I want to write you all the words but I keep them in my heart

For a long while I have not visited this place for many reasons: lack of time, school, lack of energy, school, and lack of desire. Mostly, I just didn't know if I wanted to share my experiences, my failings, my utter glee, and my current self with the rest of the internet. So, a sudden hiatus from writing was warranted.

I did miss baring my soul to the universe. I feel that writing here is similar to shouting my feelings on a mountain top where there is not a lot of chance for someone else to hear me and respond. That, of course, is not true, but it is a delusion that I choose stick to.

I have run out of words. Or I have been silent too long that words have dried up and faded even before I can write them down. I miss handwritten letters and smudges and carefully folding of the papers before tucking them in neat envelopes. I miss conversations that occur on a silent canvas of parchment and ink stains and tear stains and tears on the margins. I miss waiting for a message that I can feel, crumple, smooth out and re-fold. I miss all of these simple things that I took for granted before and now I can only slightly recall the event I was so angry about that I wrote them out or the joyful experience that I carried on about and why you wrote these words. I miss the people we used to be when we wrote them even though we were rougher, more impatient, angrier, more childish, and different than the people today.

I want to write you all the words but I keep them in my heart instead because I have no time. I have your e-mail address. I am your friend on Facebook. I just liked your status. I follow your tweets. I read your blog. I text you all the time. I call you once a while. I have no extra money for the postage. I'll pray for you instead. I don't know what to say. I don't have your address. I don't think you'll care about my week. I don't want to wait too long for your reply. I have a list of things to do. I will do it tomorrow, or maybe next week when I have time. I don't have nice pens and paper. On and on.

I'm sorry that I missed years of your life now. I'm sorry for being a below average friend that we're not even friends anymore, we're down to mere acquaintances. I'm sorry to have been such a jerk that I waited for you to write but never wrote on my own. I'm sorry I stopped sending you letters. I'm sorry we're only friends online but not in real life. I'm sorry I depend on social networking to update myself on your life and not asked you myself how you are really doing. And I'm sorry that I'm blogging this now instead of telling you myself. Ironic, I know.

This a letter to remind me to write you all the words and to read all the words you write to me. This is a reminder to make memories with people instead of just waiting for them to upload and update about their life so I can 'like' them. This is a reminder not just to keep all the things in my heart but to touch other people's hearts.

Even as I say these words, I give you this promise.

I'm hardly the type of person who plans what to write. I just type or jot down and I don't stop until the words run out. I used to have just notebooks or pieces of paper scribbled with words, and phrases, or paragraphs, and poems. I love words. I think words can have so much impact and they don't often cost a dime (unless of course you go to the theatre, then you pay to see people spouting off words). People make their living off words; journalists, write stark or sensational news; authors, use words to draw us into their worlds; poets, are all a-rhyming; and so many various others, like screenwriters, ghostwriters, and the kind that writes the small print for the credit card companies and the banks, that I'm almost tempted to say, 'Yes, there is an App for that'.

I write on this blog stuff that mostly only make sense to me. Because I like writing for myself. I used to write letters and letters to my friends back in high school. All silly and ridiculous and serious the lot of them. I think words are lovely because they can be loverly, intimate; like they can curl up beside you and stay there for days, decades, and you would be able to still savor them even when they're just imprints on your shoulders. And then there're the kind that make you squirm, flinch away, because they sting even when the echoes are only heard from the depths of your soul. Because words are also unsafe. But there's so many kinds of words. Words of wisdom, words of anger, words of inquiry, words of passion, and words of doubt. Words and words of words.

I especially love the kind that leave you speechless. The kind that makes you pause, and just be there for you to really feel them. The words that touch you, the kind you can't unhear, whether they be right or wrong. Words that are like a balm that soothes. A lullaby that assures. Words that comfort when you need them.

I know she's bone tired; she hasn't been sleeping well. I hear him in the kitchen, making her coffee, tapping off the teaspoon. The weariness is in her voice when she asks quietly, "What would happen to me when you're no longer with me?" I hear him shift, his footfall loud on tiles as he walks to her. "Then I'll come back. I'll come back to you, my love".

Yes. He will. A reason why I love words is the emotions behind them as they are said. Even when you say the wrong ones, you redeem yourself as quickly as you say the right ones. Words of promise, of hope; I think they're the best kinds. Because they're the kinds you share with another, despite and because of how they shift lives. The kind of words that are looked forward to. The kind that means no more words need to be said. I long to say them. Out loud, and not just write them. But I'm saving the best for last, like the closing to a letter.

Sincerely,
Katrina

something there that wasn't there before

I still remember the first time I saw Beauty and the Beast. It was movie night with my family; I was young and happily tomboyish. We watched it on the VCR (completely ancient now) and that was when I realized that despite my tomboyish attitude I was a romantic.

I reacted awed at Belle, wanting to have my own adventure too; equally disgusted with Gaston, and his drunkard minion. And then there was the Beast. The Beast was one part daunting and another part amazing. Daunting in the sense that he was a beast, easily could maul you apart, amazing in the part that he was human underneath all the fur.

What made me discover my being a romantic was not their love triangle. It certainly wasn't the part where Gaston proposed to, well, himself. Nor was it the part when Beast gets rid of Gaston once and for all. I cheered at that part though. But it was the part when Beast surprised Belle with a library. (A library, you say?)

Yes, a library. What's so romantic about books? It wasn't about the books. When Beast gave Belle a library it was like giving Belle love. Belle loved books. Her love for books was greater than the ridicule she faced daily from the villagers who thought she was different from them. Beast gave her the library because it would make Belle happy. I think loving is like that. It's giving or doing something for a person knowing that he or she would be happy about it, or that that person would love it. I'm not saying that we should go and give the people we love a library (thank you, though, if you give me one) but we should desire to make that person happy. Just go and love the person.

I'm equating the act of Beast giving Belle a library with love. Ridiculous? Maybe. But I'm a romantic remember? So in the meantime, while I sit here and listen to the soundtrack, I'll wait for my own library.

with these hands

When I look at my hands I always remember what my eldest sister said, "Artist hands." Long, thin fingers, unmanicured. Scars on on finger, two moles on another. I like my hands. We used to have a family friend visit us on the Farm when I was younger. I remember her teaching me how to color. That is my earliest memory of liking art. When I grew up I always asked my parents to buy me coloring books and crayons. Crayolas and coloring books were there in place of dolls and dresses.

I was never a girly girl to begin with. So dolls still scare me to this day. Another cousin of mine, Kuya Steve, is a great artist. I remember when we visited in Manila I would go to his room just to look at the paintings on his walls and even on his ceiling. He made me draw a vase of flowers once but the Crayola coloring me just looked at the pencil and blank piece of paper like it was alien. I attempted to draw but it ended up looking like an abstract piece. It still makes me laugh when I think of that.

Highschool crept up and my parents no longer thought coloring books were appropriate for me. I got distracted by computer games but I still liked pastels and watercolors. One time though, a teacher wanted the whole class to draw him a horse. A horse. Not everyone in our class has seen a horse, they were all city kids. And even if I knew how a horse looked like I couldn't draw one to save my soul. A stick figure horse was unacceptable. But lo and behold, this one guy was an artist. So our classmates commissioned him to draw a horse for every one of us. He saved us all, with his artist hands and his horse.

I became really envious of him. Not that I wanted to save the class with horses. No, what I wanted was to have his artist hands so I wouldn't need someone to save me because they can conjure a horse on paper. So I started drawing again, and asked my parents to buy me sketchpads and pencils. My sister Darlene also encouraged me to draw since she was really good at drawing, coloring, painting...okay, she was good at all kinds of art. And I wanted to be an artist too, innate talent or no.

Fast forward years later, I have artist hands, after all. What I lacked was practice. And now that I stopped drawing, my art looks like stick figures again. I look at my hands now and know what they are capable of doing. I look at my hands and wish I can draw every single day. I seem to have lost my muse. I know that is not true, what I lost is my first love. Art is and will always be my first love. So now that I'm back to rank Amateur, all I can do is draw and draw and draw until art comes back to me. You accept art in whatever form because art will come to you however it wishes.

Lessons from our backyard

For the past six weeks my Dad has been with us here in Arizona. In the last couple of years, six weeks is not the longest we have been together, but six weeks weighs more than a year's worth of Skype video chats, sparse cellphone conversations, and at most, bi-weekly emails. I have never thought about the strangeness of this situation a lot. Since it's not like I think it is strange. Not seeing or talking or hearing from my Dad daily is as normal as my hair tangling up like a wretched hairball. Both are certainly unappealing, though hairballs are generally more disgusting. By unappealing, I mean that daughters usually want to know how their father is faring and vice versa. In my case, I DO want to know how my father is faring but again, in my case, that's just not always been possible. There was that one simple hang up with us not being in the same house, or even in the same continent. Good news, we're in the same planet.

I have (as you mostly are all probably aware) always been a daddy's girl. My mom and I are close but my dad and I just mesh better. As cliched as being a daddy's girl is, I think it's enjoyable. Most of the time, anyway. My dad is a military man, a math man, a straight forward and loyal man, a Bible man, a generous man, a well respected man. Not in that exact order but he is certainly the kind of guy you want with you when your car breaks down or when you are lost in this crazy Twilight Zone kind of place. Being with him again has reminded me and shown me that as smart mouthed and sarcastic I am most of the time, I still need my dad in my life. Especially since I usually keep everything to myself to the point of bursting my figurative innards.

Ever since I can remember I have always tagged along with my dad. Driving with him to Manila or taking the bus back to the Farm, I have always been by his side. Most of our conversations were conducted on the move or during nap time when I was trying to make him sleep so I could play. One time when I was four and my brother would not let me join him and his friends play, I went to my parents' room and sat beside my dad. I was clearly sulking so my dad asked me what happened. And I just told him, "I wish I was born a guy, then I could do whatever I wanted." My dad just laughed at that and replied, "Not every thing's going to be okay if you were a guy. That's why God didn't make you that way." I just humphed and stayed quiet. When I was five, I told him I wanted to be an assassin when I grew up. My eldest sister looked at me then at my dad when he calmly said, "That's not really an easy profession, why don't you choose something else?" My sister wholeheartedly agreed with him.

There were many instances of me saying some random thing to him and he would respond in a straight forward manner, despite the amusement or astonishment to my sentiments. I have always felt that he was not talking to me as a child but as a person. Once, we were parked somewhere and just sat there watching jeepneys when I noticed the signs painted on the sides of the jeeps. I asked him, "So where is 'Vice Versa' located in Cebu?" He was silent for a couple of seconds before responding, "Vice Versa?" I nodded as he started saying, "It means it also goes the other way around. It's not a place in Cebu." And with that, I sat silently, and we burst out laughing. There goes my English classes.

The past six weeks, he's been taking care of our backyard. My dad's first love is planting, and plants love him too. So my mom has given him the task of planting new plants and flowers in place of the ones that have succumbed to the desert heat. The plants which have been withering before are now basking on growth since my dad started caring for them. Another project he was tasked to do was to replant the uprooted tree on my aunt's backyard. He took me there one afternoon with his shovel, his ropes, a couple of stakes, and my car's jack. All the while I was angsting over what my mom told me just hours ago. He did all the talking while tying up the tree, talking about his childhood and how my grandfather gave him a job in the farm. I sat on the loose rocks and listened to him talk of responsibility and the hardship of sacrifice. In the end, we prayed and he asked me if I was hurt by what my mom said. I tried explaining but all he wanted was a Yes or No answer. I said yes, and he replied, "Ok. It's okay to tell her you were hurt."

I've learned a lot from my dad, and I'm still learning. I've learned that it's okay to say what you feel, and that you should. I learned that driving a car should only be done when you are sure of what you're doing. I've learned that math will not eat you alive, and that anything can be learned if you are willing to. I've learned how to really plant a flower and not see it die in two days. I've learned how to cement bricks, the difference between cementing and plastering, and that if you get cement on your hair you can wash it off as long as it hasn't hardened yet. I've learned that gardening and watering plants are relaxing and enjoyable work. I've learned that taking a break can be relaxing and enjoyable too, especially after you really worked hard.

My dad is a great influence in my life, and by great I mean in intensity and ability. I went back to Philippines one time to figure out if I should take Nursing or not. My mom wanted me to, of course, but she wanted me to decide. My dad gave me a verse in Psalm and I decided on Nursing. "Though my father and mother forsake me, the Lord will receive me." Despite the fact that Art was my first love, I decided on taking a risk with Nursing because of my dad's confidence and support in me. And in times when I doubt myself for my choice, I remember that verse and feel better again.

I had a conversation on the phone once with my dad where he was asking me if I missed him. I thought about it for a second before I answered, "No." He was clearly taken aback by that and replied in a hurt voice, "Oh, why don't you miss me? Why did you answer no?" I just said, "Well I don't miss you right now. And you told me not to lie." My mom had to explain to him later that I was just an abnormal kid and did not think normally. The truth is I miss him everyday. But I just don't think of him so I don't miss him so I don't think I miss him. It's not logical but that's just the way I cope with not seeing my family. For me it's not absence making a heart fonder, but out of sight, out of mind. But when I do say I miss someone, I really do miss them. Cross my heart.

So when my dad goes to San Francisco tomorrow, I may not get to say goodby to him at the airport. Or I may forget to email him in a week. But I think it's safe to say that I will miss him even as I bury myself on schoolwork and reading. Lessons from our backyard go from mundane to enlightening, from poignant to silly, and from father to daughter but the answer to "Do you miss me?" will always be "Yes," from now to forever.

there goes that dream.

I want to be a cow. Because cows don't need to drink milk, and they say "Moo."
I want to be orange. Because it's glaringly obvious, in an 'in your face' kind of way.
I want to be a calendar. Because I wouldn't have to worry about losing track of days.
I want to be music. Because music doesn't worry about not being heard.
I want to be a pair of slippers. Because being barefoot isn't all that great.
I want to be a satellite. Because. Just because it's cool.
I want to be an amusing, witty comeback. Because it just begs to be used.
I want to be a speck of dust. Because, why not, right?
I want to be a dictionary. Because we sometimes need words to convey stuff, articulately.
I want to be lightning during a storm. Because I get to touch the heavens and the earth.
I want to be a black Sharpie marker. Because it's bold, that's why.
I want to be a nostalgic summer day. Because of the warm breeze and rustling trees.
I want to be a shiny, new toy. Because it's exciting and fun.
I want to be a serious conversation. Because of awkward silences that have meaning, depth.
I want to be a letter in the alphabet. Because you'll miss me when I'm not there.
I want to be a picture on your desk. Because you smile when you see me.
I want to be a sandcastle. Because of your effort and teamwork, and memories.
I want to be a worn book. Because it shows the adventure of my existence.
I want to be a great, epic movie. Because, well, I love movies.
I want to be the sky. Because duh. It's the sky!!
I want to be joy. Because I'm permanent in your heart.
I want to be a doorbell. Because, again, why not?
I want to be the caps lock button. Because IT CAN EXPRESS HOW YOU FEEL.
I want to be the neighbor's barking dog. Because anything annoying can also be cute.
I want to be a special moment. Because it's a turning point.
I want to be a map without the water. Because don't you want to know what's under all that ocean you see?
I want to be a question mark. Because questions need answers.
I want to be that silly inside joke. Because it gets you laughing all the time.
I want to be a chocolate parfait. Because it sounds better than chocolate ice cream.
I want to be the computer cursor. Because, try using your computer without one sometime, eh.
I want to be a dream. Because it urges you onward.

I Believe

i believe in eating ice cream on rainy days i believe in the power of laughter XD i believe that hugs and kisses can make you feel better i believe that pleasant surprises are always welcome ;) i believe that thoughtfulness can bring a smile on one's face i believe that God answers prayers i believe that you've got a friend in me i believe in seeing the good side in life i believe in giving your best i believe that pretty nail polish can brighten up a gloomy day i believe that the invention of the 'snooze button' is a genius i believe that sugar high is equal, if not greater, than caffeine high i believe that subtitles is a must for foreign films (esp the chick flicks) i believe in the hilarity of sarcasm i believe in taking risks XoX i believe that failures and mistakes are lessons too i believe in asking questions and directions i believe that arrogance has a cure -- painful in a way i believe in honesty i believe in coloring outside the lines i believe that i can make a strawberry frappucino ~ a la starbucks i believe that combing one's hair is optional i believe that doubt comes before and after confirmation i believe that movies based from books can be disappointing (cougheragoncough) i believe that family reunions have the whole works - drama, suspense, action, comedy and awkward silences *-* i believe there's a reason why people get drunk since they seem to enjoy killer hangovers i believe in saying 'please' and 'thank you' i believe that art comes in many shapes, sizes, forms, and messes i believe like water, stick figures are universal i believe that blinking is contagious i believe that good music is good music no matter the language i believe in cuddling with cute stuffed toys i believe that having people laugh at you is better if you're laughing with them i believe in fabric softener i believe that i drive like a mad(wo)man i believe that blankets give you warm and fuzzy feelings along with a stupid grin on your face i believe in Capitalization ^_^ i believe in humor and witty conversations i believe in sharing opinions and listening to others as well i believe that God is love i believe that some day my brother will get over his spongebob phase i believe that friends are wonderful people who tend to act insane with you i believe that loving can bring smile to your lips and tears to your eyes i believe that laughter is the best medicine, along with cackling, giggling and blushing i believe that animes are not cartoons i believe in believing :)

Instant Plant: Just Add Water

I'm not a plant person. Sure, I appreciate plants. I like plants of all sorts, I'm just not that dedicated to them. I can plant, water and fertilize just fine but I'm an impatient person (when it comes to plants) so I expect them to grow in a 24 hour span. I know, poor plant.

During highschool, we had gardening. It was part of our science classes. I absolutely dreaded gardening. It pained me since I knew that A LOT of plants would die under my watch (or lack thereof). That is sort of pathetic of me since my family has a farm and I grew up planting with my siblings and my dad. Thankfully, I passed my Science classes and highschool. I think my teachers pitied me or something. LOL. But thinking of the poor, defenseless plants that died due to my stupidity and impatience bothers me. *guilty conscience* I wouldn't want to tell my dad about that since I know he would be mortified to say the least.

This piece was written since I bought orange daisies today. I like daisies and the color orange. That aside, I bought a plant, didn't I? And I absolutely do not want this plant to die just because of my impatience. I really need to remind myself that plants are living things too and therefore have needs like I do. Plants DO NOT grow in a 24 hour span but it takes them days, weeks, months, and years unless they die, of course. I really need to be (MORE) patient when it comes to plants. My lolo would turn in his grave if I let this plant die. *faints*

Please plant, don't die on me.