tripping

I woke up, earlier than usual, with the flourescent light left on, and looked around in my room.  It was today, I remembered, the day before the weekend flurry from Tokyo, to Malaysia, to Singapore, to all these things I want to do, but can barely imagine doing, to venture into the unclear, yet entirely feasible, unknown. Today, the preparation opens up into execution. I get up and change for work.

At quarter to 8, I bid my goodbyes to the office folk, and warmly receive everyone's goodbyes back.  And with their goodbyes, there seems to be sandwiched within a hearty "good luck."  The ambitiousness of this trip is not lost on them--and neither on me for that matter.

Walking to the station, traversing Japan's railway system en route to the airport, not a stray thought is wasted on the circumstances that led to the trip, nor the circumstances that might occur during.  There are only destinations and time in my head, as I stand in line at the counter, stoic, among people chattering in yet another foreign language.  Behind the outward calm, inside my head, I've laid-out the weekend plan like a connect-the-dots puzzle, as time slowly draws a line from point-to-point. Like a constellation in the sky leading wayfarers of old, I focus on this and keep moving forward. Nothing else matters.

Malaysia is bustling, and warm.  I walk with pedestrians in bright shorts and loose shirts in the city where most structures look renovated, under renovation, or waiting to be renovated. Including the temples, the city is modern, but felt worn, like a respectable trophy, gilded in silver, detailed with gold, but with a thin, barely perceivable layer of dust and age.  In a few years time, the cityscape may change, but the atmosphere will cling to old roots, like lingering vapors of all the varied spices consumed so far in the history of this place.  The city felt authentic in that way.

And in the center of it, the Petronas tower loomed, erect in the twilight, a beacon of progress casting the light of a hundred-thousand bulbs and pin-lights and spotlights. It was purposely excessive, intentionally awe-inspiring. The city is consumed with innovation, and from out of it protrudes this.

The concert was marvelous. Sonorous melodies filled the concert hall of Petronas, as well as the ears of a young, yet precociously nostalgic audience.  The hall was packed with the smartly dressed youths, collectively reminiscing, remembering those intimate afternoons fighting for love, for glory, for justice.  Overhead, battles were waged and triumph secured on the silver screen coinciding with the revolutions of each piece, a visual composition to repeat and underscore the emotion and feelings freed by the music.  For a short time, we were slaves to our sentiments, captivated by the magic of a tale we grew with and, for a while now, have regrettably left behind.

The trip to Singapore the next day was hectic, and was a lesson in faith, and hope, and blind luck.  The journey on a taxi-less morning, from one distant corner of the city, to the equally distant international airport would have been disastrous if it weren't for a lone taxi with a 7am delivery of tea for the food center nearby.  I arrived at the check-in counter, now deserted save for the check-in staff, and thanked fate, providence, and God in between every exhausted pant for breath.

Singapore is convenient, efficiency made compact and kept in tasteful housing.  It was all business, but clean about it, too. I arrived with no incident save for an address lost inside a dead phone, easily remedied by a payphone call and a knowledgeable taxi driver.

At my sister's home, I saw family again and was overwhelmed with love. All the pent-up longing manifested in a loss for words.  I grew greedy, I guess, and wanted to listen and drink in the warmth of all of them, and if I spoke, I would have interrupted them being themselves. So I kept to myself, but smiled sincerely, and did my best to satisfy missing them for so long.

And I saw Lucas, barely a week old. Tender, warm, and quite restive, clearly comfortable here with my family. Seeing him, a mere baby, struck me with wonder, both at the thought of all the possibility yet to be realized, and all the challenges yet to be endured by this small, frail body. Motherhood is not a solely female attribute, it seems. It is sympathy, born from all our own travails while growing-up, a definitely universal and wholly human experience.

Though slightly delayed by a sudden wave of a hundred and fourteen Christian teenagers celebrating their confirmation at the Sunday mass we attended, I got to say my goodbye's properly and made my way to the airport on time, with an extra kiss and a hug to spare for my mom.  The plane took me back to Malaysia, and at midnight, ferried me back home, to Tokyo.

On the train from Narita airport, heading straight to work, I met a beautiful couple who had arrived that same day and, with their 8 hour layover, hoped to snatch a glimpse of Japan. I helped them as much as I could, told them to keep their pace brisk from the temple at Asakusa, down pedestrian crossing in Shibuya, among monolithic malls of Ginza, and at last at the historic grandeur of Tokyo station.

I thought it was my responsibility to repay the blessings wrought from the weekend, to pay it forward by bidding strangers a safe journey.  Because we've all been there, to that place where there is only the unfamiliar ahead, and the blind hope in our hearts lighting the way ever forward.

purloined

Hello, I am your conscience, on an errand commissioned by the pile of broken hearts you've accumulated in the closet, behind the vacuum cleaner.

They wanted to ask how it felt to sway a heart.  How does it feel to be like the midnight moon pulling from across the vastness of space, compelling the weather and the tides?  What is it like to be the breaching Spring that excites the fauna and flora into wild eruptions of color and fertility, to then faithfully shed and wither so beautifully?

How do you live with such influence, such power, over a man's most vital part?  Is it in your beguiling eyes? In your charming smile? In your reassuring voice? In the elegant harmony of all these things, orchestrated by the burning brilliance of your very soul? You radiate such warmth, like a line cast into the sea, that snags the willing fish, caught, never to recover.

Do you revel in the spectacle? Whenever you smile your secret smiles, is it because of the bemused wonderment of your own glamor, of your own glory?  Are you aware how your every word carries such uncanny forcefulness, such unfounded gravity; and how your every gesture, spouts volumes and volumes and volumes?

Can you sleep still, knowing hundreds, out there in the still night, moan, and cry, and thrash underneath rumpled bedcovers and overturned pillows in a soulful dance moved by the loss of their pilfered hearts?

A man should not be so compelling; there is no justice there.  From your neck should hang a placard, with ticks for every heart consumed and left behind, written in the red of freshly spilt blood. Would that suffice?

This is your conscience, a stray thought that tugs at your own equally-fragile heart, an unsettling reminder that one day, someday, the moon will ride across your starlit sky and the Spring will break out from within you.  And on that day there will be justice, in sufficient capacity.

beyond clovers

I noticed it was autumn outside my front door as I stepped out for another day of work. Nearby, an abandoned garden bed had become home to a wild overgrowth of clovers.  Tying my shoelace on the concrete ledge, I stole a glance out among the weeds and wondered if among the clovers hid an extra leaf.  If there were, I can feel its presences, here at the onset of autumn, simply because it has been quite a remarkable autumn so far:

November is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), and I've found the impetus to do some hardcore writing.  That meant I commit to creating a 50,000 word novel by the end of November--that's approximately 1,670 words per day--from absolutely nothing but the random firing of my synapses. Now, barely half-way at day 12 (20,040 words), I am still stuck at 4,000.  The month's not over, but I do hope optimism-fueled writing works just as well as an inspired one.

Also, my sister is giving birth this month to Lucas, which is such a wonderful, amazing thing.  I plan to visit and perform my uncle related duties in December. What those duties are, I have yet to know.  Most of the uncles in my life are people I meet in family reunions that ask me if I have a girlfriend yet; I could start with that.

But surprise, surprise. A friend of mine just invited me to Malaysia for the Final Fantasy Distant Worlds concert. They're based in the US, but had a stint in Australia and picked Malaysia as a stop-over on the way back home.  Seeing that the odds of having a ticket to Chicago, a US travel visa, and a holiday long-enough to accomodate the journey and the concert date was, by several leaps and bounds, less likely than me scrounging up money for a day-trip in Malaysia. I considered pulling the trigger.

Which made me feel stupid.  If I can manage to book a trip to Malaysia, then I can manage a trip to visit my wonderful, amazing nephew in Singapore, too--so, I did.

I am quite aware this trip will burn me out, I also, with a welcome heart, understand that this trip will be the most rewarding.  In that short weekend, family and nostalgia will come in mighty heapfuls, and I believe I have grown enough to know and appreciate with natural sincerity the value of both.

There's also church choir revving up for the 9 Carols event in December. So we're singing and practicing carols after Sunday mass every week, and I've learned to appreciate the time spent with people I've only gotten to know in such a short period, but who now seem to have opened their arms and welcomed me with sweet, sonorous music. Those Sunday's are quite magical, and much cherished.

And at work, they've asked me to be the booth dude at the company's job fair jaunt.  There'll be graduating students at Odaiba for 2 days, and I'll be taking a shift of telling everyone how wonderful it is to work in our company.  To this end, I've learned how to say "Let's build a bright future," "Let's build an amazing relationship," and, my favorite, "Let's work together, and have fun together,"  all in hopefully non-offending Japanese, or at least not creepy-uber-friendly-gaijin-might-be-looking-for-a-date Japanese.  These are just college kids after all.

I've been making some progress in gym, too.  Slow, but steadily getting meatier as the days go by.  I've upped my egg intake-four hardboiled eggs from two--and soon I won't feel as embarassed when surrounded by naked grandpa's with clearly-defined abs and bulging muscles.

Then there's also the Autumn outing that we're planning. With just the 3 of us--Murakami-san, our HR lady, Em, ever helpful and attentive, and I--we managed to plan a trip for 50 people for Autumn. We'll be going to Chiba to see the fall leaves in the valley, pick fruits from the trees, and watch the night descend on a village festooned with a thousand shimmering lights.

There's also some undercover details and goings-on's that won't do me well to discuss here, but, suffice to say, fills my stomach with butterflies and will come to a close soon. There are exciting days ahead, definitely.

All that and day-to-day work, dorm lead duties, nihonggo studies, and the constant battle against mediocrity, I think I'm managing pretty well so far.  But alas, there's still more work to be done.

So with a flourish, I finish tying my shoes, leave the hunt for four-leaf clovers behind, and step onto the road ahead.  If you think about it, roads are lucky, too, if your feet, your determination, your willing heart can take you far enough.

Photo credit: super-rats