Here I Go Again…

Sent a text message to my broker this evening — I won’t be renewing my lease when it ends in mid-May.

She asked me where I was moving to and my honest reply was: I don’t know.
And here are some other things I don’t know for now, but am not too worried about:

1. I don’t know where I’m going to live in June, when I come back from a quick trip to Cebu, followed by another quick one to Dumaguete for the 50th anniversary of the National Writers’ Workshop, then (hopefully — fingers crossed) to a little ashram in Cavite for ten days of Vipassana.

2. I don’t know how I’m going to finish the personal writing project with the big deadline set in August. I really don’t, but somehow I see it happening.

3. I don’t know what I’ll be like after I’ve pared down the number of anchors I cling hard and fast to in my life (one of them literally) to almost zero, determinedly trying to rely only on myself. But things look promising.

4. I don’t know if I’ve found my True North, then decided to switch directions, or if I’ve suddenly developed an inner compass that I know now where to go. We’ll see.

And so: good night, and good luck.

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Making a Manifesto

The idea was Abi’s.

Maybe, she said to me this afternoon at the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf on Tordesillas, drafting a personal manifesto would help us understand some of the things we want to know about ourselves. Show us what we’ve stood for, if what we stand for is as elusive as the winning lotto combination. Bring some clarity, if we’ve been struggling to see who we are as though we had shampoo in our eyes.

So we head over to Bugsy’s where presumably clarity will come to us like a friend sidling up to a stool at the bar. I bring out a piece of paper on which to scribble notes (the backside of my salsa class lesson plan), and begin scribbling. Abi dutifully begins work on her “Mamu-festo” and I on my “Me-me-festo”.

There are some things that come easy for me — on writing: craft and style uber alles; on kindness: unconditional shouldn’t be unreasonable or short-sighted — and then there are those that draw blood.

When, for instance, is kindness real? And to whom should we be generous with compassion — ourselves first of all, or to the ones we love? Is such an act one and the same, in the end? And: if we are to be profoundly truthful to ourselves, how do we be begin to live through the uncomfortable episodes that will inevitably arise?

I order a beer to soften the edge. Some big decisions need to be made, and soon. Abi orders coffee, then a Coke. We promise to revise our notes because it’s important, she says, to be pithy with such momentous declarations. The idea is that if we show our manifestos to someone else, they could easily jump to the conclusion that, “Yeah, that sounds like Abi”, or, “Of course, that’s Tara.”

Here’s hoping 🙂 Good night everybody, it’s been a very productive Sunday 🙂

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