Indulgence

bits and pieces of the past

from The Essential Rumi (translated and compiled by Coleman Barks)
It's 4 am. Nasruddin leaves the tavern and walks the town aimlessly. A policeman stops him. "Why are you out wondering the streets in the middle of the night?" "Sir," replies Nasruddin, "If I knew the answer to that question, I would have been home hours ago!"

It was going to be a tough day and I found myself stalling to get to work. What happened instead was I picked up one of my old journals which recorded my thoughts from June 21, 2002 until March 5, 2003. Almost everyday has an entry. It amazes me how much of my life since 2000 until 2004 has been recorded. I've stopped writing on my journal for a long while now. I don't really know why. I just have let the habit go. It's no longer a major part of my being. And I've been running out of steam lately for this blog as well... Maybe there are times in our lives when we feel that we are so bothered with the going ons in our lives that we don't want to record it. We don't ever want to remember it. We just let it go.

I went over some of the journal entries in this particular journal and find so many things that bother me about myself back in the day. I was particularly weak and I was even more of a whiny character than I am today; and that says a lot. Bitterness flows through the pages so gracefully and so are my various bouts of depression and low self-esteem. If I ever met the person that I was then, boy, I would have given him a proper beating. It's amazing how much we've changed as time passes. Well, for that matter, it's amazing how some people never change...

Here is an interesting part which I took from my August 15, 2002 entry:

I was walking home from Asia Crest at around 7 in the morning. I found a white feather. I picked up the feather and brought it with me. From now on -- I'm going to fly.

Whoa! Quite shocking! Especially if you read all the entries before that, you wonder, where did this guy find the time and the depth to write something like that... And unfortunately, a few pages later, I happen to just fall flat on my face and end up sounding so stupid and weak all over again. All that poeticism lost on the shallow affairs of the heart. *sigh*

From January 1, 2003:

I just finished watching Vanilla Sky. Cameron Crowe is a genius. It is a beautiful, powerful movie. I'm crying right now -- still emotional and filled with so much passion inside.

"Every minute is a chance to turn it all around..." What powerful words. It struck me so much, tis choice of life, reality or the dream. the Vanilla Sky or what is really out there.

Would I have the strength to wake up? Is my life one lucid dream? Am I ready for this?

Then I begin talking about someone who I fell in love with but only really used me for sex. This person texted after weeks of silence and I begin to over-analyze again. Then I write:

So do I want my Vanilla Sky or what is really out there? If every passing minute is a chance to turn my life around, does that mean I can choose to wake up just a little bit later?

Do I need this Vanilla Sky?

I can't believe I actually preferred the illusion! That is what I wanted -- to take the martyr route, the painful path of having put someone in greater value than my own self, even when I knew that I didn't matter to this person. What was the use of accepting the illusion when I already knew it for what it was? My God! I was such an idiot! I was so involved in my own drama, it was ridiculous and stupid and... I can't even finish describing it. It is just so sick.

Here is one big pity party that I put together for myself. Most of the entry is deeply involved with the drama of my friends, who hates who, what so-and-so thinks of so-and-so, that sort of thing and in the middle of all of this is the person I am in love with and my bestfriend. Then I go crazy talking about my difficulty and the fact that I am being ignored and then I go off ranting about not getting what I want and being so damned poor -- which I was at this point of time.

The end of that entry (dated March 2, 2003) was written:

I don't know what I want. I'm too poor to know what I want and too poor to get it if I knew it.

Inigo is right -- I don't really belong anywhere.

Inigo is my cousin. A weekend prior to this entry, I had a great bonding moment with my cousin in the middle of a forest in Batangas over beer, right beside a pool where bats would occasionally pass by to drink from the water or pick up dead bugs from the surface. It was an amazing moment and it would have been forgotten had I not written it down.

The magick of the journal, to see how far I've come from then and to see what has passed and what has transpired that made me who I am today.

I'm going to go through all my old stuff and try to find more treasure gems like that. Magickal little phrases that pop up from nowhere. It makes for inspiring quotes and moments, I think...

posted by wanggo @ 2:21 AM