LIVE

Does this make me a stealer of some sort? But I'm fully telling you where I got this, so maybe not. I got it from tweexcore.tumblr.com through maisieessh.tumblr.com. There you go. What is this, "reblogging"? 

"I have been restless all day. In bed, with ideas, passing thoughts, some scribbled in lists in a diary, some in repeated motions, sites refreshed, moments spent. I’ve been restless and wanting to write about you (& you & you, but maybe not you, maybe I shouldn’t) and there are moments and scenes I want to remember, times I want to bring back, touches and the way eyes say so much.

Everything has been done, everything has been felt, everything has already been written about and besides, even if it happens like that it won’t happen like that. I’ve hardly eaten and I’ve nearly memorized the take out menu but I won’t order anything, I won’t. Instead I’ll check my email again and check the words on the screen to make sure I am not missing anything. Jens Lekman playing and I feel better, at least, no longer burning skin and a body that lacks the strength to move. Homesick and nostalgic and you know what I really want right now?

Nothing complicated. I’d like a coffee or a tea and a table and stars in the sky outside (but it’s New York, we have no stars, not now, not ever), and someone, anyone, a stranger, a past lover, a sought after friend, across the table and I want a conversation, just two human beings with our silly thoughts and fears and dreams and I will probably sip from your drink and laugh about it and I can’t can’t wait for so many things, but I have to wait, and I want to care about one thing then the other and not again, not like this. But then it is always like this (am I making sense? Does it matter?) and I just want to feel something, I want you to feel something and tell me when you do until it is unmistakable.

Do you know what I mean? Is it ever possible to know what someone else means?

And if you wanted to know—I am sick of hearing about your cliched love affairs, your sentimental and structured relationships, and if you wanted to know I am sick of it all and I don’t know if I believe that there is anything better. If you must know I have no idea what I believe except that maybe this is better. Maybe.

Make me stop waiting and wanting and feel. Heart on fire, shut up thoughts in my head. Or rather, don’t stop, time travel, let’s skip these days and dance to the future and redecorate the past. Who cares? Let’s live."

FIRST FEW LINES

"Clare: It's hard being left behind. I wait for Henry, not knowing where he is, wondering if he's okay. It's hard to be the one who stays. I keep myself busy. Time goes faster that way. I go to sleep alone, and wake up alone. I take walks. I work until I'm tired. I watch the wind play with the trash that's been under the snow all winter. Everything seems simple until you think about it. Why is love intensified by absence? Long ago, men went to sea, and women waited for them, standing on the edge of the water, scanning the horizon for the tiny ship. Now I wait for Henry. He vanishes unwillingly, without warning. I wait for him. Each moment that I wait feels like a year, an eternity. Each moment is as slow and transparent as glass. Through each moment I can see infinite moments lined up, waiting. Why has he gone where I cannot follow?"
-- Time Traveler's Wife, Audrey Niffeneger

"In the spring of her twenty-second year, Sumire fell in love for the first time in her life. An intense love, a veritable tornado sweeping across the plains—flattening everything in its path, tossing things up in the air, ripping them to shreds, crushing them to bits. The tornado’s intensity doesn’t abate for a second as it blasts across the ocean, laying waste to Angkor Wat, incinerating an Indian jungle, tigers and everything, transforming itself into a Persian desert sandstorm, burying an exotic fortress city under a sea of sand. In short, a love of truly monumental proportions. The person she fell in love with happened to be 17 years older than Sumire. And was married. And, I should add, was a woman. This is where it all began, and where it all ended. Almost."
-- Sputnik Sweetheart, Haruki Murakami

Time Traveler's Wife's and Sputnik Sweethearts' first few lines. Incidentally, my two favorite books boast breathtaking words right from the start.

THE LIST #1: RULES

1. I'll try to be more flexible with my lists from now on...
2. ... because I noticed I'll never be able to live with rules...
3. ... at least not in this blog.
4. I just finished downloading some e-books.
5. I have finished reading Dear John and I'm sorry to say that I wasn't in any way moved by the love story. Though, I must say, the relationship between John Tyree and his father was very, very touching. For now, that's all I can say about the book.
6. I don't like e-books. I dislike missing the part where I leaf through the pages and smell them. Also, looking at the photo of the author. But I have to put up with them for now because I am a poor unemployed fresh graduate.
7. I guess I'll be calling myself a fresh graduate until I finally get to be employed.
8. This is my current routine: Wake up, eat, internet, sleep. The cycle goes on. That's all.
9. I love tomatoes.
10. And onions.
11. Today I keep imagining the way my book shelf would look like, even though I don't own a single book right now.
12. Where are my books?!
13. And why do I keep writing on this blog, anyway?!
14. ... nobody ever reads this!
15. Sometimes optimism becomes a tedious, tedious job.
16. And all you want to do is to just throw everything away and stop living by the rules.
17. But you can never do that because life is, and will always be, bounded by rules.

HAPPINESS

"... the saddest people I've ever met in life are the ones who don't care deeply about anything at all. Passion and satisfaction go hand in hand, and without them, any happiness is only temporary, because there's nothing to make it last." -- Dear John, Nicholas Sparks

I'm not even halfway through the book and it's already my second day with it. Internet just keeps distracting me, I hate it.

Anyway, the words above are so far the one line from the book that really struck me. It was said by Savannah of the passion that John's father had with coins. I want to write about this line more later, when I'm more creatively inclined to do so. Now, I'm just in awe at how surreal it can be when a line from a book has directly spoken to you.

HELLO FROM JEDDAH

Hi. I'm back here in Jeddah after a month! I can't say I'm not thrilled, what with our new apartment which, by the way, is so far from our previous one that I feel like I'm practically in another city. Though I'm sorely missing everyone back in the Philippines already.

It was a hectic travel, I must stay. Our flight from Cagayan De Oro was at 6:15 in the morning. And we had to rush because we came to the airport thirty minutes before the flight. And then travel time from Manila (at five in the afternoon the same day) to Jeddah took a few hours more than we've expected. We even had to go down King Fahad (?) International Airport in Riyadh for reasons we weren't aware of. When we arrived in the apartment, we (my sister and I) basically dozed off and up until now, we're still recharging, waking up at almost midday and sleeping in the afternoons.

I'm so back and I'm excited to find work. I need to find a job as soon as possible. I have to earn money if I want to pursue my plans of going back to school, you know.

I miss Philippines, though. I miss MSU. I miss my friends and my brothers and cousins and aunts and uncles and nephews and nieces. I definitely miss our cat, Rosho. :( I can't say how much I wanted to spend more time with all of them. But duty calls.

Anyway, I'll write more as soon as we get a decent internet connection here at home. Although, I must say, the connection here is fast. Nakikipanibago, considering the kind of connection we get in MSU.

Hello to summer here in Jeddah! I think it's summer. Sobrang init I don't even want to go out in the morning! :)

I hope to blog more! Inshaallah! Wish me luck job-wise! :)

EMPTIED TO DUST

Chances long gone
Apologies emptied to dust
Conscience buried deep
Homes burned to ashes

We are, oh, we are
Never going to learn
The ways and rules
To keep our promises

We bend as if we'll not break
But like our dreams of sweet endings
We become less than who we truly are
And more of what we never hoped to be.

COLLEGE CLOSURES

On the morning of April 3, 2009, Friday, I marched along the stairs of the University Gymnasium towards my last few steps as a college student. And I would have to say, emotions are much better left unsaid because there are clearly no words to describe how it is to deal with something that is so final yet so unfinished.

Finality is a scary word. It amplifies the sound of old and familiar doors closing and of intimidating and strange ones opening right in front of you. Choices that have been so few before begin to multiply and swell into decisions that are overwhelming enough to turn your once safe corner into this dangerous playground. The world is laid out in front of you and the choice is yours to make: this or that, breakdown or break legs, live or die, love or hate, leave or stay, hold on or let go, grow up or outgrow, right or wrong. Goodbyes become inevitable and much as you wouldn't want to admit it, you need to get out of your comfort zones.

With finality comes the unfinished, where you're back to zero, where the real world is just about to be conquered. And then you realize that nobody ever really stops being a student. Neither a class schedule nor a notebook, a classroom, a class report, a teacher, a pen, a classmate makes the slightest bit of difference. They just undergo some sort of transformation, I guess. They don't disappear. They may be more complicated, we may use different words to name them, but they will continue to exist for us to learn and relearn everything that has been taught to us since that day we uttered our first word. Some of them we may lose only to be replaced by something or someone to continue the task of teaching us.

Learning. It's unthinkable how it never stops, how it will never stop.

***

A journal entry on April 9, 2009.
Resurrected to culminate the graduation month.

NOTE TO SELF

One: Hatred will get you nowhere. The only thing it is capable best of doing is eating at your soul and being-- until such time that you're left with nothing but hatred towards yourself. But sometimes, it slips into our judgment and we find it hard to juggle between hating people, loving people, and just ignoring people. So we choose to hate just because we feel more power within us through it, because we think hating will signify authority over other people. But, again, hating will get us nowhere. As we roll in our beds at night and ponder on the things that happened during the day, we realize that the lives of those we hate are not a bit more miserable just because we hate them. No, they're not fed-up, depressed, and disturbed-- they're not like us, the ones who opted to hate.

Two: Superiority does not, and should never equate to insensitivity and disregard of other people. Arrogance will only lead people to think that you're hiding something from them-- your inferiority. It's easier to throw away words of contempt and disdain when you are sitting on your throne, where people don't have any choice but to look up to you. But that's not exactly the case when you're down there, with the audience and spectators. In the end, the people around you may hustle and bustle when you're around or when you need something; but it may also be that you are nothing to them but a stranger, insignificant and trivial.

Three: Respect is earned. You don't wake up in the morning and see people hovering around your doorstep and nodding at you with admiration. No, that never happens in real life. We wish and pray that people will learn what we are made of and see our worth as a person. But overdoing it ruins everything. Sad to say, we just end up losing our ability to respect ourselves, which happens to be the most important thing in the first place.