espiritista

what's so great, you ask?

finally me and the missus got to watch the cinemalaya film festival on its last day last Saturday. watched Endo (JD Castro) and Pisay (Aureus Solito) and was pleasantly surprised by how good they were. especially Pisay. I always knew Aureus Solito was a good visual storyteller. i was just afraid the film would be like Gawad Kalinga's films: sincere and honest, but well, propaganda. it was nice to really see that the film could be appreciated even by non-Pisay people.

so what's so great the last few days? it feels really good that finally i'm writing in my blog again. this is actually my blog's third year, but you'd never guess with the thinness of the posts. i look back and see that there have been pockets, months on end when i wouldn't post anything. i thought then that i wouldn't mind, but now i see that i sort of wonder whatever happened to me during those gaps. what was i thinking? how did i see myself, or the people around me? i can never really know for sure now.

i have lots of storylines in my head at any given time than i care to admit. like everytime i cross the busy domestic airport road in front of the office, my mind always goes into overdrive, seizing all those movie scenes i've seen where people get run over by cars. "Meet Joe Black" is a particular reference point: i guess i have work cut out for me to make myself as handsome as Brad Pitt in the event that some asshole runs me over. and oh yes, i can be gothic and vain at the same time.

in a few months i'll be thiry years old. three decades, man, three fucking decades. when i was ten i thought thirty year olds were ancient. now, the next person who'd say thirty is "advanced" is a candidate for castration-by-jeff.

take stock, take stock. count your blessings. live your life well and without malice. never give up, never give in. love like you've never been hurt before. la vita y bella rather than c'est la vie.

cliches, man, cliches. good at rhymes, bite-size chunks of wisdom, popular wisdom. easy to spew out, easy to chew on. for the madly in love, cliches explain everything. for the grief-stricken, cliches can save their sanity. but if the medium is the message, cliches and love songs tell us that the message can still be valid, given the right circumstances.

so i have learned never to take cliches for granted.

what else? ahhh...i don't like to travel much now. i'd much rather just stay home and play with the kids. or play Zuma. or wait for evening prayer time to come. for the rains to come. nothing much, nothing so significant. one time, me and the wifey just went to bayside and ate some fishballs till the sun set. total budget was around 50 bucks. but it was a blast!

i realize my life has been one hard life. getting married early and raising a family when i myself could help a little more raising, hehe. moving from one place to another, one job to another. lettign go of several dreams along the way, but finding out worthier new dreams to hang on to along the way. losing some friends, relatives, mentors.

i also realize i've had an amazingly lucky life. being at the right place and time to get scholarships, and later on, jobs. having absolutely loyal and loving friends and family. being blessed with the most beautiful kids one could ever wish for (okay maybe, a little less kulit would be useful, but where's the fun in that? hehe). finding a truly good person to be my wife.

even in times when i messed up, somehow, out of luck or sheer stubbornness, i've always been able to recover. "to live only by grace" can only half-explain it!

what's so great you ask? i am going to tell you and you listen well: what's great, my friend, is that after all, we can still become better persons, despite even ourselves.

posted by dyeproks @ 11:00 PM