For not knowing.

And the many instances of insensitivities are just strange hues and nuances of color, hiding and appearing in my field of vision, it has been too long and I'm back in my world. A sort of eerie consolation that it's good to be here where I can smell things better, instead of just looking at them.
I guess, I'll walk around for some time and acquaint myself with the things I might have long buried or forgotten to gaze into, and also in the off chance that I might find my way to the ocean and hear infinity for some time, to close my eyes in its scent and in remembrance. Somewhere I can hear Duritz sing, music passing through this haze like an old transistor radio but becoming clearer as time passes.
I have forgotten how lovely the lights here are, changing and always familiar. It's easy to remember the late afternoon sun, dappled and revealing that face, or candlelight yellow, showing only what it can, and painting everything else in shadow, and how those eyes in that light forever burned in your memory. Then blue, blue that only early mornings can muster and give like a miser on his deathbed, the perfect color and time to be cold and be alive and how being embraced is being home.

This is knowing again.

---

And remembering when everything threatens to be a jaded yesterday, like only something from a reverie, Enid Blytonesque. This is time to revel again, in some old ways I remember, and there's always the same feeling how Case must have felt, holding that note from Molly. When everything worthwhile and a reason to smile is just "a series of warm blinks strung along a chain of winter". This is decadence, and change at every corner.

I'm so fucking tired of this.

I'm supposed to be reaching new heights of happiness, but I knew vaguely some time or the other that this would happen . Going on a nosedive again as gravity is a matter of urgency and I can feel air enclosing my face, and there's that feeling again, asphyxiation; and being too tired to breath anyway, I welcome the fall, watching contrails from my fingers trailing behind me. I look down and wonder how I have gotten this far --- hearing Smashing Pumpkins play, I wonder no longer. Just fall and wait for the blackness.

...

I just so very badly want to see the ocean today, overcast and cold; everything threatening rain.

...

Dave Matthews, past 3am.

and the heavens just washed things over again and my 12th floor musings are about going home and walking along somewhere during afternoons there, watching the wrinkles time has lovingly etched on my home city, then seeing the new skin sticking out in most places now, and again seeing the way it gets dark here again, suddenly making me feel much cleaner and freer, even if older.

and up here, the buildings are still safe from sight, I can imagine cold mountains beyond the mixed decadence and progress of this city, I guess my thoughts really want to go home along with me, even if they reach my destination first before me, then looking out again, knowing that a few hours from now the dim hazy outlines of these buildings will show, gray and unnatural in the gloom of this continuous drizzle, and it makes more of my thoughts want to be warm in the sheets of my bed and your hands and Rain's diminutive embrace.

but I guess, I'd have to sleep first, and that hint of blue creeping in the black stillness of my 12th floor horizon is just assurance that I'm still here, semi-stuck and wishing, and looking at the gathering rain, consoling my thoughts that at least it's going to rain.

give me a warm embrace anyone
run your fingers along my face.
and perhaps a few stories for my thoughts.

in this rain. keep me company.

the new painful words.

It rained this afternoon, in this dirty city; quick and harsh. It had no grace or subtlety, or grand opening scenes or fade to black happily ever after. I watched and thought about some other place where this rain would fall divinely, but seeing only concrete the wish made me sadder than usual. I slept after the last drop fell, exhausted and depressed and not wanting to go melodramatic at the moment, and just gave in to black, dreamless slumber.

I woke up to fluorescent lights, harsh and sudden yet again, searing my eyes to an early evening. I found out I was cold a few seconds later, and thinking about the water temperature of my bath. I guess it still rained again after I slept, much longer this time and I was still thinking about some other place, where I had blanket and a pillow for wonderfully cold rainy afternoons.

I probably think that the most part of my income would have been spent trying not to go crazy here. the cinema, clothes, shoes, phone bill, etc and food, yes glorious food; these are just avenues for staying sane. But I don't need any extravagance of those things now, I have Rain, and she makes all the difference.

And clutching this tabo, past seven in the evening, wondering how cold it would really be, I came back to her words, the two new painful words here in Manila.

"Hello"

"Papa"

I still have work, and this is as cold as it gets.

pointblank.

it just happens, it hits

(i just heard this song, i just passed by this store, i just happened to sit behind a stranger wearing this cologne, or maybe it was this person's scent, or the shampoo, i just happened to read a book with some familiar lines, plot lines, i just ordered a quarterpounder, i just ordered rootbeer, i just passed by the old school, i just saw the opening credits for this movie, i just started to clean my room, i just heard someone curse, i just unearthed my old shirts, i just got an e-mail from you, i was just cleaning my inbox, i just saw old pictures, old negatives, i just saw your friend, i just saw your surname painted on the side of a jeep, i just happened to read my old journals, i just heard a child laugh, i just found a password protected document in my old files, i just saw the ocean again, i just happened to see an old movie poster, it just happened to rain during a power outage, i just went on a 9-hour day trip to somewhere, i just heard someone call your name, i just happened to wake up in mid afternoon, i just broke the mug, i was just drinking and saw the ice melting, i just found out that my old e-mail account was still working, i just found myself still awake on new year's day and not drunk, at 4 am when everybody else was asleep, i just wrote on my blog again, someone just miscalled on my phone, i just happened to look at the horoscope, i just happened to play the guitar, i just heard the song again)

and it is a sharp pain (and something akin to a sudden itch at the same time) going off like a small explosion somewhere in the upper chest area.

the world is a little blurry after that. or blurrier still.

wings.

And listening to music, I preen my feathers and smell the breeze.
It’s time to take wing again, a little older again and where I am is not changing.
I’ll fly at dusk, as the vermilion slowly becomes muted by the coming night.

For the time being I’ll look around a little more, tasting and speaking.
It has been a comfortable nest, and I guess a bit of nostalgia will settle after I fly.
hold some thoughts to keep me warm in my evening flight.

And shake sleep off, I havent been up there for years,
I foretold some loss of innocence, and it has come to pass.
the times I mistook it for growing old, when it was innocence fading.

For now I'll listen and lipsync with some of my old songs and wait;
wait for the passing of days as the rains have come again.
couldn't have wished for a better time. I can feel the wind again.

soundtrip.

This is listening to songs again for the reason that some parts of it are just like some parts of you right there unraveling. And listening is like hearing stories about yourself. That are true. A rehash of harsh romantic truths and sometimes a helping of your own brutal honesty.

Then listening (sometimes) takes you back more than a few thousand hours ago, and going back, you kind of settle down, like being home again when you are thirty years old; and knowing that you will never be home again. Never.

Just a small sliver of that feeling in the space of a few minutes; then you can feel yourself breathe again.

Then the next song comes in and the world changes…