Pruning is Healing

 

Got up at 8am today despite falling asleep around 1am.  Perhaps I was able to make full use of my 12-hour sleep on Friday night, that I’ve been able to get as much energy I need for the day, not that there was much to do.  It was, however, something that was programmed in my head to go up the roof and do some roof-cleaning.  It’s been leaking the past few days due to unpredictable and sudden intermittent rains, and now there’s another typhoon in the country.  

More than anything, I got excited about the weather.  It was a bit windy and drizzly and not as warm, unlike the past few days that it had already been warmer at 8am.  Fortunately it lasted until 10-ish that I felt I was able to accomplish much cleaning and pruning of my oak tree.  Turns out, my Celtic tree sign is the Oak which I didn’t know until this week, which made it even more symbolic and motivated me more to do some clutter-lessening.

With all of my interpretations and “hugot” from this activity, as I usually make meaning out of some things that I do, every cut, every leaves or branches thrown sort of meant something.

As the tree, which is a bit over 2 years old since it was transferred from a pot that accidentally grew at our Brio condo in Makati, it’s now about three storeys tall when we planted it at the backyard.  I had wanted and wished it to be fruit-bearing tree as it’d make more sense, but now with this awareness, it’d probably be another think-over before I cut this tree down.  

I’m a little distracted now while watching the local weekend documentary KMJS, so this won’t be as metaphoric or dramatic, but I’ll still try.

After cleaning the roof gutters from dried and liquefied muddy leaves, I started seeing dried small branches.  You’ll know that it was no longer useful because you can easily snap them off the bigger branches.  You know, just like people in your lives that won’t be of much help in giving a nice breeze, or greenery in your life.

It just felt therapeutic.

Bye 

Needless to say, this must be done regularly.

I've Something To Say

Originally in September 2011. 

Spectacles - Vision Revisited

 

February 2024.

Finally had my first pair.  I’d been told for a while at this time that I’d long been in denial.  I turned 47 in June, and if memory serves me right, I’ve been informed five years ago, when I had my corneal erosion on my left eye checked due to a bad dive from a 20-ft cliff - my first time without anyone to teach me how, with just the pristine waters of the beach that lured me into it - that there was going to be a need for eyeglasses soon.  Though it was a preliminary test and wasn’t the point of the check up, I went on with my treatment and had a few follow up checks.

Within the past five years, I’ve had this corneal erosion turn into a corneal “ulcer”, as diagnosed by an asshole at the Asian Hospital, who I never went back to again, until I landed at the Asian Eye Institute at the Mall of Asia, with very nice staff and seemingly very good doctors, who told me that indeed aside from a no-longer 20/20 vision, that I have astigmatism.  This later on made me realize what causes the traffic lights to be a bit more starry and the countdowns from a distance more blurred than it used to be.  I got an unbelievable quote to have progressive glasses on top of my debt-fulness and broke-ness, starting at 20k.

Sister came home, after I was admitted for the second time in my life at the hospital for a 2nd minor surgery in January (my first time ever was just three months prior for the same treatment), from Sydney, perhaps for three things with me being the least likely reason.  Celebrating daddy’s birthday, and her anxiety at work.  It was an opportunity to get new glasses, though I was not hopeful.  A day before she left, as we were going around the mall, she asked me to look around until I found the best deal, for more than half less than what I’d usually get for quotes.

Long story short, I got them, care of her.  After taking me and Lod for a month’s stay with them at their new home in Sydney, our first time in the country as well, all expenses paid.  This “uncalled for” Christmas holiday had too many stories in them, mostly depressing, brought about by my dysthymia and my first ever surgery and hospital confinement, my depression diagnosed in May 2022, but this would be in a separate story.

I’d wanted to write about the eyeglasses today, how my vision got better and didn’t believe what difference several years of progressed eye condition made, and how much better it has been since I wore these glasses. 

Sometimes, in our day-to-day lives, we hardly notice progessions of things.  

I didn’t know that blogger was still alive and one of the top ten blogspots, so this is a good continuation.  What 10 years can bring to your life. And how different it could be, or the same.

Today, and in the past months, I’m alone again.  Not lonely.  Maybe temporarily separated from my partner of 18 years, and six months has been the longest we haven’t been together, with three months of it with no talk.  We conversed last week, but things are comfortably hanging for both of us, I guess.

I’ve been quite busy dealing with myself, finally exercising again, the last of three or four elements that’s kept me from recovering well from my literally persistent depressive disorder, meditating, and journaling by writing.  I’ve been wanting to blog (again), though I was advised that writing was better which I also did until my penmanship got so much better again, but I guess for narratives that will require this length and point out important facts and illustrate visuals, would be better online.

What I wanted to say maybe was that, like with my glasses, I’ve been able to work on so many things that was getting blurred through time, until I can no longer see what’s in front or around me.  Peripheral visions depleting, which I’d been so very proud of.  Clarity took on a new meaning, things got a little too vague, unexplainable, and I eventually lost the energy to express and articulate myself, the way I usually could.  Thoughts got clouded, cluttered, garbled, abstract, that I had to take time to look, contemplate, reflect, until I come up with my readings.

My meditations have changed a lot of my mindset yet ever better, when I thought I could be positive my whole life, but I think I literally got sooo tired of life, of everything, that this almost 4-year break brought about more likely by my covid in December 2020, which made the rest of the days downard and uphill.

But the past four years has opened my eyes more clearly, that relying on yourself and God will be your only options when it gets to that.  The recent tarots I’ve been listening to has kept resounding things that has resonated with me that I can summarize in a bunch of words: AUTHENTICITY, CLARITY, TRANSFORMATION, REBIRTH, KINDNESS, beginning with SELF-LOVE.

These sound quite straightforward and easy.  It had to take me months for these to sound edible, and it’s different indeed when you actually experience the sayings that have been simplified for us that were most likely been lived through by who said what.  Like, Everything Happens for a Reason.

I can see more clearly now.

Moments

..of deep waters running with hardly anyone minding because they don't notice, violently revolting underneath but there happen to be no stone, no rocks, no fallen tree to wash against.


..of embarrasment to self from succumbing to stupid things that hardly any other one will every know about, much less the emotions and processing that went with it.


..of hopes maybe too high if i keep silent, otherwise what is your life about, really?


..of the quiet but turbulent breeze that brings sheer joy to the soul, because it's too much air breathing down your lungs as a gift from God.


..when i looked at faces everywhere: at the church, on the bus, at the coffee shop, in the office; and notice how similar and different our lives are.


..that told stories of hidden agenda, unknown truths, never-celebrated victories, secured wounds of pain, of secrets.


..when i felt sorry and dumb and powerless and numb; nonetheless life has to go on and on, and on.

..of people staring at you, with wholehearted judgments (sometimes care), with a few names longing for someone to hold and keep.

..of tears that brought cold cheeks and chest, pillows and hankies, regardless whether is joy or pain.

..to remember loved ones, miss them, reminisce, and miss them some more.

..that summarize mistakes, triumphs, sorrows, fulfillments, scars, loves, conflicts, and EVERYTHING in between; all in one sitting.

Slumber

I've always struggled sleeping. I've gotten used to it, and have had a few ways to get around it.

When I was younger, maybe way back college, I discovered for myself a technique to put myself to slumber (which I later on found out on tv or from a friend, I can't recall, that it's the same practice that could be done/ he does). I close my eyes, and somewhere in the darkness there'll be a tiny white speck that'd be moving around. Sometimes, there'd be a lot of 'em, but i blink reversely until i form just one bright speck. I focus on catching that spark and attempt to hold it in one place, ideally at the center, as if I were looking straight if my eyes were open, and then I stare at it until I feel calmer and I won't notice that I'd already dozed off. i figured it was effective and it had been a great help putting me thru the night or day, whatever my sleeping schedule was....it worked everytime. It worked for a long time.

Somehow, I had eventually let go of this practice. I can't remember when I'd stopped, as I continued to habitually form other, perhaps more effective ways of starting the sleep (or still working around it).

So far, I have not found a better way.

nirvana 33

cheers to things that start and end.

Morning 2010

It simply felt like it was just another year, another day.

2010. New Year. It's always a perfect mark to either start something (or start it all over), have a clean slate. I hate to flip into a channel where a good movie's halfway done. It may have just begun, but a critical detail to fully appreciating the film was given on its first 5 seconds, and you missed it. On the 8th hour and 40th minute into this new year, I am beginning another chapter.

So many things have happened in the last year that's just passed. It was so full that I thought it might even have been TOO full. It's a time that I really "tried" counting blessings and exerted to appreciate them. It's usually and relatively effortless. but 2009..

With not being sure what to look forward to exactly, though there are plans that are not as flat as it should be, the hope that things go for the best is sincerely at heart. I just hope that my fickle-mindedness does not interfere significantly to what I need to do and what I have to be.

In an effort to have a trail to follow for now, I have decided to blog about a favorite HBO series that I'm starting all over, and so far, the 1 of 2 series I have enjoyed watching and finished: "Six Feet Under". While it seems a little too morbid a theme, it practically tackles life and how important to live it, be in it, and savor its sweetness, bitterness, and however else it may taste to our souls' tongue.

With its dysfunctional characters as how they'd call the cast, it brings to my demented LIFE a rollercoaster ride of emotions and persona that I have incorporated in my life and may still be constantly patronizing, only to possibly determine how to make it right.

We all die. Whether we like it or not. Might as well deal with it.