The Farthest Shore

There are a lot of things colliding in my brain today… I want to resume blogging and this time it would be with this site. I want to write about a lot of things but I can’t focus on a single topic right now. I remember how it feels like to be Alex (played by Owen Wilson in the movie Alex and Emma). Lately, I had been reading short stories by Jaime An Lim, Lakambini Sitoy and Jessica Zafra. It was a compilation of as the title on the cover says- The Greatest Philippine Short Stories of the 20th Century. It was a good read but I hope other Minadanaon authors could have made it to the list like Anthony Tan and the Enriquez brothers.

Although my work doesn’t entail a lot of pressures, I realized that I have almost completely forgotten how it was to write and do my usual scribbles. I am reading The Farthest Shore these days and it’s a fantasy novel about how a part of their magical archipelago lost their magic- it seems that the wizards lost their spells and forgot about their powers… Ged, an old wizard, together with Arren, a kid of kingly lineage, search the isles for the answers to this thing…

Try to choose carefully when the greatest choices must be made. When I was young, I had to choose between a life of being and the life of doing. And I leapt to the latter like a trout to a fly. But each deed you do, each act binds you to itself and to its consequences, and makes you act again and yet again. Then very seldom do you come upon a space between act and act, when you may stop and simply be. Or wonder who, after all, you are.

(Ged, excerpts from The Farthest Shore)

For once, and I hope not every week, it’s just good to think about what you really want to have and what you want to do with your life… For now, I want to write.

The Next Eighteen Kilometers

the next eighteen kilometers

motion.
moving through the greens
and the browns
like a diluted mixture
of water colors
faster
thriving through
the grays bottom below
(with stones flying
hitting the leaf spring)

humid.
remembering tatooine
my shirt soaking
like a notebook
clinging to its wet plastic cellophane
dreaming
trying to take me
through the highs and lows
sleeping and rocking
sleeping and rocking

fear.
like the chassis exploding
breaking into a multitude
of parts
disturbing
my ribs are giving in
my heart is bursting
bursting.

home.
finally home
(for whatever it means)
i thought of it through
the next eighteen kilometers