Reflections

For most, summer is a time for milestones.  Some movies even give it the “time to remember” or the “most memorable times” feel.  There is always something romantic about summers.  Sometimes it will be something so temporary like back in middle school when I tried to convince myself that all the coming summers would add a full inch to my height.  Sometimes it would include that summer fling one just can’t forget.  And still, sometimes it can hold deeper meaning so as it affects peoples lives for the rest of their lives.

My summer is more like a “welcome home” kind.  I hear it loudly in my heart and it warms me all over.  I’ve taken steps toward a different direction after leaving my mountaineering days behind.  I’ve tucked it away and decided to go on my own.  I left home to try and find out what else is there in the world.  I have always been moving.  Ever since I got my bike, back when I was 13, I’ve been wandering as far as my bravery can take me.  This summer I wandered back home.

The start of this year’s summer started with the notion of change and welcoming change that is as far deep rooted an acceptance of change can go.  I’ve erased many of my notions and beliefs to accommodate changes.  Maybe even to the extent of breaking molds I’ve set myself into.  Some will say this is foolish, I say, “Thank you but this is my life.”

The summer just started.  I’ve been spending a lot of time lately knowing new people who now constitute MIT-MC, The Mapua Institute of Technology Mountaineering Club, or simply MC, a club I also used to lead once upon a time.  I attended the 23^rd anniversary last November, last year’s MC Christmas party, graduation party and a whole lot of other events in between including taking some members to indoor sport climbing, eating ramen, and going to movies.

I have been formulating a plan of hiking up mountains again for sometime.  The start of this summer just made that reality when I got to hike up Mt. Napulauan.  I am truly thankful for the welcome and I’m so glad I’m connecting again to something I was passionate about and I wish to be immersed in it again.  The number of people I know is increasing again and not limited to just a handful.  I know it will be difficult to know everyone on the same level but I’m just happy and I’ll take it from there. 

Mt. Napulauan is a cold mountain set in the middle of the Cordillera range.  The most striking feature it has is its seemingly endless maze of mossy forest.  There was bitingly cold wet weather during the climb.  It got coupled with tired legs, cold hands, wet feet, burning lungs and an eerie calm feeling one gets when hiking through Napulauan’s primordial looking forest.  Sagada was up next for a sidetrip, and then a few hours in Baguio just before going back to Manila.  The trip was filled with a lot of events.  The cold wet hike, the induction rites of the club’s batch 24, the deep dark cave, the warm bonfire, singing and stories shared over buckets and buckets of beer, and the list goes on but maybe some will be suitable only for my own memory.  It is more than just hiking after all.  It maybe the connections; it has made the trip all the more impressive.  Once again I am proven that passions go deeper than anything else.  When people with the same passions meet it will always be magical.

I see reflections forming a huge part of my summer this year.  Every event will undoubtedly stare me down, look at me, and then ask me questions.  Some I’ll readily answer.  Some, I’ll just wait out until a fuller understanding is available to me.  And maybe some, I’ll just pretend to understand for a while.  In the meantime every moment that stirs me is keeping me awake and that is what matters.

Hello Summer !

The long hours and days of feeling like a ticking time bomb finally ground to a halt.  It felt all too sudden like waking up short from a dream that tugs and pulls you to slumber longer.  The mind slowed down and realized how much had happened in the last nine months.  Had it been only nine months since the start of this all-new chapter of an Arki kind of life?  Feels like it was only yesterday when I asked for a letter of recommendation from my physics professor from the institute I graduated from. It feels like only a few hours ago when I passed the application form for Master in Architecture to my new school, and only minutes ago when I started knowing new people that would leave indelible marks on me again.  It feels like ground zero on the way to rehab. While most of my peers are writing plaques and epitaphs of the crowning glory of their lives, I’m redoing everything and starting over again.  I’m praying that mind, body and spirit hold on for a few more beatings, hoping that this whole system I have doesn’t collapse on me before I see the next summer.

Finally it’s here.  It is staring at me straight in the eyes, my first new summer.  I breathe a sigh of relief knowing there aren’t any more extra deadlines and no more late night coffee binges to help me stave off sleepy while piling lines and lines, and words and words on paper and on the white of blank document screens.  Finally I can get to do those few things that I once again have put off in place of more urgent ones.  I can get to ride on my dragon, Temeraire, again.  He’s waiting beyond the next few pages.  I miss him sorely.  I can revisit climbing areas I’ve been to thru photos and some writing.  Rodellar, Fosso d’llermo, Miolo, Yangshou, Getu Valley, El Nido, Camp 4 along Kennon Road, and the list can go on and on now.  I can dream of cherry blossoms again and hot sake, that sweet tasting Japanese rice wine.  Maybe I can visit a beach or hike up a mountain again to see a different kind of sunrise.  Hopefully I can get to undo some knots and step out of my old shoes and just walk on cool green grass barefoot, feeling the earth as it should. 

In a few days I’ll be on top of Mt. Napulawan to sleep close to the cold bare earth.  In a few days I’ll be diving off cliffs to meet the sea and sink a few feet down and gasp for air as I surface.  In a few days I’ll be with new friends and old friends I’ve missed. In a few days I’ll be soaked again in new laughter, new smiles, and new sunsets.  A new summer has started.  The glaring sun continues to pat the back of my neck, render my skin to a darker shade, and squint and add new lines at the far edges of my eyes near my temples.  I want this summer to last me a lifetime.  I want to keep it shiny for as long as I could.  If it means being vulnerable again just to feel alive then so it shall.  I think I’m ready for new cracks on my fabric.  I think I’ve greater control now over my senses.  I will have four months worth of summer break.  It will be the longest one I’ll have.  Next school year will start August.  From now ‘till then I have one hundred twenty days to tag as one of the more memorable summers I’ve had.

It’s time to move away from underneath the rain clouds and see the rainbows.  It’s time to get drunk again with the notion of a life less ordinary and be the person that I am, with no loose ends but with a few tattered edges, with both friends and enemies, with calm and chaos, with a smile and a frown, with memories I want to keep and memories I want to forget, with a care and an I don’t care, with hates and loves.

Summer will not be complete though without the shade.  We need the shade…the cold dark shade when the sun becomes blistering hot.  I have my shade ready…

The echoing silence of a room in pitch black

To be broken only by the sound of my own breath…

The beating of my own heart sounding in my ears…

And the sudden growling of my empty stomach…

The neighbor’s dog, barking at the empty darkness…

The sharp ticking of a broken clock not telling the right time…

I love lying down in the dark...

There is nothing in the dark;

Nothing to see, nothing to be scared about, nothing to fear;

It is cold. It is indifferent.

It is an indifference that nods, “hey, it’s o.k.”, without uttering a word,

Without staring back politely, but still understands.

It is not lonely.  There’s just nothing and nothing is something already.

So here’s to summer of hopeful sunrises, of bright blue skies, and of golden sunsets, of star filled skies and silver moons, of gentle breezes, of gusty afternoons, of cold rivers, of intoxicating nights, of old movies, of new movies…of crimps and jugs, of slopers and dynos, of loves and passions…Hello summer !