Where do I want to go next

This was written in January 2008.

I haven't done anything productive last year after I got back from Palawan. It's hard to be at the wrong place for a very long time.

01/07/08

This 2008, Year of the Rat, I’m imagining that people would be more mobile…more adventurous…more willing to explore. In Tagalog, mas aligaga..makati ang paa.

I myself would be happy to get another job that will pay me to go places, meet people, experience new things and live to write and tell about ‘em.

It doesn’t necessarily have to be a TOURIST destination. I don’t count myself as a tourist. When I go to visit a place, I like eating with the locals, learning their dialect, tuning out their humor and drawing out their stories.

Hence, my Palawan experience certainly counts as one of the most meaningful experiences I’ve had this lifetime. I know that ten years from now, when I look back to this period in my life, I will congratulate myself for having had the courage to just go OUT THERE. And it’’s not done yet. I’m still at it. In fact, I’m going back there this Friday to continue being a volunteer teacher. Until March, that is.

After April 15, I will be marching to a different tiempo, I hope. I’m not sure yet where I’ll go next or what my next adventures will be. I don’t have plans as of the moment. I haven’t really started thinking about it and I am not planning to plan for it either.. right now, all I have are a few "fantasies".

Let me share some of ‘em with you…

I want to explore Mindanao. I want to visit Adre in Cagayan de Oro; Wadik, Dioma and my cousins, neices & nephews in Davao City; I want to spend a month in Kiri’s hometown Iligan or Pam’s Butuan. I want to meet and spend time bonding with the local tribes there and hear them play their indigenous musical instruments, watch the ladies weave their beautiful skirts or blankets and maybe even dance with them in a celebratory feast.

I want to teach writing to college students in Dumaguete (haha as if!) and bask in the Tiempo’s seaside sunset in Silliman University, in Dumaguete. I want to make Aklan my hideaway, and just enjoy my own brand of solitude in an ashram somewhere in Buruanga, an hour away from Caticlan.

I want to train myself in shiatsu massage and become a masseuse (ala Maggie Cheung in Zhang Yimou’s "Comrades: Almost A Love Story") and spend one summer working in Currimao’s Nipa Hut Resort, and then fly off to Kaoshung, Taiwan when the weather becomes too hot and humid.

I want to enroll as an apprentice (Bing, pahiram nito ha) with an old and accomplished potter in Vigan and spend my days molding clay and mourning the death of an old flame (yeah, you got it - ala Demi Moore in "Ghost").

I want to fly off to Malawi and visit Jundoc’s patients and rub shoulders with Madonna. I want to go and see Kenya for myself and compare it to Calauit Island and maybe meet the cousins of Atong Ang and Erap, my two favorite giraffes.

I want to go bungee jumping in Australia, sleep under a duvet in Belgium, spell my name on the sand dunes in Dubai, go ice fishing in Canada; ride a train and have a "Before Sunrise" moment in Vienna, Austria; dig some archeological facts in Pompeii (Italy), dance to the beat of the drums in Jamaica; have a healthy salad and thick coffee in a caffe in Greece; or maybe elope with someone from Belize…?!

And try a thousand and one things ONE starry night…

I don’t know if I’ll have enough time and energy to do all this in a lifetime but who the hell is stopping me?

These are just some of the journeys I want to undertake - external and outward explorations. I haven’t even started listing the things I want to explore INSIDE me yet…

I therefore conclude that being a Rabbit who was born on the Year of the Fire Snake I am NOT meant to join some nutty or RATTY race. After all, I am meant to skip and hop, scramble, slither and slide all over the universe.

As my favorite poet - Theodore Roethke - puts it : "I learn by going where I have to go and take my waking slow.."