Free Soul

(1/30/17)

You once told me why I should write my journals at night. This was after I said I was a having trouble sleeping. When I told you that, I didn't defend my case because your suggestion was compelling for me. But days after, I felt I have been withholding information to you, I felt like I have been lying to you if I won't tell you why I write by the day.

The reason looks like a folly, somewhat embarrassing. I haven't told you yet, but my writing ritual involves paying close attention to my dreams and then writing them when I wake up, a habit I acquired from a writer. For a long time now, this is what I do. Some of my best works started from my dreams, one of them is a hundred plus page undergraduate thesis. While others remain as ideas. I have dreamed of a song melody, for instance, which up until now is still far from being called a song. Yet some of them are premonitions; some of them are snippets of what are about to happen; like the death of my father and meeting different people before we can even make a talk in a coffee table.

Ricky's writing ritual involves a scandalous link between writing and dreaming, by the way. I was sitting at an elevated deck, selling his books to the flock of aspiring writers when he mentioned it. If mine involves writing after dreaming, his is writing while everyone's still dreaming. So when Cinema 6 was almost empty, I got your books and chanced for his autograph. He noticed your name and the date written on the first leaf, he smiled at me for a while. There, my world stopped.

And it brought me back to November when I was guarding my heart from further injuries of an unclear relationship and the disappointment that the world is pinning down on me as a rookie teacher. If my days were chaos, nights were inferno as I toss in my bed and force myself to sleep. I remember a dream when I was talking to a girl in a blurry dimension. She has an animated expression and telling hand gestures. Half of what she means can be understood even without her voice. She had a long curly hair that perfectly falls in a green jacket.

The next day, you tapped my shoulders and said you wanted to ask something, I didn’t know full well what was bothering you. But as I sat there, I was in awe of thought, because it occurred to me that you were wearing a DLSU jacket, and for the first time, I confirmed that your hair was really long and curly. That marks my pursuit of understanding you, not actually know you as a person, but understand you as a soul.

I still don't know whether you're doing that on purpose. When you told me your frailties and exposed your wounded soul. I could have run from that moment. I could have closed my ears because I was suffering myself except that your soul was rare. Yours is a free soul.

"Naoko's an aspiring writer." I said to Ricky. 

"Ah, I know now what to write, tell me the spelling, is it really N-A-O-K-O, as in NAOKO?"

"Yes, yes, NAOKO"

From that moment, it was clear to me that your name will leave him an impression in the same degree that he is amused of my guts as a dreamer and writer concurrently. Because with the hundreds of books he had signed only your books were old. He knew that one writer must have missed-out the event, someone who had read his works before everyone else did.

“Naoko? Is that your "friend"?”

“Yes, she said she wants to come and see you. I hope it’s okay with you.”

And I thought he wouldn't reply. I didn't want him to feel that I worked for him just to turn him to an amusement park or a museum.

But he permitted. I think he sees himself in me. He understands where my guts are coming from. Maybe because he knew that it's not my nature to tag just about anyone. Maybe he knew it all along, with all the uncalled-for favors I made, that you are no ordinary. In the writings of Bukowski, he must have read  "...You will feel when you're with one (free soul), basically, you feel happy, very happy when you are near or with them." And so, even if he was busy, he could have made the time to talk.

I should have defended myself when you told me that writing by the night could be the solution to my trouble. I am yet to know, for one must test a method over a long period of time before it can finally work. In the same way, one must also give oneself some time for thought to assess and make sense of the chaos our feelings create. I am yet to know so much, but I want you to know that this letter is an attempt to live out your advice. The trouble of sleeping didn't leave me, contrary to what we expected, but at least, I was able to capture some fleeting memories.

C