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Many stories are being told about climbing a mountain; this one's about faith. |
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For your patience during the delay of juding for [Link To Item #1102921] . Thank you!](https://images.Writing.Com/imgs/writing.com/writers/badges/general-Appreciation-1985.gif) A question often crosses my mind – how do I want to be remembered? I have so many thoughts on this because, simply, it always crosses my mind. But, you know, I try to treat this as imaginations. I will never know. You will never know – that we are being remembered. Do our heroes know that they're being adored and honored? Rick Warren said, “You were not put here to be remembered. You were put here to prepare for eternity.” Nevertheless, the image of my papa always comes across. He was a simple man with nothing – but everything – to give. “Just be happy.” Despite the scarcity of things and opportunity, he was happy. And he was misunderstood - by me, my siblings and mama. When I was nine or ten years old, old enough to remember those memorable days, he brought me to the center of a mining village. The mine was to us a real blessing, to my boyish mind, it was a gift from heaven above. Dusty road and yellow water, and an English speaking (American) manager, the environment is still inside here. I was proud to hear my papa converse with him. We rode in a truck used to transport lumber to our town. It was my first long trip as a child, and I saw the mountain, the rigorous terrain, and the beauty of God’s creation with the backdrop of a yellow water. My eldest brother was one of the laborers. At salary time, he’d present to mama his pay slip, a summary of earnings and deductions. “Well, my son, better luck next time,” she said with a kiss on his forehead as she stared the contents of the slip. Maybe a few pesos to buy a ganta of rice. The innocence of the place could be pictured in my face. “What are we doing here, Papa?” He couldn’t give me a clear answer. He simply muttered things like he was applying for a job because he was suspended as policeman of our town. The American manager was too kind to accept us, not kind enough to give us a job. And so we walked from that place back to the nearest town, some twenty to twenty five kilometers, maybe more. We trailed a vast wooded area, rivers, up and down, long and winding. An exhaustive, long trek for a ten-year old kid like me. When we reached the first house in town, we asked for food and water. I felt how it was like to be a beggar. Mama kept on nagging: study, study, my child, so you can’t inhale the mountain and the color yellow. And now I know why I have to study and strive like what she said. Life is a very difficult subject, more difficult than the trigonometric principles in college. Now I know why the earth moves and revolves like a spinning ball. It’s because life also revolves and spins. Sometimes you are poor, sometimes rich. I was called Amerkano because as a young boy, I had those features, genes I inherited from my grandfather who lived in the island, and later left for his good, native land after espousing one of the natives. He left a part of his gene to become a writer like me who struggles to coin words everyday. Now I know why I speak good English. A brood of five and all boys was mama’s ticket to heaven; she had her purgatory on earth (to be aggravated by my papa’s drinking). Sometimes, she would just scream in the middle of a peaceful morn. The five brothers didn’t really have peace in the kitchen. My vivid memories are focused on the rainy days of my childhood, so full of nature. How happy we would have been if those drops of rain were real manna of the Jews, because the five brothers always longed for them. I feel nostalgic when rainy days are here, or drizzles outside the windows come at times. During those wet days, we used banana leaves as umbrellas. And tin cans protected us from pouring rain that flowed like water falls on the holes of our nipa roofs. The cans were hung on the ceilings to catch the water when the rotten nipa leaves could not anymore protect us from the pouring rain. High school was full of action, hungry stomach and memorizations. A teacher forced us to memorize history notes, word for word, including periods, commas and question marks. No wonder, she too could do it even with colons and semi-colons. I could memorize long sentences and stanzas of American and Filipino literature. We did it under the shades of coconut and guava trees, reciting facets of world history, word for word, facing the woods at the back of the school. The hollow-blocked fence separating the school and the wilderness looked like a long bridge adorned with young, ambitious "memorizers". College? Less thrilling than high school. I copied one whole article from a magazine and had it published in the school organ, with my big by-line. From that time on, I became the writer and future attorney. After college, I joined an army purportedly to serve my country, but which later turned out for goons and gold. I took with me some wealth I wanted for a lifelong adventure, forgot everything that was left behind. Slowly, my foundation deteriorated, eaten by rats and mice I kept in my subconscious. All the enigma, excitement and endless dreams and ambitions suddenly, to my mind, became positive. Now here in this world of my own – I can call my own – away from the land of poverty I started to build my dream world. A real one. A fantastic recreation of my childhood dreams full of adventures and escapades. How did these all happen? It was just like a dream. The earth, seen from above, is a beautiful stone, a mighty rock, thrown by a powerful hand from an ocean of nothingness. It will be there forever. But to be destroyed slowly, and slowly by you and me. Haven't you imagined yourself a spirit? You can regard yourself as a spirit floating over the universe, watching at the earth, slowly and slowly deteriorating, until it collapses into nothingness. Like a mountain with mines. Like a river with chemicals. Like the air that you breath. Slowly they will go back to the mouth of God. WHAT WILL HAPPEN IF GOD SPITS THEM ALL, MAKE ANOTHER BLACK HOLE FULL OF EVIL SPIRITS? CAN YOU IMAGINE? ASK YOURSELF!!! (This is the introduction - somewhat - to a book about me, of course, and it's like a summary, don't you think? Our life is like an island, there are rivers and seas and mountains, and mines. It has a beginning and an end, and the end seems to be the beginning of another. Don't you think?) |
| A hearse being pulled by a horse, that's what I recently saw yesterday. Actually, a neighbor just died. He had a stroke abroad, in the States, and the remains were brought to the country frozen. It was an experience because it was my first time I saw a hearse being pulled by a horse. I sensed it was some promo by the owner of the funeral company, but it was some kind of unique. As a writer with "cute" imagination, some ideas played in my crazy imagination - compose a fictional story out of it. But that's another story. I like to focus on that hearse pulled by a horse. By the way I don't know the exact phrase for this (anybody help me) - horse-ridden hearse? I also thought of talking to the owner of the funeral shop or firm. No, there's no death in the family (a cousin in far island just died). I just would like to suggest - maybe he could add another horse, for more fun? But that's a crazy idea. What if the horse/horses had gone wild? What a funeral procession! It could turn into a rampage. PS: I don't know how this goes, but I've read something which goes - A HORSE-DRAWN HEARSE. I think that's fine. |
| I have experienced this. It happened before. Everyone experienced this. Why is this? Is this a phenomenon reigning on us? Or maybe just psychological? Sometimes, they are true, and sometimes, too, we think that they are just a product of our imagination. I like to cite one example. Right after my accident when I became a disabled and now on wheelchair, I was thinking that it already happened on me before, maybe in my dreams or in my subconscious. Could it be that my subconscious knew what was going to happen to me, or some spirit or God, because I believe in God, must have sent an angel to precondition my mind or spirit or body to accept my present situation? Maybe so. Perhaps. Could it be? Miracles do happen. And before I would beg a miracle from God, to let me walk again, He already gave me a miracle by preconditioning my mind to accept to being a disabled. Could it be? Could it be not? Déjà vu. A sense being of being here before, and this feeling is very common. I was here before. Yes, this already happened to me. My stocks are working the same again like before. Death. What about death? Can there be déjà vu in death? Maybe so. But certainly. God must be preconditioning our mind to be there so we won’t be too “innocent” when we get there. But He won’t precondition our minds to be in hell, always in heaven. That’s for sure. |
| While having a drink with some of my friends, an old neighbor passed by and I overheard him say like this: "Life is short, don't make it shorter." I think he was right in that sense. He was concerned that we would be sick with our drinking of licquor. He was just saying: Do not drink because life is short. But then, there's another school of thought, if you call it this way. Maybe, this is just another alibi: "Drink because life is short!" My neighbor was saying the negative, I'm saying the positive -"drink and drink for tomorrow you will die." Which is the right one? Well, you say - if you want to lengthen your life, take the first one. But if you to shorten life, go ahead enjoy drinking. Which one do you like? I challenge you. |
| And the truth of the matter is my upgraded membership will soon expire by the end of the month. That means by the end of the month, I am going to end, I mean my membership with Writing Dot Com. So, I'm asking your forgiveness, I mean, your generosity. GIFT POINTS PLEASE!!! HELP PLEASE!!! |
| A wound that never heals September 24, 2005 I’ve just been discharged from the hospital for treatment of my wound. This wound on my left foot has been there since more than a year already. It doesn’t heal so quickly. I got fever because it got infected, swollen. June13, 2006 It’s about a year now, the wound is still here. I don’t know what’s going on with my leg. I know I don’t have diabetes because other wounds heal by themselves. Unlike this one, it heals so slowly. *** The above are entries to my blog in my personal computer. It's private, and I don't allow anyone to view this. Only this time, while I scan my journal, the entry of September 2005 caught my attention. So I added the second statement. Maybe this is God's way of reminding me ... because sometimes I'm so engrossed with material pursuits that I tend to forget that everything has end. We all have an end. But the truth of the matter is we will all meet there. See you there! |
| How time work so fast! I can just imagine how I was struggling from dire want. I was a young lad, I didn't know what to do and where to go. My ambitions were numerous - as they say, numerous as the sands of the seashore. Well, that is exaggerating. But, anyway, there were so many things I wanted to do but I just couldn't do any one of those things. Later, I found myself in a worst situation that I couldn't find a way to get out of it anymore. Fast forward to the present and I realize after so many soul-searching situations that there is a purpose for everything. They were made and God allowed them to happen for a purpose. We just have to wait. Yes, wait and be patient. That is the way of God. That is how I should learn, I told myself. More than two decades ago, I was lying in my bed, looking blankly at the ceiling, and imagining horrifying things like death, and blood, and end (the end of me). After an accident, I was totally devastated. But before I want to proceed further, I want to state here that I am now seated on my wheelchair and writing things that inspire me and inspire people. Or, at least I want to inspire people - my family, my friends, and strangers. I thought that a hospital room is next to heaven, or maybe hell. Yes, because people there are always wearing white - white uniform, white bandages, and white faces. So maybe, I told myself, this is a prelude to heaven (if not hell). But that was only because I had not been confined in a hospital for a longer period of time, that the experience was very unforgettable, and traumatic. More traumatic than the actual experience itself. I want to tell people, or you who maybe reading this, that experiences - bad experiences - can be overcome, and the key there is patience. That's right, God wants us to be patient. He has taught us in so many ways to wait for our time. There is a time for everything, He said. Everything under the sun. A time to cry, a time to laugh, a time for healing, a time to be in bed in a hospital, and a time to be happy. But there will always be a time to be in heaven with Him. That's for sure. |
| When I was a boy of seven or eight years, my mom would always remind me to always close my mouth when I was in public. Well, I had this habit of having an half-open mouth when listening to somebody, especially when that somebody is talking to an audience. Mom warned that something might enter into my mouth accidentally or some insect might make its crash landing. She said we had no money for a doctor. I remember, on one occasion, when I was in the elementary grade performing as one of the seven dwarfs, we were riding on top a float, and while people were joyously watching us, I saw one of the audience along the road my mom, and she was motioning her finger to her mouth, meaning she was instructing me from afar that it was time for me to close my mouth. I did, slowly. I did not want my “co-dwarfs” to notice that my mom was instructing me to close my mouth. In one of our commencement exercises, again I was one of the seven dwarfs. We were dressing up (our costumes) in public – I can’t remember why - meaning we did it in front of the live audience. One of my co-dwarfs was having a hard time inserting his socks. I was the first one to speak, and when I did so, I didn’t notice he was not yet through with his socks, so he shouted to the top of his voice, “WA PA GANI”, in dialect meaning “It’s not yet time.” The people, mostly composed of parents, roared into laughter. The show served its real purpose, a comedy. |
| There are creatures who act like they're not creatures. Or, there are human beings who can not be called humans. They can't even be classified as human beings. The things that happen to them are not enough for them to change. They just have no feelings at all. How is this? Is this really God's own creation? Or the devil's? There is this person who happens to be - I call it - numb. Numb to the world and to people around him. His wife just suffered a stroke, and he didn't even do something to bring his wife to a doctor. Whenever anybody in the family gets sick, he doesn't care. What kind of person is this? He has an extended family, meaning a second wife; he has a son with that woman. He has no means of livelihood. There's no sense of morality now. Things seem to be worse. Maybe, we're nearing the end. God has to end all this immorality and sin, and man's inhumanity to man. |
| It's so easy to judge people, and so easy to commit sin. We don't have to think at all. Just look at one man, even a close relative, and there you've judged him or her right there and then. This is the uniqueness of man, to separate him from the beasts. We can judge our fellow man, but we have the power to inhibit from this judging. We can close ourselves to such simple judgment. How? It may take some practice, teaching ourselves to be kind, or be disciplined, to not talk or think ill of others. It's simple, but needs perseverance. |
| Writers often ask this question. When does writing become too easy? I often ask this myself, and I say it may never come. But it does come to me once in a while, and writing is sort of automatic. It is important to understand ourselves. In this particular situation, myself. I have to understand myself, that is, I have to understand my mind. Ideas do come easily at times, and not all the time. But ideas are inside me, inside my mind. How can I make my ideas a product of my mind, that is, how can I make it something that I can write about? Or how can I make my ideas a tool for writing? These are two different things: I can write about my ideas, and I can make my ideas a tool for my writing, and my topic can be different. I can also make my ideas enhance other topics which range from the environment and the events that are happening. Writer's block? Why is there such a thing as writer's block when we have all the ideas inside us? Well, writer's block may happen if your ideas are kept inside your mind, and do not go out of your mind. We need to understand what a writer's block is. Meaning, we have to understand why is this so happening. This phenomenon, as I call it, is not at all that we should fear about because it only happens when we fail to understand our mind. If we allow our mind to be influenced by the "outside forces", writer's block comes in. There are many "forces" we ought to avoid, such as: pressures, tension, emotional problems. Although these are "unavoidable" at times, when they happen we ought to "heal" or counter them with some positive feeling. |
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At least, I hope you have the time.
I'm sorry, but I really would've! That was hilarious.