The Thought Runner - my New Blog!

Hello dear reader!

Due to my personal decision of finally creating a blog that requires itself to be updated not only once a week, but as frequently as possible, I have decided to focus more on this new blog, and discontinue updating the older.

Please do check out my new blog at http://thethoughtrunner.blogspot.com/, entitled Thought Runner.

If you enjoyed (or perhaps felt informed or inspired) by Project Once A Week, then Thought Runner could also perhaps draw the same feeling(s).

In any case, drop by and read away. :)

Thank you for supporting Project Once A Week, I truly, truly appreciate it, even if for only a moment you read one of my posts.

Sincerely,

Angela R. M. Ferrer

Blogger, Artist, Etc.

I Can't

We can't give up.

You can't.

Not then, not now. Not tomorrow...

Someone probably told you, you should, but try to be a little wiser, and hold on to what's true.

Don't say you don't know anymore, because you know, you really do.

Even if it hurts, stay. You have to hold on. You're needed. More than you imagined, more than they imagined.

Would you cry instead, and tell your prayers, and paint your anger, than letting go.

If time is the answer, then wait.

If you can't wait, then wait.

This world is very strange, and it hurts a little too much.

But please, it's not the reason why we're here.

It can distract us as much as it can, take away our loves, or prove to us that sometimes, good things are not always enough.

But that's because you were chosen. To be born. To be here. To experience your experience.

You are loved. You are loved. And you love. Keep safe. Keep safe. I tell you, God bless.

'I love you'. It's here. I'm here. You know. We can't give up. Fight for the light. Fight it. Believe.

Traveling

I think, more than the past, I believe in the future, and in the present, I try my best to trust.

Just because I hurt, just because I feel bad, doesn’t mean I lost faith in what’s important.

And just because I may lose track, whether by chance or on purpose, doesn’t mean I don’t know how to get back, and doesn’t mean I don’t want to go back.

It just means I’m learning.

I’m trying to do what I can with what I have. I’m trying to explore what else I can work with, play with, be with, live with. I’m trying to live the best life I can live in every moment, without getting stuck in the future, or being buried in the past. Most of all, with the demands of a presence of mind, I try to do excellently as a good person. Doing good, being good and staying good.

All this goodness, is nothing close to the childish notion of naughty and nice. Doing good as contributing to others around me. Doing my best to be thoughtful. Thinking of others’ situation before my own, and analyzing as best as possible how to reconcile both, and if sacrifice on my end must be done, then so be it. Being good as to practicing my virtues.

As difficult and impossible as they may be, I can try to be saintly, but never claim to be as such. I aspire to be not because it’s admirable but because I’m directed to be so. As everyone is, in fact. As to be saintly is to be good, people are directed to goodness. Growth is goodness. Transcendence is goodness. Using this transcendence to help us pave our destiny, but not just ours but of others’. Being good technically does not only show your faith and love for others, but your faith and love for yourself as well.

Staying good as getting back into track if I fall down. If I fall for temptations, if I forget important things and reminders, if I chose to do what is not good—Staying good has a lot to do with persistence and determination, and meaning to do it not just because you’re sincere, not just because you have to, but because you know it in your heart that you want to stay well, and you want to do good, to be good, because you are aware that this brings you happiness.

Just as you are, the goodness that you are, in your heart, you bring tidings to your existence. Happiness is happy for happiness. As happiness is universal, happiness of others, may also count on yours. Your affectivity extends from yourself, onto others and multiplies as long as others reflect their lights, from a source so Beautiful. Like mirrors, we reflect His light, His goodness, His mercy and His compassion.

I may not see everything. And I may not know everything. But I know that in my heart, that whatever I’m looking for is already watching me with love and unsurpassed longing. I search, and I am waited for. If I wait as I search for my answers, my answers wait until my personal investigation has been completed.

The Red Queen Complex

Even words can’t speak sometimes.

But when we begin to force them, as if aiming for a ripple effect, they cascade, like water seeping through cracks.

Eventually when you break the wall, they just overflow.

Super giant one-of-a kind apologies to others and myself for not coming up to the already small expectation of sharing a post ‘once a week’.

So last I posted was December, and already it’s February and the entire world is about to welcome summer in its variety.

I’ve mentioned somewhere in my posts before that technically, I’ve already failed the routine of posting once a week and yet, I still continue to do so.

(I tried making up for those like, I’d post 2 entries the ff. week if I wasn’t able with the last. But. I think sticking to your site’s ‘premise’ is like, following the doctor’s orders. If it’s just one glass of wine a day, and you missed drinking, you can’t have two on the next. So. ….I’M SOOOOORRRRRYYYYYY.)

I know even if the comments read ‘0’ count, I still keep on saying these apologies, but it’s for any friend or reader who passes by my page and reads or scans through my entries.

Long apology over. I’m still writing in this blog.

And new entry:

The Red Queen Complex

‘Off with their heads! Off. With. Their Heeeeeaaaads!”

Guess who said that.

I like her, the Red Queen, from Alice in Wonderland.

She’s angry, she’s vengeful, she knows how it feels to be hated and to be unloved. There is no other daring character in this world that I know, in either fiction or reality that is exactly like the Red Queen. If you know one, you’re in a serious treat.

No, I’m not sadistic. I like her, yes, but I don’t want to be like her.

However, I do feel like her, but not necessarily wanting to be.

Are you a Red Queen, too?

But pardon, Red Queen is Red Queen. Let us not rob off her personal merit of carrying her own name, character and definition, however impossible to fully define.

My sympathies go more for her, than for Alice. Her malice makes her sympathetic for me; that fear, that thirst for redemption, her wild revenge and her quest to earn her misplaced, misinterpreted ‘merit’.

The Red Queen, to me, is the epitome of frustrated love and unaccepted difference. I find her will to live so very much astonishing. She is a kind of nemesis that keeps you wondering, “Why? Why? Why?” Just to arrive at the simplest of answers no one can dare translate as coherently as she sees it in her own mind.

She is jealous and coveting. She will rob you in an instant if you possess something she wants. She is high-tempered and lacking of basic social skills, but her aggressiveness and direct-approach sends everyone moving and talking about and even for her.

But as earlier confessed; I may find myself resembling the Red Queen in times, but I dare not want to be like her.

Content and deluded by her own misery and loneliness. Someone who agreed with herself that the world is how she sees it to be and no one else can change that. Someone who’s smart enough to force herself in leadership, but dumb enough not to know how to handle the responsibilities. She fumes, explodes, rages and pounds. All that beautiful, bountiful energy; recycled into the universe without her turn of good use.

That to me is her unfortunate downfall. An opportunity lost to contribute something good. Nothing is more saddening than an opportunity lost. Regrets bore out of this, and yet we have the audacity to tell ourselves that we have learned our lesson, only to commit the same mistake not only twice, or thrice, but over and over until our life must’ve been sucked out of our bodies.

The horrifying and good thing about this lifetime we spend, however singular, is that as energy is recycled, opportunity can present itself again. Yes, hence the performance of similar mistakes. But we cannot blame ourselves so much because of our innate downfall; our lack of an all-knowing intelligence. A basic truth we can never, and I mean it, ever change. So we have what we call ‘perfecting’; a state where we are close to perfect, but not really.

Given that we enjoy and learn in our own faults, it is just as a given that we secretly or adamantly aim to change that.

Did the Red Queen want to change?

I certainly want to. But the Red Queen found perfection in her own imperfection. And for those who think they are perfect, and nothing more can ever be added or subtracted, you’re one and the same fault.

The answer is brutal and simple: We’re not.

So deal with it.

Seriously, work on it.

My All-Time Top 10 Favourite Christmas Movies

My Top 10 Christmas Flicks:

(Ones I never tire of re-watching, and keeps getting better every time I do.

Not to mention, I can watch it at any part of the year, and still feel Christmas-y.)

1. Home Alone

Starring Macaulay Culkin

2. How The Grinch Stole Christmas (2-D Animation)

By Dr. Seuss

3. The Nightmare Before Christmas

By Tim Burton

4. While You Were Sleeping

Starring Sandra Bullock

5. The Holiday

Starring Cameron Diaz, Kate Winslet

Jude Law and Jack Black

6. Scrooged

Starring Bill Murray

7. A Christmas Carol (3D-Animation)

Starring Jim Carrey

8. The Muppet Christmas Carol

Starring Michael Caine

9. Tokyo Godfathers

By Satoshi Kon

and last, but never the least

10. Elf

Starring Will Farell

Try to watch them!

Enjoy!!!

Facebook, Personal Return

What could have possibly urged Facebook to come up with activation and de-activation settings in general? As I mentioned in my previous input concerning Facebook ‘Delirium’, I’ve a hunch that it had something to do with one’s reputation on-line while our reality-spaced life is busy on its own.

Of course one may argue that our on-line life is a mere reflection, or a snapshot-collection of our reality. However others may contest that on-line in itself is a different life, another entity, one we can easily manipulate and alter as we please. After all, perception on-line is heightened. You control what you want to be seen. Edit, fix, use photoshop and all other kinds of alterations. You can stare at the same face for hours, studying profile pictures and albums and reading previous comments, creating ones and monitoring anybody (who’s your ‘friend’) including yourself.

To me, it is a form of vanity. Apart from myself, there are others.

And others are in form of friends and family.

See, this is the point where I technically surrender to the ‘Facebook Way’. Yes, it’s an admittance. Yes, it feels like some sort of defeat. Yes, I’m back.

But this time, for better reasons.

I once began Facebook for the sake of reminiscing; your typical high school story where she wanted to see her old friends check out their old photos. (Not so old!!!)

And then it snowballed into something bigger, and I realized I was tweaking my profile more frequently than I should.

Saying all these things, simply to point out that I’m finally accepting what I have intentionally neglected for this long.

There have been various reasons, and when I say various, I really mean a variety. From ex-boyfriend issues, to photo-lifestyle-pseudo-competitions, to account-hacker(s) and not to mention, creepy stalkers who keep on adding you and God knows whether they’re just changing their profile pics every time it’s a new one.

There were many reasons why I had to just quit. I couldn’t help but think what other profilers thought of me, that anyone smart enough can hack in, no matter how tough Facebook can protect my account. But I always worried about my long-time friends who would ask me when we bump into each other, ‘Where are you in Facebook?’ . ‘Did you de-activate your account?’ , ‘Come back na kasi!’ , ‘If you’re serious about blogging, get your Facebook back.’ , ‘Just don’t add him/her when you get another one.’

None of those arguments could persuade me. Not really.

Especially not if I wrote not long ago a blog-article pertaining to my delirium over Facebook, and how much it can consume my time, even if it was in fact, little. (The fact that I obsessed over the details makes it feel so invested. Couldn’t believe myself that I was committed to an on-line representation. It was a little too shocking to me, basically because not all the applications or status messages or fan pages could define who we really are, let alone what we show in our reality-space-in-the-flesh lives.)

It was my loved ones. You know, those people who supported and loved me thru thick and thin; Who loved seeing me in Facebook and getting in touch with me with just a click, typing here and there.

I can’t bear it for long…not having to show them our precious taken memories from mere cameras and have it display in the most influential on-line network yet.

FYI. I’m back because this time, no strings attached, I’m coming in just as me. For myself first, and consequently for others. I’m going to use Facebook to help me understand myself, my friends and all the colourful interests invested by other people. I’ll try my best to be more careful. But knowing Cyberspace, let alone life, that’s never genuinely possible.

Technically, I’m taking the risk.

Where it all boils down

Nature literally ate thru my memories.

Our house have always had the problem of termites to deal with. For one, they love to make houses from the ridges of our walls and two, they eat anything (of course) in their midst made out of wood.

So we made adjustments as called for and transformed storage areas into compartments of glass, pyro-glass, and even ended up making our interior look stylishly modern.

My custom-made closet, which was used to be made out of wood became steel & glass with a touch of mirrors. I had the liberty of having a shelf made out of glass, and has now served a great purpose in my room.

However, our second floor is still made out of narra, and as we still prefer to keep our narra despite natural crises (there was a time it flooded in our second floor thru the terrace, and the narra broke up along the edges, so we had to get used to the uneven floor then on) I find myself still battling it out with the ambitious termites.

They went under and up in my supposedly invincible shelf, however do not fret, no, thank God, they did not eat my books, unfortunately, they ate my 'time capsules', boxes made out of italian paper filled with cards and papers from long-ago memories that I so wished to preserve.

Out of a bundle, only four items survived:

A small Christmas card from my best friend.

A singing competition ticket where I supported friends, not to mention a crush (I leave notes at the back of receipts and some tickets).

Another Christmas card from the people I work with at Church.

Yet another Christmas card from my mentor at the university.

A Valentine's card from my dear parents.

And lastly, an invitation card, the 'prototype', I spared for myself from my 18th birthday, my debut.

It gave me the chills when all the cards that had something to do with the Holy Family were competely preserved. Scratches here and there, but it's still crisp and clean over-all. I can run my finger on the paper's matte surface and it felt as if it was just bought.

These items remained intact.

But what they stand for is what baffled me the most.

They were the people I trusted. Loved. And cared for.

They represented my family, my friends, my womanhood, and most of all, my faith.

It all boils down to the essentials.

Even if everything else are taken away,

the most important things stay.

Today, I was reminded of that. Though in an unusual form, a reminder still.