Wow. It's been a while.

We are in mid-2015 already and I haven't posted anything since last year.

Honestly speaking, it's been a tough year for me; a year where everything's changing, where every ripple created by every decision that I've (and people close to me) made and have to make will be reverberating throughout the course of my life ride ahead; and thus is frighteningly impactful. It's tough and frighteningly so because my choices, my current choices, will define who I am as a person. And it's double tough because I oftentimes do not feel confident in the direction where I'm taking myself to. Yes, I set the course, I own this expedition and I chart through my own navigation, no one is held responsible but me, which definitely should be an exciting challenge to conquer for those in their 20s. But for me, unfortunately, this thing that excited me in the first place has become all the more endearing in the process - and that's because I'm closely watched.

Yes, that feeling of being watched over by those people in your surrounding, and judged. It was as if you were held responsible for your every act and you were obliged to show some results to them because they gave you the freedom to make your own decisions.

Among friends and colleagues, I also hate it when everything's kinda turning out as some sort of competition - who's more successful, who achieves more, who marries well, etc.

I've been learning not to care too much. Well, I don't care most of the time; but then when this friend or that friend chats about this friend or that friend moves to work overseas or is getting married with one time or long time boyfriend bla bla bla - to sum it up, happy news - sometimes I'd be happy. Sometimes I'd be nonchalant simply because. But sometimes I'd also feel wistful. No, not envy, but slightly wistful - that I can't deny it.

I'm uncomfortable with this feeling because I'd feel all the more conscious of my own life. And thus arise insecurity. And doubt. Doubtful if I could make something meaningful out of my life.

Well, of course I could! It's just that this doubt becomes ever so present in my current state of life...

Because of that, I have to admit that I have entertained the thought of leaving my current place inhabited by those peering people to go somewhere else, someplace new with, of course, new people to get acquainted with. I'll only keep contact with a select few of my friends. You think it's coward? Ok, I don't even care how you interpret it. But one thing for certain is I'm not exactly going to leave the past version of me. I'll still be my own self, with my own history. I'm just embracing a new adventure that's akin to a new chapter of life, like being given a blank paper to write on.

That's only a delicious thought, though.

But you know, I oftentimes feel that if it was only me (with no people to please) I think I could have a lot of fun exploring my potentials. This chance actually allows me to rediscover myself - which  makes me think that I'll probably discover another part of myself again and again later - the process of which will be endless, perhaps. What I mean is, my own choices give me all the opportunities to make me understand myself better, specifically, of things I want to do and create. Of what I actually hate. Of places I want to go. Even of my own weaknesses. Those things, some were barely perceptible before, now have become clearer to me.

(And here you thought you already know yourself really well but actually you don't).

But that doesn't mean I am fully enlightened. I'm skeptic I will ever be, though. Because even until now, I'm still figuring out, like, almost everything. And damn it doesn't get any easier. You see, having things mapped out in your mind doesn't mean a smooth road ahead in reality - it's entirely a different thing, this and that. It irks me sometimes why it is so, why it is so hard to do those things in real life and get the expected results as planned in my head.

Argh. Forget expectations. I think I'll just have to sincerely give out my best in everything I do.

Please wish me luck.

A Sad Place

Have you ever, accidentally (or not), stumbled or stepped into some places, a place with a kind of peculiar quality, a place that looks so quiet, still, and lonely, that makes you feel that time, perhaps, doesn't exist at all in this kind of place? A place so pronounced that its atmosphere lays heavy in the air, despite its quietness?

I have seen that place.

This place is a road that runs parallel alongside a wide river, the riverbank dotted with small, crooked trees and the streams clogged with mud. Sometimes floorboards, plastic bags, and other kinds of litters gather in the corner, they're just kinda stuck there.

Old, abandoned factory-like buildings line the other side of the road, opposite of the river. While some buildings are not entirely abandoned and are still functional, their gates are never (or rarely) open or they just don't have gates at all, because the buildings' yards are separated by high gray concrete walls.

This road is actually like a back road that runs behind the back side of the buildings. Their fronts face the main thoroughfares, which are on the other side.

There are cars still occasionally taking this road; but even that doesn't diminish the fact that this place, somehow, oozes something that makes the notion of time seem foreign.  

When I was little, my dad often took this road as he drove us to a nearby mall to visit a bookstore and buy me books. But I don't have any specific history with this place; I don't have any sad memories here. It was just a road we used to take, and I didn't even think too much of it back then.

So it kinda strange, how it makes me sad now, the wholeness of it. The monotonous gray color of the old buildings, the way things are carelessly stacked, the fluttering dead leaves that dust the side of the road. And the river itself.

Now that I think about it carefully, this place doesn't really change much. Even back then, the road was so quiet, always almost deserted, the walls of the buildings were cracked and yellowing and the sidewalk pavement was already full of wild grasses and rough gravels.

Have you ever encountered a place that makes you abruptly sad?

Regardless of the Answers

So... I'm currently reading "I'll be Right There" by Shin Kyung Sook (which I so dearly love, very very much), and I came across this one sentence in the book the other day:

"You should only ask someone if they love you if you love them, regardless of what their answers might be."

(Jung Yoon, p. 60)

I dogeared this page. 

Well, I've dogeared a lot of pages in the book anyway, with so many highlights here and there (that's how I treat a book I love, by making them appear so well-loved). I even copied 2 passages from the book and pasted them in my thick notebook. 

But reading the one sentence above again and again, there's something in it that strikes a chord with me. It makes me remember someone - someone I once liked, really really liked but now no longer (it's been years, he has his own life but nonetheless I somewhat still occasionally remember him, and how we were once). Well, he never knew about my feelings back then. I kept it hidden, unsaid, though doubtlessly somewhat both of us actually knew. I wasn't sure about his feelings though, but I had my own suspicion. 

If I were to be given a chance to meet him again, should I say to him that I'd once liked him very much? Regardless of what his answers would be? Could I do that? 

Now that I think of it, if the moment was right, I think I would. And could. Just for the sake of saying what once I held so dearly, that it had once been real to me. Even though it's late. 

Right?

Disappointed.

When it's not only one person who makes me disappointed but two... three perhaps, until it just seems to me that everyone in my life decided to conspire against me to make me feel immensely miserable... would it be so wrong of me then if I started to ask myself pathetic questions... whether I'm just that weak, so quick to succumbing myself to sadness? 

Whether I'm not that valuable, that people just disregard me and my thoughts easily? 

Whether I'm just selfish for having set a bar of expectations or wishes, although I only keep them within myself, unsaid? 

Or is it precisely because I don't show my feelings openly and honestly, and only resort to joking about it that it eventually sends the wrong signal to people? 

Or is it because I'm just too sensitive, too quick to judge people when they themselves actually do not have any intention to disappoint me? 

Poetry in Pictures?

I really love Instagram, you see, and the no. 1 reason would be because of the lovely feeds that I get to see from users all over the world. The feeds I'll always enjoy looking are those of food and travel (mainstream enough?) and illustration and architecture!

Seeing the streams of beautiful pictures everyday, I came to realize one thing I didn't know before.

The Earth is naturally studded with a lot of interesting, beautiful gem-like places (of course that's common knowledge). While Grand Canyon or the range of the Apls or the stretch of glaciers that you can spot in Greenland are truly unbeatable sights that would make you breathless as you wish you could be there, in the real location, and be the one taking pictures of the majestic wonder yourself (because they are sublime, like Alain de Botton also mentioned in his book "The Art of Travel") (which of course, would also make stunning photographs), I think I find my preference in looking at a photo that has a composition of civilization in it. 

Civilization, or the remnants of civilization, in the same picture with nature - no matter how small, how insignificant it would look like against the greatness, wholeness of nature itself.

One example, something like the ruins of Machu Picchu. Yes, all that's left in this place may be only skeletons of stone walls, built high on and around mountain peaks. But still, humans used to live in this place; they existed. The legacy of their age and cultures, though, are forever imprinted against the jaw-dropping backdrop of nature, a beauty that seems so ethereal.

Or the villages in Cinque Terre, Italy, where the houses were built against the terraced cliff on a steep landscape. The coastal towns overlook the Mediterranean sea, the walls and roofs of its houses are constantly beaten by the sun and weather and wind; and there's even a potential danger of landslide. But still, the overall picture of it is that, humans strive to survive in order to live in this world, alongside with nature.

There's poetry in such pictures, don't you think so?

At least, that's what I think.

Random Shot Series #1

The Day I Almost Reached My Breaking Point

I was crying this morning during the ride to work. I cried because of all different reasons, because of the exhaustion, the helplessness I (still) have every time I'm made - forced - to face the frustrating situations in my family, and then work, and then my dreams, what I want in this life, my future, what I'm expected to do and what I have, need to do, what I'm lacking and what I don't have in me, what I can't do and all the inhibitions and limitations that fence me in.

Suddenly I just cried. The tears held, they didn't fall for the first good 3 to 5 minutes or so. But in the end, they fell. One stream, two. But that was it.

But it was enough.

Strange.

Because I was so fed up at that time, suffocating almost to the point of breaking. For a miserable moment, I felt so incompetent and weak, all hopes crushed down that I felt numb and dumb and forlorn. I became so small; the hurt then doubled or quadrupled because I also felt so unimportant. I was nothing. Someone unremarkable and forgettable.

My thoughts made my own self secluded.

Then it turned into a self-pitying session.

Scary how feelings could become so alive; a breathing, living thing, an unimaginable creature that will drag you under and tear you apart without any mercy.

But stranger more is that, those dark feelings, only this morning so pronounced and profound, have now become something so distant and far away. Leaving a trace, indeed, but so little, barely recognizable. Now that I think about it, perhaps it was because I was crying during the ride, with passing, all changing scenery in front of me. And then behind me. The clouds, the sun was up overhead. It was all moving. People briskly walked to work, cars and public transportation and trucks and motorcycles and bicycles crowded the streets. People picking up their kids from school. Public workers fixing the electricity poles. Vegetable and fruit suppliers dropping goods to a certain seller in the traditional market. The usual, familiar sight, it's what you call daily life.

The ordinariness of it, perhaps, was what had calmed me down a little. Was it in fact a distraction? I don't know what it was exactly, but it made me come to terms with myself faster than I'd imagined I would. One thing I know for sure, it would've turned out differently if I'd cried in a confined room, surrounded by still, unchanging furniture. It would've turned out messy.

And besides, I saw a Greenfields Milk truck passing beside me. The picture of milk, rolling green fields and its tagline "100% Honest Milk: Our Cows Don't Lie" painted on its body made me smile. Well, it was the tagline that made me smile, actually. Really. First smile of the day.

And later, the sadness didn't stay. I may be thinking about it again later when I'm about to sleep at night. But at least, now, I'm feeling fine. Not light, not really free of weights, but just adequately fine.

But that is enough.