Corridors
I’ve been staying out
in the hallway
far too long, not wanting
to open doors
because I don’t
like people
telling me not to
leave, when I really don’t
want to
admit to myself
that I want
to stay.
I think you’re brave
because you dare
to open doors.
TJD –8:22am, 17Jan06
Hi, everyone! Advanced Happy New Year!
This was just too funny to pass up:
__________________________
Okay, it’s official. I’m in love again.
One of the things that’s always kept me sane is the acceptance that everything is transient; that thought helped me survive my grandfather’s death because, for quite sometime before he passed away, I knew in the back of my mind that he was going away and that I should -and, fortunately, did- cherish him while he was still around.
When I’m in love, I tend to just give and give without thinking about my end of the equation. I admit that I’m afraid to admit to myself just how much I need and want to be loved by this person.
Additionally, when I factor in the thought of transcience, I feel scared. I’m scared that, eventually, for one reason or another, I will part ways with the person I love. Maybe it’ll be a breakup, maybe we’ll grow apart, or -the worst- maybe one of us will pass away.
If I do go away (howsoever it may come to pass), how will she think of me? She will love again, I hope, and be whole once more. Whereas I will be just a memory. Hopefully a fond one, though.
I don’t know. I think that I would like to be the most important person in her life for always. A part of me thinks that’s selfish, but the mortal part of me feels that’s probably the closest chance I have to immortality.
I look into her eyes and I see just how much a part of her life I am TODAY, here and now. I also see in her eyes just how much she hopes to share her future with me.
I also see in her eyes how much she has loved before, and just how much she has lost. I look into her eyes and a hurt yet warm, compassionate soul stares back.
I love her for who she is, and even when I look back on her life’s journey I see the path of a very beautiful soul.
I’ve thrown my hat into the ring, and I’m scared of losing her. But as long as I’m around I will love her and cherish her and share my life’s journey with her for as long as I possibly can.
I hope that, in some distant and as-yet only hypothetical future, she should be able to love and to give compassion to anyone who needs it. When they look into her eyes, I will be there looking back at them if only as a fond memory of another compassionate and loving soul who, at one point in his life, chose to fall in love again.
Early this morning, the father of a friend passed away.
While this was not my first time to console a friend on the passing of a loved one, it is the first time that I am able to do so with a full understanding of what it means to have lost someone close to you; my grandfather -whom I lived with for all my life- passed away earlier this year.
When I received my friend’s txt informing me of her father’s passing, I thought that I would be able to give more than just "condolences." I thought that, after all that I had been through myself, surely I could reach out to her on the same level. Surely, I thought, I could say something that would at least be comforting.
And yet I was dumbfounded.
I realized that my friend’s father’s death is a deeply personal experience, one that I could never hope to understand entirely. Death, I found, is a religious experience that leaves us changed in ways that no words could ever convey.
Each death is unique.
"My deepest condolences," I finally managed to type out, with the knowledge and fatal acceptance of just how poorly comforting those words are despite the rich understanding of what they truly mean.
Once on a time there was an orphan girl named Ylang. She was very beautiful, but always silent. She spoke rarely, and only when it was absolutely necessary.
Ever since she was a child, Ylang spent most of her time listening to songs:
She listened to the song of other children as they laughed and played in the street.
She listened to the song of the rustling leaves of the acacia trees.
She listened to the song whispered by the rays of the sun as it rose in the sky.
Everything that existed, she learned, had a secret song that was all its own; a special song that was meant for it alone.
Ylang was thrilled to discover the secret songs of the things around her. But inside, she was unhappy, because although everything had a song, she had yet to find her own.
“Come play with us,” the children would say as they passed her in the street.
“Sorry, I cannot, for I am looking for my song.”
“Come dance with us,” the acacia leaves would say as she walked under them.
“Sorry, I cannot, for I am looking for my song.”
“Come laugh with us,” giggled the sun’s rays in the morning.
“I am truly sorry, but I cannot, for I am looking for my song.”
But one day there passed a violinist by the name of Lucas. Ylang found him sitting on a stone, playing to himself.
He seemed very happy, but she noticed that he had only one leg. She hesitated to talk, unsure if it was absolutely necessary to speak, but curiosity got the better of her and finally she asked:
"Do you miss your leg?"
"Oh yes, always." He said.
"Sometimes, when it rains, or when it is very very cold, I even feel as if it’s still there."
"Does the pain ever go away?" she asked again.
"Yes, over time. But you always miss those things that are dear to you. But I have my violin to keep me company, and when I play I feel whole again."
Lucas looked down at Ylang and touched her head.
“Here, let me play you something,” Lucas said.
He picked up his violin and began to play. He played an old lullaby, of the kind sung by mothers to put their children to sleep.
Ylang closed her eyes and thought about her mother. She remembered her mother’s face, warm and comforting. She remembered that whenever she cried, her mother would carry her and sing her the same lullaby. It was a song meant just for her. In it was mingled the welcoming laughter of children, the comforting rustling of leaves, and the warm embrace of the dawn sun.
Ylang had found her song at last.
___________________
Copyright 2005 TJ Dimacali
This story was alternately posted at http://www.violinist.com/blog/tajax/
She is in love.
She confirms this to herself as she lies awake at night, into those long silent hours that straddle the border between yesterday and tomorrow.
In the calm silence, she can hear her heartbeat and hopes, despairingly, that he can hear it as well.
Many times, she has told him how she feels. But she has said and done all she could, and now there is nothing left to do but wait for an answer. Any answer at all.
She knows that none is forthcoming.
***
You seek completeness or, at least, closure. Neither of which is possible unless he tells you how he really feels, one way or the other.
Take heart in the knowledge that, somehow, things will resolve themselves in due time.
Until then, I only wish that you would stop effacing yourself. If only you could see the beautiful warmth of your own soul, the wonder of your own person. Yes, you are beautiful and wonderful. Always remember that.
But it is not my place to light your path for you. Know, however, that I stand beside you wheresoever your heart may lead you.
You are not alone.
The hysteria over Neil Gaiman’s visit to the Philippines hasn’t completely died down yet, although the excitement seems to be on the wane at last.
The sheer volume of people who turned out to see Gaiman was truly unprecedented, to say the least. While Fully Booked has received its own fair share of criticism about its management (or mismanagement, depending on who you ask) of the event, they were no doubt completely overwhelmed by such an unexpectedly large turnout.
I was fortunate to have Gaiman sign my calimba… it’s a thumb piano made from a gourd, wood panels, bamboo, brass, and iron tines. In the quirky spirit of modern globalism, it’s an African instrument made in Indonesia that was bought in the Philippines and now autographed by a British author! LOL
What irked me most about the Gaiman event, however, wasn’t the long lines, nor the pandemonium, nor even the English-speaking coños who sat in line with me. It was the annoyingly pervasive groupie culture that drove me nuts.
A cursory glance at the Pinoy blog entries floating around the Net concerning Neil’s visit show a tone of awe bordering on hero-worship. I have yet to find a single critical essay of the whole thing (barring some rants here and there about the chaos of the event itself).
Even more sadly, I also have yet to come across anyone who has openly declared that s/he has been inspired by Gaiman to write his or her own prose and get it published (even if just as a blog entry or fanfic).
All I’ve seen are just raves from fans.
Of course the people at the Gaiman signings were fans; we wouldn’t have been there otherwise, would we? But after all the squealing elation, everyone just seemed to evaporate into thin air, clutching their prized autographed books.
Now, my question is: what’s next? We’ve fawned over Gaiman and done backflips over his work, but has anyone paused long enough to take a step back and dissect his writing? More importantly, has anyone been empowered by Gaiman to write and get published?
When will we snap out of our enchantment and actually start to do something, anything to give our rich mythology the retelling it justly deserves? It seems daunting, yes, but Gaiman has shown us that it’s possible. We need look no further than into his own writings to see this.
Someone has to tear Gaiman apart, limb from limb, look at the sum of his parts and beyond, and say "Aha! So that’s how he did it!"
The prospect of deconstructing Gaiman’s mesmerizing works seems shocking, kind of like wanting to take apart a Stradivarius violin just to find out what makes it sound so good… followed by the horrible realization that you can’t put it back together the same way ever again.
After all, it’s one thing to dissect the dusty work of a long-dead author, and another to deconstruct one of the literary heroes of your own generation. Maybe we’re afraid to lose whatever magic we feel from Gaiman’s writing. Perhaps we’re afraid to dissect his words lest we kill the soul of his work as well.
But I do hope that someone takes that crucial step. Hopefully, of the more or less four thousand people (!) who lined up to see Gaiman, at least one of them does decide to take the idol down from its pedestal and smash it to the ground.
What we need are a few good iconoclasts. When we lose sight of our gods, it is only then that we are able to discover them within us.
I hope that somewhere out there, someone is inspired to do for Filipino mythology what Gaiman did for Greek, Egyptian, and Norse mythology: to retell our myths in our own way, to reclothe our archetypes in the zeitgeist fabric of our times.
(Last modified: Jun. 25, 2005 at 6:11 AM)
The name of a violin is a precious thing,
If you speak it or even sing,
I would have to give you everything.
My violin’s name is –ah, but that would be telling!
(adapted)
I read somewhere that in some religions, it is believed that a thing’s power is closely linked to its name and that anyone who speaks the name gains control over the thing in question –be it a sword, a demon, or even a god.
Relatedly, when a warrior’s sword broke in battle, it was believed that an enemy had learned the blade’s secret name.
Speaking of names and breaking things, fellow violinist.com blogger and kababayan Putch Panis posted a blog entry recently on the gut-wrenching feeling that probably all violinists get when their instruments fall apart.
We share a close bond with our violins, not unlike the relationship that warriors of old had with their weapons.
Giving something a name makes it unique and personal. It’s a verbal affirmation of the object’s intimate connection and endearment to its owner.
Oh, there’s magic involved all right. But not necessarily supernatural.
So, one day, I set about giving my violin a name. It’s old and brown, and one of my teachers used to joke that it looked like a cockroach. So, occasionally, even today, I affectionately refer to it as "my ipis." (from the Filipino word for cockroach).
I did try giving it a proper name, though, but nothing seemed to stick.
And then I realized that my violin is so much a part of me that I just couldn’t name it. It’s like a hand, or a foot, or a nose… (Of course, it’s quite possible that there’s someoune out there with an appendage named "George" or something, LOL)
And so, my violin has remained nameless.
Now if only I could actually get to PLAY it better…
(Reposted from my alternate blog at www.violinist.com/blog/tajax)
Yearning
I don’t know if I’ll ever be like my professional violinist friends.
They tell me that they practice about four hours each day, and even that sometimes doesn’t feel like enough for them.
There was a time when I told myself that I would persevere in practicing at least an hour every day. Even if it killed me.
I tried and tried, but I only burned myself out. I was like a runner waiting for my second wind, feeling my muscles aching and throbbing and telling me to stop even as I pushed on in the faith that, if I persevered long enough, I would be rewarded with a renewed burst of energy.
It never happened.
Instead, I found myself growing increasingly dissatisfied with my playing until I was forced to admit to myself that I just couldn’t practice that long, that hard.
So I put my violin in its case and left it there. And it stayed there. For days and weeks.
And then, one night, in the silent darkness, I felt a yearning to play. It was an urge that came inexplicably, unbidden. Perhaps it was an agglomeration of memories of past loves and half-forgotten disappointments. Perhaps it was the loneliness, or just the biting silence of night. Perhaps it was restlessness. Perhaps it was grief. Perhaps it was nothing.
What was clear to me, however, was that my fingers yearned to touch my violin with the trembling excited expectation of one about to explore his lover for the first time after a prolonged separation, or an absence of years.
Suddenly, my violin felt more familiar to me that it ever was before. It yielded to my touch as if it, too, waited expectantly so long for this moment.
And so I played.
As lovers always are, it wasn’t perfect –but it was divine. The music that came forth was imperfect, yes, but nevertheless full and rich, forged as it was in the heat of yearning and tempered by the loving acceptance of its own shortcomings.
It was an act altogether nasty, brutish, and short –altogether human yet, at least in its yearning, divine.
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INTERLUDE: It’s midnight Philippine time, and I’ve just gone through three hours of Writer’s Hell translating portions of a Filipino textbook into English. Thirteen pages down, about a hundred more to go. I needed to do some creative writing before I bust. Still, everthing I said holds true. Pardon the cheesiness.
Please be to my faults a little blind.
(reposted from http://www.violinist.com/blog/tajax/)
Leaving Marks
I’ve always loved thrift shops and secondhand book stores. There’s something romantic about an old piece of furniture or a yellowed book that makes me wonder about its provenance.
Once, I came upon this worn-out, dog-eared book of select poems by Neruda. What got to me wasn’t so much the reading material itself but the beautifully handwritten dedication on the flyleaf: "Dear ______, I will always love you. _____" it said simply.
Who were these people? Where are they now? Are they still together? Do they have children?
I realized that everyone leaves a mark in the world, though not always writ large for all to see. We leave a little bit of ourselves with everything and everyone we touch.
And then I think of my violin.
Itself a secondhand instrument, my violin came to me with a repaired crack on its belly and a chipped scroll. I’ve also made a few marks of my own since then.
I wonder, years from now when I’m gone, if the violin’s next owner will notice the small notch in the scroll from when I carelessly bumped into my music stand?
Or if anyone would figure out that the glued bit on the right f-hole is from a repair job after I (again, thoughtlessly) played around with my bow’s screw in the hole?
I cringe a little when I remember these things. They remind me that I should be more careful on the marks I leave and the impressions I make, especially on people.
For better or worse, though, (and I hope it’s more of the former than the latter) I have added something to my violin’s character. Irrevocably and indelibly, I’ve become a small chapter in its life and whether or not it is a significant chapter depends on how I act from now on.
Next time you see a used violin, take the time to look it over carefully. Each spot, each nick, each dent has a story to tell.
