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Talk throughs and celestial (un)certainties

October 5, 2018    |    0 COMMENT(S)

The thing about being in school for so long is that you stop feeling like having a life outside the four corners of most rooms - a classroom, the library, your condo unit - feels like a transgression. Any time spent with friends or family without books or cases, you start feeling guilty. Days are counted by the number of hours you have to either earn your breaks or make up for it. You never get to fully engage your self in certain social situations, because at the back of your head you're always worrying about crawling back to your readings.

Now that law school and bar review is over (for good, HELL YEAH), I'm slowly easing my way into having a social life. I get to have dinner with friends and have meaningful conversations that I can fully immerse myself in because things are - well, not easier, per se, but - less stifling.

Which is an opportune time, I guess, especially now that I feel like I'm going through an internal crisis of sorts. I'm navigating through grief, I'm coming to terms with certain realities about being an adult, I'm feeling angry and frustrated about our nation's institutions falling apart - and I can't do that alone. Or, maybe I can. But I appreciate the company of people going through the same things, riding out the same waves.

Of knowing that you have allies, in your principles and in your passions.

Listening is underrated. There is comfort in conversation, folks. It liberates.

___


Somewhere in the digital sea of old files in my hard drive is an old screenplay I wrote for class. I never got to finish it - never even got it to take off to any kind of conflict - but I recall it was about fortunes being told, and fates being decided by the stars.

A girl opens her palm to a mysterious lady under a tree. It was mid-afternoon when she stepped out of work for a smoke. The lady called to her and asked her if life consumed her the way the puffs of smoke did. Out of both curiosity and boredom, she approached her and sought out answers for questions she didn't dare ask. But my script ended there because I had no knowledge of palm reading, and did not have insights on what it meant to predict futures.

Venus is about to enter retrogade, so goes much of Twitter today. I try not to take these things seriously, but sometimes there is comfort in hanging on to so-called certainties found in celestial bodies. 

Scorpio sun, Libra rising, Moon in Gemini, Venus in Virgo, reads my birth chart. What does it mean? I sift through readings, I scroll through interpretations. I press like when I recognize myself, which is just about thirty percent of the time. I know none of these matter in the real world, and almost all of it is never really true. But I still find myself Googling through meanings every now and then, hoping to make sense of feelings that shouldn't be there but just are.

Is this part of the quarter-life, suddenly seeking new lenses through which to view life?

One of my best friends has recently thrown all caution in the wind and professed faith in horoscopes. I message her about these fears of mine every now and then, and she tells me how "Scorpio" or how "Libra" I am, or reminds me that this is just how it is for "Moons in Gemini." I sometimes don't know what she means, but I find myself being okay with it. Normally, I would scoff at such frivolities, but these days, I feel like exchanges like this are more comforting than "real talks" where practicalities are clearly defined.

How naive, Karla. Also, how delusional. You think putting your head above the clouds makes sense? 

No, but, somehow it makes things more easily digestible. 

And I feel like this is probably how it is for a lot of people. There's a reason why millennials cling to astrology so badly these days, out of irony, but maybe also out of desperation. These horoscopes, and personality tests, and astral charts - all coping mechanisms, and to a certain extent, they work. If it gets one going and allows you to still wake up, find the courage to carry on, and do some good in the world, then why not.

Outside, people are starving, dying. There is turmoil, and chaos, and fear. There is this nagging feeling of "Why can't I do anything about it?" All that we've known, and all that we've been taught - they all feel useless. The world is becoming more and more cruel, slowly and surely gnawing at whatever is left of our idealism.

The future is scary and overwhelming, the present, even more so. None of us have the answers, but all of us have the same questions. I guess it's in these times where we're allowed to find something to hold onto these days, no matter how capricious.

Is this being a Scorpio, or is this just being a 26-year-old? 

___


Facebook's "On This Day" reminded me that six years ago, I was eagerly anticipating the release of Red. Yep, that Taylor Swift album.

October 2012 feels like a lifetime ago. I am no longer in that same head space, no longer heartbroken and tired. I no longer have the same feelings of love-and-hate towards Taylor Swift (these days, it's more of just ambivalence). But it is still my favorite album of hers, for many reasons, the first of them being "State of Grace."

I am turning 27 soon. In twenty-one days to be exact. I am both excited and terrified, because 26 was so good to me. It was incredible and exhilarating and generous. But 27 is a little more uncertain: no more goal posts, no more clearly defined finish lines. Only an open race that leads to... what exactly? I have no idea.

"This is a state of grace / this is a worthwhile fight," I remember singing this song while cramming for Persons as a first year student. It carried me through that exam. Will it carry me through this month, nay, this year?

Let's check in with "On This Day" next year to find out.

__


A very good friend has been telling me to keep writing. I don't have anything to write about, I say. And worse, I don't have the time.

Well, here: fragments of thoughts at 5:21 in the afternoon, on a Friday. It's not much, but it's still something. Maybe one day I'll get back to that screenplay. But until then, this will have to do. 





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