Oranged

Princess Orange

           (This is also part of my Sinulog adventure set. She’s so pretty, in person and in the camera’s eyes). @_@

           Pinay in fuming orange and yellow, looking like a princess with a feathered crown. 

Sinulog 2008

 With the little niňo. 

           Personally, I find Sinulog exhausting. It’s practically like War of the Worlds every time. EVERY time. Two days ago, like every other Sinulog, it was again nothing short to Independence Day chaos. Plus it rained at around 2 pm. Very sweet. But I get to have some good stuff under a very piercing sun. This girl, I forgot from which city they’re representing, smiled at the camera ever so candidly. I thanked her with a smile (too) that spelled of erased exhaustion.  @_@

Faces

          For the past few months I’ve been trying to capture frozen moments of unsullied smiles, honest sorrows, naked fearlessness and candid yearnings. Here are a few of them that I am (finally) not shy to share.

Thinking

           My grandfather locked in his thoughts. Wherever that is, the look he makes of it is somehow gripping.

  Soaked

            Beaches are popular during the new year (or at least from where I grew up, it is). My family have spent new years and new years (and some new years more) of good food, sands and uninhibited karaokiing on a beach house. They say the water symbolizes an act of cleansing. I’m not much of a fan on these things, but hey, there’s nothing frolicly ill with the idea of cleansing yourself as you brace yourself for another year.

           This is my six-year old cousin Christian caught soaked and tanned during our new year getaway. 

  Hands in Love

          I delight  with an overwhelmed heart capturing this. Christmas day, my 83-year old  lola’s hand holding my 86-year old lolo’s hand. And I hear people say love is extinct at this nameless age and time. I guess they must mean to say it is rare.

Fixed in Red

              Two syllables. Tatum. She looks candidly aweless here, you wouldn’t have a single clue how this girl wrecks havoc when she starts pulling her mad strings for comedy. ^^

Blown Away

           Eunice looking effortlessly fabulous even with her hair flying all over.

           People tell you stories through furrowed brows, age lines, crooked smiles and fearless eyes. They don’t even have to say anything. You look at them and they speak to you through these stock-still moments. 

Hooked up

On you. You lucky, clueless person. 

Finally, I've come to my solid senses to wake up from this mad mad daydream. Where you and I choke each other with our seemingly spontaneous exchanges. Fired up on shuffling vent after vent. You delight where I simper. I tear apart where you cut dead. From me. In any way.

This is not right. I never tear apart. From anyone. In any way. 

What's sad is that I am swimming over unrequited waters. There's no I where you are wanting. Between us, there's not even a long shot, or any sorts of shot for that matter. There's only you and the rest of your world. Then I will have to be on some unnamed planet, breathless and fluttering.

My resolve is that this fixation over you is a cracked up delusion (I caught somewhere between our odd etceteras) that's going to end up tormenting. I have to wake up from this. From you. In any way. 

I cannot throb for you anymore. There can't be you where I am longing. Because no one should love in vain.

And of course, I don't hate you. I could never hate you. What we share is one of the beautiful things I rarely  bump into in this jagged-haired life. You didn't do anything wrong.

I'm just saying I need one good slap in the face for getting genuinely hooked up. On you. 

Current Mood:  Hopeful  

Current Song: Requiem by Jump, Little Children 

Wonders out of you

                                                                                    Phys 52.1 / 07.10.07

 
          People don’t make geniuses out of a nobody. How does it happen then?

They go above themselves.

Albert (yes I call him in first name basis now) was astonishingly normal. Unlike how most people perceived him to be. (Or at least, now). He had those troublesome moments of temporary paranoia over making it with life or just down right failing at it. He wasn’t particularly special, no fanlisting of any sort, was not exceptionally favored by his teachers. More surprisingly, he had moments of notable detestation from one of his high school teachers. He had friends, though - friends whom he laughed with, and gossiped with. I don’t know ‘bout you. But he seems like the ordinary Joe to me.

That was Albert Einstein simply being unmasked from the miracles of 1905 and the wonders that pivoted from it through the future. Statistically speaking, he’d be naturally a median. Average, so to speak. Struggling. And nearly failing, even.

But what happened? It’s almost as if the gods gave him a crumb (yes, just one) of their celestial food and it drew phenomenon after phenomenon for him from that single crumb. In Einstein’s language the crumb became a quantum and everything was colored and breathed through a four-dimensional space-time. If Newton discovered the universe, Einstein unlocked it. And I didn’t mean the universe per se, I meant the laws that came with it, and how any man could possibly bring forth those laws in a most logical mathematical brogue. I can only think of a word. Miraculous.

Einstein didn’t receive a crumb from the gods, though. I’m pretty much sure things didn’t happen that way. During Einstein’s time, Mount Olympus was not particularly sitting cheekily at its pedestal any more. Science became the tenet of reality and it had Mathematics for a foundation. So when Einstein hit the jackpot one perfect morning, it was purty much a repercussion of brilliant thinking within the bounds of numbers, imagination and logic. So how, pray tell?

He obviously went above himself.

He had failures and tons of unproductive days to deal with. Money problems. To add spice to the situation, he didn’t have the pleasure of time to even visit the library because by the time work was over, so were the doors of the library. That didn’t stop him, though. And this is where he cuts off from all the medians of the world. He went forward and didn’t stop. He kept on until he bumped on the next best thing which practically flipped the entire world of science on where and how it’s supposed to be viewed, understood and chopped.

Yes, Einstein had the genes to match the works of his brilliant brain. But if he had a sappy attitude and gave up easily, who knows where modern science would pick stuff up. I’m a fan of Physics (favorite subject), because next to Math, it makes the most sense of them all. So to me, they are the things that I believe in a hundred percent, almost. 

I don’t believe too much in predestination, though. In this life, we write our own stories and live our own lives. Life happens because we choose it to happen. And yes, there will always be accidents beyond us. Histories that seemingly peg us to be predisposed of something that’s greater than our own will. Seemingly. Just seemingly. Why? Because I’ve known stories of people who were seemingly predestined to be nothing, and yet they drew wonders and miracles out of themselves. And that didn’t happen by luck. That happened because they worked hard for it to happen.

What happened to Einstein could happen to anybody. Well, of course the theory of relativity and all the original brilliance of Einstein would have to be out of the choices. The miracle that happened to Einstein could happen to anyone, though. People just have to work hard for things to happen and go above themselves until they bump unto their next best thing.

Until I bump into my next best thing, I shall work hard to go above myself and try my best to draw wonders out of my ordinary. The road should be difficult, but nothing’s wrong with trying and on keeping the feet on the run. Einstein did it. We should, too.

So what do you think about making wonders out of yourself? It’s a tough challenge. But the prize is promising.

As the Nike logo says, “Leave your old self behind.”