New Directions

So now I'm starting things all over again.
I have worked since I was eighteen years old.
And it's only been these last three months since I've been back in Manila that I have stopped being a work mule and have just started to have fun.
I tell you - that my fun is no longer fun.
That I have been out all night and all day and in my craving for fun, I have forgotten my search for happiness.
I have short term fun and I am doing nothing as yet to work on my long term happiness.
Let's face it - my grandmother isn't getting any younger. And yet I leave her most nights in search of these "fun things". Drinking. Celebrating with friends. Forgetting that I have not yet done anything in these past few months of my life worth celebrating.
I am now in training once more to be a Radio DJ at a local radio station - at last, at least a step in the right direction.
But what about everything else?
In my crusade to prove to everyone in Brunei - not everyone really, but simply the man who is the main reason I have been sent back to Manila - in my crusade to prove that nothing I am is diminished by what I have gone through in the past, I have totally and completely forgotten what matters.
So now I am going to slick my hair back (with these long curly locks, good luck with that!) and I am going to once more begin my search for balance. Go down that road long enough, and I know I will finally find my happiness once more.
All it takes is one small step.
The right one.

This is an ACTUAL Job Ad.

With time is Rememberance

What’s amazing to me is that 21 always seemed… you know:

“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 yet to even begin to burn down my quiet fear and try.

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.

When you belong to the Earth, stand up for it.

Desire. Rhymes with. Hmm FIRE.

What do you want?

What are you waiting for?

What do you WANT?

God. These are just the questions that you dread hearing because you dread to answer. Why, you ask? Oh, not because you don't have an answer, or that you do not know what you want.

It's because you know that what you want cannot be had... And isn't within reach.

Saying what you do, in fact, deeply unabandonedly truthfully desire out loud and knowing that you cannot have it...well. It breaks you. It breaks the walls that the world has created around your being. A wall that has named itself 'Reality'.

Instead... I will step into that mirror and look that girl, a woman now, in the eye and bravely but very slowly answer, as if I were standing on a plank of wood that on which the slightest hint of movement might overturn and send me drowning into the mercurial waters of hopelessness: What do you want? What are you waiting for?

...silence.

And a pause.

Because I want my words to shake the ground that I stand upon with every syllable I'd utter and give to the world which hangs onto every word I say as if already planning my downfall and using them against me; to mourn me, to laugh, to belittle, to spit at me.

Sometimes, the world is nothing but a rowdy crowd that holds up rotten banners which is good for nothing except to bleat loud noises and scuffle outside the Casa Rosada. You don't know whether it desires your undoing or the rise of your being. All that you know is that it is loud and it goes wild when you raise your hand in acknowledgement.

I want...

I want him to love me.

I want him to know how I have been waiting all of these years and I want him to know how I feel: That he is the only one in the world for me.

I want to travel the world. And sometimes, especially as of late, even more than I want him. As if I know that the knowledge trotting to and from places which my soul flies to when I am asleep is enough to satiate my restlessness, my strongholds, my passions.

There are so many things...

I want to write. I want to sample the local fish from Sutri and drive up to Rome to watch the sunset over the Coliseum. I want to walk through the halls of the L'ouvre and hold back tears at the centuries of Beauty and ages that I would be beholding. I want to know how it feels to remember how I had fantasized and dreamed about doing so when I was a little girl and be amazed that I am standing where I would be standing.

I want to travel by train throughout Europe and find myself being surprised at how beautiful Germany is (which I had never imagined it would be) and be blown away by the feeling of peaceful pain that my feet would endure after walking through the vineyards of Marseilles and Provence. I want to walk down the backstreets of Tokyo at night and watch the reflection of the citylights on the stars that would wink down at me going, "Stop smiling like an idiot, Kiddo. You're happy. We get it... We're happy, too." I want to eat with my hands in the Scottish highlands and fantasize about shaking hands with Nessie. I want to visit Manarola most of all and get lost in the simple magnificence of its colours.

I want my writings to be published. I want to talk to people about the stories they would find in my books and explain how my style which they would call Magic Realism is actually just another fancy term for the words Reality is Pure Magic.

I want to buy a house where my family and extended familiy could live, sort of like a private village.

I want my brother and I to fight just like old times when every other sentence coming from our mouths would emit a punch from one or the other or both. It is much preferrable than the adolescent silence we share now.

I want my Mom to be happy. I want her to support herself once more because she still has so many gifts to give out to the world. My grandmother and mother are so wise...so wise...and flawed. Which makes them irreplaceable in my book.

I want to paint the local market scene in Aruba and visit the temples in Cambodia to pray.

I want to buy an I HEART NY t-shirt in New York City and not spend a moment asleep as I flit from one Broadway musical or play to another.

I want to freefall in a bungee jump in Niagara Falls.

I want to stop now...

And listen to myself sigh.

For now, it's best to continue to take the planned steps to realize all these desires, these wants, these unopened treasures I am patiently waiting to open.

Now all I have to do is keep dancing the dance....