Three miles ran and a day full of smiles later, I’m surrendering to the temptation of writing down whatever it is that comes to mind before I take a shower (I smell pretty terrible right now).
When I was in high school, I feel like I was a lot more open about writing in a certain way that produced something other than just a simple entry – in fact, I collected most of my “blog” entries into a notebook I recently found. Although – looking back on it – it was mostly lame stuff about unrequited attraction, and my own failures in attempting to express through speech the things I usually only wrote. Somehow I’d convinced myself that there was no way to be judged if all I ever did was write – but if I spoke, there was a large chance for regretting something – anything.
Needless to say, I was right. But where’s the fun in keeping it all to myself? I’m a closet histrionic whore.
I speak more than I used to. For a while, I’ve had no choice but to communicate through words – and, surprisingly enough, I call people more than I used to. In the past, I realize that I used AIM and all that to communicate, but now I hardly use that at all. Actually, that’s probably not true. AIM was just a gateway drug and Facebook is the inevitable crack version of it. But even then, I really do call more, or at least I try to.
Some people would probably say that’s also untrue, but generally, I’ve been better with the phone. I was very good with the phone when I was in New York – I swear I’d call everyone all the time – especially Janella! And I used to Skype with Anton and listen to his songs for hours at a time (I don’t know if that ever annoyed any of my roommates, but I don’t think I was ever really around to annoy them anyway). Mostly, I guess, people call me, because they know I really don’t call, but that I’m almost always available to talk if they want to. Honestly, though, I’m less afraid to call people just to talk – I’m going to try to make a better habit of it in the coming years.
I should really stop being available for people to just randomly call, though, because that makes it seem like I’m always putting others’ needs before myself. Or there are those who’d see it another way and think I’m an asshole because I don’t make an effort to call and improve our friendship. Actually, this is the biggest problem for me when I play the Sims, too – I usually play as a workaholic that can’t sustain friendships (or make them) without cheating.
The positive side to all this is that I think I’m a pretty good temporary friend. I honestly enjoy getting to know people, because people are most open during that ‘first impression’ window. That’s the most enjoyable part of friendships. It’s a terrible thing to admit – because most new friendships I’ve incurred are usually these kinds of friendships: fun, fleeting, temporary. That may just be because I have plenty of friends that I’ve known for years and still actively keep in contact with and share a loving, accepting, and utterly ridiculous and fantastic culture of drama-free fun, but I know at some point I’ll have to try and strengthen new relationships to become the kind that will brighten my life just as my tried-and-true friends have been doing for years. Someday there will be a space where being yourself is okay, because no matter what – you’re loved beyond even your own definition of the word.
Come to think of it, almost all my life, I’ve been in spaces where I’ve been my self without much regard for how I was perceived. But keep in mind that the “self” is a malleable term, and whoever I am is whoever I choose to be at the moment. This, admittedly, is a completely different understanding of the concept of “self” that most people (I find) accept. We can be anything and anybody we want to be at any point and time – whoever you want to be, as long as it fulfills you in some way, is who you are. To the world, only your actions will define who you really are – but that space is limited, incomprehensive, and simply a result of whoever it is you end up choosing to become.
I’m riding high on endorphins, so forgive me for entertaining this annoying, Berkeleyan discussion of identity. But, honestly, I don’t think I could feel so fulfilled and confident about my worth as a person if I hadn’t learned the importance of not limiting myself to an identity based on how others perceive me. I can be “true” to my “self” listening to Marilyn Manson and T-Pain, reading manga and Nabokov, or enjoying Batman Beyond and Schindler’s List – who the fuck really cares? None of this shit means you’re a hypocrite – we’re all fundamentalists about a lot of things – it takes a lot more to be a phony. As long as you enjoy the shit, you’re honest – you’re okay.
(Or maybe I’m just afraid of admitting I’m a phony, myself.)
Eh, you know what? Dirt off my shoulder. I’m pretty happy with who I am; I’ve done enough soul-searching to be able to judge my own actions for their merit (or lack thereof), although I always feel bad and guilty if people end up not liking me.
Well, you know what they say – practice makes improvement. That applies to matters of all kinds, especially the self. There's always room for fixing if you're broke.
That’s enough for now. I have to take a shower because my own odor is killing me.
...is a threat to justice everywhere.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
Things like this make it easy to forget the more superfluous facets of everyday life. I have officially moved on. The revolution is gaining ground--unfortunately not a Velvet one, like it was in the Philippines, but here's one point for globalization and what it's done for an oppressed people. I hope the bloodshed is worth the change in the end.
hopin’ you'd notice
The way that I like to
Have you around
Today I went to Patterson for my nephew’s birthday and my uncle’s housewarming with Ryan Leslie’s “Addiction” constantly in my head, which doesn’t particularly help me right now, but what can you do? It’s a really good song, probably because he’s a good musician. It helps that he also sounds a lot like John Legend, with a better grasp on hipper beats. I still love John Legend more though.
I need to get over my unhealthy attraction to toxic bachelors, John Legend included. Although, it probably can’t be helped in a society like ours, where the existence of pure fidelity is on the same plane as the existence of Bigfoot or perfection. I think I still have a while to go before I can fully escape my innocent and simplistic view on life, although part of me is wont to do so. I think the attraction stems from the mystery of the lifestyle—the wild, uninhibited embracing of physical human interactions that I am incapable of experiencing. Actually, that’s probably untrue, although it does seem like the most obvious explanation. I think the only real attraction is my wanting to pin down those personalities and the experiences that shape such a mindset. Bachelors are interesting people to think, write about, and discover.
The problem with writing the way I do is I write with a robust sense of hope when life continues to teach me that its better lost to cynicism—the kind of hope that translates even to how I approach my own life. However, I’ve also found that disappointment is suffered and survived either way. It takes little for me to “get over” something in comparison to others now because of my one and only relationship, which tested perhaps every aspect of my sanity during the length of it. The part I hate isn’t the falling through; it’s the calm before the storm—of confusion, of misunderstanding—and the aftermath of regret. I suppress the regret to the point where it attacks me unnecessarily during strange times of the day—like a whiff of bad breath strong enough to tear a hole in my stomach. Then I have to mentally slap myself until I can forget again, and remember how genuinely good my life is. That’s hope’s role.
My cousins warned me not to hope. One of them hoped for 7 or 8 years and got nothing in return but disappointment and heartache. But they also said it depends on what you’re hoping for.
I think, in the end, I don’t mind hope. Everything I do contains such a strong element of it—perhaps because of my youth, but regardless, that’s what it is. A hope to unearth a kind of perfection in a flawed world. A hope to discover truths about herself and those around her.
I’m pretty tired to say little else, but I’m sure you’re happy that I’m sparing you any more kitschy-ness. Good-night, then.
This poem is easily the best of the set:
a residue
stuck in mid-flight,
wickedly sheared,
dreaming of the
dactylozoid.
turned away,
fashioned to stop
on zero,
flamed out,
hacked at,
demobilized.
where is common
laughter?
simple joy?
where did they
go?
what a vanishing
trick,
that.
even the skies
snarl.
what rancor,
what
bitterness...
the cry of the
smothered
heart,
now
remembering
better
times
wild and
wondrous.
now the sad
grim
present
cleaves.
Today, I kept grappling with memories that now only induce a decent amount of shame--enough to make me randomly burst out, "Fuck"s and "It's okay, it doesn't matter"s. My sister was thoroughly annoyed. I, for the most part, was bent on forgetting; yet, as the day went on, I only kept recalling. It'll fade at some point--but for now, I'm helpless against my own emotional masochism.
I'm doing pretty well, though. I think the more I internalize this, the faster the healing becomes. After all, I can't spend every day whining about the same old thing. Writing helps clarify the fact that my own sadness is an annoyance better left jarred in a poem, rather than hanging in the air.
I just hope my thoughts now catch up to my common sense when the time comes. I always do what I want, but I'm not sure if what I want to do is really compatible with the sensible thing to do. The road less traveled by, apparently, does make quite the difference. Whether good or bad--well, I guess there isn't really a good or bad, just an is. It will be.
I'm trying my hardest to tiptoe around the real matter at hand. But thankfully, others have written on the subject far more beautifully than I ever could.
One Art
The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.
---Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.
-Elizabeth Bishop
"You look good. You look like you." -Simon Stein, In Her Shoes
Part of that quote resonates.
Saw this entry I wrote, April 27, 2006. Not too far a date. Not too foreign a feeling after all. Is my life really just a string of self-fulfilling prophecies?
It's funny, and I tell myself every time that this sort of thing is just God's way of symbolizing a coincidence. It seems to be a really effective trend in my life so far. And the thing is, I always, always know that it's bound to head in the not-so-satisfying direction. Maybe it's also a reason to get as far away as possible. Seems like the greatest idea to me now.
Just to forget.
Just to rebel.
But mostly just so I won't have to face it any more. What's the worst thing about a failure? A disappointment? It's facing it nearly every day. It's having the remnants stuck to you like a second skin. It's the routine of having to try and desensitize myself for months before I'm able to feel like I can feel something other than loss or frustration over my own drawbacks and the seriously irritating ironies that persevere and continue to be the only consistent and faithful things in my life.
I never liked where this was heading. And now the light's out once more and I'm left to revel in the pieces. I'll count them all wrong. Forget to carry a zero, or something. And now it's coming back; hasn't it gone too far? I was trying to help, but I guess I pushed too hard.
I'm trying to amuse myself somewhat because this will have been the fourth time I've had to write about this thing that I can't even really talk about without feeling angry at myself and at people who don't deserve my secret rage. And I won't talk openly about it because it's not fair. It's not fair to me or them or the world to even know about it.
But I do have to write this right now, before I find myself gripping the seat, unable to form any coherent sentences or thoughts. And then I'd lose the sanity I tried really hard to preserve.
This time around, I won't let it bother me as much. I saw the situation for what it was before any of this, admitted the facts, and I think I'm handling it better than I did before because I trained myself to just understand. To already know.
It just... sucks, you know?
Well, I guess you don't. That's okay. Thanks for reading.
Sorry, I can't seem to go to sleep even though I haven't gotten any at all. I probably won't be awake at all tomorrow, if my sanity has anything to do with it.
All the canyon lines say, "Nevermind, nevermind;"
Sunset says, "We see this all the time. Never mind."
---
It's about time that I started writing again, for my own sake. I haven't really blogged since 2006, which I now realize is an incredibly long time for me to have stayed away from myself. It was a nice reprieve -- not writing in a journal meant connecting more with others outside of myself, out of my own labyrinthine means of expression about whatever the hell should be bothering me. (You see, the messiness of language through metaphor or vagaries allows me to be quintessentially honest with the reader without giving away in too great detail all the numbing regularity of what it is I'm discussing.) A lot of things have changed in my life in three years, but most of the changes occurred in only a given six months, which is strange. But I guess there's always those sparkled moments in life full of change that makes the wait worthwhile--whether it be two and a half years, or ten, or thirty. Almost always it doesn't seem welcome at first--until you learn the lesson and move the fuck on.
The problem with lessons, though (as Lewis Carroll once said), is that they lesson from day to day.
Get it?
I wrote two poems recently -- not my best work, but I have to start somewhere. I'm a little rusty at finding the right way to illustrate the dankness of what I feel right now. However, everything outside of the problems I address in both poems are the things that are keeping me from ultimately crumpling up into a pile of pathetic: that being my new position with the Pilipino Academic Student Services as the Transfer Outreach and Retention Coordinator and my ambitions to write an Honors Thesis on the Supreme Court and its role in the racial isolation in the United States. Both will take up a significant amount of my time, and hopefully, away from the useless heartaches of everyday disappointments.
And a note: I write as a form of catharsis -- forced to by an invisible hand and the stomach's-full of word-vomit I've built up in attempting to suppress in my own, however gaudily adjectival, way the things and moments that break my heart, that stir my smiles. As anyone who knows me well would know -- who I am when I write seriously, forcefully, is not the same person that speaks without style, tact, or abandon in person. This is little more than a convenient canvas for me to pour out what exists of the little girl who clung to the words of Rimbaud and cummings and Kafka and Mann, trying in vain to replicate the power and the genius behind the works of her masters. And now, this will be the woman traipsing according to impulse the workings of her careless soul.
the problem with first love is that it never fades
i used to think it a sorta fairytale,
but it was two years of nightmare -
recent self-studies have engendered
an epoch's worth of negative feedback,
and yet many anonymous feelings remain.
almost as if being worlds apart
had in the end done more good than bad,
and the mending of a too-quilted spirit
become too common a routine to cause pain,
allowing the anonymous feelings to remain.
i can't for the life of me feel angry,
or sad, or heartbroken, as i did then
when i tried my hardest to well-maintain
the careful balance of you above myself
so the anonymous feelings would remain.
and still every step forward carries you:
an action so workless, so mundane,
and a memory hits me like a careless breeze
that booms like a thunderstorm, and
instantly i regret how you no longer rem...
...no.
i don't.
or, i guess, i won't.
just an epitaph for things i can't rein
in any longer. a bittersweet good-bye,
but they probably all are. someone once
told me that life isn't perfect - but,
things are, this way. in this case.
such feelings leave little else to say.
---
the first delirium
it's the sound that eats your sinuses alive
with the snaking aroma of a demurred defeat,
both at once shaking you stiff and wringing
you dead. it's all the same to your head,
which never fails to be so contrived
as to cause a dangerous locomotive
bulldozing of the ribcage; after all,
nothing is as glamorous as a whiff of ever-
so-genuine bile rising up in the delicate
curve of your throat as you try to get
the words (goddamn the words) outright;
out right where you want them: hanging like
Christmas lights scattered across the
fleshy insides of the Amazon, all green
and yellow and the like, glimmering with
evil, love, and the calamity of life,
none of which befit even the slightest sinew
inside my palm. they're jigsaw against the
clean, linear panorama i'd drawn up for myself
not too long ago during a particularly
vitriolic affectation of the mark of the ram
on my soul. this is where shames so great
are repressed to fatality only to meet
the sincerity of a someone wishing only
to find good reasons to smile once more
--to enjoy yours with saccharine candor.
but in the absence of such a discovery,
not much is left but an ineluctable stench
that reflects as a mirror would a horror
too terrifying to view every contour:
"...sorry."
oh, poor little fool!
---
And never doubt reality, even when it hurts.
