November 28, 2007 : WNCAA 2007

ninoy aquino stadium, where we owned school spirit. complete with balloons and the loudest cheers and even a prefect chanting "walang pasok!" as aftermath. (not true, of course...)

congratulations you guys :)

0157: credit Cara

photos from before and after the event will be posted some other time. some of these are rather blur, sorry.. steal all you want but i'd just like to know where the photos go, so let me know.

November 24, 2007 : Outreach - Mother Spinelli's Treasures

to those who didn't make it - you should have.

keeping the children company and making them smile and laugh, i'm sure, was well worth the arm muscle aches some of you may have now, yes?

but i must say what made this day most special was the prayer at the end. we were given the open field at the back of the building to use for a short prayer. it was around five in the evening, the sun was setting, the breeze cool, the air filled with the little circle of us singing. i couldn't give it a pass. i found higher ground and tried to squeeze all of this in a photograph (0380).

thank you God for not bringing the storm in to the area yesterday because none of this would have happened it it had.

-

0147 - 0164; 0170 - 0176; 0185, 0189: credit Dru
0197 - 0199: credit Kevy
0218 & 0220: credit Joey G (I think. I can't remember who I asked to hold the camera while I fiddled with the camera bag.)
and
on 0218: OKAY FINE YOU GUYS WIN (for this only) THE PERSON IN THIS PHOTO LOOKS LIKE A DUDE. wtf.

0239: credit the cute girl in green in 0238
0405 - 0414: credit Carlo
0417 - 0431: credit Dru (use the flash next time yo :D )

05

Every now and then I try to fill up a white box on the screen, with text. If I am lucky I can muster a few paragraphs (see blog entry 03, and probably this one once I'm done with it) but really, in truth, everything I want to say is in the one-worder (see blog entry 04).

Either it's the same thing over and over, or nothing else interesting really happens, or something does happen and it is so special I want to keep it to myself (and also because anything I would say would not do it justice). Or something like that.

Within the six-month span of lost writing momentum:

A home in faith, a new way of expression that words alone could not fill the shoes of; a new level of candor and honesty, letting words slip out, pushing words out; the language of touch, the brushing against, the circling, the Stay; and eye contact, and a prayer I wish I could have kept in a bottle to listen to whenever I wanted, and a friday, and going back to sleepovers, and unspoken understanding, and the rarity of being together wrapped in cozy silence, and knowledge of who sticks around despite distance

I have a habit of suddenly breaking paragraphs just because. And the last paragraph in particular because I don't know how to continue or expound further.

Also, finally feeling the adjustment to the big transition ending. Madeline and her sisters did sing that home is where the heart is (ha ha ha). But this is all still too raw and even the slightest uprooting is rather unbearable (i.e. I have to attend the school's retreat this weekend and I am really not looking forward to it [and I like letters, especially handwritten ones, but if it's not it's perfectly okay, if anyone writes me it will be my Home throughout the retreat meaning it will mean so much to me]). The ending of my essay on Community for CVE (Christian Values Education) last quarter:

With my mother being a diplomat, we never settle in one place, and that sense of never having enough time becomes the norm. It is less shocking, but does not get easier – my life has been spent thinking how much time I have left, and this is a lot harder when thought on smaller scale (as opposed to the bigger scale, which is when life on earth ends). The good this lifestyle has given me is the early realization of what home really is. It is not four walls (or more) and a roof; it is not even a country. It is community, the broader sense of family, that sense of belonging, that something you look forward to seeing, that something that gives, and in turn takes away a part of you and keeps it for itself. With that, you will always find your way back to it.  

My family leaves for another country again, late next year. Leaving is always the worst part, no matter how many times it is done. All I can do now is make the most of the time that I do have, and make sure I leave a home, not just a country.

How do you know if something you want is something you deserve? And how do you know when to stop chasing after it, to stop making the effort, though you really don't know which is more painful, the stopping or the trying.

The parents are once again beginning the preparation for departure and this is really all too soon it gets quite emotionally exhausting and I am blowing this out of proportion again but that's the package that comes with sentimentality. My teacher in grade school who still keeps in touch (and takes beautiful photos), is in Thailand now, teaching children in the provincial areas. He has the ability to do things with everything he has AND slip out of the life he gets used to. So easily. Sometimes I wish I could do that.

The meaning of the word "toska" is in an older blog entry here ("where the english language fails, somewhat"). The meaning can also be found in unbearable silence between you and your person. In the darkness you stare at when you lie in bed at night, clutching your pillow, crying loud enough for only yourself to hear. In every move you make that feels forced, pointless and incessant. In the sense of worthlessness when you realize you are being juggled with something else, when you are pushed to second, or third, or fourth... In the last lines of Grey's Anatomy episodes; in the lack of knowledge of one's wants or confusion about said wants. In the inability to express everything inside you that is screaming to be heard. In the words of another that once felt true, but now cause doubt and denial. In the desperate hope that those words are actually still true. In the longing for something unsure of, in the longing to know what said something unsure of is. In waiting. In trying so hard not to expect anything so that any hope will not be sent crashing down. In that heavy chest feeling when you try not to cry. In missing.

Or maybe it isn't the same thing over and over, maybe it's not that nothing else interesting really happens, or something does happen and it is so special I want to keep it to myself. Maybe I want you to find me.

Or, yanno, something like that.

04

toska

ANTOINE DE SAINT-EXUPERY / The Little Prince

"My life is very monotonous," the fox said. "I hunt chickens; men hunt me. All the chickens are just alike, and all the men are just alike. And, in consequence, I am a little bored. But if you tame me, it will be as if the sun came to shine on my life . I shall know the sound of a step that will be different from all the others. Other steps send me hurrying back underneath the ground. Yours will call me, like music, out of my burrow. And then look: you see the grain-fields down yonder? I do not eat bread. Wheat is of no use to me. The wheat fields have nothing to say to me. And that is sad. But you have hair that is the colour of gold. Think how wonderful that will be when you have tamed me! The grain, which is also golden, will bring me back the thought of you. And I shall love to listen to the wind in the wheat..." The fox gazed at the little prince, for a long time. "Please, tame me!" he said.

"I want to, very much," the little prince replied. "But I have not much time. I have friends to discover, and a great many things to understand."

"One only understands the things that one tames," said the fox. "Men have no more time to understand anything. They buy things all ready made at the shops. But there is no shop anywhere where one can buy friendship, and so men have no friends any more. If you want a friend, tame me..."

"What must I do, to tame you?" asked the little prince.

"You must be very patient," replied the fox. "First you will sit down at a little distance from me, like that, in the grass. I shall look at you out of the corner of my eye, and you will say nothing. Words are the source of misunderstandings. But you will sit a little closer to me, every day..."

The next day the little prince came back.

"It would have been better to come back at the same hour," said the fox. "If, for example, you come at four o'clock in the afternoon, then at three o'clock I shall begin to be happy. I shall feel happier and happier as the hour advances. At four o'clock, I shall already be worrying and jumping about. I shall show you how happy I am! But if you come at just any time, I shall never know at what hour my heart is to be ready to greet you... One must observe the proper rites..."

"What is a rite?" asked the little prince.

"Those also are actions too often neglected," said the fox. "They are what make one day different from other days, one hour from other hours. There is a rite, for example, among my hunters. Every Thursday they dance with the village girls. So Thursday is a wonderful day for me! I can take a walk as far as the vineyards. But if the hunters danced at just any time, every day would be like every other day, and I should never have any vacation at all."

So the little prince tamed the fox. And when the hour of his departure drew near...

"Ah," said the fox, "I shall cry."

"It is your own fault," said the little prince. "I never wished you any sort of harm; but you wanted me to tame you..."

"Yes, that is so," said the fox.

"But now you are going to cry!" said the little prince.

"Yes, that is so," said the fox.

"Then it has done you no good at all!"

"It has done me good," said the fox, "because of the color of the wheat fields." And then he added: "Go and look again at the roses. You will understand now that yours is unique in all the world. Then come back to say goodbye to me, and I will make you a present of a secret."

The little prince went away, to look again at the roses. "You are not at all like my rose," he said. "As yet you are nothing. No one has tamed you, and you have tamed no one. You are like my fox when I first knew him. He was only a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But I have made him my friend, and now he is unique in all the world." And the roses were very much embarrassed. "You are beautiful, but you are empty," he went on. "One could not die for you. To be sure, an ordinary passerby would think that my rose looked just like you, the rose that belongs to me. But in herself alone she is more important than all the hundreds of you other roses: because it is she that I have watered; because it is she that I have put under the glass globe; because it is she that I have sheltered behind the screen; because it is for her that I have killed the caterpillars (except the two or three that we saved to become butterflies); because it is she that I have listened to, when she grumbled, or boasted, or even sometimes when she said nothing. Because she is my rose.

And he went back to meet the fox. "Goodbye," he said.

"Goodbye," said the fox. "And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."

October 31, 2007 : Kickin' It Old School

Halo-ween 2007 at Ate Pat the Air Freshener's (my shepherd, yo).

a lot of photos are out of focus because i forgot my external flash, and it was dark. :(
great, i forgot to duplicate the last photo. so the last isn't loading again. multiply sucks.