Indulgence

itchy feet

Ralph Gerard
Reason can answer questions, but imagination has to ask them.

I saw a movie last night called L' Auberge Espagnole (The Spanish Apartment) and it was a French movie set in Barcelona. The lead was going to take Economics in the University of Barcelona. While he was there, he rooms in a tiny apartment with 5 different students -- 2 girls, 1 from Spain and 1 from England and 3 guys, 1 German, 1 Danish and an Italian. They were all from different countries who had gone there to study. In one of his classes, he meets up with a Belgian who babysits to pay for her room rent. There were scenes when they would all talk and it's college talk -- idealistic, studied, structured and very passionate. It was so appealing. I was just getting excited. I was having a hard time understanding the film because the film wasn't formatted for the television set and the subtitles were tucked at the bottom, half the letters of the lowest line in the subtitles were being eaten away and it was making it very difficult to read. But there they were, students from different countries, dealing with each other, studying, becoming whole. I wish I could have finished (and started) the movie but I had to sleep. But I saw what I needed to see.

It was such a wonderful look into what life could be like.

I started to think that maybe there are so many other options for me. What am I saying? That is exactly what I told my friend Daniel from Denmark yesterday. There are always options -- choices that we didn't know were available to us. We just have to sit still for a minute and clear our heads and it will present itself. Studying abroad has always been available to me if I just work it. I should get off my ass and finally apply for that Fulbright Scholarship. Start setting money aside for that trip abroad, for the tuition, for the money that scholarships can't provide for.

What am I so scared of?

I've been to so many places, more than some people and I've seen wonderful things. I've been dazzled and amazed by the Bund of Shanghai, the cathedrals of Rome, the Duomo of Florence, the buildings of Hong Kong. I've been to one of the oldest mangroves in the world in Sabang, Palawan and drank fresh from a mountain spring in Quezon. I've been up to Baguio and have gone to Boracay which is not provincial anymore but practically a city already.

There is just so many things to see. I want to see them all.

I've been getting this itch to disappear for a month to write something -- a novel? A movie? I don't know. But I think it's time that I start getting something done. I've been sitting with my thoughts for far too long. No more time. I've been dawdling, I've been distracted, I've been taking too much time. What am I so scared of? There are things that I want that, in truth, I'm also very scared of. I'm a person who so easily falls into my comfort zones and I can't get out of them. Truth is, I guess, I'm not as brave as I think I am, or let myself out to be. But at one point, I'm just going to burst and I need to do this. I really need to do this. What am I waiting for? That point of explosion? It isn't going to do me any good. So let's scratch the itch, let's scratch the ache. It's now or never.

(picture of a river in Banahaw (Quezon) taken from TXTube footage, taken in May 2005. Shot of one of Palawan's islands taken from the airplane by Rica de Ramos, June 2006.)

posted by wanggo @ 9:55 AM