Time Has Been Blissfully Swift

When I was a kid (and I don't think it's just me), I thought teachers are also cloaked with infallibility just like the Pope. A teacher's word is a dogma, or so I thought. Then I became a teacher. I had series of mishaps, starting from falling from a flight of stairs to falling from a platform in front of the class. There are times when I am unable to answer my student's questions or I confused lessons. In spite of these, I was able to bounce back by humbly accepting my mistakes and correcting them. Much to my surprise, students appreciate such humility.

Indeed, teachers are not infallible.

Yesterday, my students were taking a quiz and a some lines came to my mind that best described how I felt the other day. Just so to capture it, and not to forget it, I quickly grabbed my laptop and typed as quickly as I could so the lines won't disappear and get back fast to my students who were taking a quiz.

Unfortunately, one of the students posed a question if what is flashed onscreen is included in the quiz. Then I realized that my laptop was connected to an LCD projector. And my poem is right there, onscreen, and all my feelings exposed for my students to read. The funny part there is I forgot the shorthand command to hide the screen. The whole class was teasing and curious to read more of the poem. I just smiled at them and asked them to get back to their quiz.

Next to my art, poetry is like a therapeutic salve for me. It provided an outlet to free those overwhelming emotions that may drown me into sorrows. I didn't have a good day two days ago. Thanks to my friend, Ising, I was able to bounce back. Now, the poem is my way to put closure to that and move on.

To my curious students, here is the complete poem:

Time has been blissfully swift

It has left its wounds

Tarnishing the gifts it brought.

The pain of the day has left its mark

To this already scarred spirit;

The night now witnessed the wear

On this wanderer’s being.

The only charm in this bitter pill

That time has been blissfully swift.

Gash from the Past

Each time I see a little child crying or throwing a tantrum, I often wonder what he/she turns out into after 10 years or so.When a mother humiliates her child in public physically or verbally, it gives me a sense of foreboding of what a parent this child will become.

I grew up fast. I was still a kindergarten but I know a boy can fall in love with a girl. I understand that a girl has to maintain a sense of propriety and a boy should not cross such boundary. My high school friends (and I have only a few) would often ask me what college is about when I haven't been there myself, just like them. I always have this air of maturity beyond my age, accompanied by a sense of weirdness and aloofness.

Oftentimes, I found myself outside looking in, that I decided to venture into a journey of self-instrospection. In this journey, I came across a lot of books and one of these is written by a clinical psychologist Oliver James entitled They F*** You Up How to Survive Family Life. It detailed, complete with examples, how a damaged childhood can affect the behavior and perspective of an adult. The younger the child endured an abuse, the more difficult a child can recover from such that he/she tends to repress the emotional pains. However, like an overflowing dam, the repressed emotions have to surge out in the form of anger, insecurities, skewed perspectives, misplaced values and such.

Though fictional, let me cite one of my favorite TV series Dexter as an example. Dexter Morgan is a Miami Police blood spatter pattern analyst. Unfortunately, he is also a serial killer and his need to kill is referred as his dark passenger. This need can be traced back when he was 3 years and found in a pool of his mother's blood, after watching his mother's violent murder.

It may be fictional but fiction has factual basis.

Fresh pains can be one of the outlets of these repressed emotions. It is like a new open wound over old scars and there you can see a tiny child peeking from the past, in the hope of being seen, comforted in her grief and reassured that there is a place for her in your present and future.

Uninspired

The Muse has deserted me
While I toil inside a box
With blood as my sweat
My inspiration is now drained.

Now as I stand in the open air
Searching inside for that beat
Yet the spark has now waned
The Muse has deserted me.