On This Dust of Words

Somehow Sunday is always a day wherein my creativity starts to kick in. Sunday is my day of creative sanctuary. I've made two wonderful written work discoveries since last night but today I'll post this one because it is my favorite of the two.

This essay was written by Professor John Feltiner found in a back issue of Standford Magazine. I was searching for material in the web that could tell me more about the story of Elizabeth Wiltsee. I ran into her on Marie's blog where she featured the screening dates of an independent film entitled "This Dust of Words" by Bill Rose.

I have annotated this essay onto the document because I found it quite necessary that my thoughts be right where the quote is.

This Dust of Words

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Another Kindred

I was pleasantly surprised when I woke up to this sitting in my inbox this morning

I have read some of your writing at :: http://www.mycreativeintent.com/profile/Katherina and this morning...once again, out of the blue I was lead to follow the patchwork quilt dots! One point about your writing that I believe makes it worth reading is the the fact that you deal with our "very human" issues so delicately ... but clearly. You seek ... you ask.... you observe... I truly appreciate that I was drawn to you this morning and that your words - thoughts - deeds - bring all humanity in touch (tune) with one another. Love without action is just intent.

Thank you so much - you have a gift, I can't wait to see where you go with it! Together we are opening doors and changing the future through our collective collaborative spirit.

- by DeZengo

I find it ironic that I get this today because I was just telling Adi how I've struggling with my writing for the past few days. I find it such a blessing to get this today because it soothes the struggle and cushions the tension.

Thank you kindred heart! <3

Writing Like Hemingway

So I'm talking to Adi and she's trying to tell me that I can write like Hemingway. Hemingway. Hmm. I've always wanted to try imagining myself writing in the middle of a busy street waiting for a cab. Or...perhaps somewhere in the middle of a crowded Starbucks scribbling down my Moleskine quite absorbed in my thoughts. But that never gets to happen. I don't know why I want to be able to get self-absorbed like that in the midst of vibrant life. I suppose it's my way of trying to exist while breathing everything in. Not the usual way I get so paralyzed in the middle of a circumstance that attempts to change or shatter. Move. Inspire. Liberate.

She just went offline and my muscles are a bit sore. Helping my Dad do a little shindig of a workout on his bed gave me quite a workout too! I bought 2 Nike yellow resistant bands for my Dad a few days ago so that he can stretch a bit since he's been bedridden for more than a week now. He finally decided to use it. I find it funny how my Dad gets all excited about new activities like that. It's amusing to me for a 61 year old to get giddy about little things.

Now he's off to snooze. His snore gurgling to escape his open mouth. At times I get nervous listening to him snore when we're here in the hospital because it feels like it'll never end. But there are times when I find it funny too because his lips twitch uncontrollably until the snore comes out to a full sigh.

One of the days I was left alone to watch him, I saw his whole body twitch. It gave me quite a scare because his health wasn't so stable then. I never thought my Dad was such a lucid sleeper. So I tried to nudge him and ask him what was going on. He groggily woke up and said, "I was dreaming that I'm riding a train and was chugging along with it." He fell back to sleep and true enough his body was chugging along again.

I had to stifle a laugh because I didn't think it appropriate for me to let out a guffaw in this situation. My Dad's such a character. I love him. He's starting to be annoying when he's restless but as I said yesterday, it's definitely much better having him that way than how he was a week ago.

So yes Slick, you're right. I think I can start writing like Hemingway.

On Mother's and Breakfast Preparations

I just got to work. I left pretty early this morning because I woke up early too. I woke up early because I had to prepare my lunch since our house help has gone on vacation.  I went down to the kitchen and found my Mom cooking.  It was a pleasant sight to see.  I never saw her do that all the time when we were young.  But it's a beautiful transformation that even now as I grow older, I am able to appreciate how my Mom is being such a mother to me.  

After she prepared our food, she started sewing the new pairs of slacks I bought over the weekend.  I wanted to cut some length because they were too long.  I appreciated this a lot because I know that her routine every morning was to go to the mass and the Adoration chapel. I've always found myself being thrown off my center whenever a routine of mine is broken.  But my Mom willingly received the short-term transition.  

As a reaction, I dutifully cleaned a bit of my room and made sure I didn't leave it messy for the day.  I missed a little bit of prayer time but I was glad that the morning drive wasn't so heavy that I got to work early enough to have a bit of silence in the prayer room.

I was also happy that I still ran into Adi when I got to work.  It's always a pleasant exchange in the morning.  Another thing that made my morning pleasant was reading through Marie's blog about Tolkien.  She says she's started to finally read Lord of the Rings.  I've had great respect for the author and even have the complete series myself.  Unfortunately, it's one of those things I haven't done yet.  Perhaps, like her, it takes time to be ready to get into certain things.  

Having experienced that little moment with my Mom this morning, I want to cite an excerpt from Marie's blog here because it honors such motherly acts.

Just before the New Year, I was reading Archbishop Chaput's Render Unto Caesar, and in one of the chapters he relates this story:

It's also why asking Catholics to keep their faith out of public affairs amounts to telling them to be barren; to behave as if they were neutered. Nothing could be more alien to the meaning of baptism. The Christian idea of witness, which comes from the Greek word martyr, isn't limited to a bloody death in the arena for the faith. All Christians have the command to be a martyr in he public arena --to live a life of conscious witness where God places them, no matter how insignificant it seems and whether or not they ever see the results.

Years ago I read a story about an Englishwoman named Mabel. She had two sons. It's not clear what first drew her to the Gospel, but she became a Christian shortly after her husband died in the 1890s. She was devoted to her new faith. Every Sunday she would make the long walk with her sons to an Anglican church. Then one Sunday they tried a different place of worship: a Catholic church in a poor area in Birmingham. Mabel already had an interest in things Catholic. She asked for instruction. She then entered the Catholic Church.

Mabel's Catholic conversion angered her family. Her father was outraged. Her brother-in-law ended the little financial help he had been giving her since she became a widow. Her dead husband's family rejected her. She and her sons slipped into poverty. Mabel's health collapsed. Despite this, she remained zealously committed to her Catholic faith and taught it to both her sons. Several years later, she fell into a diabetes-induced coma and died. She entrusted her boys to the guardianship of a friend, a local Catholic priest, who deepened their faith throughout their upbringing.

Very few people remember Mabel and her story. But a great many people remember at least one of her sons: J.R.R. Tolkien. In a letter to a Jesuit friend many years later, Tolkien wrote: "All my own small perception of beauty both in majesty and simplicity is founded" on Mary, the mother of Jesus, and that "The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work." He added, "[My Catholic faith has] nourished me and taught me all the little that I know; and that I owe to my mother, who clung to her conversion and died young, largely through the hardships of poverty resulting from it."

I'd sit here all day and muse about Tolkien's journey but I have quite a bit to catch up for work. Finally having a learning outline to work with, I feel a little bit more focused in gaining some speed for the new job to hopefully bear a little bit of fruit.

An Authentic Christmas

It's been a while since I wrote and really sat down with myself to think about everything that has happened for me this Christmas season.

For quite some time, I have been blogging with the sole effort of picking up my writing habit. So that little by little I can start feeling productive as I pursue my writer's dream. For quite some time I have been taking tabs on myself like how meaningful my posts have been or how many pictures I have uploaded in Flickr that caught how many number of views or comments. For quite some time I have been metering myself on my own progress without the knowledge of many so that I know if I am moving or not. So that I can tell myself I am doing good or not. So that I will not be affected when anybody tells me that I am doing good or not.

Experiencing the death of a loved one changes all the perspectives you can have about success or about living a meaningful life or about what fulfillment is for you. I'm not sure if I have gotten mine articulated clearly but I know my perspectives have changed.

I have experienced 4 loved ones pass away but I have never contemplated on the reality of death this long and this deep as when my grandmother passed away. I've written snippets of my thoughts everywhere and have chatted about it with those I constantly confide in. Somehow I can never repeat it enough. My full appreciation for her life came only at a point when she is gone. Mostly because I never understood the way she lived. I never understood the stories I have heard about how she raised her children. I never understood how I witnessed her strict and unpleasant air as she was taking care of my grandfather in his last days. I never understood why I was always afraid of making her cross. I never understood why despite all these, I still follow her and respect her ways.

Perhaps it is this irony that makes me ponder so much upon the effect her death has on me. And why I am suddenly awakened to want to discover how her interior life has been instead of the exterior one. There must be something inside her that I have not fully understood. A feeling. A hidden experience. A trauma. A hurt. That manifested itself as uptightness. As strict-ness. As an idiosyncrasy that never really sits quite well or leaves me at ease. As I reflect upon these things, I also reflect upon my relationship with my own mother and I find several parallelisms in the patterns of our lives woven together. As I reflect upon my own relationship with my mother I also reflect upon the relationships of those I have nurtured. Though I may never be quite the mother many continue to hope for me to be, God has somehow graced me with some experiences that can resonate with what its like to be in a mother's position.

The patterns cycle flawlessly. My lack of understanding for my grandmother's tough shell is the same as my lack of understanding for my mother's tough shell. It is also the same for those who I have nurtured as they try to continue to understand me. However there are breaks I have noticed and these breaks signify a certain illumination on my mother's part and on my part as we probably catch ourselves affecting others too strongly with our "fierce" exterior leading to the weak understanding of others on our intentions from the inside.

As I continue to sort out my grandmother's things, I realized the many similarities I have with her and that my mother has with her. The love for keeping mementos. The love for books and reading. The love for quaint beauty. I also realize the similarities in things we dislike. Of which I would rather not enumerate anymore because it is so much easier to dislike things than to love things and this recount is an attempt to increase my own capability to love.

I realize that there is so much meaning in the word HEREDITY. It can encircle you in a certain perimeter and keep you there forever or you can make the circle wider encompassing and embracing more of life in a variety of ways but in the same nature. For example, my love for the art of diary keeping is something I share with most people. My reflections are something I rarely keep private because I find liberation in sharing them with others. But writing is not only a trait I acquired. It is a trait I inherited from my mother who is quite a profilic writer herself and was a thespian in her day who inherited it from my grandmother who I recently found out does her own writing in the form of calendared thoughts on pages of an old notebook. However, the break in the cycle shows that they are both more private with their reflections compared to mine and perhaps that's when my circle become a little bit more wider because as I take the risk to share my inmost thoughts to others I acquire certain experiences that teach me something else that they may not have experienced while keeping their thoughts private.

It is not to discount the value of whatever our experiences have given us but reflecting this way now helps me realize that even with our similarities there can be a point of difference. What to do with this difference now becomes an act borne out of love. Love can bring about further understanding with one another. Patience when understanding becomes a struggle and Faith that understanding will be a new dawn that is promised to one who remains steadfast.

I suppose it is true when they say that in understanding death, you begin to learn how to live. I never quite finished Tuesdays with Morrie but I'm sure I got myself to that part of the book.

My journey to authenticity centers around living my life as meaningfully as possible. Bearing fruit through the love I receive from my family, relatives and close friends. But there is a difference in how I want to remain authentic. I want it effortless. I want it natural. Not because I want to slack off or not work at anything at all but on the contrary. I suppose I want my authenticity to pervade externally as naturally as it can be and that can't be possible without acquiring a certain interior steadfastness of character.

I suppose this is another break in the circle. For generations of my family, developing character is acquired through discipline. Discipline is quite a strong word that never fails to manifest itself through uptightness. This uptightness weakens the expression of tenderness (not to say that it is not present because how can one love without being tender?). But the pursuit of good and noble character becomes a rigourous pursuit for discipline. I would say if one is kept in a straightjacket for too long, one would really ache to break free from a routine that can inhibit the other expressions that one naturally expresses because of their own individual nature.

So the big question is, what can I do to continue pursuing good without becoming too uptight that my pursuit is misunderstood?

As I have reflected in the previous paragraphs, I have inherited favorable traits and unfavorable ones. The general weakness of man tends to magnify the unfavorable ones. Perhaps this is what Catholics call "the effects of original sin". To remain there would be a painful way to live. So how do I live beyond it? How do I magnify the favorable traits instead? I realize now that everything favorable is not a result of my own effort. I have come to a point where I have felt and pondered upon my weaknesses to the core that trying to overcome them on my own is quite an ardous task. If one is already burdened with having to overcome a weakness, how can one effortlessly exhibit a strength?

GRACE.

Of course one can always say that practice makes perfect. Virtuouso pianists practice the whole day. Athletes train the whole day. But what is it that makes them internally willing to go through the rigor and the toil? What makes them even love it? What makes it effortless for them to subject themselves to such an molding of mind, body and spirit?

GRACE.

I suppose a musician knows that without thoroughly completing the scales, his fingers will lose their dexterity. I suppose an athlete knows that without properly stretching his limbs, he will lose his flexibility. Dexterity. Flexibility. Both associate with the ability to bend and stretch beyond what is normally capable. It is an admittance on their part that they become weak in their craft/art/sport if they do not remain a certain degree flexibility in mind, body and spirit.

Taking it to its intrinsic value, what causes interior flexibility?

GRACE.

I may sound like I'm trying to prove a point but I'm not. It's just that I find no other answer in my mind as far as my experience in this lifetime can say aside from the word Grace. And how timely that I just refer back to 2 Corinthians 12:9 where it says "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in your weakness."

Someone who knows that his body will not bend that far without a certain surrendering to a routine knows that he is intrisically weak without that routine. For the spiritual person, this routine is prayer. I suppose that's why for musicians practicing their instrument becomes a sacred moment as well as morning walks or jogs are for athletes. The rhythm of repetition in the beginning causes a tension but with consistency produces fluidity and a calming effect that lulls the senses and makes what is being done an effortless motion expressed.

It may seem that I have gone off tangent already but the whole point of extracting this out of my system is to face what I have been absorbing the past Christmas season.

It definitely has made me understand a lot of things. Now making me comfortable in sitting with some of them. And that's all I need to be for now.

Remembering that I belong to a family of women who may live fierce but love just as fiercely. Grateful that I am given the wisdom to understand some things I found difficult to understand. Relying on the grace of God to propel me to move forward and continue to journey the authentic and blessed life I have always longed to live.

I realize now that even if this Christmas may not have been as Merry or as Happy and even if it didn't seem to bring "glad tidings", it has been the most authentic Christmas I have ever experienced because it is during this Christmas I realized a lot about the truth behind significant people in my life and in realizing that I come to know that I have always been loved.

In Need of Creative Resuscitation

I've been thinking that I want to be more focused about my move towards growing in the writing craft. So I've been trying to search for creative prompts that can initiate my journey to writing more creatively. I think the problem is that I haven't really been sifting my mind so much that's why everything simply gets stuck. I also have not been reading a lot and my momentum in digesting words has gone to slow. My literary sense has faded.

But I am optimistic. I've been seeing a lot of people venturing towards their dreams lately and the first thing they did was to aim high and then follow a process. For athletes, it's a training schedule. For artists (or writers like me), it's a creative routine. Most of the things I've read say that the most important tip is:

To read a lot.

Last week, I managed to finish reading a book in one day. I used to devour two books in one day when I was in college but that ability has been stunted ever since I attended business school where my taste for literature has gone bland. Filled up with stacks of case studies and business reports has numbed my creative writing mind and it desperately needs some resuscitation.

The next important tip is:

To write a lot.

They say that it doesn't matter what you write, just write. Some say that it's important to plan what you want to write and others say just write and then edit later. I don't know which advise is better but I find myself unable to "just write" right now. I suppose the cluttered thoughts have a lot to do with the bottleneck.

The third important tip is:

Find people who believes with you.

I suppose the birth of any dream is fueled by the strong desire and belief of the dreamer and those who stand by the dreamer. It makes a lot of impact when your environment allows you to test all sorts of possibilities without restraining your creative potential and the limiting the journey of creative exploration. Those who find it difficult to begin taking the first step towards their dream, I find, are those people who have never been exposed to an encouraging environment.

Negativity is easy to come by especially in a world that wreaks with turmoil, crisis, poverty, unemployment, heartache, death (this is just to name a few of those anxieties we constantly run through our heads on a daily basis). For some reason it has become human nature to find it easier to point out a mistake, a wrong deed, a wrong action than to point out a good deed, best effort, a trial overcome, a change made. It feels like an itch. Or worse, a pimple aching to be popped. You just can't stand it. You have to scratch it. You have to pop it.

Where do we get that urge? I can't speak for everybody but I suppose for myself, it's because I am unable to empathize nor see beyond the inner struggle of one who goes an experience or simply said, I don't believe the inherent goodness in a person. But that was past. As I move towards authenticity, I am growing to realize that I too limit myself if I limit others.

The poison to any possibility is a negative word. Somewhere in Proverbs it says, "Death and life is the power of the tongue." It is easy to stick this on a car bumper or to post it on your office wall or make it a desktop screensaver. But it is very hard to live out. It becomes hard to live out because we are more quick to call others' attention than ours.

A chat with a friend recently reminded me of this bible saying that goes, "One who has been forgiven much, loves much." How can you love much if you don't know how much you've been forgiven? How will you know how much you have been forgiven if you think you don't NEED to be forgiven? :-)

I think I've strayed far from my point of enumerating the important steps of embarking on the creative writing craft but I think it is important that before any journey begins, the heart, the mind and the soul is set in the right place. For you will not know what kind of challenges you will face but if you got your insides intact, your inner mettle will let you rise above anything that tries to run by you.

So here I am trying to move with the flow again and believing that even if there are seasons in where my creativity runs dry, there are definitely seasons where the spring will come again.