to live

good friend k sent me a message unexpectedly about the purpose of living...

"the purpose of life is to be alive, not to gather objects, achieve, accumulate successes, or forge your body to fit a mold. it's simply to be alive. to touch, feel, sense, hear, see, and live in a dynamic flow of whatever arises in the moment; to accept the wild and crazy thoughts that go through your mind, your animal nature, your wisdom, the fears that arise and grip your chest, the laughter that brings tears, and the joy that takes you beyond yourself. to be alive is to meet and accept every part of yourself - the scuzzy, sweet, passionate, talented, or slow...? charlotte kasl (2005)"

...

just recently, he began noticing really small things about himself and his life that seem to fall and fit into fine niches in place -- still without a clear direction and purpose but clearly with a sincere intent to pursue the self-journey of what he believed to be his lost soul.





he always felt an unexplainable sadness even at times when the occasion called for a festive disposition. in his eyes, he knew persons he was talking to were part of an unexplainable feeling of deja vu -- it was as if once before he had met them. in most places he went to, he felt that he was just going back home but to a home he had never been in this present life. everything he left, he had to bear an unbearable loneliness of leaving a place that he felt cradled him to knowing -- perhaps, lifetimes before. it must be the interconnectedness of all lives on earth, as he heard oftentimes before. or the force at work as he had sufficiently understood from jedi films. the deja vu's, however, were too strong in a sort of dreamlike recurrences that there must have been some sort of a confederation of past lives into his present one. the feeling of somehow knowing peoples and places without any rational explanation was unbearably strong, he did not feel prepared head-strong to confront that his past may have already come to haunt him in this present life.





... and a pot spills menacingly beside him. he awoke from a deep sleep, in time to remember the child and the woman in the dream, and only to find out that both the child and the woman actually belonged to a culture of a community he visited days after. it must have been a foreshadowing of what was to occur where in the future he would come to feel the unexplainable feeling of deja vu with the child and the woman, as he usually felt in most of his minded years. it could have been a subconscious trace of a past life.





for surely, the people he met were just too familiar - were they too many coincidences in a present life or just fate that seemingly seeks to binds connections from past lives... he was not all too sure about all these. as he noticed he had been having a hard time recognizing faces in the streets with his glasses, he felt he was seeing more clearly inside of him and the simplicity he wanted that most people have come to accustom against. he must see clearly now and find his ways back to his homes.

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left

empty
unknowing
whether they have seen their flight
in nature's skies,
or in strangers' eyes they succumb
in early retirement
to heaven's light

blue

i am reminded
nature leans
in favor of creating
likeness
in women and blooms

playing in reverse

He was strangely calm when the phone message came that time when night and morning intertwined. It caught him dreaming still but nearly awake enough to notice and silence the beeping of the phone. The dream was far too interesting for his exhausted mind from previous days' excessive workings. He slept until a whiff of warm pancakes in maple syrup opened his eyes to the morning. The memory of the phone message hanging by a thread, he grabbed the phone from the bed clutter near his feet-side and curtly replied "bakit?" (why?) and went back honoring sandman's images of gliding through several laps in a pool, deja vu's of a previous day's seemingly miserable discussion, and the woman who never ceased to challenge the stutterer in him.







Years ago he was always found stuttering by the very thought of courting women who sparked the interest of his heart, but never did he spare an opportunity to pursue them, much as he enjoyed more looking and reciprocating his feelings from afar... at a distance. He knew there are risks involved in relationships and did not want pain to be a part of it. He was content that from this emotional distance he will still be able to be a part of these women's lives and form lasting impressions. This was enough to fulfill him, enough to satisfy his longings. Fly-by-night women satisfied his urges.







Witnessing them fall for others hurt him, but it was the lack of intimacy for another woman which seemed to have the deepest bearing. He knew, in one way or another he would have to make a move or grow old always shifting from one flower to another, wilting in the process without his own rose with him to grow. He was afraid to fly and he knew it. He also knew he was not ready to learn it, and the dream of loving was sideswiped from his ambitions to live.







Until that same morning, in a sudden epiphany upon his second waking, the message recurred in his mind. It was clear to him what the message meant but the reasons behind it intrigued him gravely. Nature taught him two basic reactions when faced with threat, either to fight or to flee. The paranoia the message created was almost enough to trigger his defense to run away, were it not for his resolve to stop playing safe and start taking calculated risks in life.





"Gimingaw ko nimo." (I miss you.)





It was still about taking calculated risks, true, and he thought this still entitled him to play it safe until he was able to plan the perils involved. He also needed to reconsider his feelings for other women he has feelings for, to make the playing field fairer for all. There is the one who makes him stutter, and another with whom he enjoys discussing about the world's usual and crazy realities, another seems to awaken the creative genius in him, while another makes him feel human and wanted. Little did he know that the game of love was no ordinary simple game and playing it would hurt him more. At the very least, he was taking his first steps again to fly...

"I would believe only in a god who could dance. And when I saw my devil I found him serious, thorough, profound, and solemn; it was the spirit of gravity ---- through him all things fail. Not by wrath does one kill but by laughter. Come let us kill the spirit of gravity. I have learned to walk: ever since, I let myself run. I have learned to fly. Now I am light, now I fly, now I see myself beneath myself, now a god dances through me." (friedrich nietzsche)

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peri-purple shoots

oft in relative towering height
small kisses gleam
these quivering lips
in sidewards'
quiet
ecstasy,
little women
in peri-purple shoots


(crac 04-01-06)

i gave up years ago

at chances to settle down.

as day forwards to another day
and night bids farewell into an august morning flight,
your face beckons me
to stay
and frolick in our minds' limitless,
and in my mind's ever resuming longingness
for you.
i gave up years ago but your presence hangs,
i,
in a tightrope balance to languish in forlorn images
of ---
you,
in a deft of illumination,
takes delight in the arms of another.

while the day bids good
night brings moon's favor for the non-waking of this
seemingly lost
candle-light.

cac (7-19-2006)

...

love was always evading. possibilities were like butterflies disappearing in an instant flutter to the wild. somehow he detested being cornered... the possibility of dating, or being trapped inside with a couple who believed albeit, un-subconsciously, that they were made for each other since the heavens hurled them out of kingdom come. he had come to realize that he can never be found, much more, he to find, the life that everyone ideally finds. somehow he too detested realizing himself the truth that, for end's sake, he still denied.

"a?" he imagined she would have said in a low tender voice.

he would have done nothing, and would have waited for her to come over to him and kneel by the bed to say, "what is it? are you sick?"

no answer. her insistence would not have made him say anything until, "are you depressed?" would have struck him and entirely changed the realm of things as things would clock-work in his denying mind.

"are you depressed?" he repeatedly thought over and over in his mind as the woman he started to believe was real slowly collapsed with his sanity, and all else, except himself, lay wasted as each affirmation his lips muttered, in resentful tears, slowly drained the long weeks of accummulated tension from the room.

...

...

he whimpered, and then cursed faintly a few times in his head, not so much because he cared about the paperwork or the money as because he needed to maintain his good nerves. to do this he needed a degree of cooperation from the world around him.

truly he agreed to himself, the problem was money and the humiliation one suffers without it. each new gadget, high-priced durable apparel, and moderately-efficient yet dashing SUV he saw was a torment. he never was covetous, and he didn't feel so much of envy. but without money he felt hardly a man, and felt as if he couldn't find a woman to complete his sense of agency... a woman... the foundation of manhood... apparently, his manhood, having felt the loneliness seep in his being for the longest time and the desperation to feel the intimate warmth of a woman to cup his impetus.

"hey you're not alone. you have friends around you but you keep them at a distance, which is why you feel lonely." a message came to meet him dully through his phone.

he believed, mind over his fate he was fated to live a life of distance and loneliness, haunted by his ghosts of what could have been, being, that he is, incapable of intimacy.

"hey don't worry. my parents went home this noon so i'm alone. my flight is on wednesday afternoon. ah this is what i truly miss about the big city, i can be lost and anonymous in the crowd."

"oh. but you are fortunate you can experience both worlds, and get to compare the good things each has to offer. really, i am happy for you." he realized he sounded neurotic and seriously hoped she did not notice that his depression was starting to hit in. "by the way, where are you eating? and what do you intend to do before your return?"

"i was eating at the bistro. i'm set to meet my buddies for lunch tomorrow then i have to meet my boss on tuesday before i leave for the province. i'm on my way home, don't want to risk the weather."

"i like it when the storm's bad. i always get this fantasy of getting stranded alone someplace far." the idea of being a stranger in someplace unfamiliar, he always lived in the city with short glimpses of the unfamiliar during work travels. the thought pretty much gave him a sincere interest, less of a hard-on.


...

a path that eventually we have to take

after coming of age
to start
life
anew,
i graduate.
i pass.

but

where do
i
go?

i managed to
open the door,
said to lead me to dreams
(and riches and prestige
that any man will ask for)
but,
to find
an open field
that leads to nowhere
i
know.

after coming of age,
i know not where to go.
i heave the door
and find
the road that leads back
to
my home.

a path that eventually we have to take
to mask ourselves in the comfort
that always leads in return
or find
the will
in open fields
to explore.



crac (04-05-06)

daily service record

from the eighth to the eight
morning til night
in between
unglued eyes
six minutes each mark
valued as billing
time
sublime
as per each ringing
the phone sets' mark
dreams cling, tire, die
in between
night til morning drops
stops

i set with the sun

as i gradually prepare for the night that inevitably comes
the sun
in its retreat
amidst heaven's fog of war:

taints the darkness
with spilt blood
born
by the million revolutions of our lives
that inevitably ends;

at sembrano's shoulder
i set
with the sun's waning interest.