To Newly-Twenty Me

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There will always be moments like this from now on. Moments when you are just scared of whatever happens next. These moments make you human, but these are the moments that would make you want to be invincible. But for invincibility, you have to throw away humanity, for those who are invincible have lost touch with their reality. They become invincible because they have nothing to fear, and the emotions that make people so helplessly weak are the same ones that make them so beautifully human. Fear of what tomorrow will bring, fear that no matter what happens today supernovas somewhere can create their own Big Bang. Your life can implode upon itself in as many stars are there in this galaxy but the universe will not care enough to stop. Rather, it would care too much and live on. All of us have the selfish wish that the world would acknowledge our existence, but there are other galaxies that function without the tiniest idea that we exist. We want the world to stop for our benefit but all it can do is move along and move on.

Raise your head, for even if there are pennies under your feet there is a lot more of the sky and the universe that you ought to see. Raise your chin, for although it is important to be humble you ought to know that you have a place in this earth. In this lifetime, in this century, in this millisecond, you are woven into the fabric of history; you are the needle and thread of one ordinary day of legendary possibilities. Raise your head and your chin, and know enough to claim your place in this earth. Raise your hooded gaze and see what world you have created with your very eyes. Square your shoulders and carry your burdens that you have more than one shoulder to help you carry them, like how people are supposed to stay together and how humans are supposed to be. The curves of your spine are meant to be straightened out, not by violence, but by love. Straighten your back to stand up for what is just; straighten your spine because you stand by what you love. And at the times we involuntarily slump in defeat, we square our shoulders, slap our cheeks. The pain will remind you that you are alive. The pain spurs revenge--the revenge against disappointment and unhappiness by being satisfied and happier.

The positive feelings may not last long. But they never disappear. Same as fear--it will never be removed from society. Each and every individual will possess a smidgen of raw terror at the darkest corners of their hearts, folded into a box that will unlock itself at the best and worst of times.

And it's okay.

It's okay to have and feel fear. It's okay to not be brave all the time, to feel like hiding under fifteen blanket layers and a rotten mask of cool indifference. It's okay to have wobbly knees, stomach butterflies, chills that take elevator rides up and down your spine for fun. It's okay to be a coward sometimes, and to feel like you're not up for the world. It's okay to admit defeat, because if you don't then the real loser is you. You lost to yourself, never to the world and its all-important natural functions, not to the society and their pretentious classifications of what perfection should be. Not to anybody, with different unique beliefs. No. You lose only to yourself, but that's okay. Because then, you can amend. In the end, you can win against the world. Contrary to popular belief, sometimes fighting the losing battle will show more merit in your character than anyone else has to say about you.

It's okay to lose yourself along the way, because eventually you will find and get yourself back. You may come back a little bruised, a few cuts and scrapes and all sorts of injured. You may also not come out in one piece. You can have your soul shattered into a million impossible pieces. Your heart can be ripped out of your chest, a hole punched through, and put back as if nothing happened. That hole may never heal, and maybe you'll be left with a hastily patched up piece of muscle that will not stop bleeding over the lives of the people you meet. It is sometimes not our choice to get hurt, but we go ahead and do it because we're stupidly, beautifully human.

It is okay to doubt being alive, existing in this tiny miracle that we call life. But never doubt your importance, not once, not ever. It is okay to be fearful of yesterday, and tomorrow, to acknowledge the many different phobias that stretch through time and space. But never question your significance, for your memories and experiences can never be repeated or duplicated by any single particle of even the most powerful star in the universe. For the idea of you was important enough that the usually cannot-be-bothered universe has fermented all the atoms that makes you a warm living, breathing creature, and yet it is still the idea of your existence that makes you significant in the existence of the universe.

You are the completion of the map of human existence. Remember your significance, for you are important. No matter what you think the universe says, there are facts that should always keep you going: you have a purpose, and you are important.

Why Study Communication Arts?

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My brain-to-mouth filter is faulty at best. Sometimes, it works too well to a point that I don't speak at all, content with plugging off the rest of the world with songs from Japan to Great Britain to America and back to the Philippines, or defying time-space dimensions with books or movies or TV series. And yet, there are times that I let my words trip over each other in their excitement to get out and be expressed, telling of subjects, people, cultures that I am passionate about, wisecracking (admittedly) corny jokes, and trying to prove my inner swagger by talking like I'm one of the cool kids. I'm more noisy online, the flow of conversation easier for me without the eye-contact and actual people in front of you. Talking to people has and always will be tricky, for there are ticks and bubbles of privacy and personal space that you always consider, whether you do it through a screen or a keyboard or a phone or static space. Too scared to always cross the line, always too uncomfortable to be too close for comfort--that was, and always will be me. Yet I like warm hugs, like that cute animated snowman, and for the past four years I've been contradicting myself that made me want to have an answer. After all those years of education, who was the me created? How do you label and define the person typing these words?

I am a paradox; I came from an institution filled with numbers and equations and chemical formulas and inertia. There was constant questions about the universe and how it was formed, how we became to be as Homo sapiens. Friends have asked me: why enroll into this type of curriculum in high school? Why spend time solving and balancing equations when my head was more suited to floating around with the clouds, or buried into the books I read in class that, er, weren't related to class?

So I enrolled into this degree program. Following my heart, spending my parents' money on an expensive but privileged education, still not being allowed into malls because of the juvenile uniform, the whole nines. I've been careful not to mention my high school--not that I'm embarrassed of it in any way, just that there's a certain expectation and distancing that happens when people think you're smarter than what you really are--but when people do start to know, the same questions were asked. Why enroll into this degree when you come from such a different path? Why not try medicine or engineering with what you know? Why rather not be anywhere but here?

The answers I have only get to blog post and diary entry, but they stay majorly unchanged. This was my way of trying to answer my own questions about the universe, of the importance of the existence at this place and at this time, how we became more than a person, but as a human individual with sets of values and principles and quirks and philosophies. Of questions of why we exist, outside food chains and stupid pyramid hierarchy of needs. Of how we feel outside hormones and chemical reactions, how we became permanent in the only constant facts of change and death. That maybe by this choice I have bound myself would help me articulate everything going through my brain into words and speech.

And yet, here I am. Unable to look in the eye half of the guys in my block, the same people I've been with for the past four years. I'm not the expected communicator this degree would churn out, all booming voice and overflowing confidence. I still prefer to sit tucked into the corner, the left or right of the very end of the second row, depending on the classroom and the professor's preference of alphabetical pseudo-order. I stumble over my words, use the podium or whoever is sitting in front of me as a shield whenever I brave to prove a point. Everything that requires talking in front of the class, stating opinions that may go against theirs, goes against every cell in my body screaming to stay away from conflict. Never good at handling arguments, sitting back from taking any major decisions (with the exception of meal choices, or my friends and I will have end up not eating anywhere in said four years). I rant through tweet, status reports, and creative retelling of events in this corner pocket of the interwebs. My accent is still beautifully native, unable to adopt the most-prized twang of the DJs and TV personalities and lack (or refusal?) of practice. I converse in the vernacular, yet write and think and dream in this language that felt like a second skin of my brain, ally of my ideas and witness to the written words my mouth could not express.

Descriptions of me range from quiet and aloof to overly adrenalin-rushed and exuberant, and I don't know what to believe. There are a million possibilities of conversations running through my head, possible scenarios from this world or other dimensions. Yet rarely do I speak outside the written word. And there is the power of the speech of silence that I have learned to value throughout the years; something about choosing the battles you fight and win and lose.

I never know exactly where to put myself.

I'm not exactly the stereotypical student of the art of communication, the whole base idea weird to begin with. For not all of us want to be in front of the camera, for we understand the utmost importance of the people behind the lens and the lights. We are not always noise and glittering lights, and enjoy the importance of being alone with ourselves. Nor are all of us performers, because there is an understood need for the people behind the curtain to push the right people into the spotlight. We are not all of an attention-hungry race, for we value the silence of coffee shops and libraries. We do not always act out tragedies to get out of responsibilities, for we know the responsibilities we hold with the media that we handle. Not all of us are at parties, for we all had thesis requirements to pass. Films to make. IMC campaigns to flesh out. Advertisements to make believable. Plays and events to plan. So many things to try, so many things to do. We defy the very word of stereotype, for there will never be one type, not one mold to fit us, not one label to contain us.

So I sit here and type and try to answer other questions that started this whole shenanigan, and realize I have the answer.

What am I doing here? What am I trying to do?

More than a ploy to romanticize the already dramatic "great scheme of things", there's a tentative reason why I willingly went through all the readings and papers these past four years. There's also the unstoppable need to prove yourself--to your professors for the grades you want, to your peers for the acceptance into this circle, to your parents for the assurance that their money isn't going to waste, and maybe most of all to yourself, for the assurance that you are not going to waste.

So I sit here and write, and tentatively answer. That I don't know yet. It is hard to assume your purpose in the world when you have yet to map out what that world really means to you. And maybe that for now, it's okay not to know. And eventually, the answers will arrive at my doorstep after constant wrestling with the universe, ready to meet the person that I am. All I can hope is that the universe likes what it gets and choose to stay.

I don't have labels. I don't have a clear definition. But I am a human person, and the beauty of that comes from being able to try on different identities and choosing which is the most comfortable against my skin. I am a human person, and with the constancy of change comes the assurance that nothing will permanently stick. By the time we expire we are to be identified by a few words in our tombstones, but the joy in living comes with the ability to constantly shift outside different words into others.

I am a human person. I may not have the best brain-to-mouth filter, but I try my best to get across the important stuff.

If I may choose any definition to remain, let it be that I am human, and that I have been good at it.

Platform Terminal

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As published in The Chronicle A.Y.2013-2014

Train stations and delays, flights and arrivals and departures. You were always the question mark in my carefully mapped out plan, the only wrinkle in my path to tomorrow.

You were that question I can never answer.

I know the basics, like how you came into my life (it was college, everything is scary, and you were the first friend in the sea of faces and strangers and sky-high expectations), but I don't know how you made yourself so important. Nothing was ever permanent, but you made me feel that you are. Through deadlines and stress and all the unhealthy habits, you were always beside me, or else in the background but still a significant presence.

You were there. You were always there. You were the only definite spot in the map, the only landmark of my failed romantic ventures. You were the last saving point in a game, always there to urge me forward and try again.

I never realized when you turned from the saving point to the goal.

You were the princess to be saved in the tower. The final stage, however, was also you.

Despite your permanence in me, you were never one to be still. You were the dictionary definition of action. Movement became you, and life happened with your step and smile and snap of your fingertips. And despite my geeky, video-game analogy, you were never the one to wait for a savior. You were the type of princess who owned the castle and made friends with the dragons and trolls that guard it.

You never waited.

You said so yourself, until I met you. You said the last four words lightly, but I heard the weight of the words.

I was your anchor, and you were scared of that. Anchors kept ships at ports, and you only saw ports as changing points for the next adventure. But ports were also safe places, for repairs and refreshments and getting to know what it means to have stability.

I was an anchor. You were the princess in the tower.

Maybe we were waiting for each other. For the ship to set sail, for its final passenger. Maybe, just maybe, this was why we waited.

The train is slowing to a stop, the final boarding call is being sounded out. There were places we need to go. It was time we stopped meeting them alone. There were crossroads to be taken both ways, with held hands in both directions. There were paths that needed wrinkles for people to try and iron them out, questions that needed to stay unanswered until that right one comes along and the right person answers.

Coming along, then?

The Touch Language

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I never understood
what it meant
to be this close
to another human being
Before this,
before us,
I only read
of fairy tale beginnings
and beautiful endings
I have yet to learn
the secrets of
the language of skin to skin
Of the creases and calluses
of hesitant hellos
and fingerprint friendships

I don't know
what became
our beginning of everything
but I know it included
singing in the rain
without an umbrella
and twenty-inch pizzas
Doodles behind notebooks
and guitar chords
Swept up hair
and drunken
must-be confessions
and maybe a sliver of
confusion(?) and denial(?)
before
we became
this

This bundle of blushing
bumbling idiots
With a million undiscovered nerve endings
on every inch of skin
from the shoulders when we leant into each other
to our fingers
as we held on and wondered
how deliciously different
this feels
This
whatever it is

Silence
was our loudest answer
for we are born
in the quiet of each other
amidst the noise
of a thousand people
bustling with their own brands
of hellos and goodbyes
while here we stand
meeting each other

Hand to hand
finger splayed against finger
palms together
with signals from every known nerve ending
meeting

Hello
Hello

De-composition

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What drove people
to create things?
Monuments and destruction
were the endings
of all the wars
that ever were.
So what was the point
of all the music and
the movies and the
paintings, all the art and
dance and bombs and
explosions and births
and orgasms?

Why does longing
for the warmth of human flesh
struggle to find descriptions
that raises the blush in your cheeks
and memories that should be kept
in heart and not grey matter?

Do we long for perfect
first kiss stories
to hide the ugly truth
of why the world
is falling apart
in its seams?

Or weep over
the things we cannot control
to show that we
are truly grateful
of all the things
we take
for
granted?

So why does it seem
that for every wrong
there are
a multitude of rights
waiting
to make you feel guilty
of what you can have?

Why do we seek
to find
all that is
painstakingly,
obviously,
beautiful
and take a picture?

Are we that afraid
of wiping out
our own species
so we are now
all desperate
to leave our mark in the world?

Every polluted molecule
every sullied part of nature
we are there
every birth
and every death
somehow
we are there

Of the things we deem ordinary
and the things we may not understand
our existence
is woven into every droplet
of rain
and paint
and tear
and alcohol
that ever existed

We are there

Every grain of rice
of sand
of wheat
Every leaf
of tea bushes
and marijuana

We are there


In the midst of creation
there will always be
the destruction
and decomposition
of what we know
as "the self"

For what is the self
but beliefs
and memories
and feelings
coming together
to form
you
and
I
and everyone else


So why do we have
to make sure
that someone
somewhere
somehow
would remember us?

Is this struggle
made for the comfort
of those we leave behind?
To have a final say
in how we want
to be remembered?

Or do we create
for the sake of creation
to fill the urge
of emptiness
seeking for
pretend completion?