a daylight dream

I was supposed to be writing this last night, yet my fingers were enormously cold and it was an aching situation to tap repetitively at a screen. Now, the morning has come and January’s still here, but ending. t h e  c o l d It’s been quite cold— so cold in fact, that the air smelled like snow. The mornings were extremely hostile and home was even colder than outside. To make it more bizarre, a wave of flu (or omicron, who knows) smothered almost everyone I know, including myself. I never had a cold that lasted more than seven days, but this one lingered for almost two weeks, blocking my nose and making me feel uneasy with lassitude. Still, it was a lesson to be patient for recovery, to take it easy and to sleep well. Sleep is such a blessing in winter. Most days, I was already in bed at 7.30 pm, and honestly, I love it that way. There is nothing more harmonious than waking before dawn and sleeping as the night settles in. c r e a t i v e   s i l e n c e January was silent and artful.

i have learned much less through doubt than death and by death I mean a sweet surrender when the heart ceases to breathe and eventually, instead, sings sweeter songs than the usual hum in its chest what a caged cavity each friday dawn we lose ourselves to that special kind of sweetness we lay mirrored by constellations and forgiveness something, then, does die so sweetly.

I have failed again and again to give thanks cordially; for divine thanks is an act of constancy, and it is never festive, but humble. A thanks is a sip of water to the parched, and aren’t we the weakness that cries in rapture and enthusiasm—   oh thank you, lord! Still, a real thanks runs amok from grounds of vainglorious tones uttered as a response. A real thanks is soundless, speechless and pathless. It climbs the tree, ripples on the lake, and it is the hare in the clouds I see. If we would teach the artfulness of thanks, perhaps we would teach its constancy: how its song never ceases, and how we have forgotten its words; they were never there after all.

When I asked about the hibiscus flower, I was enmeshed and engraved in disillusionment, watching fingers point at pale, scarlet delicate petals. I knew it was a dishonest name for a flower, for the tea I drank on winter nights did not possibly appeal to such delicacy When time passed and I happened to come across the real one; cruel, shrivelled, reserved, painted in deep burgundy— I knew it was it what touched my lips so cunningly. I knew it was this kind of cruelty that dissolves in the love of boiling water, it couldn’t be anything else. Beings on this gorgeous earth seem to have the signature of their essence upon their form. And like the hibiscus, I must be. I wonder if one can recognise my essence from how my eyes shine when they grow towards the sun, and how I become feathery and lightweight in the face of ancient love, and how my face crumples when all is so beautiful and wondrous. I hope all these tell honest stories about me.

The heart stops singing when it ceases to become a slave to a divinity as whole as God’s. One of my earthly friends came this morning and shared tea with every one she’d meet. It stirred an aliveness in my heart: I’ve never been stirred by the aliveness of sharing before. What if whatever we gained was meant to be shared. What if sharing was the only way to reward success with equality; to give what we have been given, to share our rains with golden grounds; for what is the rain without the fertile garden blooming and green? Is this why we feel so empty up the vertical ladder of earthly climbs? I mean and intend to share the silent goodness of my heart. It multiplies still, in stillness and in silence, but goodness was not made to be a crumb. It is as supple as the sound of a tree's name, sweetening when it is uttered, when it is dispersed and shared along the continental drifts. Is there a way to become enslaved to divine sharing of goodness? Then I must learn. Then I must commenc

You’re as distant as the other side of the moon. I gaze at you, asleep as the sun rises slow this January, this arctic wave of unbearable cold that no warmth can harness. My hands are too cold to fondle your skin, so they are hands I keep to myself. I wondered if you ever knew how much it hurt me to feel so much but not know how to reach you through the vast steppes of silence between us. I’ve always had those pages to write to you infinitely: my fondest thoughts, my most fiery odes that make my heart twitch with the arrival of much more than morning light. Sometimes loving you is a tidal wave that smothers me. A wildfire that eats away the gaps and the whole of me, too. I’m consumed and I’m empty. I’m the paradox of having too much to say and not a single notion to paraphrase. I wince watching you sleep. There are things you’d never know, love. Things humanness never amassed. Holiness of love to be anointed with but never grasped. When you wake, silence on your face, I realise the dif

It’s rather mystifying how life is asking me to slow down, incomparably. I’ve never thought life would ask me to do that, it was always the other way round; me pleading for things to take less of a toll on my time and my energy to keep up. Even with things mounting on my list, there is less of an inclination to ridiculously fuss and fester over minor details. It’s now quite expected to rather fondle ideas and nurture them with visuals and make-beliefs, which is mind-blowing. God has given me the slowness I’ve always dreamed of. And maybe that is a temporary gift, and maybe one day I’ll have to fuss and fester plans and random doings— but now that it’s here, I allow the silence to prevail inseparably from my avid heart. Oh, there is much to be amazed about by the sidelines that have less to do with much to do. There is an astonishment related to beingness which is as profound and less constructed. I fell ill last week. It’s funny how one has no choice but to not invest in much rabbit ho

when the ground beneath me cries in the terror of ones hungered severed torn how could I have known the grace of a smile was made into being experiencing cycles of pain before I was born

i ran to chase the blackbird count the grass blades and the little buds in the dead trees asleep oh the mischief in untamed free curiosity oh the lavender glow of moonrise in my soul life begins this slow when you don’t notice it at all.

One needs not proof for the language of God in the entirety of the universe’s existence. Despite His divine silence, how is there so plentiful to interpret? Honestly, it is a turmoil to fill my head with more to listen to than the music of the earth as winter falls off the precipice of its orbit. It’s a turmoil to need more proof than already is abundantly existent. I pray to need less, everyday. I forget my prayer, forgive it, and pray again. With less, i unburden my shoulders with the heaviness and realise I’ve had wings of a butterfly. With less, I soar through the magnificence of a sunlit sky. The less I need, the more it seems I have always had everything.

T his earthliness is beautiful, captivating, bewildering. I hold your hand as we meander and wander by the valley, the hem of our clothes drowning in dew, my soul drowning in you . As much as it is wondrous, it is temporary. I stare into the snow-laden banks and all the lifeless views. The seasons do freeze our hearts, too. The hastiness of impatience, the impertinent waiting for grace to free fall into the fragile days where it’s empty and cold— when love is nowhere at all. Yet I pray in those seasons that I serve you, loved one. I pray to kneel on my knees and pray one long prayer with you, hold those shrivelled hands and look into your eyes till they tear in soft humility. Serving you by remembering with you, learning to love this earthliness through God’s grace that has befallen on all forms. Tonight, it is speechlessly silent. You’d wish to be here, to push more of you into the vacant spaces of our home. But there is no need, love. It is an ancient nothingness. We can be patient t

Last week was cold, so cold. So empty, so barren, so devoid with everything inessential. So insensate, so unresponsive. Silent, but not solemnly so. A silence that haunts the heart with fragile emptiness. A humility breathed in with every gale of arctic air, in search of a vulnerable plea of guidance. Last week was all of this, and none of it, at the same time. Despite the boreal gusts, I choose to leave home in the early morning, my lungs almost cast in fractals of ice. My hands turn frigid, even in my pockets, but I still go. I face the seasons of life and watch it all mirror within me with a painful emptiness that is severely worrying. I watch the dawn unfold with rosy and lilac tints, the full moon in its fall, the blackbird soulfully singing its song. And I see the little dandelion petals asleep, arms clasped facing the stars. Venus adorns the eastern horizon with a spectacular glow. Clovers multiply in the shadows of the barren silk floss trees beneath a bed of autumn leaves. All

I want to share with you a story, that whenever I relive it in my mind, it shatters my heart with incredulous faith, awed by the power of vulnerability in a child’s development. I have a boy in my class who had deep anger management issues. I remember the first few weeks (even months) of school, every lesson would be a terror, watching him move around hurting others, slapping, pushing desks and chairs in moments of fury, when experiencing conflicts with his classmates. I observed him and didn’t raise my voice or resort to punishments since I knew it wasn’t the issue. anyway, he was not afraid of punishments. he was fearless and extremely rebellious. when things got messy in my class, I’d send him out to calm down, but it never really worked. one day, i saw him outside the class being reprimanded by teachers, alongside another classmate who was in tears. my heart ached to watch him in this state, and I knew I was called to help him heal. I knew at this moment that I had to give up class

it dawned upon me this morning how liberating it would be if i simply chose to go beyond the labels that bind me to this temporary lifetime. beyond the label of “ teacher ”, “ educator ”, “ advocate ” and “ poet ”, i’m but an eternal soul on its divine journey to wholeness. perhaps i’m more interested this moment in moving beyond labels when it comes to my career. sometimes, it is quite limiting to say that i’m a teacher when in truth, i come in many forms to serve those beloved children. i often hear others say “ i can’t do that, i’m just a teacher ” when confronted by challenges beyond their job description and title. well, perhaps we get paid for specific things, but the mind thrives on those self-imposed structures to create suffering when the heart speaks and calls for action yet stays fastened in some abstract box of roles. this year, i hope to bring my full humanness and light into what i do and move beyond my job description. upon learning that there is such a thing as  unschoo

the day starts and we go separate ways to serve the world with gifts and bright, reverent hearts. like birds that come into murmurations and disperse, i find myself in places and conversations i have never planned. and so do you, but our hearts are bound to be where love is. when evening falls, i come home with an exhausted smile and broken heart from all the beauty that has surpassed the day. lately, there is this halo of surrendered love that follows me everywhere, humbling the smallest features of my face and softening my slowest steps. i come home with it, and here, it multiplies in wordless togetherness, a million times more blinding near your presence. our togetherness is different than i expected it to be, love. there is much more silence than i could have imagined. but it reminds me of the sweetest silence that prevailed before i knew your name, when this ancient love was only a comforting truth echoing in my chest; a fractal, an extrapolation of God’s fabric of love coating th

today, i happened to reconnect to a beautiful friend with whom i share so many dreams and auras. we talked about divinity, interconnectivity and everything that binds us to God, the source of all oneness and aliveness. since that conversation, much of the chatter in my mind ceased to exist, despite the usual tendencies i have to want to do something. there are items on my list that haven’t been checked, some as absurd as “visualise activities for term (2)” which would mean going through every single day of the week for each unit in my head. well, it would be productive, but it would most certainly attach my ego to the outcomes, too. and so i dropped the list awhile and listened to the music of the spheres— musica universalis . the beauty in stillness and inner peace, the cessation of movement to coexist with all patterns in the universe. perhaps it would be healing to pay attention to our innate nothingness and the ultimate wholeness that we truly are. suddenly, the desire to eat, drin

When I look back, I find that not much has changed in numerous ways. The irony is that an infinitude of changes had happened in the past few years, perhaps one’s imperceptible, but powerful enough to manifest breakthroughs that may not be visible now, but are to create lasting imprints. Since 2017, things started to change so rapidly. Reflecting upon it with my father, he tells me that not much has changed, but I cannot help but recognise the person I was then. There are fleeting remnants of who I’d always been, but deep inside, I’ve changed radically. It seems that the more appropriate term is not change , but growing back to originality and authenticity rooted in my spirit. I don’t know why I’m mentioning this now, but something in me whispers that starting from 2022, all the imperceptible changes shall become more embodied in real terms. Faint dreams shall stroke the canvas of life in colours of daylight. I am not yet aware of how that should manifest, and am forsaking all the detai