my heart with love.
All of my young life I thought of my grandfather as no more than a gardener. That was how he spent his time and that garden was my world. I caught spiders and ladybugs. We had beautiful orchids and ceramic gnomes. We even swam in the garden pond full of blue and gold fish. If I had known then the majesty of a life well-lived, if I had known about the hard work that led up to and went into keeping a simple, steady life, where one could spend the day cultivating one's own garden, I would have trembled in my grandfather's presence. I would have never learned how to laugh or smile. I would have spent my life terrified of time, of the work that it makes you do, of the places that it takes you to and the burden it imposes on you.
I know I would have, because I am now.
Although I doubt anyone checks this old thing anymore, for any extremely bored, have-looked-through-every new trailer at Apple quicktime and funny pictures at engrish.com friends that happen to straggle by, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you!
Fall semester sure whipped by like a tornado, with all the associated speed and fury. Suffice to say, the holidays is the creepy, green-skied, all-too-quiet eye of the storm. Sure enough, the battering will be picking up as soon as the New Year dawns. I am full of optimism. (insert extra tub of bitterness here).
Last night a friend asked me, "How was your 2005?" Funny, I haven't asked myself yet. So I thought, an end-of-the-year evaluation should be in order.
I am looking back, all the way back to January, rewinding the events as one would an old videotape that had just rolled credits, without stopping the video first. I feel like an entire lifetime is backtracking before my eyes. (Is it like this every year? I don't know.)
In reverse order I can make markers -
of crushes: the squirrel, Mr. "Kylie", the abominable Aa, the cunning Canadian, the rockstar, the abominable Aa (recurring theme), the dance partner, Soles-san.
of places I was in: New York, Florida, Cambridge, New York, Florida, New York, (Japan), Manila, Punta Fuego, Manila, Boracay, Manila, (Japan), Cambridge, Chicago, Cambridge, New York
of memorable and other traumatic events: Universal Studios, Christmas, fall semester "ends", Pride and Prejudice, drunken response papers, English 159, Lolita, failing midterm, BS57, e-mails, senior bar (seeing A), HSA 27, senior bar (seeing Aa), mom visiting, MCAT scores, sisters visiting, birthday party, Florida with Ging and Nic, MCAT exam, summer summer summer, did I mention summer?, end of Junior year spring, Eliot Fete, Chicago, Ghungroo, Prado's visit, Cultural Rhythms, Chem 27, Final exams
of revelations: life will be OK, life will be dreadful, life is meaningless, life is meaningful, my life will be worth something, my life is worth nothing, friends are everything, love is everything, love is nothing, the future is bright, the future is bleak...you get the picture
of things I've purchased, of friends I've called, of friends I've avoided, of letters I didn't write, of people I didn't like, of places I didnt' see, of things I didn't do...
To move forward, one must look back, but how does one arrange the things and the nothings that were? What exactly does one have to do? I'm sure I am not alone when I say, I am trembling with fear when I think of the coming new year.
This is it. This is the battle I've longed for ever since I began obsessing over Lord of the Rings and other big epic we-must-save-the-world-or-die movies/stories; except the demon is within, as is the fear that needs to be conquered.
I hope you have a happy new year. A victorious one. A glorious one. I hope you overcome all the challenges that wait at your door and I hope that you'll still sing, when you're up to your neck in shit. (Beckett)
If I speak the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perserveres. Love never fails.
Going to the beach tomorrow. Wheeee! Well, really we're going to Atlantic City. Hopefully while in the casino, my aunt and uncle will let me hang out at the beach. I haven't been there in almost ten years. I remember being excited about dipping my feet in the Atlantic Ocean. I hope the weather will be lovely.
I think it was Julia Ormond as Sabrina who said "I must've been taking pictures all my life, long before I even had a camera."
Funny/sad phone episode with Prado last night. We must've been on the phone for four hours, sometimes talking, mostly not. It was such an Oedipus Rex night (minus the incest) - when a truth was unraveled and the only seemingly sane thing to do is gouge one's eyes out. (Don't get any ideas, Prado, it's just an analogy. It's going to be okay, meng. Carry na lang. Kung kaya ko, kaya mo rin. Love naman kita baby.)
She said, "I wish I were seven again, so I can do stupid things and forget about it after 2 seconds." Watching my little cousin, it amazes me how much children can tolerate: inconstancy of attention, temporary neglect, outright rejection. But they never give up, they go on pestering and nagging, single-mindedly pursuing a simple objective: to be loved. Maybe at 21, not much of that has changed. We're still as needy and insecure as we were 14 years ago. We just don't have the same courage as they do. We always feel like we have so much more to lose at this point in our lives. Do we?
Sometimes, friendship is a decent conversation at the 47th St. McDonald's.
tonight's the night that shit's going to hit the fan...not if i can help it! the summer motto's been fun, fun, fun so i'm not going to let anything ruin the perfect summer memories. need to pack today, but more importantly, i must stow away all this emotional baggage that's been dragging since last week. i've spent too long hanging out on the brink of falling in love and now that certain events have forced me to make a decision, take the plunge or abandon post, i suddenly fear the loss of the comfort of complacently, indulgently grazing this place. but as with most things all i can say is "oh well" and move on. i just need to let it go. what's the point in holding on if neither he nor i can brave the risk of pursuing this?
for what it's worth, i feel as if i'm handling this much better than freshman year fiasco. maybe i like d so much more than a.
we're just kids!
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we always take the opportunity to hurt ourselves and the ones we love. what is it about pain that makes us easily forget how it hurts? we pick our poisons and nurse our demons. we fall, cry, pick ourselves up just to do it all again. it's almost in vain to ask - for what purpose? we forgive. we understand. we let it go. "the laughter keeps us coming back for more." it's easier to forget. it's easier not to think. sometimes i'm also convinced it's better.
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