Notes from the Past Week

Jay is smiling like the Tuscan sun.

Jay is having a lazy Saturday afternoon with his younger sister.

Jay is imagining corners within circles.

Jay is meditating, listening to Brazilian music.

Jay is wandering.

Everything's coming up sunflowers

A few day's ago, Raffy, a friend from Milan, greeted me a Happy Birthday through SMS. Two things made me smile right away. First, it has been quite a while since I have heard from him, so it was a kind of a pleasant surprise. Then, it was not my birthday at all, so it was a sort of a scary, funny surprise. Hehe.

Until tonight, I still am smiling like the Tuscan sun because since I got that unexpected greeting, everything has been coming up "sunflowers", like gifts in the form of small, quotidian miracles. It actually made me count my blessings no matter how cliche that may sound. And like they say, whatever the Tuscan sun touches gets that film-like luster and looks golden, and smiles become brighter, and laughter crunchier. Every little thing seems illuminated. Even memories of my Loppiano experience, I can still feel the warmth of each detail. I wish I could sit one day and tell them all in one sitting. For now, here's a piece of that. (Smiles under the Tuscan sun, that is. Plus a photo of my "real" birthday party in Loppiano two years ago.)

my short musical career in italy

Sick and imagining corners within circles

For a while I thought that I must have been living in circles, moving within the same perimeters and occasionally catching myself succumbing to familiar corners.

Well, if that is the case, then I have to do something about it. If I can't change the world and the way circumstances take on a certain predictable pattern, I have to modify my way of seeing or feeling things.

I resolve, therefore, that each time my personal history repeats itself and I find myself time and again staring at similar scenarios and recurring characters, I'd grab it as a chance to transport things to a different level, transforming myself in the process.

I guess, the word is transcendence.

wandering

Tolkien said "not all who wander are lost." I have been wandering, and people say that I'm lost and that my life has no direction. I don't really mind getting lost if it means sporadic, spontaneous collisions with different versions of your self. I also am not afraid of having no direction if it means stumbling upon strangers and all the world's serendipities.

Come to think of it, all this time that I have been lost, inch by inch I have been scratching the surface of the unknown, getting closer, deeper each time into a pure knowledge of the universe outside of, and within me.

'Til then, I would go on walking away from the highways and the comfort of not knowing, swimming along sanctuaries and the mood swings of time and space, climbing up mountains and beyond history and expectations.

'Til then, the unknown keeps on calling and I'd still be wandering, wandering, wandering...