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‘Clarity’ Category

  1. Irreversible

    December 1, 2011 by A.

    Human feelings will always be flimsy because they are reversible – what was once endearing can easily become detestable by any given catalyst. This is because they cannot, no matter how idealized, be regarded beyond their being conditional.

    As such, human emotions are best measured (and expressed) not according to their current side of the dichotomy – love or disgust? – but to their relative location in the spectrum that runs the gamut of neutral affective intensities. Neutral, because experiences only really color them, not because they have any intrinsic quality prior to the contexts in which they are summoned.

    To say that one strongly feels for another – as opposed to exclusively expressing only either affection or disgust, for instance  – is more comprehensive as it gives due credit to the complexity (and simplicity) that informs human expression and invokes the universal duality of things, instead of presupposing color onto everything thereby mistakenly regarding them as pure (in their color). It simply recognizes the ability of everything to be regarded both ways, as a source of both elation and misery.

    Apart from recognizing duality, such an understanding will also render it unnecessary to resort to reversals – for instance, eventually demonizing what was once pure (and vice versa), or hating what was once endearing (and vice versa), when certain circumstances arise to effect such changes in regard. It eliminates having to “turn bitter” as per request by sturdily built defense mechanisms in lieu of a more enlightened manner of seeing.

    As for the quip most brandished by individuals who think it clever mainly for its opposition to a cliche (which, unknown to some, has placed it on the very same rank with the number of people “cleverly” echoing it):

    Love is not the opposite of indifference. Love is a colored affective intensity on one side of the dichotomy. Indifference is a level of emotive intensity. Therefore, the opposite of love is hate. And the opposite of indifference is a deep, substantial regard for something or someone, whether it be colored by specific human experience as love or hate.

    Embracing the duality of your affections makes it easier to embrace the duality of the object of your affection, invariably making it easier to accept the qualities that hurt you, time and again, at every reversal.

    Because most things, when they happen, are irreversible. And all things, regardless of human regard, perish.

     

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  2. No such thing as loving in vain

    March 22, 2006 by A.

    Talked about the nature of Vanity in his car on the way to his house. It was fueled by this topic being discussed on the radio, about flirting while in a relationship, whether it was okay or not. As always, our conversation began with our disparate views on the topic, (me thinking it was normal and him saying it wasn’t), and eventually leading us to isms and other related things like perspective, religion, upbringing, then dichotomies, then strangely, patriarchy, colonization, and oppression.
    Our conversation outlasted the radio show.

    Then he asked me if I wanted to drink, in spite of the fact that we were both already very sleepy as we had only slept for two hours the night before because of… well, personal needs.
    Anyway, we were as heavy-eyed as we were light-hearted. Finished two pitchers of beer and spent the entire night sprawled on the carpet, holding each other with tipsy arms, laughing away to F.R.I.E.N.D.S. on DVD, and taking turns going to the restroom. I had always wanted this, to drink with him as if in celebration of our quotidian love, and letting him hold me as if I were the smallest tipsy creature crying over Joey and Chandler when they fought over a woman.

    We woke up at around 5 in the afternoon already. I am filled with the vanity of giving love.

    “And not a vanity is given in vain.” -Alexander Pope

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  3. The edge as horizon

    March 19, 2006 by A.

    Rarely is the artist capable of going both ways on two journeys, into the self and into the world […]. It is a combination of the Romantic I and the Classical they . It is subjective and it is objective. It navigates between the real and the imagined […].

    -Deena Metzger on Anais Nin

     

    I’ve always felt my place in the liminal space. As if I were constantly hanging in suspension, finding myself afloat just when I have alighted on ground. There is always a distance that intimates nearness as if constantly postponing pleasure. Please: both a command and a plea. I oscillate between its two connotations like a tidal wave. The deluge of desiring. And I have always been afraid of deep water.
    The true nature of a person is best discovered in bed. I have discovered much about other people — often hurtful revelations, but very suitable material for my writing. As for me, I’ve grown to love the edge of the bed, the way it poses the danger of falling off and perhaps hitting my head on the floor. It is an exaggeration, but sometimes I imagine it, its worst scenario, perhaps a landing that would make my head bleed. And it arouses me. Some might think me sick. But there really are times in the night, in the morning, when I feel a coldness in my chest that cannot be allayed by the one next to me. And so I turn away, find myself drawn to that which is beyond the bed, beyond the space of true nature, half-dreaming in my wake. This is how to desire what is close to you, knowing you cannot hold it any closer. You must move away.

     

    Pardon me for the incoherence of this entry, for I just woke up.

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  4. Burnout

    March 13, 2006 by A.

    I should have heeded the cards a year ago when they showed me the unpleasant outcome of my decision to stay in service — that it would turn out to be anti-climactic: The Tower. It is futile to cling to past accomplishments, and I’ve always wanted them then to remain unseen. But no matter how MUCH I’ve invested in the past five years, surviving politics and maintaining balance while nurturing relationships to see our collective effort to fruition, they will never suffice for my inefficiency at present. I never knew that staying would exhaust me this soon (even if a friend who is a co-worker did tell me that it’s about time I got exhausted). Because I did not, do not want to get tired of it. I have always been used to denying my bodily complaints, like postponing hunger, for instance, or overlooking sickness and sleep… what more exhaustion?

    To think I used to thrive in this, used to consider it the world and I used to move in it gracefully, used to take joy and derive strength from encouraging all of them to grow and not to lose heart in art. And so many of them looked up to me for answers. I used to have all the energy for management, and all the energy to listen to what they had to say about their lives.

    Now I have lost heart. And I’m just waiting for it all to end. For the meantime, I will just finish what I have to finish, it won’t be a very long wait.

    The Tower:
    “As a warning light-house The Tower announces cliffs and shoals. Its essence is change without participation. Long term planning and cautious preparation prove useless.

    Regard The Tower as a messenger of blind fortune. Stay calm you have done what you can. Do not cling to the past. Simply watch the fall of debris, accept that there really are things out of your control.”
    I did not listen.

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  5. Penguin for your thoughts?

    March 12, 2006 by A.

    Another long, insightful conversation with him at Penguin Bar, Malate. As a matter of fact, we seemed to have created a world of our own again, where everone and everything around us seemed to have receded in the background (my apologies to Jenny, who celebrated her birthday, and the rest of the lit barkada). It makes me so happy to see him open himself to me, like watching a lion unfurl its glorious mass after an afternoon slumber. Talked about the nuances in initiation and response, gestures and passivity, love and fondness. He admitted things that were quite surprising to me as they were relieving. Like the real subtexts behind his responses to certain people if only for them not to get hurt, the inability to reject in the name of courtesy. Then he asked me about my honest take on such things. I answered, even with the risk of momentarily breaking him with stories of genuine generosity, the things I’ve done in the light of my I-want-to-make-love-to-the-world philosophy. And I fall in love over and over again with the fragility of his strength.

    He accuses me of being too understanding. That such an attitude makes me susceptible to others’ abuse, men and women alike.

    Perhaps I am. But it is what keeps me from thinking ill of others.

    Besides, without my understanding, I would have left long before we could have reached this state of pleasant transparency.

    I am happy now. He makes me so happy.

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  6. I am not going to entitle this The Persistence of Memory

    March 7, 2006 by A.

    Strange how I remember the very moment I gained consciousness. I’m not being all “figurative” here. Neither am I attempting philosophical discourse. I mean it very simply. The moment I was born, I remember it: from hearing a long, muffled humdrum………………..then suddenly SOUND. And that account of how things appear blurry at first, only to gain clarity eventually? It’s true.

    I could not answer to the memory of my first tactile and olfactory experiences, though.

    But still. Isn’t that so strange? To remember such things?

    You don’t believe me, don’t you?

    Then pay attention. To the moment you first became conscious. Do not willingly invoke the memory, just be silent. It’ll come in flashes. I am bringing this up now because it just happened to me a few minutes ago. It was the nth time I experienced my birth in the landscape of my memory.

    No but really, they’re linked — the memory leads to certain thoughts, like wondering why you view things in first person, why you seem to be the “main character” of the frame of your vision as if you were the “camera,” thus not being able to see your own face without looking on a reflective surface, thus being the main person of this lifetime, as if your life were the main connective to other, if not everyone else’s, lives? And thinking, because of that, that perhaps the gods must have been biased in creating humankind because only you feel yourself the way no other person can ever feel you. Because if not, then why do you experience first hand?

    I’m not being narcissistic, thank you very much. I’m being selfish. Self-ish? I’m paying attention to myself paying attention to its Self.

    Funny how I remember something as early as my first consciousness and not be able to recall where I placed my phone I set aside just SECONDS AGO. So frustrating.

    I probably should turn in for the night already before I give birth to myself again.

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