INNER JOURNEY

By Reymundo Salao
Askal Projection

The sunshine has fallen into the color of slumber, radiant yellow into an icy blue, as rain falls and replaces the day into gloom. The winds are frigid, the mood somber. We close our eyes in sadness, but we will always know that the sun shall return. If not today; tomorrow.

The quiet weekend drags my heart into an aching fever, with painful recollections of lonely days passed. Filled with persevering hope of enlightenment, I pursue to seek means to wash off the negative vibe that taints my soul. Perhaps a preparation of coffee and the beautiful music of my CDs may appease my soundless cry of misery. For music is the drug that can sedate us into worlds of various colors and smells; music can shape our soul like clay for a god to mold. An afternoon of music, meditation and reflection to replace the biting boredom. The music from the likes of Anokha, Talvin Singh, Transglobal Underground, Bjork, and Thievery Corporation, has begun to stretch out their hands of vibe that massage the soul of my head. The coffee shall be ready in a minute's time. Coffee with what I would personally call as my Inner Journey to achieve some Moments of Spiritual Consciousness. Moments when we should choose to forget our negative energies (like hate, prejudice, arrogance, selfishness), even bury them in the septic tanks of melting memory.

What is darkness? What is light? What is life? Questions to think about, not in arduous, eyebrow-tightening effort, but in a quiet, submissive and passive manner. We are, after all, mortals that may not have the brain capacity to comprehend the great mysteries of this world. Perhaps one step to know life is to, first, know ourselves. What we have, what we struggle for, what we want, what we need, and what our purpose in life is. Where we have been, where we are going, what lies ahead? This isn't new. It has been said and done before, it is just that we forget and we neglect, because sometimes we tend to think that what matters is what is in the material world. We consciously tend to neglect what is in the spiritual world; the real world that is beyond mortality, beyond the world of flesh and money. Half of our being lives in the spiritual world; this is the world wherein what is only acknowledged is our real human emotions; love, devotion, unity, sacrifice, and honor. We are, after all, spiritual beings only living under the shell of mortality, living in the temporary world of the materialism and flesh.

Calm, I decide to take out my old photo albums, and reflect upon the joyful moments that have been bookmarked upon my life's journey. The smiles, the laughter, the memories. My entire afternoon was drowned in meditative bliss. It is sometimes in moments of great sadness that we unravel certain scrolls of life. For I have found myself to write what seems to be spiritual tenets for my life. Tenets that have somehow emerged from the soul of my mind. And hopefully, shall become tenets that can be shared, to guide us into the flight of life. It is sometimes through ourselves that we lay down our own morality, our own spiritual philosophies. Somehow, I have realized that if you blend the spiritual concepts of Christian morality, Karma, Vedic, the Shinto and Wiccan respect for nature, and (well….) the concepts of the Force, opening our minds not only to what we have learned through the religious moralities we grew up with, but with the ones that we still have yet to learn, and inject it into the subliminal parables that we have gone through or witnessed in our everyday lives, we can come up with our own tenets. Spiritual tenets that could help us live a good and happy life. Tenets that could help us handle moments of despair, failure, guilt, and loneliness. In time, we shall finish these tenets in text form and maybe live life to its most meaningful worth. I have yet to finish mine.

(tripxyde@hotmail.com)

CALL NOAH

By Reymundo Salao
Askal Projection

Is it sunny outside? Well, you can't really trust the weather by just looking outside the window anymore. You can't trust that sunshine; bring your jacket and your umbrella. In the case of this city, whenever you talk about rain, then, you can inevitably talk about floods. Flooded streets, flooded roads, flooded city. To quote a friend of mine, the floods in this city are an almost-annual occurrence that never misses to happen. It's that time when crossing the street feels like crossing the Yangtze river. Hours later, you'll be cursed by a killing flu, or leptospirosis. Much later, an entire nation of mosquitoes rise out of the floodwater and begin their reign of dengue. One of the many causes of this? …all because many of us are just idiotically taking our surroundings for granted. We throw plastic EVERYWHERE. We smoke and just simply get rid the butts right under our butt, oblivious to the fact that each time we do these (oh, unconscious and negligent) acts of stupidity, we doom ourselves with the side-effects that nature most willingly will lecture us with.

Many of the opinions I've read about this subject matter point to street vendors and how they are accused of being the filth that causes the eventual damage to our little urban ecosystem. While that may have some level of truth, it just seems too hypocritical to generalize the blame on them. Most of them are too underprivileged to afford decent garbage disposal equipments, much less afford a decent home. In addition, many of them are just too ignorant to be too conscious on the matter. One appropriate solution to this is a really efficient information drive. Let these people understand that they must have limits to what abuse they do to the urban ecosystem. Because it is them who are the direct victims of the calamities that may be caused by these acts of negligence.

Another solution is providing these sidewalk stalls (as part of the apparent city beautification program) with a proper sidewalk stall system; garbage cans and public toilets. And letting some stall-owners understand that they would have the responsibility of these facilities. But that kind of solution is just too utopian. There will be the pessimistic possibility that such facilities would fall into being abused and worn-out. These poor stall owners and street people are not to be blamed. Each and every citizen also has an obligation to keep the city clean. ESPECIALLY these large commercial companies. I've actually been disturbed by this one incident not too long ago when I was crossing a bridge on this city and witnessed that this commercial complex was dumping some kind of reddish watery material (like water with red dye) from their drainage system, and into the river. I'm not sure if that was just sheer coincidence or if that was a regular activity of said commercial complex. Nowadays it's easy for capitalists to ignore laws that have to do with the environment. Sometimes, I get too rebellious and become a reckless litterbug whenever I'm inside the mall as a form of demonstration for my friends to witness as I impart my little motto of urban ecosystem: "Malls have janitors; Mother Nature doesn't.