Living a Hermit's Life

For the past 9 months, I could be seen almost always sitting on the grass with patches of light and shadow from above, under a canopy of branches sheltering me from the sun during noon. All is silent, except for a wind passing by and the sound of cars from the distant roads. And in the afternoon, when the sun is about to set, I usually sit alone, or sometimes take a nap from the stressful, classroom hours, in the middle of random people playing, chatting, walking, passing me by.

This is my routine at school during break time, and during my peaceful visits to this small thicket I usually work with my stories for the bunny (particularly the bestiary of mythical creatures and plants and the Annals), writing in my journal which I will give to her when she comes home from Spain, eating my lunch, and doing random doodles and sketches which sometimes convert into proper illustrations with watercolor or in my sketchpad, which I will show when they're finished.

I usually work alone, whether in the library browsing through books, or in the lagoon spending time thinking, contemplating on other things and thoughts. I sometimes see myself as a hermit, despite being among other people. Living in seclusion is not so bad, though I don’t say that it is good at all. I have sometimes have a plenty of time for exploring other things that people ignore sometimes. And they never realize their marvels and wonders.

I would like to end this post with a story I wrote for my Creative Writing class.

Home

Walls that Divide

The house is separated by a single stone wall from another house, as that is separated from the other houses next to it. Inside, there are eight rooms. Each one could fit only a single member of the family in our house. Between them are dividers of plywood and cheap cement. There are no doors, merely a window, so that everyone could see to each other but it can only fit our faces. The rest of the body and the room are kept hidden from view.

But I prefer to shut my window. I have boarded mine up, the slats nailed to the cement with a resolute clatter.

I can only hear the mumbling sounds of their conversations behind these dividers. If I try, it becomes nothing more than termites gnawing.

I shutter my eyes to sleep to dream to leave these walls.

As they became Strangers from the Place they knew.

Footsteps without Footprints

The seashore is one of my favorite places in this world. I have been always amazed to see that deep blue stretching to the end of the world, and the sand moving to and fro by the shoreline.

My family and I went there a long time ago during our vacation to my aunt’s house by the sea. I stood at the edge of the sea, between the brown sand and the blue water, watching my feet as they skip in and out of these places.

I was caught between these two worlds. And yet I never left a trace in any of them.

I am a stranger of the tidelands. A stranger of the two worlds, despite myself living in both.

Among the myriads of people

I am a nomad, traveling endlessly amongst lands that are people. Along the sides of the road are hundreds and hundreds of faces I will never know at all. Somebody told me I have to choose among the myriads stretching over the horizon of years pulled too thinly, though I could not say if they will choose me back.

I cannot stay long. And no one stays that long.

And so I walk on.

I really don’t know where I should go, what is at the end of this road, this journey, this halfhearted persistence called existence where I meet people for a moment then leave them forever.

Why should I always leave them?

Because if you don't, they'd be the ones to leave, someone tells me.

And so I walk on.

The Tale of the Blue Girl

There was girl in blue dress who had a bunny, traveling inside the dark vaults of a library. The towering shelves and brick-thick books of moth and molder dominate the narrow hall as the young girl explored this place, heavy with paper, wood, and stone. Holding her bunny tightly, she found many things within the spaces between the shelves as she walked the corridors dimly lit by deep and narrow windows.

There, she met a ballerina dancing in the hall. They befriended each other, and the dancer became her guide. They traveled together in the library until the ballerina she met saw other ballerinas and ran away and never return.

She became upset. But she continued her journey.

At the darkest corner, where light hardly passes, through she met another girl, with white hair and dressed also in white, sitting on a pile of books on the floor while reading one about lives of famous men. The blue girl stopped by, and decided to read along with her. They explored the books further, reading them from the shelves of stories of whispers of worlds outside theirs which they never would even see, and leaving them on the floor. They began to know each other quite well, and were happy to be together. But, soon enough, from the other side of the shelves, a group of young girls with white hair and white dresses passed by. The white haired girl decided to leave the blue girl to come to join the other white haired girls.

The blue girl became upset for the second time. She cried, rand and hid back again in the darkest corner, her bunny clutched to her, and the books they read together at her feet, and decided not to continue the journey anymore.

Someone spoke to her. It was a boy on a horse. He asked her what was the matter, but she did not answer.

He came from a long way, from the far end, he told her, and asked if he could sit with her. When still, she did not answer, he sat down.

She began to cry harder. Pity, she said. Pity that he'd leave as well.

He held her hand, asking her to stop her tears. But she would not.

His hands were warm from those of others. Oh, he would leave, like he left them, and they left her.

He held her face. No more. He was tired, and did not wish to do that anymore.

The blue girl beheld for the first time and saw he too had wept.

I will never leave you, he promised.

No one has ever said to her that before.

She smiled, took the boy’s hand, and began to ride with him across those halls. Nothing had changed: the corridors were still shadowed, the pages crumbled on, and the sound of distant laughter walked those paths like ghosts, and they still knew not where the end was.

Nothing had changed except for one.

With that, they rode on.

.

Furrows

The road seems very long, but I know, and I believe, an end of it awaits me.

But then I realize, I have already come to the other side of the sea, on a shore where I can see my footprints left behind.

I am happy. I am home.