Life and magic are queer bed mates. Just as success and failure are off-tangent partners. Loyalty and friendship however are more likely to hang out together.  Life coaches in this lifetime agree that loyalty works in tandem with friendship. It is in fact the bedrock of friendship. Loyalty is the best tool so far in measuring the motive of a true friend whether good or otherwise. Unfortunately, it is a double-edged sword for loyalty is better understood when betrayal becomes the only option.

That I believe is the law of logic which sadly defies and negates the aftereffects of magic. I don’t really subscribe to this statement, although my brain is telling me I do. To be honest, my actual premise is that in every stage of human life like love or marriage there are constant tradeoffs. The joy of loving for example, becomes intense only when we experience the same degree of hatred.  Success becomes sweeter only after several bouts of repeated failure. Suffice to say, the full measure of wholeness depends largely on our status as remnants of brokenness. Only when we are floored down on our knees, can we power-up our souls to scale new heights. Only by then can we appreciate the beauty and true magic of wholeness and perceive things in a new light.

It is scary just as life and love is a frightening saga of trial and error. Ironically, it is also downright encouraging. The risk and pain may be that extreme, but the joy and rewards are too tempting to resist. That is where the magic truly lies. I hope I am making sense here.  On the other hand, I now fully understand why in the last twenty years, more and more self-confessed “commitment phobic” personalities are coming out. I reject (vehemently at that) the experts’ opinion that this aversion to commitment and keeping one’s vows is a symptom of unreliable personality.   I strongly believe this phobia to commitment merely mirrors a point in life where single blessedness becomes a happy option.

When life becomes quartered with rough edges, who wouldn’t succumb to change to heal themselves in the process. Maybe it is time to turn the other way. Maybe it is time to court nature instead, re-visit its contours and enjoy the little secrets of magic in the wild. Don’t get me wrong, I am not insinuating something lewd here.  What I really mean is give ourselves the needed break, smell the gift of silence and breathe in the glory of God’s creation with all its scars and ugliness. If the lambent moon is the answer to the mystery of the silken sun, then so be it.  And that, I say is magic.

Decades ago, I blossomed in the purity of first love and drank from the cups of sweet innocence.  But I chose to exorcise my claim on love knowing that it only serves to fill the heart but will never nourish my soul.  My worst blunder however was to experiment with marriage for the wrong reasons and ended up a casualty of a failed relationship. I never knew marital quarrels can be much worse than adolescent angst. I realized far too late that the bond of intimacy between two unlike individuals yielded zero dividends. It goes without saying that the meaning defined by the heart is too often a fleeting fancy for love, like friendship or marriage causes pain.  Nonetheless, I am a better person now for I have gained back my self-esteem and confidence. I may not be super rich financially, but I am definitely whole again.

I agree, separation is a real pain in the ass, but time does heal even the deepest wound.  The practical benefit I guess, when relationship ends is that we become smarter, and we tend to acquire a pragmatic view of life. I have learned to deal with life with all its complexities and have forgotten to ask those dreaded “what if” questions.  I have ceased to be an eternal question box, forever asking “what’s wrong with me “and needlessly looking for flaws within me.  And the best thing is, I have learned to appreciate simple things, savor the taste of every bite, enjoy the gifts of sound sleep and appreciate the quiet rise and fall of my chest as I breathe.

My road to pragmatism is a long, convoluted, grueling years of struggle. I do admit it is lonely to lose one’s pride, especially when you are trying to settle obligations and is fighting that battle alone.  Sometimes when we are cowed by insurmountable financial burden, self-worth will force itself out of the window.  But I am lucky for I am surrounded with friends who have learned too, to convert their hurt into something positive.

Never will I again wallow in the tragedy of a failed marriage, for I have discovered a whole new me, a mother, rediscovering her journey and affair with writing.  Indeed, a bruised ego has a way of helping us rediscover our passion for life. Admittedly though, only true friends will help nourish us to bloom.  Yes, I am not a millionaire like Elon Musk, but I am stable and happy. Honestly, that is all that matters.

The truth is, I am a closet writer. I mean literally, because I keep all my written work hidden. But one thing is sure I will never waver to nurture this urge to write.

At a young age, I have discovered early the fruits of angled words catching life’s complexities and contradictions in sentences and capsulized lines. My pen would collect them to create images I never imagine would be possible. The little notes I called slips covered the whole gamut of emotions from grief, sorrow, hatred, pain and love. They were written however like crude ink-forms, only for my own pleasure and private reading. Too often, it was just a whimsical drive to desecrate old truths with silly mental interpretations that never got to be written most of the time.

As I went through significant physical and emotional changes in my life, I learned to lock these silly notes in a box, purposely for the said notes to disappear to oblivion. I never thought they were worth reading anyway. There was really no need to bother my pen or so, I thought. I was helplessly drowning in self-doubt because English is not my native tongue. I was a nobody who preferred to write in a foreign tongue.

Then by a stroke of faith, I discovered LinkedIn and hesitantly joined the “Poets” group.  I was damned too scared to share my sample poetry.  I was only writing for myself for quite a long time and there was really no pressure to improve my craft. I was not even conscious with grammatical issues and rhythmical patterns. I just write for the sheer pleasure of writing. I merely gave in to the flash of inspiration unrestricted, unobstructed and unhampered by rules, in an attempt to catch the moment while it lasts. The practice allowed me to weave ideas into words and made them fall in line, unboxed.

It must be my stubborn, liliputian logic that I have become stone deaf, retreating inwardly in my comfort zone. I write for my own self-gratification. I write not to be judged by critics. This has been my credo for so long.

Meeting however three angels from Poets group at LinkedIn have radically changed my approach to writing. Shari Jo, Kalika and Toni motivated and inspired me to get out of my cocoon and test a new ride. They encouraged me to explore new inroads beyond my comfortable nest and upgrade from low to high-octane writing. They told me I have something new to offer and it made me a bit bolder. Another dear friend, Murray, also helped polished my writing skills by instilling relentlessly the value of precision and brevity in poetry writing.  I am indebted to him for my original poem that was accepted to be published in the October issue of Tuck Magazine in 2013. I know I am still far from being good, but I am gradually learning.

No doubt, LinkedIn was my poetic birthing ground, but as I bumped into another pathway, the FanStory.com, my first crude walk at LinkedIn became crucial to my poetic growth as a FanStorian. My baptism into the world of poetry via online writing platforms contributed a lot to my poetic journey.

I haven’t changed really much about my views in writing.  I still write for my own private pleasure. I still write for the sole purpose of seeing words coming to life whether crude or polished, whether it be free or unfree verses. The form is always immaterial to me, but the message is everything why poetry or prose is written.  I still believe ideas and words are better captured when they are raw, unblocked and not dictated by rules. Finally, I could say my wings got stronger in time, backed up by a firm conviction that at last, I could fly against the wind.

Separate motherhood, however, is a tough wind to confront and can make a lot of difference in writing. Routine, mundane things and menial jobs that could help save extra cash are consistent tradeoffs for writing.  My pen will willingly take a backseat to ensure that there is food on the table and that funds are always available to finance the college education of my two children. Thus, when flashes of inspiration jump in mid-air while cleaning the dishes or washing the laundry, bright ideas just joined the suds down the drain, finding their way back only when I am done. Believe me, when a flash of inspiration comes back, it is no longer the same as the first time it hits me.

Perhaps, my muse will sing a different tune this time.  I am officially retired from teaching and currently employed part time as a skilled professional. I have two children armed with college degree, with stable jobs and I can only look with pride at the fruits of my labor.   Today, I am turning another phase in my life re-exploring the thrills of my first ever Blog, re-tracing my baby walk at LinkedIn, revisiting my roots at Fan Story, renewing my ties with friends and enjoying the gifts of God above all. I am truly alive. What more can I ask for?

I really don’t  want to kickstart my sharing with such a morbid subject like death. But remembering death in my particular case is like discovering the real reason for hope. Death comes with a certainty at a time when we least expect it, as it did when my father died at the early age of 58. Dad, a bastion of hope for our family, is  a queer book-lover who reads books as if they were food.  And one the richest hours of my life was spent with my father in those reading sessions at night, before bedtime, everyday.  It’s a daily routine that I won’t forget until today.   But I remember Dad more, when illness reduced him to a mere vegetable, until a decaying liver and a bleeding ulcer claimed his life. That was in 1986, when my father was immediately transferred to Manila for  treatment.  Since then my mother stay glued at his bedside, caressing my father’s face with such tenderness only a woman deeply in love can do. Finally,  Mom came back to our home in the province with my Dad, who had become someone else.  Dad lost his interest in communication and language ceased between us, as if Dad’s brain lived only in sleep. How it pained me to witness the gradual degeneration of my father from a healthy family man to a useless heap of flabby skin.  But to see him like a vegetable on his bed, his wasted body nourished through a net of nasal tubes, his skin cut as needles were injected in his sunken veins, was a much, much more unnerving sight, that ripped right through the heart. All through the period of his agonizing ailment, Dad never talked to us and never complained of pain. There were times I would see him lying on his bed, brows knitted , tears gently falling on his furrowed face. The scene is forever etched in my memory, seeing an iron-willed man like my father, crying like a spent-man. And finally my father died but I did not cry on his deathbed.  I died earlier than him, in all those months that he had suffered.  When his final hour did come, this little death escaped in a hurry.  It was more like a feeling of relief, which was what my father must have felt also. Yes, for many years, there was the longing. If only Dad chose to be more predictable in his last days, longing would not have been difficult. But in God’s time, we understood the message in his silence and his indifference to pain. Very few people faces death with such gallantry and Dad is one of those rare exceptions. His death was such an enigma, that he continues to live with us. In agony and death, Dad’s wit never waned.  Him and his collection of thoughts will always be my sanctuary.

Deadlines are absolute stumbling blocks. This is primarily the reason why I cannot be a journalist, whose pay envelope and efficiency depends largely on keeping the deadlines. I am better off as a creative writer who is at liberty to twist and manipulate words, invent and re-invent sentences to dramatize a point with no deadlines to think of. I do prefer the warm, figurative language and the more creative literary “lingo”, rather than the cold, detached and the straight-forward language of the news writers. While news writing feeds on issues and current events, creative writing needs more than that, for it feeds on inspiration.

Creative writers flourish more in a writer-friendly environment where minds can wander freely without pressure. Needless to say, it takes time to squeeze the creative juice and accelerate its flow to the fifth gear.  Hitting the first flash is much more difficult than you think.  Believe me, writing the first line is like going through a tunnel of words triggered by a smile, a wink, a sound, a dream, and all sort of random things sending writers in a tailspin with wild flutters and weird stirrings of the heart. The most difficult part in the process of writing is how to pick up and select from that tunnel, the right words to describe what just hit you. If all of these words don’t come tumbling down at our feet, then we must look inward and discover what feeds our soul.

Please don’t hate me for saying this, but sites that require collecting and purchasing dollar-member pumps to promote written pieces as a vehicle to improve one’s ranking as a writer, are absolute creative blockers too.  Despite the craziness of it all, we still willingly succumb to the euphoria of getting ahead, reviewing and collecting pumps to make our work always available for the readers. Failing to join the crowd means death to your prose and poetry as well as the rankings too. What the heck, sometimes reviewing and collecting pumps takes precedence over and above everything, clogging the tunnel of words before we could even collect them. Still, I am a satisfied member because I have found a family of writers from different places, backgrounds and persuasions. That is all that matters to me, I guess.

After all these and you are still stuck in that tunnel, then perhaps a creative crutch will help. A crutch is a refuge or a sanctuary where writers usually visit to nurture their muse.  Mine is a dictionary of thoughts, a collection of immortalized quotations and verses, a legacy which my father left for his children to read.  Reading them again and again drives me to write with renewed zeal without pressure, without deadlines. If you still cannot write, then nothing works. Rien ne va.