Love is wanting to be loved

I know I can be fucking annoying sometimes but that is only a function of my care and concern. And I'm tired of talking to walls and being told to lay off. I've been given this treatment by a brother, a pseudo-lover, a friend. Even if people tell me, "hayaan mo na yung mga taong pinagtatabuyan ka," I still have this nagging feeling that the way to be of help is not to back down but to blast through their closed off hearts and go all in even if it's humiliating. I'm not gonna apologize for who I am. Dammit, I will hug you even if you flail your arms in disgust and anger.

But then again, the reason I might be doing this is not because they need me or any help for that matter, but because I need to reach out and be with them. And it's a need they cannot and might not ever fulfill and I have got to accept that, move on, and focus my energies on people who appreciate my presence in their lives--those who allow me to care for them because they realize I want and need to, it's also for my well-being, and that I can't live otherwise. 

This got me thinking of a movie I watched some 5 years ago. The subplot proposal scene got me: 

People need time and space. I will give these to them not because I don't think it's bollocks, I do, but because I deserve to be in others' who want me to be there. 

Point this sinking boat home, once and for all, will you?

Five years ago, this song was on loop in my playlist. It is a beautiful song that resonated with me then. It was this, UDD's Bipolar, Death Cab for Cutie from Something about Airplanes to Narrow Stairs, and Neruda's poems spoken by different artists for Il Positino that whispered in my ear almost 24/7 since I didn't get enough sleep that whole year. Needless to say, I was always in this melancholy haze which I didn't think I could get out of. Ever.



Today, things aren't that bad. But something remains the same which I hope will change soon. I am always rooting for the people I love, even if it means I root against myself. This is why I liked the song very much. It tells of a person willing to get out of the way of someone else's dream. I hope I would never have to do that again. The first time was crippling. The second time was a little humiliating but mostly sobering. I'd like to think we grow thick-skinned with these things. The point has been made; a third time would be just cruel. I hope that someday I would be the other person's dream.

A Change

Dream Sequence: I was rushing back to my hotel after a late night dinner outside. My vehicle only got me up to a certain point. Then I had to walk past the queue of tricycles to get to the hotel gate. It was a full moon night and the clear sky cast a soft glow on the tricycles' clunky metal bodies. Everything looked blue-gray, but luminous. A few drivers watched me walk by. I was wearing a red, knee length, short-sleeved, A-line cotton dress, buttoned from the waist up, with tiny white polka dot prints, and this made me doubly conscious. I sauntered past the gilded gates and skipped up the stone steps leading to the lobby. It was a wide expanse of stairs, eerily like the steps in front of the Daraga Church. There was an event at the lobby and a dozen or so people spilled over from the grand entrance but still faced the stage, attuned to the program that seemed to be winding down. It was surprisingly quiet; no shrieking emcees or loud music. No raucous laughter. A few steps up, I noticed an old man, thin like a hanger, with longish graying hair jutting out in upturned waves from his ratty baseball cap. He was standing a meter from me, looking out in the direction of the gate but at nothing in particular and singing Sam Cooke's "A Change is Gonna Come". A few levels above him, I stopped for a second and looked back. He wasn't blind but he didn't seem to notice me. For a split second, I had the urge to speak to him but I didn't want to disturb the soulful way he was singing the tune. I considered staying a while but it was late, the words of his song rattled in some hallow part of my gut and I felt spaghetti and meatballs rising up my esophagus. Anyway, I reluctantly made my way through the throng of people to the elevator and punched my floor. The old man's voice clung to my fingers like sticky honey.

"It’s a strange thing, how you can love somebody, how you can be all eaten up inside with needing them–and they simply don’t need you. That’s all there is to it, and neither of you can do anything about it. And they’ll be the same way with someone else, and someone else will be the same way about you and it goes on and on–this desperate need–and only once in a rare million do the same two people need each other.”

–The Small Rain, by Madeleine L’Engle

Fantasies of Privacy

Have I ever thought that I am evil and I want too much?

No, I am going to make a man pork chops and the chops will be

a cinema of compassion. Then what of that piggy?

I am writing no promises on any walls, I want to be

beholden to no creature, responsible for no breed, I am

a number and I did not ask to be bred, I never said

dream a little dream of me that was your very own volition.

I do not know the you of whom I speak. But I have an asshole

that must be kept clean and it is enough of a punishment.

- Melissa Broder 

Oh. I think I get now why I procrastinate. I have difficulty letting go. When the work is done, I have to release it and it's out there, no longer mine, open to the universe to do what it wants to it. Deeeymsun, I'm a selfish control freak :/

There is No Word

There isn’t a word for walking out of the grocery store
with a gallon jug of milk in a plastic sack
that should have been bagged in double layers

—so that before you are even out the door
you feel the weight of the jug dragging
the bag down, stretching the thin

plastic handles longer and longer
and you know it’s only a matter of time until
bottom suddenly splits.

There is no single, unimpeachable word
for that vague sensation of something
moving away from you

as it exceeds its elastic capacity
—which is too bad, because that is the word
I would like to use to describe standing on the street

chatting with an old friend
as the awareness grows in me that he is
no longer a friend, but only an acquaintance,

a person with whom I never made the effort—
until this moment, when as we say goodbye
I think we share a feeling of relief,

a recognition that we have reached
the end of a pretense,
though to tell the truth

what I already am thinking about
is my gratitude for language—
how it will stretch just so much and no farther;

how there are some holes it will not cover up;
how it will move, if not inside, then
around the circumference of almost anything—

how, over the years, it has given me
back all the hours and days, all the
plodding love and faith, all the

misunderstandings and secrets
I have willingly poured into it.

—Tony Hoagland

On being less orderly: Brief reflections on the death of Sec. Jesse Robredo

I don't know why I am affected so much by Sec. Jesse Robredo's plane crash and death. I do not know the man personally and have not followed his career save for a few news features and articles. But he seemed to me, like to almost everyone else, as a down-to-earth person who means well.

My friends have insisted, amid my defense, that I am not the best test of character. However I think Robredo's net goodness goes beyond the normal human being's and that it is not a mistake that he is respected and wished well in his untimely death.

I admire him not only for his gentle and humble demeanor but also for his work. He was on the right track. His achievements and legacy as a public servant got me thinking, over the last 3 days of their searching for him around the coast of Masbate, about how we need more people like him to take up influential roles in nation building, whether in government, civil society, or the private sector. Our country lost a good man and I hope that his life and death inspires many to follow in his footsteps and fill leadership gaps.

I recently listened to a podcast once about planning your funeral and which suggests hiring a physicist to speak at your wake to explain that, scientifically, death is not a curtailing of life, but is a natural occurrence which releases life from our physical bodies into other forms. Energies of people who have passed on are no longer housed in flesh-and-blood cages but are still here in this earth, in and around us, perhaps very much like the Beatles song.  If this were true, which I am wont to believe, I should not worry too much. The Secretary's energy is sure to be felt and picked up by people who will be called to do as he has done.

Six Songs of Me

So The Guardian recently launched a project about Music and its effect on our lives. 

In Six Songs of Me, they asked people to key in basic personal information such as age, sex, occupation, etc. and answers to the following questions: 

1.) What was the first song you ever bought? 
2.) What song always gets you dancing? 
3.) What song takes you back to your childhood? 
4.) What is your perfect love song? 
5.) What song would you want at your funeral? 
6.) Encore: One last song that makes you, you. 

I keyed in my answers but it was too bad they were tied-up with spotify and spotify did not have Filipino songs in their library. So even if my answers can't be part of the social survey, it was fun exercise which got me thinking about my six song and the memories associated with them. NPR ran an article which elicited thousands of responses about other people's six songs here and here. The results of the survey are still being consolidated 

So what do the soundtracks to my life tell me about either music or myself? Musicologist Eric Clarke writes, "Well, they bring home that strange combination of serendipity and revelation that so often characterises our encounters with music: those BBC advertisements for the proms in which a passerby steps into an invisible circle of sound and is suddenly transfixed and transported tap into a particular preoccupation with 'the secret power of music' which is both profoundly ideological and all too real." 

Hmmm. That didn't clear things up. It's still pretty conceptual to me. I do know, though, that music for me has always been a companion of sorts. Like a friend who cheers you up or sympathizes with you. Someone who jolts you out of stupor or calms you down. A provocateur or peacemaker. Or just someone you like to hang around with. 

I'm the kind of person who almost always has background music on, except when I'm writing. It was weird to discover that not everybody was like that. During a trip to the province, I hitched a ride with my aunt and, for 10 hours, the radio was turned off. I didn't have a radio/mp3-enabled phone with me then.  That was the only time I profoundly missed music. I hope that never happens again under any circumstance. 


My Answers: 

First song ever bought (...with my own money, that is. It was probably Joey Albert or Lea Salonga I first asked my mom to buy for me. Haha. I also had FrancisM and After Image tapes before this): 

Song that gets me dancing:

Song that takes me back to my childhood:

Perfect love song: 

Song for my funeral: 

Song that makes me, me: 

And just like that, the sun comes streaming down on us. I am directly washed over by the afternoon light when I am sitting at my office desk. Usually, I draw the blinds down but today, I was missing the warmth so I left them up. It was weird, though, that even if I was sunbathing for more than an hour, I still felt cold. Maybe it was the AC, I thought as I put my shawl on. But later when I checked, it was just set around 24 degrees Celcius. I am also not sick today.

Just like that, I am where I was exactly 4 years ago. I’m trying not to panic but today, I learned something which made me feel something which subsequently made me feel really angry at myself for allowing myself to feel that something. I thought I had immunity over the disease. But this, although showing similar symptoms, is another strain altogether. For one, although the discomfort is more bearable, I have a feeling it’s gonna be a protracted battle. I hope they don’t tell me it will be a condition I would have to live with for the rest of my life. I’d rather be terminally ill. Cut me with death’s scythe. Make it swift.

Of course I’m being overly dramatic. It’s not always bad. In fact, it’s occasionally good but mostly potentially better. And that’s the thing. Hope is more powerful than fear. Flickering lights are more dizzying than the constant dark.

daw.

Storifying

MMJ180 [Video]

The Young Ones of Luneta from Diana Moraleda on Vimeo.

MMJ 180 [Essay]

Engaging in Social Media: The News Organizations' Social Imperative

What the...

My ACFJ classmates are so kick-ass I wonder why I am in the same group of around 12.We have a photojournalists, writers, radio show hosts, TV directors, advertising creatives from countries like Japan, Tibet, Maldives, India, Myanmar, Singapore, Mongolia, China who have worked in the greater parts of America, Europe and Asia.. They're all so accomplished in terms of getting their work out there: Time, Newsweek, The New York Times, New York Magazine, Forbes, Chicago Tribune, business newspapers in their own respective countries, famous radio shows, clients such as Nike, MSNBC etc. Many have won awards and prestigious fellowships. Some are currently chasing stories in countries of great civil unrest at this moment and communicate with us through their mobiles. I feel like I am just the token development worker. Still, I'm excited to start on-campus classes. I think this is what I need to step up! (deep breaths)