My 2012 Wrap-Up

2012 had been a year filled with huge transitions for me. Never exactly a fan of documenting life shifts, I now see the beauty of it. How else do I grasp what is happening to me without putting things into writing?

Q1 of 2012: Graduation jitters 

We almost didn't make it! Our thesis is the perfect example of Murphy's Law. It was difficult to get what we had worked on the entire first semester so we had to reframe the thesis a little bit. The first quarter was spent being frazzled by more delays and disturbing a lot of friends for interview schedules. 

I have my thesis to thank for though because through it I was able to forge new connections while strengthening old ones. My thesis partner and I became closer because of the many depressing nights spent watching an entire year of news reports about the conflict in Mindanao. 

Q2 of 2012: To be or not to be 

I used to think that getting the diploma is the harder one until I had to make a choice on which opportunities to take. I am grateful for finally reaping what I have sown during college but it is difficult to say yes to one thing and say no to the rest. 

Unlike most of the people I know, I don't really have a dream company or a dream job. This made the choosing harder. Eventually, I decided to work in a start-up social news network. 

Q3 of 2012: Home sweet home

Left my first job in favor of something that would bring me back to Davao. It was a full quarter of trouble and fun. 

Trouble because it was the most tumultuous quarter I've ever had that with personal issues getting in the way of my goals. Nevertheless, it was a quarter that brought me to many beautiful places in Mindanao. I was able to go on a land trip that brought me to the very ends of Davao Oriental and Zamboanga City. 

Q4 of 2012: Tough decisions 

This quarter brought me back to my first job and first love. A lot was said about Manila's terrible pollution but I fell in love with the loudness of the city. Everywhere I go, everything screams - the buildings, the cars, the people. 

Taking things slow and looking before leaping were things I've only begun to appreciate when I learned their value the hard way. 

2012 had been exacting, yes, but here's to hoping that 2013 gives me everything I need to run life's race well. 

Surviving goodbye

Days are getting fewer and yet I am growing increasingly restless. I have gotten past the worst and am now breathing again. Despite that, I cannot be calmed.

What remains of my time here is going to be tough for I find myself unwilling to do anything anymore. I may be physically present but my mind wanders. I am seated somewhere well-lighted and spacious with the view of the sky almost black with pollution. I am hearing a lot of noise - talks about the recent political boo-boo, furious tip-tapping of the keyboard as the deadline nears, door opening followed by hurried footsteps.

I am no longer suffocated in the corner nodding wordlessly. Temporary compliance and patient tolerance just to get by until this is finally over is how I survive until I can feel, smile, be me once more.

There is no going back now. I have never felt so free.

The other versions of Whitney Houston's Greatest Love of All

Reminder to self: buy a huge mirror so I can hold a staring contest with myself.

  

Image taken from CJ de Silva's website

After Love

Derek Walcott

The time will come

when, with elation

you will greet yourself arriving

at your own door, in your own mirror

and each will smile at the other’s welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.

You will love again the stranger who was your self.

Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart

to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored

for another, who knows you by heart.

Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,

peel your own image from the mirror.

Sit. Feast on your life.

 

Mortality

Each day, we die a little. How do we keep some of ourselves from dying?

The Business of Love is Cruelty

Dean Young

It scares me the genius we have

for hurting one another. I’m seven,

as tall as my mother kneeling and

she’s kneeling and somehow I know

exactly how to do it, calmly,

enunciating like a good actor projecting

to the last row, shocking the ones

who’ve come in late, cowering

out of their coats, sleet still sparkling

on their collars, the voice nearly licking

their ears above the swordplay and laments:

I hate you.

Now her hands are rising to her face.

Now the fear done flashing through me,

I wish I could undo it, take it back,

but it’s a question of perfection,

carrying it through, climbing the steps

to my room, chosen banishment, where

I’ll paint the hair of my model

Bride of Frankenstein purple and pink,

heap of rancor, vivacious hair

that will not die. She’s rejected

of course her intended, cathected

the desires of six or seven bodies

onto the wimp Doctor. And Herr Doktor,

what does he want among the burning villages

of his proven theories? Well, he wants

to be a student again, free, drunk,

making the cricket jump, but

his distraught monster’s on the rampage

again, lead-footed, weary, a corrosive

and incommunicable need sputtering

his chest, throwing oil like a fouled-up

motor: how many times do you have to die

before you’re really dead?

Tagorre's Brink of Eternity

To hold forever in my hand. To make time my ally...

Brink of Eternity

Rabindranath Tagorre

In desperate hope I go and search for her 

in all the corners of my room; 

I find her not. 

My house is small 

and what once has gone from it can never be regained. 

But infinite is thy mansion, my lord, 

and seeking her I have to come to thy door. 

I stand under the golden canopy of thine evening sky 

and I lift my eager eyes to thy face. 

I have come to the brink of eternity from which nothing can vanish 

---no hope, no happiness, no vision of a face seen through tears. 

Oh, dip my emptied life into that ocean, 

plunge it into the deepest fullness. 

Let me for once feel that lost sweet touch 

in the allness of the universe.