2013 - Digital Outlier | Orly Ballesteros

Dear ME

I have spent 10 minutes of my important day staring and firing words in front of my laptop. Outside the sky is pitch-black. Earlier it rained and cooled what was once a burning earth.

I cannot ask for the wonderful interplay of elements as my best day approaches. It is like they are soldiers with trumpets announcing this important day of my life.

I can hear them. Brave and sparkling soldiers giving me the best welcome for my best day.

So four decades of existence. I try to figure out right now if I already have answered the greatest ontological question. Am I a year better or a year worst?

I try to fathom right now John Green’s “some lives have better infinities than other’s infinities stuff”.

Yup, I already know me more than 90%. I am pretty darn sure of that. I already concluded that my life is like a changing of seasons. Some moments will be better and some moments will be bad, but I have to be still like the Molave in the deep forest (I hope there is still a Molave in some of our forests);a Molave that the weather already gave-up festering because its stillness cannot be moved.

Four decades is a short a time when you are so busy flying around doing a lot of things. Four decades is a lot when you try to swim back in the deep and wide ocean of the past.

Right now I am swimming freestyle. My mind is like a time machine trying to check and countercheck all the best and worst moments of my life. The hair in my skin is up. It is like the gift of memory is so powerful that tapping my past and the emotions that goes along with it is so archaic – full of mysteries. In fact, I am now hearing tribal chants in my ears.

I hear Earth songs of a million years.

I now relish past moments of victories that I have: MVP in a Fiesta Basketball Tournament, T.V. talent in Tele-Aralan ng Kakayahan, Essay Champion defeating Dela Salle and other private schools, Two Years Best Debater in College, Writer in elementary, Sports Editor in High School, Associate Editor and caretaker of the school paper in College, published poem in inquirer, First yes of a girl, first kiss and the lists goes on. They are like sheep in my head; they bounce and make funny sounds I can’t help but smile right now in front of my PC.

I now feel the emptiness of defeat and failure: dumped by a girl, runner-up in the UN Contest, cut as a member in the elementary group oratorical contest, benched in a basketball game, unable to dance my high school crush in the JS Prom, College Suspension, outings and out of town contest I failed to join because I lack money to be there and the lists goes on.

Defeat and failures are like shards of broken glass. They stick to your heart and penetrate slowly and deeply. The pain make you squirm and lose your breath.

But I am still here, alive and kicking, so they say. I am still here. I am enjoying the sadomasochistic ritual of feeling the pains of your past as if it is happening right now.

I love myself and I hate myself.

There are moments that I bask on the greatness of my actions. There are moments that I despise the wrongness of my deeds.

I don’t subscribe to clichés. I am human clichés argggghhh.

However, I guess I am like others cut in the mold of committing rights and wrongs, like humans (sigh).

It is hard to write all the stuff in my mind right now. Four decades cannot be summed up by few pages; most especially, if I am tussling with sleepiness in every click of the keyboard.

The sky is pitch-black. I am alone. Everybody in the house is asleep. It is my birthday. I am happy and I am sad. The two emotions are like a gin and water. I have to drink both to get high. Alas, I am not a drinker so to identify myself with drunkards will be inaccurate.

I guess being inebriated is a romantic approach to life. Albeit sometimes I admit it is also a sign of cowardice.

In my four decades of existence, I just know that I made a mark but I still have to make a mark. In my four decades of existence, I believe that in order to wake-up every day with energy you have to feel LOVE.

LOVE - this word makes life like a hammock that swings back and forth or waves that goes back and forth, both are soothing to the soul.

I know a lot and don’t know a lot. It’s a Faustian Tragedy that I have learned to accept.

I am forty . They say life begins at forty. But this belief is rubbish. Life begins every day. There is no age in beginning and facing life over and over again.

Life for me now is to show others that I love them in small moments like the sachet of shampoos. Love is an action word that reaching this age and living this long all infinities must subscribe to – I will be one of the torch bearers of Love.

As in L.ove O.thers V.ital to my E.xistence.

10:28 AM
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Threshold

A rubber band stretched to its full elasticity will snap. A dam forced to its pressure capacity will break. Cold water heated to the brink will boil. On the other hand, hot water place in a cold storage will freeze. These are samples of threshold. A universal law all of us are governed.

Sadly, we forget about this rule of threshold.

Most live our lives helplessly. Most do not swim against the tide. Actually, we do not need to swim against the tide and exert too much effort to win against the tide. We can use a boat, a motor boat at that to go against the tide. If only we knew that we must be out of the box so that we can carry the box!

We forget about the Rule of Threshold – the rule that says everything has a limit. If we keep this into heart then all problems are NOTHING.

Why?

Simple, there will be no person that will fall on the side of the road. There will be no person that will turn its back on the problem no matter how GARGANTUAN the problem is. Heck, there may even no words like Quit, Give-up, Surrender and other related words in the dictionary.

Still don’t get it?

If we know threshold, we will be obligated to keep on pushing forward and against challenges, having a peace of mind that these challenges cannot break us because it has limits. It has threshold!

Humans are the most powerful creature in the universe. I am always reminded of the Vitruvian Male – the symbol in the Renaissance Era, this is how powerful man is. The single creature that can hold dominion over the world (I just hope responsibly and with respect to other creatures of Earth).

Alas, majority do not realize their true nature. I see them in the streets, in the dark alleys of our decadent cities. I see them in clubs and other nightspots. I event see them in great families. I see them bedraggled, their spirit sagging evident by their lonely eyes and dropping shoulders. Sometimes, they even tried to hide that lost spirit but their smiles betray them.

Such is the disease of people that feel they are helpless against the problems and challenges that beset them.

Robert Schuller said, “Tough Times Never Last, Tough People Do!”

This is proof that THRESHOLD is true. This is proof that IMPOSSIBLE is nothing. This is proof that YOU are destined to CLAIM YOUR DESTINY.

Just take UNRELENTING ACTION until YOUR CHALLENGES explode to bits and pieces because it had reached its THRESHOLD.

6:38 AM
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Bounce

9:26 AM
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Love as I Know it

Love

I know love. But it seems I do not know love. She is like a woman that I may not be able to figure out. It seems that what once was a puzzle that I tried solving becomes a labyrinth that gets bigger and
complicated. The more I tried to find the way out the more I am lost inside.

I know love. I tried to love you. But may always fall short of the love you are expecting.

Still, I will continue to make sure that your coffee is served during the morning, whether I am the one who makes it or I ordered others to make it. I will make sure that I always buy your favourite perfume Elizabeth Arden, during Christmas. Although, last December you told me not to buy every year since that last one you are using is half full. The possibility of overstocking of such an expensive perfume might happen.

I will always take into account to monitor your Body Shop Strawberry moisturizer – every day I see you are enjoying it. I too enjoy it, your smell transport me to Baguio, like I was driving under the shades of the pine trees, enjoying the view of the verdant mountains and the glistening cliff. While the cool breeze of the wind gently embrace me. It is too hard to concentrate while you are holding the steering wheel in this psychedelic atmosphere. But I manage to drive may way on top of Baguio.

I will always attempt to buy you jewelleries and shirts, even if I am pretty sure 99% you may not like it. I will consign this to fate. Take this situation as part of trying to show in actual physical form the emotional abstraction I am vent on showing.

I know love. Believes I show love. But may never pass the standards you set on how you should be loved. But I will take comfort of trying. I know that my best move is the jokes I crack and spontaneity that is my character. When you giggle or boisterously laugh because of what I do. I know I have showed you my style of love.

Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus. However, somewhere in the constellations of the stars is a comet (me) burning, swooping in that black sky . My illumination might be temporary. But such is our life. Such is my love. Something you may miss when it’s gone. Something may be unrecognizable when it’s there.

Don’t also forget my crazy adventures that you hated but tried and loved in the end.

I hope I can be like a flying kiss that aided by the soft wind landed in your lips. Again, I am Suddenly but gone Instantly. But something you will miss. Something you will say in the same breath as the word LOVE.

8:18 PM
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The Present

Happy

7:58 PM
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Mama

She never graduated for higher education but is more educated than some of those people. She never took any management courses but her management abilities are superb. She never took economics but her financial and business acumen is at par with successful businessmen.

She always prepares a sumptuous food whenever her sons or daughters paid her a visit. Her smile and infectious laugh is like a sprinkle of rain that drenches you in one cool afternoon.

Sometimes her Visayan accent transports you to her childhood where the idyllic farm and nipa hut is a panorama that expands and throbs like gold in the heat of the sun.

Even when she unconsciously sings around her family, as she does household chores, instantly the room is transformed to a sepia picture, and you find your whole being massaged by a jazzy siren. It is this moments that you close your eyes and stretch your hands to feel the cool wind that caresses your skin. It is this encounters that convince you that simple moments are treasures that are to be cherished.

Once there was a boy who was so blessed in having to witness how she showered these simple moments. The boy drunk all these moments like a cold Coke, bottoms-up, he drunk it all, like a thirsty traveller after journeying for days in the desert has seen an oasis.

But the boy knew that sometimes she is like a volcano. She can spew fire and burn you. There was one recurring scene where she will always break a stem of the gumamela plant in front of her house, run after the boy and other siblings every one ‘o clock in the afternoon outside the house, drove them inside the house, give them some lashing, and put them to sleep.

Although the boy knows that the lashing is about them being undisciplined and failing to sleep during siesta in the afternoon. He still gets the shiver seeing her eyes like rolling lava ready to melt him.

Time flies so fast.

Even if the boy wanted to stop the ticking of the clock he cannot do anything because the clock is like a ship that once the anchor is removed and placed inside the ship, it sails in the vast ocean.

He now reflects on the vast ocean with its undulating waves of memories. He now tries to run back the hands of time and be the boy he once knew – thin, army cut hair that makes him look like having a spoon that hangs in his forehead, two protruding front teeth earning him the monicker Tasyo. He tries to bring back the boy who runs; like there was no tomorrow, after seeing his mother from afar and embrace her tightly because he was so afraid she will be taken by ugly monsters, and be gone forever.

She showed that boy who is now a grown-up how love breathes and throbs. For that, the boy will honour her forever.

Happy Birthday Mama!