Tuesday, September 14, 2004

dreams

ina wrote about something about her dreams in her latest entry. something about the word "dreams" makes a ripple in my insides.

i often convince myself that i am living in a dream... and i am. i am a thousand kilometers from home, away from all that is familiar. i am living alone, on a solitary bed, single room apartment, (but i have to share the bathroom though with choy... o well, i really cannot have it all). i am working at a job that pays clearly way below than what i used to earn, but i am enjoying every minute of it. i am travelling around mindanao, and sometimes in the visayas, going to places, knowing names of people that no other person in my manila 'kada would ever knew.

it was all bliss, until i woke up.

i do not know exactly when, but i know it took me a very long time in order to brush the sleep from my eyes. i realized, then, that what i was living in was surreal (surreal is how we, well at least with ina, mike, ninin and myself, used to describe our jvp year). it was all too perfect.

when i finally did wake up, i began to feel the pain of chasing and living for a dream. it became real for me, the sadness became more pronounced, it became less and less easy to smile, more and more difficult to look at better things. sometimes i would feel a yearning to come back to the dream, or worse to come back to the state where i was in before i started the dreaming. somehow it was safer then, more comfortable, and a little less "unknown" than what it is now.

and i dance the edge of temptation to pack up my bags and go, resigned to the fact that i haven't made it. that i lost it all, that i failed in living my dream.

i would have done it, many times especially in the past months from may, hadn't i reminded myself of a very important element of living (and inadverently, waking up in) the dream. that is the factor of choice.

there was a 2am taps snack conversation that i had with mike, in one of his early visits in davao. i do not remember the exact dialogue, but i vaguely remember it going this way:

mike: pare, minsan alam mo naiinggit ako sa iyo
jerry: pero marami din akong sinugal
(medyo tumahimik ata kami dito)
jerry: dahil alam ko pinili ko ito

the choice to run the chase is a choice that now i can say, have been difficult, troubling and testing. it was a choice of discovering what i am made for, my limits that have extended way beyond than what i've set. to run the chase is to define my jerry. to move away from the stereotype dude, to go towards the person i desire myself to be.

and that makes the dream worth living for. less for the experiences and new things to do, even lesser for the pain that it allows, but more for the processes inside. the daily decisions to taste life, in all its sweetness, in all its bitterness, in all its flavors. the minute by minute determination to go through it, because it is also a minute closer to what i am.

a dream within a dream, i dreamt last night that i have cut my hair even shorter. gupit binata so to speak. i woke up almost terrified, then i almost sneezed with the hair the has crumpled on my face. i knew then that it was all a dream. glad to have my mane safely intact.
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my blogs seem to have turned serious lately, damn o how i wish manila. i get too sentimental when i do not get a regular dose of manila air. even if i know that the moment that i step out of the airport, i would be missing davao already.

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