there is a sadness tugging at my heart right now as i look at the city lights below me. just finished moving songs between my ipods and reading the word in between thinking too much, i could set a new record for myself – for not being able to sleep. now that the dust has almost settled in, there are so many things left to put in their proper places or put away in boxes to send away. the noise of the skytrain keeps me awake, as a flood of recollection try to pull me down, thoughts of people who rarely speak, but when they do, crush my heart into pieces, still linger at the back of my head when i try to close my eyes.

i need to be rid of myself.

two months and two more moves later, my previous post looks so ancient now. my new place, for the next few months at least, is on the 24th floor, overlooking the mountains, the sea, and the city lights. every day, the sound of the skytrain greets me until 2 am, it rests for two hours, then it starts again – this kept me up on the first few nights but after i finished setting up my sound system, i can now block out the noise with music as i sleep on the couch.

a week after my move, i am almost done unpacking and settling in, i boxed all the useless things i accumulated and tidied the clutter that is my stuff. having my own place again feels different. it brings me back to 5 years ago when i was living on the 22nd floor overlooking makati, 2 minutes walk to greenbelt, and 10 minutes walk to work. i remember the fireworks every week in december which i can see from the rooftop and stargazing by the pool every night.

now, half a decade later, i can’t really say i’m better off. i am more lost and more alone than ever before and the future doesn’t look friendly at all. my family is now physically and emotionally distant, my old friends have moved on to new chapters in their lives, and the new ones i’ve met have their own roots and security blankets here. i feel like a seed that grew on the wrong side of the forest.

on times like these, when i miss people who can’t be with me, i have my sailboat and my lava lamp to comfort me.

moving to a new place entails a lot of hard work, it requires not only mental and emotional preparation but tough manual labor as well – packing things into bags or boxes, discarding accumulated junk, cleaning up the old room, saying goodbye to people you will leave behind, saying hi and adjusting to the new people you will be living with, cleaning up the new room, physically carrying the stuff to the new place, unpacking them all again, and setting them up in the new corners you would want to put them in – just listing these steps is already exhausting. in fact, survey says that moving house is of the top 5 most stressful things in life, the others are work, debt, loneliness, relationship problems, and whatever else.

so why do people move in the first place? there could be a lot of different reasons – forced eviction, going to somewhere better, or it’s just the natural progression of things. not that i’ve stopped growing, but i have always remembered my growing up years to be punctuated by endless moving to different houses temporary called home. usually the scenes would be as dramatic as “running on empty” but mostly its just a chore brought about by the school or work we chose. my clothes were always in boxes or suitcases, i never bothered to take them out to put inside drawers and closets, i would never buy things mindlessly, i would always think about disposing the old one first before getting something new. or else they would be a pain to pack or carry when i move again. and so i lived my life without baggage, light, cool and easy.

last year though, i decided to spin in place, i’ve changed too much and assimilated a lot of bad things into my life, falsely believing that everything i was before should be discarded in order to stay here. i accumulated a lot of useless baggage, and now i feel heavy and burdened, but then an epiphany came and whispered a nugget of wisdom into my ears – you don’t need to be as heavy as a rock, swim in the mud or sink deep into the soil to grow roots, i could be an aerial plant instead.

today my room looks like an aftermath of a holocaust, things scattered here and there, i have to sort through everything to find out what to keep and what to throw away. these junk would have stayed hidden in bags, rotting or collecting dust, had i not decided to move to a new place and stir the skeletons in my closet. it will take a while for this place to become habitable again or have some semblance of order, but small steps get you there.

coming, going, leaving, entering, moving, staying in place, uprooting, growing roots, everything is part of what makes life interesting. this might be one small step for a wandrer like me, but it’s a giant leap for all nomads out there =)

boston was a blast, met up with zet whom i haven’t seen in 5 years – has it really been that long? it didn’t feel like it though since there wasn’t really much to catch up on coz we exchange emails almost every other day anyway. we took a stroll along harvard square and mit campus until we felt nostalgic about our own university, so we decided to drive off at 6 in the morning to the city that never sleeps: new york. we visited all the places i missed last time i went there as well as the usual stops – the financial district, ground zero, and times square. it was march and yet still freezing cold at liberty island, which is probably why it was so easy to get ferry tickets this time. snow caught up with us as we tried to jog at central park and on the way back to massachusetts it became a full blown snow storm.

warm and dry back in cambridge, i realized this would be one of the last if not the last trip we’ll ever take together before she turns another chapter in her book. we used to go island hopping in the visayas, and did spur-of-the-moment-escape-the-valentine-crowd roadtrips in luzon with ri and the rest of the gang back when everyone were still unattached. those days seem like a whole other lifetime now and i am awed at how the world and my friends have changed a lot in the span of half a decade.

my cubemates now reside in different continents and have accomplished a lot since those ne tools days of mfc and sourcesafe. it’s amazing how much each of us have grown to be who we are today, esentially the same fresh grads but much more polished and a little less idealistic. i’m excited to see what the future holds and yet at the same time afraid that i might become what i have always hoped not to be..

but there’s no use worrying too much, tomorrow will take care of itself, for now march main event is announcement of bells ringing for my fave cousin kat, and bday celebs for kuya, zet and stellah,. best wishes and maligayang bati are in order ^_^

now that i got my passport back (yey!), the world seems brighter again =) no need to be stuck in place and grieve that i can’t go to the mountains – i’m banned from snowboarding till my fractured vertebrae heals. 6 to 8 weeks, another xray, and soon i will be good as new, almost.. for now my physio says i should do core strength exercises for my back.. still hurts to sit but.. whatever, no pain no gain, hmmm what did i gain from this experience again?

in the meantime, i’m off to boston, somewhere i’ve never been, a place i only know in song, to meet up with zet and check out harvard, hmm what is there to do in this university city? maybe i should go back to school and relearn everything haha

“Boston”
by Augustana

In the light of the sun, is there anyone? Oh it has begun…
Oh dear you look so lost, eyes are red and tears are shed,
This world you must’ve crossed… you said…

You don’t know me, you don’t even care, oh yeah,
She said
You don’t know me, and you don’t wear my chains… oh yeah,

Essential yet appealed, carry all your thoughts across
An open field,
When flowers gaze at you… they’re not the only ones who cry
When they see you
You said…

You don’t know me, you don’t even care, oh yeah,
She said
You don’t know me, and you don’t wear my chains… oh yeah,

She said I think I’ll go to Boston…
I think I’ll start a new life,
I think I’ll start it over, where no one knows my name,
I’ll get out of California, I’m tired of the weather,
I think I’ll get a lover and fly em out to Spain…
I think I’ll go to Boston,
I think that I’m just tired
I think I need a new town, to leave this all behind…
I think I need a sunrise, I’m tired of the sunset,
I hear it’s nice in the Summer, some snow would be nice… oh yeah,

Boston… where no one knows my name… yeah
Where no one knows my name…
Where no one knows my name…
Yeah Boston…
Where no one knows my name.

i used to say that pain is not the worst thing in the world (forgetting is), but i was talking about emotional pain then – those tiny insignificant heartaches that can easily be blotted out by perspective and the right state of mind. physical pain is a totally different matter, i’ve tried using up all the logic in my head to convince myself that i’m not hurting, but it’s not really working, well, maybe sometimes, but not always. i thought i was good at this – tolerating pain, but i just proved myself wrong, i’m good for nothing.

last saturday, as i was getting off the lift at cypress, i felt something hit my back, then everything was a blur, i was lying on the snow facing the blue skies, and all i could think of was how those two birds looked so happy flying by. i couldn’t move, couldn’t feel my toes nor my fingers, all i could hear was people in the background telling me to get out of the way but i was in shock, nothing intelligible was coming out of my mouth, they tried to move me and i tried to get up but only my brain was working, the rest of my body didn’t respond.

there were no flashbacks, no moving pictures of life lessons ran in my mind, i made a mental note that perhaps all those books and movies were wrong, when you die, you just become this brain trapped in a body, and then slowly you will fade away.. your life will not go on instant replay, it will just be gone in the blink of an eye.. one moment you’re here, the next moment you’re gone.

numb from the cold and babbling some nonsense phrases, the first-aid team finally arrived and strapped me to a gurney then rolled me down the hill on a sled. they called for an ambulance and i found myself on my second ER trip in this lifetime. i must say ambulance ride is cool =) except i couldn’t really appreciate it that much because i had this neck brace that stopped me from looking around.

at the hospital, they took me to radiology for xrays while my friends patiently waited by my side. got dismissed by doctor saying everything will go away in a few days, but one day will be more painful than the next. he prescribed some painkillers then i was discharged, i stood up and all the pain in the world collided in my head, i felt faint and i don’t really remember much. i just knew i wanted to get out of the place fast before the world starts spinning.

later that day i got a call from the hospital saying they made a mistake interpreting my x-rays. turned out i have a fractured lumbar vertebrae, fancy name that explains the pain. and it will hurt for several weeks instead of just a few days.

so now i’m living one painful day at a time in slow motion.. it hurts to stand up, sit down, walk, laugh, breathe, digest food. stretch, i feel like an invalid, unable to pick up stuff,, yeah i’m being whiny and grumpy and on full complain mode. can’t focus or think clearly.. stopped taking the pain killers, it’s for whimps, plus it made it hard for me to breathe, the label on the bottle also scared me – habit forming. i don’t need more addictions..

the nights are worse, but tomorrow is gonna be better. pain is not the worst thing in the world after all, not even physical pain, although the mind can’t really block it out completely, it’s still all about attitude. feeling anything, even pain, just reminds us that we’re alive, and with life there is hope..

in some alternate universe, i wish my whole life just flashed before my eyes and then i’d be done with it in a split second, no more unbearable feeling of shooting pain… it’s hard accepting that i have to stay in place now, and be a burden to other people, i can’t even do my work well.. i feel so useless..

in that other life lived from the other window, i would wish myself away.. but somehow i’m somewhere else now.. somewhere i have never travelled, i’m just glad my guardian angel is taking care of me tonight.. i wish i deserved this kindness..