Wishes for My Close Friend on her Wedding Day

Today, a close friend of mine back home finds her way into the altar right through the arms of the man she will now call “husband.”  The moment she told us about the wedding plans, we never ceased making jokes about it, inventing hilarious and wacky stories to lighten the feel of an important event which could get a lot stressful for the bride-to-be.  We even went to such length  as looking for a wedding theme as if it is going to be a costume party—“Under the sea…Melinda, you have to be the jellyfish and your daughter the plankton,” I once cracked while we were dining out and a roaring laughter ensued.  Then, we thought about a song for the bridal march which was a pretty depressing song it really talked about the pain felt by a person watching her loved one tie the knot from afar.  Again, we almost choked on our sundaes.  Fortunately, the bride-to-be was never short on good humor she laughed with us.

But tomorrow all these jokes are going to end, finally our friend would be at peace with us leaving her alone.  I am pretty certain a male friend who hangs with us would say, “one down, three more to go,” referring to three of us who can’t seem to make plans like that.  There used to be four of us, plus Melinda who is married but is “technically single” as her husband works abroad.  Oh, those times we headed to the beach straight from work to catch the sunset and talked about the many things that mattered to us—annoying co-workers, exasperating superiors, life-drowning system and our individual dreams.  Drinking strawberry daiquiri was the farthest we went for a digression.  Four single women who could afford to engage an argument with the boss but too careful not to go beyond our comfort zones.  Tomorrow, there’ll be three of us and with me away, there’ll be two left.  (Wait, there are actually two absentee members of our club who moved somewhere.)

I know I would be missing my friend so much, no, the single friend whose time we almost seemed to own.  Before I left I told them I love hanging out with them and would still want to do it even when we are old at sixty.  But time has a way of surprising people and we would never know what will happen tomorrow.  Maybe we could still hang out together but not as often as before or maybe we would go separate ways to chase some of our dreams.  One thing I am really sure about though is that I am so happy that this day has come into my friend’s life.

Finding and falling in love, and really loving are glorious experiences, so they say.  If Luis Buenaventura’s blog “Finding Your Soulmate: A Statistical Analysis” is to be believed, there is a 58:1 ratio of getting yourself lucky enough to find your partner—that is, if one has “fifty-eight times of reliving his/her life, s/he will cross path with his/her soulmate once.” (Sounds pretty depressing isn’t it?  ‘might as well forget about it.)  A great many people all over the world longed for it and not all of them were lucky enough.  It’s not because of the ratio, no.  Sometimes people seem to connect with each other at the wrong place and time and wake up finding they have so much to catch up with life (perhaps) on their own, not with the other around.  Others got it the second, the third, the fourth time, but not before they get themselves burnt.  There are those who are almost on the verge of it and then, like the light of the candle was snuffed by the wind and faded into the night.

My friend is blessed.  After a few failed relationships, she finally found someone who could say to her today he’s willing to hold half of her skies and finally she found the courage to declare herself capable of holding up someone else’s half of the sky too.  I’ve been watching couples who are happy with each other for years now (that’s what I’ve been doing these days, watching couples with the hope that if I could immerse myself into their world, I might, even for a fleeting moment, experience that magical and mysterious feeling they call “love.” No, I’m kidding.)  I am amazed how these people fit together like a puzzle, and I don’t mean just the physical side of things.  I refer to the emotional, psychological and spiritual levels.   There is something about them more than mutual trust…that they understand each other, able to anticipate each other’s needs just by a glance or gesture.  I love seeing this in married couples with so much love for each other.

I wish for my friend to live this experience and for this experience to live forever.  I know that the journey towards establishing this kind of connection—marriage—would not be easy.  No matter how people like each other, there are bound to be differences.  The key there is how to even out these differences without killing each other’s individuality I think.  Well, I am not so sure…who am I to know about these things.  But I really do hope that they would not easily give up on each other without exploring a number of ways where conflicts can be resolved.

I cannot see her now.  But I know she’ll be good at it—the multitude roles of a married career woman which could drive the weak nuts.   She has always been the motherly shadow to my volatile and unpredictable personality.  When we blew our top off, she’s the voice of reason telling us to take things easy.  She’s the listener to my jokes; she’s the audience to my shows.  She was the one person who made me peel some layers off myself, in those unguarded moments I felt totally free.  With her around, the person who can be extremely private and withdrawn found a way to unload her vulnerabilities and fears and even had her taste of a few adventures.  I am full of hope that they can make this work.

They have to—she sacrificed a great deal for the relationship, with her giving up the chance to pursue graduate studies in the States as I do now—because she knew that life is about making choices.  I haven’t really met her husband, I’ve only heard of him from my friend.  Yet, I know they will take care of each other till they are old and bent.  After all, to live for each other, to give for each other, to take from each other without killing each other are part of what marriage is all about.

Finally, I hope Ian (her husband) would still let her drive with me to the beach and watch the sunset to talk about old times, the joys in life, even when we are sixty, wrinkled and gray.

Unlock the Hymen (Two Poems by Angela Manalang-Gloria and Karen Kunawicz)

Revolt From Hymen

O to be free at last, to sleep at last
As infants sleep within the womb of rest!

To stir and stirring find no blackness vast
With passion weighted down upon the breast,

To turn the face this way and that and feel
No kisses festering on it like sores,

To be alone at last, broken the seal
That marks the flesh no better than a whore’s!

A poem written by Angela Manalang-Gloria in 1940 that continues to inspire “muted” Filipino women to claim their voices even half a century after. In every line, there’s liberation.

Unlock

If I wasn’t so numb
If I wasn’t so lost
Floating along the swirling dark clouds in the sky
I’d do anything to keep you here tonight
To keep you here forever
To have your hand in mine
And mine in yours
In a lock of pale flesh

But there is nothing more I can do
I cannot sing you the moon’s songs for sleeping children
I cannot cry you a silver lake to reflect your dreams
I cannot turn cartwheels and dance around
With a rainbow of ribbons in my hands
I cannot tear myself apart and give you what’s inside
(that’s nothing but despair, my love)

So I watch you turn
to face the door
Leaving me with a kiss I will taste forever

As your fingers
Slip away from mine
I hang my head
And a rain of hair covers my eyes
I don’t want to see you go

But you do.
Just the same.

Karen’s poems are cited to be depressingly dark but beautiful, longing for some lost soulmate.  She keeps a blog called Milk and Blood at http://nazgulqueen.livejournal.com

Atrophy of Another Kind

I’ve read somewhere that the gravest sin a blogger can commit is to let your blog sit for months. I know. The moment you sign up for a blogging account you enter into some sort of a contract to take it upon yourself to keep that blog breathing and spewing, if not thought-provoking ideas, then “rants” which might just give birth to grand ideas, or to fill that virtual gap with something that would remind man of his humanity, of the ironies in his humanity, and the beauty in such ironies. Somehow, somewhere, there’s that tight little circle of loyal readers who keep track of your takes on these ironies, some approvingly, others ready to punch, and the rest glued on a spot we call “neutral” which, ironically again, was the cause of most of human tragedies (but this is a separate matter I might deal with in the future). You owe it to your followers to keep the fire of interest and loyalty burning.

But that’s not what I’ve been doing these days. If a two-second gap in radio broadcasting is called “dead air,” then, as a blogger, I’ve been dead for months. Yes, months, long enough for muscles to go slack with inactivity–by the way, medical people got a vogue name for it, atrophy. A “dead air” long enough to drive those few loyal followers to turn the dial and switch stations. Atrophy does not only hold for muscles, I tell you. They do not only hold for messages that failed to get past those complex barbed wires of human cognition and affect. They are also true for brains. Once synaptic processes slow down, it is difficult, really, really difficult to even get yourself past one paragraph of, say, even puny writing. Haha. Now that’s a confession.

My former professor who is a blogger herself once told me “It is so easy to put up a blog. Finding the commitment to keep that blog is the hardest part.” She’s correct. For one, it eats up most of your time. Two, writing, really writing, is painful, draining. Three, serious blogging demands that you shed your clothes off and bare yourself, freckles and wrinkles, fears and hopes, strengths and vulnerabilities to your public. A blog that deserves to be read should have some soul in it. And how we hate to bare ourselves before people, not even in our dreams. This brings us to the fourth one–blogging is political. My friend Jean Claire, a serious blogger herself, once wrote that what you chose to write in your blog is a political thing. Yes, and this makes blogging twice the effort. We have to always remind ourselves that the virtual space is also a medium. We have to police what we write in terms of its appropriateness and accuracy. Blogging is not some railroad tracks that you build in the outbacks and leave once completed to become that rotting, rusty, atrophied trace of the futile human effort to conquer isolation. Blogging is continuous building. Blogging is like Stephen King’s Rose Red, that house that feeds on the psychic energies of people so that it can build and rebuild itself. Blogging should reflect the mind of the person who build it, and if this is not an excess, the mind in its best.

Alright. Having said this, I decided to work up my hands, my brain and all the parts involved in the thought process with the hope of gaining back that one rippling muscle which was once a symbol of life. I know this would not be easy. I have not bared myself for a long time now and winter’s fast approaching. It would be cold and harsh. But at least, I’m back!

Photo from: http://www.treehugger.com/20081215-abandonned-railroad-tracks.jpg