This is a pretty straightforward post. For context, see 2011: The Wishlist

1. Climb a mountain. Check! I didn’t get to go on the Pulag trip I mentioned because I got sick on that weekend [it was a good thing too, as the group I was supposed to go with ended up climbing in bad foggy weather], but in April my family climbed Mt. Taclang Damulag with some family friends.

2. More love! So many checks! 2011 was full of surprises. You know who you are.

3. Get published. Sadly, I didn’t even try. I did manage to finish some stories but I’m still relearning the joys of editing my own work. I also need to set aside a regular time for writing and make it into a discipline. Writing can be such a pain. In Dorothy Parker’s words, “I hate writing, I love having written.”

4. Tone muscles. I’m still skinny. Does that count?

5. Write songs. Apart from the nonsensical songs I sing to my family and dog, I have nothing to show for here.

6. Prepare a super-complicated meal. Omurice? This year I taught myself how to make omurice. And that… is not a super-complicated meal. v______v

7. Learn how to knit. Check! [At last! This list was starting to make me feel bad.] Anyway, so I learned the basics of knitting from ebooks and YouTube… and I also found out that I’m really not the sort of person who can do something like knitting for a long period of time. Cause knitting’s kinda boring. It pains me to say that because I think it’s genius in principle – using just two long needles to turn a ball of yarn into cloth – but I found that doing nothing but clacking away with needles for hours got me restless and existential and sad. I think it’s the perfect thing to do in front of a television or something, when your mind isn’t too active, but I don’t watch television. So. Yeah. Knitting’s bad for my mental health. But I’ll finish that scarf one day.

8. Visit a country I’ve never been to! Check! Cambodia was beautiful!

9. Learn a new instrument. …I’m a little better at whistling! Getting bongos next year. Or something. Oh, I actually did get a new instrument this year, but it was a new ukulele and that’s not what I meant when I wrote up this list.

10. Run more. :”>Let’s try again in 2012!!!

Verdict: I got 4/10. And yes, that number looks pathetic, but I am more than satisfied with how 2011 has turned out. It’s been a wild ride, and I’m walking away with a lot more than what can be squeezed into a single blog post, let alone a 10-point list. I can see myself, years from now, looking back on the past year with utmost fondness. You have made me glad, 2011, and you have given me cause to expect big things in 2012. Thank you.

Tumblr cross-over copout post.

Haven’t had enough time/the right mindset to write. Sigh. I’ll get back to you, blog, before the year ends for our year-end review.

Quote for the day:

“I find you stunning but you are running me down.”

- Ingrid Michaelson, Sort Of

On my last beach trip, my girlfriends and I dared each other to see who could walk the furthest into the water, up to the point where the aquamarine suddenly turned deep blue, where shallow water sharply dipped into deadly depths [insert ominous music: tun-tun-tuuuuuun]. The rules of our little game were simple: hold each other’s hands and walk, don’t swim.

So there we were, six girls looking for adventure in the great wide ocean, psyching each other out with our screams as we inched closer and closer to the edge of “safe” waters. Being the tallest, I reached the furthest, and would have gone further if it weren’t for my friends’ overdramatic cries for me to come back. I probably would have made it all the way to the deep, where I would be forced to scull, but to appease them [and, admittedly, also out of fear - some of my friends were calling dibs on my camera, cell phone, etc.], I turned around and swam back to meet the rest of them.

Sometimes, it helps to have someone screaming in your ear to stop before you do something stupid. But on the other hand, it is also these cries of concern and fear that keep you from taking risks and possibly doing something worthwhile. It’s up to you to recognize if it’s time to humble yourself and listen or if it’s time to be stubborn, ignore the voices that tell you “no”, and go deeper.

So tell me, what time is this?

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Quote for the day:

Oh, my weeping willow,
Let your leaves fall and return,
Oh darling, the seasons are your friend.

- Sia, Death by Chocolate

You know what I need right now? I need me some perspective. If I could, I would schedule a rendezvous with myself[/selves?] at ages 11, 13, 18, and 30.

We’d meet up at a pizza place, because, you know, everyone likes pizza. 11-13 will have pepperoni while I look on in disgust. 18 will be awed by my ability to abstain from land-animal meat. [That's all I have to impress her. But more on my underwhelmingness later.]

11 likes to break out into Andrew Lloyd Webber songs when she thinks no-one is looking. She daydreams of running away to the wilderness; of shrinking herself and riding her pet hamster James like a horse; of waking up one day with superhuman abilities; of gatecrashing teddy-bear picnics. 11 knows everything in the world yet has experienced nothing. She feels perpetually underestimated by grown-ups, and will be determined that her opinion – solicited or otherwise – be heard. She will comment on 18’s graphic t-shirt: “I don’t get it.” She will like my hair. And we, the weather-worn, will look at 11, see her self-awareness and misplaced sense of invincibility, and envy.

Except for 13. Frizzy-haired 13 will kick 11 under the table for butting in. Ah, 13. I will pat you on the shoulder and whisper in your ear, “Lighten up dear, everything will be okay. This will pass.” And 13 will look up, see what she becomes in ten years, roll her eyes and sigh. I will try to impress her with how cool I’ve become, then quickly realize how insufficient [read: lame] my deemed coolness actually is.

She won’t be the only one disappointed with me.

18 will be disconcerted at my appearance. She will sidle up to me and preach, unblinking, “23, remember the height from which you have fallen. Remember what I stood for. Remember my optimism. You can deal with this the wrong way and destroy yourself in the process, or you can do as you did when you were me, and build yourself from the heartbreak and grow. Remember being alone but unlonely. You can be that again.” I will try to keep my voice steady when I say, “You don’t know where I’ve been, 18. You have no idea how hard it is to…“ Then, right when our eyes begin to well up, 13 will disrupt the conversation with a loud OMG-I-can’t-believe-this-drama sigh, and we’ll quickly change the topic, proceeding to gush about boys while 11 and 13 make retching noises.

30 does not gush about boys, but will be amused by the conversation at the table. We’ll all want to know: What does she do? Is she married? Does she have kids? Pets? But 30, like most imagined future versions of selves, will hold back on the spoilers and not entertain these questions. She will say that she has seen the world, knows what she wants and is on the path to getting it. As I will have done with 13, she’ll reassure me with a “don’t worry, you’ll get there.”

Recently, I learned that the root word of education is educere, which means “to bring out.” Real learning isn’t about putting ideas and skills into someone, but fleshing out the muck to reveal the whole human being underneath. And I wish that this process can be pleasant and smooth-sailing all the time, but I now know that a lot of it involves painful pruning.

I sometimes think that this post-formal-education period has been my lowest, that I have devolved, that I have drifted off-course, and as 18 might say, fallen. But a week ago, a friend of mine told me that I had grown a lot since our first meeting a couple of years ago. I don’t see it, of course, but I hope that he was being sincere and that he’s right.

Some people don’t need a lot of pruning, some can flourish wherever they are put. It would save me a lot of grief if that were true for me, but obviously that’s not the case. I grow slow and not-so-steady, but the bottom line is this: I grow. I need to accept this season, because what if this mess is what I need to bring out the real person?

Don’t take it personal, they said;
but I did, I took it all quite personal—

the breeze and the river and the color of the fields;
the price of grapefruit and stamps,

the wet hair of women in the rain—
And I cursed what hurt me

and I praised what gave me joy,
the most simple-minded of possible responses.

The government reminded me of my father,
with its deafness and its laws,

and the weather reminded me of my mom,
with her tropical squalls.

Enjoy it while you can, they said of Happiness
Think first, they said of Talk

Get over it, they said
at the School of Broken Hearts

but I couldn’t and I didn’t and I don’t
believe in the clean break;

I believe in the compound fracture
served with a sauce of dirty regret,

I believe in saying it all
and taking it all back

and saying it again for good measure
while the air fills up with I’m-Sorries

like wheeling birds
and the trees look seasick in the wind.

Oh life! Can you blame me
for making a scene?

You were that yellow caboose, the moon
disappearing over a ridge of cloud.

I was the dog, chained in some fool’s backyard;
barking and barking:

trying to convince everything else
to take it personal too.

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And also this is a cop-out I-just-wanna-update-my-blog post. I haven’t had the time to write anything coherent. Reader, if you’re out there, I’m sorry. I’ll try later this week. (^_^)v

Quote for the day:

Miss Stubbs: “You seem to be old and wise.”
Jenny: “I feel old. But not very wise.”

- An Education

So another month just came and went and I have nothing on my blog to show for it. Yet again. =|

What could have happened in just one month anyway, right blog? Thirty-one days isn’t a lot when you think about it so you couldn’t have missed out on a lot, right?

Wrong! Haha! A lot has happened!

For example, just last weekend I taught myself how to knit.

Clockwise, from top-left: learning via ebook; step 6 – you can’t see it here but my manual was congratulating me for making my first stitch – yay?; a tangle – the point when I had no idea what I was doing and had to consult youtube; my many failed attempts; a little progress and my ripped jeans; my most loyal companion helping out by lying down on my ball of yarn.

Why knitting? I can’t really say that I decided to take it up on a whim, since learning how to knit is on my 2011 wishlist, but apart from the reason I put there [just in case I grow up to be that creepy old spinster I need the knitting to make my whole character more creepy old spinsterish], I have nothing much. I’m sure I could force a metaphor in here somewhere but I’m not in the mood for metaphors. I just think sometimes it’s good for your soul to do things just because you can. As someone once said: “Try everything once, except incest and folk dancing.”

Aside from taking up a hobby – a totally useless one, considering that I live in the tropics and everything… well, a lot has happened. So much that I don’t know where to start, so I just won’t. Let’s just say that August was… interesting. Pivotal.

So there. Hello, -bers. May these last four months of 2011 be kind to us all.

Quote of the day:

“Truth is more of a stranger than fiction.”

- Mark Twain

Wouldn’t it be great if we had one day dedicated to unabashed honesty, sans repercussions? Just imagine—one anarchic day to finally get that weight of your chest and admit to your fourth-grade teacher to being the one who killed off the class goldfish, to tell the boy you’ve been watching that you’ve been watching him, to confess that in reality you’re not a Pink Floyd fan—you just pretended so they would like you and you could maybe be friends. Think of all that we could accomplish in that one day; think of all the pairs of jeans-that-make-your-butt-look-big you’re going to throw out; think of the lines drawn in relationships that needed them; think of long-“forgotten” issues we can stop rehashing and finally get closure for.

The cool thing about this is what happens the next day, when our social filters kick back in. We won’t have any memory of what happened the day before, but we’ll notice how we suddenly have more space in our closets. And some of us will discover that they do have the courage to tell her she’s beautiful, or they’ll find themselves paying more attention to the quiet guy they keep running into at the photocopiers. Ill-fitting jobs will be vacated and filled by the people who want them. Without knowing how or why, fathers, mothers, sons, and daughters all over the world will look at each other with new-found understanding and respect.

Or.

Maybe nothing will happen, maybe we’ll forget and that will be that. But regardless of whether or not anything changes, our breathing will be a little easier in the lingering aftertaste of clarity, the remainder of just one day of sweet, reckless abandon. Wouldn’t that in itself be great?