ditto, elizabeth bishop.

at the risk of putting up another emo post [yet again! eeep, i'm on a streak], i'm sharing this poem i came across while reading a melissa bank novel. i may as well have had written this poem myself. if it's possible for your spirits to rise & fall at the same time, then i believe mine just went through that exact (non)rise/(non)fall a moment ago.


One Art by Elizabeth Bishop

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.

same old, same old

it gets tiring, crying yourself to sleep each time. quite frankly, the self-pity is pathetic and enough is enough.

Detached and grateful

Someone once told me that if things don't go according to plan, then your plan was wrong. From the depths of my heart, once again, thank you, Lord, for showing me that I was wrong.

I don't know what I did right to deserve a second chance, but thank you, Lord, for giving me the wake-up calls of wake-up calls.

Thank you, Lord, for showing me the difference of passion and obligation.

Thank you, Lord, for showing me that instead of trying to outmatch the pace of other clueless zombies like me, I only actually had myself to compete with.

Thank you, Lord, for making me realize that accomplishing greats feats in all other things pale in comparison to the satisfaction I get whenever I finally get over a baby step for something I sincerely love to do. It's the difference between contentment and pure, utter bliss.

Thank you, Lord, for showing me which things were actually worth losing sleep over. I still have a bit of trouble detaching from my old 'programmed' ways, but I'm getting there and frankly, I'm surprising myself every step of the way.

For all these, thank you, Lord -- thank you, thank you, thank you for saving my life.

hep. take a breather.

i find that life comes in phases. one time, you'll find life so uneventful and boring that you begin to nitpick and question everything. next, you'll find that life hurls everything but the kitchen sink at you that you just want to zone out. bored. nitpick. battered. zone out. chill. think of what's next.

i'm somewhere in that zoning out part right now. recently, to say that things have been chaotic is to put it nicely. i've never thought of myself as that resistant to change, but when it haunts you at home, at work, when you're with your friends, it can be a tad overwhelming. gawd, for crying out loud, i've got this 3 gigantic zits in my face (oo, mayabang na, but when i get zits, that's a very bad sign.) i've already got them named -- BEA, youtube and mike (oo mike, i'm holding you responsible for this. you owe me pond's. =p) but i say, boo-hoo, have a cry over it, be a bratinella if you need to, but then move on. zone out and chill. speak in abbreviated sentences.

as with any muni-muni moment, i usually take a trip down nostalgia lane to calm myself down. i got reoriented with friendster and multiply, and retroed while reading all my past posts and testimonials. it was kind of funny, actually, when i got to reading the oldest testimonials -- these were posts by my high school friends. if you were only getting to know me for the first time, you'll get the impression that i was this patient, uber-nice and perky person who would never complain about anything. i could already hear my officemates' eyebrows hitting the roof. "Si Ish?! Patient?? On what alternate universe?!"

i know i've changed my stance in a lot of ways, but it never really sinked in this much. i guess in challenging times, you get to know who you are, who you want to be, or at least who you were all along. for the record, i've never really believed that soul-searching for who you are would solve anything -- what mattered was that you're happy with whoever you are at a given time.

so that brings us to the question -- am i happy with who i am now? the reborn brat who needs to put on the brakes and grow up? (fyi, i'm still debating with myself if that's a need.) i found that i may be weaker and more vulnerable now than the disciplined thinker i was then. but there's something with being a feeler that's just draws you in; i guess any brand-new feeling is impossible to resist. well, one thing's for sure -- i'm happy that FINALLY i'm able to detach myself from my work (o SWAT, paki-baba uli ng kilay.) now i understand that work is just work. i finally got it through my thick head that work does not define me. big feat, trust me.

so there goes zone out; this is probably the chill phase. so, what's next?

wala lang

kapag wala kang nakikita, ang nakikita mo ay wala.

kapag wala kang ginagawa, ang ginagawa mo ay wala.

kung gayon, ang wala ay binubuo ng mga mumunting pangyayari o gawain na tila walang kabuluhan. o hindi binibigyang kabuluhan.

doon marahil gawa ang black hole. ang black hole na mas malapit kaysa sa ating akala.

halfway between petix and motmot

i've been known to corrupt the sanity of my peers; i guess i just have that effect. i highly doubt i was put on this earth for humanity's enlightenment. in fact, i highly doubt that anyone was put on this earth for anything. once you get rid of the notion that we're here for some higher reason other than our species just refuses to die out, then it liberates you to actually just live. just exist. and just die out like any normal being. none of that messianic gibberish.

how can one feel numb?

it's a sad, futile cycle, really. we prod, we stress, we overcompensate -- only to find a void still there, which eats away from inside out. sorry, i know it's so emo, but i can't seem to shake it off for now.

it's both amusing and sad, actually, how articulate we get when we're down.

------------

they say luck is the lazy man's excuse for not working for anything.

well, come to think of it, yeah. the only question is if the lazy are whiny, or if the optimistic are delusional.

astounding.

Most times, I take it for granted, but I just realized that I really am surrounded by AMAZING people.

For example, to my sister Ate Ting -- you're amazing. You have the biggest vault of patience out of everyone I've ever known, and you're not stingy with it. You never asked to look after a little sister like me, and I know for a fact that I can be quite a handful. You know when to just be agreeable, and even more, you know when to give me a good smack in the head. You turned not only me, but also Ikay, into Photoshop nuts (and I haven't even gone around to teaching you the guitar or HTML yet, after all these years. You're simply amazing.

To my teammates, Mike & Jan -- you're amazing. As I've already told Jan, you two are among -- if not the biggest -- the factors why I probably am still sticking around. I never really saw myself in something so corporate, but you guys make it seem homey -- no, actually, it's more like a playground. You guys are amazing.

To my partners in goofiness and all other crimes, Rhea & Liz -- you're amazing. There's never been a time when you guys failed to crack me up. Yet, even when I'm in the lowest of lows, you guys are also the same ones I turn to. I consider myself soooo lucky to find buddies with the same wavelength. You're amazing.

To Bugsy -- need I say it? You're amazing. We all are so into our own things, yet we never let each other forget that we still have kindred spirits out there, egging us on. We have something time nor distance can't break. You're amazing.

To my parents, you're amazing. Putting up with a know-it-all brat like me is a feat. You accept with without question -- even in my ugliest moods, even if I shut you out, even after I lose my phone for the nth time. You're amazing.

And what's better is I know there are lots more amazing people not yet mentioned in this post. Hay. I should have posts like these more often.

theory of relativity, and then some

one guys chose cryptography for our MS reporting, and he defined gibberish as 'of unintelligible meaning'. i couldn't have put it better.

it's funny how relative everything else. how something 'unintelligible' to one holds a whole lot of meaning to another. how something trivial to some is the the whole world to somebody, that he obsesses over immortalizing words and unleashing them for everyone to see, when he had no intention of sharing it anyway.

buzzed

It's odd that I find noise in my life comforting. Maybe it just confirms what I've known all along -- that I'm an escapist by nature. Filling my head with things to do, then pointlessly mulling over getting them done ironically aids to keep my sanity. Because there are worse things out there than noise. It's called TRUTH. And it bites.

bangag. don't ask.

Where does one get wisdom?

Never really been a fan of self-help books. I'm more interested to learn from real people's encounters, but all these are reactive. Are we doomed to get messed up first, then learn later?

We all wish that it would be that easy -- that answers fall into your lap, that the signs you ask for would be as obvious as MMDA's 'Walang Tawiran, Nakamamatay', that every life-altering choice you would have to make could be decided by using some neat, nifty algorithm.

But then again, if it were that easy, then the point would be lost. I guess this is why of all species, we were given minds that can handle complex thought, so that we can cope with inherently being complex beings. Frankly, I wish God gave me a stronger heart instead, so that I can go out there and make the moves that matter, instead of just cowering and surrendering to the hammock of complacency we've hung for ourselves.

Why is it so hard to sit still? Why do we always have to question the state of our lives? And why is it that it is almost always certain that the answer will be unsatisfactory?

Sana monk na lang ako sa Tibet. Paging inner peace. Is it only I that think that I seriously need a shrink? Haha.

Don't get me wrong. I am certain that I lead one of the more interesting lives. It's one of the millions of more interesting lives out there. The fact is both uplifting and disconcerting at the same times, not to mention enlightening in so many ways.

ish is crankyish.

it took an hour of wearing myself out on the treadmill to finally knock some sense into me.

i actually thought i got past my 'moody' phase. i think i have anger management issues. one time, i'm calm -- the next, i'm nuts. at times, when the peeves rear their ugly heads, all caution & rationality goes out the window. i don't even realize when i'm indulging myself in uber-crankiness, and i just blurt out whatever comes into mind. it's like one messy hangover, and the guilt afterwards is hell.

i mean, i don't get violent, but i for all people should know that words could do worse damage. this is for you, all the people who had been unfortunate enough to bump into me during one of my sungit attacks. i sincerely apologize.

sometimes, i get through okay, or i just get away with it. come to think of it, believe it or not, i'm actually an uncomplicated person. it's just when things like pressure, expectations and feeling come into the equation that i lose grasp of sense. if only things were meant to be uncomplicated. if only questions came with answers. if only we had a unified sense of good. if only good was inevitable. if only your crush had a crush on you too, those kind of things.

damn it, someone please fix me.

don't mind me, i'm just rambling

life /lIf/ (n): the condition of living or the state of being alive; the quality that distinguishes a vital and functional being from a dead body

If your life consists of just getting through the day's and hoping that tomorrow will bring less drudgery, would that qualify as life?

If your life sans eclat would boil down to simply counting down the hours until you go pffft, would that count at all?

Again, don't mind me, I'm just rambling. It's just ironically, now that I can call the shots to where I want to be headed, I haven't the faintest idea on where to go, let alone what to do. How my life has simmered down to this state of limbo, I could not fathom. It's silly, really --- I don't know if it's just hormones or some long-suspected clinical condition, but sometimes I feel so lost and alone, that I could just spontaneously burst into tears. Now, that could be awkward if I bawl in the middle of typing. Sheesh.

Maybe it's just because recently, nothing has recently made me happy, as in with the true sense of bliss. Nothing bad really happened, but nothing that good, either. They say life is supposed to be this big adventure, this roller coaster. Then you discover that it's really more of a Rialto --- scream all you want, but it's just as real as you would want it to be.

Oh well, enough whining.

----------------------

Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday. I'll keep that in mind.

we

I have belief in my generation. We are to be the success story which our nation awaits. We have all the capacity to be -- the right mix of idealism, cynicism, brilliance, and heart. Throw in today's myriad of opportunities.

Bear in mind, we also can be the nation's ultimate tragedy and disappointment. Let's make sure it won't be so.

petix mode

Amidst half-sleepiness (or half-awakedness, if you're an optimist), one question dawned upon me earlier, one which I feel is long due: what's so wrong with being ordinary?

As a child, my parents never bugged me to get high grades. Yet I did choose to drown myself in deadlines, contests, responsibilities and even more responsibilities. I have no idea how I turned out to be a total square.

Yet now, all I want is to, well, the word that comes to mind is float. No more dreams of grandeur, or wide recognition. Just being. Just chilling.

Sometimes it alarms me that I don't have any plans at all. Haven't really thought of career advancements or the like. Don't really care if I get moved up any time soon. Nada. Totally unlike the grade-schoolish me.

I guess the pressure wore off once I stopped the lame attempts to impress people (call it a knee-jerk bunso thing). Once I discovered that I am indeed innately selfish, that only I could define happiness for me, all hangups wore off. And I am glad for that -- although I wasted all the cranial capacity God has given me, the realization did wonders for my mental health.

I admit, this new outlook can be a little scary (what if regret finding myself amounting to nothing at all? what if i just become another echo?). The good thing is, once I realize that all the questions begin with 'what if', they get auto-dismissed by this new outlook too. Convenient.

I remember reading somewhere that the world doesn't really need more successful people. What it really needs are happy people to be a happy place. I guess I'm still doing my part after all.

that prince

hmm, i think i deserve a good whack on the head, right about now. ikay made us watch this new koreanovela dvd called 'Princess Hours'. i'd rather watch a rene requestas film.

but lo and behold, by nightfall, my sister and i were marathoning up to episode 8. never mind the bad (and i mean really BAD) subtitles; i had to summon all my context clues skills. but man, we were hooked. especially me. whenever the prince's cousin comes out, i literally SHRIEK. can't help it. eeek. me, shriek at an intsikin guy? this is so not me.

*whack*

===========================

you were probably one of the nicest things God could have ever sent my way. if you weren't standing there, actually breathing & talking, i'd probably dismiss you as a mirage, a myth.

you're one of my biggest regrets too. i have to say, you're the biggest. knowing you exist could not let me forget this gaping loss. i feel hollow. cowardly. stupid.

the memory's vivid, the one when you told me how you knew she was the one. man, that hit me the hardest.

*whack*

what's the rush?

you ubiquitous starbucks cup, you. it seems everyone's scrambling for a frap today, just to get that 2007 planner.

it just dawned on me -- somehow, somewhere along the way, i stopped 'planning' my life. i used to keep this papemelroti calendar everyday, along with a bunch of post-it reminders. heck, i used to wear a watch. i've never really been a long-term planner, though. the farthest i go, i guess, is freeing the next weekends for birthdays & night-outs.

i guess i stopped when i realized that sometimes, not planning can ironically be more eventful. messier, but more eventful. more mistakes, but more life lessons as well.

here's to not knowing what tomorrow brings.

self-actualization

ooh. big word.

it's the only thing to keep us sane once you realize you're in a race without a direction. be it as grandiose as an assault to everest's peak, or as trivial as managing to keep your room in order for once, it's important. urgent. vital, even.

i gotta get those sign language lessons.

ultimately, imho, the only heaven's here on earth. and it's grand.

ulyanin

why is it that more often than not, we remember the things we have to do at the time when we are absolutely unable to do it?

get high

we're a generation of stress junkies. yes, work can be a vice. our vice.

free time is not always good. in fact, it can be the most horrifying moment of your life. when the realization slowly creeps that you have no life to go back to. just when you thought you had all bases covered.

tsk tsk.