examen xxiii

how to be alive in a place where you are considered a ghost? are there any tips for breaking out from the glass case of a museum?

how do i move on from the vast landscape of failure without in a sense abandoning there the pain that i caused? how do i take the time for that journey out of a dead valley when all time i have feels stolen and unjustly taken?

these questions run their laps in my head tonight. almost all conversations with K are like going back to ground zero. square one. 

how do i proactively trust and stand firm in waiting?

be expectant. 

His words will not return to Him empty. we're supposed to be here together for a lifetime.

He knows the plans He has for me. plans that are for me. for a future full of hope.

i peeled off dried skin from about half my left heel today. as i did so i thought about the fine line between waiting on healing, and waiting expectantly. proactively, for the better to arrive. 

at first i beagn to think that peeling off the skin - tough, calloused - was me being impatient and making haste with healing. and then when i felt the new, pink, healthy skin beneath dried yellowing tough layer of old skin, i realised that there is no need to let something rot and finally fall away for it to make space for the new that is already there. the better that is already there. that i need only unveil. peel away. 

i pray that i am not something that needs to be peeled away from someone's life. 

the new, pink skin is a little tender. i remember how the disease pulled these two layers of skin apart, how it felt like an itching furnace just beneath that calloused layer of skin. on Christmas day my tita explained how walking made it worse - mine spread plenty on my feet because of the pressure applied to the first rashes. like it exploded and spread just beneath the surface of my skin. 

that first layer used to look tough. weathering anything. hours of walking, running, standing. but next to the recently revealed layer underneath, it looks just weathered. worn. unhealthy. 

i don't want to wait for the worn layer of my life to die a slow death. it wastes the time the better could be living. 

examen xxii

27 dec.

grace, God, in unexpected places. 

i started a conversation with my lolo this afternoon to try and get an idea if he would like a book on Philippine history that i found in powerbooks yesterday. What books are you reading at the moment, i asked, because i knew he had 'reading time' in the wee third or fourth hour of the morning, and he always mentions that he is behind on 'all his reading'. 

the first book he mentioned was one called After Jesus; about the history of Christianity. by now i can no longer recall the one or two other books he mentioned, because of the conversation that transpired.

he told me that i should read the book because it's very informative. in the context of the disillusioned Catholic in my lolo, i knew that informative meant that it was some kind of diplomatic church-bashing. and there was a moment i could feel i was about to turn on the defense. 

as he relayed a few examples - how Christmas used to be the Pagan celebration of the unconquered sun, how confession was turned into a regularised process by a king who got a second chance at life and couldn't live it without blemish - i asked myself. why am i defensive? and what do i have to defend with? i don't know this history. i've read about a third of the bible at best, not in chronology and with little contextual knowledge beyond my own personal relationship with the sacred stories.

so i listened. and felt my mind and heart open. i remembered being at the dining table nearly seven years ago and having a heated discussion with him about belief. i had to step out because of frustration tears. in another instance, at the same place, it was him and lola and it ended in him storming up the stairs saying hay nako stop that! i don't need your prayers, away from lola praying out loud about his unbelief. i realised that he is different now. seeking. with a highly intellectual disposition still, but with the eyes of the heart opening. his voice is collected and does not escalate like it does when he talks about politics. i am so grateful for this.

siguro... may mga mali rin talaga sa bible. it was written some 300 years after Jesus' time. i somewhat agreed, acknowledging losses in translation, but also reminding the both of us that it was the Holy Spirit that wrote through servants of God. 

perhaps partly in context with what has been happening lately in my own life, i suddenly could see the strings of continuity in all of the disparities of the Church that he pointed out. maybe those disparities happened so that change could take place. turning points rather than steps back. and one of my lolo's examples was about exactly that - he criticised how the Church could label Judas as just an ultimate betrayer, when it was prophesied and instrumental in the event on which our entire faith is anchored. so surely, there was something 'good', at least purposeful, about Judas' failure. He couldn't have helped it, my lolo defended carefully, Could he? otherwise where would Christianity be right now?

ever since Eve and Adam ate the apple, to be human has meant to be on a journey home to God. maybe that King was was granted a second chance at life so that he would change the idea of deathbed confession to become a regular part of dialogue with our Father, addressing the human need for a holy vantage point here on earth. maybe the excommunication of Gallileo on the basis of his findings and belief that the world was round, an excommunication despite the bible saying 'sphere' in reference to earth, was the opportunity for the Church to become more open and more discerning. perhaps it wasn't really that converted Christians 'stole' December from their old pagan religion and claimed it for the birth of Jesus, but that they had discovered truth and their traditions changed accordingly. perhaps the scandals had reached its peak because new leadership, new light, was to follow. 

my lolo started talking about repetitive prayer. how it's in the bible that Jesus doesn't like repetitive praying. i don't know about that part of the bible, but i shared what i thought about the rosary, the only repetitive prayer my lolo does for the sake of his mother who taught him it and whom he loves very much. we ask often because maybe we are to learn what to ask for. maybe it's God helping us learn that. revealing His plans and causing us to knock the right doors. it reminds me of him, i said, how he is so eager to share his stuff. you only have to ask, he always tells me. my lolo laughed. and i had a feeling it was appreciative rather than dismissive. i fought against the small feeling of being belittled, and took a chance.

diba? i asked, smiling. my lolo just laughed. mali ba ako? still chuckling a little, tama. we high-fived.

-

p.s.

thank You Lord for the absolutely genius idea of pairing my bluetooth keyboard to my iPhone. this new perspective on mobility is refreshing and surprisingly homey.

28 dec.

p.p.s.

Lord, please take away this incessant taking of time that i often end up doing in writing sometimes. take away this sickness of perfectionism. 

i just had to laugh when lola started talking about perfectionism this morning after a short voice lesson. i want to hear you doing what you need to do in this house! practice, practice. i never hear you singing. don't say you are shy. that's pride.

i think voice lessons with my lola is helping me lose myself. be less conscious. on the very few good days of my sporadic lesson schedule so far, i feel like i disappear. in a way that is me feeling and seeing from the very core, from the inside out, rather than from the outside in.

deeper: hebrews 1

enter & impress

there used to be only prophets. today, we have the Son, who is the reflection of Glory, and an imprint of Being, and sustains all things by the Word. 

the Son is superior to the angels. He sits at the right hand of Majesty on high. all the angels worship Him. 

the angels are the winds that fan the flames of our servanthood.

everything changes, everything perishes. but He remains, and He is the same.

pray & live

thank you Lord for the time to dwell in your word this moment. thank you for kath who has motioned me into this letter to the Hebrews. thank you for this devotional that gives me landmarks as i journey into these most important stories of lives, and documentation of messages. you saw my need and you even helped me to see my need and to ask for it. and you have abundantly given.

a reflection, an imprint, and sustenance. this speaks to me like this: to be sustained, i am to seek this reflection and imprint. the reflection will help me to see. the imprint will help me to be.

you remind me of what is around me. air. wind. the angels are wind; and i am a servant, a flame of fire. just as i am cooled by a breeze and just as oxygen keeps me alive on this earth, so do the angels keep my spirit alive to the Kingdom here on earth. 

i am reminded that i am an heir of salvation. it's high time i start acting like one.

lifesong

come out of hiding

you're safe here with me

there's no need to cover

what i already see

you've got your reasons

but i hold your peace

you've been on lockdown

and i hold the key

because i loved you before

you knew it was love

and i saw it all

still i chose the cross

you were the one

that i was thinking of

when i rose from the grave

now rid of the shackles

my victory's yours

i tore the veil

for you to come close

there's no reason to stand

at a distance anymore

you're not far from home

i'll be your lighthouse

when you're lost at sea

and i will illuminate everything

no need to be frightened by intimacy

just throw off your fear

and come running to me

oh as you run

what hindered love

will only become

part of the story

baby, you're almost home now

please don't quit now

you're almost home to me

examen xxi

God bless those with the strength to write through their trials, their pain, their struggles. because it helps. i am humbled by this and deeply regret not being able to write the past years, though K had always told me i should. it wouldn't have been just for me. it would have been for us, too.

last night at the height of blistering sores, i was looking for accounts that would illustrate the typical course of this virus. i was grateful to find out that my case has really been very mild and i have been spared the bulk of discomfort that comes in the form of sores and blisters in my mouth cavity - on the lips, on the tongue, on the throat. thank You Lord that i have been able to eat with the minimal discomfort of swallowing with a sore throat, and some tenderness on the sides of the tongue.

here is the post that was helpful to me. not so much for the recount that i could relate to, but for this poem at the end:

I asked God for strength, that I might achieve.I was made weak, that I might learn humbly to obey.

I asked God for health, that I might do greater things.I was given infirmity, that I might do the better things.

I asked for riches, that I might be happy.I was given poverty, that I might be wise. 

I asked for power, that I might have the praise of men.I was given weakness, that I might feel the need of God.

I asked for all things, that I might enjoy life.I was given life, that I might enjoy all things.

I got nothing that I asked for, but everything I had hoped for.Almost despite myself, my unspoken prayers were answered.

I am among all men most richly blessed.

examen xx

i woke up this morning after a restless night being woken up constantly by the itch. on the in side of my hands, and all over the soles of my feet. like tiny little micro ants parading around the surface area, just beneath my skin. it was 6:40 and i had decided, maybe best not go to church.

my dad came in to the room to ask how it was and said my feet looked much better. it didn't feel it. di ka ba magsisimba? i begin to hear it. the negative questioning. i say probably not, because look at this. bakit, masakit ba? di mo ba kaya? i begin to feel attacked. a guilt trip? does this need further questioning? all throughout yesterday he was the same, being nonchalant, not caring that i was worried because i had used his slippers the previous evening and asked him to clean it. so hindi ka na magsisimba? papa. di ba may sakit ako? baka contagious pa ito. and masakit maglakad. sige, bahala ka.

i don't understand this.

my mom comes in to the room a bit later on and has similar inquiries. but it feels like she sees me more. and she understands when i say contagious. maybe she sees because she has been through illness that has isolated her. i don't think my dad has.

i wake up at 7:49 after what felt like a power nap. my mind feels wide open and there is a clear image of an old lady with boils, on the floor, just reaching out for the hem of Jesus' garment. the lack of peace from the initial conversation with my dad is far from my head and as i go out the door to check if they've left, my mom comes up a few steps of stairs and says, aalis na kami. gusto mo ba buksan ko yung internet? i say, can i come?

she prepares mouthwash for me while i dress up in semi-slow-motion. it's amazing how much more weight this pair of jeans has in my hands because of the lesions. in haste the sores on the side of my feet are chafed by my jeans. a wince. it passes. my dad is honking the car outside. she doesn't flinch. i am so grateful that in that moment it felt like the most important thing to do for her was to help me. i go down the stairs as quickly as i can and ease my feet into shoes slowly, slowly.

i haven't felt that in a while, that i had to go to the Father's house just to meet Him. despite myself, in spite of myself. the past years i have felt that i had to go, but for myself. that was a different kind of desperation. this desperation was liberating. in that moment i knew who He was. and because of that i knew that i would be healed.

my mom spots K on the way to a pew and we motion and mouth Hi's. i wave. i am not sure how to read her facial expression. but it's okay. i know where i am headed. i sit down at the pew and for the first time in a long, eventful december, i feel like i am exactly where i need and want to be.

examen xviv

20 dec

steps are like ones on needles.

the work of my hands is temporarily suspended due to a colony of angry red islands.

God is really making me stay still.

not for rest, at least not initially. but for the truth.

it could just be an allergic reaction. but its manifestation the past 45 hours also looks exactly like a common virus that usually, only children catch. "that means your immune system is that low," the doctor said. "this is what happens when you act like a child," a voice in my head said.

he ends up selling me something that will boost my immune system double time. i could have said no and stuck out the long way. but i caught myself. i am not inconsequential. i have a life to live. the price of not taking care of myself the past two months: P2000 in boosters and multivitamins. P540 for a blood test. P530 for antihistamines. P560 in antibiotics, because as well as a virus there was a bacterial infection.

the price of not taking care of myself the past three years: an incessantly broken heart. quasi-increased threshold for stress that has come to bite me in the ass. so many headaches. tears. time wasted going round in circles in my head. a worn-down Square One. a grave lack of grit. a burnt-down home and relationships in ashes. too much pain that did not need to happen, both to me and to those close to me. the spiritually expensive question of Who am i.

Then I went down to the potter's house, and behold, he was working at the wheel. And the vessel that he was making from clay was spoiled in the hand of the potter; so he made it over, reworking it into another vessel as it seemed good to the potter to make it. 

(Jeremiah 18:3-4)

make it all over.

examen xviii

19 dec

i sit here at the jeep stop along country club drive that is closest to my house.

my bag is heavy with a laptop for a meeting today. and its weight gives my brain some kind of translation for the real world. i also carry weight, beyond the physics class definition, and i feel it every day. i feel it right now as i anticipate a bright red car to pull up at the jeep stop. and in brief, civilised correspondence.

but despite all that is difficult and all that is past and all that is before what is yet to arrive... i feel home. i feel hope. (i wonder what kind of sign it is for those two words to be so close in composition.) hope was born here. and perhaps being completely hopeless in the place where hope was born, is the best cup. being in the darkest night at home means i can still feel my way round. like being able to walk in your own house in darkness because you know where everything is. being at home is that opportunity to truly feel, and see with the heart and not with the eyes. open the heart's vision.

i still wish that this didn't have to be at the expense of another soul. maybe this is a difficult lesson, a message that jolts me from recluse: you are not inconsequential.

examen xvii

i don't know what it is that makes me silent and feeling like i have scour my brain for words to lay down here.

my mind isn't idle. my heart doesn't feel cold. why has it become such a challenge to talk about myself, think about myself?

one of the reasons i stopped writing years ago was because i began to perceive it as a kind of luxury for the outside world - taking up time. for the inside world... perhaps because it was beginning to feel like a black hole that i was digging myself deeper and deeper into. always entertaining the same thoughts, always speculating, always asking questions that are unlikely to be answered.

for a season this was good; it was good and healthy to attempt to be in the real world. but seasons end. and yin and yang, high tide and low tide, peace and unrest, cosmos and chaos... they all coexist in one body, one circumstance. it should coexist in me.

the peaceful moments of my arts education were in co-creation. the conversations with God that happened during and through an activity uninfluenced by what surrounded me. i hid in the throwing room, producing cup after cup and when there was frustration their walls would also be tired.

the paradox of design and my growing dissatisfaction in creative expression in my soul the last three years i can see is a mirror of my pursuit in writing.

expression was fruitless if it didn't drive me forward, if it didn't serve a greater purpose.

was faith so internalised that it was fruitless expression?

examen xvi

the time i made her draw the line

i will forever regret this one moment where i was not mindful. where i didn't pay attention. it made me miss the crucial details in the conversation that would have told me what was really happening.

i am not usually like this and all my mistakes are so out of character. i have never been someone to be not mindful. to not pay attention to details. to not realise in a heartbeat what mattered more.

i wish i could take everything back. i wish i could step into a blue box and tell an old man to bring me back to where i last left my real life.

only God can do something with what's already there. He won't take it back though. but He will turn it into something new.

and while He makes a masterpiece i have to make sure i am making one too. co-creating. tilling the soil. sowing the seeds. because God is going to - already has - always is - catching up - caught up - with me. and He's going to be excited and He's going to have all that grace. and if i don't sow, and till... i am going to miss it.

today's round of old-word-digging has rendered the following:

from me:
"i have been thinking that this robot has taken over because i'm not facing what i'm really feeling. since i got here it's been like, you're in europe. you've always wanted to be here. absorb it. love it. you're in a better place. be happy.

and though i did pull that off the first week.. the more we settled in, the more i felt jaded.

and i realize now that the feeling is still the same. leaving singapore, the same as leaving the philippines. this time i just didn't face it. 

...

never been good with transitions. and the only way i deal? full-fledged melancholy and introspection.
and maybe my whole problem these past weeks has been the very absence of that."

from her:
"perhaps the initial shock is still upon you.  you haven't adapted to the fact that you are in some kind of prison because you're in transition.  you're "neither here nor there" YET.  it's like when the lights suddenly go off and you can't see but after a while your sight suddenly adjusts to the darkness and you can see the shadows and hues of light reflected by the moonglow.  so i suppose in some divine way, we are in the right path.  after having had a series of great miraculous moments we see this huge abyss and it seems that everything is impossible.  hopeless.  i can hear God saying now, "because i don't want you to be happy with just that."  and it's true you know?  because when it hit me the awfulness of this transition i started questioning God, "ito lang ba yun Lord?  hanggang dito lang ba???"  and it became really frustrating.

till it hit me that THERE REALLY IS NOTHING I CAN DO.  NO HUMAN ABILITY of mine can take me to where i want to go.  what heights i want to reach.  what dream i want to come true.

try to find meaning in the routine.  try to find airpackets.  your defense mechanism has always been to get jaded.  indifferent. close up.  zip up. it's not so much as to recluse yourself like how i am y'know? but yours is really like to go zombie on me.  or other people.  and that's a bit harder to guage or assess or interact with because i don' tknow what the truth is at that present moment.  i don' tknow what meaning you're absorbing.  i can only guess.  perhaps that's why i'd prefer to be a momentary recluse because at least it's CLEAR to myself and to other people.  this is what i don't want.  this is what i want.  this is what i can live with.  this is what i can't. etc.

i know i have more to say but right now i'm multi-tasking in finishign this email and chatting with ktrise.  i'll email you a copy of that chat in a bit.  but yeah...maybe it will help if we "live together" through this transition you know?

like make it a point to stay connected.  make it a point to write even when you're SO TIRED.  make it a point to blog.  post pictures.  like dont' get paralyzed and consumed by the "impossibility" of things.  share share share.  even the bad and awful stuff.  if you have homework, share it too.  if i can't really do it, i'll tell you.  HAHA.  but keep sharing adi. :) "

i remember this. words exchanged a month after arriving in london. i remember these feelings. but reading these words over again, it is just that strong a mirror. a black mirror. and right now is the black side. where time is quicker - or i am much, much slower.

i remember that my sense of purpose setting first foot in the UK was the same as me coming home this year: a purpose rooted in zeteo. and in both cases i have realised the need to contextualise myself by myself. but here on the black side it has come at a great price because i hadn't paid it off with the time i was given.

and the story has always been the same. i wonder how i dealt with it as a child.

nowadays, nowayears.. if asked how i am feeling off the bat: i am okay. it's like how i can hold in my pee for abnormally long and even forget that i need to go, then hours later i realise the under of my abdomen is aching and the process of expelling is slow. and difficult. and painful.

stripped, i look for the words to describe me. and i have barely any. so many, too many allocated for other things, other places, other people, other feelings.

i wanted everything else to be okay so i could be okay.

fucking stupid.

right now the question echoes. ito lang ba yun Lord? hanggang dito lang ba???

i can't do this. i have no hope for myself. because i've tried that and it's always thrown me a curveball. but i have hope in God. i have hope in His plans. the only way for those plans to happen, plans that are so amazing that it's nothing i can think of, is to stay focused here. where He has promised, and where He has laughed (and continues to laugh) at my own little stupid pointless plans. the only way to be sustained through waiting is to ask Him into the empty and broken places that wait to be alive, that wait for Life.

a prayer by origen:

May the Lord Jesus put His hands on our eyes also, for then we shall begin to look not at what is seen but at what is not seen. May He open the eyes that are concerned not with the present but with what is yet to come, may He unseal the heart's vision, that we may gaze on God in the Spirit, through the same Lord Jesus Christ, where glory and power will endure throughout the unending succession of ages.

examen xv

i am trying out just writing writing and if i feel it is done, i post it, and when i feel it has not been long enough, i write again. instead of succumbing to the impulse of making things neat in a post per day.

last friday's morning energiser/checkup before plansem was uncanny. while most people said they imagined new york... in my head was a collective, paraphrased memory of a real, recent past. being in a big crowded city. full of lights. not knowing what i'm doing exactly.

but more than a suitable description of my last country of residence, it was the scene in the coffeeshop that hit me. i imagined it to be my first experience of taking in my surroundings, in london. it was in wimbledon. at costa coffee. it was crowded. it was october so light coats were out. i had my moleskine and did some writing. i drew a man nearby who was by himself. i can't remember what liana was doing at the time, but we were there because my parents had gone to see a house in the area and the letting agent's car was tiny.

in the prayer... i saw His eyes. how they looked at me and saw me. His hand was warm. he was looking at me and seeing me. he is looking at me and seeing me. Lord, i ask for vision. let me see. in and beyond my circumstances.

examen xiv

parents have been asking me why i seem 'matamlay' but i don't really know how to tell them what is going on right now. the last time they asked they were dropping me off near church to meet jarro and i couldn't help the tears. they didn't press on with asking me after i brushed it off and said i would kwento soon because i was about to get out of the car. while writing last night my mum walked into my room looking for something and casually said, hindi ka pa nagkkwento. i was writing already then so felt i shouldn't break the rhythm. she just left.

i don't know how to be close to my parents this way. to say, i have realised i am not at all where i should be with God and i need to sort it out. i can imagine saying it and more often than not with them that is just what i do - imagine it and then do it. but paying attention to how i feel i am still often reluctant. unsure of what to expect from a connection, wondering whether i will be disappointed or enlightened.

one of the few times i was really sure was when i stood up for my sister about her marriage. it was clear to me where i was coming from and what i knew needed to happen as a result of my pushing them. but if it is me standing up - or even just opening up - for myself... i am not sure.

i can imagine possible responses like, lagi na lang ako ang mali, most likely from my mother.

as i write this my door is open and across from it, two steps away, is my parents' open door. they make before bed shuffles in a lamp-lit room. both rooms are together in silence. i am reminded of what kath said lately: being together doesn't necessarily mean connecting (paraphrased). and as they do their own moving and breathing and living... i do the same, not too far from them, but in my mind i could not be farther. why is there a feeling of missing? why is it more pronounced right now, than say the normal missing, the comfortable missing of my sister who exists mostly through a whatsapp window?

it feels the same with kath. and the rest of the family. i feel far and left behind - my own fault. right now it is worse than i was physically far away.

james told me the last time we saw each other that he is going to be the worst person ever at keeping in touch. and it couldn't be more true. he explained that he cannot deal with emotions and connections that are beyond his physical periphery. when he realised it, he accepted it. and just carried on. explaining to anyone relevant (only if they were in his physical periphery). i don't know if his last breakup which happened just before i met him was the reason he went into emotional overdrive and when he got over it, he dropped it completely. choosing to live differently. his world so small. i understand him and i appreciate and accept that kind of connection. but at the same time, it is not how i want to live. and since his new way of living had happened, i detached from him my own idea of a close friend.

perhaps trying to accommodate so many different experiences and people have turned me into a character-less vessel. i knew who i was in different contexts, with different people, different cultures.

and coming home. i thought i knew who i was coming home.

but i have been confronted with the question of who i am. plainly, simply, and most painfully. because of course. home isn't now as it was.

i needed to know who i am out of context. maybe in outer space, just to give my brain the abstract place to chew on. maybe in the heart of God. in the hands and feet of Jesus. in the cavity of Mama Mary's bowed head and reverent stance.

examen xii, xiii

10 dec.

it is impossible to live unforgiven.

and there comes a time that no one else can convince you that you are but you. because everyone already tried. but you were stubborn. 

meet me where i am, Lord. show me who you are, that i might know who i am.

i can't help anyone if i ignore helping myself. 

-----------------------

12 dec.

shep says, you both have to find yourselves in God, independently.


-----------------------

maybe i have never really felt my time was my own. that my life was my own. or maybe there came a point that i stopped owning my time, and my life, in some kind of twisted intention of being more present in others' lives.

i remember telling beci once, after meeting her mum, that i felt like my own didn't have much of an identity. i don't know what my mother was like before she started a family because i'm not sure that it shows at present. while packing for the UK departure, i was looking through some old photo albums and remember thinking the same thing - what was she like? my parents met in japan. she had some cool clothes. maybe the deepest thing i know about her is that she is a people-pleaser.

when i was around 7 or 8 years old she had gone through a phase of a scarring temper. if my sister and i (i'm not sure if i remember correctly but i was probably reprimanded more often) made her upset or if we didn't obey, she would tell us bitterly about how hard she works just for us. that maybe it's better that she didn't come home. i have suddenly just recalled a now vivid memory of being in their bedroom when we lived in makati. white walls, white closets, and white dressers. the bed was cream. and i was touching a set of garments, a brown pant suit, that was laid out on the bed. my mother was getting ready for work the next day. eh ano kung hindi na lang kaya ako umuwi? as she rummaged through her closet. i was stood by the bed, hearing the words but not seeing where they were coming from. i was looking down at the pant suit. thinking it may be the last thing i would see my mother wear for the rest of my life.

maybe i had used the computer outside of the allocated time (clear instructions were in blue ink, in my father's handwriting, on a small memo-sized piece of paper taped to the monitor). maybe i didn't want to eat the fish that had been prepared for dinner. maybe i still hadn't memorised the 6 times table. whatever i did, it was so unforgivable that my mother said she might not come home the next day.

despite those bad moments i always looked up to her as a child. she looked strong. she knew what she was doing. and maybe, in a way, because i knew i had disappointed her often... i wanted to redeem myself.

when i became a teenager i wanted and worked for the same thing as everyone else my age did: an identity. maybe this is is where i stopped wanting to redeem myself to her. because i was discovering new things. realising that i am someone. and my mother... stayed that way. she was my father's husband. and my mother. and that was it. i became more aware that she had friends and took time to see them. i didn't know what music she liked, and she didn't like mine. she tried to make me wear floral-printed clothing in a time all i would wear were sports-brand shirts and baggy jeans.

my parents worked the hardest in singapore. we only saw them in the evening, because we always left for school much earlier than they were even down for breakfast. they were always tired at night. i remember one night, one of the first couple of weeks in high school, i felt homesick. i was lying on the couch tired from softball tryouts and feeling anxious about what the coaches' judgement about me was. my mum was in one of the armchairs behind my head, with some papers laid out on crossed legs. maybe she was on the phone. she talked for a while. i remember thinking, i should talk to her after her phonecall. i fell asleep before she finished, and when i woke up she was still there with the papers. i can't remember why, but i didn't speak to her. instead i was in my head trying to understand what i was feeling. why am i homesick? what am i missing? why do i miss her even though she's just there? and why can't i just tell her about the softball tryouts? at the end of my first year in high school, i was in the bottom tenth percentile of the whole batch. failure was part of my identity and i learned to wear it as a badge of pride. because i was beyond school. i was busy with creating my identity. couldn't care less about algebra.

when i was still failing after the first quarter of the second year, my mother was crying to my teacher. good grades in english and an above average fitness test record wasn't enough. i didn't want to get kicked out. i did the remedial classes and pulled it up a notch. my parents couldn't say much because what i was required to learn at school then was beyond them. they were happy. i just wanted to play softball.

in the quieter moments there was still laughter and joy. Christmas, birthdays. we usually went to church together. but these relationships that persist in mostly silence are difficult to weave. and in manila i eventually, finally, started to try, because i was beginning to fall through a dark hole from the lack of a weave. it was too hard to stay resentful at the reasons for being uprooted from singapore. i remember one time in the car and having fun for the first time in that context. i was reading out whatever and everything i could read as we drove. i forget why. but i haven't forgotten how appreciative they were. that i was actually talking. i was still unappreciative about my context but at least i could laugh in the car with my family.

we have come a long way as a family, especially my mother. especially all of us in relation to her. discovering God, individually and as a family, at St. James did that. and her cancer changed all of us.

lately (i.e. the past couple of years, post-cancer), though, i have felt things shifting again. old habits die hard. for her. and perhaps i am searching for her again.

Lord, why have you made me remember all this?

i remember the pant suit memory again. i can't believe how easily i can relate to that younger self. do i really still feel that small? the bad kind of feeling small? is that how far i have carried this?

i thought i had surrendered all i needed to in my early adulthood, and thought maybe i was just forgetting how surrendering feels like. but maybe i hadn't looked deep enough into my own history.

examen xi

i am sad about the good things because i cannot share them with my closest friend. today's inner compass workshop has resonated with all things i have been confronting recently. it showed that my core (the 'who') has really been internalised and often tucked away from 'the real world'. which was the 'where' and 'how'. life as a reaction.

to an extent my core has always been compromised. one, because a life in transit hadn't really allowed any deep roots to form. two, because of completely reclusive tendencies - perhaps a result of a transient environment, perhaps because of dealing with being bullied in my pre-teen years. being bullied is something i never paid much notice of, charging it to experience and the strengthening of moral fibre. until i started becoming interested in how people grow, education, and most recently horizontal social development. my sensitivity to 7 - 12 year olds is heightened now and looking back on what i went through in primary school, it is the type of thing campaigns are set up for to be against it. i wonder why it is always the fat kid who was the butt of everything. i wonder if kids today are still like that. 

and so i grew up proving myself. a continual mode of defense that attempted to tell the world that i do deserve to be here, that there is more to my self that is actually likeable and not laughable.

in the more recent past i see that translated into my relationship with my parents, something i made a decision to improve on shortly before moving out to the UK. i don't regret the time and effort spent on giving back to my parents; it was also a kind of overflow of the abundance that i experienced in manila before leaving. i wanted to not be that kid who was sulky and unjustly unpleasant to them. right now the one scenario that keeps presenting itself to me is that in an argument or a difficult discussion, where they close up when i try to provoke/encourage communication as a means of resolution. it was in those moments that my Who had been chafed. silenced. because it was too much. too insistent. too repetitive. too self-righteous. and i didn't have the One thing to restore that worn down core. 

examen x

just got home and opened my door to a room that had been completely rearranged. at first i felt… ‘no, i just fixed this and it felt more ‘me’ !’ the bed had been put back in its original place.

then i realised that there is now a desk and chair on the left side of the room.

i am grateful.

i am a bit sad because kath didn’t tell me about her successful work deal. katrise exclaimed about it in the car and i got excited and then found that the message wasn’t in the group. for a few seconds i wasn’t sure if i should message because she didn’t want to tell me or something. then i caught myself. i’m just going to message her anyway about it because it’s part of non-reactive relationship actions, which i’m trying to be more aware of.

oh she just messaged 

i am grateful.

—-

the environment

lolo singing in the shower.

lola giving a voice lesson downstairs.

cold air from the fan.

new bedsheets.

rainless outdoors.

me

a bit of a headache. perhaps because i haven’t had coffee today.

a bit hungry, had a small lunch.

feeling less anxious about work, for unknown reason. i did what i could today, and there feels to be more clarity and peace about things. i don’t think anything has really changed about what i have to do. maybe there’s a bit of shift in petspective.

still battling with insecurities. remembering what has been told to me recently:

- you gotta be a bit thick-skinned.

- we are all in this frikkin boat.

- you’re slowing us down. you shouldn’t be.

- this isn’t you.

- we are just dealing with it. we chose to deal with it. so deal with it too.

- you know this. you know everything.

——

gratefulness makes me feel lighter this moment and i would like to be able to sustain such an effect in a difficult time.

just discovered our wifi is working again.

——

katrise today said that she has a definition of herself, based on something said in How to Train Your Dragon 2.

katrise: soul of a warrior

            heart of a shepherd

i’m wondering what mine is. she’s not sure how to differentiate the two yet. maybe heart is the core, she said. and soul is a personality.

i can't seem to think of any 'people' that fit the description. what about objects?

the soul an airplane, the heart a vessel?

the soul a window?

the soul a vessel, the heart a window?

it feels like if i was asked this question 6 - 8 years ago, i would have been able to answer it in the next breath. why the uncertainty now? sometimes it feels like having eyes opened to the inside world has overwhelmed me. i have been silenced at how small i am. sometimes this is a good silence and sometimes it is not so good.

sometimes i can remember who i am. or who He is, that i may know who i am.

such is my inconsistency. i shuttle between american and british spelling, between here and there, between remembering and forgetting, between being whole and being fragmented.

examen vii, viii, viv

examen vi

i’m on notepad. (textedit because it’s a mac, but this plain blank white screen will always be ‘notepad’ to me)

the wifi at home has been dead since last night, and it feels like 8 years ago when my life depended on notepad and small black tahoma characters. 

except back then, i completely rejected the world i was in. it was easy to choose to retreat for hours and devote my existence to writing whatever could possibly be written.

right now as i rediscover that rhythm it comes hard and bulky and taunting me because i can’t keep myself awake to do so at night, because i am pathetically failing at making ends meet between my interior life and a world i finally want to be in completely.

they say time flies by when you’re having fun, but i seem to be clamouring to catch up with time in the wake of mistakes that have caused a storm.

word vomit. two fingers down the throat. right now i am reminded of maybe three weeks ago when i was throwing up on an empty stomach and i didn’t know where it was all coming from. is this the same case? because it feels like i have no more words. or it feels like something daunting is constantly stuffing itself from the crown of my head and clogging my brain that any thoughts spill out and seem to get lost before i can pin them down. like in the shower which lasts ten minutes, i sit down after to write it down and i can’t remember it. i can only remember what i felt when i thought it, that i was blessed by peace and that i would write it down when i finish my shower. i could almost cry at the forgetting. at the frustration with whatever blockage there is in my head.

God’s language with me was always of remembering, and seeing, and right now i can seem to do neither.

when my parents called me down to speak to me a while ago, i caught a bit of the film they were watching. A Beautiful Mind. “your delusions are triggered by stress,” she said. i wondered what stress triggers for me. and maybe it is a kind of delusion. a kind of delusion that is constantly condemning me, like the imaginary man with the hat in the film. this stupid feeling is what has done so much damage lately. 

You fashioned my heart, Lord. (Psalm 33:15) i know somewhere in the rubble of this mess i have caused is the truth that can break down the walls and defeat the delusions. i know that no amount of mistakes that accumulate can be greater than that of feeding the self-condemnation that sprouts afterwards.

this is the end of me and i am here waiting for grace. 

i am remembering gratitude. presence in gratitude. eucharisteo. and it’s hard. thank you Lord for… this frustration. 

how can i be thankful for that??

    

      

  

    

     

my frustration tells me that i have a limit. it tells me what i don’t want. and it tells me of this very human, very cerebral limit. let me hope Lord in what is beyond all this. thank you for this limit because this is where i know Your footsteps begin. where there is no choice but to look at You. Lord let me never have any other choice again because my feet will always, always fail. these waters are impossible to cross by myself.

failure and frustration and pain is the beginning of the greatest blessing, the greatest grace. i imagine Jesus in the world, Himself and everyone at the same time. the human existence of the entire world, including him, in Him. his disappointment and love in perfect and painful tandem. perhaps as the new covenant this is what i am too. in me there is the battle of human disappointment and Godly love. but He carried it. which is why i shouldn’t have to. and every time i try and toil is an act of ignorance of that. 

i only have to love. think with love and see with love and move with love and act with love. from the inside, and then out. why is this something you cannot understand until now? that God loves you. that you need not move only according to what is moving around you because He moves you. your entire life being moved around you have had to relinquish control. in your family you see the relinquishing of control. but this should be a no-brainer (all-hearter?), this relinquishing to Him FOR control. a surrender to be free to be moved by Perfect Love. only in that can strength be created. everywhere else… it is stolen and fleeting.

laugh at my plans, Lord. laugh at my anxiety. and let Your laughter be here again. in this family that i have failed. you don’t make mistakes Lord and i know you brought us all together and that things are not meant to stay this way. let your laughter enlarge my heart and fill up the pits of silence in between these relationships. knock me down so that Love can enter with relentless force. i’m here trying to put together charcoal from the rubble and you’re just waiting to give us gold bricks and the softest feather to be cozy in your kingdom. every day let me see things that are not as though they were, as you everyday promise. upturn all the tables i have set up meekly to attempt to organise my life, because these efforts are nothing next to your love that should roam all around this house. 

examen v

i woke up feeling a bit sad and a bit comforted at the same time. i dreamt i was with my lola and she was very weak, and i had to help her go about her daily routine. i also had to protect her from strange figures that didn't feel amiable. it made me feel sad to see my lola this way. she did however look the same as she does now, not looking unhealthy or weak at all. i wonder what her spirit looks like.

comfort came in the form of a completely unfamiliar male figure. this is unusual because people i connect with in my dreams are usually familiar. by way of my brain's means of reconstruction, i guess, nothing particularly poetic, unless it's recurring. he was helping me. i can't remember details anymore, except a army green shirt. and a profound feeling of gratitude.

i started a project today. i have been thinking of how i adjusted to life in the UK six years ago, and comparing it to how i am adjusting to life back in the Philippines. i started a project then. quotidie. it began around the same time, i'm just a few weeks earlier this year. if quotidie celebrated the everyday, namamahay wishes to discover what it means to be home.

it is a bit of an embarrassing admission that to realise i should do this, K had to say (paraphrased), Are you sure you want to hang out tonight? i feel like you have a lot of unprocessed thoughts and that you should spend some time in your home. your room. you need to make it feel like it's your own.

i used to be ten steps ahead of myself. never could iron out any other aspect or person in my life, but the self, at least, i knew about. perhaps one day i'll be able to laugh at this time, right now. but also maybe not (my fear says).

dear Lord, please let laughter ring. let joy arrive. let Love be greater than everything else.

a lot of effort has gone into forcing myself to be home. because why shouldn't i be? technically this is home. my brain says, You are home. this is a house, these are people, this is a street i have known since i was 3. these are people i have known deeply, the spirit kind of knowing. and yet somehow this isn't what i feel. somehow this third dimension, this world beyond pixels, is alien and i am trying to move as if it weren't and i am failing to move forward at all.

i put down the camera a few years ago because it began to feel like i was experiencing my life in retrospect, through documentation. right now it feels like maybe i need it because maybe my memory is really that terrible. and maybe it will help me with the words that need to happen, too.

*          *          *

in other news, i am anxious about having to integrate into a workplace/force that is already running. all the frameworks and all the schedules got thrown out the window by politics. this is really a challenge. but also maybe it is an opportunity to be like water.

(notes for non-forgetting: extra-curricular. providing the right atmosphere. allocating a decent amount of time. creating a space for focused making. one hour a week for each class.)

today's calligraphy workshop with K was a lovely breather and has inspired me to really knuckle down on the ideas i have had for running my own for ceramics. 

examen iv

twelve days it has been and it is always like this. i start and then trail off. when i break a daily routine of writing i can never seem to pick up again because of the lost days. a fixation on chronology that eventually makes me pass by it completely, unable to continue with the baggage of the undocumented, the undone, the failed to do.

"you're 24. you gotta get rid of this thing about failure."

there always just seems to be too much to say. and then life happens, and the seeds of words are lost. and plenty remains in my head, filling up, drowning out reason and good judgement and insight and sharpness.

and so i guess it should come as no surprise that i often feel like i am suddenly realising my surroundings, my circumstances. like joe from fight club. constantly waking up.

tonight in the shower i realised i was crying. i was thinking of my lola. i realised that i am probably going to experience the passing of my grandparents in the next decade, and i realised i cannot imagine it and would not know how to deal with it.

my lola was crying too, just a little bit, frustrated and feeling helpless at her body which seems to be failing her. she too has many words that she cannot seem to say. to my lolo, "please bring me to the hospital for a checkup. i need an injection for my arthritis." are things that bad between them that lola cannot communicate what she needs? would lolo really just lecture her about the diet she hadn't done and the exercise she never got into? my parents are bringing her on tuesday.

somewhere between the grand introspection of my adolescence and these first few years of adulthood, i have forgotten how and why i should write. my mind feels like it's shrinking, like it is losing the capacity to remember new information. like it is being pricked by the veins and the stimuli that come from my eyeballs. to feel that my mind is shrinking must be enough reason to write.

examen iii

Have compassion for everyone you meet,

even if they don't want it. What seems conceit,

bad manners, or cynicism, is always a sign

of things no ears have heard, no eyes have seen.

You don't know what wars are going on

down there where the spirit meets the bone.

(Miller Williams)

J.

i have spared you compassion the most. because of reaction rather than action. i have allowed your responses (or more aptly the lack of) to dictate my own movement. slow and gauging. never setting the pace, though i know them, though i know what needs to happen.

facing the reality about you and me has made me confront how i have ultimately related to people (aside from my immediate family with whom i have travelled) my entire life: never knowing completely whether i am a bystander or otherwise, always feeling a gap that i never have the right to attempt to bridge first. allowing distance and absence to put my heart into static, when people drift away.

you had reached out first, then. asking. 'gmick?' making small talk. then small talk grew.

i am grateful for the people closest to me who have reminded me of our friendship. because with me, maybe the feelings don't change. but for that to happen, memory does.

i am grateful for you for being the one to reach out first, again. calling me from across the escalators. 'you're rocking the boat,' you had said. in that light, the past month has probably been a bit of an anti-climax. i have been stuck at shore because i have been thinking i should know how to walk on water already. when there's really no way of knowing, not completely. there is only not knowing and doing in faith.

so here it goes, rocking the boat.

examen ii

today's (and perhaps the next few days') examen is to try and recall all my reconnections with people here so far. because it also seems to have been the source of errors, mistakes, and misconceptions. Lord, please help me see Your hand in all these interactions that i am going to recount. so that i realise how to move forward from now.

my tito picked us up from the airport, in the car of a very wealthy family friend - generously lent for this rare occasion of homecoming. a big, white SUV pulls up and i instantly feel a tremor. here is where material culture begins to change. i've forgotten how this wealth feels like and how my life here, though not having it, has in a way become part of it by circumstance and association. i feel very small in this big vehicle. and just beyond its black-tinted windows is the polar opposite of half-completed buildings and child beggars and the working working class of the country out on the streets.

my tito is the same, repeating words often, and tells us about my cousins who are all working now. when i see them three days later i will discover it is strange, especially after a bit of an awkward exchange about the wedding that had happened in july.

as i did three years ago, i broke down when i saw my lola. as she did three years ago, she greeted me with a huge sigh of relief. like we had come home from war. or like she had finally finished a battle. i don't think i fully understand this and perhaps how lonely she gets here in this house that is the closest thing to my childhood home. she has one more daughter who still lives in manila and her three children, my cousins, visit regularly. i hope i do not fail her by staying here in this house long-term.

my lolo had just finished exercising and he was upstairs cooling down before a shower. he was only in his boxers. he laughed when he saw me crying. (this happened before too.) a few minutes later, i am downstairs and i can hear him singing in the shower, again. just like the past twenty years i can recall. i am grateful for these things that have not changed.

K. i feel close to her and yet feel i have yet to get to know her better at the same time. i am grateful for this familiarity and the promise of a friendship. for her openness. she had helped me plan the surprise, too, which was super exciting. she has been a bridge of new and old, because she is connected to my old experiences here and is also embedded in the new experiences - and because i am getting to know her truly only now, it is in a way grounding to have the old and new be peaceful in one being. i am grateful for the prayer in the car. for her generous accommodation of me and the things that have been happening so far.

J. is still the same. he is polishing off a slice of pizza and beside him is a box almost empty. he doesn't lean forward to make beso, of course, and instead motions me to come closer for one. i have not seen him recently. his presence seems to be fleeting - he has a different life now.

J. i hold only a few conversations for my familiarity with him. it has been a challenge to get hold of him the past couple of months and i hope to get to know him better. i am humbled by his readiness to admit his mistakes and his persistence at his responsibilities, no matter how much criticism and mistakes he has been made aware of. i also am grateful that he had a pack of tissue last pray day, which i pretty much used up.


K.

i instantly welled up when i saw her through the glass sliding door. it was surreal to encounter a being who had only taken form through little pixels on the screen for years. i wonder if that moment - when she couldn't open the sliding door at the lanai and we had to run round to the front and the lump in my throat dissipated and was replaced by a lightness of joy - if that moment was when i kind of jumped into something too quickly. i felt shaky and excited as i waited at the front door. did i leave something behind right then? going through that door, now that i remember it, was like going into a room and forgetting what you went there for. when the brain tucks away certain thoughts from an old room, to accommodate new information that is offered in a new room. this frustrates me. because it's like part of me knew what this particular reconnection meant. but part of me also didn't understand its gravity. i knew what was expected of me and i expected them of myself too. how have i failed to meet them so gravely?

Lord, i am grateful. thank you for these new experiences, especially this reconnection. help me Lord to carry everything i need to make this reconnection a full one. i hate being late, and what usually makes me late in my life is when i forget things and have to go back for them. i don't want this to be the case in this situation. every moment i am late things get worse and i fear so much that i will lose the person closest to me.

being in a new place has my brain processing all this new stimuli and it's making me forget what i already know.

it has not helped at all, coming into these circumstances and feeling like i need to be introduced first. Lord, i know you are here in the familiar and mistakes happen when i don't see you. when i rely on my own assumptions and my own courage, which is easily shaken.

i need to remember that this change is a permanent one this time. i'm not going anywhere else so i have no reason to not be grounded on this land, in these circumstances. this is what i asked for but i didn't forecast how alien this experience would be to me. and that it would be such a struggle.

i thought coming home would be natural. and that being home would come naturally to me. but it hasn't been, and has been in fact one of the most difficult things i have done in my life thus far. i am grateful for being home, and endlessly for K who has prepared so much for this time. i have let her down immensely and i hope it's not too late to make up for it. empty me Lord. so that i may do your good work. my own doesn't mean a thing.

examen

the whole day has felt like a headache pouring out of my eyes.

i think i stopped writing because it felt like i needed to do more than to write about it. the same way i’ve put down the camera. being instead of documenting. remote conversations with people became my new writing regimen. for a long time i thought it was okay. but i think i am realising with a lot of gravity that writing for me wasn’t just documenting, or archiving. it was an exercise. like the examen.

right now it feels like the examen needs to happen for the good part of the past three years of my life.

i have been back in the philippines for nearly a month and a week now. i am not sure where all the time has gone.

this must be a sign for the need of the examen; when i can’t tell where time has gone or how it has been spent.

the pain in my head began last night, as a kind of bottleneck pressure of tears that were expended for hours, but still wasn’t enough. i am not sure how this happens either, but coming round to a 24th hour of this finds me feeling like i’ve run a marathon. all joints, even the little ones on toes and fingers, feel exhaustion. is this something that i’ve successfully ignored up to now?

i stopped writing because it felt like it meant talking about myself for a period of time that had become uncomfortable for me. i seem to have forgotten the value of introspection and for a while have not seen it relevant to how i strive to be a better person.

right now feels like a big crash from being somewhere else i thought was secure. it feels like suddenly the ground beneath me is gone and i’ve fallen through.

the examen started last night when i prayed for myself on paper. i realise i have not done that since, perhaps, when i still used to write. i prayed to be emptied so that better work can be done through me. get rid of my expectations, Lord, and plant in its place a spirit of trust and giving.

the words that arrived in return of this prayer was clear, in a matter-of-fact kind of handwriting and pink ink. “no condemnation.”