Get busy living... or get busy dying.

"It is as natural to die, as to be born; and to a little infant, perhaps, the one is as painful, as the other. He that dies in an earnest pursuit, is like one that is wounded in hot blood; who, for the time, scarce feels the hurt; and therefore a mind fixed, and bent upon somewhat that is good, doth avert the dolors of death. But, above all, believe it, the sweetest canticle is’, Nunc dimittis; when a man hath obtained worthy ends, and expectations. Death hath this also; that it openeth the gate to good fame, and extinguisheth envy. - Extinctus amabitur idem."

--Francis Bacon Of Death


Tonight will be my third wake this month alone.

....

The last time I wrote of death was several months ago, when a good friend was killed just two weeks after my 26th birthday... gunned down in front of his home without warning nor mercy. At the height of his success and the many plans that were soon to follow, he was taken away. Just like that. And I didn't get it.

It was only recently that I have finally come to terms with the concept of death and how I should start planning my own. Now I don't mean to sound morbid or depressing (and no, this is so not some suicidal "cry for help" before y'all start to worry). This is just what I've come up with with regard to the inevitablility of my passing... kind of like how I planned my wedding right down to the ring (with pegs and all).

I think we should all make a final wish before it's too late to make it. Because seriously, God doesn't normally ask you first. He's a sneaky ninja like that. And it's almost holy week so... how more timely could one get?

Ergo...

I will try not to make this sound too tragic.

....

Let me begin by saying that I hate funerals.

Like... I hate them in general.

And not just for the painfully obvious reason of a person actually being "dead" AT the funeral  or that I have a very low-tolerance for pain (despite the masochistically romantic history) --- I don't like them because I don't like seeing the living mourn... the ones who cry and cry and sob and cry and you can literally see the hole in their heart through their eyes... and you know they have to live with that hole --- the painfully operative word: to LIVE. And I know it's stupid but I don't like people crying at funerals... exposing those holes. I cry because of those holes. Then there are the ones who don't look like they're mourning but they really are but they're just too busy entertaining other mourners and they talk about other things and... oh I dunno. Strength in adversity moves me to tears.

And all the while, there's this dead body inside a casket in front of you. Surrounded by huge bouquets of flowers --- all sorts of colorful, lively, beautiful flowers made into these magnificent arrangements... flowers that body inside the casket will never see, smell, nor touch... ever again. And that, too, makes me cry at funerals. The flowers.

They're like bad jokes.

Because they too will wilt and die beside your grave and God, can we have any more "death" surrounding death. Sheesh. Wilted flowers give me the heebie jeebies.

So yeah.

I don't like funerals.

And if God willing... I will grow to a ripe old age of... oh... say... 93 and He will grant me the final wish I have decided to make now... in the day of our Lord, March 29, 2010.

Now I've given this some serious thought and I've finally decided that...

When I die...

I wish to be cremated. (But under the condition that the coffin I'm gonna be set ablaze in will have a bell just above it with the string connected to my hand --- in the event that I am actually still alive, in which I can ring that motherf*cker and escape unscathed.)

I am totally serious.

Ergo...

I don't want a viewing.

I don't want my body put in coffin, put in a funeral home, and kept there for a week. Ok now I was thinking about this at the wakes I've attended ---- and... at first, I figured... "What the heck. Look at all these people who actually care, who want to extend their condolences. That must be really flattering. I'd like to see that at MY funeral." (because seriously, funerals are like the biggest vanity showcases ever... next to weddings) ---- but then I realized...

I'd be dead. Too dead to give a damn. So why the f*ck should I care who comes and sees me save for my close family and friends... the ones who were there when I was ALIVE and breathing. Why should I make my family and friends pay so much for my death???? (Hey, those funeral homes and coffins and flowers and tombstones and mausoleums don't come cheap.) Hell, if there were an afterlife and my soul was watching down on my funeral, I'd be more pissed to see crazy money spent on my death than what could've been spent on me or my family when I was still alive. Shoot. I could've gone to this place and that place, bought this car, or that appliance --- material things that would have made me happy. Temporarily, yes... but isn't that what life is? Temporary?

I'd rather that money went to my family. My kids. My grandkids. Though I would (selfishly) want my death to be sad... I'd also want it to be beneficial. Or at least... non-invasive. Because life goes on. And if there was any way you can help promote it, even when you're gone, then by all frikkin' means, right?

That's why... I don't want a funeral.
 
And God love the people who would've wanted to pay their respects at my viewing but really... I'm not sure I want people sitting around my dead body playing tong-its and socializing, fruit juice in one hand, a wad of cards in the other. (And no disrespect to funerals and to other people's beliefs on death. We all deal in our own way, I totally get that.) I mean, I'm sure my loved ones will need all the consoling they can get... but I'd probably tell them to do it in their own time, you know? Because honestly, why would I let a bunch of people "view" my body when first of all... I probably won't have much of a say as to how I will look (and you know I gots to look helluh good), and second... I don't even let people watch me sleeping so why would I subject myself to that when I can't even argue my way out of it?

Therefore...

I would want my body exposed only to my family and close friends... so that they may say goodbye to my physical being... who I'm sure have grown accustomed to seeing over the years. After which, I would want to be cremated. I want absolute death. No burying me beside a bunch of other dead strangers' bodies. No dreary tombstones or creepy mausoleums. I don't want my grandkids to be frightened by the memory of me. But mainly, I don't want to take up anymore space than I already have on this earth. God gave me my time to tread the earth and leave my footprints... but I would like to return as the dust from which I came. And no epitaphs on how I was a beloved wife, daughter, mother, and friend. I hope that with the way I've lived my life... I won't need one engraved on stone... because it will be engraved in the hearts of those I touched... and it will be they who will immortalize my memory with how they live... and how my life was able to enrich theirs so that they may enrich others.

That is what I want.

And my ashes....

I want them buried in my massive garden or like a secret garden like in... "The Secret Garden" (God willing I have a garden in my family home). I want a flower planted just above my ashes --- maybe a rose bush or marigolds or something. I want my family to tend to my garden so that my grandkids can see that there is beauty in death...

And I can get on to becoming a supernova or something.

But we won't get into my un-religious beliefs and where I believe what happens to us when we die. =)

Align the Chakra, kids.

"In desperate love, it's always like this, isn't it? In desperate love, we always invent the characters of our partners, demanding that they be what we need of them, and then feeling devastated when they refuse to perform the role we created in the first place." --- taken from Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert


Ain't that the truth. *extends high-five to nearest girl-friend*


So I hear alot of couples have been breaking up recently. Couples that have been together for years... and I mean, yeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaarrrrrrrsssssss.

How does that happen?

How do you just... fall out of love? (Ok, I'm not stupid, I actually KNOW how this happens and I don't really need an explanation because chances are, I know the reasons better than those who have actually been in a relationship for years and years and years. Hell, I must've mastered the art of falling out of love... just as I've mastered falling right back in it.)

It's a sad rhetorical. But plainly, it's just sad. And discouraging.

***Our editorial asst. Danee (who actually read the book and shared some of its content with me when I was still single) just mentioned that some of the comments she was reading regarding the book were terrible, particularly, the one who called the author (as this was based on her life) "selfish for leaving her husband to just have fun and to find herself."

Now for those who don't get it... Here is the trailer. (Yes, there is an upcoming film adaptation of the book starring no less than Julia Roberts herself.)

...

...

...

Finding oneself is NOT selfish. Because seriously, you can't know anyone until you know yourself. Ergo, you can't possibly know you love someone if you don't know what love is. And more often than not, you know love by how you love yourself. You learn it by living it.

(Whoa, I think I just went to the bottom of the ocean with that one, haha!)

But Hell, what do I know right? *winks*

I think after you've found yourself at the bottom of a bottle or on some stranger's bed or on yours without any recollection of how you got there looking as wretched as you do... that's when you realize that maybe, those aren't exactly the nicest places to "find" yourself in. Or to see yourself being in. And in the same rite, if you find yourself in the arms of someone who no longer makes you happy or in a house that is no longer a home or in a partnership that seems more one-sided than two... or if you find yourself just going through the motions --- complacent, stagnant, and "passively bored" (as described in Kundera's Identity) then...

*sigh*

But it's never too late to start from somewhere.

Anywhere. and Anytime. (G.G. Marquez's Love In The Time of Cholera comes to mind =)

....

I'm still trying to come out with a formula to stay IN LOVE. Let me get back to y'all once I've passed the three-year mark, still energized and rejuvenated and not gasping for air. Perhaps in this lifetime and with this love, there won't be a need for "second winds"...

I'll try to make it in just one.

GUMMY BEARS

It's a bright and sunny Monday morning... woke up at an ungodly 5am... and I am in the mood to bitch about my weekend.

Ok I actually had a great weekend.

But on a serious tip...

Like seriously...

(and this is directed to someone either very very stupid or very very dense)

....

If I'm ignoring you...

and I mean, like... blatantly...

that probably means...

if not, definitely means...

I don't like you.

Or at least...

I don't want to get to know you.

So please.

Don't go out of your way.

Your gums are irritating. And I never thought gums could ever do that to a person. But yours do. And hers, too. Gums gums gums.


....

Happy Monday y'all.

And cue happy song of the day!.....This sh*t seriously made me laugh. =P Let the LSS begin. =)

PSYCHE CALYPSO

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.

I wanna talk about my daughter today. And the first thing I want to say is that she is AMAZING --- and I know that's the cliche of cliches as far as parents are concerned but... she really is. And this isn't merely because she came out of MY body or that I spent 4-hours in labor only to have a c-section otherwise I would've lost her...


No...

She just is. She's very kind and bright and funny --- and these may not seem like tangible qualities given to an almost three-year old... but she is exactly those things. Amazing because she amazes me and the people around her everyday... and as her mother, I've never been so lucky to have such a daughter. Like... I'm not even sure how she turned out the way she did considering I'm hardly the most motherly of mothers nor am I the most womanly of women. Sure, they say being a mother comes naturally to a woman but I think... for the most part, it was her who taught me how to mother her as she babied me. (And I know that may seem like a stretch but she really is raising me more than I'm raising her.) I find myself growing up --- and yeah, I party it up like a mother(f*cker) but it doesn't hinder her from wanting to learn despite my absence... to show me that coming home to her is the absolute BEST feeling ever.

....

I don't remember her ever crawling.
Ok, maybe a few times, but only backwards.
From there... crawling backwards... she just began to stand up and walk.
By the time she was one, she could already walk around.
She empathized with pain... and was usually strangely quiet when she was in the midst of fighting.
She made you laugh when you cried.
She told you it was ok when you cried.
Her first song ever was Taylor Swift's You Belong With Me.
She was potty-trained by the age of 2... and opted to use the actual toilet by 2 and a half.
Her favorite pastime is to jump on my bed.
And now... she always asks me to go home and bring her red, purple, pink or yellow icecream.
But her pure heart... her innocence... to believe that her father is perpetually at "work" without resentment... and to find a friend in my new partner and recognize love in the way he and I are with each other...

I've never known purpose until she came.

She is my bestfriend... and I hope, that when she grows up, she would want me to be her friend.

Until then... I'll just blackmail and embarrass her with these baby videos. (Because I'm her mother and I can do whatever the hell I want =)

RAUNCHY.

Ok so Gadgets Magazine has a Facebook account... and my colleagues-slash-administrators along with my funny funny boss have taken it upon themselves to come up with a fan-page promo showing off your sexiest summer photo for a chance to win an OSIM uZap ----

USING MY PHOTO AS AN EXAMPLE!!!!! (I am such a sport, I frikkin' swear.)

And yeah. They just HAD to use "raunchy" for an adjective, hahahaha!!! Hilarious.


This is what I get for not having a facebook. *sigh*


http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=3442760&id=24568184893


And here's our actual facebook website:
http://www.facebook.com/GadgetsMagazine?ref=ts


So yeah. For those who actually have a Facebook account and think they can top my "raunchy" photo, I say...


Bring. it. on. =P

:)

Smile though your heart is aching
Smile even though it's breaking
When there are clouds in the sky, you'll get by
If you smile through your fear and sorrow
Smile and maybe tomorrow
You'll see the sun come shining through for you

Light up your face with gladness
Hide every trace of sadness
Although a tear may be ever so near
That's the time you must keep on trying
Smile, what's the use of crying?
You'll find that life is still worthwhile
If you just smile

....


I wish I met him at the sandbox.