Won’t be able to maintain too many blogs.

So, dear reader, if you are interested, check out my other blog – http://rossanova.wordpress.com/

Thanks and see you around!

but strange only to the ears of others

because really i hear you.

thank you.

Yesterday, I accompanied my brother to Marbel, a good 45 minute drive from home. That’s where he works and since he only had to deliver some papers to his office, he asked me to go with him on what turned out to be a road trip. During the somewhat long drive we got into a conversation that I just can’t elaborate on right now. But basically, I told him some of my thoughts on what happened to me in October last year. One of them was that at the height of my episode, I had a story going on in my head. I thought I knew what was going on with the other people I was interacting with. But of course, this did not seem to be the case as I found out later on when I checked with my friends about what they were thinking about me.

Sometimes when I look back on the many things I have done, I cringe in embarassment. But then, they are stories that must be told, for they are tales that are the gateways to understanding. But they cannot be told in this blog. Yet, maybe. For now, I can only tell these stories in conversations with friends who hold my heart close to theirs. In other words, they are secrets, as yet.

It’s a new year. What possible resolutions should I hold now that I am where I am in this small city strange to me and with only my family as constant company? Cliche or shallow as my resolutions are, I dare put them down here. Heck, these are after all what I think would make me like myself more.

It turns out, I have only one very concrete new year’s resolution. Lose weight. Yes, because over the past two months I’ve grown bigger what with the meds increasing my appetite and my newly developed cravings for sugar. Lose weight, that is all. I maybe wrong, but I believe this is what it takes for me to motivate myself into becoming a better person. If i can achieve this goal, then I know I truly have the will for anything I set out to do.

Ganyan na muna. Isa-isa lang.

Perhaps, as a new year’s resolution, I promise to write some more this 2008.

Of course, the real reason being I don’t know, don’t know for certain, that is, what to say. And so now I find myself scribbling, er, typing away, thoughts that swirl over my head, almost desperately wanting to pull them back on earth through words that appear in the computer screen. All these, so friends would know what have crossed my mind before the compulsion for Silence again hits me.

With a lot of spare time in my hands and a host of memories to review, I usually do a lot of thinking, contemplating, if you may. Most of the time i find myself centering on the present as the remarkable consequences of the past and the haunting worries for the future bear yet unclear answers. As past and future converge in the present, the only thing that grounds me is the love and security my family and friends offer as well as the inescapabale PRESENT MOMENT. Times when I get concerned about the future and questions like what will happen to me arise, I find comfort knowing that I have family and friends looking out for me. It is a knowledge that discourages me into complacency and instead inspires me to help myself while being equally generous to my loved ones.

A chat conversation with a dear friend has made becoming more honest with myself easier. The understanding that goes along with the conviction that eventually each one only needs to claim for oneself the journey it has chosen to take makes this journey indeed “exciting”. It is an excitement that neither exaggerates nor downplays, neither tolerates nor denies, but stems from a place of knowledge even when it is not yet apparent. And in this, I, too, find comfort. Because it is the authentic path, even when the realizations it brings about are downright embarrassing, painful and perverse.

There goes another of Life’s ironies. And it teaches me that the thing that should matter most is how I conduct myself today. Today is different from yesterday and unique from all other tomorrows. Today, I may not earn big bucks but have made connections and held my nephew in my arms. In thinking so, I become a better individual.

The Power of the Mind has been endlessly testified by numerous inspirational authors, some of whom I have read. It is one of those things that keeps me from sliding away. I believe in this Power. It is among what Spirit is. It is that which makes us smile at Life’s ironies and our indisputable role in it.

Happy Friday.

Between the frog and the crooning fat piglady
a cactus displayed unashamedly stands;
It provokes you into scrutiny.
Its threadlike spikes point to all directions
as if to scold and insult the Chinese for
inventing mahjong tiles with only four
wind directions – north, south, east, west.

Look here, the spikes say,
what have you been thinking?
One dimensions are not for round planets.

I tried to write you my dearest. And I tried to come up with answers to the question you posed which I found most profound: Why do I need so much to heal (others, I suppose)? In trying to answer that question by outlining some reasons, I found myself facing a blank wall. I thought that I cannot answer that question in concrete terms (meaning, what in my personal life makes me want to heal). That is why I am opting now to share my thoughts in this blog hoping that something maybe exposed. This will also somehow reveal the other question you asked: What am I thinking?

I choose to reply in symbolic terms (my drawings, for example) because that is what I can manage now even as I am also thinking that symbolic language perhaps may be the most appropriate and most effective way by which we can communicate and hopefully understand each other and the entire experience.

For frankly speaking, the best answer I can give now is an “I don’t know”. I don’t know why I had pushed everyone to come along with me in the experience. I don’t know why I refused to listen. And yet, something tells me I know. But that knowledge is inaccessible for now. Or perhaps, that knowledge is better not uttered for now because they are most strange, most unbelievable, most unreal.

Because deep in my heart, I believe that everything happened as it must happen. Sometimes though, I find myself thinking about what ifs. What if I stuck to the group that may have perhaps best relate or most understand what I was going through. What if I did not drag my friends into the experience? What if I took it slow? What if I did not break boundaries?

And yet when I ponder some more on boundaries, I find myself getting the affirmation I need. I don’t know if this is a justification. But my thought is simply this: The experience was precisely a destruction of boundaries. That was why everybody who was involved was involved.

That is where my being “Not Sorry” post came from (I had deleted that post because the context was not elaborated. I was concerned it would be misinterpreted.) I may be sorry for the earth-shattering, mind-blowing panic and pain. Yet, I also do have the notion that things happened because they needed to happen. In writing that post, I thought being sorry would invalidate the whole experience. That being sorry contradicted the whole experience. Perhaps I am wrong. Or perhaps, I am simply ignorant of how I and the experience affected my loved ones. And for this, I am over-eager for everyone to share with me their experience as well as insights.

Why did I want so much to heal? Because I had been through what others would call as the “dark night of the soul”. I suffered anguish and rejection and I was wanting to find light. The dance gave me the light. The dance unblocked me and allowed me to be myself. In so doing, I was eager to share myself and all that was running through my head, my limbs and my trunk.

I followed the messages: You are a road, keep your path. You are loved. Learn, continue learning. I thought my way of learning was experiential. That was my road. That the way the Spirit wanted me to learn was for me to discover on my own, by myself (with minor prompts from the healer I had recently met).

But that discovery entailed involving others (my friends and workmates) because I thought then involving them meant evolving and healing them too. And I chose to do just that. That was the main framework of my journey. This also means, in a way, I violated my loved ones. And now, for this reason, I am saying sorry and asking for your understanding. There were times I behaved in quite a smug manner and appeared to be all knowing and uncontrollable. And so, I may have hurt you or caused alarm and confusion.

This line of thinking simply means: I wanted so much to heal because I wanted to learn so that I could be a better healer. And I wanted my learning pronto or at a fast rate because it gave me much joy. The energy gave me much energy I felt almost continually high. The only things that disturbed the wonder of the experience were the concern and the doubts of my dearest (which I truly truly understand). But I chose to fight instead of acquiesce because as I said I wanted to experience the flow of the energy because it was teaching me many things.

Is healing my calling? I don’t hear voices asking me to be a healer. I only know I want to help and to heal and to teach. Right now though, I know I am not able. Yet something also tells me that my experience with you is to teach me what healing and spiritual practices can do — that there are such things as spiritual emergencies or mental illnesses that can be brought about by spiritual endeavors, at the very least. But I had to experience all that I experienced. For me, this is what the message: “You are a road, keep your path” meant. And I say this not with false pride or arrogance but simply in recognition that the path for me maybe quite uncommon. I hope in the future, I will meet those walking along that similar road.

This is all for now though there is still much to say. Thank you Ewe for prompting me to write. As always, I love you.

i hope you do not pull yourself down
nor bring yourself up.
everything is level;

on ground;
and above, is sky;
all else, are just clouds.