Like how a bird flies south for the winter

I wouldn’t mind being home right about now. I miss my bed and my car. I miss the sunlight that streams through the clear windows of the dining room at breakfast. I miss sitting with my coffee and a book. I miss my room and my privacy, the quiet that being alone affords. I get a lot of me-time here, don’t get me wrong, but being alone in a place where social connections abound, has an oppressive quality to it, somehow. As if I’m not spending my time as wisely as I should, holding hands, having deep conversation over even deeper cups of coffee. It’s strange how the brief moments of being alone in a place where I am constantly with someone or someones makes me feel lonelier than I am over there where being alone with your mind and being able to do things for yourself is necessitated by circumstance.

Starbucks satisfaction not quite the same as breakfast table (in my jammies with my book) happiness

I know I will miss this – the noise, the flurry, the unavoidable bumping into each other. But I miss my freedom too. Being able to sit quietly with just my feelings, being able to examine them as much as I wish (while often not the healthiest of past times), is a luxury I can ill-afford here. And yet, this is what I come home for every single year, like clockwork, like how birds fly south every winter.

Why I wouldn’t trade my best girlfriend for Michael Fassbender on Valentine’s Day

 

 #1 While we try to dress up and look pretty for each other, it’s fine for us to mess up our makeup, or see each other in our home attire as well, even before we’ve washed our faces and/or brushed our teeth.

#2 We can talk about everything and nothing at the same time. We can talk for hours and hours on end, yet, we can also shut up and sit quietly watching people passing by. We can gossip and be generally catty girls, yet we’re also able to talk about the bigger things in life, like what do we do with our lives, where do we go from here, or what to get for dessert! I can discuss with her the plot of Jane Eyre or my favourite telenovela (hey, no judgment. I’m learning spanish!) without shame, and maybe even get her hooked on one or the other.

#3 We roll our eyes together or let out a not-so-silent ‘Ugh!’ at the sight of couples kissing on escalators or holding hands like there’s no tomorrow, and it’s perfectly acceptable.

What Jane Eyre taught me.

After being disappointed by the newest Jane Eyre (save for Michael Fassbender, of course, duh), I decided to go back and re-watch the 2006 version with Ruth Wilson and Toby Stephens and re-read the novel. I was reminded of why I loved Jane Eyre in the first place. It’s like reading chick lit, only with much better writing and a much more intelligent, sensible, feminist heroine with bucket loads of integrity and an iron-will. In a time when people gain fame from accidentally leaked sex videos and most music videos consist of humping and grinding, it’s refreshing to find a leading character who is, and who wins in the end, by being a good girl. A very good girl, in fact. While being a good girl may never be cool again, Jane Eyre is a reminder that it’s still possible to be a lady, stay true to oneself, stick with your morals, and still get the dark, brooding leading man at the end.

The 2006 mini-series with Ruth Wilson and Toby Stephens, the best (read: sexy but still accurate) version to date

Here are a few quotes from the novel that struck me as particularly relevant…

On the restlessness of (my) human nature

“I climbed the three staircases, raised the trap-door of the attic, and having reached the leads, looked out afar over sequestered field and hill, and along dim sky-line — that then I longed for a power of vision which might overpass that limit; which might reach the busy world, towns, regions full of life I had heard of but never seen — that then I desired more of practical experience than I possessed; more of intercourse with my kind, of acquaintance with variety of character, than was here within my reach. I valued what was good in Mrs. Fairfax, and what was good in Adele; but I believed in the existence of other and more vivid kinds of goodness, and what I believed in I wished to behold. Who blames me?

On glorifying sadness

What is it about dark things that draw art to them? Every masterpiece (every painting, every great novel, every great poem) was about sadness or death or heartbreak. The greatest artists are those who have suffered and managed to churn out something heartbreakingly beautiful from their suffering. Heartbreaking beauty. What is up with that? What is up with liking/loving/wanting to be sad and frustrated and lonely? Nobody would ever wish this upon themselves, but we talk/sing/write about it as if there were no nobler pursuit. 

The problem with me and signs

Can it be true when they say that some people aren’t meant to go on gap years, to go wild, to run with the wind and never look back?

My decision to bury my head in the sand lasted for roughly a month. Now I’m bound for university again, for even higher education. I’m not quite sold on the idea just yet, but at least it doesn’t repulse me and make me want to hang myself with the same intensity as it did before.

After months of soul-searching, deciding, moments of absolute liberation and crippling denial, I’ve decided to open my eyes and my ears, my heart to what the universe is telling me. When all signs point in the same direction, surely, that’s the way to go?

The 6 instances I found happiness in Bohol

The other day, while on holiday, my grandma pulled me aside to share something she read from Theosophical Digest with me. It said that happiness can’t be achieved by looking to material things or experiences. I agree with the first part – new iPhones get old, shiny cars depreciate, state of the art laptops break. The second part, hmmm. Not so much.

I spent the last four days in Bohol, Philippines, soaking up the sun and the local sights. For non-Filipinos reading this (I mean YOU, Aida ), it’s this little island off the coast of Visayas, an hour-long plane ride south of Manila.

Now I thought I’d try my hand at travel-blogging my first adventure of 2012. I’m not going to bore you with the nitty-gritty details of said trip (like how we missed our flight, how the cute little kid behind us pooped in her diapers and filled half the cabin with suspiciously adult-smelling odors, how many mosquitoes feasted on my limbs, etc.etc). Nope, we’ll stick to the highlights.

Highlight #1: Bluewater Panglao

Truly the jewel in the crown of our whole trip. I don’t think our trip to Bohol would’ve been the same if we’d stayed elsewhere. We knew it was going to be a good time the minute we set our bags down at their front desk with a member of the staff handing us cold towels and lemongrass juice, with a warm “Maayong Buntag!” (Good day in the local dialect). The place was gorgeous – it was all pools and villas, with violin music and cricket noises filling the air.

The view of the never-ending pool from our rooms

The path to their beachfront

The war on weakness

By Usien (Own work) via WikiCommons

And then one day she realised that the effort it took to be weak and sentimental was far too much more than the strength it took to suck it up and keep walking on. She realised that the courage she had within her had been kept in storage for far too long, like a muscle that grows weak from disuse. Strength had atrophied, shrivelled up, yet was still there, nonetheless. Now taking it off the shelf, she blows the dust off of its top and polishes it till it shines. Just because she’s tired of whining, complaining, feeling helpless and sad all the time. Just because the want is too much to bear, too strong that she can feel its palpable presence, the weight of it, like a smooth grey stone in the palm of her hand. Because the black wave she feels starting to engulf her must be stopped. In order to change things, she must help herself. Perhaps this is the start. Perhaps this is the solution, the end. Maybe not talking about it, not allowing feelings to permeate every single thought, such that it oozes from her pores, is the key to the undoing of undoing. 

What I learned today from tv

As per usual these days, life lessons come in the form of tv episodes. I’m learning a lot about being a woman, being in love and loving, but mostly,  about self-respect and about leaving some for yourself because no one else will. People take and take while you give and you give, and this is as it should be. However, upon the disintegration of the relationship, or whatever it is that’s happening at the moment, there is no giving back, even if you both wanted to.

It’s s terrifying how love turns us into animals – hurtful and hurting, left with nothing to arm ourselves with in the fight to save ourselves.

On not knowing.

 

Maybe there is a certain kind of joy that is to be reveled in in not knowing. Maybe the excitement of waiting for what the future will bring is and should be just that – excitement. Maybe it’s all a matter of perspective, what the future holds.

Maybe the joy is not in the answer we seek but in the question itself that we ask.

Maybe i’m not meant to know everything and anything these days, at this point in my life. Maybe this epoch is for exploration and learning, of discovery of myself and of the greater world. Maybe the beauty is in the world surprising you with what it can suddenly offer.

Maybe I should love the freedom of choosing instead of being boxed in by the array of choices before me. Maybe there are no shoulds, only mays and cans. Maybe there is something in letting the dice fall where they may, letting water take its natural course, going with the flow.

In homage to the timeless question: ‘WHAT IF?’

I am perfectly aware that in the course of our days, we constantly negotiate and re-negotiate our present in order to influence our future happiness. I know this – we make decisions then we change them. We make little choices throughout the day as to what colour undies to wear, what to have for lunch, which movie to watch. And then we make the bigger decisions that take significant time and effort, maybe a period of soul-searching. Or two. I know all that and yet it takes me by surprise when I am faced with big decisions that need to be made every other day, that I’m starting to laugh at the great cosmic joke that I feel like I’ve been thrown into.