Fever Pitch 20 June 2007

Psyche gropes blind
Through the darkened room
Nothing illumines
The mysterious Figure within
Cold marble
Beneath bare feet
Signals a quiet warning
To Aphrodite’s curse.
Yet a fire smolders within
Inexorable, relentless…
A feverish hunger
For a Visage long missed.
And in that despairing moment
Between Eris’ urgent whispers
And Fate’s cautious advice;
Between Patience’s cold wisdom
And Passion’s searing flames,
The caged fire
Blaze free of its confines
And raged forth to light
Upon a single candlewick.
And the darkened room
That hid
The mysterious Figure within
Burst in conflagration,
Illuminating in a flash
That Visage long missed.
But Aphrodite’s curse
Once spoken, so true
Doused Love’s raging fire
In the twinkling of an eye.
And that which blazed
In carefree conflagration
Soon cindered, soon darkened
Until the pitch black room
Bore nevermore
That mysterious, belov’d Figure within.

Written 27 November 2002, in remembrance of love’s doomed impatience.

My Life…a Little Closely Now 20 June 2007

Empty.  That has always been the feeling I encountered whenever I looke at my life a little closely.  I hated that kind of feeling.  As if there was something in me that was missing, or incomplete, or just plain imperfect.  So I refused to consider my life from up close.

For the better part of 24 years, life was one big, rowdy party. I had moments of silence, but they were few. I had a diary, but I only wrote about boys and gigs and inconsequential things. Pretty superficial.

The the emptiness got bigger and bigger. It became more intense.  Until I could no longer ignore it.

With dread in my heart at what I would discover, I took one peek at my life.  I could not see anything substantial, so I looked longer and closer. And a little closer. And still closer. Until I realized I was staring at a huge vacuum.

My life was not anything worth living!  It was not anything at all.

It had no purpose, no goals.  It had no beliefs, no missions. It had no passions, no convictions. My life was one purposeless, meaningless life that if I ended it today, It would not have hurt the world one iota. 

So I searched first for my life’s meaning.

I went into yoga, hoping that by “going to the center of the life force of the universe,” I will be discover my universe.  I dabbled in mind control, hoping that I will be able to “shape my life” into something worth living by the sheer force of my “mental energies.”  I went into transcendental meditation, hoping that I will leave the “craving of the flesh” behind and become a “spirit attuned to the general purpose of the Universe.”

Everything, yet no meaning found.

Until one day, frustrated, depressed and near to breaking down, I cried out: “Lord, if You are real, show me who I am. Who I am meant to be.  What my life is all about. Why I live at all.”

Months passed. I have forgotten that one moment of weakness. The Lord, too, or so I thought.

Out of the blue, a neighbor invited me to a Life in the Spirit Seminar. Out of the blue, I went. Two days later, the blues when out of me.

Finally. I. Found. My. Reason. For. Being.

I began to understand why I live at all.  A new life commenced…and I have never been the same since.

The emptiness left my heart, and Christ settled in. I felt whole — perfect, complete, content. And I finally understood the emptiness.

Every human being made in His image and likeness, God created a place that is reserved for Him alone — one part of us that shall never know rest until He rests in it.  His own, personal resting place.  Wherever it is in our heart, It is His and His alone, and nothing and no one knows the key to that sacred place.

No riches, no power, no acclaim, no rings can substitute for the fullness that you find in that place.  As long as He is not there, the emptiness will persist.  But once He settles in, the journey ends and a wonderful, wonderful life story begins.

I should know.  My own wonderful life story is unfolding right now.

Published at the Inspirare website in 13 June 2001.  I took a year-long, free email workshop on journaling one’s life and this is one of the results.  The author, Susan J. Letham, has since put up the Inspired2Write website.

Litanya ni Esmi 20 June 2007

Gabi na, wala ka pa.
Sabi mo, ‘trabaho ‘to, honey.’
Naglagalag na ang isipan ko
Sa kung saang lupalop
Sa apat na sulok ng bahay na ‘to
Pero di ko masipat ang koneksyon
Ng trabaho at kumukutitap na ilaw,
Habang ikaw nama’y humihimas
Ng bote ng beer at
Hinihimas ng sinumang herodes
Na mahaba ang buhok.
Kagabi, sabi mo kasama mo
Ang boss mo, sa klab.
Kliyente. Product demo.
E bakit di mo maaninag
Ang kasamang kliyente
At di marinig ang kanyang sinasabi?
Dahil ba ang product demo
E yung umiinog na bolang kristal
Sa gitna ng parisukat na kahoy
Kung saan dalawang babae ang lumalambitin
Sa dalawang posteng bakal sa gitna nito,
Nakatapis lang yata ng tig-isang yarda
Ng telang binili pa sa Divisoria?
Bukas, gagabihin ka na naman.
Tiyak yun! Di na ako magtataka.
Sana sa pagitan ng product demo
At babaeng nakalambitin sa bakal
E maalala mong may isang ako
Na di makatulog, nakasipat
Sa apat na sulok ng bahay na ito,
Iniisip kung ano na ang kalagayan mo.
Kung buhay ka pa ba
O kung pwede ka pang dalhin sa ospital.

What Do I Want, Really? 20 June 2007

What do I long for?
Whom do I ask?

The starry-eyed girl
Who wears pink-hued bifocals,
Her eyes gone blurry for
Being perpetually buried
between the pages of Sweet Dreams
and Sweet Valley High?
Or, the woman who looks back
With exhausted eyes,
And still more exhausted lines
Crisscrossing her sun-roughened face?

The cross-eyed girl knows
Prince Charming is just around the corner,
Waiting on his trusty steed,
Rushing to rescue her as swiftly
As unicorns can fly.
The woman knows Prince Charming
Will be out beyond midnight
And if there’s any who’ll have to do
The rescuing
It will be she, when he stumbles home
Barely, on all fours, just before the cock crows.

Miss Sweet Dreams wants
Just Prince Charming, in love with her
Happily ever after.
Ms. Cookbook would rather have
An unlimited expense account
And a stable job;
A handsome Lothario’s suspect,
He may have seconds
She may come to know about.

22 march 2006

Christmas @ 8 20 June 2007

“Mommy, have you seen Santa Claus?”

My mother, bless her soul, never missed a beat as she chopped garlic and onions for her famous spaghetti sauce. “Nope. Never.”

Undaunted, I asked, “Well, is he really real?” When my mom just looked at me, with that inquisitive look that said “I don’t know what you mean”, I added, “The other kids say he’s not. They say it’s impossible to be at the same place at the same time, all at once.” I paused, counting heads in my head. “In fact, I really say it’s impossible. There must be zillions of kids like me all over the world, just waiting for Santa.”

My mom put down the knife on the chopping board and gazed at the oval wood for the longest time. Even as a naïve eight-year-old, I knew she was considering her words carefully. Then she turned to me, her shrug almost imperceptible for me not to catch it. But I caught that shrug, and I knew she’s decided something.

“Santa Claus is a very magical person,” she said, slowly and softly, like my grandfather telling tales of fallen Japanese soldiers and giant horse-like men. “You see, God has given him the power to be in all the houses where children are on Christmas Eve. It’s just like what the song says, he knows what you’re doing. Every time.”

“Every time?” I repeated doubting the truth in the claim, remembering my playmates’ claims. My older playmates.

“Every time,” my mom confirmed.

“So, how does he do it? Be in different places at the same time?”

“See, that’s the mystery of Christmas. Even I didn’t discover how.” She paused, returning to her chopping board and the half-diced garlic and onions. “But he comes between 12 midnight and just a minute afterwards. In the twinkling of an eye, he comes and goes, like a thief. Silent. Quick.”

Undaunted, I plodded on. There has to be more to this than the twinkling of an eye. “Where does his reindeer stay?”

“Oh, they hover above the roof while Santa’s delivering gifts.”

I mulled over this logistical impossibility. “How come I never hear them?”

“Because Santa makes sure you’re asleep when he does come.”

Uhuh. “Aha! He avoids being seen!”

“Of course,” my mom said. “If kids saw him, they might ask him for more gifts. And where would Santa get those other gifts?”

“But you said he’s got magic,” I reminded her hotly. I felt like I discovered gold amongst the rice I was sifting through. “Wouldn’t he just magic it out of his sack?”

“It’s a little bit more complicated than that,” my mom replied, putting the chopped garlic and onion onto a plate and reaching for the hotdogs. “You see, Santa also decides what gifts to bring to exactly match the kind of goodness that a child has done. Any more than that and the child will be getting more than he has earned for the year. That will be cheating.”

I slowly nodded my head, sure that there was something foul in that reasoning somewhere. My eight-year-old mind, brilliant as it were, couldn’t latch on to it though.

“Okay,” I finally conceded. “But can I stay up late tonight? Can I stay awake and just wait for the noche buena?”

“Why?” There was that dubious look that only mothers can have painted on her face, as if I was up to no good again.

“Nothing,” I said. “I’d just like to see what Santa looks like.”

This time, my mother smiled. “Okay,” she agreed. “Suit yourself.”

Then something struck me. “Will Santa pass over the house if he knew I was awake?” I asked, fearfully, visions of empty stockings during Christmas dinner dancing through my mind.

My mom shrugged. “I don’t know,” she replied. “Guess, he will. After all, Santa really doesn’t want to be seen by kids.”

I felt deflated.

My mom took pity on me when she saw how crestfallen I was. “Look, Santa will come. You’ve been good this year,” she assured me. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Okay.”

That night, I really tried hard to keep my eyes trained on the Christmas tree. But past eleven, I could feel my eyes drooping. I tried valiantly to fight it. In fact, I bit my lip and pinched myself so many times just to keep myself from closing my eyes.

I guess I lost the battle.

I woke up at midnight to find my stockings filled to overflowing with all my favorite sweets, candies that were forbidden to me during the year. There was also fifty pesos in it, about a couple of month’s allowance, and some gift-wrapped packages underneath the tree with my name in them.

Better luck next time.

22 march 2006

Getting to Know You 20 June 2007

I am not really a writer.  I’m a storyteller.  In my mind, a storyteller and a writer are two different beings.  The former is a keeper of oral traditions; the latter is the scribe of these keepers.

This is evidenced in the case of legends, myths, fables and all the other oral traditions that each culture kept as heritage from their ancestors.  Moses, for example, was never a writer yet the stories that he told kept tghe Israelites of his generation entranced and obedient.  It was only later when an enterprising scribe thought of writing these stories down for posterity’s sake, perhaps in the hopes that they will be kept just as entranced and just as obedient as their predecessors.

So it is with me.

When the stories occur in my mind, they are already whole — plot, charactger, setting, action, and all other elements a story should have.  Then I tell them…to family, friends, enemies and whoever is willing to listen for a long while as I weave my tale.

Later on, I discovered that my tales were being bandied about by other storytellers and I realized that I had the selfish predilection of writers for a byline.  So I forced myself to write down my stories in the hopes of staking my copyright on them.

That was when I encountered a challenge that I have never encountered before.

Most writers posit that all stories should have all of its elements interlaced into one neat weave.  Disbelief should be suspended, characters well-developed, character arc well explained, and all loose ends tied neatly down at the end…et cetera, et cetera, ad nauseaum, ad infinitum.

This last semester I had to confont the possibilit that creative writing is more of a challenge than I thought.  That the gift of storytelling doesn’t presuppose the give of story writing.

The stories I tell are close to my heart.  They are bits and pieces I pick up form my daily routine which I use to spin my tales. Yet in their utility, some segments of my web are left weakened or missing.

One of the most important realizations I’ve had is the fact that I don’t know my characters well.  In the tales I tell, they are mere pawns to the narration.  In the stories I write, I am an unwilling pawn to their emergence.  And too often, their emergence is at the cost of my control over the things they think about, the words they speak, the actions they do and most unfortunately perhaps, on who they eventually turn out to be at the end of the story.

Lately, I had to embark on the arduous task of turning these strangers that people my stories into intimate friends.  I had to familiarize myself with their little quirks and unique mannerisms just to differentiate one from the other.  I had to dig deep into their back story and know such basic details as their birthdates, their parents’ names, if they even still have both, where they attended primary school and other such things that make them into the persons they are when I started writing about them.  Often, I had to walk up in their shoes for a mile because, as I found out, their actions and motivations left permanent imprints in my story’s final form.

Sometimes, too, I discovered that my use of these real life bits and pieces have left me too close to my material for comfort.  When that occurs, I end up with mor equestions in the readers’ mind that I can resolve to their satisfaction.  Perhaps, because i suffer from too much honesty and I cannot begin to comprehend, or even accept, that in fiction, the bending of the truth is far more acceptable than it is in reality.

Further, most writers subscribe to the belief that all the other elements of a short story are elicited by characger.  Indeed, when I tried that tact it did lend a better, more coherent perspective to the ending of my story.  It is this method that I am now experimenting with.

My problem, however, is that I am hampered in the writing of the tale.  I have mentioned that a tale is often complete once it presents itself, and the immediate telling of it captures the whole story more faithfully as they have occured in my mind.  In the writing, some details are lost as I have to deal first with the getting-to-know-you formalities with my characthers. 

Sometimes, I am lucky. The characters spring forth fully gorwn.  Most times, however, I have to suffer through the pains of their birth, toddlerhood, and puberty to get to their maturity.

The important thing is, I recognize that creative writing is not just mere oral storytelling translated into the written form.  If I wanted a story that will be cherished and appreciated by my readers, I have to pander to their demand for satisfaction.  That means characters they can identify with and recognize, someone they can understand and be companionable with.  That requires cognizance on my part of my character’s character.

I have known ths truth before.  That is, however, mere head knowledge.  Now I have a better appreciation of ths writing principle and the work that goes with it.  Perhaps, in time, it will ecome as easy and as natural as breathing.  At the moment, I have to settle with the fact that I still need to expend energy to comply with this requirement.

I submitted this essay to a creative writing class I attended at UP as part of end-of-term requirements. I believe that was 1st semester of AY 2003-2004.

Out of body experience 20 June 2007

would i choose
to have my heart
beat out of my body
and see it
walking around
careless-like
indifferent
to every quake
and tremor,
my body shooting
the richter scale
as two tiny feet
stray farther
from my reach?
can i live
beyond sixty
when every moment
my heart
runs
stumbles
jumps
moves around
uncaring
lips long untouched
by sacred words
now continuously mumbles
in jagged whispers
an endless stream
of litanies and entreatments
to God and little gods
that every tiny step
that my heart takes
away from me
be a step closer
into my relieved embrace?
will i survive
just one tick
of the second hand
with my heart
out of my being?
could i?
would i?
should i?

08 june 2005

Not another teary poem 20 June 2007

last night, i slept
with my back
to you.
i tried to mute
the thunderous breaking
of my heart -
splintered, tiny shards
scattering to the corners
of my shattering soul.
the blinding lights
dimmed to shadows
slowly choked out
by a gigantic hand.
last night, little feet
stark white against
the gathering dusk
walked through the debris
the illusions i harbored
glinting off the shards
disjointed, unfamiliar,
unrecognized.
i found sleep, the ringing
still echoing in my ears -
of shards further splintering
to unseen pieces,
of silent agony
and grief,
of love disillusioned,
disappointed, distraught -
my skin fearing
the slightest friction
of intimate, familiar skin.

04 august 2004