Woman

To my dearest friends.

It’s my second day in General Santos City and my first time to sit down to write. Of course, the first people to write to are all of you who have provided tremendous support and amazing generosity.

I don’t know where to start. Well, I never know where to start. It’s a symptom of my health condition.  Hahaha! Now, I have a ready excuse for past, present and future shortcomings. Kidding aside, here goes the flow…

I am drawing again – stream of consciousness art. Abstracts, if you may. I doodle beautiful images (for me, at least) – flowers, twirls, human cubes, animal cubes, leaf cubes, dots, faces, lines. I will post these in my blog for you to ruminate on. Hahaha! What an order! Oh you can also just view and leave it at that.

If you feel they will be good enough for you to have, you will receive them as gifts. Wonderful cherished gifts. A mentor once said my crochet and beadwork are manifestations of my soul energy. I guess these include the drawings too. What better gifts but those made by my own hands? J

One moment, allow me to digress. Also, be warned that I will digress every now and then. That is a symptom of my health condition. Hahaha! Also, there’s so much I want to say all at once and contexts must be clarified so everyone is on board and knows what am trying to get at.

Right now, I feel that my writing is so formal. I feel am writing like Rizal to his friend Blumentritt (?) in Germany. I do have friends in Germany. But am no Rizal. Anyway, apologies if indeed my writing sounds a bit prim and proper. The intention is that it be trite.  

My brother Toto and everyone here are taking very good care of me. Am being fed the most nutritious food and Toto patiently explains to me what I must do to get better and to have focus and discipline. He is implementing the five-step program in the book “The Healing Code”. In that book, the author shares a healing program that helped him not only survive and be cured of multiple sclerosis but also be in top shape. I am excited about this. I have read just the first chapter but I already like the tone and message and intent and healing approach.

You know, sometimes I can’t keep still. I find it hard to keep to one task at a time. Usually, I jump from one task to another. Of course, this isn’t very unusual. I’ve been like this ever since. But now, am learning that I can actually correct this tendency. Hopefully, I will. I know I will. J

Right now, Toto and Sam are out marketing for siomai ingredients and also to check on our Internet connection. The Internet guys didn’t drop by today as they promised. But most probably by the end of the week, I will be online.

Online. Hahaha! My social life will be through the web. This was the plan. But it was supposed to happen in December. Now, the GenSan move has happened, earlier by over two months! I’ve been dreaming of relaxation and managing my own time and not being bound by office work since June and now all these coming to life. A wish fulfilled in the strangest circumstances.

The financial support that went my way was incredible. I never imagined that I would be confined in a hospital for two weeks and that friends would solicit for my medical expenses and generous souls and very dear friends would just send in their help at the blink of an eye.

I am now not able to thank all the donors individually because Toto has still to show me the fundraising list. But you know who you are. And I thank you very much. And I promise to make the bounty multiply so that through me you will also have helped many others.

To the core group who danced with me, who brought me to the hospital, who cared for me, and who kept me, Papa and Toto company, MARAMING MARAMING SALAMAT.

One of you said thank you is not needed and am sure that’s also how everyone feels. We are after all loved ones to each other. And because of that, we are all rich and precious. But still…I love you gid. Palangga ko gid kamo tanan. And you know that this kind of love is eternal.

My warmest and tighest hugs,

Rudie the Beauty  

Fountain of Being.

I have just read his words and I am struck with knowing. He gave an account of his journey, a mere glimpse of the indescribable though not unfathomable. I am stunned by recognition.

There was another entry, an FAQ, but I merely scanned through it. Did not read. I did not want ideas getting ahead of me. I want to know the answers to the FAQ myself. This way, I will have no doubt, no single doubt that what I will discover and echoed by many others is TRUE.

Since this morning, I have been in meditation. Meditating while doing everything I needed to do. I got up and flowed with the energy. The energy that’s ever-present. It was like I was my self but not really my self. The movements, the routine was familiar. I moved according to how I move. I know the movements to be mine. But they were not mine. And they were mine. They were me and not me and me.

I am one, two, three and one. The triple and the one. They are manifesting. You know them.

It’s here, there, everywhere, up, down, under, beside, over, by the sidewalk, in the canteen, along the road, in bed, out of bed, in the playpen and garden and walls and cities and floors and moonbeams.

You are Kali, and you came to me.

*written in August 2004

Ode to Kali

In the dead of night,
Lies stillness.

In the bright daylight,
Soars the whimpering cry of wounded bird.

At half-past eleven,
Brooks rush to flow.

Lightning strikes.
Thunder booms.

Flowers bloom,
Violet orchids smile.
The cusp is filled, water drips.

Bamboo pierces the hardened soil.
Discovers the secrets of earth.

At three quarter,
Moist mud glistens.

At ten to six,
Dames bathe in pale moonshine.

By nine o’clock,
She moans.
Groans.

Such is desire.

Of a muse
Who

Longs.

 

On a more personal note

 

This is an attempt to document, to recapture what I have gone through three years ago. I feel that I must remember, recollect, gather the learnings from that experience. It had been a glorious period, one rifed with struggles and confusion and uncertainty but also of knowing, of celebrating, of rejoicing.

 

In many instances then, I felt that I was being offered glimpses of the mysterious, some bits of secrets revealed, but not fully. My rationalizations and egoistic tendencies sometimes mired clear understanding. It was as if I was being teased, provoked into comprehension but did not yet have the ability or the knowledge to synthesize the insights of the experience. On some occasions, I followed impulses which then I thought were revelations but weren’t really. Because they were simply my own thoughts, my own record of things. They weren’t yet the sublime and profound.

 

As I write this, no thought precedes. There is no concept, no idea that is being followed. My fingers work their way along the keyboards. Words leap out of the mind. It’s as if something is just flowing. Something which does not have a beginning nor an end. Something that is just here in the present moment. There are a few errors, a few mistakes in this writing.

 

I do not presuppose am being taken over by something that is not me. But I also know that whatever is expressed is not me. This is not about me. But about something else that desires to be understood, to relay messages that may not be easily held together.

 

Words are carefully chosen because words have meanings.

 

In 2004, I went into a trance. By trance I do not mean I lost consciousness. Trance simply refers to that state by which a person is able to tap into a higher energy, a different life force, different from the usual energy that gets expressed through physical activity or mental stimulation. One could say this energy was that of a spiritual kind.

 

During those periods, I was made aware of the extraordinary, of the strange and unusual. It was so unusual, I did not know how to make sense of it. My body experienced powerful electric surges. There were times when I was sensitive to the energies around me. My senses were fully heightened.

 

The first time it hit me, I thought I was going to die. I prayed, please let me go back. Please, I don’t want to go just yet. I was then inside the cab when this thought occurred. I was moving like a wild woman then. I was doing yoga gestures inside the cab! I would stick my head out of the window because I badly needed air. I even thought my limbs were disappearing, going invisible.

 

This narration of my experience will come in spurts. Because as I’ve already said I am just flowing with the energy and the memory. I am simply Being. This story cannot be forced. It cannot be demanded from me. It is a story that must be respected, must be honored, must be revered. For it is a story that is true. Do not doubt it. It happened.

 

My narration will be slow. It will be paced. It will not hurry.

 

It must take its time for when fear and disbelief override all that is told, then everything will be for nothing.

 

Thank you to all those who have read patiently. You have gone this far because you can go this far. Blessed are you, all of you.

* the image above is described as “the rare venus transit”. i got the image by typing “image” in google.