Hercules

When I was a high school junior I watched the Disney movie "Hercules" with my friends. What I remembered most was the moment I can point to as the start of my propensity to memorize all the memorable movie lines I can and to use them as often as possible.
A guy friend was sitting next to me. The only reason he sat next to me is because he wanted me to be a buffer. This girl he liked (also another friend) sat to my left and he sat to my right. I don't think he saw the movie at all - except towards the end. If you've seen Hercules (and have a memory for lines - like I do), towards the end of the movie the hero asks Meg (the heroine, in Greek mythology Maegara) why she did what she did (jump in front of a falling massive column that would have pulverized Hercules) and she answers, "People do crazy things when they're in love."
It's a gag-worthy moment for those of you who hate sentimental mush. But I remember it most not because of the line, but because my friend (the guy) said under his breath, "Yeah. People DO crazy things when they're in love."
Okay. Back in high school, the concept of love wasn't as foreign to us as when we were in elementary. Gone were the days where we defined love as God. Or like a rosary, filled with mysteries. We started going beyond its slum- (or slam? in more ways than one) book definition.
With the advent of Dawson's Creek, we sort of learned that love wasn't all that pretty - although it had a pretty good soundtrack. We kind of had an idea that love entailed sacrifices and it's not all butterflies in your stomach (which I always thought was another gastric attack). Some of my friends have gone through the drama of getting dumped through a badly written letter or more ceremoniously, in public. I know of one classmate who drank gasoline when his girlfriend broke up with him. According to rumors, when the girl found out about it (as our high school was pretty small) she told him that he should have drunk muriatic acid instead. Pretty helpful, wasn't she? After that incident (the whole "friendly advice"), he was thought to have gone to our unfinished third floor to jump to his death. I have no idea if he ever did.
And after having endless conversations about the L-word over coffee, beer, and Tequila in Starbucks, cramped boarding houses and on the rooftop with a jacuzzi I wonder how it took most of my friends 4 years to realize that the idea of love we had when we were in high school never included strength. When you're 16, it seemed as if they were two mutually exclusive ideals. I used to think people who actually WANTED to be in love were wimps. Something along the lines of what that girl in "Hitch" said: "Relationships are for people who are waiting for something better to come along."
I have always been portrayed (by friends who know me best) as the strongest person they know. These are people who saw me cry when Bambi died. These are people who tease me the next morning because they heard me crying when I was reading a romance novel. These are people who grew up with me (in various stages) and saw me shed tears when I read that the stickers PS I Love You can be both Palm Springs I Love You and Paul Strobe (amazing! I still remember the name!) I Love You.
All those tears and I was still strong. I never cried when it counted. I don't cry in grief or sadness. Loneliness is an alien concept to me. I have an answer for everything. I kind of believe in the idea of soulmates and destiny - but only because I like the movie Serendipity. I make bargains with the universe using my love life or rather, the chance that I might have one as a chip.
So what prompted me to write something that spanned 2 hours of my life when I was in high school to a conversation I just had with someone who shall remain nameless? It's this supposed idea of strength. Does it really fall flat in the face of love? And here I thought I was going to be a convert to the Albus Dumbledore philosophy that love is the power that the Dark Lord knows (or has) not?
I just had to insert an HP reference... sigh...
And so in closing, I guess I had the answer (wrong or right) all along. "A hero is not measured by the size of his strength, but by the strength of his heart." Hmmm.... Gives you something to think about some more.

Encountering Paolo...

I was walking around Powerbooks (which disappointed me for the first time because I left without buying anything...) when I saw a display featuring Paolo Coelho's new book. I forgot the title. It was a love story - as all stories are, I think. It was about a married couple. They weren't your conventional married couple. They had worlds outside of their marriage. The thing is, the wife disappeared and then the husband searches for her. He meets this guy who may or may not have been the wife's lover... See, that's where I have a problem with it.

I'm not anti-marriage. I think it's a commitment that should be made by people who are so damn sure of living with this person for the rest of their lives - come what may. I don't condone cheating. And you only cheat when you're in a committed relationship. What could be more committed than a marriage?

I guess I'm too idealistic to read a novel that deals with adultery. I swear! I'm a literature major and I've read all the books required by my professors, but I always dislike the ones that deal with adultery. I have this predisposition of not liking the story when it deals with subjects such as adultery and unfaithfulness. I'd rather read a gory graphic novel.

That's the biggest sin for me - more than murder, rape, treason or thievery. It's a betrayal of everything you hold dear. It could drive you to murder, rape, treason... (thievery as well?) I've never had anyone cheat on me (seeing as I was never in a relationship). But the idea evokes such complex emotions that I don't even want to analyze.

That's why I'm into friendships. Not the kind you make when you meet someone new. The kind that started when you were kids until adulthood. I'm more into friendships than family (my parents are my friends as well so...) It's kind of difficult to cheat on a friend.

How do you cheat on a friend? Not by being friends with someone else. Because it doesn't work that way. When you become friends with someone else, that someone else becomes friends with your other friends (unless, of course, they hate each other on sight). It's an open relationship with no opportunity to cheat.

Sometimes you go for years without contact save the occasional email and text message, but the moment you see each other, it's like - well, meeting an old friend - because you are meeting an old friend. Almost all the grudges and the fights and the cold shoulders are not forgotten, but forgiven. They're chalked up to things you're going to rehash as funny memories.

Sigh. I miss my friends.

This is the life... (sigh)

It's been such a long time since I wrote anything worth reading... I think I'm out of practice...
There's a song for September (Wake Me Up When September Ends by Green Day), for October (Fall by Bethany Joy Lenz - the first line goes... It's October again leaves are coming down...) and for November (November Rain by Guns 'N Roses)... so it would be kind of a lie to say that this month snuck up on me. It seems to me that I've been waiting for this month to arrive. I'm not really sure why. Maybe it's because it precedes a certain month that puts everyone in some kind of funk (worse than September) - December.
'Tis the season... for what, exactly? The controversial holiday - Christmas. I'll be spending mine lying on a hammock on a long stretch of beach with no neighbors in sight. My idea of heaven. I can just picture myself: lying on a hammock, typing pseudo-profound stuff on my laptop, Vienna Teng playing in the background, a mug of steaming coffee nearby, the sound of the waves alternately soothing and beckoning, and probably me going bonkers out of boredom.
Spending time alone used to be my idea of heaven - anywhere. It didn't take a strip of sand (seeing as I grew up in an island) for me to float to some idyllic setting in my head. Nowadays, I'm spending too much time alone that sometimes I forget what it's like to be with other people.
Joy (my housemate) and I are the only ones left in the house. We hardly see each other as her schedule varies. We subsist on deliveries (Wendy's, McDonald's, Jollibee, Greenwish, Pizza Hut - even Rice In A Box). We spend our weekends alternately sleeping and eating. How boring. And yet, we are so used to this that we don't find it boring. We think it's just - life.
It's kind of sad... I mean, here we are: single in the city, with jobs (so we don't mooch from our parents anymore), our own place, no curfew... and yet we stay home on weekends with nothing to do. Short of drinking ourselves silly (no go, Joy beats me in almost every drinking game ever invented), we content ourselves with just lamenting the irony of cable TV: no good shows on weekends.