Theories

Sunshine has this theory about love and parking spaces. She said your luck in finding prime parking is inversely proportional to your luck in love. In her case, she never had to worry about parking because, as theory has it, she'll find one faster than a date.

Jon has another. He said every person attracts a specific type of love and heartache, determined by the initials of the other. In his case, he's more likely to get involved with men whose names start with A. He also thinks there's a higher chance of the involvement going south if the guy has the same initial.

I have yet to validate Sunshine's parking theory for myself. Partly because my success in getting good parking on gimik nights is so so. Mainly because I don't believe luck has anything to do with love.

On Jon's take, I am co-author of this theory, if not the main author, since I first pointed to him that I seem to have the J curse - most people I get involved with have first names, second names or nicknames that start with J. It was I who first came up with the idea of the ABC theory, though he wrote about it first and hence, the credit goes to him. Bugger!

Yes, in the same way that Jon has his As, I have my Js. I used to say I have this J-curse, and true enough, I seem to be a magnet for ones with the J in their initials: JMs, JTs, JRs, MJs, TJs, RJs and the simply Js...but for the most part, those two-first-namers who go with 2-letter nicknames.

I don't call it a curse anymore, but a blessing. Most of these Js are cute anyway, so why complain. Besides, I happen to be in love with One, complete with the 2-letter nickname and several unmentionable adjectives, lest my blog gets censored, so I'd settle for cute and hot na lang.

Thankful for

*Send off dinners
*Starbucks
*Remote Fridays
*Lemon squares
*Coffee shops with operational WiFi
*Friends who know, and friends who don't
*Blogs where you can do residual venting
*and private journals where you can write whatever you want to say
*SMS (or lack of response to mean you were mad)
*The word Crisis
*Conversations that clear things up
*The strength to let someone know you are weak
*And loving someone more than you ever thought you are capable of.

Wifi hell

"I just needed to know where I stand. I am not one of your options. If you ask me to wait, I will. Not forever, of course, but at least you give me something to decide on. What I won't have you do is string me around, lead me on, keep me as if I am one of your errands that you can de-prioritize when something more exciting comes along."

-sentiments of a friend. I never understood her until today, when I am strongly reminded that there was a time I used to play this game, and why I decided it wasn't worth it. I had hoped my sins would never come back and haunt me.

I am so dead wrong.

Sailing and the shore

I'll probably be doing a lot of running tonight. And a lot of thinking.

Jenny's leaving for Germany in a week's time, and it will be months before I see her again. We joked about what could happen in 3 months - who knows? Lots of possibilities - the ring, the proposal, or the ultimatum. The romantic part of me knows the deal will be sealed and my chances of being a donor dad will be next to nothing where she's concerned. I don't want to even consider the darker side of realm of possibilities attached to this trip. Not being her donor dad doesn't bother me at all. I just want my friend to be happy.

We came to the topic of frames of mind, or mindsets if you will. At our age, we both know we're ready to settle down. We can make calculated risks about our private lives and know what to give up, what not to. In her case, my friend knows she can go as far as migrating to where her love is, giving up a very stable and successful career and starting over again in a foreign land. She's even learning the language. To me, that's fairly strong indication of how far she's willing to go for the opportunity of a lifetime. And even though she wouldn't call it that, I would anyway.

The thing is, given our age and presumed maturity, we tend to be impatient when we see someone taking too long considering options, or taking too much trying to cover every turn and trying to make sure everything is perfect. We may have been perfectionists ourselves, but we know that in love and in life, there is no guarantee. Didn't we find that out the past 10 years of our lives, trying to look for love in places it never existed and overlooking where it does?

I just wish there's a way to synchronize frames of mind in the same way we synchronize time. Then I'm reminded of how the beauty around us unfolds, not by force but by nurture. And that requires time. 

Coping with missing

When I was 6 years old, my mom had to be away for a while for graduate studies at UP. That was the first time a parent was away for more than a week or so (I see my dad on weekends lang, but that's another story.)

Anticipating the distress on a child being away from his mother for such a long time, well-meaning relatives gave but one big suggestion: that my mom wrap her used clothing on my pillows, so I may sleep with her familiar scent around me. It probably worked, got me thru the whole experience.

I find myself doing the same thing to get by when missing Broody. Of course nowadays technology makes it easier to be connected, but the familiar scent on the pillows and the sweater he so loved to use when seeing movies at Greenbelt helps get me thru the days we're apart (which, to begin with, isn't too much, but hey allow me for being a baby at this for once).

As I've said, I'm big on coping mechanisms - there used to be the moping album, the aimless driving, the ONS, even the drastic haircut and the flavors of the month - now I have used clothing to cope with missing the One I love very very badly.

Oh and about the ring? It's a status band. Yep, Mopey is taken.

It's started

Ironic though it may seem, since the nightmare you had the other night goes by the name of the band whose work below is my current theme. You know I'm big on coping mechanisms. Allow me this one, too.


To see you when I wake up, is a gift I didn't think could be real
To know that you feel the same, as I do, is a Three-fold utopian dream
You do something to me
That I can't explain
So would I be out of line,
If I said I miss you.

I see your picture, I smell your skin on, the empty pillow next to mine
You have only been gone few days, but already I am wasting away
I know I'll see you again
Whether far or soon
But I need you to know, that I care
And I miss you

A season of firsts

A season of wonderful discoveries, of finding the treasures the universe intended me to have.

It's been a while since I looked at summer as a special season, one that raises your temperature in excitement and fun, one that makes you look forward to days of lounging around doing nothing but watch TV, go to the malls, frolick at the beach, and hang out with friends without worries of school or anything else other than your curfew or your allowance. I've forgotten how it feels like, the summer season and being young, until I was precipitously reminded by the One who came into my life at a time when I needed to remember and feel how it is to be alive.

I can't remember how or when I started to stop experiencing life, how it changes into different seasons, when rains and thunderstorms herald the end of one and the arrival of another. No one knows exactly when they lose their childhood, let alone their inner child, although some are lucky enough to still be in touch with the latter all their adult life. I know mine is still deep in slumber when this summer came, and is only now beginning to stir and surface again.

That is has been a month of pleasant discoveries is an understatement. I felt like I was asleep all these years, maybe dead even. To wake up to this is the best thing ever a man could pray for. And be thankful for.

Cycle

As a kid I've had many mentors, owing to the fact that I've started like some gifted child who can handle fractional division while fighting with my yaya for control over the TV channels. In gradeschool I remember being coached by the best teachers in town during quiz bees and spelling bees. In high school I was a Math Olympian, with an equally talented math mentor always pushing harder. In college I presided over the Honor Society, with the school's best and brightest alumni behind me. Even in grad school, when I took four Math courses under the same professor simply because I enjoyed his math (he returned the favor by offering me a job at his firm). Always there is someone behind me, someone I knew to be better and more experienced than I am at that point.

I remember glimpses of greatness and honor and pride. I remember other coaches whispering my name with a tone of defeat, as if my being in the same contest as their wards is as good as losing. I remember perfect scores, and how I was the only one able to do it ever. There was even a time a new teacher tried and retried several exams to the detriment of the class average, only to find out that the only way to get me to not make a perfect score is to cheat the class into taking an exam on a topic that was never in the syllabus.

I also remember times when I dropped the ball intentionally, mostly to spite my parents or a new coach whose style I really never liked (anyone who would criticize my watching more TV than studying will surely get this treatment). I've learned that the threat of losing face is strong motivation to make them (read: allow me more TV time).

In general, however, I enjoyed my childhood because I got away from doing things I hated at that time, like doing practical shop or tending a school garden. Being labeled tamad by my mother as I avoided chores by pretending to be solving a math problem on a weekend was common compliment. Of course she knew then, that the time I spent studying for anything is just a fraction of the time I waste watching TV or reading comic books, but she let me be anyway.

It comes to me now, that while I was heavily mentored in academics, I was left alone to learn about the basics of life and living, of relationships and loving. I learned mostly by doing, and by the advice of well-meaning friends whose counsel I seek in these matters. Now past 30, I realize that the student in me has become a mentor, too. And therein lies my issue - how am I supposed to be a mentor in matters of life when I have only my own experiences to guide me? Aren't I supposed to have a mentor in this, too?

The good thing, though, is that in the process I learn more about myself, and that the dilemma is always about how far to go without spoiling the experience, and how tight a leash without stiffling it.