Moving alone.

Unfortunately, we would have to find our happiness elsewhere.

I wish you could still visit and get to know me. Didn’t we have a good time together in the past?

Find me here at soulthirst.blog.com.

Puff!

Today’s sweetest message came from my niece in Canada. She posted, “Hi Tito! I miss you! Remember when you used to sing Puff the Magic Dragon until I fall asleep?” on my Facebook wall. I definitely remember that as I was really fond of her when she was just a kid. I recall how she would wonder alound why I look so much like his dad (my brother!) and she would joke that I am her dad’s twin brother. When their house was being renovated they had to stay at our house in Fairview and that’s when I used to sing for her.

I have always wanted to ask if she remembers that but you know teen-agers, they grow up so fast that you don’t want to bother them about cute stuff like that. So today I just had my surprise that, after a few months of no communication, I get a message like the one she posted on my wall.

So the message made me sing the song while walking home. 

And the melancholic me just thought about how sad Puff is when his friend, Jackie Paper, grew up and became busy with his human life. I can totally relate being “irrelevant” to some people. However, it seems automatic to “relate” to the song as Jackie Paper and become nostalgic, and look back to the simple things one would do as a Jackie Paper, that we forget about Jackie as just 50% of the story. Our story. We are Puff, too! We will be Puff, too!

And, again, I can totally relate to Puff as someone being “left behind”, and, NO! I am not being anal retentive here! I have had the opportunity to be “important” one way or another in the company I used to work for and had made friends. Eventually, I learned, friends are kept not by just keeping them close, but also by setting them free. So if I am uninvited, not in on a secret, or not part of an FB “thread” (LOL), I’m in my little corner just being a dragon and waiting for another Jackie Paper to “babysit”. 

Here’s Peter, Paul and Mary again, after three decades from the above video. (I know I have posted this song, too, in my previous posts here - three years ago, I think - and it still give me the same effect -  where did my age of innocence go? Especially when I look at Mary.)

And here’s another for your sing-a-long pleasure!

Flightless

I sat next to a new colleague in training, in this new call center I am working for, who’s coming from a break up. The break up just happened 20 days ago. I learned only of her situation during break time, when, in my “pursuit” to make people laugh and get acquainted, conducted an informal “talk show interview-stand-up-comedy” act for those in the training room that break time.

I didn’t intend to direct the topic to relationships but somehow that’s what they wanted to talk about. This colleague, I won’t give her name out, then said she just came from a break up. 20 days ago. I wanted to stop the “session” but I couldn’t. Somehow, what I managed to do was just “mute” the conversation into the barest information and not the details. What she did tell us was that his boyfriend just broke up with her and didn’t say any reason. Whatsoever. 

I don’t want to sound messianic. But at that moment I prayed for her. There’s just no words to make her feel all right. The pain, that heaviness that runs through your legs and weakens you and incapacitates you every time the thought of being left alone enters your mind - there’s just no pain killer for that.

I don’t want to be patronizing. Nor do I want to portray myself as a “savior.” But whatever I can do, if she would allow me, to make the journey not that lonely I would. No one has to journey in pain alone. After just five minutes discussing her break up with generalities, we were called by our Trainer to gather up front to resume training.

It took a while for me to focus on the task at hand and somehow focused on my needs in so far as relationship is concerned. 

After the shift, I went to Lagro church’s Adoration chapel. There I saw the warning, “Don’t touch me, I’ll touch you” near the Blessed Sacrament. It was enough to “break” me, and make me set aside my so-called needs and apologized for focusing on my self too much. 

I had to put quotation marks when I mentioned break. For truly, on my way to Lagro church, I was praying and saying “Break me, Lord. And form a new me.” And some other thought came to me, that fortunately for us, there is no threshold for the grace of our Lord. That if I ask that I be given the grace to forgive, to love, to give, and be formed - no matter how painful it would be at first - God will not count the times I ask and run to Him.

Now for the video above. And why it’s there in the first place. Call me full of drama. But at the 20th second of the second minute, I just felt I knew the feeling of the kiwi bird. 

Yet, my mind can’t process the words to describe it right now. 

There are things that are rendered on a very emotional level. And you’re just left wishing there’s someone who would sit next to you and tell you, “I’m interested. Tell me.” 

Because it’s just a pity that no one will get to know how beautiful a person I can be… even in my breaking point.

Rage

There is a rage in me that I cannot further explain - the origin, the cause is yet unexplored.

What I do know is I want to listen to indigenous or tribal music. The the rythmic pounding on gongs and its repetitions, it is as if it’s calling out the enraged soul to let it all out…

We have a problem, Fairview..

So I was all excited about the new blog which I created a week ago. Was happy to learn that just like i.ph, it allows embedding mp3s. Perfect for my practice to either post an mp3 or a poem before the body of the blog entry.

However, whenever I post a link from Youtube, all it posts are the HTML codes (or do they call that embedding codes?).

Anyway, that was a major putdown so I am back here.

Nothing major to say except something that I found as a caption for a link in Youtube.

It says:

The scariest part in being loved by someone is the uncertainty, that they may stop anytime they want..

What the heck!

Here’s the video where I found the caption.

Soulthirst

I had a dream a few nights ago. It was so beautiful that it is wrong to wish it to be real. 

Because when I start thinking of the things that I “feel” I am deserving of, I just might believe this misleading mind.

Honey take me home
Let’s go back to yesterday
I miss the hungry years
The once upon a time
The lovely long ago
We didn’t have a dime
Those days of me and you
We lost along the way

If anyone’s actually reading this, please try visiting my new blog. I might leave this blog for that one. 

Toska: Follow up to The Unnamed Wanting

Back in 1991, Toska was a choice alcoholic beverage for me and my friends in San Beda College. Toska is a vodka and relatively cheap at that time. Or may be not. I wasn’t the one spending for the alcohol. It was my friend Joey who at that time was generous and was capable of being generous with the alcohol money. 

Through the years I have come to known other stuff in the name of variety. White Castle, a 70s drink that we thought of trying, was one of them. Fast forward to the 2000s and I choose what I drink. Lately, it’s Tanduay Ice although when I was still occupying a good seat in the corporate ladder I drink Vodka Cruiser as a BYO (bring your own) beverage in my own family’s gathering. (I intend to write about that corporate ladder in a separate blog entry.)

Anyway, I was just reminded of Toska a day a couple of days after I posted previous entry. Because the feeling I was looking for, or at least the word that approximates what I was trying to say, wasn’t really unnamed. I found it from a Facebook link posted by a friend. It lists words without English translations. However, I will just stick to Toska.

Toska - noun /ˈtō-skə/ - Russian word roughly translated as sadness, melancholia, lugubriousness. 

No single word in English renders all the shades of toska. At its deepest and most painful, it is a sensation of great spiritual anguish, often without any specific cause. At less morbid levels it is a dull ache of the soul, a longing with nothing to long for, a sick pining, a vague restlessness, mental throes, yearning. In particular cases it may be the desire for somebody of something specific, nostalgia, love-sickness. At the lowest level it grades into ennui, boredom.” 
― Vladimir Nabokov

The obsession in that feeling, or even word, came from another post, which I can’t find at the moment. When I discovered the music of The Best Pessimist, Trentmoller and Hammock, someone posted a comment about an unnamed feeling about longing and yearning. I “liked” his comment as I felt I knew what he or she was talking about. But I felt I needed to record what that person said verbatim to be satisfied that I do understand him or her.

Especially now that there was a certain feeling I got when I woke up from a dream last night. 

I think I need a drink.

Toska.

The Unnamed or Indescribable Wanting

Correction, sir!

I don’t know if it’s the browser or i.ph but I can’t seem to edit the previous post “I am, I said”. I basically use Mozilla for i.ph because it always says that i.ph is not compatible with any other browsers. 

Anyway, I wanted to edit two things on the previous blog:

First sentence should read:

Lately I have been listening to and watching old songs via Youtube. 

And the sentence after the Youtube/video should have read:

There was so much “wanting” (for lack of a better word) in the part when he sings:

I have been thinking of moving on to another blog site. But I didn’t want to leave my older posts. And there’s no way to move the old posts here with just a few clicks, unlike Blogger to Wordpress.

Oh well!

"I am," I said*

Lately I have been listening and watching to old songs via Youtube. I feel, without Youtube, this generation will have very little chance of getting to know great music unless a popular icon remakes them. Anyway, I was probably too young to be a music lover then, and pretty much relied on what my brother (the certified music lover in the family) played on the stereo when it comes to good music.

But that didn’t mean I didn’t have my own favorites when I was young. I believe I got hooked with Simon and Garfunkel’s Sound of Silence simply because my class sang it for our parents. (Oh that takes me back in time once again!). Then, Peter, Paul and Mary. And I found them by accident. I found a cassette tape one time when I was playing inside my brother’s room. I fell in love with “If I had a hammer”, “500 miles”, “Lemon Tree” etc. So years after, during the first anniversary of the EDSA People Power Revolution and the trio came to the Philippines, insisting that they be a part of the bloodless revolution (flower power, man!), I just had to be there to see them live. Sadly, since my dad feels I was too young to be there (15!), I just watched them at home.

But this is what’s ironic. My dad thought it was fine I was in EDSA during the revolution but he wouldn’t let me be in a concert?! Ha ha! Maraming tao?! Ha ha ha!

Ah, to be an adolescent then. Revolution, uprising, upheavals, socio-political discontent was a way of life then. HA!

Anyway, I digress. There were other favorites at that time. But as I grew older, I came across Neil Diamond. The actor. I first learned about him as an actor for The Jazz Singer before learning about him as the singer. In fact, it is only now that I learned he was really popular during his time. Thanks to Google. 

There was a time that I would joke about him as an idol, and I just realized I was telling the truth. I like his voice and I like his songs. 

A friend of mine said I am very passive when it comes to music or any art form. I’d choose one or two songs from an artist then let that artist or album be forgotten. True. So today, I listened to Love on The Rocks again, and read the lyrics…

Why am I melancholic once more?

* Title of this blog entry is taken from Neil’s other hit, “I am, I said.”

There was so much “wanting” (for lack of a better word) in the part:

First they say they want you
How they really need you
Suddenly you find you’re out there
Walking in the storm

When they know they have you
Then they really have you
Nothing you can do or say
You’ve got to leave, just get away
We all know the song

It’s this unnamed “wanting” that I want to make use of in writing. I wish I could sing so I can use it in singing too. There’s just a lot of windows in my emotions that I want to identify

and use it to create something beautiful for the person I love.