AI-evoked Catharsis

Some people are so generous that they hope to be blissful even for a little while. While some of us have the tendency to be more extravagant and want to be blissful most if not all the time.

But life is unfair and we have to accept that reality.Despite wanting to be happy all the time, we know that we can't be for that is impossible. I want to believe that wanting to be happy is not at all bad, however I sometimes feel that there is a major tendency to be selfish because of that desire to be happy always.

Life will throw at us stones, lemons, what have you but we have to gladly accept that these are all part of a scheme that sometimes we do not have control over.

I am breaking in tears and as usual in moments of catharsis, it's an effective avenue to write the feelings that evoke the catharsis. I just came from another marathon that left me speechless, sad, in awe, and even depressed. It's been a long time ago since I learned that I am not just simple touched or moved by shows or movies that are haunting or sad, they scar me--and they impress upon me memories and evoke all sorts of emotions that are present in my very wide emotional spectrum.

These tears are proof of a love story albeit poorly written at some points, but left me a major impression of what selfless love is. Human beings are not perfect thus sometimes incapable of that sort of love. Jesus is the son of God and he is both human and divine and in this other story is Night, and he wasn't human and although he was programmed to love, he was one of the perfect examples and manifestations of love in the story. The humans in the story were also equally selfless in their pursuit of love and happiness.

Some parts were cliches already and yet I learned a lot in my two-day marathon of about 14 hours worth of a show that when you genuinely love a person, you'll do everything, even help your competition for that love just to make that person truly happy. It's really about sacrifice. If you love a person so much and so true, you know when to keep going but at the same time you would know when to stop and surrender. When a person's truly important to you, every waking hour and every remaining moment of your life is not wasted when you give it and offer or even spend it with that person whom you love. When you truly care about the other person's welfare, you know when to be strong for that other person even when you're truly breaking into pieces inside. Loving is accepting but loving is also knowing. Love is generous and it is sometimes too giving.

Cura personalis,
Magis.

So many wonderful things about love and yet they're easier to see in the movies and in tv programs. They seem less complex when they're woven into a script or a plot. Love makes us believe and yet love can make us frightful but it is not love I guess wholly but the memories of fear and pain we sometimes associate.

But we cannot blame ourselves always because of our shortcomings and failures. Anyway, we're only human--unlike Wan Nai Te

Restraint, as Poon would put it

If there is one person that should understand you more than anyone else, that should be yourself. It is a great challenge if others know you more than you know yourself because that makes it a blindspot. I'd like to think that although I have poor qualities, I understand myself and that I know why I act this or that way. 

I just hope that whatever I'm feeling right at this moment, it's what I think it is--and that I'll be able to address it not as a weak individual but a strong, willful, disciplined person.

And as Richard Poon, my favorite Pinoy singer had put it, "restraint is key." And I really do believe that it is so.

Let yourself be.

Dear blogspot or blogger or blog-whatever,

I really want to write on my journal, write a new song, play the guitar, as well as paint. My hands, heart, and head have all been itching to do those things as of recently. I have so many feelings lately and none of them I have processed. Time has been against me and when it isn't, I don't know what is. I have been feeling up and then down and up again. A lot of feelings. A lot of unprocessed feelings. I want to be busy and yet when I'm busy I don't want to anymore. My heart's as if being gripped so tight it will burst into so many pieces.

I have hurt someone so much recently and I know that I will continue to be un-free if I keep on protecting that someone. I know that the pain was really meant for both of us. It was meant to be happy but it was the experience of that pain that I hold on to the hope that I will eventually be at peace. I expected the pain and I want to welcome it but sometimes it haunts me and silently saws my being.

I don't understand myself anymore sometimes. I feel that I need to fast forward my life into maybe five years from now so I don't have to continue living as this immature person. I want to skip this time of my life but of course that would have major repercussions. There are major contrasts to my being. Sometimes I want to attribute it to being young or perhaps trying to be mature when I really didn't have to way back in high school. I chose responsibility and I chose to fight for my principles. Now looking back I don't regret them because my personality has been sharpened by my experiences as a young leader. But then again, the contrasts. I want to be sometimes young and sometimes my mature-r self won't allow it. I want to be free but it sometimes entails immaturity. I don't know. I am not sure.

All these aren't even making sense but I need to write this down. I am no longer sure. God never leaves me alone but physically sometimes I feel alone and I see that it may be nice to have someone who will be there and be present. But knowing myself, if I allow that to happen again, my independence and love for freedom will complain against restraint. I just hope that I can be strong despite being alone. I am not lonely, just in solitude maybe. Solitude is my surname--literally..in translation.

I just pray that I have done the right thing. That I chose because I was no longer happy. My happiness (as a youth) I think is really proportionate to the freedom that I am experiencing. I am not entirely sure but I guess so. Loving is so painful and even if I try to make Fr. Arrupe's mantra apply in my previous romantic engagement, I just couldn't. Maybe it wasn't really meant to be or to happen or to blossom. I want to be sure but everything is crazy right now.

How I wish my early twenties will be very significant and peaceful and that I will be happy despite being one. I pray that I appreciate the silence in table for two even when I'm alone. I pray that when love comes knocking again it'll be more than 3 years from now. And that I'll be able to bear all the emotions while I'm alone. I hope that I remain to not mind it all.

Let freedom be.
Let peace be.
Let happiness be.
Let love be.

Let me love myself right now. I know its selfish but maybe it's about time that I give myself and my being to myself and my being. Maybe it's the only way I can be happy again and be much at peace.

Lord it may be hard to do but I hope that I will be able to appreciate fighting for myself and for my own survival in all the aspects. Let me remain strong in the happiness and stronger in the sadder times. Let me appreciate what I have and what will be. I want to be strong-willed. I want to man up for myself. I want to not regret my choices. I want to just move on and be.

Free Once More

Today I finished the song I was writing three days ago. The content of the song came to me when I saw through an online post that a friend of mine who lost her boyfriend last August due to cancer is still grieving and still misses him big time. Also on that same night somebody texted me that a friend of ours was in the ICU because of surgical complications. The next day, he passed away.

The song is really about people who lost someone important in their lives and are imprisoned by the grief that sometimes causes happy things like singing or dancing to be stripped off their joyful quality because sadness burns people in grief from the inside. It is for people whose hearts seem to have passed too along with the deceased loved ones.

But eventually and in time, all people who are grieving will take flight and be free once more and they will be able to hope again and when all the pain goes away.

Thank You Daren and Daniel (D&D Custom Guitars)

It's my D&D Custom Guitar. She's sleek and makes great music. Her name's Effie (Effie Trinket from The Hunger Games film) because "that is mahogany!" Haha. Actually the guitar body is made, according to my research, from mahogany and spruce while the fretboard is rosewood.

These kinds of guitars are perfect for girls and women (or men too) who like me prefer slimmer, lighter acoustic guitars (with steel strings) that have smaller frets.

I sought the help from my friend and along with his friend they were able to get Effie for me and my life has been changed already. Haha.

Thank you friend! and to your friend as well! Woohoo :))

Thank you Daren and Daniel!

Feel better by making good music or listening to them.

Harry's Games and the Potter Hunger

I have read at some site that a mother was really concerned when her son finished Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games trilogy because after reading the three books he didn't seem to know what to do with his life and he seemed afloat. But in reality, this diversion may not yet be the end of a such dreamy state because he still has two other films to look forward to.

The seven books from J.K. Rowling book series on the other hand have been my ultimate source of distraction for the past couple of weeks. I have read some of the books before when I was younger but it was just until very recently that I have read them from Books 1 to 7, watching the corresponding film after reading each book. I know I may sound such a loser for a lot of Potterheads out there since I watched all films when they came out of theaters but have just read them all finally when I'm 21. But I think it was timely because I was more equipped than I could have been when I was 12, when vocabulary and comprehension would have been more difficult but suspension of disbelief easier. Although after finishing all books and watching the films again, I was somehow like that woman's son--distracted and drifting. I was too when I finished The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, and the Mockingjay.

It was with difficulty, similar to what I experienced while reading Collins's The Hunger Games to completely accept the differences between the book and the film. I am hopeful though that Catching Fire, when released in theaters by November 2013, to give justice to such an albeit brief, very riveting, wonderful sequel in the trilogy.

But of course all directors and producers and their teams have a lot to consider, logistically speaking.

Harry Potter had seven books, one amazing author, eight films, four film directors. I am not knowledgeable about the film industry, its ins and outs (so pardon me) but I saw how the first two films (Sorcerer's Stone and Chamber of Secrets) were so similar in various aspects I attribute it to a certain Columbus flavor. At the same manner, the last four films (Order of the Phoenix, Half-blood Prince, and Deathly Hallows 1&2) were very Yates while Cuaron's Prisoner of Azkaban had a different feel to all the rest of the other films as well as Newell's Goblet of Fire. 

But it doesn't matter when you have the seven books to explain a lot of things that were not shown in the films. Successors to the film directorship had to, I obviously assume, tweak their films based on the differences between book and film that their and their screen writer predecessors have made. 

For example, Mundungus Fletcher should have been very crucial to the fifth book of the series since he was part of the Order. However, it was only until Deathly Hallows Part 1 that he was made present, introducing himself to Harry at the Privet Drive. It was a bit worse not having been introduced (in the film) to a complete set of Weasley siblings (read: Charlie Weasley). The Weasleys are my favorite pureblood characters. Too bad Bill's encounter with Fenrir Greyback was not shown in motion picture. But at least his handsome face and ginger hair were given birth to the second to the last film or else there will be no wedding.

How I wanted to see S.P.E.W movements and the tiny hats and socks in the Harry Potter movie franchise.
Or Harry's seventeenth Golden Snitch cake.
Or Nymphadora's change of patronus and her struggle to make Remus finally give in.
Or the ghoul at the Burrow's attic.
Or Ron's remark on saving the house-elves.

I felt the same way when I had hoped to see the feast Katniss and Peeta shared in the cave when she said, "There is no competition anywhere."
Or what an Avox might look like.
I wanted to see so badly how the mockingjay pin was given to Katniss by Madge Undersee and not by Greasy Rae.
I wanted to see Peeta's father holding out cookies for Katniss. 
And the list goes on.

But despite differences of book and film, the author animates her book (perhaps along with her editors, publisher, agents, etc.) while the director animates his film (along with his producers, screenwriters, cinematographers, editors, etc.) in their own way. This however has its own setbacks and some are quite big. As they say, you either read the book and spoil the film or watch the film and risk either feeling sad for the injustice to a book (since a book must be really good to be movie-worthy) or you may risk not reading the book at all.

I know that this opinion varies from person to person. There are some books I have read before the film and there are films I have watched before reading the book. The latter situation actually helped me give more details to the faces I should picture in my head or the setting in a particular scene. I am not 100% certain at this point but I am guessing I prefer to have read a book before its film (since book before film is the usual scenario). It may spoil the film for others but I don't really think so since it also presents a story although not in motion picture. The challenge however is when you are too immersed into a book, the film may eventually not turn out the way you have pictured it or expected it.

One thing is sure for me though, as long as a film gives justice to a book's beauty, it remains beautiful to me. However, no matter how magnificent a film may be, if it did great injustice to a magnificent book, I know I will be, hmmm.. sad. Gary Ross's The Hunger Games was in a lot of ways not similar to the book, but nevertheless, it was not unjust.

I am not helpful at this moment nor am I making much sense while listening to Ed Sheeran's song "Drunk" but I just wanted to let that this one out because I know other people have the same dilemma. It's like Rowena Ravenclaw's question on the phoenix and the ashes for it is a circular kind of issue. Book or Film. Film or Book. If you ever get confused, try and make some experiments, read books and watch their films or try watching films before reading their books. At the end of the day, the choice will be up to the one watching or the one reading.

Reading or watching, both strain the eyes though.

To the guy who made a lot of tears fall this past week

You can never cheat on Death and just like what I once read during college (memory not serving me optimally at the moment) that death will never be like a vacation that you can decide when to go, or where to go. It's something more like lottery results that you cannot simple predict if you are a new millionaire or not.

I'd like to think that no one really is a fan of deaths, of course for those who practice altruistic suicide or religious suicides, I can never know for sure. But anyway, a death of a family member or a friend or an acquaintance will always cause, more often than not, feelings of shock and sadness. Depression and anger. Or a feeling that seems to drill a big hollow space in one's heart. A hollow space where someone used to be in it, and then suddenly, no longer there.

I am and will never be a fan. Of course I can never predict my own death or a friend's or a family member's. I am not psychic and neither am I a health practitioner. In this uncertainty of the thief's arrival (whether at night or in broad daylight), I am at least sure of one thing--death affects and scars me in ways I myself cannot fully comprehend. Be it a death of a loved one or friend, and more confusingly if a death of someone I barely know or do not know at all. News such as those, once they enter my ears in the form of sound waves, linger as if a grey cloud on top of my head and following me whenever, waiting to downpour.

I always say, "deaths of people I don't even know affects me a lot, what more deaths of people I know?" I tend to float and my brain seems to be malfunctioning every time I hear stories of people who died or just died. This happened very recently and I have been haunted by the sadness for the last week.

He was 20, and died of an acute version of Leukemia. He survived the cancer a couple of years back, and suddenly his illness was back and took away his life in just two weeks. We weren't that close but we had a lot of common friends, and his brother was my batch mate in high school. In 2009, I had my hair shaved for a program for kids with cancer and it was called I AM HOPE. The head-shaving activity was entitled "Be Brave, Get Shaved." It was an act of solidarity for kids with cancer, particularly for the kids of Ateneo Kythe, the organization that spearheaded the activity. But of course, I offered it to him, my friend who had cancer. Luckily his cancer was on an early stage. I told him that he is one of the reasons why I had my head shaved and that he should get well ASAP. He and all the other individuals fighting cancer are the brave ones who fight and inspire us. At least all at stake was my hair, and the possible embarrassment or queries one ordinary girl with shaved head can get.

Fast forward three years after, July 2012, I heard there was a relapse and his illness was back. And it was acute this time. He was told that he had to undergo chemotherapy for six months for maintenance. We were all taken aback and I know that I'll never understand the fear and pain his family, girlfriend, and closest friends felt. He had to stay at the ICU and he was sedated during the first week or so after his return to the hospital. We learned that he underwent kidney dialysis and had a minor surgery and he needed three O+ blood donors every day. We blasted through our networks to search for possible blood donors for screening--tweeting, posting on facebook, texting people, etc. He was very important to a lot of people and it was very evident during the news of the relapse, and even until now.

I am not entirely sure of the coincidence but I had a flight to Cebu during the week he was hospitalized there. I was prepared to donate blood since I have done it before twice. I dropped caffeine, increased water intake, took vitamins, and a whole lot more. What I wasn't prepared for was hours before my flight, we was pronounced dead. And it created a hollow space in my heart, and in the hearts of so many other people who he was a part of. I thought I was to go to the hospital, but instead I went to the memorial chapel. Despite the feelings of loss that was in the atmosphere, there was hope and I really felt it during the first night of his funeral service. His parents were thankful, and very positive. His dad personally wanted to create a database of possible blood donors that will help all other kids with cancer. I genuinely felt that his death was his redemption from all the pains and that he left to be in a place with God with peace and genuine happiness.

Kristian Roy, your family and friends believe that you did put up a good fight. And thank you for touching so many lives in your own makulit way here on earth even during just twenty tender years.

Rest in peace. Have a happy, crazy, peaceful rest with the Almighty. We are praying for you.