Summer 2009

My life is all about the extremes – sometimes happiness can be so overwhelming that I would feel selfish to enjoy it all on my own. I would wish for a dual of myself just so the dual can help me fully understand and absorb this happiness. Happiness is so vast, sometimes so difficult to even grasp all at once; soon it leaves me with nothing before I am able to grasp and appreciate its whole existence. There comes despair and hate, like a reality check as to where my life is really from and where it will never go – the happiness that once seemed like my reality is now just a carnival that passed by me. It’s never a permanent part of me. I’ve always thought that life after finding acceptance to my own identity would bring me a step up to a more expansive reality and possibilities. However this summer, it seemed that finding my own identity only makes me see how truly complex and unreal to me people can be. These people also happen to be the most real people I thought I had known all my life.
Despite the tradition of how families must always stick together, biology makes this tradition easily breakable. Because after all, if my mother wanted to leave my father or vice versa, they simply can. After all, they are two out of billions in this world that met by chance and fell in love. While as their biological child, I have no choice but to accept myself for having both of their blood therefore I am here to deal with whatever they decide to do. Although lovers have the choice to part into their own ways, this freedom will also come with just as much, or more consequences to dedicate their time for. The family tie comes with a long cord called the promise, and even a longer cord called the history. The consequences are what the two have built together in the past since the day they met. The consequences include a child who is just as alive as they are, and money that only stir more guilt and greed and power. They both crave for the equally selfish, fairness and freedom. They mirror each other asking for the same things, blocking each other ways to move on. They completely lose their control. Their thoughts on morality is far behind them; what is more important now is all about fairness and greed, as much as each can attain from each other.
The relief is, my parents are aware of these consequences. They’ve lived their lives trying so hard to live on their own and in privacy. Heck, they’ve even moved out of their own country to find their own comfort zone. Irony here is that their history together involves the entire family and barely of just the two together. Because of this awareness, they insist on not splitting up and patiently living their own lives under one roof. I feel all alone watching my family break apart, but at the same time I can’t help but feel that I am one of their consequences. This is my reality because all I’ve got in the end are my mother and father who are desperate for a change in their lives, but it is clear to them that this is only possible through regret and loss.
As I grew older, one thing I despised about myself is that I seem to no longer accept myself the way I used to anymore. I look at myself and I feel ugly and disgusting. My mother who cares for me more than anything seems so far away even when she is sitting right next to me. My father whom I took away all of his freedom from and hopes for a miracle to escape from me, is so irritatingly close to my heart. All I can feel is guilt. I seemed to have lived a mistake all my life but from a mistake, what’s there to do but only make it right… One thing I am aware of though, is that the more I run away from my father, the more I will be following his steps in what he did in the past such as, as mentioned earlier, moving far away from his family in search of his own place in this world. I am determined to make peace with my dad. I can only hope..

 

Ready For the Full Moon

One summer night back in the Philippines in 2008, I spent a 13 hour experience on a psychedelic substance. That night, I told my spiritual soul sister that my soul was transcended to earth from the moon. Tonight, I remembered that very feeling; a strong flashback came to me of the moment I oddly felt so certain that I was from the moon (as bizarre as that sounds). I have to admit, it’s almost soothing when I feel the old chemicals bring me flashbacks of a previous trip, while I am completely sober.
Like everyday, I took my awkward bus ride home this afternoon. For no particular reason, buses make me behave like I am about to get murdered. Riding buses made me realize I can be quite a claustrophobic and an obsessive compulsive person. I sit weird and look weird and get really uncomfortable. Getting off buses is always a relief, I tend to hop off like a bunny unintentionally – my friends point it out to me. Despite all this, the walk home from the bus stop is really great. Even though I live in the downtown area, I get to pass by a landscape of a less busy atmosphere, with beautiful vintage, architectural buildings. The Dearborn station, the Franklin building.. Polk street is always so calming with delicate energy. After walking through Polk street, I turn left to a blank landscape, where buildings are still under first stages of construction. I first then walk by an empty parking lot, where I pass by another landscape which this time, is completely different and feel like I am far away from the city. It is an empty field, and the river a few blocks behind my building. There is always an astonishing view of the sky with an amazing sunset and fading clouds. I’ve started noticing the patterns and shapes of clouds from this walk everyday. Night time gives this area a whole new look – like a futuristic city with silent cars and lightly lit Polk street. The moon shines straight towards our block, and so it is always lit with low brightness. This walk is always a pleasing way to ending the day. It makes me look forward to my hot shower and my relaxation on the balcony.
Today’s beautiful walk back to my house, was somewhat extraordinary. It was as though I was experiencing an ‘introduction’ to that familiar erie yet refreshing energy of the full moon appearance later tonight. I noticed a lot of peculiar things that I never really paid attention to, until today. Everything felt magnified into my eyes.
I walk this walk everyday and yet I never noticed the Chicago Community Bank post on Polk street, which spins and lights up exactly at 5 o’clock. It stands on a really intricately designed post; only nerds like me probably even notice and care for it. As I waited for traffic light, a jogger stopped by me to wait as he continued to jog at the same spot. He wore masking tape all over his tshirt like the CTA Train securities. The masking tape shaped in yellow squares with neon orange borders around it on his chest and back. I don’t know how he managed this too but he wore hippie glasses with the tiniest rims I have ever seen. Not only that, this was clearly the strangest jogger I’ve ever seen – a hippie security guarded jogger who was probably about in his 50s. He turned to look at me and said hello. I smiled back but I was unreasonably being snobby and didn’t bother to greet back with a slight voice? I don’t know, I react slow sometimes and I was too busy observing him. Then I saw this lady with a red cloak like Harry Potter’s walking her dog which looked just like a guinea pig. And she was so frustrated that her dog didn’t want to go Potty and that drove her crazy. She started yelling “Poop or potty or whatever you want, just hurry your little butt!!!! Come on, potty!” I wonder how long she’s been walking her dog at that same spot she was making circles in, pushing her dog around to go potty. Poor little pig dog thing.. Then a car screeched, almost hitting a kid from the high school that’s a few blocks away from Polk, while he was jogging around the street. He not only screamed like a girl, but he was wearing a sweater that said VHORF which also read WHORE from afar, where I was observing him from. Meeting and observing all these strange people in one day in such a great landscape, called for a long Spoon post and a friendly talk with the universe. I turned left to the empty landscape by to the parking lot, and saw two birds that looked like lovers chasing after each other and it was really so cute. If only I could have the guts to tell the secret of my life my retarded feelings, I could be flying around in this beautiful landscape just like those birds! My eyes followed the birds around the sky and soon I found the moon right above my head as if to say, “Peek a boo!” It was, as I expected, a clean full moon. I stopped walking for a good 5 minutes and stared at the moon. I become such aa weirdo when I get into my own little world like this. An old Chinese lady tapped my shoulder and asked if I were okay. I turned to say Hi but snapped my neck weird. The lady heard the crack, and giggled. I got a little creeped out, or I probably creeped her out more, so I speedwalked home to write this up.

 

Being Foreign

Everywhere.
At school, in the Philippines where I grew up most of my life, in Japan where I’m originally from, among my friends, among my family, I have never felt completely settled and home in my life. The scariest thing is I feel this most when I am around my parents and relatives. But I think I’m alright with that (kind of), because my parents feel foreign to each other, and to me; we seem even.
We are a family who are all extremely different in their own ways – only God knows how this happened. Two, who can’t seem to move away from their own culture that they grew up in and adapt to the new, even though they were more than willing to leave their country; and a little one that has basically no original culture but a culture that’s been picked up from various places without a label. People who were raised in one location most of their lives, don’t seem to understand how important culture actually is to them. I am desperate for a culture, and being able to call myself a nationality and feel adjusted to it? I feel like an ocean. Not even Pacific, Atlantic, Antartica; not even a lake. I feel like a floating ocean, like a puddle on no land. It’s a strange feeling, but it’s been growing more and more recently.
I remember being little, picturing myself in a family where I felt most comfortable even when my friends weren’t around. But I also remember being little and feeling uncomfortable playing around in the field and having fun when my parents were around. I remember being little, not knowing why I hated being home so much and missing people who weren’t relatively close to me. I also remember my parents telling me no one else will own me aside from them, because that is illegal. But I’ve always searched for a home everywhere we went.
And now that I’ve made my own decision to move across the world away from my parents, I finally feel at home and I’m finally feeling my own identity with comfort. I’ve been accepting a lot of things about my family, and learning to love them. It’s ironic that love can be so strong over time, growing in disguise. This is the first time I’ll ever state that the philosophy of Knowing is Knowing Less failed to explain my situation. But being able to finally love and accept my family, doesn’t exactly feel at home either, like everyone else seems to feel. I’m still searching for a definition for home. It’s difficult, and abstract to me. Is this weird?
The most uncomfortable place for me to be, in the whole wide world is around my relatives. This is such a complicated emotion that I haven’t been able to figure out. Being around them is only a reminder to me, that I really don’t belong. It’s just blood that obligates us to get together and act family-like. It’s only because we’ve all grown together that seem to make us care for each other. Family is such a strange concept to me. Because I don’t communicate with them, they still treat me and know me as the 5 year old I used to be. My family knows me least, out of everyone that I know in this world and this is true. They may know how I grew up, my childhood experiences, but they do not know what kind of person exactly they have raised. I have been making an effort lately however, on communicating with my parents. But this didn’t really help for me to understand what a family really is all about. It only made me realize how different my father, my mother and I are individually. It only got me to feel better on being by myself away from them. But I do cherish them for what we’ve gone through together as a ‘family’. I don’t even know where to begin. Even just among the Three of us, we’ve had so much revolutions in the house. Although we, three are so different and intolerable in too many ways, I’ve finally learned accept them the way there are by simply perceiving them as people. My mom is like so, while my dad is the contrary, and there is me – this is how life goes. There is no connection whatsoever I feel from them or for them. This is the strangest question, but the biggest question in my life. What is a Family? I know that if a father, (especially my father) reads this, he will lecture me and show me a whole document on how much of an expensive daughter I am. But really, I am more than aware of that. I’ve been lectured this over and over, getting longer each year, since I was born. I understand the financial support. What is a family?…

 

Astral Projection Above Homeland

It was amazing. I can always sense it when I am about to have an astral projection. Something tries to put me to sleep. I normally never feel ‘drowsy’ unless it is finally 6 in the morning after a long night of attempting to sleep, or if I had simply smoked too much of the infamous mystical herbs. So when there is something that suddenly makes me want to take a nap at a healthy time (last night was around 8p), I take advantage of it quickly and go to sleep. I’m not an insomniac but I just have a terrible biological clock. It takes forever to get fixed, but takes just one drunk night to screw it up all over again.
My body lifted. I first climbed over the balcony and swam in the sky it was as if I was watching Google map roll its pages under my eyes.. I was flying over to the Philippines without even knowing where I was going. It was night time during the whole dream. It took about 3 seconds to find myself over a familiar ground. I lowered down to find my village back in the Philippines but I was surely in the wrong area of land because I saw huts and fields; it was barely civilized. I glided as far as I could over the land but it was endless, taking me nowhere near places Manila-like.. But the energy of the area was very much the Philippines, I knew where I was at that point. I landed myself in one of the huts, which sort of looked like a restaurant. I was then joined by a friend, whom I assumed to be Rosie. We stepped into the small restaurant hut, and it had only one seating booth for two. I called for a waiter and asked what kind of food they served. The waiter laughed at me and told me this was a dormitory.. Then I looked over to the other side of the hut across from the booth, I realized that this hut was not a hut, it was a hut on a car! The driving wheels frightened me, and I began to think we were getting kidnapped! I told Rosie we should leave this strange hut-on-a-car as soon as possible. She laughed at me but followed me outside, reluctantly. The ‘waiter’ or the ‘dormitory parent’ continued to laugh almost viciously; he wore a cap with a long black tshirt and khaki shorts. I don’t know how I remember this so clearly, if only I could have remembered more significant parts clearer! We climbed over this hut-on-a-car to fly out again. I asked the dormitory parent which way McDonalds was because I was really hungry, he told me to head southwest. It’s interesting how he gave me an answer as if he knew what it was like to fly. Normally, Filipinos will not answer like a compass, they will give the most confusing and impossible directions. I also asked where Metro Manila was and he told me to go North. By this time, he wasn’t very nice to me anymore, seeing that we were leaving him.
I remember when climbing over to the rooftop, I told Rosie how the last time we were about to fly, I was the first one to climb over the roof and fly out. But this time, I was the second to go. I explained that being the second made me feel a little nervous, so she held my hand. She asked, “Where was McDonalds again?” I told her to go North.
As we flew over again, without a goodbye, I found myself jumping into the window of room 1205 at the 162 N State Residences (college dorm that I stayed at during my first year at SAIC). Is it possible that I had time traveled through Astral Projection? I knew the dream was coming to an end; I was in a rush for no good reason and things were becoming lucid. My roommate, Ceyda was not yet home. I flew over to the door to see anyone was out in the hallway, the lights were dim but everything seemed to be so normal. I think it was about dawn, and definitely felt so good to be back. I then flew over and decided to sleep right by Ceyda who was now tucked in her bed. She woke up in surprise and I told her I had just gotten back from the Philippines. I think she had also just gotten back from a drunk night; she told me how much Jared had pissed her off while watching a football game on his little TV (it really was the tiniest little TV screen I had ever seen). She seemed really upset so I responded, “Aw, Ceyda!” But it felt too good to be back in reality (which of course I wasn’t yet,) so I laughed out in relief. Ceyda then looked over to her window and tried to shut it, but it was stuck. She closed the curtain, but was in shock: “How did these oil pastel colors get on my curtain oh my gosh!” I knew it was my fault but I kept shut. I must have been flying around leaving colors behind as a trace? Who knows, but I somehow knew it was mine. Then I climbed out of the window as she got up to get a towel. As I was climbing out, I saw my toes smearing even more oil pastel colors on her curtain! Sorry Ceyda, hahahahahaha!
I’m glad I found my way back to my body safely. It was such a beautiful dream…. I want to fly again, and remember that great feeling, fighting gravity and communicating with the illusion of distance. I woke up at around 1AM, laid on my bed for about an hour trying to ingest all of what had just happened carefully. Every little body movement I made, made me forget or feel unclear of some details. I tried my best to keep my spiritual sensitivity as clear as possible until I was able to lay out a storyboard in my head, and quickly jotted down as much as I can in my dream book. What a great dream.

 

Dear Family

I mailed really, really cute Christmas cards today to my family in Japan! I absolutely Love Borders’ greeting cards! Who’s birthday is it next!

 

Snow!

The First of December, I woke up to a snowy Chicago and it looks beauuutiful!!! I didn’t realize how much I actually kind of (hate to admit) missed the snow and the cold weather. Uff, this is a love hate.

 

It’s The First Snow of the Year

Turn up the radio
I need it more than ever now
(more than ever now)
It’s the first snow of the year
and something in the atmosphere
is coming here
Froze in our memories again
soon you’ll forget but I just can’t

I realized today that my perception had evolved greatly, over the past month when my spiritual sensitivity was rather dull. I reminisced about high school. As I reminisced, I sensed the that high school memories had become just as nostalgic as my childhood. It is not that long ago, but all the upsetting, embarrassing, frustrating memories were now ceased away. Now, all memories put together were filled with love, wishes to return, and some laughter over things I used to despise. All the good and bad things were not even distinguishable. I just wish that good and bad experiences weren’t such time consuming factors. They both require a long time to finally admit to my mind that they are in fact indifferent to each other – it’s just the trigger of how I perceive them that characterizes what they do to me. I judge the good and bad, therefore nothing is at fault. It is all under my control whether or not I want to view things brighter or boring. The good and bad after all, both lead us to the future for what’s meant to be taught in us and bring us towards where we need to be at the present.
By spending some moments appreciating/contemplating, the more ambiguous matters become rather positive to my perception…… At least for me, despite Everything, Everything, Everything that I’ve despised in my life so far, together with all that I’ve enjoyed and loved and celebrated over, have brought me to sit here at my desk reminiscing their causes. Everything, despite how it is at this moment, is actually going to be okay. It’s the beauty of Time, could be the only beauty of it, I don’t know. It’s a game between our perception and time..

I listened to this song on my balcony today, It’s a song I used to worship while I was in high school. It’s an old song by this band I went crazy for, out of nowhere (I never get obsessed over celebrities or musicians..). None of my friends ever like this band wherever I go. But I was crazy about it, and anything that put me down during the time before I found my spiritual awareness (where I was patiently put to let things go without understanding, and encounter things I didn’t have to but constantly kept attracting to myself..), I spent my time listening to their songs. I decided to listen to this song for the first time in months, Chicago surprised me. It was the first snow of the year…. while Kill Hannah recited it for me, It was incredible…

Lastly, but not the least……. (On top of all of these amazing things that’s already been happening,)
HAPPY BIRTHDAY MALVINA!!!!!!! I love and miss you so much…. Love and Light, good night now.