Differences, and ugh that yellow smoothie

I think I've always been class conscious. It's one of the reasons why I particularly am not nostalgic over my college life and kept to a small company of people over those years. And especially after that ruse moments before my graduation with respect to my being a scholarship recipient (which was practically a rude reminder I take it of my middle class standing), my affection towards that certain college-basketball-crazed institution practically went nil.

You see I have, what I'll call it generally, "car issues." It's that discomfort and insecurity for example when I first found out my boyfriend drives his own car or otherwise practically has a driver. It's that feeling of alienation during my undergrad days that made me avoid solo trips to a nearby Mcdo (mcdonald's for pete's sake!) with its throngs of fellow students calling their yayas and drivers for sundo. And don't even let me get started on Starbucks.

Early college years before I rented closer to school, I hated Mondays and early classes. Those usually spell braving the rush hour and the mad traffic along SLEX. So I learned to stand farther from the train doors, away from the daily mob action and potential pickpockets. To cool myself under where the aircon vents are. To pick the best seats on a bus. To demand the right change because I know exactly how much my fare costs and when there are hikes. Which is why I have mixed feelings of resentment and envy for those who come late to class because of "difficulties" with campus parking lots.

Why me? Why them? Those kinds of questions. Why can't my father who has an office job even buy a family car? Who gets to decide that this shitty gymrat RayBan-in-hand (but hot) freshman and his new company of cool guys deserve their own rides while I have to lug my backpack (and sometimes a hand carry even) across the whole of the metro twice a day? In what way could I say that I'm perfectly okay with that? The questions began to touch on moot issues of who deserves what, meaning, less of a sense of fairness but rather of entitlement, which frankly aren't the right issues, though they may be closest to heart.

So you learn to accept facts of life, and learn to ask other questions. (Or at least get a move on.) Perhaps those less naive, those more positive. You know, those with "importance". Like what career to take? Should you follow your dreams? Or which stable job leads fastest to a car? Hehe.

Over the ease gained after downing few beers, I once told my boyfriend I've realized how different our paths appear to me. If I do adhere to conventional standards of success for "my class," I will work to earn enough for a car and a place of my own. And even then stability is no guarantee. But once you accomplished that, then no one gets to say you haven't succeeded. That's something a man can take pride of, and in no way do I look down on those material aspirations.

What I realized is that it translates already to years, to different priorities that will motivate our separate endeavors as two individuals. So there's a wee bit again of discomfort there. Again. At differences. My weak point really, I admit. (In a way, aren't some differences harder to take from partners, than even from closest friends?)

Actually what got me to revisit and muse on this topic is some trivial incident. Boyfriend treated me to a drink on his usual hangout/study place Starbucks where I only order half the time. That particular time I was resolved not to. Because I can't afford the luxury. Because to be practical, a coffee worth 2-3 decent meals is a luxury for me. Because of so many circumstances that leave me sometimes bitter like my resentment for my less-than-capable father; and since I want a vacation with my boyfriend, because I needed to accept tutoring the exact kind of students I am most insecure to so I could manage myself by myself over the break between semesters. Boy, was I unable to keep my calm and I almost gave in to an unfamiliar anger. (Because a part of me was embarrassed?) Good thing I didn't. It was a well-meaning gesture after all. But I just had to pause and reflect afterwards why I had that so intense a reaction. Turns out it's an insecurity I still have to keep working on.

You know I have that opposite equivalent of a poker face, and it was so easy for him to see how ruffled I was. Yes, I got angry. But I knew better than to talk at the heat of the moment, what with my legendary incompatibility with coherent speech.  So what I did was to take down a big gulp of whatever that yellow smoothie was (And for the record, I  didn't like that flavor, haha, not complaining though, free is free), together with a good measure of ego and pride. In no time, I could smile again.

________________________

Holler to V, it's our <3rd month. Hey you fine mister you.  

Pagsasanay sa Retorika | Lumang Tugtugin

Aporia
Ano bang nakita
ng puso kong ito sa 'yo?
Kapag ika'y kasama,
anong ligaya ko, sinta.

Bakit labis kitang mahal?
Yakap mo'y di ko malimutan.
Bakit labis kitang mahal?
Sumpa man, iniibig kita.

Pagwawangis
Isang ngiti mo lang
at ako'y napapaamo.

Pagtawag
Heto na ang pinakahihintay natin,
heto na tayo magkayap sa dilim.
O, kay sarap ng mga nakaw na sandali
habang tayo'y magkayap sa dilim.

Pagtatao
Heto na naman naririnig,
kumakaba-kaba itong dibdib,
lagi nalang sinasabi:
pwede ka bang makatabi?

Pagmamalabis
Oh babe isang ngiti mo lang 

pawi na ang aking uhaw.
Huwag ka lamang tatawa
baka ako'y malunod na.

Pagtawag

O kay ganda,
O kay gandang mag-alay sa 'yo.

Pagtutulad
Dahil kung ikaw ang yakap ko

parang yakap ko na rin ang langit.

Yung simple lang

Walang iba pang sasarap

sa pagtitinginan natin.

Sana ay di na magwakas

itong awit ng pag-ibig.

___

The Master Speed

by Robert Frost

No speed of wind or water rushing by

But you have speed far greater. You can climb

Back up a stream of radiance to the sky,

And back through history up the stream of time.

And you were given this swiftness, not for haste

Nor chiefly that you may go where you will,

But in the rush of everything to waste,

That you may have the power of standing still—

Off any still or moving thing you say.

Two such as you with such a master speed

Cannot be parted nor be swept away

From one another once you are agreed

That life is only life forevermore

Together wing to wing and oar to oar.

______

Para kay V, na laging handang tumigil

Upward-beating heart, hay Rilke

from Letters to a Young Poet

Most people have (with the help of conventions) turned their solutions toward what is easy and toward the easiest side of the easy; but it is clear that we must trust in what is difficult; everything alive trusts in it, everything in Nature grows and defends itself any way it can and is spontaneously itself, tries to be itself at all costs and against all opposition. We know little, but that we must trust in what is difficult is a certainty that will never abandon us; it is good to be solitary, for solitude is difficult; that something is difficult must be one more reason for us to do it.

     It is also good to love: because love is difficult. For one human being to love another human being: that is perhaps the most difficult task that has been entrusted to us, the ultimate task, the final test and proof, the work for which all other work is merely preparation. That is why young people, who are beginners in everything, are not yet capable of love: it is something they must learn. With their whole being, with all their forces, gathered around their solitary, anxious, upward-beating heart, they must learn to love. But learning-time is always a long, secluded time, and therefore loving, for a long time ahead and far on into life, is: solitude, a heightened and deepened kind of aloneness for the person who loves. Loving does not at first mean merging, surrendering, and uniting with another person (for what would a union be of two people who are unclarified, unfinished, and still incoherent?), it is a high inducement for the individual to ripen, to become something in himself, to become world, to become world in himself for the sake of another person; it is a great, demanding claim on him, something that chooses him and calls him to vast distances. Only in this sense, as the task of working on themselves ("to hearken and to hammer day and night"), may young people use the love that is given to them. Merging and surrendering and every kind of communion is not for them (who must still, for a long, long time, save and gather themselves); it is the ultimate, is perhaps that for which human lives are as yet barely large enough.

-Rainier Maria Rilker, May 14, 1904

How to say it in Pastiche

I see us in the park,
Strolling the summer days in the imaginings in my head.

In the evening when the day is through,
Summer breeze, makes me feel fine,
Blowing through the jasmine on my mind.

You keep your rights, I'll take your nights
No one can lose when we take the lights out.

Let's start with the ABC of it,
Roll right down to the XYZ of it,
Teach me tonight.

Aye, aye,
Teach me how to dougie,
Teach me, teach me how to dougie.

Then one by one, the stars would all go out.
Then you and I would simply fly away.

I may be climbing on rainbows, but here it goes,
And if you're wondering what this song is leading to,
I want to make it with you.


***
Knocks me off my feet - Stevie Wonder
Summer breeze - Seals & Crofts
Sweet surrender - Bread
Teach me tonight - Dinah Washington
Teach me how to Dougie - California Swag District
If -Bread
Make it with you - Bread

Dahil kailangan talaga bawat personal blog ay pagdadaanan ang cheesy lyrics na post.
(♫ All my bitches love me,
All my, all my bitches love me,
You ain't fuckin' with my dougie)

Short musings

You know what, I'm at a point in my young life where all's good. It's far from perfect, definitely. Uncertainties old and new may be creeping up at times (numerous, actually), I'm still messed-up as everyone else is, but I am getting more of these quiet moments when I could honestly say to myself jeesuz, I'm fine (so relax and stop whining). Well, I admit part of it is because of a certain somebody who likes to microwave adobo and hates carrots. This is not an uncommon result, so my imagined surveys say. Well, I've got nothing else to say. Just got lucky, I suppose. Here's to hopefully more luck on its way, who knows maybe I could  someday go to Mongolia and travel with horses like a nomad, live in a yurt, and learn to play the morin khuur (a horsehead fiddle) and throat-sing. Oops forgive that bit of random dreaming there.

And oh, I've come to write a little something by way of reminiscing.

***

Premise

We needn’t have hurried after all

he says when he missed his 3 A.M. bus, a hint

lingering in the air you ignore, but you give in

instead to a last kiss before closing the car doors

meant: Well, have a nice life, good luck

with that fight you’re having, cheater

you turned out to be.  But you are tired

and fumble on the double locks, you wanting

to just close the night after you

on a bed you do not share. Next time

perhaps this you’re getting is a nicer screw

with fewer surprises, like the taste of his mouth

you’re now discovering, heavy breaths you’d like

of it quicken as he takes you in, out. Come later

you would invite him to your room but tonight

the time being must just be a detour so

I think I’ll go now you address the room

buckle your belt as you must leave

nothing, again it’s same way easy. You could

be polite and not betray a little too much

smile learning to keep yourself in check. But

suppose convince yourself you are not that

pleased, suppose, yes, you could stay for the night.

___

Studies on Postscripts

I posit that a love letter is a written as token of one or more of the following: a promise, an act of humility, a confession, a belabored apology, a defense,

 a surrender, a risk, a dedication, perhaps even an ending, or a prologue, a roadmap, a sweet nothing.

That although a love letter could only be written for the first time (could it?), what you add hastily or otherwise at the end’s always is.

I said I sometimes get scared. What I didn’t say: don’t forget I never said I’m unhappy. I found out one can inhabit these states at the same time though I muddle my saying it with double negatives. It’s an affectation I’d like to keep when I walk in on difficulties.

For hours, we lie like beached creatures on the sheets where sleep shallows into somnolence, breaking and foaming gently between the crevices our locked bodies try to close. The sound of tall bamboos and the wind that rattles them when I wake, this is that I am writing for the first time. There you were, with your habit of shores I imagine you to have, telling me it was like a rain-forest instead.  Which turned out to be a trivia, my hesitation secretly turning to embarrassment at that. And our quiet laughter that filtered out the window and was lost to the world outside bathed by the weak sun and abating rain.

___