a pilgrim’s trace

sulit ang pamimilosopo pag ginagamit sa tunay na buhay.

-        Sadyang nilalapitan ang mabuti dahil ito ay sadyang mabuti at karapat-dapat upang piliin, paghirapan at panindigan.  Walang mabuting madaling kamtin, sakali ma’y marami-raming dapat hamakin.  Bagaman sa tulong ng talino’y maaaring itong pagaanin, ang kahulugan (at alinsunod nito – ang kabutihan) ay lumalalim sa tindi ng mga gawaing natapos at mga hamong nalampsan (nang may saysay).

-         Iba ang ligaya at ang mabuti – liligaya lamang ang tao nang lubos sa bagay na mabuti; hindi dahil sa madali itong makuha o dahil sa ito’y nagbibigay ng ginhawa – kundi dahil sadya itong mabuti.

-         May kaibahan ang ginhawa at ang kaligayahan, ang una’y naka-angkla sa madaling gawin ang ikalawa’y nakakapit sa kahulugan.  Hindi laging maginhawa ang paghahanap ng kahulugan – hindi rin naman makahulugan ang lahat ng maginhawa.  Ang ginhawa’y madaling maramdaman (ganun din naman ang sakit), ngunit ang kahulugan ay hindi nakikita sa kababawan ng mga pangyayari.

-         Sa mabuti’y di maaring maging tanga, tamad o ubod nang ginhawa… wala itong pinuputol at pinipigil.  Ang pagtamo nito’y isang paghinto – isang tiyak na paghinto dahil ito’y hudyat ng pagkagamit ng lahat ng lakas at tapang na mayroon ang isang tao.  Bagaman sa mabuti, wala kang hahangarin kundi ang ituloy ang laban, ang pagpapanatili nito.

Veritas in caritate – ang katotohanan sa pag-ibig.  Ang pag-ibig ay nananahan sa katotohanan, ang katotohanan ay nananahan sa pag-ibig.  At syempre, ang totoo ay yun lamang sadyang mabuti.

[somewhere i have never travelled]

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me,i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain, has such small hands

True enough Melai, this is the International Season of Jerks.  This goes to everyone… yes, to girls.

from "Dead Stars" by Paz Marquez Benitez

Alfredo remembered that period with a wonder not unmixed with shame. That was less than four years ago. He could not understand those months of a great hunger that was not of the body nor yet of the mind, a craving that had seized on him one quiet night when the moon was abroad and under the dappled shadow of the trees in the plaza, man wooed maid. Was he being cheated by life? Love–he seemed to have missed it. Or was the love that others told about a mere fabrication of perfervid imagination, an exaggeration of the commonplace, a glorification of insipid monotonies such as made up his love life? Was love a combination of circumstances, or sheer native capacity of soul? In those days love was, for him, still the eternal puzzle; for love, as he knew it, was a stranger to love as he divined it might be.

Sitting quietly in his room now, he could almost revive the restlessness of those days, the feeling of tumultuous haste, such as he knew so well in his boyhood when something beautiful was going on somewhere and he was trying to get there in time to see. "Hurry, hurry, or you will miss it," someone had seemed to urge in his ears. So he had avidly seized on the shadow of Love and deluded himself for a long while in the way of humanity from time immemorial. In the meantime, he became very much engaged to Esperanza.

Why would men so mismanage their lives? Greed, he thought, was what ruined so many. Greed–the desire to crowd into a moment all the enjoyment it will hold, to squeeze from the hour all the emotion it will yield. Men commit themselves when but half-meaning to do so, sacrificing possible future fullness of ecstasy to the craving for immediate excitement. Greed–mortgaging the future–forcing the hand of Time, or of Fate.

BOW.