Sunday, October 31, 2010

The Dark Side

"I think he's some sort of crazy,"I told S.

"I think so too," S. agrees.

"No, I mean, crazy, crazy," I said, referring to a recent phone conversation I had with him.

Of course, it's quite mean of me to think of him that way. He has a darkness to him, but doesn't everyone? And perhaps, one reason why I would choose to think of him as crazy is because until now, i couldn't quite figure him out. He is a narcissist, that much I can tell. Besides that, it's anyone's guess.

Then, eureka.

While watching en episode of Criminal Minds, one of the characters, S.A. Rossi profiles an unsub as someone with the Dark Triad. In psychology, the Dark Triad is characterized as Narcissism, Machiavellianism and Psychopathy.

Bingo.

So in the interest of knowledge, I googled the symptoms and tried to see if it would correspond to his behavior. Did it? I think i'm just gonna keep the results to myself.
But I did chance upon an online test gauging how much tendency you have of being a psycho. It tests whether the Dark Triad is present in an individual.

Of course, it is a pop quiz and totally unreliable. But who knows, it may contain a shred of truth to it. So I took it, and the results are posted below:

Not really a psycho

You scored 9 on Emotional Detachment and 7 on Chaotic Lifestyle!
Relax, you are quite healthy. You are emotionally stable and you lead a normal life, as far as conditions allow. You may have other problems (if you score too low on detachment, you may be oversensitive or lack self-esteem, if you score too low on chaotism, you may be pedantic or rigid) but psychopathy is not one of them.

If your combined score is 5 or less, you are completely average compared to general population. If your combined score is 20 or more, you have a mind of a true criminal. If your combined score is 30 or more, you have a mind of a psycho.

Your Analysis (Vertical line = Average)


*Detachment Distribution
You scored 9% on Detachment, higher than 31% of your peers.

* Chaotism Distribution
You scored 7% on Chaotism, higher than 15% of your peers.


So i guess, i am quite simply, an average person with but a few issues. Take the test, if only for fun. I dare you. http://www.okcupid.com/tests/the-psychopathy-test

Thursday, October 7, 2010

Breaking the Silence

It’s been ages since I’ve written anything. I missed it but then again I had been too busy to miss anything except sleep, and not doing anything. Okay, that might be stretching it a bit too much, because yeah, I miss more than a just few things and a few people.

But what I am getting at is that I simply had no time, and more importantly, I had nothing new to say. Yeah, sure, I’ve flown to places, did stuff, met new people (dated may be a more appropriate term) but it seemed that I never exactly left and the more people I see, the more that I just wanted to be alone. Bottom line is, I don’t want to keep rewriting things here, rehashing old themes, old emotions. I told myself that until I have something fresh to say, I won’t say anything at all.

Then a few weeks ago, it happened. Something new happened. I started dancing. To most people, this would have earned a raised eyebrow and a “so what?” expression. Dancing? That’s it? That’s the new thing? But to me, it is something new, as I’ve never really taken to dancing, at least not counting the time I took Hawaiian dances during the fourth grade. I just never really thought myself as very coordinated, or graceful enough; and dancing remained to be one of my biggest frustrations. I always wished my mom had enrolled me in ballet rather than in music lesson, which I really didn’t get to use except during the time I was studying it.

Anyways, to make the long story short, I enrolled myself in a dance studio and decided once and for all to stop whining about wanting to dance and just get into it…finally. I wanted to learn the basics, loosen my rusty and creaking joints and muscles. I wanted a beginner course, and I took what seemed the easiest—striptease.

I took it mainly for two reasons: first, it has been built up to be as much as a fitness routine as it is dance. For someone who has an aversion to gym, it seems perfect. It is good exercise while it lends to certain degree of creativity. You don’t get that while pumping iron.

Second, I thought it was more practical. Heck, it’s not like I can jazz dance my way into anything, or suddenly prance around when I’m feeling it. That would probably buy me a ticket to the nuthouse. But striptease…well, that’s a different story. I could, ehem, dance my way to um…pleasure, so to speak. And if none of my efforts in my career pay off, well, it could offer me an alternative career. Harhar. Big laughs.

Besides, another reason (so I guess I have three) is that it fulfills a certain interest of mine: burlesque and pin-ups. For some reason, I’ve always harbored a secret desire (not so secret now) to do a pin-up pose or to dress up in classic burlesque or cabaret, and be a showgirl of some sorts. Don’t ask me why, I just do.

But little did I know, is that even though it may seem to be the easiest compared to belly dance, jazz or flamenco, it can be as demanding for someone who hasn’t had training in dance. The first time I attended the class, I almost burst into tears! I look at my instructor who seems to be double-jointed everywhere, and then I look at me, and I seem to be a plank of wood trying to dance! I felt as if all my control issues were showing through my dance. I was so self-conscious, I was embarrassed, I was terrible!

But I never felt so exhilarated. I was having fun. I was happy.

I vowed to get better at it. Three weeks into the class, my dance instructor tells me, “you’re improving!” and I felt like a puppy getting a tummy rub.

I am far from being the next finalist in “You think you can dance”, but who cares, I am having the time of my life. And heck if I’m gonna stop now.

Thursday, July 29, 2010

Martyrdom is Not Dead

Overheard a conversation between two girls by the bathroom door in a bar in Ortigas:

Girl 1: (emphatically)"I don't know why, but despite what he's done and what we've been through, I still want him back."
Girl 2: "Really?"

I wanted to storm out of my cubicle, cut into the conversation, give Girl 1 a pat on the back and say: "I can totally relate...I don't know either."

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

The Final Denouement


And so it ends. Spain won over the Netherlands and my heart is broken. I’m not a big fan of the Netherlands, in fact, I had been rooting for another team—Argentina but they had been booted out of the race to the World Cup when Germany mowed them down with a 4-0 match.

But the final showdown between Spain and the Netherlands had me at the edge of my seat. More than 100 minutes had passed and still no one was winning, despite best efforts from each team. I was almost certain that a penalty shoot-out was in the offing, but that wasn’t to be as Spain hit the goal…finally. The status quo had been broken, but it also meant the clear possibility that the Dutch would lose.

The final moments were painful to watch. The Dutch knew it was a losing battle but they went on, fighting as if it was still possible to turn the tables around, as if they could sway the fates to grant them this win. After all, it had been so long since they won the Cup, and isn’t it time that they won?

But things will always be what life intends it to be, and so at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter whether you lose or win, but whether you stayed true to the game, and whether you had given it everything you had. It is about you.

The little devil on my shoulders whispers: “that’s just what losers say, isn’t it?” Maybe he’s right, or maybe he isn’t, but it definitely wouldn’t hurt to have the prize in your hands.

"Do you think you would have won?" the devil asked the dutchman. "No, I wouldn't," replied the Dutchman, "But the point is, I did fight."

Ad so it ended as soon as it begun, and my little distraction is gone. Strangers, we will be again just as we were at the start, until the time comes to meet again, somewhere in Brazil, sometime soon.

Thursday, July 1, 2010

(Not So) Simple Wisdom

Karla seems to have gotten into the habit of lifting things off my blog and putting it in hers (No, Karla, I don't mind at all). And so, to get back at her (kidding!), I've decided to publish this one taken from her blog. We are members of the Mutual Admiration Club, Karla and I. But it still doesn't diminish the beauty and wisdom of Sadhguru (whoever he may be).

Sadhguru's Simple Sensibility

Devotion: is truly for the intelligent, not for the stupid because without devotion there is no profundity to your life.

Awareness: is aliveness. How aware you are, is how alive you are.

Being you: The fundamental problem with humanity is that everyone is trying to be special. Only when you become ordinary, like a tree, can a greater dimension of life open up to you.

This wanting to become special, this disease has come to people simply because they have not recognized the value of the uniqueness of their being.

Bliss: It doesn't matter who you are right now, how miserable you are right now, how disturbed you are right now. If you pay enough attention to your interiority, being blissful is a possibility for every human being.

Enlightenment: never happens.... It is there, it is always there.

Enlightenment need not always happen with a bang, it can happen quietly, it can be like a flower blossoming.

Freedom: Unless you are free from the process of your own mind, unless you are free from the process of your own body there is really no such thing as freedom.

If your happiness and your well-being are not subject to anybody or anything, only then are you free. Otherwise whether you are in a prison or walking outside on the street, you still are a prisoner within yourself.

If you’re seeking to live well, you should not talk about God. Only when your longing has become such that you want to know not just life but the very source of life, can you talk about God.

Everyone can love God, as He does not demand anything from you, but to love the one next to you right now costs life. It is a challenge. It takes much courage to do this.

Every human activity is in pursuit of happiness.

Intensity: You must be that kind of a person that even if they put you in Sahara desert, there also you must be successful with life available there.

People who have never been on fire will not know the coolness of water. People, who have just lived their life in a half-hearted manner, sedately, can never know the other way.

Involvement: You will never know the beauty of life unless you are deeply involved. At the same time, you cannot enjoy the beauty of involvement if you get attached. If you don’t get this subtle distinction, you will suffer.

The greatest crime a person can commit is to be a joyless person.

A joyful face is always beautiful anywhere in the world, whatever the shape of the nose, whatever the shape of your eyes, when you see a joyful face it’s a beautiful face.

Karma: Is not in what you have done or not what you have done. It is your volition. The, way you live. The way you are within yourself.

When you utter the word karma, it’s always about you; never about somebody. You have no business with somebody else’s karma.

Knowing: Only when you are torn, by the pain of not knowing, will knowing happen to you.

Leadership: Leadership can only give guidance and orientation, but it’s the people who have to make the difference. Every individual in whatever sphere of life he is in, whatever responsibility that he holds, whatever influence he has, he has to stand up and make it happen in his area.

Liberation: means becoming free from the very process of life, birth and death. It means becoming free form the basic structures of body and mind. For all these, the karmic structure is the string which holds them together.

Life: Life has come from a very beautiful source. If you remain in touch with that source, everything about you will be beautiful.

How deeply you can touch another life, is how rich your life is. May you have much opportunity to profoundly impact lives around you.

People try to create an outwardly perfect life, but quality of life is based on the inward.

Being alive is not a small thing; it is the greatest phenomena on the planet - not just on the planet, in this whole cosmos.

Love: is just a vehicle for oneness. What you are longing for is that oneness.

Mind: This mind is capable of takings to the peaks of what is possible by a human being but unfortunately we are using the mind to create ulcer, diabetes, misery, anger jealousy.

Collective unconsciousness means, if you go deep enough into your mind, there will be no such thing as my mind and your mind, there is just one mind.

Peace: Peace is not the ultimate attainment of life, but the very foundation of life, the birthright of all human beings.

Peace and Happiness are rooted neither in the marketplace nor the woods, but within.

When you do not know how to keep your body peaceful, when you do not know how to keep your mind peaceful, when you do not know how to keep your energies peaceful, world peace is just a joke.

If there are no peaceful human beings, there is no peaceful world. Maybe there is no killing right now, but people are torturing and killing themselves everyday in so many different ways. That’s bad enough, that’s worse than a war.

Once we are living on a planet with limited resources, and the whole thing that is driving our lives is the engine of economics, war is inevitable, peace is impossible.

Religion: We don’t need more Hindus, more Christians, more Muslims; we need Buddha’s, Jesus, Krishna’s, real ones. We need live ones. That is when true change will happen. And that potential every human being carries within himself. Who they were is also your innermost nature.

How can you love one and hate the other when the same divine exits in all. As many colors of the rainbow are an outcome of one pure light, the many religions of the world are an expression of one divine source. Religions of the world are not about one man’s belief against another. But an opportunity and a possibility for all humans of all hues and colors, of various stages of evolution, understanding, and experience to reach to their common ultimate source.

Seeking: You must seek constantly that which you know to be the highest. It doesn’t matter whether it is going to happen or not; simply living with the vision is an elevating experience and a joyous process in itself.

Self: Everything that you do is self-based. All your work, all your life is an expression of who you are.

You don't have to do anything, you don't have to think anything, and you don't have to feel anything to be complete. You are complete by yourself.

Spirituality: means to live with an alert intelligence.

When you say spirituality you want to progress on the existential level - not socially, not psychologically, and not emotionally. You are constantly seeing how to progress existentially.

Spirituality means you have started seeing life with utmost clarity, there are no more illusions about it; you see everything just the way it is.

To be spiritual means to be an emperor within you. This is the only way to be.

Tears have got nothing to do with sadness and pain. Whenever any experience becomes very intense, tears flow.

If tears of love, joy, and ecstasy have not washed your cheeks, you are yet to taste life.

Path: The path is the destination and the destination is hidden in the path as the creator is hidden in the creation.

The highest is also the simplest.

If you carry with you, what we are calling as Isha, right things start happening.

Being together is the beginning. Working together is the middle. Dissolving together is the ultimate.

Individual salvation is the only way for universal salvation.

Fear: If a person has no hope he is truly blessed, because that person has no fear of failure. Fear of missing out on something is totally not there in a person who doesn't hope.

If you want to enjoy the boons that are outside, you must do something about the inside. Otherwise, everything bypasses you

Truth: You cannot get to truth. You can never get to truth, but you can become truth.

Truth is not a conclusion. Truth is not somewhere you go. It is not a destination - it is just a living experience.

You can’t interpret truth, you can only experience it. You cannot understand truth; you can only dissolve into it. It’s not something that you grasp; it is something that you merge with.

Love is work in motion. Work is love in motion.

Only a man who works with intensity can know what rest is.

Work is an expression of who you are, so who you are needs to be worked at.

The Bliss of work is known only to those who have no need for action.

Today, with the tools of science and technology we have brought ourselves to a self-threatening situation that everybody in the society needs to turn spiritual; otherwise there is no survival for this world. With the kind of equipment, and capabilities that we have, it just takes one fool to blow it up- and there any number of those fools standing in the queue to get to the top.

Wednesday, June 30, 2010

No Big Surprise

I was introduced to this poem a little more than a decade ago. A friend gave me the Filipino translation by another Filipino poet/ writer Pete Lacaba, and i thought it was one of the saddest, most beautiful poems I've read. I'm still torn which is the better translation, this, or Pete Lacaba's.

This morning, I woke up with this poem in my head, reciting itself over and over.No, not a song, but a poem. I'm such a geek. But then again...

Tonight I Can Write The Saddest Lines
Pablo Neruda

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write, for example, 'The night is shattered
and the blue stars shiver in the distance.'

The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

Through nights like this one I held her in my arms
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.

She loved me sometimes, and I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.

To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.

What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is shattered and she is not with me.

This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

My sight searches for her as though to go to her.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.

The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.

Another's. She will be another's. Like my kisses before.
Her voice. Her bright body. Her inifinite eyes.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Indeed...

This Filipino poet just took the words out of my mouth.

A Prayer, or Great Expectations
Fanny Haydee B. Llego

There's no doubt about it I need to get hitched:
I need someone to scratch me whenever I itch

Or give me a backrub whenever I want it
(Who'll pout only a little when someone else does it);

Someone on whom I can vent my frustrations
& who is supportive in trying situations;

Who'll extol all my virtues, forget all my faults
& would always submit to my sexual assaults;

Who'll bring up my children the way they should be
Yet still be entirely devoted to me;

Who'll always obey me, my word being law,
My logic, perfect; my thinking, without flaw;

My sexy cheerleader, housekeeper, accountant,
Secretary, nursemaid, unflagging assistant;

Brought up & moulded to think that success
Is found in the home: nothing more, nowhere else.

O, Mother Goddess, I need in my life
A man willing to be the perfect little wife!