The First January Sky

And so with the fireworks and loud noises, Skywalker signs back on! Hello, my fellow porchers! I missed this place! After reading your beautiful posts, I am nothing short of inspired to share with you my thoughts for this year aptly named 2011.

First things first, Tiger Lily, as always, your post is beautiful. Penny Lane, your reply made me all the more inspired to write here again! And of course, my beloved King, K. Sol, always the glue of happiness that holds us all together, I greet thee with a Happy New Year! To the others who are yet to write, I say HELLO and HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Ok, let’s get down to business! (I’m so excited to write again!)

I guess the best way to open is to say “Goodbye, 2010! You were a good year and you made things clearer for me, thank you. However, I must move on and hope to get better.”

Porchers, I want to share with you the experience I had while I was celebrating the New Year. Lemme paint the picture for you: Before today, I was actually fuming. My mother is not exactly the coolest person to deal with when under a lot of stress. This year, finally – as one of my wishes came true – she invited my grandpa to spend New Year’s with us because he is pretty much alone and living in a slum. I will never forget the happiness on his face when he found out he was spending it with us after so many years of not talking to my mother. Fast forward to yesterday.

Mother starts to act annoyed towards lolo. That’s not cool. I wanted to shout at her and tell her how childish she’s being and how stupid it is to invite your father and NOT WANT to INTERACT with him. That broke my heart a little bit. All I could think about was telling her “How would YOU feel if I treated YOU like that when YOU get older?!” And as always, I kept my cool and I shut up. Having my spirit dampened a little, I was going back to “I give up” mode to ever bridge this gap between them.

Fast forward to New Year’s Eve. My mom cooks this amazing dinner for everybody. Steak, salmon, 2 kinds of pasta etc. and I was much like a giddy little boy. HEEHEE. One of the best meals EVER. My lolo enjoyed, everyone was laughing, I’m happy. After dinner we decided to go out and watch the fireworks for midnight. Lolo wanted to sleep in because it was so cold and he never really gets to experience nice beds anymore. So, we get to the field where there’s a countdown concert. We decided to watch it from the outside and NOT pay to be part of the program. (Sidetrack and the reason why we didn’t go in: They were singing Luther Vandross’ DANCE WITH MY FATHER 40 minutes before the fireworks go off. UHM.) We were all in a talking mood so we were just having fun outside and poking fun at the laughable playlist (Try It On My Own by Whitney Houston. :|)

Fast forward to midnight. I had a realization – almost similar to how Sherlock figures out the answers – and it is a very beautiful one. I found it so awe-inspiring how ushering in a new year – with all its fireworks and loud noises – can bring such a calm within you. It made me forget all the disappointment and annoyance I had with my mom. It’s as if I found this clearing amidst the cluttered negative emotions. A break. A sanctuary.

While those bright lights were igniting the first January sky, I couldn’t help but look back at the year that passed and forget – YES, FORGET – all the worries I have for 2011. Sometimes, life is just about moments. Moments that made you laugh. Moments that made you go “HOLY…” Moments that were burned in your head for a myriad of reasons be it right or wrong, disturbing or calming. And thankfully, moments that make you see how beautiful life really is. That moment that makes you realize that LIFE isn’t THAT bad. At least for me, in those first 5 minutes, the world stopped and all the worries and trepidations dissipated into the night sky much like those fireworks.

THIS is what I love about ushering in a new year: You get to start over with a clean slate. A second chance. Heck, maybe even 365 chances. It gives you a bird’s eye view of everything. Much like how we were all raving about 2010, I will now rave about 2011. Let me be the first to say it: THIS IS GOING TO BE THE BEST YEAR OF OUR LIVES. We have only our path to tread in front of us, dear friends. It’s RIGHT THERE. All we have to do is follow it. I think 2010, or every year prior to this one, equipped us with the ability to face the challenges that will come our way. The trick is digging deeper and figuring out which skills to use. If this year be another year of trials, BRING IT! If something knocks you down, GET BACK UP. Like Tiger Lily said: YOU BE YOUR OWN HAPPINESS.

Easier said than done BUT, IT CAN BE DONE WHEN WE KEEP SAYING IT’S EASY. Skywalker’s hand will always be outstretched for you, dear friend.

Cheers!

Happy New Year and May The Force Be With You!

Skywalker

 

Project: Rehabilitate Creativity

I am in a rut. Wait, wait, before you start thinking that it’s the same rut as before, keep your panties on, porcher.

Concerns, concerns, concerns. Complaints, complaints, complaints. Boy, those words made me want to slash the holy hell out of the old Skywalker with my brand new swanky green lightsaber (Catch my drift?). I’m quite tired from all that. So I tell you now, dear porcher, this is not an entry about those dreaded C words. This is about moving on, wearing the single black glove, getting used to my new cyborg hand, paying tribute to my Jedi master and setting the coordinates for the next star system.

So, back to the rut in question. Let us refer to our friend Maslow’s pyramid of human needs. My anomaly lies on that tiny little chunk on the apex labeled “Self Actualization.” Right now, I am on a hiatus. Aside from the 3-month Facebook hiatus that was self-imposed (with witnesses Penny Lane and Tiger Lily) in order to distance myself from the social world, I have come to realize that I am on a writing hiatus! I haven’t written a sensible blog in at least 2 months, let alone a song, which I would really love to do. This is probably the explanation why I haven’t written here in the porch as well. (Are you also going through the same thing, porcher?)

For an artist, especially a very vocal one, this is artistic sickness and stagnancy. Sickness and stagnancy leads to decay and I can’t quite accept that idea. This morning, I just realized how I feel like I’ve lost touch with the pen. A painful thought, yes, but also a good point to ponder on. I wracked my brains to try and look for an explanation and I realized a handful of things.

Let me carry you through the thought process:

1. I remember before, when I still had a band, the words just came to me along with the melody. I’d pick up a pen and voila, something comes out. It’s as if the pen was controlling my hand and it led me to write the curves that led to words that led to melodies that led to a song.

2. The last song I wrote was our graduation song called “How?” I remember asking a friend to put this violin melody I had in my head when I asked him to listen to me play and sing it for the first time. A Frickin’ Melody for the Violin, for Pete’s sake! Where the heck did that come from? I even remember buying nice sketch pads and pens just to have a place to write my compositions. Somehow, I never filled that sketch pad.

3. College came and my focus shifted. I left the band and moved on to different things. One shove towards a table with a sign-up sheet, a hair perm and countless shouts of  “Creme Brulee!” later, I realized that I can do musical theater! I have found my mistress! Still, I stayed on the course and continued to write from time to time. No sketchbook this time but my school notebooks sure did look cluttered with random words that rhyme. The biggest thing I remember from this period is I always told myself that maybe I’m just waiting for the right influence to pattern my genre after.

4. Somewhere between that and graduation day, I just stopped writing. Focus shifts were too drastic and falling into the portal of what’s instant sort of consumed most of the time for creativity. What used to be a ruthless search for a genre transformed into a passive appreciation rather than an involved creation based on music that engaged me.

5. And now here we are. Looking back at everything felt like dusting off an old book – an old side of me that has always been there but never really surfaced, or  I should say resurfaced, because of pressing concerns. It’s like one of those moments when you dig out your closet and you scream “Hey, I thought I lost this shirt!” Of course, it pales in comparison to the magnitude of attempting to rediscover your creativity and that’s why I decided to take it out of the shelf and put it on the spotlight.

Now, the question is what can I do? What SHOULD I do? Well, as far as life-altering solutions go, I’ve got squat. However, little by little I intend to regain that composure. What’s important is I want to do something about it. Maybe it can start with buying that Sketch Pad and set of pens again. Maybe by writing a line or two a day. Maybe it doesn’t even have to be a song. Maybe I can start my own blog. Who knows?

What I will walk away from this though is the realization that the beauty of this thought process is how getting stuck can show you the different alternatives you have especially when you feel like everything that makes you carry on to get through this tough life is at stake. This is what this blog is about, dear porcher. The other, more important and less attractive set of C words: CHOICE and CREATIVITY. Everyday, we are given a choice. Chicken or fish, beef or pork, pink or blue, Aquino or Villar (I hope Gordon though), truth or dare, diet or pig out. More often than not, we have more than two things to choose from and that’s a chance for the creativity to kick in. With those 2 C words together we scratch the surface of the more important universal force we need to learn how to harness and embrace (Oh, and I remember we stated here that it is what this year is about.) CHANGE.

As of now, Project: Rehabilitate Creativity has begun.

Dear porcher, since I have come to realize (through Tiger Lily, checking the Porch site, and more of Tiger Lily) how stagnant the porch has become due to busy schedules, I would assume, I hope you don’t mind that I took the liberty in making this the next topic for our discussion to sort of get the ball rolling once again. You have to:

1. Think of a creative activity you USED/HAVE BEEN LONGING to do. (Writing, Singing, Dancing, Acting, Movie-making etc.)

2. Try to come up with concrete ways of rehabilitating/starting out this new creativity. If there are no concrete solutions, a thought process would more than suffice.

THERE YOU GO!

***Oh, and finally, I showed this to Tiger Lily and I think this video will/should help. This video highlights points 1 and 2 of the thought process very clearly.

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/elizabeth_gilbert_on_genius.html

I HIGHLY ENCOURAGE YOU TO WATCH IT. *Insert my overexcited face here.* It’s just 20 minutes of your time.

I cannot wait to read your entries!

May the force be with you,

Skywalker

 

Of Reconnections and Harry Potter

I did it. Yesterday, I set out to reconnect with an old friend and we ended up talking about Harry Potter and Ateneo Education. How random. Anyway, about the person. I met her at a soiree during 3rd year High School (yuck) and after that we became friends and a year later, we just didn’t get to talk anymore. We pretty much went our separate ways because, at the time, I always had a cloud of insecurity hanging above my head (e.g. I’m not cool enough to talk to this girl.)

Her status message on YM: “P***ngina ang bakla ng kapatid ko!”

Me: Haha I know this might seem so random, but I just love your status message.

Friend: My brother studies and Ateneo and he speaks really annoying english. As in the  make tusok tusok the fishball kind.

Me: HAHAHA! I am both amused and sorry for you.

Friend: Yeah, what’s it about that school that doesn’t allow people to choose just ONE LANGUAGE AT A TIME to speak?

And from there, we got to Harry Potter and how the books always ruled over the movies. She hates Emma Watson, much to my dismay. But overall, we both agreed that Twilight is no match compared to Harry Potter.

So what’s the point of this exercise? I asked myself that before I considered reconnecting with this friend. Then I realized, it’s not about what you talk about, it’s the fact that you’re talking again. It’s like a mirror of your past. You realize how much you’ve changed from that loser in high school who had no self-confidence and did not know how to speak to human beings properly. Somehow, you just see that in reconnecting, you can’t help but compare your old self to who you are now. The difference shocked me. I’m still the same person but things just feel different. I just CHANGED.

This will help us, dear porchers, in seeing who we were, who we are and who we can be.

Skywalker

 

Overwhelmed

Thank you, dear porchers. A million thanks.

Amidst all the 25 Minutes and I’m Too Sexys, I say thank you for making the year of manhood blissful and memorable.

Skywalker

 

Goodbye, boy.

What a man learns on his 21st birthday:

You shed skin. You bleed out the wounds. You carry the scars. You walk out to another day.

You say goodbye to that whiny little boy and you just literally “man up.” You PAINFULLY learn how to accept the hardest things in life. You realize that you can’t make everyone like you or be in favor of you.

You CONTROL the impulse and, sometimes, you gotta be on the listening end no matter how much it hurts your pride.

You just SHRUG your shoulders when you see so many people picking up stones and preparing to throw them at you especially when your back is turned.

You just deal with the fact that there’s really only a handful of people who will truly understand your intentions and the way you do things. Plus, you start feeling pity instead of anger towards those people who keep kicking you down.

You notice how sometimes, it’s not you who’s afraid to be passionate, romantic and real because everyone else might think you’re being pathetic when in truth, they are the ones afraid of letting in, let alone, even welcoming genuine appreciation and belief for the things you SAY and DO. They just don’t because there’s only a few people like you who actually mean everything you say.

You see that there are things that you just CAN’T change and these times are when you have to RISE ABOVE IT ALL and kick it in the face.

Finally, you just HAVE TO LEARN HOW TO LET GO. This is not just something you stop learning at 21 and this is not even to say I’ve learned this. Everyone has to learn this.

No shortcuts. No easy ways. No gimmes.

Goodbye, little boy.

Skywalker

P.S. Bawling on your birthday does not help. There’s a reason it’s called HAPPY birthday. TRY.

 

Red Leader Checking In. (Yes, I just saw Star Wars again.)

Since Skywalker is detained in the Ice Planet Hoth *wink wink to the geekazoids on the porch* for now, he has four days to contemplate, under the influence of the force, about the new uncharacteristic things he wants to do. Although he is afraid that while contemplating and planning it, it might not be as fun. Oh, what the heck. As a friend recently said, it’s better to go full kamikaze on this instead of half-assing it. He has nothing to lose anyway.

*3rd person mode off*

Gosh darn it! Can’t believe it’s 2010. Here it is!!! Woohoo! In all cheesiness while the New Year’s Countdown was on TV, I was whispering to myself: “This year’s mine, this year’s mine.” MWAHAHA.

*3rd person back on.*

So what does the great Skywalker intend to do?

1. Complete his “Jedi Training”… errr performer wise.

To become the consummate “Jedi” one has to have the complete package. This is number one on the list. Skywalker will now undergo a complete lifestyle change in order to hone discipline and foster his skills in relation to what he loves doing best. It will be hard (this is my “lifting the X-wing Fighter from the swamp and Dagoba moment”) but he is committed to it now. It will stem from the most obvious aspect, such as a diet, to the mastery of the craft itself. Basically, it’s to get better as a performer. 

2. Get an amazing “cover-up” job as a Jedi to provide for his needs

Simply put, it’s getting a job and starting his adult life. Skywalker will now actively seek for job opportunities that will allow him to gain maturity both professionally and personally. Life begins now.

3. Turn 21 and Face the universe

This REALLY is it. Real world, here comes Skywalker and he’s got a chip on his shoulder. He’s got a bullet with your name on it and he will face you head on.

4. Repair relationships in all the star systems he’s been to

Skywalker wasn’t exactly the best son and grandson of 2009 because he was too chicken to fix his relationships but now, he wants to take a stab at it. He only has one lifetime and he doesn’t want to waste it.

To you, dear porchers, an amazing and dangerously adventurous new year!

May the force be with you,

Skywalker

 

The Wake Up Year

To the crazy year that was 2009,

Hey, I know you’re about to leave and it’s inevitable but before you do I gotta say some stuff. First, thank you. You made me realize so many things about life, love and friendship. Of course, there were times that I hated you and there will be times that I MIGHT look back at you and say “I HATE YOU” but I’ll always know in my heart of hearts that YOU HAD TO HAPPEN. You’re probably the year where I said the phrases “I got screwed” and “I lost everything” the most. Complained a lot, didn’t I?

Therefore, this brings me to my second message: Sorry. I have complained and whined so much that I forgot the point of being happy. For a moment there, I even called myself hopeless. Emo kid at heart, what can I say? Still, that’s no excuse so I have every right to apologize for acting like a child. As I have learned from my Frozen Excursion, nothing good ever happens to those who sit around and complain about their lives everyday. YOU GOTTA MAKE SOMETHING HAPPEN FOR YOURSELF BECAUSE NO ONE ELSE CAN AND WILL.

Lastly, I want to say goodbye properly. Here’s to all the wonderful times that I had underneath your wings, 2009. While you were around I managed to perform, teach, explore a new country, see snow for the first time and most importantly, realize that this life’s too short for lingering bitterness. Yes, I had terrible moments while you were here too, but after this excursion, I finally see how there are so many things I have, nay, NEED to be thankful for.

So now, with renewed vigor and hope, I say goodbye. You jolted me with reality in so many levels of my existence that I can’t even begin to pinpoint just one. It was in your expanse that I realized what I was doing wrong through mirrors of real people who do nothing but MOPE, COMPLAIN and WHINE and that horrified me beyond anything else. You made me realize that I will ALWAYS have space to love no matter what the condition is. 

You will now and forever be called THE WAKE UP YEAR.

Thank You, Sorry and Goodbye.

Here’s to redemption and the awakening of the cunning within,

Skywalker

 

Au Revoir

I leave now with love and hope in my heart. Thank you, porchers. When I come back, the new era would have already begun. White Christmas, here I come.

See you later.

May the Force be with you,

Skywalker

 

Home Alone

I will keep this as my home. Leaving will not be my option, dear friends. While you’re all away, I’m going to be here waiting.

Until you return, may the force be with you.

Skywalker

 

Attacked

Now that a little of the dust has settled, I just realized that something huge and blunt hit me over the head. I got attacked by doubt and uncertainty. I started losing hope. I was crashing. I did crash. I got so badly burned that I don’t even recognize myself anymore.

Now there’s nothing but ashes. Let me update you as to what comes out from it. It’s only either a zombie or a phoenix.

Momentarily turning over to the dark side,

Skywalker