I am feeling mixed today. For quite sometime I've been shying away from this familiar interface where I type my thoughts so that I may have the necessary time and space to deepen my connections with the people and books around me. But the dark weather so invites me to focus on my light, like a call from the rain. As I type right now, the leaves outside go in a raging dance. I take that as a good omen.

I am feeling lucky. It seems to me that for the past few weeks or so, things are surprising me as I also surprise myself. And so I am lead to believe that there is someone watching the ripples I create on the surface of history and directing the trajectory of the stones I toss across that I might make my picture perfect. It gives me this fuzzy live-in-the-moment kind of feeling as I am reminded that these ripples are also felt by the other stones making waves across the surface. We are, after all, connected by invisible threads.

I wonder what this surface looks like just now, under the hands of our generation? For the record, it seems so easy to feel scattered and undirected. Sometimes, I am guilty of being narrow-minded, limiting my choices of living between working hard and slacking off. I forget to sit around every once in a while and spend time to appreciate. I am human. I also forget to gather myself amidst the chaos. Much as I try to live life as only me can, I am also affected by the people around me. I cannot detach myself completely. People also make me after all.

I saw my first eclipse last week. It wasn't really as spectacular as the one over other parts of Asia but it was nonetheless my first. I am grateful to be surrounded by geeks who share my interests. Without them I remain to be an eclipse-less celestial admirer. Thank you.

When I first heard about the eclipse and its details, my initial reaction was to spin counterclockwise. The Philippines won't see it in its full glory you see and I figured out that, if I spin counterclockwise a sufficient number of times, I will be able to decrease the Earth's angular momentum, affecting the distribution of each 24 hours over the time zones, until the Philippines will be at the best seat the moment they align. I love the eclipse that much I am just too willing to get dizzy.

I wonder why we are still awed by a spectacle that comes from mere cycles that science has long been able to explain and predict. I wonder why it bears a different meaning for each of us. Maybe because these spectacular things science has long been able to explain and predict reminds us of that magic we once believed in. The kind of magic that tells us not that faeries exist but that dragons can be slain.

And yes life remains to be laden with magic. Have you ever felt how easy it is to get lost in something you utterly enjoy? These are the things that you won't get a prize for doing because doing them IS the prize. Do them frequently and overflow with the light that comes with it. For me this comes in the form of creating things that wasn't there previously, reading books, hunting for celestial spectacles plus the hundred other possibilities I have inside me which I haven't quite tapped yet. I can get lost in them. Forever.

I guess we all have this place where we often retreat to in order to find ourselves. Social as we are, we often keep this place away even to the persons closest to us. This is the place where we go so as not to suffocate our relationships. This is the place where the winds of Heaven dance, where the angels sing. This is the place that lifts you up. This is where we overflow.

The word "place" is a poor noun for it. This thing I am talking about is not really a place. This can be anything. This is different for each of us. This is where we polish our art that is our life until we are ready to present it once more to the world, and then they put in suggestions and then you polish it again so that it can accomodate new strokes...and it goes on until we do the purpose we are here to figure out.

What's yours?