Popularity of Porn

I am saddened by the fact that as it stands now, my most popular blog post is about PORN. To think I wrote the essay only to prove to myself the suggested idea of blogging about popular topics, and tagging it with popular words. I’ve never missed a day without a “view” on the subject, and these were not limited to the United States but all over the world—from Pakistan, Turkey, Australia, Indonesia, Nigeria, Austria, Spain, Ecuador, and the UK.

As if porn is already an important part of people’s lives these days; that they have to search online on how to go about it, how to do it better. I am not talking big numbers here, but the daily regularity of browsers dropping in to view the blog, is surprising (if not encouraging, if one decides to ride the popularity of the topic).

Truth is, I pity the teens who indulged in the skin business, and not because they are young and innocent, naive or coerced into it—but because they ENJOY doing it! They are proud to bare their physical assets, to be part of pornography, unmindful of later consequences.

One glaring but very influential evidence of this wide-world acceptance of open sexuality online are the Facebook duck-face pics, where the girl/boy/gay/lesbian holds her phone or ipad to take a provocative slutty pose—the more boobs and navel exposed, the hotter; the more pouted lips protruding, the more skanky and popular—advertising herself online for everyone to “like”. Can the porn industry talent scouts be far behind?

Call me a puritan, a moralistic hypocrite, but I still respect a human being, especially, a young girl. And to see these same beautiful girls blessed with good looks since childhood flaunting it online with utter disregard for decency while courting possible harm to their future and selves—basking in peer adulation and enjoying every moment of it—seems a shocking waste of life.

WHY a waste, when they are having fun? Why interfere and preach when they are “adult” enough to know what they are doing? Why be so concerned when it is as natural as drinking, smoking, getting high, and enjoying a series of sexual ecstasies? Common venereal diseases, unwanted pregnancies, drug addiction, alcoholism, prostitution, and possible criminal acts—what the fuck, who cares?

You do; you must.

Simply look at your angelic child now, the one you hold close to your heart, the ones you love and care for with all your life. Now, imagine her/him in a porn video/movie when s/he reaches her/his teen years. Corrupted, violated, abused, subjugated, and most of all, beyond your reach to save or change—with her/him, your baby, the one you cuddled each morning—laughing, sneering, mocking your so-called precautions, spitting in your face…live, in colour, in full stereo, and having fun abused and abusing his/herself online, for everyone to see.

Sigh, I am not a dad and cannot relate to having a child, but I have siblings, and I do not want any harm come to them. Do you?

Finding First Love

For anyone to say or wish that she or he would like to find a “first love” is quite unnecessary, if not inappropriate.

Often expressed with an anxious tone–as if not to have a special someone marks the person as an ugly duckling, a desperate loser among friends–excited kids new to the fleeting game of love blurt it out without a thought.

Seeming always in a hurry to find a cuddly cute one to call their own, they ignore altogether the caution and willingly embrace the stress, apprehension, and peer pressure that accompanied the search. All of which, bring the eye bags, pimples, skin rashes and acne, not to mention the resulting worry of concerned friends and those within the family.

But for young individuals who have already felt and savoured early the joy and intimacy of the emotion, finding, or securing another one, becomes the source of the anxiety–a love problem that leads to romantic daydreaming, frequent masturbation, lost of appetite, and lack of sleep.

Or worst, the redirection of the tension to compulsive eating behaviour, painful self-abuse, experimentation with alcoholic beverages, predilection to drug use, and unsafe sexual adventures, paid or otherwise. All common and natural things that stoked more serious personal and family problems later on.

Yet, only for the guilty to brag later among friends and everyone else, that he or she, finally found love–no matter how elusive and sticky–either the hard way or the messy way, and without guarantees, of course.

For what is first love but a tease of exuberant possession, of selfish and prideful ownership of someone’s heart?

First love answers a person’s strong intoxicating need for personal affection, a tug of sincere and honest sharing aching for truth and respect, and which, each of us at an early age have already nurtured in our private little “crushes”.

We have all been privileged to participate and experience the excitement of the moment–even though we do not understand or appreciate it yet. Yes, it is exciting to be in love!

And anyone who says he or she has not experienced it, one way or the other, is already dead…had forfeited her or his soul to destiny, and is only waiting to be buried soon, alive.

First love, they say, is the most memorable, unique, and unforgettable, that if one is honest and sincere with what was felt–it is the most precious, most cherished. Even if it does not always works out well in the end, most of the time.

But of course, the real thing–true love–is the one hardest to find later in our lives. Yet for some, it happens quite easy and fast like magic, sparkling in a fairy tale romance.

First love is not to be found, since it presents itself without warning: a sweet smile, an unexpected phone call, an invitation, a visitor, or a twist of timing where one bumps by accident with someone you do not know or expected to know.

My first love happened when I was only five, and I have included the moment in a romance novel I am challenged to write:

The sweetness of the memory would drop on him unexpected, light as rain.

It would be pleasant, vivid…pure. As distinct and clear as it happened during his childhood–even now, already in his advancing years. He is forty four.

Yet the joy never diminished, faltered. Tiny droplets of thoughts sprinkled through the years, melting in his eyes.

In his mind, he would see her again, with an eagerness filled of boyhood anticipation, of wonderment, a joyful disbelief of admiration mixed with the innocence of infatuation. Real things he would remember, would retain and recall often, after all the years.

For occasionally, it would dawn on him like the unexplained sprinkling from the heavens–a delicate moment of outpouring, reminiscing, absorbing–settling softly in his heart; a passion of sensual exuberance he had experience as a boy, silently awakening in his senses. It was a reality so vivid he knew he will not forget.

He saw her like a multicolored vision; a beautiful creation of a dream that materialized before his eyes, ambling in a casual stride as if in slow-motion, the fog of consciousness covering, enveloping everything all around them…He is in love; alone with her in a romantic wonderland.

Wrapped in a rainbow dress, colours glowing brilliant after the rain that highlight the whiteness of fair skin–soft, smooth, and delicate. Her fragile air intensified by the smallness of her waist, swaying gracefully as her skirt swirled in the wind, a style that accented well the promise of budding breasts below the round, sloping shoulders. She was beautiful in his eyes. Indeed, she looked at him, and he was devastated by the pounding of his heart.

Excerpts from “The Heart”, a novel started in 2004, and remained unfinished.

My first true love happened by accident: My cousin, after working in a school assignment, dropped by the house for some snacks and brought with her a girl classmate. And I fell in love with her as soon as I saw her at the door.

I promised myself I will marry her when time and circumstance allow. I had no doubt or felt fear she will not accept me, nor where there qualms about who she is.

I saw her, let them in, and we are already friends–as if I have known her from long ago or times past. The relationship lasted for two years. She went abroad to stay permanently with her family. I was seventeen, and the memory remained still vivid and clear, like our theme song, jolting me from the present to the past whenever I heard it played on the radio.

And since first love always happens in our youth, we are still careless, vibrant and care-free, often overwhelmed by the emotion of being special in the heart and mind of someone. Thus, we also have the tendency to lose it easily.

Yet, it is a lesson learned that will guide and shape our whole being when love comes knocking back at our hearts again. For there will always be a next time, whether we make an effort of it, or exert the least of efforts finding one.

Of course, there are more misses and losses in finding the real thing, since true love is as ephemeral as it is for real.

Thus, I believe it should not be a part of our worries, whether or not we have already experienced it, not unless we are bedridden or extremely ugly or incapacitated or in a comma not to have a chance of having one.

Yet, exquisite true-life love stories proved these claims were untrue, and not a hindrance at all. I may be exaggerating things, but my point is simple…Just let it happen, and grab it when the time comes.

And if you find sincerity, a serious truthfulness attached to the expression of an honest heart offered in the love, then hold on to it. Be extra careful not to break or shatter the bond of friendship, and allow it to mature and become a true love relationship.

For being in love, and finding one, is a wonderful privilege not to be taken for granted or ignored, and that which all of us must handle with extreme care and caution…Remember, he or she is special!

Let the universe flow, and as my Chinese friend in college once said: “Each one of us has someone waiting for us, only for us, even at the end of time, if not in this lifetime.”

(Dedicated with all my heart to my young blogging frheend with the beautiful, soulful eyes, whose heart starts and grows aflutter, now that she is seventeen. May you tell me about him…soon.)

Note: Pic was downloaded from random Google images.

A conversation after life

I cannot offer you any facts. I cannot even offer you the secrets of your life. It is only for you to decide if you have done well or not. For what is measured only are those universal, beneficial, and sublime. Each soul follows a certain path—predetermined, plotted, and prepared for everyone—regardless of when or where each one was conceived and granted a life.

So, whatever you are going to do in this world, whether good or bad, constructive or destructive, affluent or deprived, influential or insignificant, is not of your own doing but dependent of a scripted series of actions you must follow exactly to the letter, and as precise and accurate as it was written and agreed upon—yes, you made a pact and accepted what was all along planned in advance for you, the way you wanted it, as accurate as you wanted it to happen…Your way, because you want to continue whatever it was you felt you can contribute; or to fulfill, what remained unfinished in your other, previous lives.

What about choices then, you say?

What about that all-important gift, a privileged action that separates you from animals? Are you not allowed to make your own choices—those little changes that connect actions together to have a total effect on whatever superficial situation you are currently experiencing in the now, a bad luck or a broken heart, perhaps?

Is it not clearly specified in the contract of agreements before you signed it with a teardrop and a spit of blood on the burning line that yes, you are given the right to make a choice—whatever and whenever you want—once you receive your grant of one lifetime on earth, and thus, become human again? Are you deprived of it, or is it a fact?

First, let me correct your misinformed notion in your belief that “choices” is only granted to you, since you are a human being and it separates you from the animals, lower life forms that you can eat when you are famished; put to work when you are tired, or even keep to yourself for company, when you are lonely or sad. Yet, these animals, in their own unique ways, have their choices, too. If you will only take time to observe their behaviours closely, be it a cat or horse, a cow or a frog, they keep to their habitats and eat only the food that nourished them, avoiding those that can be poisonous or make them sick; and knew also when to run or hide from other animals that can either kill or maim them, devour or harm them.

That is choice, an inherent knowledge of survival; to know when to act, to pick what is the best option, and how to behave, once the choice is made. A cat chooses not to stay or waddle in the waters lest it catches cold and suffer death; a horse chose to eat hay and oats instead of insects, or rats, or birds lest it suffers constipation and weakens from the abnormal diet; a cow allows itself to be milked important to your health because it chose to give and help; and a frog stays in the muddy swamps since it knew it will not survive the heat and other predators on open grounds.

Choice? Each lifetime granted on earth includes in the neat package the gift of choice, and each soul follows their individual paths to fulfill the accepted pact before he or she is given a life. You, and the animals, are not so different in that regard.

Remember Judas Iscariot? The apostle Peter? Alexander the Great? Constantine? Julius Caesar? Gautama Buddha? Lincoln? Hitler? Stalin? Hirohito? Lee Harvey Oswald? Kennedy? John Lennon? Jim, Janis, Jimmy, Brian, or Kurt? A handful of historical and popular figures who suffered their deaths—either memorable, significant, honorable, grotesque, abominable, or in a detestable way—whether a hero or a villain, whether committing the crime or being murdered, whether taking their lives or the lives of millions of others, each one either followed their specific agreements or chose instead, to alter their predetermined paths.

So that whatever they did, no matter how right or wrong, each decision affected the destiny of others who were connected to them in a continuous motion and in certain, specific ways—a deck of cards falling and gaining momentum as time moves on, each one contributing to the slow, spinning loop whether you like it or not, in the universal cycle of life. Then again, one way or the other, these souls will try to come back to earth, petitioning and praying for another grant of life after spending already so many lifetimes, only so they can correct and try to fulfill their pacts.

Yet, my examples do not preclude those who died of natural causes. They, too, can affect the destiny of others unconsciously, and will, like the rest of the restless souls you see here all wailing, howling, and weeping, want to go back so they can fulfill and settle their unfinished accounts. Thus, for you to insist on making a choice, to bring about the changes that you think are so necessary to uplift and improve your life, will only later learn that everything will lead you back to your predetermined path, no matter what it takes you to complete it, even in so many lifetimes. Consider this:

A poor boy wished for a motorbike…A choice made, but is not possible to happen because of their low position in life. But the father, full of love and pity for his teenage son, made a loan in the local bank. (His choice, now affecting the life of his son). The following Christmas, the father, together with the whole family, gave the gift to his son. Everyone was joyful, happy, and celebrated teary-eyed, as the son beams with delight.

The mother started preparing their Christmas dinner. But the boy was so excited with his new bike, and asked his father’s permission to give it a quick spin in the neighborhood. Both parents agreed (their choices, now entwined with their son), yet asked him to come back at once, after one circular drive. The boy promised, and everyone was happy, satisfied, and proud as they watched him climbed his new motorbike and roared away to take his joyride.

After more than fifteen minutes, the mother became worried of her son. Thirty minutes, and their doorbell rang. Neighbors, together with the ambulance paramedics. Ten blocks from the house on the way back, the boy hit a rock on the road, and the bike spun out of control, throwing the boy to the pavement—broken, twisted, unconscious. They found him exactly seventeen minutes after the accident: dead, bleeding, and with internal brain hemorrhage. He wasn’t wearing any crash helmet. This is a true story.

Humans learned to call it destiny; a written, fixed map of their individual reasons for existence, up to the very end of each lifetime. And what choice does for you, is only to delay that which is to happen, and had been prescribed. In the case of the boy, the choices made by the family affected his choice, and led him faster if not quicker, to an early death—which is to say, his soul’s destiny for that lifetime—even if, his wish for a motorbike had not been fulfilled.

For it will happen, no matter what. So that if choices made surrounding the boy affected and altered the consequences or timeline of the pact, the soul will come back again, this time equipped with the most suitable configuration for a new life on earth that will bring about the fulfillment of the agreements—to do exactly what had already been clearly specified.

And not unless, your choice is one of the predetermined paths that will bring you back closer again to your agreement, then the choice made becomes justified. But if not—that is, your choice is really spontaneous and of your own doing affected by your sincere desire to alter the circumstances surrounding your life—then you will create a ripple of changes that will have an effect on the destinies of others.

Oh, I know what you’re thinking…

That every murdered victim of every murderer, every rapist and the raped, every killer and those killed—Kennedy, Lincoln, Hitler, Stalin, Oswald, etc.—were all justified and not to be blamed for their heinous crimes, with the victims bound and destined to accept their fates, because each one is necessary to fulfill one another’s predetermined pacts, once they crossed paths. Unfortunately, yes…

That is all true. The moment of Lee Harvey Oswald’s conception in his mother’s womb, his destiny was already laid down to fulfill his involvement in the assassination of John F. Kennedy. The moment when Adolf Hitler’s soul entered the agreement of conception in his mother’s womb, he already created a pact to lead and implement the Holocaust. And the moment of Albert Einstein’s conception in his mother’s womb, he carried already the gift to discover the formula that will help create the atomic bomb—and each one of the Japanese people who perished in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was connected and attached to their predestinations: for them to die in the devastating annihilation of the two cities had meant the fulfillment of their destinies all along. And yet, Einstein only meant well…

A gruesome thought? A morbid truth? A sad reality?

Yes again. It is a chain reaction of thoughts, of decisions, of basic actions performed by every human being, either for the good of the greater whole, or worst, the destruction of the unsuspecting and the innocents. A Chinese sage once said: Your life is like the palm of your hand; open your hand and the outstretched fingers are the paths to your destiny. You can make a choice in which path to follow, yet each one points to the fulfillment of your destiny—your predetermined and accepted pact in one lifetime.

Have you ever wondered why you are rich and they are poor? Why you are black and they are whites? Why you are affluent and others so deprived? Why you are respectable when many are doomed to labor? It is all because of your destiny in one particular, bargained lifetime.

So that if ever you decided to make a choice, to alter what was already prescribed, and then died—that is, you already arrived at the very end of the agreed lifespan without having fulfilled your destiny since you altered it to make a new and better life on earth—do not rejoice or feel triumphant for having successfully created a changed in the paths of your life. Because my friend, you will again petition and pray to be given a chance to come back so that once more, in another granted lifetime, you will try to correct and finish what you have altered last time.

Yet don’t get me wrong…It does not mean you may not try. You always have the choice to do what you like. For if not, you may keep me company here for the whole of eternity.

Have you not asked yourself why some people wore so many wrinkles on their faces as they grow old? Why in some cases, others have less-lined faces even if they are of the same age? The wrinkles you see on a human face are the soul’s timeline of lived lifetimes on earth; reflected on the flesh and becoming more persistent and clearer, as one gets older and nearer the end of a lifetime. If you are perceptive and observant enough of those around you, you can deduce and infer the age of their souls just by looking at them, or how many lifetimes they have already spent or gone through, all these centuries.

Now, you tell me you wanted another grant of a lifetime?

What, so that you can correct all the fallacies you have committed in your previous lives?

But have you counted your trips on earth? Or have you already lost count? Look around you…Each alteration you performed in your destiny piles up, one on top of the other. So that ten uncorrected agreements become twenty, and forty, and eighty, doubling up each time you failed as you alter the course of your life.

The cycle would be endless, and I am afraid you will believe your stay here with me, a living hell. Your soul will be tied to these spinning life and death drama, since each time you become a human again, your very first impulse or initial reaction is to change your destiny—live a better life, you say—always unsatisfied and discontented with the way things are happening or evolving around you. When in fact, these were the very same circumstances created and drawn up so you can fulfill your destiny!

Isn’t it ironic that you’ll always forget that? Once your soul is ready and posed for human conception, you forget. Then you’ll shout at the top of your as yet undeveloped lungs, cry in revolt and outrage and despair, knowing it will take you several years to grow up before you can do anything substantial at all. And in the process of becoming a child, forget altogether what it is you are on earth for, why you came back again, in the first place.

So that next time, you will be here to make your promises, your prayers, that you’ll follow everything if given the chance again; fulfilling whatever circumstances was prepared for you, even though your records of changes made are filling up and building a wall around you, enclosing you, beginning to suffocate you once more. And that to escape all these guilt and mental persecutions you will ask for another chance again…Are you not getting tired of these redundant cycle of human life?

Sorry, I asked…Of course, you cannot.

Your soul cannot rest; cannot experience a peaceful bliss until you correct everything you have allowed to change in the course of your lifetimes. But does that mean you are just going to lie there and allow everything to happen to you so that your destiny will be over and completed? To be raped, killed, murdered, drowned, poisoned, stabbed, decapitated, burned, imprisoned, humiliated, buggered, overdosed, or obliterated? Or, on the brighter side—honored, awarded, elected, idolized, loved, promoted, respected, venerated, adored, embraced, or revered, until finally, you die? Yet again, without knowing if you did the right thing or if you made a poor decision, and which will only be clear to you when you woke up and emerged from the transition of life and death to face me?

Look at it this way…If you are a soldier and you need to kill the enemy, you have no choice. Your destiny made you a soldier, and since the nature of war makes soldiers necessary, and the killings imperative, you have to kill or be killed yourself. Now, if you are destined to be a soldier, that is, your ambition from the very start points you in that direction, yet your choices and your circumstances made you decide to change everything and become a grocer instead, you will lead a peaceful life without threats or fear of going into war.

But then again, your conscience, and that is, your agreed destiny, will continuously nagged at you, becoming aggressive and persistent at every turn of your life—whenever you come across war in the news; when you watched a war movie or anything with soldiers on TV; or when a veteran buys a pack of beer in your grocery store—What if? What if, you followed your destiny instead? Thus, after death, your soul will come around asking for permission to come back, and correct your altered path, again.

Does it leave you any choice then?

Answer: None…none at all.

Remember the litany of heroes and villains I mentioned a while ago who now populate earth’s culture and history? There had been no choice even for them. It is the cycle of life, live and let live, so that each soul can fulfill their predetermined paths until the end of time, for the good and the worst of everyone else… Because without evil, how can you define good?

So my friend, you are welcome to stay here if you so chose, for you do not occupy much space. Weigh your options well, if you really want to go back or stay here with me. But don’t get me wrong—it does not mean you may not try. You always have the choice to do whatever you like. Which one will it be?

Think carefully now, and do not hurry. You have the whole of eternity if you do not mind the cries…You may keep me company while I stoke the fires.

VIVIAN, and THE REST OF US

Why should a person struggle to fight loneliness, even if, there is a family or circle friends willing to participate, to get involve and be a part of that struggle? The answer is quite obvious: loneliness is a personal battle, and it exists only in the minds and hearts of each of us. Come and think about it, after all, the pain or the hurting were brought to our lives because we allowed it to happen.

A broken heart? At least we knew from the start–that is, if we have been truly honest with ourselves–that the relationship will not work out or turn for the better no matter how hard we try.

Lost of self-esteem? Again, we all know the answers to that because we are the ones involved here and no one else. Failed ambition? We cannot change the course of our lives in a day, unless fairy godmother Luck waves her magic wand. We need to make the changes come about. We need to make that first step no matter what it takes. We, we, and only we can let it all happen to us–if only, we try.

“Happiness is a warm gun” as the Beatles’ song goes, and maybe, it was really meant for Loneliness in a twisted kind of way. (No, sweetheart, taking your life because you are lonely is not the answer nor the end of it. Worst, it was not even meant for you to happen at all in the first place, not unless, something so irreconcilable did happen–say, a car accident, a rape, or lost of limb or one of the senses. Still, stories of overcoming these painful and permanent personal situations are not unheard of.)

I know what you are thinking…I am already preaching. No. I only try to look at the brighter side when the gloom and the doom cloud my senses while my emotions came rushing up to my throat strangling me, choking me to say “I give up!”

No…There is always a next moment, an hour or a day to see things better and clearer, to find solutions to what we once considered absolute and definite. There is a rainbow, after all, hidden in every storm.

My brother used to say whenever I told him I want to write a novel (while begging him to take at least a tiny peek on the first chapter) that he’ll wait for the book, when it’s already in the stores. That used to hurt me, but it also prodded me to take more aggressive steps to learn how to write my first novel. (At this time, that is not yet a reality but I am not giving up–oh no, I’m not!!) In a way, I believe writers are also lonely people, i.e., reclusive and not that sociable, especially while in the midst of that all-too important flow of story. I am an artist, and I have experienced losing my temper if anyone or anybody would knock on the door only to say why don’t I go out and have some social fun, while I’m actually deep in a religious communication with an on-going work.

I have forgone doing some art related projects because of these uncalled for distractions, only to come again and visit the works after a year or two. I take things sincerely, seriously like a relationship, and it wounds me and defeats my purpose whenever I am distracted and taken away from that “moment” of creative bliss. Yet, I don’t give up. I will come back to it to find my lost precious moments.

We are only humans, and we have our ups and downs; we can fail, fall and be dragged to the ground unconscious. Or we can be hoisted up high in our own pedestals, lifted in the clouds to touch it with our open hearts. It’s a cycle of life, they say, and we must be strong and fortified to either fight it or be swallowed whole by it.

Fame is a dangerous thing if one is not ready for it. And so is Failure, if we are weak to rally against it. Yet both carry with them a tinge of loneliness, unavoidable and necessary, to check us in our moments of glorious ecstasy, or delirious agony.

So we hoped, we hoped that we will overcome the barriers that prevent us from reaching our goal on the either side of being alone. But be careful now…Embrace only what your heart can carry, and let go of everything that felt unnecessary.