The most compelling part of the invitation was “you don’t even have to talk.”

And so it was a positively-charged long weekend of limestone cliffs by the Mediterranean on a ridiculously beautiful clear day at the prelude of Spring.

Apart from other good things in Murcia like homemade pizza, concerts in small candlelit bars, coffee in such a place called Café Yemanja, books, films, mind teasers, long drives with cars and motorbikes, cañas, guitars, one-eyed and blind dogs, and sleeping in away from the noisy thundering upstairs neighbors of Madrid.

Would not have been possible without a really, really good friend, who just knows how to read minds.

.

 

 

 

Just wanted to record the good feeling and insight in my heart this morning when I woke up – something just told me in my heart to just trust.  TRUST. And it was a great feeling to hold on to, a panacea for fear.  Meditations are awesome.

And this piece of advice from an email from Kaz this morning too – “just try to give love as honestly and completely as you can. I find that when I do, it comes back to me twofold. At least.”

 

 

 

I received the news on my way to Ávila.

She was truly the kindest, strongest, most generous, most beautiful woman in my life.

Memories rush, both wonderful and painful.  I am engulfed with nostalgia and sadness, but I am happy for her that she’s finally joined Pop and Lolo now.  (And Hugo too!)

I got to speak to her for one last time on my birthday, because ours is only a few days apart, and her voice, though quivering, was still determined and joyful, and still persistent in wanting to give me something.  She even teased me about ____!  I just laughed and told her I was happy here.  I’m happy I told her that I loved her. I did not know that those would be the last words I would tell this most awesome woman.

Truly, the greatest legacy one leaves is also the simplest one.

I will miss you Wawa.

Break on through to the other side.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2012 is here, and I’ve been getting deep into my readings about “The Shift”.   Rather obsessive deep, actually, and suddenly I’m recollecting those travels over the years, unplanned except by that “compass of instinct” as Dino once termed to some sacred spots in the world – Stonehenge, Sedona in Arizona, Angkor Wat, Teotihuacan, the Mayan temples in Palenque, the Yucatan Peninsula…and soon Tibet and the Andes.  I call it the “Kundalini World Tour”.

This particular article from the Spirit Science page is completely fascinating, explaining the polar shift and its repercussions, quite beautiful if you realize there is nothing to fear:

http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/esp_2012_02.htm

Happy 2012!!!

 

 

 

…telling of windy days
spirit corpses of forgotten friends
and paramours
hearts of dark truths
and fine enigmas

~swirls of wine spilling themselves
into the recesses of childhood dreams
and fears of tomorrow’s nights

Where are we really going?
Fugitive lords
awake in terminal departures
the truth comes to me
in the cusps of grasping
heaven and hell

The lords pray to their diablos
and sometimes to their gods
affecting the seemingly seamlessness
of a life once dreamed of.

Would we be here today,
in this now,
somewhere between the outposts
and lighthouses of faith

connections to the breathing -
the sheer honestly of living

There is no past
ruptured in a momentous outcry
only the impetus of feeling
the now, the world,
the universe ensconced
in a snowglass globe
shaken only by its
fragile architecture

A trick, a trial,
the righteous path
of endless lives
and beautiful poetries
all drifting along
the freeflowing
vibrating strings
and plentiful springs.

 

(Happy 2012, an infinite vibration of blissful awakenings =) )

 

Swirls of wine

spilling themselves

into the recesses

of childhood dreams

 

+ + + + + + +
It’s been a while since I’ve scribbled, the past weeks have been mostly about letting go and letting in.  It’s been an exercise in both detachment to say the least, and also of opening up to new experiences and people and loves.

We finally sold our house a few weeks ago, the house my grandfather built for us and where I grew up in.  At first, it felt like a stinging sensation that I was trying to compress, but after a lot of thought and 12-dimensional dreams of criss-crossing memories, and I confess some immersion into Buddhist readings, I have actually surprised myself for being able to let go, and let be.

It  was mostly the good memories of that house that was so difficult to say goodbye to, all the family dinners and summers in the garden, friends popping up randomly in my balcony past midnight, the wild parties and all-day barbecues and bonding with my brother on quiet, starry nights.  But as my brother said so poignantly in his email to me (below), there is a place and time for everything passing in this world.  The time has come for that house to give its happiness to someone else.

 

T,

The deal is done, the house is sold!

Melodrama warning.

A funny thing in my head came around after the exchange was made and the buyers left leaving me to close all the lights and doors. That song “Closing Time” started playing in my mind, loudly. I reminded myself that new younger voices will again bounce off the walls when the new buyers move in as they have 4 young kids. I guess it really is a closing chapter in our lives, a somewhat intermediate, trying, but real chapter that took a decade and a half to address. It forged us into very unique people, not anymore oblivious to the real world outside our gated community. And the house- all the holidays, parties, impromptu get-togethers with friends that happened in the defining years we lived there will really never happen again whether or not we own the house since it has already changed. Like what our friend Chicky said, the original people are not there anymore.

Anyway how long does it take to apply for a visa for Spain?

D

 

But as the aforementioned song goes, “every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end…”

+ + + + + + + +

There is no past

ruptured in a momentous outcry

only the impetus of feeling

the now, the world,

the Universe ensconced

in a snowglass globe

shaken by the architecture

that moves it.

 

+ + + + + + + + +

Strangely auspicious (and coincidental?) reading: “La Casa Tomada” (The Taken House) by Argentine writer Julio Cortazar.  Beautiful and eerie.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
I have been stricken with an extreme case of social saturation.  And I’m not talking about the flesh-and-bloods that offer the comfort of true friendship, but the 2-dimensional avatars that have invaded the grand design of my life.  I deem it social network anxiety.  I think it is just not healthy for the soul to have more than 1,000 “friends” open to voyeurism and exhibitionism on FB.  For even the close friends I have sometimes morph into some other caricature of themselves on the virtual sphere – in other words, even good friends can bug me.  Not good.  The annoyance stems from a careless display of one’s self, I’ve come to realize – I believe privacy is sacred, and if Zuckerberg declared that it is dead, then he just murdered an essential facet of man’s nature, and that is the choice when to be social or a private individual.

Along with the social decluttering came a very real breakthrough in thought, that now is the time for a life edit.  An authentic one, in which I will simplify my life into the things that really matter, a breakdown of its components into its simple building blocks for a life I want to lead.  Yet simplicity can be the most complicated to achieve.  Less materialism.  Less wasteful talk.  Less wasteful thoughts.  Less people from the past that bear no meaning on my present.  And along with that, just a mental discipline of letting go of memories and expectations.

More time for good friends and good wine and savouring coffee breakfasts.  And the words of books once again, instead of the garbage spewed on the FB newsfeed.

And back to real travels, authentic traveling, the ones whose photographs may never be shown to people at all, for the journey is your own private and sacred one and yours alone.  (Does anyone ever travel anymore these days without flaunting it on the sticky social web?)

And most of all, just the discipline of personal evolution, the mind-emptying and mental teacup pouring, the acceptance of the ever-living present unfettered by those things that don’t (or shouldn’t) matter anymore.

Let the life edit begin.

 

October 6 was my three-year Spaniversary.  Caña believe it?!

 

A few weeks ago, I received a postcard from Club Paradise.  These days, it’s certainly a bizarre thing to see:  an analog antique shining through the blight of utility bills in the mail, and therefore a nice surprise.  On it was a photo of a stunning beach, and of course behind it, a personal scribble from Amanda: “I miss your thoughts, your words, your spirit, soul sister Talia!  Can I kidnap you and take you to the mosh pit of RHCP, dive in Apo, do something artsy in Batanes then fly back to San Sebastian and pigout?  Stay stellar!”

There was just something so personal and meaningful in it, this message that could have been sent in an eyeblink in today’s digitally constructed world, instead of being handwritten, postage-stamped, dropped in a mailbox and snail-delivered for weeks, thousands of miles away in another continent.  You could say there was a kind of indelible positive energy in it, in the kind hands I imagine that have held it to help deliver it to its intended destination.  Sentimentality, yes, such is what navigates the analog Old World.

A few weeks later, I received another one, this time from the tiny town of Dinkelsbuhl, Germany, and from Cat.  “I hope you and I can be in the same country next year.  Whether it be Spain, the Philippines or somewhere new!” she wrote.

If this were a new trend that these girls were trying to fuel, I was on it at once – I trooped to Correos and sent my own scribbles on postcards, feeling a bit silly yes, but good-silly, perhaps in the same way that vinyl record collectors listen to the seamless sounds of their music at home and smile.

There are a few things still left in the world to be worth the passing of time.  The slow burn of things of true value. The wine of friendship, as they sing in “Les Miserables”, the ripening and harvest of true soul-siblings in life’s vineyard.  Good travels, slow travels, those whose snapshots may not find themselves among the digital piles of the social network, but remain affixed in memory.

+ + + + +

Something, some things of late have made me decide to deactivate Facebook for a while, and try to reconnect with things that truly matter.  I don’t know how long it will last, but yes, deleting the 1,035+ so-called “friends” oversharing about what they had for fucking dinner felt pretty liberating.  Already I’ve gotten a few messages asking me if everything was ok because I had disappeared from the ether.  Well, so much for going gently into the good night!  It’s a bit like faking your death – you can do it quietly, but everyone eventually notices.

So what now, without the voyeur-inducing newsfeed, and Enviable Travel Photos Of Other People, and preachy God statuses,  and cliché quotes pilfered from unnamed sources,  and ultrasound images of unborn children, and baseless whines with wrong grammar, and farm animals, and mass messages telling all girls to post their bra size on their status messages to promote breast cancer awareness …  hmmm, I think I can live without the humanity for a while.  As Sartre once said, “L’enfer, c’est les autres.”

In the meantime, back to email.  Or snail mail, if you prefer.