when creatures eat their tail

The ouroboros. It eats its own tail so it can go on living.

I'd painted the double version of it on my wall back home a long time ago. It's a fascinating creature and an even more intriguing symbol--unsettling but compelling in its possibilities. 

Much like the incidents in my December break this year. 

For one, old faces and old names trickled like rain into the small, warm pool that was my holiday, creating swirls and splashes I did not expect. Every day, I'd hear from someone I would grab at the chance of laughing with. Every day, I'd find myself delightedly catching up with familiar faces--charming because they were all older but lovelier faces; awe-inspiring because they had things to say I couldn't hear before.

True Blood

We were all there and accounted for: the eldest daughter, the middle sister, the youngest brother. There's only the father now, but the family has two more endearing children and three beautiful young women. And as we placed a comma to another year together, I saw all of us through instagramic lens--differently toned, adapting, present. That is us in unostentatious love and familial solidarity. That's the love that endures. That's the truest shoutout of all, that's the wall you can safely slump against... again and again.

The Women in My Life 

Each of them keeps a bit of my heart, these women. With no fanfare, they put those pieces together in acts made all the more loving in their simplicity. 

One gave me something priceless--time. Time together. It was only when I looked at the snapshots of my holiday that I realised she was there most times. A comforting presence. A seeming guardian. It stuns me how easy it is to take these special gifts for granted when one doesn't pay attention.

Another baked me a world of tenacious dreams and different views of the truths we dissected long ago, with half-closed lids, in one beach or another, or over the light of the deliberate candle. Hers was a constant reminder of the promises of days and weeks and months and years not yet come.

And then, as always, there was my inverse doppelganger--she of the completely opposite personality, but of the absolutely twin soul. She didn't have to say anything, do anything--although she always would. Her presence in my life has been a gift in itself ever since we exchanged books, letters and diaries at thirteen. From her, I know understanding, I learn loyalty, I comprehend love and courage. From her I gather strength.

Old voices, new sounds

They were just there, one by one... former students, long-ago pupils, new-friends-made-over-cold- ended-loves... all turned into people who showed me again and again the joy of being remembered, the kindness of compassion, and the freedom of laughing in silly abandon.   

The incorrigible boy who used to pull down my skirt while  I dragged him around the wet market when he was four talked about burnt-out passions and the constant opportunity for self-reinvention. This as we tried to find the car he forgot where he parked at, and as we struggled through an unusual Cebu traffic to catch the boat for home. In the short span of a walk and a drive, I saw the naughty cousin who spray-painted our neighbor's pig with a dirty word (and set it loose), the artist who stayed true to his passion and craft despite realities, and the seeker forever striving for more to discover in himself.

The childhood playmate who refused to let us touch her doll when we first met, and with whom I grew into womanhood together, came back. She affirmed once again that friendship built in true joys and real pain does not go away at all, no matter how many breaks it takes over the years.

Three singular individuals shared a typhoon with me in a narrow hallway. The harsh truths and frank admissions we thrashed around in that surreal night of whipping wind, raging rain, and odd cookies jolted me out of some safe pretensions and held up a cracked mirror to a blurred vision. We were all flawed people with conscious choices borne from an unlikely mix of passions, prejudices, and the refusal "to be like"; yet we would stare at the chipped mirror and see who's there until it hurts. We fall, we rise, we try to be--no apologies.

 The ouroboros I fixated on?

These surprising, almost random, meet-ups and epiphanies seemed to close the hurts and disappointments of the past year and glide on to open another one of new beginnings and realisations. 

Those old voices, new friends, steadfast kin--they are the symbolic fish--or serpent--swallowing its own tail in an eternal cycle of renewal and rebirth.  A hope that lightens my heart. A hope that's true for all of us.

my double ouroboros