What is it that you fear losing the most?

Will it be choice or chance?

Sometimes, words fail me.

“No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother.” — Margaret Sanger

Of friendships and trips. Of love lost and found. Memories of individual lives etched on wood.

Running your fingers over the dented and misshaped surface, you smile. Speculate on what induced these people to carve shapes and letters on an unsuspecting timber. The need to leave a mark quite evident, however subversive and juvenile a deed. There’s a certain romance in the undertaking, the youthful mindset and guileless design.

Damn the callowness and just savour the gaiety of it. Perhaps, one day, I’ll yield to leaving a memory carved on wood.

Then again, maybe not.

“.. there is a poem called ‘Loss’ carved into the stone. It has three words, but the poet has scratched them out. You cannot read Loss, only feel it.” — Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha

Trivia: Photo taken at Caleruega, Nasugbu, Batangas, Philippines; February 2011.

I pick up my pen and I draw blank. I feel the minute coarseness of the paper and the roundness of the long, thin cylinder that holds the ink. I hear endless and mindless chatter in my head. But I still find myself at a loss, both inspiration and cohesion. I’m at the precipice of finding reason for hope and the logic behind the despair.

Having focused on something for so long can bring one to a state of disarray if suddenly uprooted. I’ve come full circle sans tangible output. I am reminded of how fleeting everything is.

I imagine myself standing at the end of an empty jetty staring at the edge where water touches the sky, wondering at the strange contrast of the unsteady surface of the waters and the soothing blue sky. I would end up lowering my eyes to stare at the planks of wood that I’m standing on in an effort to avoid drowning in the unfathomable mystery of the scenery or to mark the humbling sight that invoked powerful emotions and indescribable conundrums, accepting that there are things in this world that I will never understand.

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I am like a ship on a calm harbour. Assured of its safety, secured in its peacefulness. I am lulled by the gentle waves, as if without care to the rest of the world. My mind was on what I had planned to do in that harbour — everything except the plan of leaving. There were moments when I had wondered of the adventures that I would’ve had if I were to leave that harbour. And there were moments when I was sure that I’d have regretted the rough seas I would’ve faced if I hadn’t chosen to steady myself in there; never really knowing the extent of my strengths and my weaknesses.

Tides turn and the water, which I thought was safe and still, churned at the sight of God’s purpose.

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Cold wind caresses my face; I refuse to turn away. My mind had seen what my eyes had not. I hold on to my heart and let it do what it does best. My hands can only obey.

In swiftness, in haste.
What is there to see?
Quickly, quickly —
Do things make sense?

Emotion champions over reason. I loved and loved deeply. You touch my thoughts in fragments, in bursts. Do I? Should I? Why would I? But I’m left with just this memory of having loved you deeply.

In swiftness, in haste.
What is left to see?
Quickly, quickly —
Will anything ever make sense?

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Trivia: Pine trees, clouds and the blue sky. Taken whilst in transit on the winding roads leading to Camp John Hay in Baguio, Philippines; May 2009.