Footnote to entry "We are all in the dark"

Something I saw while scrolling the net, not my words but just so beautiful I want to share it:

Years ago, anthropologist Margaret Mead was asked by a student what she considered to be the first sign of civilization in a culture. The student expected Mead to talk about fishhooks or clay pots or grinding stones.

But no, Mead said that the first sign of civilization in an ancient culture was a femur (thighbone) that has been broken and then healed. Mead explained that in the animal kingdom, if you break your leg, you die. You cannot run from danger, get to the river for a drink or hunt for food. You are meat for prowling beasts. No animal survives a broken leg long enough for the bone to heal. A broken femur that has healed is evidence that someone has taken time to stay with the one who fell, has bound up the wound, has carried the person to safety and has tended the person through recovery. Helping someone else through difficulty is where civilization starts, Mead said. 

We are at our best when we serve others. Be civilized.

Visual Journal Entry #12

As mentioned earlier, this is the 12th one.

I like the easy tone of this visual journal entry, the purple color seems to dominate the elements in this spread. It becomes a pivot for which all colors and images rests. Even the fashion of the woman borrows a lot of color from the purple strip. Upon closer look at that strip, it is like the feathers of peacock, fragile but a feast to the eyes, it has rich colors within its tiny thin streaks. 

Still, the mild coffee color strip of thicker volume looks sturdier and it lends a noticeable background. It supports the two white squares which usually bears the written message in a journal or in a letter. A smiling cat sets the mood. But we can see some jar, time tower, scale and a parcel package scattered across the whole canvas. The flowers are giving some vibrant color in this rather dissolved in white feel spread.

It was originally designed as a get well soon card for someone. And it is in that someone's possession right now. So, this is the first visual journal entry that I gave away. 

Anyways, healing is something that comes in the right time, if we have the right medicines, right frame of (happy and content) mind, if we read and feed our soul with the right healing words and if we let the flowers of life continue to bloom and flourish, then we are in our journey of healing. 

Perhaps, the purple strip is like the water that supplies the healing power.

Have a good day my dear readers.

Treat yourself well

Para kay mama

Para sa nanay kong mahilig mag-comment sa mga post sa mga naglalabang kulay noong nag-daang eleksyon:

Ma, wag ka mag-alala kapag nakasuhan ka ng cyber libel, bibisitahin ka namin ni daddy, dadalhan ka namin ng palabok at cake.

#moveonatayo #taposnapoangmay9

Is there a place I can go ...

... where the lonely river flows?

Where fear ends and faith begins

Halleluhah | Alicia Keys

There's a hole in my heart I've been hiding
I've been strong for so long that I'm blind
Is there a place I can go where the lonely river flows?
Where fear ends and faith begins

Hallelujah, hallelujah, let me in
I've been praying but I'm paying for my sins
Won't you give me a sign before I lose my mind?
Woah, hallelujah, let me in

Every step makes me think that I'm closer
But somehow I just never arrived
When our hope disappears, please protect me from my tears
I need you right by my side

Hallelujah, hallelujah, let me in
I've been praying but I'm paying for my sins
Won't you give me a sign before I lose my mind?
Woah, hallelujah, let me in

Tabula Rasa

Seeing the Oblation standing amid the destruction around UP Campus in Leyte, I cannot help but feel the profound invitation of hope. There is light, beyond the desolation, beyond the seemingly insurmountable challenges, beyond desperation. A very bright light which remains pure and untouched by anything that befalls the humanity and its creations.

And I believe that that light is here to guide us in molding new and sustainable beginnings.

Clean slate, a divine gift to all of us.

Humming while trailing the path

How to keep Saturday an inspiring day:

1. Watch Studio Ghibli film (highly recommended: Spirited Away, Howl's Moving Castle, but actually all of them)

2. Listen to the ending song

3. Read the english subtitle of the song

4. Feel inspired 

That's exactly what I did and now I am sharing with you this song with english translation at the bottom.

Always with Me
--------------
Somewhere, a voice calls, in the depths of my heart
May I always be dreaming, the dreams that move my heart

So many tears of sadness, uncountable through and through
I know on the other side of them I'll find you

Everytime we fall down to the ground we look up to the blue sky above
We wake to it's blueness, as for the first time

Though the road is long and lonely and the end far away, out of sight
I can with these two arms embrace the light

As I bid farewell my heart stops, in tenderness I feel
My silent empty body begins to listen to what is real

The wonder of living, the wonder of dying
The wind, town, and flowers, we all dance one unity

Somewhere a voice calls in the depths of my heart
keep dreaming your dreams, don't ever let them part

Why speak of all your sadness or of life's painfull woes
Instead let the same lips sing a gentle song for you

The whispering voice, we never want to forget,
in each passing memory always there to guide you

When a miror has been broken, shattered pieces scattered on the ground
Glimpses of new life, reflected all around

Window of beginning, stillness, new light of the dawn
Let my silent, empty body be filled and reborn

No need to search outside, nor sail across the sea
Cause here shining inside me, it's right here inside me

I've found a brightness, it's always with me

Soul search week

Fangirl mode (lovin' it)

While trashing about the deep dark waters of self-doubt and self-insecurity this week, I happened upon a number of inspiring people who gave me messages (unintentionally) that made me think of life in bigger picture. Maybe what I am saying is that, up until this week I was sure of my path, but came Monday, it suddenly felt like I woke up  on a boat battered by unforgiving storm in the middle of big ocean. Completely unaware, this big storm caught me by surprise. This concluded in almost a week of absence from work, ineffective planning and uncertainty.

First. Words of wisdom from my eye doctor. I had my eye check-up (at Asian Eye Institute) this Friday morning and my doctor was very cheerful. He asked me about laptop sleeve (which I learned, is different from skin). Then I mentioned it was just a gift to me. Then we talked about school, ROMVLO hall and main lib. That he needed to go to Asian Lib to study. That during second sem of 1986, Diliman was closed and classes were disrupted. Good thing he had all those P (Passed) grades that sem (he was graduating that time) because he enrolled full load. And that after BA, he went to UP Manila to pursue medical school. That was a turning point in his life. His story made me think of UP as our community, although I was just born the year he graduated his BA, we have that common impression of library and our mutual happiness about him passing his full load semester (we all know that enrolling full load in Diliman whatever sem it is could be really challenging esp during hell week!)

Second. I attended this community concert held at the Amphitheater which featured Buklod (Rom Dongeto). It was also a date with Fati ^^ She mentioned that it felt like it was a beach concert. With the moon luminously watching over us, the cool wind blowing, good music, audience sitting at the grassy ground, one would think of occasionally running to the beach to soak in its gentle waters.
I feel like I miss being near the waters. I long to be surrounded by it. To renew myself inside its protection. And I felt the closeness of UP community, we all share the love of indigenous music (courtesy of Kontra-gapi) and the music of Buklod along with Tres Marias and others.

Third. The picture above is a rare treasure. When I was in college, I religiously read his column and I finished his thick book about Martial Law in Philippines (Dead Aim) borrowed from Main Library. So, upon seeing him sitting at the side of stage, watching quietly, I knew that I am about to watch two spectacles: the concert itself and his reactions.
The event concluded with Buklod's signature song Kanlungan. What a treat! We all clapped our hands, healed by the power of music. But on a personal note, I know being there was a kind of healing for me. For someone experiencing the torment of searching for self-identity and purpose, finding myself belonging to a community who loves music, who respects diversity, who gather together to celebrate unity beneath the moon and stars through songs and dances, I somehow realized that I after all, am not alone in this torment, that people around me also defines me. That I share their tears, laughters and delight with each song played.
And that I feel like I am protected by these emotions because they feel the same, too.

A gem of Celtic Wisdom

For Freedom 

John O'Donohue

As a bird soars high
In the free holding of the wind,
Clear of the certainty of ground,
Opening the imagination of wings
Into the grace of emptiness
To fulfill new voyagings,
May your life awaken
To the call of its freedom.

As the ocean absolves itself
Of the expectation of land,
Approaching only
In the form of waves
That fill and pleat and fall
With such gradual elegance
As to make of the limit
A sonorous threshold
Whose music echoes back among
The give and strain of memory,
Thus may your heart know the patience
That can draw infinity from limitation.

As the embrace of the earth
Welcomes all we call death,
Taking deep into itself
The right solitude of a seed,
Allowing it time
To shed the grip of former form
And give way to a deeper generosity
That will one day send it forth,
A tree into springtime,
May all that holds you
Fall from its hungry ledge
Into the fecund surge of your heart.

Easy Sunday

And today is a lazy day, unleashing the home-buddy in me. But still I want to accomplish stuff, so here is my Sunday list ^^

1. Write snail mails, so far, I have yet to reply to 8 letters.
2. Accomplish my christmas shopping list for family, friends and officemates.
3. Send postcards.
4. Start snail mails for friends XD
5. Maybe wash later
6. Update my diary.

So this is an easy Sunday, playing easy as Sunday Morning in my head ^^

Also, before I end this entry, I will paste the image of this book that I will give as a sembreak gift to myself. Here it is.

Some words of wisdom from him:
"Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any misery, any depression, since after all you don't know what work these conditions are doing inside you? Why do you want to persecute yourself with the question of where all this is coming from and where it is going? Since you know, after all, that you are in the midst of transitions and you wished for nothing so much as to change. If there is anything unhealthy in your reactions, just bear in mind that sickness is the means by which an organism frees itself from what is alien; so one must simply help it to be sick, to have its whole sickness and to break out with it, since that is the way it gets better.” 
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

Two big influences

This is called Blue Marble.
This picture is the view of earth from Apollo 17 travelling to the moon.
Taken in 1972, it was considered as a milestone in Space Photography.

His Holiness Dalai Lama talking with a girl.

My mind is non-communicative today. It would rather look passively at pictures, stories, blog entries, news, quotes than actively write or create. But for some weird moments, my mind alerted me about this story that I read somewhere, that the picture of our planet is a statement. For one, we have proof that our advanced technology can snap away at the profile of our blue planet. Also, it reinforces the idea that this fragile spherical mass is suspended on its own in this infinite dark space. Many environmental movements started out with this picture as their symbol. Some even mentioned that it can actually heal some people by just looking at it, though I am not really sure about that one. Perhaps, earth's picture is a good representation of one home -- despite varieties, despite diversities, despite differences -- there is wholeness/completeness. And we are all part of this one blue miracle.

Anyways I started searching for planet earth's pictures and eureka I found a lot! The one I pasted above is the 1972 photo called Blue Marble. If you want more pictures of earth go to Nat Geo or NASA.

Then on to His Holiness Dalai Lama. Last December I had read his autobiography My Land and My People. It was during a tumultuous time between Tibet and China (1960s) that He had to flee His land to keep the peace. Looking back, my life was also in a very complicated turning point last December and His endurance and positive attitude in the face of hardship helped me in my quest for peace during those times. I posted His picture because He is an image of stability and security for me. My moods are fluctuating lately, up one moment then down the next, must be quarter-life crisis, eh! And in this trying time, I guess I can count on him as a sturdy anchor as big waves attack me one after another.

Well, there, I posted two healing pictures for me.

*About busy days coming: Yes, I will start school tomorrow. My day will start at school, then office, then back to school library for research. Sounds busy, but I commit myself to it. Good winds everybody.

My birthday week recap: Lauren and I

20120515 | I had cakes again but this time they were from Lauren ^^
She visited me after her Kalinga expedition! That busy lady, Lauren!!
She got worried about me being ill so she treated me to get well cakes, sweetness.
Also she introduced me to her new DSLR, firestone.
I adore Lauren because she is the visionary lady who believes that documenting Whang Od, the famous woman tattoo artist up in Kalinga is more than a creative pursuit, it is also one way of preserving the rich cultures and symbols of our diverse indigenous heritage in the form of the Kalinga tribes' tattoo art, which Whang Od tirelessly shares to others...
This entry comes with a wish that we finish the project feeling enriched by the vision and integrity of this creative pursuit.
I believe.

Lauren and I (old picture)