Deeper waters
Over the summer -- my favorite season of the year -- the man in my life and I have been to four different resorts: Eagle Point Resort in Batangas, Rockpoint Hot Springs Hotel in Calamba, Palm Beach Resort in Batangas, and Saud Beach Resort in Pagudpud. In Eagle Point I was a tag-along for an office activity of his with his subordinates, but the rest of the beach trips were just for the two of us. I got a mild tan and tried to finish reading a Margaret Atwood novel. We swam laps together in the pool, and in the ocean we tried to challenge how far we could swim from the shore, and I got stung by a jellyfish twice. It was funny, actually. We had a great deal of laughing done. He played PSP games in bed while beside him I read some trashy celebrity magazines. I remember looking up from my reading, looking so serious, and saying, "I will blog about this," and him bursting out laughing again. We had the chance to be together and talk, undisturbed by office and client concerns and online distractions, and we got to sleep soundly together with our sliding doors open to the beach and the sound of the waves all night.
I have always trusted my very first feelings about anything. I am one of those people who believe that things can happen in the blink of an eye, and that all around me are teeny tiny signs to tell me what's going on in my world. Sometimes I do misread the signs, especially when I over-analyze them, enlarging them -- a habit which I have acquired since college and which I now believe to be a temporary curse -- but once I go back to that initial feeling, that unadulterated first look, first breath, first heartbeat, and try to render things smaller and denser and purer, I always know what is to become of me. In my life, the first feeling is always the most compelling one, driving me to either glory or madness. All else is segue, all else is transition, to something I can neither ignore nor change.
In September, the first time we met, the man in my life looked at me and asked if we could take a leisurely walk along the shore, barefoot, with our pant legs rolled up. It sounded like a nice, fleeting thing, something like a pretty leaf that could just fly away in the wind. But in the deepest heart of me, where all my life begins, I could already see myself in the future, underwater with him, and I held my breath and said "Yes."
It wasn't all perfect, of course. There were inconveniences, there were problems. Sometimes the sand got rocky, and several times we got cuts from pieces of broken shells. Sometimes the sand was not sand but mud, and then it became sand again. Yet all through that, somehow, in the deep of night when I would stay awake, plagued by anxiety bred by over-analysis, I would go back to that very first feeling, remember that first look we gave each other, the first hello we uttered, and the first breath we shared in the same small space of a finite universe, and I would know that in the pure, instinctive, crystalline knowledge of what was to become of me, he would be part of it, irredeemably, and that would drive me deeper and deeper into that peculiar existence of one who knows but does not know.
And because of that, we are now treading deeper and deeper waters. A few months ago we could still feel the sand -- or something solid -- beneath our feet, but just recently, I found I had to hold my breath and submerge myself fully before I can touch the something solid again with my toes. And onwards we go, swimming, treading, to that part of the water where the earth holds its most ancient secrets, and when we get there, we will cling to each other and allow ourselves to be swallowed up by the irrevocable, unchangeable waters, where no human being can tear us apart ever again. There is nowhere else to go but further into the sea.
[Image credits]
I have always trusted my very first feelings about anything. I am one of those people who believe that things can happen in the blink of an eye, and that all around me are teeny tiny signs to tell me what's going on in my world. Sometimes I do misread the signs, especially when I over-analyze them, enlarging them -- a habit which I have acquired since college and which I now believe to be a temporary curse -- but once I go back to that initial feeling, that unadulterated first look, first breath, first heartbeat, and try to render things smaller and denser and purer, I always know what is to become of me. In my life, the first feeling is always the most compelling one, driving me to either glory or madness. All else is segue, all else is transition, to something I can neither ignore nor change.
In September, the first time we met, the man in my life looked at me and asked if we could take a leisurely walk along the shore, barefoot, with our pant legs rolled up. It sounded like a nice, fleeting thing, something like a pretty leaf that could just fly away in the wind. But in the deepest heart of me, where all my life begins, I could already see myself in the future, underwater with him, and I held my breath and said "Yes."
It wasn't all perfect, of course. There were inconveniences, there were problems. Sometimes the sand got rocky, and several times we got cuts from pieces of broken shells. Sometimes the sand was not sand but mud, and then it became sand again. Yet all through that, somehow, in the deep of night when I would stay awake, plagued by anxiety bred by over-analysis, I would go back to that very first feeling, remember that first look we gave each other, the first hello we uttered, and the first breath we shared in the same small space of a finite universe, and I would know that in the pure, instinctive, crystalline knowledge of what was to become of me, he would be part of it, irredeemably, and that would drive me deeper and deeper into that peculiar existence of one who knows but does not know.
And because of that, we are now treading deeper and deeper waters. A few months ago we could still feel the sand -- or something solid -- beneath our feet, but just recently, I found I had to hold my breath and submerge myself fully before I can touch the something solid again with my toes. And onwards we go, swimming, treading, to that part of the water where the earth holds its most ancient secrets, and when we get there, we will cling to each other and allow ourselves to be swallowed up by the irrevocable, unchangeable waters, where no human being can tear us apart ever again. There is nowhere else to go but further into the sea.
[Image credits]
posted by Maryanne Moll | 10:41 AM
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