Making Room

I honestly thought it was just 2022 that sped by, but apparently, as evidenced by this now resurrected blog, the last five years also somehow just slipped by without my noticing it. I do have sporadic documentation of what transpired throughout the years: in my journals, in attempted curated social media feeds, in poorly managed photo folders, in letters and postcards sent and received, and in whatever else is folded, rolled up, shoved deep, and un/intentionally archived in the mess of my life’s spaces. I still need to hand it to 2022 for being the year that chewed me up and spit me out so I could ultimately understand how time is truly just a concept of the human mind. We count days, fill calendars, chase deadlines, snooze alarms, and wish for extra hours every single day, only to wake up feeling rundown by the exhaustion of having done so much while at the same time feeling like nothing significant actually happened at all.

I think this is what they mean by not really being in the moment. And this year’s first entry is an embarrassing but very liberating admission of the things I didn’t get right in the past year(s) about time and its gifts because I was too busy trying to make my schedule work, so much so that I had to allocate time slots for moments to remind myself to live. But isn’t that useful enough and isn’t that how it’s actually supposed to be done? If you have to bookmark in your calendar a time to feel alive, then you need to re-evaluate what being alive actually means.

On Christmas morning, I woke up thinking “Oh, it’s Christmas today but it just feels like any other day.” No sadness, no joy, no relief, no regrets. Just a moment of sitting on the bed and taking in the first few hours of morning light, finally able to notice what morning feels like instead of thinking about what morning schedule needs to be accomplished. That’s when the longing for days past sunk in. I longed for the feeling of waking up knowing I turned another year older and being proud of having survived, at the very least. I longed for the euphoria of seeing the blast of confetti and fireworks timed perfectly to music, music that I painstakingly curated as part of a lifelong dream. I yearned for that satisfying exhale that came with the sense of fulfillment after completing something, anything — a sense of fulfillment that welled up from deep within, unencumbered by the judgement, expectations, stipulations, and manipulations of those who find fulfillment in seeing others unfulfilled.

I first thought it quite pitiful, to be thirty-five and still be grasping for things that can make you feel feelings and to still struggle to be unbothered by people who really shouldn’t matter. An uncanny recurrence only because it seems somebody (me) hasn’t been really paying attention to life’s lessons these past years. Voila, in that Christmas morning that didn’t feel like Christmas at all, the Universe sent me a present by dropping clues on how to navigate living better in 2023, and it came with the thought, “Well then, I could just celebrate and conjure the Christmas feeling on any other morning of the year if I really wanted to.”

And conjure that feeling, we shall, and celebrate with the right people, we will.

There’s a schedule to follow and then there’s a flow and rhythm to life one must ride and guide. Making a schedule work will be inevitable because, at the end of the day, it’s not a fantasy – it’s adulthood with bills and a retirement fund to build. But being alive is not confined to the 35-box grid of a month, and your schedule should come second only to the rhythm and flow of how you live from sun-up to sundown. Live with intent. Start thinking about how you want to spend all the hours of your day instead of filling up your 24-hour cycles as mere time slots. Mark the milestones that should be celebrated and not just the milestones dictated on a calendar. Instead of collecting a list of things to do, re/discover what to feel in a range of different moments across all your days.

As for the people to share your time with, know the difference between those who will give you a seat at the table based on the list of things you’ve accomplished versus those who will hold space for you even when you fail at completing all the things that need accomplishing. It sounds easy to distinguish, but it’s really harder than it seems. And that’s why you must allow yourself to fail sometimes. Because that’s when you’ll see them start walking away when you are unable to do what they expect of you. Stay with those who will stay with you, make space for those who will do all they can to make sure you never feel alone.

Moments to feel alive and people to live life and feel alive with. I honestly wish I could enumerate many other things because, really, a LOT happened in 2022. But no matter how hard I try, these are the only two things I’m hyper-focusing on to make room for this coming year. Because what have I truly lost, if not the sense of feeling like I’m truly living and the connections I thought were real but apparently were not? Puwes, babawi tayo.

Image grabbed from Facebook.

Throughout 2022, and actually the past five years since 2017, I’ve tried so hard to keep myself from falling off the tracks and just keep trudging ahead despite all my loose screws. I’d like to think I’ve walked quite far, marched so hard, ran so fast, and crawled even when I should have just laid down and given up. And now, I don’t want to just keep journeying only to seek relief from exhaustion in the end. I want to stop feeling like I’m losing my life to the journey. Now, I want to feel more alive with every step.

Of Drip Paintings and A Year That Did Not Go According To Plan

“I am learning to love myself more and live with the choice I made no matter how unfounded it could have been at the moment that it crept up on me. and i will get into grips with the realities that i will face, now and tomorrow and in distant futures…there will inevitably be continuous weeks of drinking the self to sleep and wishing and hoping and praying that whatever is now is otherwise

it’s a new year and everybody, or most of everyone at least, aspire for new beginnings to make better continuations of their lives

a turn of the year could be both as profound and as meaningless as the next sunrise. so another minute passed, so the calendar changed dates. so maybe we are older by another planet’s revolution or maybe we aren’t

all i wish is that i could sleep better soon

that things will make sense. that these feelings and choices and deeds will matter more than the time that i seem to lose every other second”

— It’s Just Another Sunrise, January 8, 2014

And now, hey-ho, here comes 2015’s imperative New Year post.

And, as usual, my entry’s a tad bit too late for the annual jumpstart-the-year-with-this essay writing contest. And I’m saying that just to point it out already before anyone else calls it out on me. Done deal, whooped my own behind for it, and i’m fine anyway, still writing, so either you judge me because of writing the year’s first entry halfway into January or you just go on and read whatever follows this sentence and send me a virtual high five.

If you’re still reading this, *high five*.

Two thousand and fifteen. This year feels different, says everyone every time the year changes. Maybe pointing it out might increase the possibility of the actualization of aspired change. Might give some push, might instill a stronger sense of optimism and faith, might finally actually convince the self to make things happen.

For me, it’s different because this year came without that profound feeling worth a word and hundreds more. What it came with was an itch that crept from the center of my palms to the crook of my elbows, and badgered at my neck so that when I craned and stretched and shook off the crumbs of 2014 from dreams and memories stuck to my hair, I am left champing at the bit to manufacture moments that will incite desired profundity rather than wait for it to be shed from some speeding meteorite one fateful evening or so.

The above-mentioned continuous weeks of drinking anticipated for 2014 did materialize and resulted to a majority of the year’s nights, or dawns more precisely, of falling into bed too intoxicated to remember anything (more so write about) and waking up too late to do anything else but rush to work. Entire days were either spent fulfilling whatever waits at my desk or figuring out how to even achieve fulfilling whatever task is at hand. The days and nights endured. I turned to one frivolous evening after the other in a frantic search for joy that only seemed to elude me more as I craved it. Until I allowed the torture of isolation to wash over me. I took to the cliche and on one night I sat alone in a bar, dim and smoky and bleeding with soul-gripping music that too few people listened to, one hand grasping a glass of whisky for dear life while gripping emptiness with the other. The night aged and changed and gave birth to the kind of bliss brought forth by the virtue of choice. It was deep and real and unbreakable exactly because it was how it ought to be, it was what it was though unexpected, though unplanned. At the oddest of circumstances, in quiet solitude, I had finally chosen to be happy and I knew I was. Still am.

The past year failed to live up to plans and realize illusions I conjured in blind hopes of keeping my life together. Instead, it painted a picture that though seemed unlikely was definitely a deliberate stroke of the one who paints things greater than this little dot inside this tiny little frame. Autumn Rhythm feels like the best appropriation, certainly: drip painting, Pollock, autumn, rhythm, the number 30, and the great immense enlightenment culled out of a certain feeling of meaninglessness.

The past year saw a lot of things planned but unrealized. Long lists of wants and should-haves and could-haves crumpled and tossed away. I would have been so utterly disappointed, endlessly scolding myself for failing to living up to a set of to-dos and habits and traditions and expectations I certainly should not deviate from. But then it was also a year of realizing that plans? Pssshh, they’re not all that. Really.

In the past year, what I learned is that the things that will happen by virtue of being the other scenario that fate had intended for you at that moment will be as important as every other thing you had planned or intended or even mildly hoped for. But you must allow it to become that. You must live in that moment as it is and open yourself to its impact rather than getting hung up on what was replaced and failing to even notice what has taken its place instead.

Only if we allow these moments its being will we truly enjoy our every waking breath. Only then will we understand what it means to live life fully – to allow it to happen as it would by letting it happen as it does and not necessarily always according to how we had hoped for or planned.

I have still made plans for this year, more detailed than that of the past year in fact. The difference now is that I know I no longer have to kill myself over boxes left without check marks or standards that may be unmet. Simply put, I am going to rediscover the wonder of being surprised again. And I will learn to surrender myself to the thrill of it.

Last year I yearned for things to make sense. Indeed, it is starting to make much more sense in ways I have not realized before. And, yes, finally the feelings and choices and even non-choices have begun to matter so much more. It all will once you think of the moments you’ve lived rather than the time you’ve lost.

And sleep? Though there is so much delight in being wide-eyed and fully awake for as long as you can muster to be in a day, I am glad to have begun reacquainting myself with the dreams under my pillow once again.

Revisited Reflections: Paris 2013

This was a year ago. Some thoughts are due now, I suppose. 

——————————-

July 28, 2013

Due to certain trivialities that my weaknesses fall prey to, I sometimes forget how wonderful being alive could really be. The little details we often fail to pay attention to are usually what truly matter: the water that sparkles as it emerges and then splashes back upon itself creating ripples of wave and sound, the ink slithering from the pen onto the page, the statue smiling from a building’s elaborate stonework reflected on the stained glass of one of the world’s most famous landmarks — and then the self, in its most realized element, pen and paper in hand under a bright Parisian sky. I am not saying anything new here. Only pointing out that there are things we ought to really notice sometimes. Then everything else that don’t matter will cease to clutter the big picture.

 

we flipped my quarter

<p><a href=”http://vimeo.com/45360365″>That Fresh Feeling – EELS</a> from <a href=”http://vimeo.com/user12442079″>zondagzanger</a&gt; on <a href=”http://vimeo.com”>Vimeo</a&gt;.</p>

words can’t be that strong, my heart is reeling

this is that fresh , that fresh feeling

this is a love song. and this is dedicated to life.

because celebrating life does not end when the last party song is played or when daybreak signals the end of a birthday. not even when the late greetings stop coming at the end of the birthweek or birthmonth even.

you celebrate life  every single morning you wake up, acknowledging the mood of the sky for the day; you celebrate life with every sound you take in from the city and every sigh you breathe back; you celebrate life with every smile you accept and pass on,  every new flavor you discover, every scent you whiff, every sneeze that makes your heart skip a beat, every drip of sweat, every drop of blood, every dribble of drool, and every single blink and breath. you celebrate life with every ounce of love the universe allows you and you allow for the universe.

with every bit of yourself at every second that you can feel, then there is reason to live —  that is what you celebrate

i can only try so much to put the enormity of this joy into words, yet it will never be enough. (meron na ngang kanta, mamaya lalagyan ko pa ng image yan. medyo OA na pero di pa rin sasapat, i’m sure.) one more thing too bad is that i did not even bother to take pictures of that night myself. i was too caught up in the moment of being there with everyone that i failed to capture snapshots that  i could keep in a box to look back on whenever i feel the universe is playing some nasty game on me. but no matter. i can still feel, and will forever feel, with every pore of my body, that electric sensation of being superbly alive in each moment of that night. 

so. 25th birthday huh? and the best i could do is ramble, embed a music video into this delayed birthday-post (which can get me sued, by the way hahaha. but not really very funny.) and attempt (very lamely) to illustrate how much love i feel for life in this petty little corner of mine in cyberspace. 

but you know what? so what?

sometimes we forget how much love the universe actually allows us, showers us, drowns us in. yes, guilty as charged, more often than you could imagine. but now, it’s no longer just about accepting the love we think we deserve, it is knowing there is so much love to go around.  and if only every single person at every single minute is made to feel that love as well as is able to GIVE that love, then it will be a better world. 

in the last week, the people around me have successfully reminded me that it could indeed be a better world. and, yes, that i am loved. and i love you all back.

 so, therefore, let us all resolve to

i have faith that we will succeed. because we know how to actually live.