the day of the soul sister

dearest kathi erin,

i feel a quiet as this special day starts. i'm still making your birthday present. i thought that i might just give it a couple of days late because i didn't want to rush it and have it end up substandard. but i'm still awake now (praying my body doesn't pay for it later) because i would like to more than anything do my best to give to you as much as you have given to me.

the past seven and a bit years of friendship has been the most humbling, crazy, exciting, excruciating, inspiring, and altogether beautiful experience of my life. as we come into half a year of completely new and largely unfamiliar territory of our journey together, as well as new years in our own lives... i would like to pause to thank you for everything. for this longest running conversation ever.

i hope and pray that this day is the embrace, celebration, and breath of fresh air that you so deserve.  you have always allowed Love to be embodied in you for everyone around you. i hope that today, and my prayer for you this year, is that Love is embodied in everyone around you, for you.

thank you for staying in this journey with me thus far, and i'm sorry for my struggle with presence. right now, i am so happy to be able to celebrate your day with you in real life. i hope that you will be happy too today.

see you later :)

i love you,

adi mari

night into morn

my lower back has seriously been bothering me today and in the evening at my desk in my room i could no longer focus on anything at all. perhaps for my birthday i should invest in an ergonomic office chair. if i close my eyes and listen to the different parts of my body right now, it is mostly the right side that exclaims strain. i am not sure what this means and if it is at all related to my brain.

i tried to encourage my body to remember the yoga poses for the lower back that was such a relief during the days i was writing a dissertation. and the ones that k have taught, and also our yogi in the office.. the dull nagging ache is still there now, albeit less.

i stayed in a shoulder stand for a minute and a while. chin buried in my chest and slowly trying to hold a straight position. there was a moment i suddenly felt heat in my quads. my body was being pushed to work in ways it hasn't in a long time. the stomach is getting gradually rounder and i begin to feel more uncomfortable that the matter of me is not more compact. it feels like i am travelling heavy when i should be travelling light, ready to sprint, ready for a long-distance run.

something i realised recently is that when i was in my first two years of high school, i had a lot more command of presence. and i can't recall being this conscious of my physicality. it isn't about image, but just an ease in knowing the space i take up. because i was in the softball team, i was aware of the capability of my body and this influenced the rest of my life. this is something i need to rediscover. embodied prayer was not enough for me. or maybe i need to learn how to do slow movement (as opposed to strenuous) that expends a lot of energy. like the shoulder stand.

i am restless and at peace at the same time with work. i become a bit restless when i see everything ahead of me. but focusing on what is right in front of me helps me settle a little bit. somehow it is like working on the wheel... when eyes wander elsewhere, chances are, your hands will be too. but focusing on one point in the clay body, the point that you exert force, very quickly deploys energy equally with the help of the revolution of the wheel.

there are big stories happening around me right now and on less than great days it stops me from looking at mine at all. or writing mine at all. i realise that is the big problem that i can immediately impact for the better. i have to start writing my own story again. because in my writing, i do what i mean to do anyway, but better: instead of loving people through knowing their stories inside out, by also writing my own, i honour everyone around me who love me and have changed my life.

i must stay still and focus on what i can do right in the moment. my stillness is what works with the bigger revolution.

*          *           *

this song has found me just before i started the day. my mind is spinning a little from a strange dream that i have yet to fully understand and remember.  p didn't want my groceries. he was on a bulldozer. i don't know what that means. but the feeling of strangeness is still on my shoulders right now.

“Where I Belong” took shape during a spontaneous moment of worship as the Lord began speaking to Cory Asbury about how He delights in us and chooses us despite our imperfections. // Watch a new acoustic version of "Where I Belong" and read Cory's full story behind the song: bethelmusic.com/blog/where-i-belong-song-story-cory-asbury
Posted by Bethel Music on Tuesday, 16 June 2015

con trol/front

(source)

i have been avoiding myself for too long. so much that i am beginning to disappear. and yet i feel somewhat sick of myself. like i have spent too much time looking into a mirror in examination of what is in front of me.

i don't know how i can feel these simultaneously, but what i do know it does is it makes this process difficult. i am always wanting to write, stringing up phrases in my head, thinking, contemplating, analysing, reflecting, and then when i see this white space, when i begin to try and bring out the rhythm of this typed process - i go blank. it used to come so, so easily. words were spilling out all the time and were able to spill accurately through my fingers and onto a white space. i used to die for the limited hours i was allowed for use of my laptop for leisure. 

and i always, always had so much to say. but at the same time - i don't want to go back to exactly that. because i was an arrogant little bitch. while i was very complemplative and expressive and well-articulated, i was also purely misinformed by delusions of my own grandeur, or at least that of my opinions'. 

in some ways i have always understood how God silenced me. how him finding me began a new part of my life that also saw the demise of that intense era of writing, of glamorous introspection. it was a part of myself that needed to die, because it was selfish and self-centered, and there was no space for God there. but i have not understood why i cannot write with the same intensity when it comes to my own journey of faith. maybe because a lot of the time i am just speechless about it. 

-

my writing was disrupted because of my sister messaging that there was a sale with cebu pacific. photo finish booking. work starts in 6 ish hours and i have definitely have to be centered. i have updated my trello board although i need to clarify some priorities tomorrow to plot out the rest of my week. 

i cannot afford to keep making the same mistakes and operating on the same untruths that i have managed to trudge around on my back the past months. on some days i am okay, relatively, but i need to be okay on all days. 

confront what i cannot control. i seem to be out of control with fear. it isn't a specific fear, rather, more embodied. i have been reading Forgotten Among the Lilies: Learning to love beyond our fears. and i haven't gotten too far yet but Ronald Rolheiser talks about an innate restlessness of humanity because of its need to return to God. that restlessness to me manifests as fear, because of a lack of understanding in how the restlessness can transform into the expectant, joyful waiting that paul speaks of to the romans. 

i make decisions to choose life over death when it comes to words, thoughts of myself. and yet it is so easy for the thoughts take a backseat when another part of me is drowning out the sound of hope and replacing it with a fleeting drive to perform. 

an angel spoke to me this morning at mass and said:

God will not fit in your small plans. that is why He has already prepared something bigger.

i have heard the term and read the verses about human planning in the midst of a perfect God... but Him not fitting because those plans are so small - this moved me. my life is so small. Lord. please take it and do what you will. 

defrag

another week cannot pass with words not being properly and purposefully articulated in this space. i have had bits and pieces of soul and thought on paper, in my phone, wherever scattered, in conversations, in doodles... but this is the defragging, the sweeping of the floor after a long day at a hairdressers'.

i'm going to try to dismiss every single thought that attempts to analyse the order in narrative of this post because that's what stops me from going anywhere. something has to be unloaded. because i'm running out of space.

i feel like i could stare at a wall all day and not be bored. there is a lot swimming in my head and i wish it wasn't such a personal struggle to organise the way i think. or better, control the way i think.

i wonder how helen keller felt having many things in her head but not being able to express them. i saw myself in her struggle to articulate and the fight against falling into familiarity. and then one day she finally understood: water. beyond the odds of a lack of vision and hearing, her brain made all the necessary connections and she knew. i felt like my heart was going to explode because she could never finish the word water, only saying the wuh sound. something was stuck. and when i went to look for a video of the real helen keller after the film, i found one that said her biggest frustration is life is not being able to talk normally. because i imagine i could do so much more if i could talk.

shame on me. not talking when i am completely capable of it.

i had had a conversation about the struggle of engaging children in learning with b that night, and it found me watching the miracle worker. i watched the original breakfast table scene and it was so much worse than the disney remake i was familiar with, though the latter was sufficiently stressful. anne sullivan's perseverance is impossible. she reminds me of k.

i can't remember the last time i was happy with what i had accomplished in the office. this is difficult to deal with and i don't know if my spot when we moved downstairs has anything to do with it. i am going to sit at a new space tomorrow and i hope it's a brain blink that i have been dying for. 

spent most of the day in antipolo yesterday, seeing faces and listening to voices that i haven't heard in years. some 3, some over a decade. it was nice to reconnect but also tiring to do so. nowadays it seems that with unfamiliar people, and with no real agenda, i am unable to sustain interest in a connection. k told me that she thinks i am not really an introvert, which sort of confused me. i feel the farthest sort to be called an extrovert... and yet anything k says has at least some degree of validity. i don't really know what it is that makes me seem like an extrovert but i asked myself the question and reflected upon it for a while before concluding that no, i do not find energy in interacting with other people.

k and v who have made these observations i feel like i am trying to spend more time with to make up for lost time. to have samahan that is outside the work that we do. looking to make memories that aren't just me screwing up or me forgetting to update my trello board or me not completing yet another task on time. it's not that i don't want to do the work. i just need something else too. maybe the work environment is the exact place that demands more extrovert qualities in me so i am trying to veer from that. then again, maybe my perspective is completely wonky. and i am missing life as it is happening.

it's a stranger-than-fiction kinda thing, this moving back home. i realised i have never done it before. i have always moved to somewhere but it was never to be back and build a life with most factors of its old existence still intact. my whole life i haven't experienced that unchanging presence.

but why is it even a surprise that this home is unchanging? this is where God is, after all.

Lord, wake me up at 6 AM tomorrow. please.