The days still feel empty. You wake up every morning feeling that void in your heart you can never replace, however hard you try. These are the days when you find it hard to get out of bed simply because you find no reason to do so.
But it has not been long enough. Time, like they always say, heals all wounds. And I am hoping that in time, that void will be filled with something else. It doesn't matter what that something may be so long as there's no more void in it.
Thursday, November 24, 2011
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
Just a little trash can
Just a little trash can is what I need because I seldom throw things, even a bubble gum wrapper or a restaurant receipt. I find it hard to throw things, exactly because I find value in everything. I mean, they might seem unimportant right now but if you keep it long enough, for, say, five years at least, you'll see the value in it when you look back. They say anything that is old has value in it. And I think there's truth in that. Take, for example, antique furniture and bonsai plants. They really are valuable, at least for some people. Most importantly, our wise old men. Some things just get better with age. And oh, red wine and old friends!
Even if a thing is broken or can no longer be used, they don't go straight to the trash. I keep them in a box, especially if they were given to me, or is a reminder of a special part in my life. Even if it's just a piece of broken, useless, paper clips. I keeps things -- letters, notebook pages, notes on post-its, dried flowers, chocolate wrappers, gift wrappers and it would take forever to enumerate the things in my boxes. And by things, I mean a lot of things, if not everything.
The idea of throwing things and carrying on with life without them -- them which were once part of your life -- just seems too scary for me. Aside from feeling incomplete, it makes me feel guilty to just let them go. I have this feeling that I should take responsibility for the things I get a hold of. Like when I borrow a pen from a classmate, I take the responsibility to use it properly, and care for it just like how its owner would. I cannot, ever in the world, lose it if it's not mine. That would be UNacceptable!
I am given the power to fix broken things -- mind power, that is. Or the will to keep on fixing and fixing and fixing. I'll fix whatever. I can even go on fixing it forever. Just don't make me throw it! It won't be easy for me.
I mean, how is it even possible for people to just throw things like that? I don't get that. Am I the only one with attachment issues here? Or who values sentimentality? It does not even have to be those kind of corny things. How about the 3Rs -- Reuse, Reduce, Recycle? Or the value for money. Or resourcefulness. Or having things to remind you of your past when you're old, sitting on your rocking chair looking at the window?
It makes me sad to have to throw things. But being sad is okay at times. Life, after all, has to be balanced. How can you feel happy when you don't know how it feels to be sad? You can't keep things forever. Sometimes you have to pass it on. Throwing them doesn't mean they'll be gone in this world forever. They'd just be somewhere else, owned by someone else. Everyone needs just a little trash can.
Even if a thing is broken or can no longer be used, they don't go straight to the trash. I keep them in a box, especially if they were given to me, or is a reminder of a special part in my life. Even if it's just a piece of broken, useless, paper clips. I keeps things -- letters, notebook pages, notes on post-its, dried flowers, chocolate wrappers, gift wrappers and it would take forever to enumerate the things in my boxes. And by things, I mean a lot of things, if not everything.
The idea of throwing things and carrying on with life without them -- them which were once part of your life -- just seems too scary for me. Aside from feeling incomplete, it makes me feel guilty to just let them go. I have this feeling that I should take responsibility for the things I get a hold of. Like when I borrow a pen from a classmate, I take the responsibility to use it properly, and care for it just like how its owner would. I cannot, ever in the world, lose it if it's not mine. That would be UNacceptable!
I am given the power to fix broken things -- mind power, that is. Or the will to keep on fixing and fixing and fixing. I'll fix whatever. I can even go on fixing it forever. Just don't make me throw it! It won't be easy for me.
I mean, how is it even possible for people to just throw things like that? I don't get that. Am I the only one with attachment issues here? Or who values sentimentality? It does not even have to be those kind of corny things. How about the 3Rs -- Reuse, Reduce, Recycle? Or the value for money. Or resourcefulness. Or having things to remind you of your past when you're old, sitting on your rocking chair looking at the window?
It makes me sad to have to throw things. But being sad is okay at times. Life, after all, has to be balanced. How can you feel happy when you don't know how it feels to be sad? You can't keep things forever. Sometimes you have to pass it on. Throwing them doesn't mean they'll be gone in this world forever. They'd just be somewhere else, owned by someone else. Everyone needs just a little trash can.
Saturday, November 19, 2011
NOTE TO SELF
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Before dinner at Quezon City Memorial Circle |
“Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don’t resist them – that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.” - Lao-Tzu
“Smile, breathe and go slowly.” - Thich Nhat Hanh
“Flow with whatever is happening and let your mind be free. Stay centered by accepting whatever you are doing. This is the ultimate.” - Chuang Tzu
Friday, November 18, 2011
The Catcher in the Rye
I am far from busy this semester, like I said in one of my recent posts. School takes up just about six hours of my entire week; studying for my subjects takes up about… well, I haven’t done that yet. I’m much more in the mood to read and write and fix my life.
The Catcher in the Rye is about a boy who got kicked out from college, flunked all his subjects aside from English. He hated how things went in there. It was just a story of what he did before going home. He doesn’t want to go home ‘til Wednesday, the day his parents would receive a letter from the school headmaster informing them about their son’s dismissal. And there were a lot of digressions on it. A lot. His thoughts along the way made it interesting.
I don’t want to compare authors since I respect their individual styles and I think everyone is good in their own ways. There weren’t much of quotable quotes in the book, unlike Dostoevsky. But that was a good thing in a way that I am not so anxious to mark pages with pretty lines. So I was able to focus on listening to the author talk, naturally.
I just said I do not want to compare authors but I’d also like to mention Charles Dickens here. He’s a classic, really. I’d like to think he’s the author’s favorite author. By the style of his writing, it may not be apparent. But he mentioned David Copperfield and Charles Dickens in the book. Okay, that may not mean anything at all, but I’d like to think that so please let me. Thinking about Dickens could have made his writing suck, but it didn’t. I don’t remember the last time I actually finished reading a book – I usually start reading and gets bored afterwards so I end up grabbing another book before even knowing the ending of the previous one. I do that most of the time. But The Rye, as I’d like to call it, actually got me wanting for more. I felt the author right in front of me, really. And oh, how I just wish I could hold him!
So about the not-so-many quotable quotes, I just have here three:
Certain things they should stay the way they are. You ought to be able to stick them in one of those big glass cases and just leave them alone.
The man falling isn’t permitted to feel or hear himself hit bottom. He just keeps falling and falling. The whole arrangement’s designed for men who, at some time or other in their lives, were looking for something their own environment couldn’t supply them with. Or they thought their own environment couldn’t supply them with. So they gave up looking. They gave it up before they ever really even got started.
The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.
Okay that last one just got me. Arrector pili muscles contracting! (Goose bumps) I don’t know why. Well, actually I do know why I just do not want to tell it here. I like authors.
P.S.
I am aware that my writing here and on my recent post is influenced by J.D Salinger. :D
Math and other things
I am thinking of my tutee right now. It’s 2am and I was just about to sleep but my mind’s pushing to places. I am thinking about my tutee and how our interaction today was different from any other sessions we had. It was the first time we had a three-hour session; it was supposedly for two hours only. It was the first time she cracked a joke on me, two actually; the first time we had a deal (that if she fail her long test tomorrow, I’ll make her run 5 rounds in the UP Acad Oval) I think she liked the idea but acted like she didn’t. Oh, high school girls. I’ve been there before; the first time we had a physical contact, that is, a high five whenever she gets the right answer just minutes before we ended the session; the first time we were actually almost being just ourselves – mocking each other and telling random things, whatever comes out. I must admit, at that time, I was becoming happy with what I was doing – teaching a high school student math. I never said I don’t like doing it before. As a matter of fact, I like doing it but sometimes slow people just gets into my nerves. Today, I loved teaching.
The mood at the beginning of that session was very different compared to the latter part of it. Because, before we began with what I planned to do, she handed me her quizzes on simplification and addition/subtraction of radicals, and her scores were almost like friction, negligible. Just almost. Or maybe I just have high standards for negligibility. I was so heartbroken at the time and I want to break down. But my intervention has not sunk in those tests yet, I thought. I hoped. I’m the type who does not easily give up, especially if I know I can do better. And I was certain I can do better with teaching her, pushing her to her limits.
I started the session the mock exam I made beforehand. And while she was into it, I was examining her exam papers. Oh, the pieces of my heart were just falling down those sheets. I computed her scores, 35% overall. A mountain and seven seas from the 75% passing grade. And to think tomorrow’s her long test? Oh, I could die. What have I done wrong? Am I not teaching her well? I can only blame myself. I want to tell you she really isn’t interested in the subject and if only she could pass by running a thousand miles instead of solving math problems, I’d swear she’d do it. But the blame’s still on me.
So what do I do when I’m teaching a student who’s not at all interested in the subject?
She loves running, or her team, or the field. I don’t know but her heart is obviously everywhere else, just not in math. She just got suspended from running/competing because she failed math. She won first place in the 2k event but she can’t get her medal because, technically, she’s no longer part of the team. And there are a lot of things she could lose if she continues to fail math. Not only her track team, but also her high school or her batchmates. If she succeeds in failing math once again, she won’t be allowed to enter third year in the same school. That means, either she has to transfer to another school or repeat second year high school. If only my opinion matters, either of the two is a good way to go. Because in my opinion, she hasn’t learn anything in math since Grade 1. It’s really disappointing to have to go back to the basics when you are teaching a second year high school student, who cannot even add fractions! Oh, it gets into my nerves.
It’s heartbreaking. I can tell by the stories and the tone of her voice that she really loves to run. She’d rather train than study math! When we change the topic from math to running, the tone of her voice suddenly shifts from bored to excited. It just pumps her up.
What I like about teaching is that it makes my short piece of patience longer. Really it does. I swear, when it comes to people who are slow to pick up, I don’t have the patience to discuss a lot of things with them a lot of times. I just don’t want to get into that kind of trouble.
But the thing about teaching math (or any subject for that matter) is that it’s not actually just your student you’re teaching or who’s learning. It’s not actually just your student who’s getting something from you. If you think I’m saying I am getting something from my student, well you are partly right. The thing is, I am getting something from myself as well. If she’s not picking up what I said, then that would only mean I am not communicating well with her. I am not conveying the words in a manner she’d understand. This is something I learned from my boy. I learned a lot of things from him. He’d make a good teacher. He was good for me.
Going back to my tutee, I think what we need is rapport. First and foremost, she has to trust me. And even if it’s hard, I have to trust her – that she’ll be able to pick things up. She tells me things she doesn’t want to tell her mom, and I think that’s a good start. But she’s a kid, she tells a lot of things.
I want this tutor-tutee relationship work. It’s like having a little sister. I want to take her to UP, to show her what a nice campus UP has. I want to tell her about architecture and what good things that comes from it and all about its grandeur and elegance. I want to take her for a jog regularly and we’ll have breakfast somewhere. And we’ll talk about math discreetly. I want to be a good model for her – show her how important it is to balance things in life, like training for running and math and other school stuff. I want to tell her what I wished I have known when I was still in high school. I want to warn her about life outside the family and how it feels to be far from home. I want her to be good in math, and a lot of other things. I want her to like numbers like I do, and letters, and art. I want her to grow up to be better than me.
The mood at the beginning of that session was very different compared to the latter part of it. Because, before we began with what I planned to do, she handed me her quizzes on simplification and addition/subtraction of radicals, and her scores were almost like friction, negligible. Just almost. Or maybe I just have high standards for negligibility. I was so heartbroken at the time and I want to break down. But my intervention has not sunk in those tests yet, I thought. I hoped. I’m the type who does not easily give up, especially if I know I can do better. And I was certain I can do better with teaching her, pushing her to her limits.
I started the session the mock exam I made beforehand. And while she was into it, I was examining her exam papers. Oh, the pieces of my heart were just falling down those sheets. I computed her scores, 35% overall. A mountain and seven seas from the 75% passing grade. And to think tomorrow’s her long test? Oh, I could die. What have I done wrong? Am I not teaching her well? I can only blame myself. I want to tell you she really isn’t interested in the subject and if only she could pass by running a thousand miles instead of solving math problems, I’d swear she’d do it. But the blame’s still on me.
So what do I do when I’m teaching a student who’s not at all interested in the subject?
She loves running, or her team, or the field. I don’t know but her heart is obviously everywhere else, just not in math. She just got suspended from running/competing because she failed math. She won first place in the 2k event but she can’t get her medal because, technically, she’s no longer part of the team. And there are a lot of things she could lose if she continues to fail math. Not only her track team, but also her high school or her batchmates. If she succeeds in failing math once again, she won’t be allowed to enter third year in the same school. That means, either she has to transfer to another school or repeat second year high school. If only my opinion matters, either of the two is a good way to go. Because in my opinion, she hasn’t learn anything in math since Grade 1. It’s really disappointing to have to go back to the basics when you are teaching a second year high school student, who cannot even add fractions! Oh, it gets into my nerves.
It’s heartbreaking. I can tell by the stories and the tone of her voice that she really loves to run. She’d rather train than study math! When we change the topic from math to running, the tone of her voice suddenly shifts from bored to excited. It just pumps her up.
What I like about teaching is that it makes my short piece of patience longer. Really it does. I swear, when it comes to people who are slow to pick up, I don’t have the patience to discuss a lot of things with them a lot of times. I just don’t want to get into that kind of trouble.
But the thing about teaching math (or any subject for that matter) is that it’s not actually just your student you’re teaching or who’s learning. It’s not actually just your student who’s getting something from you. If you think I’m saying I am getting something from my student, well you are partly right. The thing is, I am getting something from myself as well. If she’s not picking up what I said, then that would only mean I am not communicating well with her. I am not conveying the words in a manner she’d understand. This is something I learned from my boy. I learned a lot of things from him. He’d make a good teacher. He was good for me.
Going back to my tutee, I think what we need is rapport. First and foremost, she has to trust me. And even if it’s hard, I have to trust her – that she’ll be able to pick things up. She tells me things she doesn’t want to tell her mom, and I think that’s a good start. But she’s a kid, she tells a lot of things.
I want this tutor-tutee relationship work. It’s like having a little sister. I want to take her to UP, to show her what a nice campus UP has. I want to tell her about architecture and what good things that comes from it and all about its grandeur and elegance. I want to take her for a jog regularly and we’ll have breakfast somewhere. And we’ll talk about math discreetly. I want to be a good model for her – show her how important it is to balance things in life, like training for running and math and other school stuff. I want to tell her what I wished I have known when I was still in high school. I want to warn her about life outside the family and how it feels to be far from home. I want her to be good in math, and a lot of other things. I want her to like numbers like I do, and letters, and art. I want her to grow up to be better than me.
Saturday, November 12, 2011
Something about Running
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New Balance Chevrolet Power Run 2011 |
But I'm so scared my words might not be enough. I'm scared that I would only demean this one great experience I just had. I think by the title alone I just did injustice to this experience. You see, it's not just something about running. It's much more than that.
Maybe, when I become better with words, I'll tell you.
Move.
I am thinking of running from here to any beach. I'm taking my phone with me, in case i get injured along the way. I want to take a book with me, to read when I get there. Of course, I'm bringing my sports beans Mama gave me. I guess I'm gonna need more of that. And cash. And (knock on wood) for identification purposes in all cases of emergency, my student ID. If all else fails, I'd take the train to Bicol at night and wake up in an unfamiliar place. Press F5.
Journeys are the midwives of thought. Few places are more conducive to internal conversations than moving planes, ships, or trains. There is almost quaint correlation between what is before our eyes and the thoughts we are able to have in our heads: large thoughts at times requiring large views, and new thoughts, new places. -Alain de Botton
Read more here: http://www.kristinbairokeeffe.com/tag/living-architecture/
Habits
I just woke up. I slept at almost 3am and now it is almost 11:30am. I was planning on having oat granola for breakfast (I asked my guy roommate to buy me fresh milk last night) but rather I'm taking it for lunch. Later, I will be meeting my sister and my brother and we're eating buffet so my stomach would be compensated.
I only have 5 units this semester and I am far from being busy:
Also, art therapy with my roommate makes me excited! That's the long time dream. I've been yearning for paint brush and a canvas for years. It's better to be with my friends now, now that they know about me and what I am going through. To be with them has never been easier. Oh, this would be a great semester. I feel like I've been handed a new life. :)
I only have 5 units this semester and I am far from being busy:
Tuesdays and Thursday afternoons are for school. So what about the other days? What am I gonna do with this life? A lot actually. This is the life I've been wanting to have. I have been wanting to quit school so this is almost like it. Almost. Maybe. This is the perfect time to fix myself. And earn some money. Haha.
The lack of will made me hop on random things to do. This is wrong. Men's natures are alike; it is their habits that separate them. I have not been allocating time to read books when I should be spending most of my time on that. Though I miss Pip, I have to grab other books for now.
That I am writing right now is a good action and a habit I must not break: write upon waking up, where thoughts are clearer, unbiased. Record experience. Developing this habit to write would also be one of the goals this semester. These habits of reading and writing (what about architecture? don't worry I also have plans for that but not for now) would make my life stable. Watching movies could also take some of my time, as it refreshes my mind and brings me new perspective. But only the good ones.
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The Talented Mr. Ripley: reason why I slept late last night. |
Matt Damon is just great. He made my arrector pili muscles contract! Basically, the movie shows how one lie can lead to ripples of lies that can affect your whole life and your well-being. It was a good watch, except for the blood.
"Don't you just take the past and put it in a room in a basement and lock the door and never go in there? That's what I do, And then you meet someone special and all you want to do is to toss them the key and say; open up, step inside, but you can't, because it's dark, There's demons and if anybody saw how ugly it is. I keep wanted to do that, fling the door open just let light in and clean everything out."
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Last night at Leona Art Restaurant: dinner alone. |
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