Dear Bloggie: I feel like an ass whenever I drop by and see you. You seem to be stone-cold, silently staring me back from the monitor, and with what I must have imagined a slight pout on you, you remind me how much I have been amiss adding into our supposedly colorful history in the making. In fact, I myself feel stupid whenever I make those visits -- why was I doing it (and doing nothing much else), when I know for sure that nothing could happen just by looking, that my continued committed participation in this blogging crazy virtual world is essentially your life?
Oh, I do wanted to tell you so many things that happened to me... many good, but just as much saddening, or at least melancholy. I wanted to tell you, first and foremost, how much fun it is writing on you. That sharing my thoughts with you has in fact helped me think things through my life more sharply. God knows we need much more skill and commitment to discernment. Much, much more to discern in face of things like a friend deciding to call it quits struggling in this mediocre economy, but that his exhaustion is more pronounced and articulated because of failed love. And yet, in his remaining days as a struggling compatriot, he spends boundless fun in the company of his ex and his ex's newfound love. (Not that that was totally absurd, I've met the guy myself, and he's totally likable.)
I wanted to tell you how much I was saddened at a growing common sentiment that many a friends' loved ones are -- uh -- "checking out." First it was someone's father, then someone's mother, then another one's father. Then us friends coming to a consensus that we are witnessing one generation pass on, and that life and lineage and legacy shall have to go on now with us ever growing nearer to the frontlines. But at every reunion at someone's relative's wake we find ourselves reliving happy times together, and sharing heart rending anecdotes of family, with seemingly boundless humor, sometimes a bit of embittered diva dry wit, but generally wholesome and wholehearted laugh. It was even a cultural exchange program in the making in one wake: during our Chinese friend's father's wake, our friend taught us the finer qualities of Chinoy bereavement and ceremony. Oh, we had such a grand time rolling those monies for the departed and then burning them, depositing them to the world hereafter! That and some of the most delicious sungsong I've tasted in ages! "Why all the bother with these bill rolling when you could just shove them as is into the fire?" asked one friend. And I said, "Kapatid, you should appreciate the Chinese attention to fine detail; their civilization haven't survived hundreds of generations for nothing..."
But most importantly I wanted to tell you, Bloggie, how much my heart broke when another friend wrote on her blog about knowing to be on the express of the check-out lane, but pondering out loud when is she really due. She is in Vietnam now, and I never had the chance yet to tell her how much I really, really love her -- that it breaks my heart to hear her this way. But that I also understand I should let her be because, because I love her. * * * :~( * * * Sorry Bloggie, my sight fogged up and my chest heaved heavy for awhile as I wrote that last line.
On the periphery I think of another friend whose suffering -- at the moment, inexplicably -- of back pain; one says it's the signs of the times for him, and I thought, for us too. On yet another periphery I think of us, hunny and I, who have been learning to live by the day, but remaining committed (rather vaguely still) of supporting each for as long as long could ever be, from time to time, noticing also how we're growing much further away from lusty, expedient youth. (Oh wow, even OPM Myx has dedicated a song to a recently departed but loved comrade, just now as I am writing.) And further still on a tangent, I remember trying to support a friend just a week ago, in his process of concluding his relationship, though slightly gapped by a generation was still filled with intimacy and intense friendship -- I being one of those appreciative witnesses to their endearment now stood to help in supporting renewal of faith in, and hope for a future love.
Yet youth was all I felt as I went through the "hallowed" holidays (redundant term actually).... Literally fresh from a bus trip from Lucena (after a whirlwind tour of the project sites, and a short 30-minute meeting back in Manila in the middle), BFF eon helped me dust off the career drudgeries with the music of the Salvation Party, then of Government, then of the Malate halloween street party, then back at Government, and then just last weekend, of the newly expanded BED. Thump, thump, thump, stomp, stomp, sway and sway, got myself all sweaty and spirited. It's a good thing that eon and I are almost always getting high on endorphin rush while many, many others almost always with hefty helpings of alcohol and chemical.
Last Saturday, though, while getting high with the beat of the music and the mute admiration for a ledge boy, while trying to match the boy's moves and vigor, my knees and ankles shrieked ache... short, abrupt but sharp flash of pain, the best of woeful reminders: "Hey gramps, you can go on staring at that youth for hours on end, but getting into the beat with him is totally out of the question..." Hay naku, the next day was spent walking aimlessly in antiseptic Greenbelt mall with aching joints and lots of method-acting-like-nothing's-rusty-in-me. Whenever there's a need to revive my self-esteem being nursed in intensive care, I recalled visions of the denimmed, shirtless ledge boy and feelings of how much I admired his grace, his confidence, his eyes frenzied with here-and-now euphoria (even behind those spectacles), his skin glistened and appropriately sparse chest hair slicked with sweat, and his belt buckle... my memories almost always starting and ending with that belt buckle; him being on the ledge and me on the dance floor, it was what I saw for most of the time, being aware then that looking up at him for longer lengths will make me too obvious... and maybe thought of as downright dirty, troll-like oldie...
I remember eon asked me if I still have self-esteem problems, well, dearie, I still do have them, here is one.
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