A repose from the hiatus...and what's to come...

t's time once again to give you a peak of my life at the moment.

At this time, I'm studying for my Broker's Exam and April. Mountains of books and study guides are what's keeping me up late right now, unfortunately. I don't feel desperate quite yet, and am actually feeling pretty good about this test.

But now, to the real reason I started this entry:

In 2 months time, 56 days to be exact, I'll be taking a risk into the unknown once again. Apart from my family and friends and a nicely-combed, predictable lifestyle. And what better way to kick conformity in the ass than a voyage by sea to Europe

Barcelona Harbor

Two weeks. 

5 Countries. 

The seas' winds at our faces 

and the boundless horizon in our midsts.

 Plus a chance to travel again with one of fuckin' coolest dudes I know.

More to come as the dates get closer!

But for now.........

Back to hittin' the books.

Goal No. 12: Perform 'Amor Prohibido' on Stage

The setting was calm, the room was comfortable. Minutes passed and yet they seemed to feel longer than minutes as each poet got up to the mic and bled their emotions out into the crowd. Each with his and her own story, own style, and fluidity. Somehow, the room, the poetry, and the mediums from which art was transferred had become a single entity. I looked around and everyone seemed transcendent. Every artist briefly beguiled by the beautiful blossoming beats that beat in the room.


The host came up to me. My turn would be coming up after two more poets. He bowed close to me and asked, "Do you want to go now?" I felt nervous, but I was ready. 


I stared out into the crowd, and it sound vanished. The dread was gone, and as the first word of my poem slowly crawled out, I began to feel a familiar emotion: satisfaction.


The first two went well, I thought to myself: They were just practice. Here's the main event.
AMOR PROHIBIDO

Mujer misteriosa,

me has encantado.

Tu mensaje prohibido

encendió mi alma

con una locura insaciable.

Has vuelto infieles

los mas leales hombres,

acometen travesuras

por tenerte.

Muchos saben de ti,

pocos te conocen.

Son mucho menos

los que han podido alcanzarte.

Con una Mirada

me liberaste de la pesadilla

y mi alma ya conciente  

despertó de la mentira:

de la vida habitual de blanco y negro,

de reglas impotentes, vecinos miserables.

Tu esencia remendó mi vida entera.

Mujer misteriosa.

Sin palabras, sin susurros

me has brindado un millón de deseos.

Tu mensaje evangélico

me levantó el alma

y quedó en mi Corazón

una huella.

La huella de esperanza, de rebeldía,

de amor, de una vida sin barreras.

Solo fue tu Mirada. 

Dediqué entonces mi vida entera a buscarte.

Soñé y acaricié locos sentimientos

por tenerte a mi lado.

Tu Nombre es: Libertad

And then....silence. It was the calm right before the crashing of a huge wave pummels the sand. It stayed with the audience for a second. 

And as soon as the silence came, it vanished.

Applause and cheers filled the room. High fives accompanied my return to my seat. Pats on the back, accolades in the form of whispers and nods. And the most satisfactory, yet another emotion that I am almost ashamed to say is not was familiar as the former: True Happiness. In it's purest form

Goal No. 10: Get down to a Size 34

It's been roughly two weeks since I started this meal plan. As of Wednesday, I'm down to 170 lbs or originally being 190! As a direct result of that, I've slimmed down to a size 34, achieving one of my goals I set out to accomplish this year. Woot!

This has been the lightest I have been since I was young, around 12 I'd say. It's given my renewed confidence and has also brought to light a thought process in which I need to work on.

Throughout these two weeks, while I struggled with giving up the foods that I love (Cheese, red meats, rice, oh how I miss you), a thought came to my mind that I had to bring to consciousness to make it more palpable. Even on days when I busted my ass, my mind produced this thought: you're cheating. You're taking the easy way out. Your weight loss is a lie. That was the day when I had to eat nothing but fruit for the day, a Sunday. This thought was disturbing, and I had to put it out there to prove a point: Determination breeds success. Making a consistent effort to do something produces results, especially when it comes to self-motivation. The fact that a thought like that came to me meant that there were still brief moments of a self-destructive mind that crept forward. I dealt with self-esteem issues when I was younger. What I took from those years was that you are your own keeper, your own coach, and your own motivator. It means that positive thinking must be a consistent effort to go hand in hand with the task at hand.  


I'm still going with the meal plan, and expect to finish it by next month. Now, on to phase 2: Fish and White Meats!

Reconstruction - Day 0

Today marks Day 0 of a meal plan I've committed myself to doing, my first part in my overall plan for a healthier lifestyle

I visited a nutritionist after work, whom had studied in India and knew more about you than you knew about yourself by a simple blood test and an eye exam, or so they said. I was skeptical, but am a lot more skeptical with western medicine, vowing never to take pills. I figured the worst that can happen is a wasted 100 bucks.

When I walked into her office,  I was expecting a clean bill of health, maybe a sign that I had been drinking more water and exercising more than when I was fatter. Overall, a sign that I didn't need a plan and that I was on the right track.

She drew some blood from my finger, and took a picture of my eye with this fancy camera. And then came the prognosis: My initial expectation couldn't have been farther from the truth.

I won't divulge all of my nasty details but I will say that she told me I had severe circulation problems because of my digestive system.

On that screen, dozens of brown lines and shapes in my eyes detailed my health history in the blink of an eye (no pun intended) (ok, it was).

She'd point to a part of my iris and asked if I'd been in an accident, saying that a certain discoloration meant my left knee was injured and still hurt. That was the knee that I hit in my first car accident. That weird dark spot on the southwest part of my iris? Snowboarding accident. Nothing got passed her. I had the sudden urge to take this picture along with me and show it off as I would a battle scar.

The part that shocked me the most was when she pointed to northernmost part of my iris. She told me I was depressed. That a certain situation in my life was preventing me from being as happy as I wanted to be. That it involved a masculine entity.

What I thought would be a routine health check became a short therapy session with the Sylvia Brown of natural medicine.

My skepticism withered away. I knew, for a long time, what was bothering me. My mothers' relationship with my stepfather had been eating away at me for years. But I had no clue to what role it was playing in my physical well-being until now. I had always believed the soul cries out and the body reacts, but it was much more eye-opening(I had to sneak that one in) to see it manifested so palpably.

It had taken her less than an hour to know me in so many ways without as much as a drop of my blood and a snapshot of my eyes.

The problem's out in the open, so now healing can begin.

Never did the phrase 'The eyes are the windows to the soul' ring more clearly than today.

The day

The day when you let go...

The day when you realize nothing will change...

The day when you see the direction your life is headed...

The day when the inner voice is loudest...

The day when you accept that the promises you made when you were in love will not come true...

The day when you adjoin your body and mind, and your soul echoes through every corner of your body...

The day when you listen to your inner child cry out...

The day when you mute out what the world tells you do to with your life...

The day when you finally see things clearly...

The day you let go....

is the start of your life. 

A Raison D'Etre Part 1

Have you ever stopped to wonder for a second, "What's my raison d'etre?"

Just in case you're not familiar with the term, or French, it means 'reason to be.' It's used pretty freely in speech, and its true meaning is often overlooked.

And when you think it about for a minute, it's a penetrating question. You can't answer it sincerely without much contemplation: "What is your purpose?"

Earlier in November, I took place in National Novel Writing Month, a monthlong endeavor to write a novel, book, story, whatever you wanted to work on for a whole month, every day. And let me tell you, the idea is spectacular. Following through was a struggle, though. There were days when the words just flowed freely from finger to keyboard.

Then...there were most of the other days, when I got a paragraph or two, tops, which I was tempted to delete but couldn't; A golden rule of NaNoWiMo.

During one of my many road blocks, I took a break and spoke to a good friend of mine. During our conversation, the topic of our 'raisons d'etre' made its way in.

I hit a road block, again. That was twice in a night. You'd think there was major construction on this road I was on.  or Perhaps a detour up ahead.

As I stood outside the Dunkin Donuts, I had to ponder about what my purpose was; not because I wanted to concise answer for my friend, but because I wanted to hear it out aloud for myself. It's funny, so many things popped up in my head to say, but it was hard to separate them:
fleeting interests, random thoughts and ideas, ideas of what it 'should' be

Then it came to me: "Writing"

Even though I've been a dilettante, even though I have't written religiously in years, whenever I'm faced with expressing myself onto paper, or pad, or computer screen, I feel the most secure. It's the one thing that's stayed constant, as much as I've let it go, and pursued other things, it's always been a part of me.

And though I still have my doubts,
and my own pressures about saying the right thing,
about being blunt and honest,
about my actions,
whether or not my purpose changes as do the times,
whether or not my 'raison d'etre' will be something people will implore, applaud, or disregard,

I know that my writing will be there to remind me: C'est a toi.

So I ask, What's your raison d'etre?

To Chase or Not to Chase

Do you remember when we were young? When life was such a splendid thing, and we chased our dreams for countless days; and there stood not even a trace of fear or worry, just genuine curiosity and innocence.

I'm sure you had some bizarre, wacky dreams of what you would become when you 'grew up.'
A cowboy
a doctor,
a ninja,
a movie star,
an astronaut.

For me, I wanted to be a secret agent. Fluent in 10 languages, could see through walls, and would never get hurt, and would always save the day. I knew how to do anything to blend in to any crowd, could talk my way out of any bad situation, and was always one step ahead of my arch rival. A detective at heart, and overall badass mofo.

Can you believe jut how uninhibited we were? Such crazy fantasies that would manifest in our small little minds; infinite potential, infinite creativity, and so much fascination!

Then, as we all know by now, we grew up.

Dreams of epic crime-fighting and treasure hunting became distant memories, only to resurface when thinking about the good ol' days.

Our dreams, so vivid and captivating, became nonsense. I bet most of us laugh when we recant our own dreams when we were young.

Why?