Synchronicity: A series of events that occurred within a 24-hour period, mostly over drinks

Sometimes, bizarre things happen almost at the same time or in a well-ordered manner that, when pieced together or looked at collectively, is more than just a matter of chance. Today, the cicadas are screaming--they are almost deafening.

*****

1. Empty Glass
Friday, July 29th, 12:57 PM

A friend shows me an empty shell of a cicada nymph. She tells me that cicadas spend the first half of their lives underground, feeding. Until a time comes for them to tunnel to the surface, break out of their old shell and fly away. To sing and to reproduce.


2. Milk
Friday, July 29th, 5:05 PM

A 24-year-old girl meets a 24-hour-old boy:

It's the first day of the rest of his life. It's roughly the 9,023rd day of mine. I have lived 216,528 hours more than him. He spent most of his 24 hours feeding and sleeping. I feel like I've done the same with my two-hundred-thousand-plus.


3. Coca-Cola
Friday, July 29th, 9:21 PM

I've known S. for about a year now. I won't say we are friends but we are always friendly. We've gone to the same parties, had lunch at the school cafeteria together, and asked each other for small favors.

I've always tagged him as somebody different from me. He didn't, couldn't, and would probably never understand me and my recent decisions. However, we talk at a dinner/sayonara party for a common friend, and I end up telling him about recent developments. Not ony does he respect my decision, he also understands it; and while explaining things to him, I begin to understand and value my decisions and their consequences better.


4. Whiskey
Saturday, July 30th, 2:32 AM

Two people are fresh out of a shower. The half naked man waves goodbye at me as he leads the woman to the bedroom. I smile, raise my glass in a toast, and light a cigarette. The paper crackles and the tip burns a bright, angry red as I take a long, deep drag.

Two hours later, on my way home on my bike, the hem of my much-too-long jeans is caught on the gears. I immediately back-pedal in order to free it, but this causes the hem of the other leg to be trapped. Unable to bring either of my feet down, I fall from my bike, landing on my left knee: causing an old, scabbed-over wound to bleed again.

I untangle myself--and my jeans--from the mess. As I get back on my bike, I see that two people--a man and a woman--had witnessed my fall.


5. Ice-cold Water
Saturday, July 30th, 5:34 AM

I am not sleepy, so I decide to watch a movie to pass the time.

The movie is about strange things--unbelievably strange things--that did (and do) happen. About synchronicity--when things occur seemingly in a certain order that is more than just a matter of chance.

The movie is about time--how it can seem linear at close range but can actually be curved when viewed from a fair distance. About how two different persons' times when seen in an imaginary chart could actually intersect at a single point-instant, or follow a whole series of moments, or be totally asymptotic to each other.

The movie is about signs--those that we cannot dismiss, and those that we miss. The movie is about choices--those we choose and those we choose not to choose.

The movie is about the middle--how we are often lost in the middle of nowhere: On the way to work, but making a detour; sitting alone somewhere and singing along to a song; listening to inane advertisements on an on-hold phonecall to someone one doesn't know; driving back from a failed date; hating and loving someone at the same time in equal measure--the list goes on and on and on...

6. Coffee, Tea or Orange Juice
Saturday, July 30th, 9:18 AM

So Now Then:

The cicadas are out and they are singing a rousing chorus that I cannot ignore. I am bombarded with ideas and images too fast for me to really capture and edit, and I know I have to write them down immediately but patiently. Because to postpone it is to lose the moment, and to do it haphazardly is to reduce its significance.

I sit down on a park bench, over looking a koi pond and suddenly everywhere around me is a conspiracy of signs: the lone pigeon sitting quietly facing of an empty bench; the pack of cigarettes and a lighter, lying on the same empty bench, that was left by someone I was just so sure I had met; the drop of water that fell on my arm out of nowhere; the blue-tailed lizard that sat next to me for a second before scampering away. I write and write and write as all these just cascade over me. All the while, the buzz of the cicadas in my head like a chant: Listen, listen, listen.

And I decide thet whenever the cicadas are singing--no, screaming--at me, I promise to always listen.

*****

Sometimes, bizarre things happen almost at the same time or in a well-ordered manner that, when pieced together or looked at collectively, is more than just a matter of chance. As soon as I figure that one out, I notice that the cicadas have quieted down as if they never were. But it did happen.

To Have Without Holding

Learning to love differently is hard,
love with the hands wide open, love
with the doors banging on their hinges,
the cupboard unlocked, the wind
roaring and whimpering in the rooms
rustling the sheets and snapping the blinds
that thwack like rubber bands
in an open palm.

It hurts to love wide open
stretching the muscles that feel
as if they are made of wet plaster,
then of blunt knives, then
of sharp knives.

It hurts to thwart the reflexes
of grab, of clutch; to love and let
go again and again. It pesters to remember
the lover who is not in the bed,
to hold back what is owed to the work
that gutters like a candle in a cave
without air, to love consciously,
conscientiously, concretely, constructively.

I can't do it, you say it's killing
me, but you thrive, you glow
on the street like a neon raspberry,
You float and sail, a helium balloon
bright bachelor's button blue and bobbing
on the cold and hot winds of our breath,
as we make and unmake in passionate
diastole and systole the rhythm
of our unbound bonding, to have
and not to hold, to love
with minimized malice, hunger
and anger moment by moment balanced.

-- To Have Without Holding, Marge Piercy

It's funny. The first time I read this poem, I was probably 17, green as an unfurled leaf, and never had a boyfriend. Much less sexual experience. But this poem just struck me and the first time I read it, I knew how to read it out loud, too. The rhythm, the matter-of-fact-ness, the pain, the cynicism, the forced amusement at cetain parts, and the exhaustion and acceptance at the end.

I remember Mikael once planned and organized this poetry reading night in school, and he invited me to read. I had a power meeting that day that lasted until about 9 PM, and I rushed to the SEC foyer clutching two poems--one mine, the other one was Without Holding. When I get there, the place was packed and maybe about 7 people have already read. Mikael walks up to me and says, "O ano Drey, ililista ko na ba pangalan mo dun sa manila paper? Magbabasa ka ba?"

My knees were shaking but I knew I wanted to do it, I say to myself, Okay Drey, bite the bullet. So I give Mikael this shaky little nod and he walks off. Finally, my turn came, and if I remember correctly, Mikael gives this embarrasing introduction about me being a writer and a published scientist at the same time. (As if. He was in the same course as me and he was a published poet, for crying out loud.)

I walk to the little impromptu stage, knees knocking together. I ramble a little bit, apologizing that it was my first time to read, and adding that, like all first times, this could be a little painful. (Shit, I still cringe thinking about that. There were professors there, for fuck's sake.) Anyway, I read my poem first (which was awful, come to think of it now), then Without Holding.

After I finish, I walk back to my seat (knees still shaking), and this girl stops me and says, "I really like the second poem." Now, I want to answer wryly but truthfully, "Yes, me too."

So there you have it. I have come to realize I am not and never will be a poet. But dammit, dammit. Almost 8 years later, I totally, totally get this poem.

i'm a(n oxy)moron

it's weird. sometimes i can't understand if i'm a lone wolf or a social butterfly. (god, i hate phrases like these. as if a butterfly flits from one flower to the other because she had nothing better to do, or that a wolf wouldn't stick with the pack because it cramped her style.)

i've always been good at being alone. as long as i had a good book with me, or my ipod, or an odd piece of paper and a pen. i could spend time meditating too. especially if the atmosphere is good--like in ryoanji, near the pond when it's not too crowded; or at the college church in ateneo when it was empty except for the choir practicing in the background; or when i'm soaking my feet in the river on a burning hot summer day.

when i was home, i wouldn't mind not going out either. i could always talk to my dad about theories, or with my mom about the past or the future, and my sisters were always great company. if and when i wanted to be alone, i could bike to the beach and listen to the waves, or immerse myself in a book.

running is an excellent way to be alone, too. and let me tell you, when you're concentrating on your breathing or on your muscles not cramping, your rhythm and how many minutes you've got left in your routine--well, there's just no room for anything else in your head, much less other people.

the thing is, i haven't been wanting to be alone lately. i craved the monochrome personality of a crowd, the buzz of a party, and the forgetting of being drunk. i wanted to fade and not be recognized; i wanted general opinion and not well-thought arguments. i wanted my concerns drowned in alcohol, or at least postponed until the next morning. i sought automatic nods, shallow laughter, tenuous bonds. i really couldn't care less--it was easier that way.

i haven't been very good at being alone with people i love too. i would make up stories, instead of going into details; i would be quiet, or try to be funny all the time. i found myself screening things that i wanted to say, even things that sometimes had to be said. i hurt my parents for not being open with them with plans and problems; and i made my sister cry when she read the posts here--i think i scared her. i put my best friend in a tricky position with my family because she's my secret-keeper. and i have perfected being calm and cool and careless with my love, even if my heart felt like it was being squeezed. hell, i couldn't even be bothered to write for so long. it was all too much commitment--and i was safer this way.

now people think i've changed so much. my mom is so worried she asks me how i am (in a disguised manner, of course) almost everyday. my old friends hardly recognize me (and they hardly hear from me, too). my new friends, well (i think) sometimes they think i'm crazy and give me odd looks. acquaintances that i've fed too much bullshit are so full of (it) themselves, they think they know me. and (i wish) my lover is confused. maybe they're all disappointed with me for one reason or another (i sometimes am).

and sometimes, my being alone is being nowhere. being caught in fiction. being deafened by music. being drunk. being with stupid people who demand the minimum of me. being stupid, period.

being nothing.

sometimes, my being alone is by distraction from solitude and loneliness. and my silence and introspection is my defense against giving too much away to others, especially those that deserve it. i'm afraid of loneliness, yet i'm afraid to commit. i want to be comprehended, but i don't want to be apprehended and labeled. i'm scared of being, but i'm terrified of nothingness.

i don't know. it's weird. it's an oxymoron. no, it's a paradox.

i can't figure out if i'm being brave or being a coward. (now these, these are entirely in human terms.)

If you care enough...

Recently I learned the word FUBAR. It isn't a word as much as an acronym. Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition. Fubar. Simple as that.

***

My secret fear is that I wake up one morning and find I am forty years old, five kids and a husband under one arm and a career under another, and realize that I had done nothing with my life. And being forty with responsibilities other than those just to myself, I have no choice but to stick to the path I had paved, and that the possibility of crossroads has been taken from me forever.

And for the past three years I have been at the crossroads: one fork leading to security and what everybody expects of me; the other, to possibilities. (Possibilities. This word is enough to give me goosebumps.) This week, I finally stopped lying to myself and took the leap towards the unknown, towards those possibilities.

Now, I'm half excited, half scared out of my wits, but I tell you, I've never been this alive and this at peace. I remember a Kundera novel I read a long time ago--Identity, I think--and there's this part where the guy's sitting under a tree and he looks at the branches stretching into the infinity of choices. He thinks to himself--If I'm going to end up sticking to one path all my life, why should I stop from exploring other branches, since I know I'm going to end up traveling that single road soon enough?

So, that's how I've been feeling for so long. Confused, lost, terrified. Confused about what I wanted to do with my life. Lost in the tug of war between secure boredom and true living. And so terrified of the mere existence of other possibilities for me, that I fucked up my life for a year, so much that I hardly recognized myself. Now, I'm just glad I finally faced that decision; now I feel I can actually start to get to know myself again without all the surrounding bullshit muddying up the waters. But hell, whatever I tell myself, it's still difficult to face the fact that, right now, I'm not being what people expect me to be. That a lot of people will think I'm being stupid, ungrateful, indecisive. Crazy, in a word.

However, if you care enough, you will worry about me, and worry some more, but admit to yourself that my eyes have not shone like this in a long time. That I haven't smiled so sincerely, laughed so exuberantly, or been this motivated in a long time.

If you care enough, you'll know that I'm taking time to explore, so that I can wake up that one day when I'm forty with responsibilites up to my neck, smiling and saying that I made the right choice of all the possibilities given me.

If you care enough, you'll stop working out reasons why you wouldn't even think about trying anything like it, but figure out why I had to do it.

If you care enough, you'll admit too, to yourself that life isn't short at all, rather it is much too long not to take the occasional detour--if only to find out where you really want to be. Because both sides of the coin hold the truth: Life is too short not to take chances, and life is too long to spend regretting them.

Even if you care enough, you probably won't understand; but then you'll know what I mean.

***

Now that I know, I just don't want to look back at my life and think, Fubar. Simple as that.