Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Writing with Feelings

I was told to write with feelings from a classmate who took a creative writing class and I took that to heart. Weird huh?  Usually no one takes these kind of things to heart because feelings flow out naturally when you're writing or deliberately expressing yourself.  So feelings huh? I guess I have none, when I write.

I had shut that part of myself last year after a damned incident and thought I would never open it up again until this instant where she made me realize I have no emotion in my writing.  Hahaha I guess it was obvious to her, that when I tell a story, that it's interesting, it's just that I don't make it sound intriguing because I don't put any feelings to it.  When I thought I did.  Well, now that I think about it, I usually tell everyone that I'm not really good at expressing myself.  But I guess that just explains it, I keep telling myself that, and that's never a good thing.

My drawings haven't changed because they always look static, like my emotions.

Gee, I think I'm a little devoid of emotions.  I could care less about a lot of things and I refuse to give into emotions because that makes me weak.

Oh dear, so maybe, I need to work on my feelings...
and I guess the best way to get that back..
is basically none other than..
to fall in love again... OH GAWD. (Bitterness is kicking in at the moment).  I will try my best.

Monday, October 3, 2011

The Mystic Garden

As I look up at the sky, I watch the birds fly by.
The wind blowing against the trees, caressing my skin like a summer breeze.
It was a quiet garden with no one yet around.
And I decided to say a prayer, to thank God for letting me experience the serenity,
    even for just a minute, this feeling of forever.
The feeling was heavenly.
I walked into the garden, towards the twirling pathways
 to sit at a stone bench.
I gazed and gazed, till I felt invisible.
Invisible to the people taking pictures.
Invisible to the gardeners.
Invisible to the people playing music.
Invisible to two strangers, one crying out her emotions, the other listening to every bit of it.
Invisible to a group of people having a conversation right beside me.
And I wonder, is this how God feels?
I sat there and saw a woman about to pass me.
I said, the gate towards that way is closed.
But she just smiled and pointed at the direction of her destination.
And as if I knew, I just said, oh.. okay.
The quietness of the garden came back to me
and I thought, no one really appreciates just sitting.
It's so majestic, everything around me doesn't feel real,
yet there I was enjoying the breeze.
I looked over in the direction the lady went and saw
that she knew where she was going, she was talking to someone.
Someone she already knew, a person who guarded the gate.

The End.

Sunday, October 2, 2011

The Aleph - Paulo Coelho

This is from a chapter in The Aleph by Paulo Coelho, my favorite author.  Please take time to read the book, or at least this small portion from the book.  The impact from reading his books are tremendous and each time, it has made me discover something about myself that inspires me to change myself for the better. The author gives insight to human phenomenon that we experience but can't explain ourselves or we ignore "thinking too much" because we think we'll get too crazy in our own thoughts.  But it makes us more open.  So I want to share this to my loved ones and hope that their past is not holding them back.

Enjoy :)


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"It doesn't matter.  You need to think about where each of us is right now, in the present moment.  We're accustomed to measuring time in the same way we measure the distance between Moscow and Vladivostok, but that isn't how it works.  Time neither moves nor is stationary.  Time changes.  We occupy one point in that constantly mutating time - our Aleph.  The idea that time passes is important when you need to know when a train is going to leave, but apart from that, it's not very useful, not even when you're cooking.  After all, however often you make a recipe, it always turns out different.  Do you follow?"

 ... "Are we the result of what we learn?"

"We learn in the past, but we are not the result of that.  We suffered in the past, loved in the past, cried and laughed in the past, but that's of no use to the present.  The present has its challenges, its good and bad side.  We can neither blame nor be grateful to the past for what is happening now.  Each new experience of love has nothing whatsoever to do with past experiences.  It's always new."

"Is it possible to fix love and make it stand still in time?  Well, we can try, but that would turn our lives into a hell.  I haven't been married for more than twenty years to the same person, because neither she nor I have remained the same person, because neither she nor I have remained the same.  That's why our relationship is more alive than ever.  I don't expect her to behave as she did when we first met.  Nor does she want me to be the person I was when I found her.  Love is beyond time, or, rather, love is both time and space, but all focused on one single constantly evolving point - the Aleph."

"People aren't used to that way of thinking.  They want everything to stay the same--"
"--and the consequence of that is pain."

"We are not the person other people wish we were.  We are who we decide to be.  It's always easy to blame others.  You can spend your entire life blaming the world, but your successes or failures are entirely your own responsibility.  You can try to stop time, but it's a complete waste of energy."

....

"But there are all kinds of problems I need to resolve now."
"They lie in what you call the 'past' and await a decision to be made in what you call the 'future.'  They clog your mind and slow you down, and won't let you understand the present.  If you rely only on experience, you'll simply keep applying old solutions to new problems.  I know a lot of people who feel they have an identity only when they're talking about their problems.  That way, they exist, because their problems are linked to what they judge to be their history."

"It takes a huge effort to free yourself from memory, but when you succeed, you start to realize that you're capable of far more than you imagined.  You live in this vast body called the Universe, which contains all the solutions and all the problems.  Visit your soul; don't visit your past.  The Universe goes through many mutations and carries the past with it.  We call each of those mutations a 'life,' but just as the cells in your body change and yet you remain the same, so time does not pass, it merely changes.  You think you're the same person you were in Ekaterinburg, but you're not.  I'm not even the same person I was when I began talking.  Nor is the train in the same place it was when Hilal played her violin.  Everything has changed; it's just that we can't see it."

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