15 December 2008
This is an ACTUAL Job Ad.
Who do you tell?
I have difficult saying 'No'.
11 December 2008
Para Siempre.
Surprise.
Gracias. Gracias. Gracias.
08 December 2008
With time is Rememberance
“God, Sasha, you’re OLD.”
And there it is.
21 is staring at me. Eyeing me as if looking for the slightest movement. A flicker of eyelash. A cease in breathing. The hesitant looking thrown over the shoulder.
21: It’s nice to meet you, Sasha.
Me: Uh. Hi. Isn’t your arrival a tad bit… too soon?
21: This is merely an informal introduction. We shall save the grand ceremony for the 10th of December, shall we?
Me: Oh. Ok. (muttering) You just seem a litte too anxious to me.
21: (smiling) And should I not be?
Me: No. I don’t know. No. Not really.
21: And why’s that?
Me: Because I always thought that when I’d meet you I would be in a different place.
21: Is that so? Which place would this be.
Me: A place other than here.
And so I’m turning the big 2-1 on Wednesday.
Let me see.
It would be my first birthday without Uncle Bong greeting me. Without him there to tell me how much of a lovable fool I am. How I should never ignore inspiration. How I should not war against my imagination. How I am on the verge of that freefall which is success. How I should give it my all. How I should never stop running. How I will win the race just by being true to myself. How I am going to make it. How I am going to survive the inflaming passion of my dreams. How he much he loves me and how the world will come to love me too, once I take that crucial step to fulfill my dreams.
“Happy birthday, Sash. I love you. Take care, dude. You are one cool dude.”
“writing that million dollar bestseller is your best chance. keep the dream alive and reach for it. i love you.” - Uncle Bong Japan 8/12/2007 3.09 PM
Just examples of random SMS messages from him that I will no longer receive it seems.
Don’t worry, Dude. I still have your messages and your smile alive and burning clearly in the reddest part of my soul.
I just miss you, that’s all.
And I think about you. Forgive me that.
I love you, you see.
And I’ll go on like this for oh… the rest of my life, most likely. Til I see you again. I expect that great big hug and the giddy rush of heat to my cheeks from your proud pat on my back.
21: You still have that promise to fulfill.
Me: I know. I know. I know I promised him. I’ll do it. Ok?
21: (laughing)
Me: (annoyed) What?
21: Sasha.
It is not your promise to your Uncle.
It is the promise you made to yourself.
The day you were born, when the first breath of air rushed in to fill your lungs, a promise flowed from the earth’s lips and met the one which manifested deep within you on the upon the nanosecond of your creation:
And that promise is what you should keep.
It has been a promise you made to God Himself the moment that he configured your existence.
Me: …Yes.
So now I’m turning 21 in two days. And during the years and mad moments that I’ve encountered and that have encountered me as I write this, somewhere down the road, Life had managed to give me the ride of my life. Upside down and inside out is fun and apparently the ride isn’t over.
There have been more things I haven’t expected to happen that did than those I had foreseen.
I am not the College Graduate I always thought I was going to be at the age of 21.
My family , whom I had lived and grown up with in the same big house the first 14 years of my life is now scattered across the globe.
Two of them, Uncle Bong and Lolo Dad, are now…elsewhere. But hopefully (and I keep my fingers and heartstrings crossed on this one) still watching over us.
I have a thousand manic and mercurial poetry in my books – none of which have yet been properly compiled and sent to a publisher.
I have yet to begin to search for a decent publisher to which I could submit my works to.
I have not begun to edit and in some cases complete the stories which I have written. (This is bad. And for those who are lucky enough to know their true passion, Having No Time is not a valid excuse.)
I have now come to love World Music more than the popular kind, the ones people had me listening to growing up. Meaning, I love music whose lyrics and beats are set in languages that I don’t verbally understand but which resonates and reverberates within the white of my bones. And shakes my soul to stillness: Italian, French, Cuban, South African, North African, Celtic, Mediterranean, Balinese, every color in the world’s palette have now been painting my soul and writings because of it. (This is one unexpected situation I don’t find myself complaining about so much, if at ALL.)
Maybe this is my way of preparing myself for fulfilling my dream of travelling and discovering the world.
Speaking of which, I am now saving up for that.
I still despise being subjected to other people’s rules.
I have become a cliché. More often now I love to put on the candles, turn off the lights, pour myself a glass of white wine, melt dark chocolate into a cofee mug half filled with almonds, turn on the laptop and turn up the Opera.
God I love opera.
Oh, 21! I am ready for all the mad endeavors and fruitful blessings you will bring.
I’m aware that I have to put out my share on the table.
I will fulfill my promise.
I will take out the old guns, the ones that I thought I have left behind me in a past life.
I will take out the old guns and take a deep dive into the world.
I will not go down.
But I will go enveloped in my own fire and with guns blazing:
Take on the world.
24 November 2008
I am watching...Slumdog Millionaire
What does it take to find your first love?
17 November 2008
He used to be a Man.
13 November 2008
Dreaming a dream. Is it over?
So I dreamed that there was an earthquake.
Or rather I dreamt about finding out about an earthquake.
My mom was telling me about it over breakfast.
Surprised, I said, "When did it happen?"
"Just this morning." Then as she was reaching for the blueberry jam, she said, "I think C is dead."
A large pause. Blankness blanketed my mind.
"What?" I exclaimed in disbelief. "He could not be dead! How do you know?"
"I saw him and his father on the news."
"What - " I paused and tried to rack my brain, trying to remember something that I wasn't aware of had just happened.
And a mental picture, sort of like a random "memory" popped up and the small square of toast I was eating was still perched halfway to my lips. Indeed, I "remembered" seeing a newsclip showing C trying to wade his way over a river of rubble, with his dad following a few meters behind.
And sort of like an immediate realization hit me on impact a moment later.
"Mommy, C is dead! I can't live without him. What am I going to do now?" Although in my mind the words came out in a lament not deep enough to fully awaken my heart to any serious pain. The words, instead, as I said it aloud...sounded more like a whine.
'Of course you can!' Mommy said, waving her hand in my direction. She was already busy doing something else.
Then I remember something else happen:
I went to the corner of the room, near the windows where the white curtains were draped and pulled to a close, and I prayed.
My prayer went something like this:
'God, please don't let anything have happened to Joshua and C. Please don't let anything bad happen to Joshua and C......'
And then later I woke up.
I remember the room was still dark. It felt around 4.30 AM in the morning. I sat up in bed, propped myself up with the palm of my hand pressed down on the bed. My hair, as I saw myself later in the mirror, dishevelled and decorated with long curls big enough to give La Union's tidal waves a run for their money.
In those initial moments after the weird dream occured, I was just sitting quiet listening to myself - with grogginess tending to leave the brain blank and addled. It wasn't difficult to recall what I had just dreamed. And also what I had felt during the dream:
Nothing. A distant mourning and regret, at some point. But without any pain that truly pierced me.
In fact, during the dream and afterwards I felt like how a drugged patient in a mental facility must feel: slow, confused, distant, self-contained, floating, mildly ironic.
I write this down simply because two things surprise me:
1. The way I "unconsciously" reacted to the scenario. And my reaction, in particular, to someone named C----------------. I thought that in the least, whichever way I would have felt would have been....uh, Stronger.
2. The vehemence and suddenness with which I included and even centered my prayer to God around Josh.
There really is no appropriate ending for this general diary entry.
This may be because there are still previous dreams concerning the subject (whatever that is - death perhaps? Or the hidden meaning behind death? Or the hidden meaning behind the hidden meaning of death? etc...) or the people I had before this one. Suffice to say, life is but one big puzzle - and one that is yet unsolved! Woohoo! - and dreams are merely fleeting spiritual orgasms that come to you from the culmination of your current mentality, unexpressed emotions and may even come to you by the supreme pity or in utmost confidence of the Universal Deities.
So there is no diagnosis or anaylsis I'd like to scribble down here. If I have any, I think its only proper to keep my lips shut and keep it stored on a mental shelf for any future reference.
All I would like to say is that I had a dream.
And then I woke up.
06 November 2008
05 November 2008
The Legend of 1900: Playing Love
04 November 2008
Do you want to learn English?
30 October 2008
Be who you Are.
22 October 2008
Random thought.
I was browsing through a section entitled Used Books.
And I remember thinking suddenly:
Funny. Used books. Used books. How does one use up books? By reading them the first time? Used books.
What if it's they who are using us?
(shiver)
Scary thought.
17 October 2008
16 October 2008
If you were a film...what would you be?
15 October 2008
Llamame Azul.
13 October 2008
In case you didn't know.
I suppose people should learn from this.
If you have to hear Madea say it out loud first in order to realize its truth then you have to recite this to yourself every morning right after you dream and before you wake up so that this message becomes a rule engraved in the armour of your chest.
It's an innate knowledge that you're already born with.
But some people refuse to listen.
So I hope that this reminds you why you're here.
It makes Life so much easier.
08 October 2008
Everybody has a Theory.
- from Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
07 October 2008
He talks about you like you put the stars in the Sky.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBzoQnwSb9Y&feature=related
06 October 2008
La Boheme - The Philippine Operatic Company Staging.
Because no matter how organized and strategically placed you teach or direct them to be before the curtain rises, the after part always is an entirely different matter. Their performance was so-so at most, relieving and fresh the first 10 seconds they arrived on stage, and then again so awkward to watch while the whole thing was going on because not only did they look like a group of ants, complete with plastic joy written all over their faces, suddenly running amok - they also moved in one large group, all 20+ so of them - at one point they were a massive wave moving from one end of the stage to another and when they closed in around Musetta's former paramore (ie The Old Guy who Gave a Supremely Amazing Performance) their shocked and amused "laughter" looked so staged and...sa Pinoy, sobrang plastik that you wanted to cringe and slide down your seat to hide until they went away so you could breathe normally again.
- La Boheme is the number one and most loved opera in the world.
- The entire cast in this production has large potential.
- Approximately four people in the cast has absolute out-of-the-ballpark operatic voice and acting abilites and fierce stage presence (one of them is the boy who sang a little solo and who therefore outshined the rest of the younger-aged cast)
- BLAME THE DIRECTOR for concoting this modernized, half-assed, unthought out, mechanical, awkward and just BAD staging of this dynamic and timeless opera.