1) So tired traversing the complex life web,
I tried every nook; tasted every food.
Comfort, it gave me; fullness, it served me.
Lo and behold! All were temporary.
2) I shifted! I moved! Diff'rent crevices
I've visited to find my comfort zone.
Enjoyed the laughs; I ogled in the dark!
So sad when alone; needs unsatisfied.
3) I searched for answers~shelves of well-read tomes.
Roosevelt's Freedom from Wants~ to Maslow's Needs~
I also checked on Durkheim's suicide book,
Before I turned to the old Book of books!
4) "You come; you weary trav'ler. Come to me.
I got the stillness you need. Come and rest!
I got the water you need. Quench your thirst!
I got the life eternal. Come have peace!"
5) I wrestled! All excuses I have giv'n.
My spirit wants, but, oh, my flesh doesn't.
The world I love so difficult to yield.
I can't! Not now! Convict my soul next time.
6) "I have selected you amongst many.
I wanted you to come into my fold.
I died for you; I shed my blood for you.
Conform to my will. I have chosen you."
7) The world so beautiful; 'though it's a mess.
A maze so vast; seems there's no way out.
The dead-end's plenty; the hedges so thick~
Is there no way for world to give me peace?
8) "I made the world and all that is therein;
It's beauty marred by self-enriching men.
The talents I give them~used without me.
Joys they offer lead people go astray."
9) So tough to go against the stream of life;
So difficult to turn one's back away!
Can I not do your will and do the world's?
Is there no easy path to be with you?"
10) "My cross is the shortest! No other way.
My door is still open. Please don't delay.
I have been waiting for you to come in.
Join my family and dine with me."
11) You weigh me now, I surely will fall short.
My ways are different from those in your fold.
"Son, my blood is red, as crimson as yours
My saving grace is giv'n. It's free. It's yours."
12) You know I'm stubborn, spoiled good old brat.
More blunders I will make; more shame I'll give
You. ~Can't be good testimony for you.
Imperfect; if I would give in today.
13) "Not done with you yet," God reminded me.
"Go on! You study~and learn more of me.
Let me mold you, a potter to miry clay,
And perfect you'll be for eternity.
14) Be reconciled and grow in me," said he.
"Forget the world; focus your thoughts in me.
Join my family. I'll adopt you wholly.
My ways aren't easy; your guide, I'll be.
15) The fam'ly's my idea to gain strength,
But free will, still I give, to all my kids.
Unlikely people, they're in my fam'ly
Like you; they are still weak~needing support.
16) So don't be discouraged; please do not fret.
I'm sovereign, controlling everything.
If you'd need guidance; I'd be in your heart.
Share me your fears as a child to a dad."
17) But, Lord, I fall short, got my own limits~
Measuring up to your will is hard to attain.
"Don't worry, son, I do understand.
I made you that way so just trust in me."
18) Walls tumbling down; my tears rolling down.
Man's love melted; Agape love transcended.
I felt the power, Holy Spirit filled me.
I'm now~ a member of God's family.
19) Unsearchable riches awaiting me.
Looked everywhere e'en in nooks dimly lit.
Failed to heed God's call; blinded by the world.
Yes, I'm in this world, but not with the world.
20) Mysterious fellowship, the fam'ly of God
I'm part of it! Praise God for saving grace.
In Him there is strength and it will never end.
Now, I have the joy that is full and complete.
(c)edmund melig industan, Sept. 2008
Note: I wrote this Blank Form poetry to recapitulate the month-long sermon series of our pastor at Lake Avenue Church, Pasadena, California. May this poetry gives you a light in the tunnel.
Showing posts with label life. Show all posts
Showing posts with label life. Show all posts
Monday, September 14, 2009
Friday, July 25, 2008
Online Friends: Friendship or Friendly Relations?
I have been enjoying making hundreds of friends from all over the world in one social network since January. Initially, my purpose was to promote my first book, KOILAWAN: Letters and Poems of a Jungle Dad-Mom, and my other book projects. However, I was so intrigued with the messages like, "I m very sure I have met u n Manila?","I n-vite u 2 a party!"(...as if US and Europe are just an hour drive away.),"U r my best friend.", that I lost focus. Tending my garden of friends and learning how they live (culture) and how they communicate have now become my interest. As I continue to exchange messages and postings on funwalls,(making sure that I could send "smiley", "Starbuck's coffee" or "growing plants" every weekend),I began to wonder what really is my relationship with many of them. Are we friends or just acquaintances with friendly relations?
Developing an interpersonal relationship with strangers (particularly on the web)is not easy if one is really serious in making friends. Mere messages and application "gifts" are easy to misinterpret. The term 'acquaintance' is seemingly not a website lingo.
According to S. Kurth's Social Relationship (1970), there are two types of relationships: friendly relations and friendship. Friendly relations (acquaintances) involve a present orientation that focuses on the encounter that is taking place. Friendship focuses on the interaction regarding the past and future, as well as the present. Following Kurth's idea, I could easily categorized those who just keep on sending an overused "how r u" messages, without progression to issues that touch ones past,future or more intellectually engaging topics, are just mere acquaintances, not my friends yet. However, if I would consider the language barrier (many only speaks either Spanish or Indo-European language) I really could not just simply put them in that box, despite the mere "how r u" drop line I received twice a week. We seem to reinforce our language limitation to heartwarming application gifts...gifts that imply real friendship between us. I blabber English sentences at them, hoping that they understand, considering that English is spoken worldwide. I ignore the thought that even English speakers can experience communication miscues, such as "rubber" is an eraser to the British, while a condom to the American-English speakers. Worst, it could be either a tree or a pair of running shoes to ESL (English-as-a-second-language) speakers.
So, for now I have to assume that my interpersonal relations with many of my online friends have been progressing. I have a friend relation with you when I received a requests to become your friend and a message of confirmation is received. I have a friendship relationship with you when you start sending me "how r u" messages and posts, meaningful or ridiculous. It progresses when more posts are received, even just once a week. Friendship ends when the short messages and posts, or acknowledgement of posts, do not come anymore for several weeks. When that happens, I put our relationship back to friend relations. Believe me, I really am hoping that all my online friends are not just my acquaintances.
Drop me a line how you would consider yours.
Developing an interpersonal relationship with strangers (particularly on the web)is not easy if one is really serious in making friends. Mere messages and application "gifts" are easy to misinterpret. The term 'acquaintance' is seemingly not a website lingo.
According to S. Kurth's Social Relationship (1970), there are two types of relationships: friendly relations and friendship. Friendly relations (acquaintances) involve a present orientation that focuses on the encounter that is taking place. Friendship focuses on the interaction regarding the past and future, as well as the present. Following Kurth's idea, I could easily categorized those who just keep on sending an overused "how r u" messages, without progression to issues that touch ones past,future or more intellectually engaging topics, are just mere acquaintances, not my friends yet. However, if I would consider the language barrier (many only speaks either Spanish or Indo-European language) I really could not just simply put them in that box, despite the mere "how r u" drop line I received twice a week. We seem to reinforce our language limitation to heartwarming application gifts...gifts that imply real friendship between us. I blabber English sentences at them, hoping that they understand, considering that English is spoken worldwide. I ignore the thought that even English speakers can experience communication miscues, such as "rubber" is an eraser to the British, while a condom to the American-English speakers. Worst, it could be either a tree or a pair of running shoes to ESL (English-as-a-second-language) speakers.
So, for now I have to assume that my interpersonal relations with many of my online friends have been progressing. I have a friend relation with you when I received a requests to become your friend and a message of confirmation is received. I have a friendship relationship with you when you start sending me "how r u" messages and posts, meaningful or ridiculous. It progresses when more posts are received, even just once a week. Friendship ends when the short messages and posts, or acknowledgement of posts, do not come anymore for several weeks. When that happens, I put our relationship back to friend relations. Believe me, I really am hoping that all my online friends are not just my acquaintances.
Drop me a line how you would consider yours.
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Civet-Excreted Coffee: The Priciest, but are we Sure?
There's a seven-feet coffee plant with limbs laden with black, deep crimson, red, orange, and yellow green berries that's growing in front of our house here in California. While looking at it yesterday afternoon, I cannot help but to think of two things: the most expensive coffee in the world and my childhood coffee experience in Mindanao, the second biggest, of the 7,100, islands of the Philippines, and just few hundred miles north of some Indonesian islands.
Yes, the Indonesian Kopi Luwak has been considered as the world's priciest coffee. Due to it's exotic extra flavor and the high demand from Japanese, British and American coffee drinkers to its low supply, the market dictates a whooping $500 for a pound or $50 for a cup,once brewed.
Kopi Luwak, as we probably all know by now, are collected on the ground from the excreta of the wild palm civet cat. Its passing through the animal's digestive system is believed to give its extra flavor. However, like the US-based food and drink critic, Chris Rubin, I question this marketing blitz. Is it the very unique process of depoding or the perfect ripeness of the berries, that only the palm civet cats know, gives that added musty flavor?
With more than thirty coffee plants robustly standing tall in our backyard, while growing up in southern Philippines, my friends and I usually were having fun racing to trees with lots of deep crimson berries. Why? I tell you why. Deep crimson berries means that they are fully ripe; hence, their pulps are very sweet and easy and soft to depod. But not only that! They also signify that there are lots of coffee beans on the ground that bats, rats, and (who knows) four-legged or two-legged (?) civet cats excreted or dropped on the ground for our picking.
We usually picked those fallen beans first before climbing up those 50-foot, more or less, coffee trees. Most of our coffee plants were Coffea arabica, and very few Coffea robusta (the shorter plant with smaller berries). We preferred to take the risk of (or enjoy)climbing those tall trees, because the pulp of arabica is sweeter, the marble-sized berries are enjoyable to pop into our mouths, the Chinese coffee buyer in town buy it few centavos more, and most of our parents preferred the flavor of brewed arabica more than that of the "commercial", shorter and smaller robusta.
Oh, yes, these five- to ten-year old two-legged "civet cats" climbed up those trees with tin cans strapped around their waist first thing in the summer morning, happily perched on those berry-laden sturdy branches, often times moving from one limb to another, while depoding those deep crimson berries with their mouths. They often tell jokes and horsing around by shaking the limbs hoping that their friends will move away. Holding ones dear life and laughing with five to ten berries in ones mouth were not a good combination, because many times, these two-legged "civet cats" ended up swallowing the slimy coffee beans. (Oh, yes, they have constipation the next day... and some would either pushed hard to poop while up the coffee tree or come-down and dig a shallow hole underneath those trees.)
If we just have known before that these coffee beans that pass through someones digestive system have very high market value around the world, we could have not strapped those cumbersome tin cans around our waist anymore. We could have just swallowed both the sweet nectar of those deep crimson berries and all the coffee beans for our picking the next day. Oh, well, the information is out since December of last year. Some two-legged "civet cats" are surely going to be young secret "millionaires". Secret or secrete "millionaries"? Just an insinuation! Don't puke!
Seriously, those who know (and are very sure) that the priciest coffee beans are from a four-legged wild palm civet cat excreta, please stand up!
Note: The short story, "The Coffee and the Two-Legged "Civet Cats", is included in my book project, Bedtime-Pastime: Collections of Short Stories and Bukidnon Folktales.
Yes, the Indonesian Kopi Luwak has been considered as the world's priciest coffee. Due to it's exotic extra flavor and the high demand from Japanese, British and American coffee drinkers to its low supply, the market dictates a whooping $500 for a pound or $50 for a cup,once brewed.
Kopi Luwak, as we probably all know by now, are collected on the ground from the excreta of the wild palm civet cat. Its passing through the animal's digestive system is believed to give its extra flavor. However, like the US-based food and drink critic, Chris Rubin, I question this marketing blitz. Is it the very unique process of depoding or the perfect ripeness of the berries, that only the palm civet cats know, gives that added musty flavor?
With more than thirty coffee plants robustly standing tall in our backyard, while growing up in southern Philippines, my friends and I usually were having fun racing to trees with lots of deep crimson berries. Why? I tell you why. Deep crimson berries means that they are fully ripe; hence, their pulps are very sweet and easy and soft to depod. But not only that! They also signify that there are lots of coffee beans on the ground that bats, rats, and (who knows) four-legged or two-legged (?) civet cats excreted or dropped on the ground for our picking.
We usually picked those fallen beans first before climbing up those 50-foot, more or less, coffee trees. Most of our coffee plants were Coffea arabica, and very few Coffea robusta (the shorter plant with smaller berries). We preferred to take the risk of (or enjoy)climbing those tall trees, because the pulp of arabica is sweeter, the marble-sized berries are enjoyable to pop into our mouths, the Chinese coffee buyer in town buy it few centavos more, and most of our parents preferred the flavor of brewed arabica more than that of the "commercial", shorter and smaller robusta.
Oh, yes, these five- to ten-year old two-legged "civet cats" climbed up those trees with tin cans strapped around their waist first thing in the summer morning, happily perched on those berry-laden sturdy branches, often times moving from one limb to another, while depoding those deep crimson berries with their mouths. They often tell jokes and horsing around by shaking the limbs hoping that their friends will move away. Holding ones dear life and laughing with five to ten berries in ones mouth were not a good combination, because many times, these two-legged "civet cats" ended up swallowing the slimy coffee beans. (Oh, yes, they have constipation the next day... and some would either pushed hard to poop while up the coffee tree or come-down and dig a shallow hole underneath those trees.)
If we just have known before that these coffee beans that pass through someones digestive system have very high market value around the world, we could have not strapped those cumbersome tin cans around our waist anymore. We could have just swallowed both the sweet nectar of those deep crimson berries and all the coffee beans for our picking the next day. Oh, well, the information is out since December of last year. Some two-legged "civet cats" are surely going to be young secret "millionaires". Secret or secrete "millionaries"? Just an insinuation! Don't puke!
Seriously, those who know (and are very sure) that the priciest coffee beans are from a four-legged wild palm civet cat excreta, please stand up!
Note: The short story, "The Coffee and the Two-Legged "Civet Cats", is included in my book project, Bedtime-Pastime: Collections of Short Stories and Bukidnon Folktales.
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