when you can smile at these

when you're young and you fall in love and then out of it, you swear you'll never live through the shock of pain hurt and betrayal.

when you're young you are infallible, unbeatable, invincible. nothing gets you down. life is to be conquered, no party is too wild, no drink too deep, no man too tame.

when you're young you are the most beautiful girl at the ball, the smartest chick, the coolest gal, the hippest bitch. nothing, no one, can get you down. let them try.

then one day you wake up and look through the clear glass of your apartment window and the gray skies greet you solemnly and you can't help but smile at the slew of memories that march across the overcast palette of hidden sky.

how has it come to this, that one can miss the flings of her younger years? those very same flings that rocked the foundations of all you held dear, that threatened the very fabric of your most precious existence? can it be possible to become lost in the songs that defined that irresponsible moment of foolish discovery and feel a soft longing for the cast of that story? a tale shakespeare could have himself crafted in his most perfect play, "othello", a story of greed, jealousy, lust, and the earth-shaking depths of love. as boy and girl sing in "moulin rouge", i believe in love above all, come what may, i will love you until my dying day...

i never gave it much thought, but he did love the beatles. the simple strains of "why (s)he had to go i don't know, (s)he wouldn't stay. i said something wrong how i long for yesterday..." stand the test of time, sitting collectedly among the greatest songs of all time, not just the previous century. the george harrison songs i love bring back sun-kissed beaches in mindanao when i still had a 24-inch waist and graceful flexible limbs that allowed me to float above my students' wide-eyed faces while dancing "here comes the sun" at our farewell party, or to stare at the crystal clear skies studded with a million stars, exchanging warm caresses with a boyfriend who would someday beat up his wife and leave her, a mere shadow of his former cute self, ugly, drawn, haggard, and weary with life. but the hint of a smile on my jaded lips will always hearken back to that golden time when the night wind cloaked my love in its secret folds and took me anywhere everywhere my searching questing heart yearned to go.

you can only smile at the past tragedies, the past loves, the past shadows, when you have found your own very special place in the world. until you have found your niche in the order of things, the past will be nothing but ghosts that haunt you endlessly until you have buried them in their proper places with a secure, peace-filled present. maybe that's why it took me a long time to settle down, i was too curious, too adventurous, too full of (unnecessary) questions (at times)... the one time (was it only one?) i nearly lost it all was enough to put the fear of god in my heart forever and vow NEVER ever to hurt my one true thing, the one person who means the world to me, the one person who is the One for me in this life and beyond.

if there is a tale of true love for me, it is one with the streamer above the entrance of a yellow brick road: "the road to hell is paved with good intentions". the road dives into dark woods filled with dangerous bandits and intoxicating hideaways then explodes onto golden beaches of wanton sun-tipped waves before alighting gently on fields of gold (of course sting is there to greet me at life's end) where nothing can hurt me anymore, not the traumas and stigmas of past experiences that are best left in the wooden chests of memories.

i cannot exchange my life for a more innocent one, for a more idyllic one. this present one, with all the nightmares and joys, has been tailor-made for me, though i may not have seen it at the time. am i being fatalistic? not at all. i am a firm believer in free will, i am no puppet that acts out the designs of a sadistic higher force. i am a child of the universe, born out of and in love, thrown into the tumultuous pot of self-discovery the hard way, but always, always, holding the cinnamon bottle of love tightly in my hands, so much so that it is part and parcel of who i am and always will be.

Now another wintertime has come and gone
The pigeons feeding in the square have flown
But I remember when the vespers chime
You loved me once upon a summertime...