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I have many Ideas. I ponder over them like an obsessive collector; organizing, re-organizing, packing them into words so the meaning is captured, transferable. Most of my transformative experiences are unexplainable - how does one capture the depth of a still, silent night? The whispering of leaves in warm summer breezes. Vague feelings of wholism while sitting in the grass, photosynthesizing like plant ancestors - a fish swims without direction. Many call it god but the church is alienating; the word massacred and butchered beyond the recognition of what it once meant.
One idea I have kept unmolested by the opinions of others, is that these holistic experiences in nature, with friends, live music shows, where the pulse of life beats strongly, are everything. An anchor point for a life well lived. It’s not enough to just be in nature, alchemizing the circumstance missing the key ingredient. A couple of friends and I went on a trip to where the ocean went on forever, unbroken horizon. We were down by the water, sunset and glistening, warmth of the sun and sand beneath my feet. But it was nothing more than looking. I did not have access to this other way of being - locked out, truthfully, by being eaten alive by the stress of exams and stewing in the feelings of being unlovable. It is somehow within you; the trees and ocean reflect it back to me. A quality of self brought out by sincerity and solitude. It’s everything, reflected in everything worthwhile.
Apr 17, 2024
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For someone who claims to identify so closely with solitude, uncovering just how tethered I was to the emotions of people I love was a crispy realization. Of course, that attachment is the basis for any kind of relationship. You cannot claim to “have someone” in your life if you do not feel some kind of emotional connection towards them. The stronger the connection, the stronger the relationship. We all know this. However, there is something to be said about a relationship that is “too good”; a bond so strong due to its shocking lack of tension. In hindsight of various broken and fragmented connections I’ve been apart of, any relationship that exists while remaining entirely unscathed now kind of terrifies me.
I believe there can be such a thing as “too much love”, and I think those who have given or received it know when they have done so. It’s a mistake anyone is capable of making. Imagine a relationship so polished, free from any erosion (visible or otherwise); seemingly perfect. This type of connection can only be established through a building of trust and an abundance of time. However, I’ve come to learn that the more impeccable bonds tend to break easy when faced with their first real blow. Birds only crash into the cleanest of glass.
*"If music be the food of love, play on; / Give me excess of it...*"
I don’t want excess. For the food of love, I am no glutton. I eat until I am full and push my plate aside. I used to love like my life depended on it. I put those people whom I adored on the highest of pedestals, framed them in my gallery and admired new details every time we shared a visit. Maybe I just hadn’t been wronged enough to ever think that I could be wounded by those I dote on so heavily. What is it with loving and being loved that makes feeling hurt seem so impossible? Why must love shatter all preconceived expectations of what emotion is? Is love really so massive, so gargantuan that it conquers all other feeling?
Yes, and no. At least that’s what I think. This is all just what I think. I don’t want to come across as some great romantic or lovesick puppy or old friend. I’m just trying to figure out the right way to love, like everyone else.
Mar 16, 2025
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Bereft of a true home, I dwell instead in sentiment and practice the collection of numerous small tokens thereof: an olive-pin, a tea-tag, a berry-shell, a fortune. I treasure the incitement of memory brought about by these little markers in time-passed, as I do that incited by the more obvious strains: postcards and Polaroids and locks of hair … and these too I try to accumulate, these too light me! But perhaps what is most meaningful is the undisplayable — that which is gone — letters received and lost, letters writ and never sent and lost; a poem misplaced in the loose-leaf of a moulting notebook. A garland of flowers or bouquet that remains only in a blurred photograph; a collection of photographs drowned in a flood. Since my adolescence, some of most beautiful pictures I’ve made on my cameras have been the nonexistent — the mechanisms failed or my Nosferatuesque fingers blocked the lens or or the memory card betrayed me or the film was overexposed through actions entirely beyond control — yes, the most beautiful, I say! It is just so. I can picture them all behind my eyes in perfect clarity — so so beautiful — as beautiful as the flowers that nevermore will fragrance a room and all those words which forevernow lay unread. I can’t speak exactly to the wider benefit of this “recommendation”. But somehow this is the sort of thing that makes me happy.
May 10, 2023
im never more offline than when im commuting. it does get unpleasant, but i have no real alternatives so i stay. i stay with the noise, the waiting, the elbows, the heat. but theres also something in that pocket of time that feels like a sort of gift ? like the city letting you in on something, if youre willing to sit with it long enough. not rly silence bc manila rarely allows for that lol but a kind of stillness that moves alongside the chaos. the kind that doesnt ask for attention, but rewards it
for months i kept noticing these lines along edsa: crescent-shaped shadows on white walls, like soft brushstrokes. id wonder what caused them but theyd slip out of view and something else would take their place: pillows soaking up the morning sun on rooftops, a deflated nemo balloon tangled in trees. and id wonder about those instead. the lines werent a mystery i carried constantly, they just became familiar questions i greeted whenever they returned
one windy afternoon i watched the plants outside the mrt dance - rooted in place, their bodies bent in the only directions they could, in arcs so well rehearsed theyre almost muscle memory. each gust of wind sends them brushing against the wall, over and over, gently eroding the white paint. time passing in small, invisible repetitions. the plants were paintingÂ
i later traced the area on my favourite archive google maps haha and slid back through time. i found a coconut tree. in older images when the tree was younger and its leaves hung lower i could see how it once touched the wall. the tree had grown since then, its reach no longer the same. but the marks remained, like a growth chart. a timeline written in strokes only the wind could carry
i think about these lines often, how the body can grow taller and further away but the places it once brushed against can still remember. i try to hold the same feeling in my ceramic practice: a mindful documentation of the in betweens, the soft evidence of something passing through. in that stillness theres something lasting, something that can be held in the hands long after its made. a way of saying: we were here once. and we danced
Apr 12, 2025
Top Recs from @sun
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Ripping into fruits on a hot summers day, juice dribbling down my exposed chest pooling at my feet. Sitting in cool river streams, a part of the natural world around me. Not a thought beyond the immediate. Stuff like that.
Jul 10, 2024
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These are a few that stick out to me; a good place to start, no particular order
- be here now, Ram Dass. Very dear to my heart, there is nothing else like it. there are also many hours of his lectures recorded for ur listening pleasure
- letters to a young poet, Rainer Rilke. letters he’s written; he discusses solitude, relationships, art, always with the undercurrent of spirituality
- book of hours, Rilke. love poems to god, I like the Barrows and Macy translation. I’m currently reading it
- new seeds to contemplation, Thomas Merton. Merton is a good one to read, he’s got lots of work; go pick through
- lord of the rings, Tolkien. i feel that it is a deeply spiritual text. the prose makes me cry, the reverence of Nature speaks to my heart
I like to listen to James Finley’s podcast turning to the mystics because my current interest is contemplative christianity.
Pete Holmes sometimes has interesting guests, as does Duncan trussel, who talk about spirituality from varying traditions.
I never felt a great affinity for Alan Watts but u could give him a listen
Apr 18, 2024