Letters to X: Gravity

X, 


I will start at a random point in our story, two years after, if that's okay with you. 
 
I was alone in a very hot room with a singular fan humming silently in the background. Few clothes litter the empty bed across mine. I have a huge window that gives me a terrific view of the whole island alight in the evening. Except for a few sobs, everything was just as it should be, still. 
 
It's my first week in a new island. My mission was to forget you. 
 
A year after that, I am crouched in my room back at home, still crying the same tears.  


Y. 

One day vs. Forever

From collider.com

How wonderful must it have been if we meet our one true love early in life and know that they are for us. It is a terrifying thing to face the world alone. Who says we need forever? I think all we need is just those brief moments with these people who could truly make us happy. And those little moments, although transient and fleeting make it worthwhile to wake up every single day.

Uking it out

A gibberish rendition of Obladi Oblada by The Beatles

I went over uke renditions of some pop songs when it suddenly hit me. I used to live like the music a uke makes. Before I was velvet violin , I was sunny uke.

I guess some of life's realities have a way of messing with our disposition. Then again, there is always a choice. I find it ridiculous how I had spent most of my time the past few weeks mulling over things I cannot change yet when I should be having fun.

Months ago, I planned on learning how to play the uke. Somehow, that little plan had been buried beneath piles and piles of other worries. I'm glad I remember it now. Remembering... Speaking of which, while forgetting is hard, remembering is just as difficult. After all, you would only realize that you have forgotten something after you have remembered it.

Like tonight. I remembered how I loved the uke and how one fine day last October I went to a music store and hungrily ran my hands through the uke's body.

Next pay day, I buy a uke and work on learning how to play it.

True love and coming alive

*This is a writing assignment for my Corporate Communications class from last semester

The only time that I saw our professor turn pinkish with excitement was when she, albeit briefly, talked about how she found Hyun Bin to be both a handsome and talented actor. As she was preparing to introduce the mystery speaker for that day, I cannot help but notice how she was giving off that Hyun Bin glow. What is it about this mystery speaker that pleased her so much?

Hearing about the speaker’s credentials had me feeling for my jaw for fear of it falling on the floor!

There clearly was a discord about what I imagined an accomplished writer should look like and what I saw when Marivi Soliven Blanco was called to take the floor. On the outside, she resembled those elegant ladies who hosted tea parties and spent vacations in chichi resorts somewhere in the Maldives. To my chagrin, Mrs. Blanco is not only a prolific writer with several Palancas and a novel to be published by Penguin, but also a very supportive wife who readily came with her husband wherever he went, thereby putting her career on the line. Is this even humanly possible?

Her talk was riveting for she is one of the few living proofs that challenging what is conventional can prove to be fruitful in the long run given the right attitude. She took us to different points of her life and showed us how everything has come together in the end to make her the writer that she is today. While she admitted to have “sold out” in her first few years after college, she has nothing but praises for the advertising world that trained her to “think in scenes” which would later help in her creative outputs. Shortly after quitting her lucrative job to pursue her passion for creative writing and just when she was getting noticed for it, she left the Philippines to be with her husband who happened to be based in the United States. To have taken the risk of losing her momentum to follow a loved one was alien to me. I have read it in books but I never really expected for it to be a valid choice in real life.

Whenever I am home for the holidays, my grandfather who I call Papu, is tireless in reminding me that although a career can give me a sense of accomplishment, it is not the only thing that would make me “come alive”. I never understood it until I came face to face with the epitome of what Papu was talking about. How Mrs. Blanco chose to live her life is not something that a lot of people can do.

In a field with roughly a thousand hopefuls, she stood out and even managed to make a lifelong career out of it while being a mother and a wife all rolled into one. Her consistency and discipline, the same winning combination that made Sir Sandy defy the law of gravity and succeed in the financial world, made her shine in her chosen field. “Being nice and hardworking apart from the talent”, shared Mrs. Blanco is the way she did it. Humility by “understanding that not everything you write is wonderful” is how she improved her craft eventually gaining critical acclaim in the Philippines and now set to rub book spines with the likes of Nietzsche.

But what I really gleaned from her talk is that an accolade is just the cherry on top of the cake that is “finding the thing that works for you”.