baby steps to a grand day

one of my favoritest things in the world are long long walks. whether it's with people i love or it's just me and my thoughts, i love walking. naturally, i prefer doing it across green, flower laden meadows or under large trees or along a seldom-used trail that cuts across a little creek. but when company's real good or when the solitude urges, i don't mind navigating the busy, noisy, smoggy streets of the city.

a few months back, i discovered a way to make every day wonderful. starting it with prayer and a longish walk under a still-starry sky. every day, my dogs (and at times, other welcome companions) join me for a one-to-two-hour walk. it's lots of fun. coming across people who you greet, "maayong buntag" or calling back the pooch that's straying too far or just pausing under a streetlamp.

my favorite part is stopping by an open field to watch the sun rising and slowly coloring up the clouds and everything else. it's one of the most wonderful sights in the entire world.

i come home from these walks fulfilled and energized.

the dullness of these past days i've come to blame on the failure to get my legs tired in the process of watching night turn to day.

just the other day, i wanted so much to take a morning walk. but things came up, and it was a cold morning. so i missed the sunrise once again.

but just as i thought i missed the way to a grand day, i found myself in the home of one-year old Baby Angel who was just learning to walk by herself. for about thirty minutes, her small fingers clasped mine and we took the smallest of steps back and forth across their living room.

i so loved the way she felt light and heavy at the same time. and i just adore the way she "bangs" on her mother's bedroom door and calls, "momeee." and there's so much to be said about sitting alone with her in her uncle's bedroom floor, playing with her grandmother's left slipper.

not that i want to miss every single sunrise for this, but it's safe to say that the deviation from the usual was a really good one. and my day turned out to be just as grand.

baby Angel and her uncle in a morning stretch at the camp site last month

and speaking of babies and walks, my four-legged morning walk companions are going to have puppies soon soon soon. :)

and and and, this afternoon i found this piece of music that reminds me of my much-missed morning walks. (am not too sure about the video, but i like the song. :) )

worse than an alien abduction

MojoJoJo, we sometimes called him, though he was nothing like the large-headed villain of powerpuff fame.

he was our timid, funny, diligent, patient, and uber kind maintenance guy at the office.

note how I use the past tense.

this afternoon, i passed by the bakeshoppe near the workplace jojo and i used to share. i half-expected to see him there on an errand.

Jolito Evardo -our Jojo - is gone. that is the only way i can speak of him in the present tense. he was murdered, along with at least 56 others.

brutal. yeah, tell me about it.

before jojo came to work with us, he did not know anything about computers. but he was more diligent than most of us. he learned and learned and learned. photo editing, shooting videos, video editing. jojo learned. several months later, he left. to work as a video editor in a national news company.

that was how it happened. that was how he became part of the massacre (how i hate to use this word when i am talking about jojo). they were covering that news story. he was in the leading car of the convoy.

such diligence, such kindness, such potential, such patience. all gone now.

how jojo made all our lives easier back then. how he gave us things to laugh about, things to think about, things to smile about.

once we all arrived at the office finding his blue slippers just outside the door, pointing in. but there was no sign of our quiet guy anywhere - not the receiving area, the offices, the post-prod suites, the wash rooms, the balcony, the SouthSpot area, the roof, the space between the roof and the ceiling (yep, we looked). he wasn't there.

the boss's theory: alien abduction.

we spent the morning laughing, imagining jojo flirting with martian girls. he has never had a girlfriend, you see.

we never know what to expect from beings from other planets. and from beings that are from this one, we want to believe that we do know what to expect. but we don't, do we?

the murder of 57 innocent, unarmed humans. it's all so heartless.

i try not to imagine how it went - those last hours of his life. for when i do, i find myself wishing it was one bullet to the head or heart. jojo deserved better wishes.

i have nothing to say about those who took his life; i do not know them. but i knew jojo; he was a good guy. for a life well-lived, jojo will have his reward. for their crime, the villains will have theirs. of that i am certain.

funny, it still feels like one of those times when an officemate would look to another and ask, "naabot na si jojo?" "kita ka kay jojo?" "asa si jojo?"

a few minutes later we'd find him. maybe bent over the broken swiveling chair in the balcony, or sleeping on one of the suite couches, or arriving from an errand, or coming down the stairs with mop in one hand and bucket in another. but always, we found him.

heh. it's not one of those times, is it?

11/05/2009

to the atheist who loved me

you and me. like all things else, we are but projections of the same energy. variants, you called them. us.

we do not exist. nothing does.

you and me. we are but molecule and molecule put together. randomly.

that was how it was decided -no, that was how it turned out that your fingers would be a few centimeters longer than mine.

and the sun shall rise and shine just as much, whether we walked under it or not.

and the stars above us, they would fall, whether we watched, or wished, or slept.

for such is the way of light not made for our eyes.

amidst it all, somewhere between (or maybe beyond) darkness and light, there is what you hear and what i said. a string of lines, curved and not, oohs and aahs. it is only by sheer chance that we believe we understand.

we are cosmic dust that "could have flashed by one another, but didn't." we stopped for a little chitchat. and then we moved on again. without purpose or direction. just random movement spurred by other variants of the energy that is also ourselves. without anything to wait for or anything to wait for us - except perhaps that ultimate end. as insignificant, pragmatic, unsentimental, and meaningless as the beginning and the space in between.

there is no all-seeing eye. no universal truth. only relativity. i am not real. because the things that are in me and the things that are me are not. there is only you and the things that you are.

so then you see that the glitch is not really you, but me. i am but a glitch in your reality. or maybe "glitch" is not the right word. i am an occurrence, like all others.

like love and pain and memory. we all come and go, even the open nerve that is absence.

then you'll have to admit. there will be others. because there is no certainty nor finality. no destiny, no design, no God. (only fairies and Santa Claus.)

and when you do find yourself in touch with that other piece of cosmic dust that you'd call "one true love," maybe you'll understand. or perhaps that other piece does not exist out there. maybe you'll understand better.

i know here i misunderstood. forgive me.

11/04/2009