How to Travel Alone

I Have Lived

I may be Alienated from my kind, but I lived
That is all that matters, I lived
Nothing gets wasted
There is nothing to regret
I lived and the way I lived is what I have chosen
That is an accomplishment
That is my success
I have seen beauty
because I know horrid things
I have felt happiness
because I am aware of sorrow
I get alarmed at the sound of bloodshed
because I know music
I have spoken healing words to one
and I have wounded the heart of another
I have lived and I know I shall die
In all my understanding,
these are the only things that matter
These are the only words I want to leave behind

You Don't Need To Make It A Happy One

Photography by Tino Belarmino Castillo

It is your Birthday Tino. 

You don't need to make it a happy one. 

You go ahead and hurt others with the truth.

Raise your hand and flash it for the whole world to see

that you don't care.

Listen to the message in the dreams you have at night.

Let it be known that you are detached.

You have always been 

because you know that it is your gift.

What you do with your gift is yours to decide

a gift bears no judgment with it.

Go on, touch it some more

run it against the skin of your face

gently close your eyes 

raise your shivering shoulders

and inhale the serenity of solitude

Hold it there 

let the pulsation of your veins count the years

pour down the energetic silence

and lazily let go of the air. 

Memories

flashes of memories that define you

those are your trails

It is you Tino

Without them you are nothing

So remember who you are

let it go down to where it all began

backwards, there it is

go backwards

until you reach the point where there is nothing

and there you begin

Inhale

Fill your lungs with life

and cry

for that's the only thing you knew then.

When crying was over you learned

and learning made you survive

You keep on breathing

Let it go

Let life go

and let it return if it wants to

---Tino Belarmino Castillo

(written for my July 17, 2013 Birthday)

The View Of The Falcon

The view of the Falcon
(Watercolor by Tino Belarmino Castillo)

The view of the Falcon

Once upon a time, there was a boy walking in circles.

Soaring high up in the sky, was a mighty falcon with sharp eyes.

The falcon wondered why the boy goes in circles

So he glided down and landed on the ground

The boy stopped walking.

The Falcon examined his eyes.

Sadness, fear and confusion was there

When the Falcon asked why, water flowed out of the boy's eyes.

Never did he think that someone would ask.

As the boy explained, the Falcon listened

When it was all said, the falcon spoke

The boy understood

and the Falcon flew back up high in the sky.

In the next days, the boy built a boat instead of walking in circles.

He slowly shed his fears, confusion and sadness 

When he finished, he set the boat afloat in the sea and laid his back on it.

He watched the beauty of his life and everything around it

He allowed the the sea to drive the boat in any way

in there, he relaxed with a clean mind; watching the Falcon soar in the sky

with a clear understanding that from up there in the clouds

one can see almost the whole world

and the falcon sees nothing that the boy should worry about

That is why, to the boy, the Falcon said, 

"All your worries are just in your head."

          ---- Tino Belarmino Castillo

The Changing Drop of Water

The Changing Drop of Water

I am looking for a particular drop of water in the ocean. It fell there sometime ago. At that time I didn't know it was called love. I never really understood it. My neighbor defines it as, "the wiggling buttocks" of her hot professor vigorously writing on the lecture board. My professor puts it this way, "I love my husband so stay away from me." My very pretty friend said, "ahh…you know…love is…please don't ask me." But I kept on asking around. I read about it and I pondered on it and of course love differs from person to person. It varies from culture to culture. It is perceived differently by persons of assorted ages and sexual preferences. It has a meaning that the movies and media have popularized that a lot of people have been trapped into and have been damaged by. But I know that is not the drop of water that I am looking for. All I know is that it is somewhere there in the ocean.

My neighbor has that particular drop of water in the ocean. My professor has her contribution. My pretty friend just cannot put it into words but she has a drop of love on it. All of their kind of love are there in the ocean. But as soon as that drop touched the sea, they all would say, "love is gone."

Maybe the right word for it is "lost." After all the ocean came to life from all the drops of love from people through millions of years. Love is there in a bigger scale. They blended with the others and changed. My neighbor, professor and pretty friends thought it is gone. But like a process of chemical reaction, it just changed. It evolved into something that not so many people understand and want to accept. It is its nature to change. It is the river that runs to the ocean and changes into vapor to become the clouds which turn gray and throw thunder and lightning and then weep down to the dry land and whose tears gets sucked in by the roots of the plants that have flowers to collect the drops of dew in the morning that glisten under the ray of the sun and make my pretty friend smile.

She smiled for sometime because she said she is in love and then with great fury yelled and cursed at the world for being abandoned by love. When her energy was spent, she cried. When the last drop of tear bid her goodbye, she smiled. She decided to look at the flowers with morning dew on it once again and got another love.

Love changes but the players of love don't want to change with it. My pretty friend would cling on to the euphoric initial phase of love and when it seems not there anymore she would say, it is over. Like an addict, she would not want to part with the delightful feeling of the first stage. Rage and frustration would take over because she doesn't want love to change. She would look for another one and would find it. She is pretty after all. But she fools herself. What she would look for is not another love. It is the player of love that she changes to feel that rapturous initial stage again. But she never really goes along love as it changes. She plays along with the player of love, not love itself. That is why when love evolves she wouldn't recognize it anymore and she would start to pick on her playmate, and say, "you don't love me anymore." The other player will get confused and would react accordingly until both the players decide not to play anymore. They would say love has been dropped into the ocean and is gone. Then maybe, as the world turns, my pretty friend will grow old and mature playing along with a partner or another and will depart from this world while doing that. 

At the end of the day, a lot of love goes to the ocean where it will change and mature as what has been going on through millions of centuries. But I think a lot of people like my neighbor, professor and pretty friend will go around aged and changed without a love that is supposed to be... mature.

Well, please don't ask me. Let me continue looking for my drop of water in the ocean.

Afraid of what we want

Afraid of what we want

Maybe it scares us that we may become too attached to each other that instead of even more showing our love, we keep a distance or disregard each other. Maybe we are afraid that our feelings will be hurt. It is always the fear of something that drives our actions. I think, this is the story of human beings nowadays.  

We are afraid most of the time of what people will say or think or do. Instead of doing what makes us happy, we do something else that is hard and tedious, which gives us the sense of sacrifice, thinking that in sacrifice, we get greater glory. We are obsessed with the sense of being approved of by the society and that obsession is bordered with fear. Not knowing however, that the fear the society flooded us with, is just to keep us civilized but not happy. That is to keep us normal but not progressive. It is only meant to manipulate us to have all else move in an orderly fashion.

AS we deny ourselves of happiness we believe that self sacrifice will give us what we want.  But what do we really want?  Isn't it that the bottom line of all our wanting is that we long to be happy? But look, we deny ourselves of that happiness for the sake of self sacrifice and discipline.  As we go on with life, we simply just keep on training ourselves, disciplining ourselves, punishing ourselves and keeping away from the enjoyment that we really want.

And so sometimes we try to find happiness in other areas not involving human beings. We even become experts in casual relationships that last only for a moment. We want at the end of the day to be uncommitted, for fear would set in when we think, we are falling in love. For falling in love means being euphoric in the morning and despondent in the evening. So we rather not feel the ecstasy in falling in love. We just want to be stable. We want to be in control all the time and being in love and attached to someone deprive us of that control. So we keep ourselves away. We preserve ourselves. 

Now, I wonder how many are there in this world who are just like.... me?