Grand Finale

It's been a long time since I've blogged. I kinda missed blogging. Sometimes I feel that blogging beats talking to myself hands down. It is better this way. At least I don't get those "Is he talking to himself or is he on his phone?" looks from people's faces.

Some of my readers at one point said that they had a hard time understanding my poems with the exception of "Iron Link". I decided to write a blog about a poem that I wrote about 10 years ago. It is titled "Grand Finale" and also relates to my last blog entry. My style of writing is still largely the same with small differences that I can't place myself. Perhaps my past writings were less polished...

Anyway, the poem below is about taking on challenges in pursuit of a greater freedom in the world of the unknown. During this pursuit, obstacles were encountered and a helping hand was offered. This helping hand turned out to be offering false hope and was full of deceit. While on this pursuit, I wasn't the one going for a ride on life's roller coaster, but instead, I was the one taken for a ride. At the end, the lesson that I learned was that I trusted people too easily and that I felt dumb about it. Well, that's the Cliff Notes version of the analysis. :)

When I wrote the poem, I felt trapped and betrayed. The one person I thought would understand the truth was also blinded. I admitted defeat. I succumbed to lies thrown at me and was allowed to die on my own. That was how it was and I have scars to prove it.

Grand Finale

The night has dawned.
The moment is right.
To skate in the sea.
Chasing the moonlight.

The path is long.
The distance is far.
I glide with each push.
I fly with each star.

Faster I go.
The further I reach.
The sun is jealous,
And braces the beach.

The ice shatters!
Abandons my feet.
Slipping and sliding,
I admit defeat.

I turn my back,
Feeling a sad breeze.
I bow to the crowd,
Shaking on my knees.

What have I done
To deserve this gift!?
A strong hand comes forth,
"I'll give you a lift."

Grabbing strongly...
Reaching for the hand.
Vanishes it goes.
I don't understand.

Crackle, split, splash!
The grand end has come.
Voices are shouting...
"You are just plain dumb!"

The poem was started at 12:52am Sunday, 5/10/98 and finished on 3:29pm Tuesday, 5/26/98. Back then, I took longer periods of time to express myself thru writing. I did fail the CUNY writing test when I was a junior in HS. My writing skills improved during my college years where I wrote love letters and poetry for that someone special. I also spent hours each day crafting my emails to prevent any possible misunderstandings, as there were many due to our cultural differences.

Sigh... like I said in my previous blog. I wrote this poem in response to a professor's actions. Gosh... it's such a long story to tell. I don't even know where to start off telling it. This is the same reason why I never wrote my book. Whenever I sat down to write my book, I would dance around the subject and write about other things, much like what I'm doing right now.

Ok.

So, the story begins... I fell in love for the first time when I was a junior in college. Before my junior year, my life was largely a lonely one. Throughout high school I had no friends. When I say I had no friends... I mean I had no friends. I had acquaintances. Acquaintances that I never hung out with, in or out of class. I didn't have a social life. I never saw one single movie with friends... scratch that... I never saw one single movie EVEN with A friend. I never was invited to hang out or to even sit with people during recess. I went to school alone and I went home alone. I only called up someone when I needed to ask a question regarding classwork and the same when I received a phone call... even those were very far in between. I never cut a single class. I had perfect attendance... for 4 years in a row. I basically lived life in a vaccuum and was very depressed.

Throughout high school I cried often. Often before bedtime when I finally had time to think about life in general. If I wasn't so strong minded in doing what's good or what's right in life... I would have committed suicide long time ago. At one point, I was pretty close to doing that. I made an audio tape one night talking about the things that were going on in my life. I kept the tape for that what seemed to be an inevitable day that would finally come.

A long story short... my college life didn't change one bit for the first two years, but during my junior year I befriended someone special. This someone special helped me find happiness in life in a whole new light. He might not have known how he affected me initially, but it was he who gave me reason to live life with a happier rhythm.

Our first encounter was a weird one. He was wearing a t-shirt with this cute and very childish cartoon character of a cat on it. The shirt was very colorful and had black and white thick stripes on the shoulders. He said it was one of his favorite shirts. I thought it was too childish for his age. He had light brown hair parted down the middle and was wearing jeans and sneakers. He caught up to me in the lobby of our school and asked me for an interview. We sat in the lobby for about 10 minutes and the interview was dumb. It was "What's your favorite color?" and "What's your favorite food?" kinda dumb. The interview was a chore for him and not one that really allowed him to get to know me.

Our second encounter was also very brief. He was in pretty much the same outfit... I know he must have washed it, because he's a clean freak when it comes to his body... his living environment... uhm... it can get quite dirty at times (just to be fair). He had a tummy ache the second time I conversed with him. I must have offered him Tums since I carried it all the time after my breakdown.

All the depression that was bottled up in me over the years did me in at the end of my sophmore year. I took the bare minimum of credits to maintain my scholarship and my GPA plunged from 3.5 to under 2.7 in two semesters. I was prescribed medication to help me deal with my anxiety. I carried the same medication with me for over 5-6 years after the breakdown, because I was afraid of a relapse. The medication made me sleepy and slowed my breathing and made me go into a state where I didn't know how to worry about what was going on around me. It made me happy in a sad way. The pill was tiny, white, and had a slight bitter taste to it, but moments after taking it, I would be in la la land.

During our brief second encounter, we just talked about the classes we were taking and which professors we had and what we did over the summer. We were in the same social science class and sat next to each other. During this encounter, I noticed something different about him. He was a little nervous or jittery even. He seemed to have alot going on in his mind and was skeptical of sharing it with anyone. He didn't seem depressed or comtemplative, but instead, friendly and jolly. This jolliness however came across as being fake. Not fake in a bad way, but fake as if he was hiding something or simply what he now calls "being reserved".

It was not until our third encounter where things became more apparent. It is also our third encounter where the story -truely- begins.

<<
The night has dawned.
The moment is right.
To skate in the sea.
Chasing the moonlight.
>>

The moment had arrived where the door to a new life opened up. I changed the black water of the sea, my fear, into ice. It was on this sea that I skated with freedom while chasing my inner peace.