MattAndJojang's Blog

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The falling petal

Is precariously floating,

Dangling in the mist.

~ Matt

This charming and chirpy video pays tribute to the happy wholesomeness of being alone. Tanya Davis recites her poem about the ways of solitude, gently cataloging all the places where aloneness can bring freedom and healing. Whether at a lunch counter, park bench, mountain trail, or on the edge of a dance floor — all we have to do is love ourselves enough, to love being alone.

If you are at first lonely, be patient. If you’ve not been alone much, or if when you were, you weren’t okay with it, then just wait. You’ll find it’s fine to be alone once you’re embracing it.

We could start with the acceptable places, the bathroom, the coffee shop, the library. Where you can stall and read the paper, where you can get your caffeine fix and sit and stay there. Where you can browse the stacks and smell the books. You’re not supposed to talk much anyway so it’s safe there.

There’s also the gym. If you’re shy you could hang out with yourself in mirrors, you could put headphones in.

And there’s public transportation, because we all gotta go places.

And there’s prayer and meditation. No one will think less if you’re hanging with your breath seeking peace and salvation.

Start simple. Things you may have previously avoided based on your avoid being alone principals.

The lunch counter. Where you will be surrounded by chow-downers. Employees who only have an hour and their spouses work across town and so they — like you — will be alone.

Resist the urge to hang out with your cell phone.

When you are comfortable with eat lunch and run, take yourself out for dinner. A restaurant with linen and silverware. You’re no less intriguing a person when you’re eating solo dessert to cleaning the whipped cream from the dish with your finger. In fact some people at full tables will wish they were where you were.

Go to the movies. Where it is dark and soothing. Alone in your seat amidst a fleeting community. And then, take yourself out dancing to a club where no one knows you. Stand on the outside of the floor till the lights convince you more and more and the music shows you. Dance like no one’s watching… because, they’re probably not. And, if they are, assume it is with best of human intentions. The way bodies move genuinely to beats is, after all, gorgeous and affecting. Dance until you’re sweating, and beads of perspiration remind you of life’s best things, down your back like a brook of blessings.

Go to the woods alone, and the trees and squirrels will watch for you. Go to an unfamiliar city, roam the streets, there’re always statues to talk to and benches made for sitting give strangers a shared existence if only for a minute and these moments can be so uplifting and the conversations you get in by sitting alone on benches might’ve never happened had you not been there by yourself

Society is afraid of alonedom, like lonely hearts are wasting away in basements, like people must have problems if, after a while, nobody is dating them. but lonely is a freedom that breaths easy and weightless and lonely is healing if you make it.

You could stand, swathed by groups and mobs or hold hands with your partner, look both further and farther for the endless quest for company. But no one’s in your head and by the time you translate your thoughts, some essence of them may be lost or perhaps it is just kept.

Perhaps in the interest of loving oneself, perhaps all those sappy slogans from preschool over to high school’s groaning were tokens for holding the lonely at bay. Cuz if you’re happy in your head then solitude is blessed and alone is okay.

It’s okay if no one believes like you. All experience is unique, no one has the same synapses, can’t think like you, for this be relieved, keeps things interesting lifes magic things in reach.

And it doesn’t mean you’re not connected, that communitie’s not present, just take the perspective you get from being one person in one head and feel the effects of it. take silence and respect it. if you have an art that needs a practice, stop neglecting it. if your family doesn’t get you, or religious sect is not meant for you, don’t obsess about it.

You could be in an instant surrounded if you needed it
If your heart is bleeding make the best of it
There is heat in freezing, be a testament.

~ Tanya Davis

Photo: bluej727/Flickr

Outside my window

The tall, thin trees are swaying  -

The sound of the wind.

~ Matt

Photo: Andy Roberts/Flickr

‘A few strong instincts and a few plain rules suffice us.’ ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Life can be ridiculously complicated, if you let it. I suggest we simplify.

Thich Nhat Hanh’s quote… is the shortest guide to life you’ll ever need:

“Smile, breath, and go slowly.”

If you live your life by those five words, you’ll do pretty well. For those who need a little more guidance, I’ve distilled the lessons I’ve learned (so far) into a few guidelines, or reminders, really.

And as always, these rules are meant to be broken. Life wouldn’t be any fun if they weren’t.

the brief guide

less TV, more reading
less shopping, more outdoors
less clutter, more space
less rush, more slowness
less consuming, more creating
less junk, more real food
less busywork, more impact
less driving, more walking
less noise, more solitude
less focus on the future, more on the present
less work, more play
less worry, more smiles
breathe

~ Leo Babauta

Photo: Seeneasy/Flickr

If you can’t be a pine on the top of a hill

Be a scrub in the valley, but be the best little scrub on the side of the hill

Be a bush if you can’t be a tree,

If you can’t be a bush be a bit of the grass

And some highway happier make.

If you can’t be a muskie, then just be a bass,

But the liveliest bass in the lake.

We can’t all be captains, we’ve got to be crew,

There’s something for all of us here.

There’s big work to do and there’s lesser work, too,

And the thing we must do is the near

If you can’t be a highway, then just be a trail.

If you can’t be the sun, be a star.

It isn’t by size that you win or you fail.

Be the best of whatever you are.

~ Douglas Maloch

Photo: Laura Hegfield

I was watching the gathering clouds and their shifting shadows on those familiar mountains for quite a while. I saw you, but it wasn’t until I turned and took a step that I could truly see you.

With an intake of breath, my heart expanded in awe, recognizing yours, so perfectly formed.

How many others had passed by without noticing? What if I had not turned that afternoon, had not taken a step?

Gratitude awakened, witnessing this mirrored image of sacredness balanced on the mountainside.

                                                  You.   Me.   God.

Standing as One in this single moment of grace.

I love this tree. I love remembering the feeling of awe that filled me when I looked through the viewfinder of my camera and realized that the branches and leaves grew into a perfect heart shape. But I didn’t see it right away; it took a while until I was standing in just the right position to be aware of what was in front of me the whole time.

The form was there, the core essence of holiness was present all along, but I had to orient myself properly in order to recognize it. I think the same can be said for the holy essence that resides within each of us.

During the month of Elul, leading up to the Yomim Noraim, the Jewish High Holy Days of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, it is a Jewish spiritual practice to make t’shuva — to turn, return to our goodness, our godliness, to God.

We turn inward. We look in our hearts and examine closely the mountains of mistakes we have made. We turn towards those we have hurt and ask for forgiveness. We promise to do better — at the very least to try to be kinder and more thoughtful in the year to come. We do what we can to repair what we have broken. We make a conscious shift from where our hearts were positioned when we were intentionally hurtful or simply not paying attention to our words and actions. We return to God awareness, remembering that it is when we forget our own divinity and that of others that we inflict harm.

We choose to change, to grow. Like the micro-movements of alignment a yogini must make to settle into vrkasana (tree pose) with strength, firmly rooted, balanced, open, present, we readjust our inner stance until we can see beyond the misdeeds, harsh words, insincerity, apathy, judgment and wounds to discover our own holy hearts, beautifully formed, strong, rooted, balanced, open and fully present; silhouetted before the jagged background of those mountains. The dark clouds move aside, our holiness shines brilliantly. It was always there. Here. We forgive ourselves; perhaps the hardest step of all. We have returned.

~ Laura Hegfield

Photo: http://www.ileifa.org

Even empty space has a kind of structure, and we don’t understand that at all. In fact, most of us would guess that empty space does have a structure but on a tiny, tiny scale. There’s fascinating ideas and one of the fascinating ideas is that if you could chop up space on a very tiny scale, you would find that what we think of as just a little point in space is actually a tightly wrapped origami of extra dimensions over and above the three that we are familiar with.

~ Lord Martin Rees, Astrophysicist

Photo: Maddy Clare/Flickr

When I was six or seven years old, growing up in Pittsburgh, I used to take a precious penny of my own and hide it for someone else to find. It was a curious compulsion; sadly, I’ve never been seized by it since. For some reason I always “hid” the penny along the same stretch of sidewalk up the street. I would cradle it at the roots of a sycamore, say, or in a hole left by a chipped-off piece of sidewalk. Then I would take a piece of chalk, and, starting at either end of the block, draw huge arrows leading up to the penny from both directions. After I learned to write I labeled the arrows: SURPRISE AHEAD or MONEY THIS WAY. I was greatly excited, during all this arrow-drawing, at the thought of the first lucky passer-by who would receive in this way, regardless of merit, a free gift from the universe. But I never lurked about. I would go straight home and not give the matter another thought, until, some months later, I would be gripped again by the impulse to hide another penny.

It is still the first week in January, and I’ve got great plans. I’ve been thinking about seeing. There are lots of things to see, unwrapped gifts and free surprises. The world is fairly studded and strewn with pennies cast broadside from a generous hand. But—and this is the point—who gets excited by a mere penny? If you follow one arrow, if you crouch motionless on a bank to watch a tremulous ripple thrill on the water and are rewarded by the sight of a muskrat kit paddling from its den, will you count that sight of a chip of copper only, and go your rueful way? It is dire poverty indeed when a man is so malnourished and fatigued that he won’t stoop to pick up a penny. But if you cultivate a healthy poverty and simplicity, so that finding a penny will literally make your day, then, since the world is in fact planted in pennies, you have with your poverty bought a lifetime of days. It is that simple. What you see is what you get.

I used to be able to see flying insects in the air. I’d look ahead and see, not the row of hemlocks across the road, but the air in front of it. My eyes would focus along that column of air, picking out flying insects. But I lost interest, I guess, for I dropped the habit. Now I can see birds. Probably some people can look at the grass at their feet and discover all the crawling creatures. I would like to know grasses and sedges—and care. Then my least journey into the world would be a field trip, a series of happy recognitions. Thoreau, in an expansive mood, exulted, “What a rich book might be made about buds, including, perhaps, sprouts!” It would be nice to think so. I cherish mental images I have of three perfectly happy people. One collects stones. Another—an Englishman, say—watches clouds. The third lives on a coast and collects drops of seawater which he examines microscopically and mounts. But I don’t see what the specialist sees, and so I cut myself off, not only from the total picture, but from the various forms of happiness.

Unfortunately, nature is very much a now-you-see-it, now-you-don’t affair. A fish flashes, then dissolves in the water before my eyes like so much salt. Deer apparently ascend bodily into heaven; the brightest oriole fades into leaves. These disappearances stun me into stillness and concentration; they say of nature that it conceals with a grand nonchalance, and they say of vision that it is a deliberate gift, the revelation of a dancer who for my eyes only flings away her seven veils. For nature does reveal as well as conceal: now-you-don’t-see-it, now-you-do. For a week last September migrating red-winged blackbirds were feeding heavily down by the creek at the back of the house. One day I went out to investigate the racket; I walked up to a tree, an Osage orange, and a hundred birds flew away. They simply materialized out of the tree. I saw a tree, then a whisk of color, then a tree again. I walked closer and another hundred blackbirds took flight. Not a branch, not a twig budged: the birds were apparently weightless as well as invisible. Or, it was as if the leaves of the Osage orange had been freed from a spell in the form of red-winged blackbirds; they flew from the tree, caught my eye in the sky, and vanished. When I looked again at the tree the leaves had reassembled as if nothing had happened. Finally I walked directly to the trunk of the tree and a final hundred, the real diehards, appeared, spread, and vanished. How could so many hide in the tree without my seeing them? The Osage orange, unruffled, looked just as it had looked from the house, when three hundred red-winged blackbirds cried from its crown. I looked downstream where they flew, and they were gone. Searching, I couldn’t spot one. I wandered downstream to force them to play their hand, but they’d crossed the creek and scattered. One show to a customer. These appearances catch at my throat; they are the free gifts, the bright coppers at the roots of trees.

It’s all a matter of keeping my eyes open. Nature is like one of those line drawings of a tree that are puzzles for children: Can you find hidden in the leaves a duck, a house, a boy, a bucket, a zebra, and a boot? Specialists can find the most incredibly well-hidden things. A book I read when I was young recommended an easy way to find caterpillars to rear: you simply find some fresh caterpillar droppings, look up, and there’s your caterpillar. More recently an author advised me to set my mind at ease about those piles of cut stems on the ground in grassy fields. Field mice make them; they cut the grass down by degrees to reach the seeds at the head. It seems that when the grass is tightly packed, as in a field of ripe grain, the blade won’t topple at a single cut through the stem; instead, the cut stem simply drops vertically, held in the crush of grain. The mouse severs the bottom again and again, the stem keeps dropping an inch at a time, and finally the head is low enough for the mouse to reach the seeds. Meanwhile, the mouse is positively littering the field with its little piles of cut stems into which, presumably, the author of the book is constantly stumbling.

If I can’t see these minutiae, I still try to keep my eyes open. I’m always on the lookout for antlion traps in sandy soil, monarch pupae near milkweed, skipper larvae in locust leaves. These things are utterly common, and I’ve not seen one. I bang on hollow trees near water, but so far no flying squirrels have appeared. In flat country I watch every sunset in hopes of seeing the green ray. The green ray is a seldom-seen streak of light that rises from the sun like a spurting fountain at the moment of sunset; it throbs into the sky for two seconds and disappears. One more reason to keep my eyes open. A photography professor at the University of Florida just happened to see a bird die in midflight; it jerked, died, dropped, and smashed on the ground. I squint at the wind because I read Stewart Edward White: “I have always maintained that if you looked closely enough you could see the wind—the dim, hardly-made-out, fine débris fleeing high in the air.” White was an excellent observer, and devoted an entire chapter of The Mountains to the subject of seeing deer: “As soon as you can forget the naturally obvious and construct an artificial obvious, then you too will see deer.”

But the artificial obvious is hard to see. My eyes account for less than one percent of the weight of my head; I’m bony and dense; I see what I expect. I once spent a full three minutes looking at a bullfrog that was so unexpectedly large I couldn’t see it even though a dozen enthusiastic campers were shouting directions. Finally I asked, “What color am I looking for?” and a fellow said, “Green.” When at last I picked out the frog, I saw what painters are up against: the thing wasn’t green at all, but the color of wet hickory bark.

The lover can see, and the knowledgeable. I visited an aunt and uncle at a quarter-horse ranch in Cody, Wyoming. I couldn’t do much of anything useful, but I could, I thought, draw. So, as we all sat around the kitchen table after supper, I produced a sheet of paper and drew a horse. “That’s one lame horse,” my aunt volunteered. The rest of the family joined in: “Only place to saddle that one is his neck”; “Looks like we better shoot the poor thing, on account of those terrible growths.” Meekly, I slid the pencil and paper down the table. Everyone in that family, including my three young cousins, could draw a horse. Beautifully. When the paper came back it looked as though five shining, real quarter horses had been corralled by mistake with a papier-mâché moose; the real horses seemed to gaze at the monster with a steady, puzzled air. I stay away from horses now, but I can do a creditable goldfish. The point is that I just don’t know what the lover knows; I just can’t see the artificial obvious that those in the know construct. The herpetologist asks the native, “Are there snakes in that ravine?” “Nosir.” And the herpetologist comes home with, yessir, three bags full. Are there butterflies on that mountain? Are the bluets in bloom, are there arrowheads here, or fossil shells in the shale?

Peeping through my keyhole I see within the range of only about thirty percent of the light that comes from the sun; the rest is infrared and some little ultraviolet, perfectly apparent to many animals, but invisible to me. A nightmare network of ganglia, charged and firing without my knowledge, cuts and splices what I do see, editing it for my brain. Donald E. Carr points out that the sense impressions of one-celled animals are not edited for the brain: “This is philosophically interesting in a rather mournful way, since it means that only the simplest animals perceive the universe as it is.”

A fog that won’t burn away drifts and flows across my field of vision. When you see fog move against a backdrop of deep pines, you don’t see the fog itself, but streaks of clearness floating across the air in dark shreds. So I see only tatters of clearness through a pervading obscurity. I can’t distinguish the fog from the overcast sky; I can’t be sure if the light is direct or reflected. Everywhere darkness and the presence of the unseen appalls. We estimate now that only one atom dances alone in every cubic meter of intergalactic space. I blink and squint. What planet or power yanks Halley’s Comet out of orbit? We haven’t seen that force yet; it’s a question of distance, density, and the pallor of reflected light. We rock, cradled in the swaddling band of darkness. Even the simple darkness of night whispers suggestions to the mind. Last summer, in August, I stayed at the creek too late.

~ Annie Dillard

Fermin with a Zambian child

We are reposting this inspiring blog entry  written by our good friend, Fermin ” Tarcs” Taruc who suddenly passed away today. We will miss you, Fermin. Rest in peace…

The author, Fermin “Tarcs” Taruc, is Jojang’s friend since the 1980′s. Recently, Fermin made a radical decision in his life. He took a sabbatical leave from his lucrative job at Gurango Software as its Chief Executive Officer, to spend six months in Zambia, Africa. We regularly read his blog because we enjoy reading his blog entries. His latest entry, Distant Drums, is very inspiring and we would like to share it with you…

As of today, I have 16 days left in Zambia. My remaining time will be spent completing a few projects and saying goodbye to the friends I have made.

The experience has been everything that I expected. It has been difficult and challenging. Oftentimes, I felt isolated and lonely. Conversely, it has also been everything I did not expect. I made a lot of new friends that I would not have been able to meet elsewhere. I learned new things, most especially about what I can do without. I look at my end-of-placement review document and, on paper at least, it seems I have done a lot in the past five and a half months. At the same time, I feel like I have not done much at all.

In the bus this morning on the way to the big city for a final workshop, I realized that It may take some time before I could process my entire experience and understand how exactly it has changed me. Maybe someday, after having made another one of my strange life choices, that is when I will suddenly realize – ah, this is what I learned in Africa, this is how Africa has transformed me.

For now, I have my curios and my experiences to remind me of the time I have spent here. When I am alone, I take out and admire the African souvenirs . I imagine how I would put them up back home or how to explain their provenance to my friends. But, a thing is a thing. I quickly get bored with this activity.

I spend more time running through my memories. I hold each one in my consciousness, considering their value against the bright light of hindsight Which ones are most precious to me? Which ones do I want to take home with me?

I could remember:

• the wretchedness of a diarrhea attack in a place with limited toilet facilities (dear God, the wretchedness).
• the 2 kilometer walk to get to the nearest hospital and the stench of sweat and sickness while waiting in line for my malaria test results (negative, but I was scared)
• the appetizing mixture of mud and manure on which I could just not avoid stepping during rainy days
• the frustrations from a work environment with limited resources and a different ethic
• the feeling of helpless anger and the lost of my sense of complacent security after having my things stolen
• the homesickness that was never more acute as during the cold nights when I would be shivering under a thick blanket, listening to the sound of scurrying rats in the ceiling, wishing I were home – warm, clean, stomach full – instead.

I could remember grievances, inconveniences, hardships, annoyances, irritants.

I could. But I don’t think I would want to. Even now, the details of these memories are starting to get fuzzy. How many times did I get diarrhea? Was it in November or December that I had malaria-like symptoms? What exactly were the things that were stolen from me?

I brush these memories aside. I survived. That is what matters. I have suffered thru shit, theft, stomach problems and homesickness before. They are not unique to my African experience.

Fortunately, there are many more memories from which to choose. These are the ones that will always seem like they only happened an hour ago. No matter what the future holds for me, these are the ones that will make me want to come back to this time and place.

I will remember

• the many nights when I drifted off to sleep listening to the sound of distant drums, imagining people dancing around a bonfire, wondering what it was they might be celebrating.
• that hot day, sitting under the shade of a tree when a hungry boy fell asleep in my arms – his rhythmic breathing against my chest, his little fingers clutched tightly around mine
• that first day in Church when, after being introduced as a new member of the parish, a grandfatherly man came up to me, held my hands and said “You are home. We are your family here”
• that late afternoon when, on the way home from work, I chanced upon a group of women standing at the back of a slowly moving truck. They were softly singing . The words were foreign but the melody was so evocative of sadness and longing. I was struck still in the middle of the street, suddenly remembering everything that I too have lost and miss as I watched them disappear into the dusk
• the thrill of riding in a car moving carefully along a deserted road late at night, careful not to hit any elephant that may cross our way, thinking to myself, “Only in Africa”
• the awe inspired by the gentle gaze of a fawn or the perfect beauty of a zebra ambling casually in front of me.
• the joy in the faces of the children who would run up to greet me every single day that I have been in Kalomo. “Muzungu, muzungu”, they would shout, racing against each other in their ragged clothes, to be the first to touch me.
• the simple, inspired meals cooked in small, cramped kitchens and shared happily with friends, all the more special because the occasions were so rare.
• telling a group of Zambians that my hero is the ordinary Filipino in times of crisis; saying how proud I am of my countrymen who, regardless of the odds and the difficulties, still manage to laugh and to share; realizing as I was speaking how much it meant to me to be able to say this.

I will remember faces and names and smiles, each special, each distinct and separate from the other. I will remember every life story that was shared with me,.

I will remember magnificent, MAGNIFICENT, sunsets, and thundering waterfalls.

I will remember a rare rainbow seen in the faint glow of the moonlight; colorful trees that seemed to reach up to the sky; verdant landscapes dotted with settlements of mud-huts;

I will remember. Perhaps, while remembering, I might even hear the sound of distant drums again.

I have come full circle. This is Africa. This is my Africa.

- Fermin “Tarcs” Taruc

Note: You may read the other entries of Tarc’s blog at: mid-life-angst.blogspot.com

Posted in Blog

You are not surprised at the force of the storm—
you have seen it growing.
The trees flee. Their flight
sets the boulevards streaming. And you know:
he whom they flee is the one
you move toward. All your senses
sing him, as you stand at the window.

The weeks stood still in summer.
The trees' blood rose. Now you feel
it wants to sink back
into the source of everything. You thought
you could trust that power
when you plucked the fruit:
now it becomes a riddle again
and you again a stranger.

Summer was like your house: you know
where each thing stood.
Now you must go out into your heart
as onto a vast plain. Now
the immense loneliness begins.

The days go numb, the wind
sucks the world from your senses like withered leaves.

Through the empty branches the sky remains.
It is what you have.
Be earth now, and evensong.
Be the ground lying under that sky.
Be modest now, like a thing
ripened until it is real,
so that he who began it all
can feel you when he reaches for you.

- Rainier Maria Rilke