mother chanced upon me once - this while i was still a sulky, pimply teener - furiously writing down something (ponderous and grandiloquent, i'm sure) in my journal. never relinquishing her right to always have the last word, she left me in peace only after warning me of the apparent danger (which, to her, was abject misery)of the contemplative life (though not in this exact nomenclature).
had she been more sufficiently literary and tolerant of faiths other than her own, she would have quoted the american trappist monk and author thomas merton who wrote "there is always a temptation to diddle around in the contemplative life, making itsy-bitsy statues."
a boyfriend, an easily forgotten ex despite his impossible appetites, once complained about the inordinate (his reckoning) time i pour into my diary entries. this is how i remember him telling me how i got all my coordinates wrong. "life is out there, not in there (while unsubtly pointing at my ratty journal)." profound, eh?
i've been diddling, so far, with my life. i've backpacked once to europe and have exhaustively cruised all the lush itsy-bitsy barrios of manila. and through all these, i've met a whole lot of itsy-bitsy people, a lot more than i would have really wanted to.
since then, i've been living it up (and sometimes down) in the city of new york and, thankfully, at a lot of times, left it for the wilderness of my silence. and somehow, because of this, i've met more and more of myself, although still a whole lot less than i really cared to.
