Day: August 24, 2008

“Kin” dreams of singing in a bar where battered souls and wounded hearts go for healing. I dream of frequenting that bar. In Jeans, reality meets fiction. Born and raised in a sugar plantation in Bacolod, this artist is as sweet and gentle as the pandas that she slept with (until she realized that sleeping alone is still best). I am eternally indebted to Jeans for being a lighthouse in my stormy days. How can I forget those mornings when on my table I’d find notes, paintings, candles, or food– from Jeans who proclaims the gospel of being okay?

Once, on our way to the office, rain poured heavily, I grabbed her hand and ran. To my surprise, I saw Jeans genuflecting, all wet, her left knee hurting. “Even if it were acid rain I wouldn’t run, she said”. She got up and walked gracefully, as if wearing a gown. People who saw the fall laughed at her… but we laughed at ourselves harder. That’s vintage Jeans.

In her essay, which I am posting in this blog (and will hopefully feature in the print edition of my weekly column come February), this woman of many passions celebrates the joys of solitude and being out-of-the-box. If there is one person who can write–with sincerity, depth, and magic– about being a quirkyalone, it is she. I am reminded that one time when Jeans, I, and other friends met for dinner after a long time of missing each other (we meet veeeery rarely), this life-of-the-party wanted to be home before 1o pm. The reason? The next day, the Ilongga was to have a very important date with a very important person–her self.

This spiritual comrade is nothing more, nothing less…than a woman who finds joy in life and in living, …because she views life not as a cross to be borne, …or a world to be remade, …or an oyster to be opened, …or a time to be suffered, …but simply as days to be lived in harmony with all men, …for the glory of our Creator.

*****

(Quirkyalone noun/adj. A person who enjoys being single (but is not opposed to being in a relationship) and generally prefers to be alone rather than dating for the sake of being in a couple. Also, a movement and an international holiday that happens to fall on February 14.)

Read on…

I am the puzzle piece who seldom fit with other puzzle pieces.

But I didn’t choose to be different, as you didn’t choose to obey the rules. I was born to a new age of pois, pandas, pixie dusts, dawns, rain dancing, colored sea stones, celtic music, gaels, lighthouses and an eternal love affair with my paintbrushes, my pen and papers.

My rules are not conventional. My spirit cannot be contained in a single receptacle.

I gravitate towards the lowly, idiosyncratic, peculiar and unpopular. I refuse to get entangled in the mishmash of sales invoice, bank statements and or a dismal display of that signature coffee cup in hand. I am your cat in the rat race.

I am different.

My friend is the moon. My music is the bagpipe and the pennywhistle. The only steps I take are tapped and in harmony with the ‘riverdance’. Sunrise is my ally but shadows always teach me things.

I am my own style but I am also beyond it. I partially reside in a closet with a mélange of moods, mystery, magic and other manifestations. I am shaped by my atypical interests and they steal pieces from each other, every single moment, making me a shape shifter and a beautiful walking mosaic.

My irreverent approach to life is driven by my endless imagination (and yes, often by hunches too!) and never a conscious pathetic attempt to look cool or conform to an existing public image.

Making magic and fairy tales come true, for me, lie in seeing the world with a heightened perception like seeing a drop of poetry in the most mundane of things.

My frame of mind is an eternal journey to more and more mystery. And my eyes, aside from being an icon of creation, is merely a peephole to the full shebang that goes inside my heart.

I am different.

I resist the tyranny of ‘couple-dom’. I have a positive space in my heart for singles like me who choose to be single rather than in a mediocre relationship. Yet make no mistake: I am no less concerned with coupling than your average serial monogamist. Secretly, I am a romantic—romantic of the highest order. But I want a miracle! Out of millions, I have to find the one who will understand.

I am different. I inhabit “solitude” as my natural resting state. In a world where marriage, proms or tandem bikes define the social order, I am, by force of my personality and inner strength, a REBEL.

I see the world with different eyes and I am continually amazed by the beauty and madness around me. like my lighthouses, i have a wealth of lovely people beside and behind me ready to fire me up endlessly. and just like a lighthouse, i reflect myself back to them with a connection that is way beyond words.

I am different. I am a “quirkyalone”…and loving every minute of it!

I am overwhelmed because being different gives me all the leeway to sashay my blots, blemishes, failings and flaws. No regrets. No shame.

I am different. I don’t have to be perfect to be whole and happy.

That’s my take on the world.

–jeanscequina (08-08-08).