mid-day

By mid-day, my heart sank from sadness. I never truly knew its face until now. As we were used to, such thoughts were swept under the rug. Because there, almost within reach, were the sea and the islands. Yet there I was, too, feeling selfish and foolish.

At the top of the hill, you could see everything down below. But when you try to reach out, you might slip and fall into the rocks. I wondered how it would be like to live in an island and be cut off from the rest of the world, as if that would be worse in a city without a village. 

Stepped out and saw them in the harsh sunlight: experiencing bold things, diving deep below as if sky caved in, all the while not caring much about anything, least of all, of me. 

before dusk

What do you do in a situation where you’re awed and humbled?

You memorize: through the images captured with a crappy camera, through superlative words, through film-like scenes replayed and condensed in the brain. It cheapens it. But it has to be done; otherwise, the feeling will be lost forever, as it is already fleeting the minute it begins. Eventually we go home and forget, but not if we diminish something profound into several poor pictures or into a romanticized memory.

Back to the question: when you’re in such a situation, you say sorry.

night

Then, it settled. I crawled into bed and slept like a log. It felt like flying as we were riding the motorbike through the narrow paths heading towards the sunset. But I held back and did not tell anyone what it meant. It was only mine to keep from now on; no one else wanted it. 

But such lies we convince ourselves with.

new day

Others got better at hiding behind cruel jokes. And as we were wrapped in darkness in a cave, this oneness overcame me. I, too, could learn. 

For weeks, I had lived with this disarray and disquiet. But when I did not plunge into the water and worry about things later on, not out of resistance but out of some sort of contentment, this I also found: there’s courage in taking constant action, but also courage in keeping still.

with love,

abelink

When something has stirred something within you - a nostalgia for what can never be - you first dive in and eventually sink into this feeling of being out-of-touch. Underwater, you exist. But life is less real. Words out of your mouth cease to come across as they should. The order of things are muddled. Perhaps this world - the world that is real - is not mine to live in. Some place somewhere, some forgotten time, is where one should be. But no great effort can make that happen. At some point, you know you got to swim back up to surface. 

A story is not just a series of events; an action/inaction that leads to another; a character talking or thinking or doing. It is that pool of light at a time of the day. It is a stranger's face. And it is in seeing these images instead of words that we come to be there in that moment, in that story. In turn, when someone falls in love, you do, too. 

I am never one for the explicit, although mostly I speak in simple terms. The subtlety of things is where one finds the most warmth. The grandiose glares and is hard to miss at first sight, which leaves no room for that crucial second look. At the second glance, you go beyond just looking. You start to notice that there, for example, in that person is a seed of contempt, of arrogance, of a quality pitiable, but also that of love, of growing wisdom, of calm. 

There is much to be said. But I won't speak in length of how the edges are soften or worn. Some thoughts, when expressed prematurely, become cheap and common. Yet I can answer this: quo vadis? Where are you going? Here: at a place overlooking the blue sea, with love in my bones, a changed man, and a confidence that all is real. 

with love,

abelink

i.

Midnight on the road; nothing to see but the measured interval of roadside lamps. I breathed in the air that carried with it scents of the salty sea, the molasses from a sugar mill, kalachuchi trees in full bloom, detergent from a gas station.

I replayed the events that took place hours ago. There was a beautiful sunset on the way to the bus station. How does one look at it – an end to a day or just a start of a night full of promise? I’ve decided to only say what I mean. That way, I wouldn’t be regretting a word. But how often I say things just to be polite, to be mean, to be some person I pretend to be. What to make of it – that sunset, that little encounter, the words I said and the words other people told me?

ii.

We docked in an island they say was enchanted. And there was the blue ocean, the nice weather, the old churches, and the ancient giant trees; and I got a bit selfish. Why were there so many strangers? All these weren’t here only for me, but I wished I could be that special.

iii.

There were actually no plans of keeping in touch with people I haven’t talked to for six years. But there we were, cramped around the table, eating soup and laughing at some silly joke. When someone reaches out to you, you got to take their hand because sometimes you regret it, but often you don’t.

The time we spent in the mountains was one of the loveliest memories of summer, in which there were hearty meals, cold spring waters to swim in, singing songs with a guitar, and drunken conversations I oddly would not take back.

iv.

Sitting at a balcony after a sweaty nap, I heard no sound at all, not even the swaying of trees because there was no wind. I looked up and saw hanging at the doorway was an old, beaten up windchimes, which made me wonder how much of its life was actually spent on creating sound. We should get out of the house and explore this island instead of sleeping the day away.

So, the rest of the afternoon we trekked for ten minutes in the woods that led up to a beach they named paradise. Not quite. We squeezed places into an hour, spending five- or ten- minutes somewhere touristy and the rest at a back of a tricycle. I thought the island was eerie. If we end up at some local’s hut with our hands and legs tied up, I wouldn’t be surprised. The sunset was strange, too. For a second, I thought we were mystically trapped in a painting where the setting sun gave some light to the cows grazing on a grass field.

The next day, we went back to an abandoned house near a diving cliff. Last night, we were the only ones there, groping our way in the darkness, making sense of the graffiti on the walls. I jumped off of the cliff into the ocean. I wasn’t really afraid of the fall; I was more afraid of how to get back up. 

with love,

abelink

i.

In Alice Munro's short story collection, Too Much Happiness, there's a piece called Face.  It was about a boy who had a big, wine-colored birthmark on his face. This birthmark gave his father a reason not to like him, even calling him, "a chunk of chopped liver." 

He had a childhood friend named Nancy, the daughter of the woman who was staying at their guesthouse. The two children became inseparable and most of the story was about their adventures. One day, Nancy found a can of red paint and smudged her face with it to look like the boy with his birthmark. The boy was offended, thinking it too red when his face had, as what he thought, a brownish hue. He ran to his mother and when she saw Nancy's face painted red, all hell broke loose. The mother insulted her and called her names and when Nancy's mother came to rescue, a nasty confrontation followed. Nancy and her mother moved out and the two children never saw each other again.

Later on, the boy heard the news that Nancy intentionally scarred her own face.

ii.

There are things you do for other people in which you mean well but may end up being misunderstood. Did Nancy paint her face red to mock the boy? In the end, as if for restitution of a lost friendship, she ended up actually scarring her own face. Perhaps what she was trying to tell the boy in the first place was: we are the same; there's no need to be alone. But the boy, insecure despite the facade of strength, reacted too quickly and saw it as an insult.  

If we are on the receiving end of a gesture, we must first understand its purpose - if it is for malice or for something good. It is easy to be carried away by emotions but we need to discern what we feel so we can act in a way that we will not regret. Sometimes, it can be too late to take back whatever we put out in the world. Although instant reactions may be the most sincere, or the most raw, I still believe in the right timing, in silence and in stillness when you know you may say or do something harsh. Tact need not to be stripped off of honesty and sincerity, but it is to be considerate and sensitive, not just to others, but to yourself.

iii.

The boy, now as an adult, had a dream where a few lines of a poem was recited to him. After much looking, he found the whole poem:

with love,
abelink

"In the original version of 'Mary Poppins', there is a heartbreaking chapter about a pair of infant twins. As babies, they speak to a starling, and they understand what the wind whispers to the cherry trees on its way back up into the sky. The babies swear that they'll never be the adults who coo ridiculously at their bedsides, oblivious to the language of the flowers and bees. But, of course, they do forget, and they do grow up to use condescending words for things too beautiful for speech." (Larocca, 2014)

Growing up is both wonderful and horrifying. Things are changing fast: graduation, being away from my parents for the first time, and looking for work that is fulfilling both financially and emotionally. The life I have always known - the kind that is quite sheltered and half-buried in books - is being restructured and that can be frightening. But then, growing up may also lead me to situations where I can know myself better, where I can delve into my own unknown depths, and where I can thrive. A line from a poem by Rilke says, "You have not grown old and it is not too late to dive into your increasing depths where life calmly give out its own secret."
But you lose some when you gain some. I may start abandoning the child within me, taking such drastic measures to prove that I have grown up. As much as I promise myself to never lose sight of what matters most to me and to hold on to my ideals, I may also unknowingly forget and break that promise.

Someone at work remarked how my age will no longer begin with one ever again (unless, of course, I live for a hundred years) and that left quite an impression on me. I've known all along that it was bound to happen but when it did, it felt strange and new. I am now twenty. On my way to work, it hit me how today, twenty years ago, my mama gave birth to me, that this miracle called birth happened to me, and it just blew my mind.

I hope this letter will remind my future (grown-up) self of this general optimism - and even of some fear - towards growing up.

with love,
abelink

~

New York Magazine article on Tavi Gevinson growing up by Amy Larocca, 11-24 August 2014 issue

Poem by Rainer Maria Rilke