Questions that will just have to be lived through

It's been a month.

Never thought this would happen. Never saw this coming. Still don't understand why this even happened at all. I mean is all this drama really needed? My life was pretty simple and boring. Now it seems complex and heavy.

Never thought I would lose a friend like this. Never thought I would lose a friend, period. Is it me? What did I do? Where did I go wrong? Why wasn't I told? What am I missing here? Am I that clueless and dense and insensitive that this thing just whisked past me and now there it is, shouting to my face, and I never even knew what hit me?

Was I unfair? Was I too emotional? Was I unreasonable? Was I really inconsistent? Was I that bad, for me to be dropped from someone's life just like that? I mean, I just wish there were hints of what was to come if it was indeed moving towards that direction. But even the subtlest hints were nowhere to be found. In fact, the complete opposite of the hints were what I got. We were getting along great just a few days, heck, just a few hours before that happened. And then boom! The explosion happened. At least natural disasters and calamities can be forecasted and predicted. But this came out of nowhere literally. And it's not as if I didn't ask. It's not as if I didn't try to find out if things are okay. But what I got was that there was something brewing already. I guess I believed too much in what I thought was an assurance that things were okay. When in reality they were not. Heck! Even my gut didn't detect anything. And I'm supposed to be a gut person. Which is I guess part of the frustration about this whole situation.

Was I even given a chance? Am I not worth giving it another shot? I didn't know anyone was keeping score. I certainly wasn't. At least not consciously, if at all. But definitely not deliberately. Why would I? As far as I'm concerned, once I've given the feedback, that's it! Clean slate. Reset. Do-over. And I guess I thought the golden rule usually applied in these cases. But it seems that I wasn't let off the hook that easily. I'm still not off of it.

And it may appear that this is happening, all under the notion and intent for me not to get hurt anymore. Just so that we keep the peace. But this isn't peace. It's anger and hurt swept under a rug that masquerades as peace. Who are we kidding? Who are we fooling? Who are we duping? Then again, it may just be me. It's always just me right? It's all my fault.

I tried to do the mature thing. I tried to be responsible and act like an adult, thinking I would be treated the same way in return. But it appears that I was expecting too much. This would definitely be a lot easier if I knew and I was convinced that I committed a major sin against someone. But I don't understand exactly what I did wrong. I'm not saying I'm perfect. In fact, I'm far from it. But at least I'd like to credit myself for being open and caring enough to work things out. If I did do something major that caused pain, suffering, and a world of hurt, then I would humbly accept and take ownership for it. It may be a bitter pill to swallow but I'm willing to take it in. Even just for the purpose of self-awareness and increased personal clarity. But I wasn't even allowed to find out. It's not as if my request was unreasonable or downright evil. On the contrary, I think it's even laudable. I mean, I'm trying by darnest best to do what's right here, but again it's like hitting my head against a brick wall. It's a dead end.

I just really wish I understood what's happening. Like I said, is this worth all the drama? I mean, it's not even a love relationship where there was a messy break-up. But it feels oddly similar to a break-up. It's so weird that I have to feel this bad and hurt over the loss of a friendship. Maybe because it's the first time. But why do I even have to lose a friend in the first place? Again, is all this drama really necessary? Can't I reserve this kind of melodrama for a relationship of the romantic kind? This just feels so overblown given it's just a simple friendship. Don't get me wrong. I'm not downplaying the value of this friendship. In fact, I clearly stated how much this friendship means to me and how I'd like to keep it forever. But it's a freakin' friendship! Whatever is the drama for anyway? Minor drama perhaps, but this? Just seems a bit too much.

I still think we're better off as friends than not. It's so much easier and much more natural to deal with each other as friends. Because I believe that some people are just really meant to be good friends. And I'd like to think that we are 2 of those people. Why are we torturing ourselves and putting ourselves through all this drama when we can just go back to being friends? I mean it's a fact that friends get on each others' nerves once in a while and they hurt each other here and there but that's why they're friends. They're supposed to stay, despite those things happening. They're just supposed to say, "Ouch! That hurt, you schmuck! Now scoot over and give me the remote back!" Makes you wonder sometimes if we were really friends in the first place, huh? But I'd like to believe we were and we are and we will be again. It's just something that can't be willed away just like that. It's going to take too much of an effort not being friends. The more natural state is to be friends.

If I am to be my most natural me, I would have to be friends again. Because not being friends is not normal, it's unnatural. It's not me. It's not us. Unless there's a logical explanation for us not being friends anymore, I will remain baffled why we cannot remain friends. It's in our nature, it's the way we were built and hardwired. And to not allow us to express our nature may just add to all the misery in the world. And that's not cool.

That's why I've decided to let go of my anger, pride, hurt, and indignant feelings which I've felt as well. I mean I'm human too and can you blame me if I did feel all these things after all that was said and done to me? But back to my decision. I choose to just be who I naturally am. And that means I will be a friend always and forever, no matter what, drama or no drama.

As I like to quote Spock, "I have been, and always shall be, your friend," I'd also like to post my favorite song from Wicked. Love this song. This made me cry the first time I heard it and I'd been so moved deeply by this whenever I hear it. Just never thought the day would come when I would identify so much with this song. Anyway, here it is:

For Good

I'm limited...just look at me
I'm limited...
And just look at you
You can do all I couldn't do
So now it's up to you... for both of us...
Now it's up to you...

I've heard it said that people come into our lives for a reason
Bringing something we must learn
And we are led to those who help us most to grow
If we let them and we help them in return
Well I don't know if I believe that's true
But I know I'm who I am today because I knew you

Like a comet pulled from orbit as it passes the sun
Like a stream that meets a boulder halfway through the wood
Who can say if I've been changed for the better
But because I knew you
I have been changed for good.

It well may be that we may never meet again in this lifetime
So let me say before we part
So much of me is made of what I learned from you
You'll be with me like a handprint on my heart
And now whatever way our stories end
I know you have rewritten mine by being my friend

Like a ship blown from its mooring by a wind off the sea
Like a seed dropped by a skybird in a distant wood
Who can say if I've been changed for the better
But because I knew you
I have been changed for good.

And just to clear the air
I ask forgiveness for the things I've done you blame me for
But then, I guess we know there's blame to share
And none of it seems to matter any more

Like a ship blow from its mooring by a wind off the sea
Like a seed dropped by a skybird in a distant wood
Who can say if I've been changed for the better
I do believe I have been changed for the better
But because I knew you
Because I knew you
Because I knew you
I have been changed for good...

The Start of a New Day

Here's to letting go of the old and living in the now and looking forward to the future! :)

Your Heart Today

Where there is fear I can allay
Where there is pain I can heal
Where there are wounds I can bind
And hunger I can fill

REFRAIN:
Lord, grant me courage
Lord, grant me strength
Grant me compassion
That I may be Your heart today

Where there is hate I can confront
Where there are yokes I can release
Where there are captives I can free
And anger I can appease (REFRAIN)

BRIDGE:
When comes the day I dread
To see our broken world
Compel me from my cell grown cold
That Your people I may behold

Where there is fear I can allay
Where there is pain I can heal
Where there are wounds I can bind
And hunger I can fill (REFRAIN)

CODA:
And when I've done all that I could
Yet there are hearts I cannot move
Lord, give me hope
That I may be Your heart today


Dedicated to Ninoy and Cory Aquino, this song embodies Manoling's deepest prayers.

The Sacrament of Waiting

by Fr. James Donelan, S.J.

The English poet John Milton wrote that those who serve only also stand and wait. I think I would go further and say that those who wait render the highest form of service. Waiting requires more discipline, more self-control and emotional maturity, more unshakable faith in our cause, more unwavering hope in the future, more sustaining love in our hearts than all the greatest deeds of derring-do go by the name of action.

Waiting is a mystery - a natural sacrament of life - there is a meaning hidden in all the times we have to wait. It must be an important mystery because there is so much waiting in our lives. Everyday is filled with those little moments of waiting (testing our patience and our nerves, schooling us in self-control). We wait for meals to be served, for a letter to arrive, for a friend to call or show up for a date. We wait in line at cinemas and theaters, concerts and circuses. Our airline terminals, railway stations and bus depots are great temples of waiting filled with men and women who wait in joy for the arrival of a loved one - or wait in sadness to say goodbye and give the last wave of hand. We wait for springs to come - or autumn – for the rains to begin and stop. And we wait for ourselves to grow from childhood to maturity. We wait for those inner voices that tell us when we are ready for the next stop.

We wait for graduation, for our first job, our first promotion. We wait for success and recognition. We wait to grow up - to reach the stage where we make our own decisions. We cannot remove this waiting from our lives. It is a part of the tapestry of living – the fabric in which the threads are woven to tell the story of our lives. Yet current philosophies would have us forget the need to wait. "Grab all the gusto you can get!" So reads one of America's greatest beer ads - get it now! Instant pleasure, instant transcendence. Do not wait for anything. Life is short - eat, drink and be merry because tomorrow you will die. And so they rationalize us into accepting unlicensed and irresponsible freedom - pre-marital sex and extra marital affairs - they warn against attachments and commitments - against expecting anything of anybody, or allowing them to expect anything of us - against dropping any anchors in the currents of our life that will cause us to hold and wait.

This may be the correct prescription for pleasure - but even that is fleeting and doubtful - what was it Shakespeare said about the mad pursuit of pleasure - "Past reason hunted, and once had, past reason hated."

Not if we wish to be real human beings, spirit as well as flesh, soul as well as heart, we have to learn to wait. For if we never learn to wait, we will never learn to love someone other than ourselves.

For most of all waiting means waiting for someone else. It is a mystery, brushing by our face everyday like a stray wind of leaf falling from a tree. Anyone who has loved knows how much waiting goes into it - how much waiting is important for love to grow, to flourish through a lifetime. Why is this? Why can we not have it right now what we so desperately want and need? Why must we wait - two years, three years – and seemingly waste so much time? You might as well ask why a tree should take so long to bear fruit – the seed to flower - carbon to change to diamond. There is no simple answer - no more than there is to life's other demands - having to say goodbye to someone you love because either you or they have made other commitments; or because they have to grow and find the meaning of their own lives - having yourself to leave home and loved ones to find your own path - good-byes, like waiting, are also sacraments of our lives.

All we know is that growth - the budding, the flowering of love needs patient waiting. We have to give each other a time to grow. There is no way we can make someone else truly love us or we them, except through time. So we give each other that mysterious gift of waiting - of being present without asking demands and rewards. There is nothing harder to do than this. It truly tests the depth and sincerity of our love. But there is life in the gift we give. So lovers wait for each other - until they can see things the same way - or let each other freely see things in quite different ways.

There are times when lovers hurt each other and cannot regain the balance of intimacy of the way they were. They have to wait - in silence - but still present to each other - until the pain subsides to an ache and then only a memory and the threads of the tapestry can be woven together again in a single love story. What do we lose when we refuse to wait; when we try to find shortcuts through life - when we try to incubate love and rush blindly and foolishly into a commitment we are neither mature nor responsible enough to assume? We lose the hope of truly loving or of being loved. Think of all the great love stories of history and literature - isn't it of their very essence that they are filled with this strange but common mystery – that waiting is part of the substance -the basic fabric against which the story of that true love is written. How can we ever find either life or true love if we are too impatient to wait for it?

Waiting is a good thing only if something is worth waiting for. How will you know if it's worth it? Gut feel. What if you don't trust your gut? Pray. You will be enlightened. Trust me. Is it wrong to expect while waiting? It's not wrong, but it will increase your chances of heartbreak and disappointment if things don't work out in the end. Is it good to expect while waiting? It is better to HOPE. What's the difference between hoping and expecting? HOPING means you're open to either side of the coin landing though you're more inclined to believe that things will turn out well. EXPECTING means you're thinking single-track... which won't do you much good at all. What's the difference between waiting and expecting? EXPECTING is waiting for something TO DEFINITELY HAPPEN. WAITING is stayingwhere you are, but not necessarily expecting something to happen definitely.

Do you need assurance from someone you're waiting for while you're waiting? Ideally, yes. But realistically, do you really want assurance from this person? It's so easy to just point at something and make that the reason why you're waiting ("Because she said..." "Because he told me that..."). With WAITING, all you really can rely on are three things: your gut feel, your heart and mind. Just YOURSELF, not anyone else. So should you wait? What does your gut say? How does your heart feel? What does your mind think? If they're saying different things, keep asking yourself these three questions (and pray!) until you get a solid answer.

THEN you'll know if he or she is worth waiting for.

tonyang and teban

i miss these random photo op sessions me and toni used to have at work... glad we got to do it again after such a long time...

steve and air

here's a pic of steve trying to hide behind air. the air is so thick around steve...it tickles... a ticklish air is a fun air. and steve is an air sign... especially the middle air...it's so ticklish, it's not even funny... but the rest sometimes are... and as they say, you can't breathe with no air -- andres

p.s. this is in connection with andres' blog which should be read first...here's the link

letters... from rainer maria rilke

"i want to beg you, as much as i can...to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. and the point is, to live everything. live the questions now. perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it live along some distant day into the answer."

my lil bro from d'planet

a special belated birthday greeting is in order...for my lil bro from d'planet -- andres. a month ago, you shared your fave pic of ours, now lemme share my fave pic of you and me (thanks to kuya bodjie for taking this). i know you're now 32 (hihi) but to me, you'll always be 20 years younger...my very own lil 12-year-old bro, especially in this pic. :p

happy birthday cocoy! -- from your big (lil) sis

reunion

just got home a couple hours ago from dinner with my 2 best friends whom i haven't seen in a while. it was great catching up with them again. i realized i missed them much more than i thought i did. i never thought that after 10 or so years of doing this with them that i'd still be as excited to talk to them as if we were just getting to know each other the first time. who'd have thought that after 10 or so years, after all the changes we've gone through, both individually and as a group, that we'd still be talking non-stop, some about the same things and some of new things. it was so easy to slip into that familiar mode and usual routine of talking after not seeing much of each other lately. the 5 hours together seemed to just fly by. it's like we never left and we just saw each other the other day. i, for one, never thought i'd maintain such a longstanding friendship with others. me being the antisocial loner/hermit, i never thought i'd appreciate and crave for this that much. but these 2 have been crucial to me opening up to others. i feel that i'm more in touch with my emotions, and more expressive of my feelings to others because of what i learned from them. i guess i've come a long way and they're the 2 people who can truly attest to that as they've seen the me before and the me now.

i'm really glad we all got together again after so long. they are truly one of my "real" support groups that has stood the test of time. we've had our skirmishes in the past, some highs and lows, and even dryness in the friendship, but here we are after more than a decade still talking, still understanding, still listening. we've changed so much with each other and yet we've also changed so little. we've seen the best and worst of each other, but we're still here with each other. i used to think i didn't need people that much in my life, but these 2 have proved me wrong. i do need people and i do need them especially in my life.

i feel extremely blessed to have them in my life caring and looking out for me always... as a tribute to this friendship, here's a video clip from a movie all 3 of us love and adore. it's interesting how we all watched this separately but still connected with it and raved about it the same way. we really are friends. :) i know we're more boring and less crazy, and less quirky, and less funny, than these characters... but everytime i watch this film, i can't help but think of the 3 of us...

to myly and monique... i love you both... and i will always cherish our friendship... hope we remain this way forever. :)

p.s. sorry for the mush but the only reason i'm writing this way and pouring my heart out like this is 'coz of you two... for this, you've got no one to blame but yourselves. hehe...

avenue q

reminiscing back to my avenue q days... just finished listening to the whole CD again after years without it... makes me feel good and grounded and real again even if it sucks to be me at times, as i'm still trying to find my purpose, while thinking that everyone's a little bit racist once in a while, when the internet is for porn anyway, after having created a mix tape, hoping that fantasies come true, despite the fact that there's a fine, fine line between love and a waste of time (this goes out to tones), realizing that there is life outside your apartment when all you can think about is the more you ruv someone, the more you want to kir them, intensely feeling schadenfreude, as you tell yourself, "i wish i could go back to college," until you finally accept and are relieved that everything in life is only for now...

angels brought badong here

i simply loved this moment from our very own idol who wowed everyone with this performance. she truly seemed brought by angels to us to make eveyone smile. we're proud of you alice and we will always be.

congrats tones

this is dedicated to esme/alice aka tones... i know i'm not really a tennis enthusiast, but i was really touched and impressed by these 2 champions' sportsmanship, grace, and (brotherly) love for each other on and off the court...

mabuhay si rafa & roger!!!

the last time

The first time I fell in love was long ago.

I didn't know how to give my love at all.

The next time I settled for what felt so close.

But without romance, you're never gonna fall.

After everything I've learned;

Now it's finally my turn.

This is the last time I'll fall... in love.

The first time we walked under that starry sky,

there was a moment when everything was clear.

And I didn't need to ask or even wonder why,

because each question is answered when you're near.

And I'm wise enough to know

when a miracle unfolds,

this is the last time I'll fall in love.

Now don't hold back, just let me know.

Could i be moving much too fast or way too slow.

'Cause all of my life, I've waited for this day.

To find that once in a lifetime,

this is it, I'll never be the same.

You'll never know what it's taken me to say these words.

And now that I've said them, they could never be enough.

As far as I can see,

there's only you and only me.

This is the last time I'll fall in love.

Last time I'll fall in love.

The last time I'll fall... in love.

that's a song that "kuya bodjie" shared with me earlier. that's also one of the triggers for my impromptu crying moment. that plus kuya bodjie's account of his impromptu sweet and ultra romantic gesture to mrs. kuya bodjie using said song hit a nerve that i thought was long dead and the tears just kept coming. i really don't know what it was about it exactly that reduced me to an emotional heap of tenderness and sentimentality despite being in the middle of a work session but i'm glad it did even for just a while. this told me that i'm not as detached and uncaring as i thought i was. i could actually still get touched by these things in a very quick, unexpected, and spontaneous way. i can still feel somehow after all.

to kuya bodjie, thanks for sharing your very special song and story with me. it's so heartwarming to know that you never tire in creating these special moments with the love of your life...

expectations

a friend told me once that if you don't expect, you will never be "forever" heartbroken. but i ask that friend of mine now: won't it be heartbreaking all the same if you knew that someone never expected anything from you? wouldn't it seem like, "you're not worth investing in, so you're not worth expecting from...?" aren't expectations indicators of hopes and wants and wishes and desires? aren't expectations indicators of trust and faith that you can give and have something to give to someone else? and isn't this a defining aspect of being truly human?

heart and mind

the heart tells you where to go and the mind tells you how to get there...

alagad ng sining

matagal ko nang pinapangarap na magkaroon ng ganitong uring pagtatala ng aking mga saloobin at pagmumuni sa araw-araw. nais kong pag-aralan ito dati ngunit nanaig ang katamaran at pangangatwiran na kulang ako sa panahon, tiyaga, at pagpupursigi upang tuklasin at matutunan ang pagbuo ng ganitong pagpupunyagi. kaya naman lubos ang aking pasasalamat kay andres na nagbigay buhay sa ninanais kong ito sa pamamagitan ng pagbabahagi ng kanyang oras at husay sa paglikha nito. isa siyang tunay na alagad ng sining sa kanyang patuloy na ipinamamalas na galing sa mga ganitong bagay. saludo ako sa iyo, andres...

ang iyong kambal sa nakaraang buhay,
teban

steve's first picture in her planet

this is my favorite picture of ours, steve. i am using it as a dummy picture for your html tutorial. now that brings so much disgrace to this sacred piture. so am gon copy-paste from here cos av none much to say... andres

steve's brilliant lil' planet

hey steve! wei gehts! so ye got ye own lil' planet up the web now. visist this anytime you feel like throwin up juices of sorts... will be visitin this page when i get to the farm so that even if i don't hear from you at least i get to read ye stuff... andres