The Girl in the Bush

In January, I signed up for an open water swimming race to be held in April. I knew how to float in the water, I could dive, do assisted scuba diving, but distance swimming is another thing. I’ve tried many times to swim in the sea but I’ve often felt afraid the moment I reach a hundred meters from the shore.

Two weeks before the open water swimming race, I was at a training session with my team. We train together for different disciplines; swim, bike, and run. Since I only learned how to properly swim in January. That week was the first week I’ve started to feel like I could relax in the water. At the end of the session, our coach told us that we would have a race. Just for fun. We were divided into two groups. The idea was we would do a relay. The team that gets all of its members across the pool first, wins. As a prize, the winning team does a shorter last bit of exercise. I didn’t know what happened but I left the pool and decided to watch the games happen beside the bushes, near the sidelines.

In that moment, I suddenly felt myself split into two. There was a part of me that was so excited to play in the water with friends, and then another, that was sure that I was too slow to make my team win, so I took no part in it and watch from the side. I often say that I am not a competitve person, I don’t think much about winning. In that moment, I wanted to participate in life, to be in the pool, but then, I admit that I didn’t want to make my team lose.

It was a good day of swimming, and we all left with high spirits but I spent the rest of the day evaluating the many instances I opt out of life. How often does it happen that I am “split in two”? Negotiating between “the girl in the bush”, and “the girl in the swim lane”. The two versions ask for different things. One asks for safety and happiness for myself and others, and the other, desires to meet life. I went home and spoke to my friends about my great discovery of the girl in the bush, and the girl in the swim lane. I was reminded to listen to the girl in the bush too and be kind. (At this point, I was really on the side of the girl in the swim lane, honestly). But as I write this, (it is already September, I’ve been trying to write this since April but cannot, I almost abandoned it again today) I realise that the two versions, girl in the swim lane, and girl in the bush, have been hearing different things, or rather believe different things about life. Maybe the girl in the bush hears harsher voices thus the fearful outlook in life, while the girl in the swim lane believes in things more optimistically.

It is September now, I finished the 2km open water swim in April. I swam the fastest I’ve ever swam. The first 100meters was the most panicked I’ve felt in the water but I enjoyed that the most I have ever enjoyed swimming. During the race, when all the swimmers entered the water, I felt a panic I was familiar with. During training, the first 300 meters of swimming was always the toughest for me. I would feel that I couldn’t manage my breath, and my limbs would be slow. During the race, I told myself that if we get to the first pontoon, then we could quit the race. For the time being, we would focus on looking at the sunlight peeking on my right eye whenever I would breathe. Yes at this point I would say ‘we’ because I was talking to both the “girl in the bush” version and the “girl in the swim lane” version. When we got to the first flag, my body had been accustomed to the movement and started enjoying seeing life underwater so there was no way back. I finished the swim with an extra 300 meters because I was sightseeing down there and went a bit off course. I was shcoked. I didn’t stop at all, I only paused to sight for the correct direction and to look at the underwater life.

Later I learned that there is a thing called Mammalian Dive Reflex. It’s the body’s way to keep mamals safe when it notices that it has been submerged in water. Water being not the element the body is accustomed to, the heart rate slows down, the blood is moved to the most vital organs away from the limbs, breathing pauses to be able to hold breath underwater. It is ok as a defense mechanism, but can be catastrophic when in a swimming race. In these moments, the body needs to remember that it is safe and it can continue its normal breathing and blood flow.

Perhaps, the girl in the bush is another form of the Mammalian Dive Reflex. A way to stay alive, away from all forms of drowning. To double think participation in life because we are not in our element, at least not yet. In the same way that there is a way to let the Mammalian Reflex disengage, surely there can be a way to let the girl in the bush relax. Maybe the reassurance can come from trusting both life, and our ability to meet it. I haven’t mastered it yet, still learning, but for now, I’ll befriend the girl in the bush, while we focus one step at a time, looking at the sunlight peeking on my right eye whenever I breathe.

A Mammoth’s Tooth

I had to check the spelling of “mammoth” because I haven’t encountered the word in a while. But it was the topic of last night’s voice note from a dear colleague and friend. This week, she had dinner with a friend who brought old rocks and aquatic animal’s teeth found by fishers on a beach. She told me that as she was looking at the rocks on the table, holding them. Her friend told them this:

“This is probably the first time in hundreds of years that these rocks, bones, and teeth have been held by human hands.”

Upon hearing this, my friend, suddenly, felt zoomed out of time, or rather felt so strongly the presence of time, it’s immensity, and how this point of contact had bended — making her life of thirty something years encounter a hundred years of existence through a single touch.

When I heard this on the voice note of my phone, I felt how lucky it was, or how lucky I was that she experienced this and now, through sound waves on a phone, I experience it too. How many times do I encounter things or instances as rare as a mammoth’s tooth, and be completely oblivious to its existence in time. Time too immense and things and life and people, too complex to understand that it gets difficult to be clear sighted at how miraculous it is to encounter each other, almost as impossible as holding a mammoth’s tooth on your left on a random Tuesday night.

When Hackett’s Paw Lands On My Knee

Hackett is my mother’s cat. He is 11 years old. When he was 5, he felt incredibly unhappy inside the house, looking out the windows, meowing until he was brought outside. He loved the outside cat life. He became part of a gang of cats, had a few babies until he was neutered at 6 years old. The neighbors have this joke that he’s the kingpin of all the cats. Recently, he’s been less active and started to want to stay inside. He’d recently taken up residence in my room.

I noticed he had this habit of resting his paw on my knee as he fell asleep. I never took notice until this morning. Here is a photo of the paw of the kingpin of this alley’s gang of cats– resting on the side of my knee. An old cat, finding rest in the bridge formed by a tiny touch.

Green Grace

For my sister’s birthday we met her in an island 5 hours from the city she lives in today. We walked in the forest near the opening of a road and found greens covering the side of the road, it was always summer in the island but underneath the trees, were the greenest greens that were cool to the touch

I think I’ve been Waiting

Today, I felt incredibly lethargic before I took lunch. Perhaps I was hungry, it is 3pm and I had a late breakfast. I found out a month ago that I was not producing enough cortisol. Apparently, cortisol is not just a stress hormone (contrary to what I thought), it also helps you get moving, get on your feet and be energised, it helps you metabolise and aids in your body in regulating stress better. Producing enough, and you feel fine, produce less than enough and you could find yourself crashing, slow, sluggish, not metabolising. My doctor asked me once, “Minsan ba, nararamdaman mo na ubos na ubos ka na?” (Do you sometimes feel that there is nothing left in you?)– Wow “ubos” seemed accurate. I told her, I figured I was lazy but I didn’t think there was anything particularly wrong. But I do not remember when it started– the feeling of running out.

When we started to get to work on getting better, I started to feel energised again. Some days, I felt like I was shining. However, last night, I slept late, went to work and forgot to do the daily regimen. By afternoon I was crashing. The physical feeling is followed by another more invisible feeling of running behind something that is impossible to catch. The doctor told me this condition I have can be a result of prolonged exposure to stress. Which shocked me, “I’m not stressed? I’m sure I’m not.” Anyway, stress can come from anything even the less obvious things. Overdoing anything can lead to stress to the body. But I don’t understand, am I overdoing things?

I told my friend J that I am dreaming of growing a garden. “But feeling ko, lagi akong naghahabol ng I don’t know what”. (But I feel like I’m always chasing after something I don’t know what.) It is a long conversation which began with a recommendation of a book entitled “Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals.” She wrote many things but this one

I don’t know which one came first, the feeling of chasing after something endlessly, or the feeling of exhaustion. Or maybe it is like a carousel– with no beginning or end. Maybe this is the stress — the quiet one that puts a shade over the things of everyday life.

“This is not it, so we better run faster to where we have to get to so that we can find joy.”

I’ve put off so many things — wait, that’s incorrect, I lived so many things in a hurried manner because I thought

“once we get through this, then we will arrive, to the place where we can enjoy. “

But I’m thinking more and more, that this is it. This is the real thing, the minutes where we are here. I realised I am exhausted because I thought that running will put an end to the waiting. But the destination had always been here, and now. I write it to remember– so that I can recognise that what I had been waiting for is already here.

The Heaviest Snow Since 1981

I rushed out of bed to open the window as soon as I read Yoonsoo’s message:

“Omg there’s snow.”

Never mind that I was in a T-shirt fit for filming in Manila’s summer heat.

I did not want
To miss a second
Of this beautiful snow
Knowing that it would evaporate before we knew it

We kept the window open,
laughing
Never mind that we might get sick
Or that our heads might ache from the cold.
That fear felt small
Compared to joy of touching a gentle snowflake

I rejoiced at it landing on my skin
and
saw it quickly transform into a drop of water

Slowly, snowflakes started to populate my palm
Turning into a puddle of water

And I wondered
how gravity told something so tiny, and fragile
to trust

To land onto my warm hands–
to let go of its apprehensions,
to not fear changing.

As if it was running toward my heat,
knowing it would be —
wanting to be–
transformed.

M

Two years ago, I spent my birthday on the other side of the world. Bogota was the farthest city in the world for me. It took a 35 hour journey for me to get there.

That day, we walked in a garden and looked at flowers. When I was 12, I thought that when you turned 30 – a person becomes this “fuller size” of human — someone more actualized, or someone completely complete. But now that I am here, in this time, I realise that “completeness” is not a one time thing or a destination to arrive at. Perhaps we are always, and have always been complete, evolving everyday, into something new.