she said call me now, baby... i'd come a-runnin.

It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living.
I want to know what you ache for
and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.

It doesn’t interest me how old you are.
I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool
for love
for your dream
for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon…
I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow
if you have been opened by life’s betrayals
or have become shrivelled and closed
from fear of further pain.

I want to know if you can sit with pain
mine or your own
without moving to hide it
or fade it
or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy
mine or your own
if you can dance with wildness
and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes
without cautioning us
to be careful
to be realistic
to remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me
is true.
I want to know if you can
disappoint another
to be true to yourself.
If you can bear the accusation of betrayal
and not betray your own soul.
If you can be faithless
and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see Beauty
even when it is not pretty
every day.
And if you can source your own life
from its presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure
yours and mine
and still stand at the edge of the lake
and shout to the silver of the full moon,
“Yes.”

It doesn’t interest me
to know where you live or how much money you have.
I want to know if you can get up
after the night of grief and despair
weary and bruised to the bone
and do what needs to be done
to feed the children.

It doesn’t interest me who you know
or how you came to be here.
I want to know if you will stand
in the centre of the fire
with me
and not shrink back.

It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom
you have studied.
I want to know what sustains you
from the inside
when all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone
with yourself
and if you truly like the company you keep
in the empty moments.

~Oriah Mountain Dreamer

ge has been gone for over 10 years. we wrote letters constantly during her first few months in the states, mostly because she didn't have school yet and was adjusting to her new life and had no friends yet and was just generally scared. then we all got busy. she began going to school. we started im-ing regularly (msn messenger!) so our letters stopped. we e-mailed though with less frequency. we updated each other about boys in our lives. we talked about college plans. courses. plans to shift. what to do after college. e-mails became scarce. a couple of years ago i told her about what happened with nameless. a year ago she posted pictures of aleli getting married. several months ago she told me she was also engaged. she was rarely online and so our stories were few and far between. a couple of pictures here and there. a bunch of "i miss you"s.

so imagine how nervous i was to see her again. i came from gym and was on my way to this opus dei retreat. she was preparing for her sick grandmother's birthday party. we had very little time to talk. i was walking to H salon with a general feeling of anxiety. will she be the same? will she still like me/us? will she like manila still or hate it the way most balikbayans do?

i talked to this girl for hours during those hot summer days of 1994-1998. our pictures are under the word telebabad in the dictionary. we went through the really bad stages of puberty together. i was the sebastian and she was ariel (coco, too. i think) when we staged the little mermaid back in grade 3. we were together when we watched our first movie ever without adults, first trip outside st. scho to eat at jollibee, first cab rides to Quad, among others. and there we were, grown-women, practically strangers.

friendship - i've always believed in quality vs. quantity. i keep a very small group of close friends, all of whom i refer to as my best friends. and i know no matter how little time we spend together, we're there for the best parts and the worst parts of life. and that we may not share the trivial details of everyday life (like we do with work friends, for example), but when we come together, the absence is negligible.

needless to say, it was the same with ge.
hopefully we get to go to her wedding next year. :')

 

Eighty passengers on a domestic flight narrowly escaped disaster in Bicol over the weekend. Only the deft handling by the pilot of the Cebu Pacific flight kept the plane from colliding with a Lite Ace van on the tarmac of the Legazpi City airport Saturday afternoon. French pilot Christopher Nowioki managed to make the plane climb back up moments after it touched down.

What was the van doing on the tarmac? An airport VIP, the son of the head of the local office of the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines , was teaching his girlfriend how to drive, according to reports from Legazpi. For Luis Sto. Domingo Jr., nothing less than an airport tarmac would do for the precious driving lessons. The younger Sto. Domingo also reportedly used the tarmac as access road to his home.

There was no immediate comment yesterday from the privileged driving tutor’s father, Frisco Sto. Domingo, probably because Legazpi City Mayor Noel Rosal was fuming over the incident. Rosal was at the airport to welcome Tourism Secretary Ace Durano, who was on the Cebu Pacific flight, and was surprised when the plane took off as soon as it touched down.

Apart from vans where private driving lessons are given, it would not be surprising to see cattle, dogs and goats on Philippine airport tarmacs. In several airports, children can enter the airport grounds from shanties straddling the perimeter walls. As the case in Legazpi showed, tarmacs can also be used as access roads to private residences.

Mayor Rosal is seeking immediate sanctions on the elder Sto. Domingo. The driving tutor must also be held liable for entering a restricted area and endangering the safety of a commercial flight. Unless sanctions are imposed, this dangerous incident will be dismissed as Pinoy comedy and may be repeated. And the next time, disaster may not be averted. - (Philstar News Service, www.philstar.com)

right. so i had this plan to like, go crazy and do, you know, crazy things for the last 24 days of my being 24. i totally forgot to start it though and it doesn't exactly make sense if i celebrate the last 16 days of my being 24, right? and i couldn't even operationally define crazy. like what? take my top off. sure. and by sure i don't mean, sure sure, just sure sure.

right. so what happened was i took a shuttle home. i do it most of the time because it's practically a carpool and it drops me off in front of my house for 60 bucks. come on. what a deal.

HOTHOTHEAT.

i did not get to go to work this morning because i woke up at 4am and my hand was on my tummy. did i mention it was aching like hell? i dunno, this is probably the third time i went through this. i'm not even sure if it's hyperacidity. and i really don't feel like going to the hospital to tell them my tummy's sad and they'll just give me an antacid and we'll call it a day.