fell on black days.

He watched a couple of drops form on his thumb and index finger, looking at it with a seeming indifference and watching it fall almost in slow motion in his mind, to dissipate in the water of the bathtub; losing their color after a few moments. He idly moved in the warm water and stared at the ceiling and for a moment was he not certain if it was really moving or it was his state of intoxication at this point of time.
This is taking too long.
He saw the showerhead and also noticed drops forming there and he waited for them to fall, but eternity took too long and he returned to watching the drops on his hands instead. He took a swig from the glass on the chair beside him and grimaced as the taste of the whiskey stung then he felt the warmth; inside him the whiskey echoed the temperature of the water. He opened it a bit further and felt it sting and watched the drops form a bit faster. He felt a little more colder, a bit more colder despite the water.
Better.
He heard Chris Cornell singing in the living room; vague and familiar, singing a song from a decade ago, about falling on black days, and wondered why it didn't hurt as much now as before. The water had taken on a more darker shade but he could still see the sharp contrast of his naked body against the whiteness of the tub, the colors almost surreal and he began to see stars near the edge of his vision, and reached over to drink more and his left hand slipped into the water, almost without him noticing.
Almost numb.
The last of the whiskey was pure heat and he wondered why he was still here, even as his vision grew dimmer and thought about everything that had led him up to this point, to this apartment and to this small bathtub. For some reason, he realized for the first time in years, he didn't feel lonely, though he didnt feel happy also. He was in a state he knew that was devoid of anything, a sort of release and all he wanted to do was close his eyes now, to let the blackness take over, to just surrender and not feel anything, even the multiple razor cuts across his left arm.
Emotionless.
He would have heard Chris Cornell singing again about falling on black days when they played Soundgarden on his wake up to his funeral procession. It didn't rain the day they buried him.

going away for the holidays.

since I miss my family to the point of physical pain and more than Naga at this point in time and since I am wishing that I'll be with them in time for Christmas next year, here's something for all of you.

here's wishing you a bit of sadness -- a little something to appreciate those happy moments better;
here's wishing you cold nights -- a few moments to take pleasure in the warmth of an embrace and the warmth of a held hand;
here's wishing you a tiny bit of regret -- to help you remember choices that made you live more and that made you give a damn more about yourself

and here's wishing you some time enough for love when Christmases like birthdays have become routine.

walang katapusang bakit.

Matagal ko ng naisip na darating at darating din ang panahon na 'to, na kailangan ko 'tong paghandaan. Pero alam kong wala naman talagang taong handa dito, na di naman talaga puedeng paghandaan ang mga ganitong pangyayari sa buhay. Kusang darating at darating na lamang ito at talagang pag iisipan mo ang mga sasabihin mo, na kung tama ba ang mga sagot na binigay mo, at kadalasan di ka iimik at titingnan mo na lamang siya kasi alam mong wala kang sagot, na wala ka talagang alam na sagot at talagang walang pwedeng sagot sa kanyang tanong. At sasabihin mo rin sa kanya at sa sarili mong hindi mo talaga alam ang sagot.

Bakit? Bakit hindi mo alam?

At di ka tatantanan, dahil kailangan mong sagutin. Kailangan niyang malaman. Gusto niyang malaman. At pag hindi mo na alam ang sasabihin, ikaw mismo ay nanaisin mo na ring malaman kung ano talaga ang sagot at pareho na kayong magtatanong.

Bakit.

Pero di ko tatanungin ang tadhana ng bakit at kung bakit kailangan talagang malaman ng anak kong 3 taon pa lamang ang salitang "Bakit?" kasi alam ko na ang kanyang isasagot, at ito'y isang tanong rin.

Bakit?

sige, isuot mo na slippers mo.
Bakit ko kailangan isuot slippers ko?
Kasi madudumihan ang paa mo.
Bakit madudumihan ang paa ko?

Kinuha ko na lang slippers at sinuot sa kanya. Marahil yun na ang pinaka mainam na sagot. At alam ko madali pang sagutin yung tanong na yun kasi minsan nagtanong na siya kung bakit daw kailangan ko pang magtrabaho, kung bakit daw kailangan pang matulog, kung bakit daw kailangan pang kumain.

Minsan sabi ko gaganti ako, kaya't isang hapon habang mag nnap kami tinanong ko siya, habang nagkkwentuhan kami, nakahiga sa kama at nakatingala at habang ang isip niya ay nasa paghahanap nung butiki na tumago na lang bigla:

Bakit mo love si papa?
Kasi nandoon si Pooh sa taas ng bed.
Bakit nasa taas si Pooh ng bed?
Kasi kasama niya si Pi-let.
Matapos ang ilang saglit ng pag-iisip sabi ko na lang:
Sige, nap na tayo.

Bakit ganito. Bakit?

happy holidays.

a happy christmas everybody, and hoping the next year would be better than the last.

as the stars slowly came out.

I have things to tell you that would cease to be my secrets once you hear them. Perhaps they are called truths more than secrets. Nothing conspiratorial, only things spinning inside me that also want to orbit around you. I wanted to tell you in the most logical way possible but I knew that would be futile, since always when it comes to you it would involve emotions, passion and warm fuzzy feelings. The fever that I have been running for years now lately burned a few degrees higher that my vision shimmers even during at night, and more when it rains. It shimmers enough that I see I illusions, mirages where you glimmer alongside.

The stars may want to proxy for your ears tonight and I will whisper some of those things as I look up and see your eyes instead. Perhaps some fragments of what I tell them will come to you in your dreams. Perhaps you might see them in the peripheries of a fading dream as you wake up, and think about me. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps... the uncertainties of our certainties. I smile wistfully and stop in mid-thought and start to wish instead as a falling star flashes across the sky.

In time, I will get to tell you of the things you already know, things you already feel, things that will make your eyes shift somewhere other than mine as I make you remember them, things that will make you smile without even moving your lips and things that will make you embrace me and say my name but things you have never heard me say to you.

You only need to be there.

while eating a hotdog sandwich.

I waited for evening, calmly comforting a hunger and watched the muted pastel sky darkening, the pink and violets all fading to dark blue. There was more sky to look at here in Fort Bonifacio more than four years ago, more uninterrupted sky but I knew if I walked farther away where no condominiums marred my line of sight, it was more or less the same heavens I gazed at.

The evening, before it came, brought out things in finer detail. I noticed the silhouette of trees in the golf course, the empty scaffoldings of an unfinished condo, the bats slipping in and out of sight, the almost lazy traffic during Sundays here in the Fort and just then, I felt the coldness of December. I was not even halfway through the sandwich.

I vaguely remembered tasting catsup in between bites as my mind uncorked after days of fuzz and of just going through the motions, and then there you were again, as distinct as my first memory of seeing you; queen of my mind, keeper of my heart. The evening had just come quietly and I was watching the fading light being overcome by the unnatural orange of the streetlights and the halogen headlights of the cars passing by.

Fort Bonifacio had just gotten a little darker, and a little lonelier this Sunday, despite that big Christmas tree and the lights and I noticed that I had finished eating and was holding the sandwich wrapper tightly, the catsup smearing my right hand that it looked more like blood than condiment under the light.

Before I went up the 12th, I looked around and seeing mostly cars and too little people walking around I realized that I was not really in the mood for Christmas and too many people at the same time, only wishing that it was just the two of us, somewhere warm, somewhere dim and quiet.

Then I rode the elevator to electronic reality and a veiled capitalist dream and while missing you, died a little as the elevator passed the 8th floor.

good night.

kinaulay ko kansubanggi su mga bituon
mientras na nakatugdon sinda sa diklom kang langit
aram mong tama man si simbag ninda
pagkatapos kong makiulay, makipahinghing
paghuna ko ngani dai na ninda ako nadadangog
ta halangkawon na sindang maray
pero tama sagkod nadangog palan kang mga bituon.
"padangat ta ka. padangaton taka."
pero bako yan, bako yan si simbag
yan si pinakiulay ko. si pinahinghing ko.
su simbag kang mga bituon, ang sabi ninda sako:
"basta."

blankness.

The past and coming days are shorter; and colder and longer nights and it can only touch me, numb my face, make me cold enough to regret not bringing my jacket but this is chill that only the body can feel, and it is fatal at best but not cold enough, never cold enough.
there is no other way
Tomorrow, I am going somewhere else colder and where it's easier to die from exposure but still not cold enough, never will be cold enough and I will take a walk in its city streets, a stranger getting stranger still.
for this is the only way
I can only clench my fists and seethe at fate, having realized that I have really come back from the dead. I have also resurrected an emotion I knew I had buried so deep, that it can only raise vague apparitions of its former self, but now it harbors inside me again; still, but restless and burning.
to love
I rage again and no cold will ever be cold enough, except the cold that came from the fires and flames that willed themselves to embers and eventual ashes; chill from the death of passion and emotions that burned brighter than a thousand suns is the only chill that can freeze me.
and I only want it to be you
my hands are cold, and I can only want for those other pair of hands to warm them, I can only want and need but not dream about the warmth, since I can hear fate cackle its loud wild uneasy laugh every time that I do. I put them inside my pockets, in time to face the biting cold of this evening and turn myself outside in where I am cold and burning, but never cold enough.
You.

flickers.

The bus he was in had passed Guadalupe long before he noticed that his body was flickering. By the time he saw Megamall, he realized that as he flickered his sense of time was also fading away. He sat uncomfortably watching traffic go by him in East Avenue and knew he was about to lose his sense of place and he blanked out and he could feel himself lose integrity; snowy, static like a dead channel in TV.

He couldn't think ahead, that even thinking about the next 15 minutes would be a stretch and an impossibility. All he knew was this moment, this moment he felt certain like he was about to disappear and about to scatter into his basic molecules but he wanted to welcome that certainty, and lose himself in his emotions. Then he was back in traffic in Ayala, and it was early evening; then a flicker again and he couldn't remember anymore. This was something way beyond logic and bus rides didn't mean anything when his brain had let go. All he could hold on to were his feelings; there were the only things that felt solid and unmoving, they were the only things that vaguely told him he was alive.

Everything was on autopilot. And the bus that stank of cockroaches was gone and he was walking somewhere he knew wasn't Manila. He saw jeeps passing by; going to Concepcion and Del Rosario. He recognized the yellow sodium arcs of the lampposts of Panganiban. And he was still walking, and he was talking to someone who was walking beside him and he turned and he saw her. Vivid and lovely, her and heartbreaking. This time he hoped for the flicker, but everything remained solid and he held her hand, in the way he had always held it, his thumb always over her thumb, always. He felt something tearing in his upper chest and then she looked at him and he felt a tremor coming and before he flickered back to another place and time he realized that he was remembering, that the floodgates in his mind had opened and there was nothing else he could do but remember and relive all the emotions that he had ever went through during that time up to now.

In his bed, he was looking at the ceiling in near dark. He lay there for a long time then he rose and, flicked the light switch on and closed his eyes in the harsh sudden fluorescent light and forced them open and everything felt familiar and strange at the same time. 2008 was dying, but the years he had lost was back in his mind and he wanted to cry but the tears weren't coming, and there wasn't anybody to embrace, or touch or hold hands with. It was just him and his overbearing emotions at the moment and then his mobile lit up, silent and telepathic. He opened the new message. " ü ". And finally broke down.

Later, he wrote for hours until his fingers were sore, and until his mind was exhausted then he slept and he never flickered again after that.

I listen to you.

I asked How Do You Feel Down here, here with us when we we are so All Mixed Up in the Amber light the color of the First Straw of summer, Flowing Beyond the Gray Sky when they said Don't Stay Home, and we did, and then you said I'll Be Here Awhile for our Lovesong, but it wasn't just awhile, it was forever. You Wouldn't Believe then the words coming from your Transistor radio, those words to Do You Right, and the Beautiful Disaster we were waiting for to happen, drinking our own Homebrew, lovely Creatures getting drunk with each other.

Imagine us, Black and White People coming together in an Angry Mad Season of sorts, both Bent and wanting to Stop sleeping in the Bed of Lies at every Rest Stop that other people tell us. I can never think If You're Gone or if You Won't Be Mine; you, the Last Beautiful Girl because when we come together, when we Leave the Crutch of thoughts behind, we know love is The Burn.

He Calls Home and remembers a Mother's Dream has faded to only a dream now. He says to her Don't You think it is time for Change, for the things left Far Behind makes No Sense for us now; for You, for me. He holds her hand and as they go outside the Rain falls and she tells him "Cover Me" and her words strike like an Arrow and he starts to feels something Blossom inside him.

in your absence.

There is almost nothing of significance to gaze at outside my bedroom window, a bedroom which I share with two other friends. Beyond the dirty window screen and glass jalousie windows which had somehow gained a permanent patina of dust, there is always that large gray concrete wall having a large square hole patched with plywood, which was probably meant to be a window and that large gate with the cliched peeling paint and rusted joints. Unchanging and changing in the few years I have grown accustomed to it.

Oftentimes this view would still be complicated by drying laundry, parked tricycles or recently that fish delivery truck. This is the sight I always wake up to after I open my eyes and I am facing my left. If I wake facing my right then a wooden faded pink wall would greet me.

But apart from this view there is also something apart from the grayness outside and this is a view that affords me a glimpse of the sky from the top of my double deck; a slivered view framed by the gate, the dilapidated roof of an abandoned sweatshop and the rusting extended eave of our roof. This little scene of the heavens then becomes the only saving grace of the crowded decadent tableau outside; and that little irregular slice of the sky is where I always lose myself in thought, in my imaginings, in sometimes quiet despair, in hopefulness, in melancholy and most often that small unreachable place is where I space out.

But more significantly this is the space where I find you when I am here inside the room when I am looking for some semblance of silence here in Manila, when I am waiting for Solitude, when I am wanting for even the smallest feeling of being home. Even when the curtain sometimes blocks the view or sometimes when I cannot see it at all because it is dark, or when that view is blurred because I am crying, I always know that place is there; always and because you are there.

The only time the place outside my bedroom windows gains a sense of grandeur or perhaps a sense of beauty is when it rains, because then you're also there, raining inside me.

finding things I thought I have lost.

It's the first of December and it's the coming new year that I can smell like Styrofoam and uncertainty, biting and unnatural. After today things will have that hazy quality again, like the fringes of a dream you're trying to remember. The last month of the year is a slow fade for me and when I go to Baguio the cold will keep me warm again. The rains there are colder; much, much colder but it can only make me remember and make me much closer to you; and together we will burn brighter in the cold, in a quiet rage of color and passion.

I looked back at the past few months and already they have taken a dreamy quality of their own, a veiled realness that only we know like small children coming across a secret place of their own. I find you in my mind again, as I find myself in yours, smiling and holding moist hands again, waiting for this new month to kiss us, lovers stumbling upon each other.

I missed you all day Sunday.

I went out, looking for stars at past three in the morning, beneath a light drizzle slowly changing to a soft rain. I went looking in between the dark gaps showing through the orangey clouds of Manila. I went looking for stars and grew desperate finding none. I stood for a long time under the quiet growing rain intently staring upward, in my boxers and white undershirt, getting cold but not minding the slow drench. I was saying your name over and over, a silent chant, a hushed mantra of a soundless plea for stars.

As I implored the skies for even just a brief sight of a single star, I thought about you sleeping in the cold, in the dark and I wanted to run my fingers across your face without ever waking you, I wanted to look at you, and wonder if you were dreaming, I wanted to watch you breathing in, breathing out, in and out, in and out and lose myself in the subtle rise and fall of your chest. I wanted to hold your hand as you lay there resting, and remember all the silent almost secret movements you make when you sleep. I wanted to watch the sublime reason for how I am now, sleep.

Then in a fleeting gesture of consideration, a single star shone brightly for a few seconds and then winked out again, covered by the clouds, gone as fast as it came into view, for the few seconds that it was allowed. Feeling the cold, I smiled and said a silent thank you, knowing I have said goodnight and the other whispered endearments you will now also hear in your dream.

Before going in and thinking about sleep, I looked at the clouds and the dark sky of morning and imagined the stars that were there and knew that were there and heard myself tunelessly singing the few lines from the chorus of a 311 song, that Robert Smith first sang years ago.

Yes, dear, always. Always.

see you later near the golden arches.

I saw something in your eyes as you brushed your hair back, something that lit up along with the reflection from the streetlight a few feet away from us but I couldn't bring it to life when I tried to speak and so I just looked at you. Then you smiled and it broke the silence with that silence, and you asked without looking at me if I was going to work overtime tonight. I said no, but didn't return the smile back and I just continued to look at you and you brushed your hair back again leaving a few stray strands that contrasted with your face and made you just look more beautiful against the backdrop of this evening and the subdued yellow gleam from the McDonald's across the street from us.

We sat down on the few short steps of the corridor leading to the side of the building and you finally lit the cigarette you were holding like it was the last Marlboro in the world. When you took that first long drag, you almost closed your eyes and kept that breath in for some time then let it out like a long withdrawn sigh and smiled uncomfortably at me, your eyes sparkling in the nicotine high. I got the cigarette from your fingers, savoring that instance of touch and took a drag myself, letting all my little highs mix with that puff. We passed the Marlboro to each other a few times, dragging our entire attention to its passage from your fingers to mine and back to you again, like an old forgotten ceremony.

You flicked the cigarette away and it hit the asphalt, scattering a few orange sparks and you let your hand freeze in the follow through for a few moments, and as I stared I wanted to hold it, just hold it and keep it warm as your hands were always cold. After a few seconds you moved your hand in that silent movement you always made like you were pushing something away then you placed your hands on your lap and looked at me, with a look that wanted to hold and be held.

I looked away instead and eyed a taxi coming round the bend, the name of the taxi read "The 28th of September" and it struck me as something lovely out of the ordinary. I also wondered what we were doing on that date but it was a time out of mind already and I gave up remembering and just returned to looking at you, the silence creeping in again, like the shadows around us when the traffic slowed down.

I asked if it was your day off tomorrow, even if I knew that it was; even if I had memorized thursdays and fridays as the new saturdays and sundays. You only smiled and looked at your shoes with a nonchalance that was almost perfect except that your eyes gave you away again and you sidled closer to me; close and just enough for our clothes to barely touch each other but enough for me to feel your body heat that made your presence more real and physical. I had to contain myself not to embrace you as I would be crossing a threshold and I would forever change once I stepped over and had to content myself with your warm scent, the scent of your shampoo that I couldn't place but familiar.

Another taxi came driving slowly and saw us looking at our dark reflections on its side window for a few seconds and I froze it in my memory; us, together for just a little while again, then you opened the door and went inside the taxi. You placed your right hand flat against the window and waited for my hand on the other side of the window to place it there, palm against palm; the unseen boundary just becoming real, and I looked at you, taking you all in as I held your hand in my mind. The window glass was cold and I remembered your hands again and me wanting to keep them warm, always. The taxi moved and I saw your eyes again, that same look and knew the words wouldn't matter now.

See you.

I told you I was going to write again.

untitled.*

for a long time,
violet raindrops fell
and we kissed
until
only a blue haze remained
that it drew tears
and the embrace
turned epoxy

then we were gone
so gone

in the summer fumes
we inhaled and exhaled

and called ourselves
angels in our own heaven.



* found scribbled somewhere in my 2001 organizer

mga tanong sa loob ng elevator na ako lang ang sakay.

kung nasa baba tayo ng building, sa fifteen minutes nating break,
para mag yosi o magkwentuhan, habang nagkakape tayo
gamit ang giveaway mugs natin,
puedeng kayang ibang bagay naman pag usapan natin
maliban sa trabaho,
maliban sa kung magkano
at kung meron mang christmas bonus o wala,
o di kaya magtanong ka na lang kung may bagyo
dahil umuulan at maginaw ngayong gabi
o kung uulan ngayong pasko
kaso sa tingin ko, okay lang naman
na pag usapan natin yung nabitin na turnaround time
dahil nakangiti ka ngayong gabi at alam ko mayamaya lang tatatawa ka pa
na hindi mo iisipin kung may makarinig na iba
na wala kang pakialam
na wala ibang tao kundi ako
dahil masaya ka sa mga ilang sandaling iyon
na pinaguusapan natin ang ating trabaho at ang putik na sahod natin
at hindi itong ulan na to sa labas ng building natin
na malamig at patuloy lang sa pagpatak;
na sa ngayon ito lang pinagmamasdan kong mag isa dito sa ground floor
dito sa dating smoking area,
na nag-iisip at nagtatanong sa sarili.

i remember the sound you make when you sneeze.

Being here, up in this height has only the effect of making me see the reality of distance, that even vision is not enough to take it all in. I have to close my eyes in that moment when sight fails and in that space where I am blind I see the vastness of that distance; cloudless, clear and laserburned with your image.

Then, everywhere, daisies and there's a haze in the horizon where the clouds don't quite reach, like a sort of boundary between the clouds and the pureness of the grey sky at the moment.

I am closest to the sky in this place right now, where the very air is thinnest and where clouds are only cold breaths and moisture, and like this cloud crawling along this mountain, I also seek your warmth. I am also now farthest from you in this lifetime.

An irony in itself as we are closer than before, oh far away so close and when after this time we'll never be alone again; only lonely and divvying up the pain between us.

I breathe again and see it turn to a miniature cloud dissipating faster than cigarette smoke.

But as you said, believe. So then I will believe and also dream at the same time, for that time we believe will come.

and everytime she sneezes, I believe it's love. - A. Duritz

I need.

a break, when I am broken
a little time, when I have ran out of it

and Adam Duritz, sings inside my head "if you wrap yourself in daffodils, I'll wrap myself in pain."

I miss Rain, I miss being embraced by her small arms, all innocence and curiousity. I am waiting for Saturday morning to see her smile again and I won't mind if the tears come, I miss her, and I guess, she'll ask and I know I'm just happy to see her again. I'll watch her sleep on our way to somewhere cold and somewhere far from the familiarity of the places I have lived in and far from the strangeness of the places I have been. All 13 kilos of her will be real on our way there, it'll be as real as gravity will permit and it'll take the weight off my thoughts even if for just the short time I will get to hold her. For a few hours I will get to embrace something part of me. I will also be whole again, even if just for the duration of a bus ride and she'll continue to sleep; and my emotions will wonder about a possibility, a probability and a necessity. Then I'll look outside the bus window and see only the actuality of distance; real and slowly being overcome by time.

bus out of Pili.

Stepping inside the bus going to Naga, he felt a certain sense of dislocation at four o'clock in the morning. He wanted to put the blame on the bus, not with how he felt at that point. There was this pervading scent of jackfruit inside the bus suddenly; swift and everywhere. He sat near a window, to breathe the early morning air and his face numbed in the cold biting wind of the dark infant morning. He gazed up and stared at the black, thinking how the vacuum of outer space would feel like right now. This was strangeness staring back in black and straight at him.

The almost empty bus rattled along; metal groaning for want of passengers and human noise. The fluorescent light inside flickering imperceptibly made the sense of motion just more pronounced and more otherwordly like he wasn't supposed to be there and he knew he wasn't; he was supposed to be somewhere warm and familiar.

So he tried to think of other things but the memory of a recent hurried lovemaking clung to him like a second skin, like peeling sunburned skin and he smiled instead, feeling warm despite the chill. He could feel and smell it off him like some aura of warmth and intimacy and he smiled, contented, that it wasn't just bodies colliding.

It was still uncomfortable seeing all that black and strangeness, and as he spaced out in the asphalt of Maharlika Highway in a bus that smelled of ripe jackfruit, he could only think of her and familiarity and of the few hours left before he would have to leave for strangeness and permanent dislocation.

It has been a long time since he missed anybody this way. He missed her smile and the way she closed her eyes.

eight arms to hold you.

When rain falls after you have just opened your eyes in the morning, to hear it fall like a soft remembrance and clothe you in yesterdays and everything around you is in soft focus, covered in a haze when you gaze at the face beside you asleep and you almost cry, enfolded in the taste of that memory and the rainscent rising along the warmth of your bodies stirring and then you touch the face and it fades into a mirage and only the soft falling rain outside remains; and you; warm and alone and longing.

-o0o-

of all the five senses, scent is the fastest and hardest ride to remembering.

-o0o-

and in the meantime I'll write for myself again, an audience of one.

-o0o-

veruca salt.

ateneo ta.

tadom sa paggiromdom, na mayo munang paghorophorop, ang pagsakit, ang kaogmahan, ang paghiling sa harayo, ang paghanap sa kamot na makapot ta ngonyan uya na ngani ang pagmati na inisip lang, dai man minati na maray kundi pighinimbang lang sa maarabot na aldaw, taon o buhay o kung ano talaga ang rason kang mga pagmati na ni, na pighinghing mo sa sadiri mo na totoo, na mayong kaputikan arog kang mga urulay ta kang mga hapon na maharopohop ang duros sa Ateneo, naghihilingan lang sa mata, naghahalat sa saldang na magsulnop sa kung sain man na dai ta nahihiling, nagmamati lang, na may dikit na pangadyi na maghaloy ang mga arog kaning pagmati, sa arog kaning panahon igdi sa batibot, igdi sa mga sementong tukawan na ini, sa irarom kang mga ulpok na kahoy kang niyog igdi, kaya mga halipot na paggiromdomon lang mientras na yaon kita igdi sa ngonyan, na namamati na ang edad, na aram na ang mga boot sabihon kang pagkawara, kang nawara, kang puedeng mawara asin ang habong mawara, mga pangapudan sa sadiring tang pigerokan na sato lang, na magakbay na, na magkapot na ning kamot, na mangkagat na sa kaogmahan ta kataid ta ka na, naghahalat sa banggi, sa diklom para magsulo giraray ning marlboro lights na gold, ta bistado ta man si guard, dai man kita sisitahon, makatabang lang sa pag alaw ning namok, asin makatabang sa pag agi kang oras.
gusto ta ka kutang kuguson sa pagiromdom na ni, 'yan lang ta nainot ka na palan, iniisip ko pa lang ngani.
sabi ninda dai na daa puedeng magkidkid pabalik sa nakaagi na. mala, sala baga sinda.

file system consistency checking life.

A few days ago, from a few storeys up, I was watching the rain turn everything grey and knew that down there in that offcolor downpour I could see more clearly than up here in this cubicle. It would be warmer there for my mind than up here in this global connectivity indifference. The truth was, I wanted to be cold in that rain in order to be warm again.

(After I found the reason why I had missed myself for so long, the resulting truth was a kind of a letdown by itself. No, I take that back, letdown is too inadequate a word. That truth was a tragedy but perhaps there is just no mot juste or mots justes for this truth. The recent catharsis although it brought me back - to my own internal truths and eventually back to myself - also brought me closer to see my own tragic flaw face to face. A conspiracy of fate, of tragic fools bound by the mylar ropes of time and written promises; yes, I have known even as a child that God has a dry and wry humor. )

I continued to stare outside to lose myself in the rain as they wove against each other on the windows of this building, and the want to just go and disappear was there for a moment; true and bleeding.

(And the feeling of being apart from everything else is back; I am looking at the world again with a sort of detachedness that I had years ago, of not really being part of anything or anyone's emotion one except this time I don't feel alone, just that pervading sense of loss and longing that will never really go away as long as I breathe. There is no other choice but to continue and like a long time ago, I will just let my tears come.)

Tonight, a cold wind blows and I feel no promise of rain, just a kind of a chill to the bone. The yellow lampposts and almost empty streets are taking me to a time and place far removed from here and now, years and miles away. I realized this is a rather bad time for reading Haruki Murakami.

160 characters.

There was a certain challenge before in the limitations of a mobile phone's capacity to send text messages, just 160 characters and that was it. You had to create another message to continue your thought but, now, you can write a sonnet and you'll still have space leftover for a few haikus. So back then, I took those limitations further and tried electronic poetry. I even wondered back then who else was doing this; thinking it'd be good to share a few hundred digital characters with that person about poetry in 160 characters or less.

These are just a few I have salvaged from my old journals, organizers whenever I had the time to copy what I wrote before I sent them to whoever, because we didn't even have a sent item folder back then in our mobiles and texting with the knowledge that you were only going to see your poem once -- as you had to delete it after it had been sent contained a sort of lyrical loneliness for me, of brilliance and the abrupt loss of that shine. I think I can even say with some degree of certainty that of all those 160 characters I sent, only these few are left.

in the space between dream and waking we held hands and watched each other breathe in silence and quiet desire; dreaming only for the world to stay this way.

you run like warm cappuccino in my mouth when we are afternoons forever, together we look like the perfect coffeetable book, dog-eared and missing pages.

the lost routine and vanished certainties.the faded sidewalks and silent restaurant doors.the dark early morns and wasted twilights. us, the ghosts in between.

i wish for rain and i know every time i wish it may not always rain but i wish anyway, beyond belief, for each time it rains, it is you that rains in me.

i miss you like life after death and even if i may not live beyond the love collective i'll still miss you forever like fishball sauce and summer sunsets.

i want to create another word for love,for no standard definition fits or exists.i have another word unknown by Webster or the World Wide Web,that word is you.

19 other odd things we did, 40 other even things we wanted and 30 other things to miss since you're not here and 10 more things to do when you come back.

love song lyrics are running through me and i have holes in me the size of Ateneo, i am not okay. i am not level. i am romeo with an acid flashback of you.

A film we should have watched together.

(On a balcony, overlooking a lower part of the city. Jesse is sitting on the stone rail, Céline is leaning against it.)

Jesse: I feel like this is uh, some dream world we're in, you know.

Céline: Yeah, it's so weird. It‘s like our time together is just ours. It‘s our own creation. It must be like I'm in your dream, and you in mine, or something.

Jesse: And what's so cool is that this whole evening, all our time together, shouldn't officially be happening.

Céline: Yeah, I know. Maybe that's why this feels so otherworldly. But then the morning comes, and we turn into pumpkins, right?

Jesse: Ahhh...

Céline: Yeah, I know. But at this time, I think you're supposed to produce the glass slipper, and see if it fits.

Jesse: Yeah?

Céline: Yeah.

Jesse: It'll fit.

basta.

It has been so long but always you'd be the right person to walk with during afternoons along the Avenue, along the dusty streets of Naga, along the empty corridors and covered walks of Ateneo in summer. It has been so long but you are the one person I'd always ask out, not for a date, but to eat Biggs dinners or Greenwich lunches, and the usual kinalas. It has been so long but you'd be the first person I would come and look for to tell any small significant thing that made me see the world in another way. It has been so long but you're the only one who'd let me cry first before asking questions of why tears are there on her shoulders. It has been so long but there would be no other I'd want to be with, to listen to lazy rainy afternoons and let the comfortable silence tell all our stories for us. It has been so long but only you would jump right into the fantasy of our text messages without any cue, or inhibition. It has been so long but you still fall in love with my letters and turn of phrases and mean it when you say so. It has been so long but I still worry like a mother when I can't say exactly where you are. It has been so long but you still derail my thoughts and I wander along the wreckage, smiling; my favorite distraction. It has been so long but your eyes are the only pair I'd want to see squinting in the golden afternoon sun. It has been so long and I know I can only say so much.

It has been so long but the words come easy the way our hands easily fit into each other, and this is the way we have gotten too close our pores have become bestfriends.

tell Sara I got my angst back.

The storms are just perfect. I would have smiled if I could, but futile and plastic if I force it and so no, no smile just a thank you for the weather. As of late, there has been a sense of urgency, a resolute need to walk, to just walk and hold my life in my thoughts for that space. Except that I'm in Manila, where I am strange, dislocated and disconnected.

In Naga, most probably I would already be shivering in this rain and walking and seeing only green fields and myself. and you. This is not a wish for melodrama but it would be so good to walk in this rain, in this storm and in this cold and that either there won't be anybody around except me or that you'd be there and walk with me.

But it would be another year before I have the chance to be there and to see all the things I have been and to let me know that I am myself again. The story of my life.

So I wrote somewhere.

'I will see you when I look out of the bus window, I will see you when I see the stars shine outside the bus. And I will see my reflection looking at all this and see me thinking about you.

I am destiny's fool.'

sa paghuna.

ta paghuna ta kasubago mauran.
madaradagom,
malipot si duros,
kaya naghalat kita
sagkod nagrewind ning dikit
kang mga pirang bulan
duman sa tukawan.
na naka-abot kung sain man
puedeng uranan.
tapos kapot, hadok.
sabay halat giraray.
nag-alok ka na mapauran kita.
na garo mga aki, na
garo ngonyan pa lang
makakamati ning lipot.
sabi ko iyo,
pero habo ko muna maghali duman
sa kaimbungan kang paghalat ta.

Iyo, sige, niako.
ulay na muna kita,
ta mayo pa man ang lipot kang uran.

dai nadagos si uran kang hapon na ito.
banggi na,
kang nasa taas kita.
nagdadangog sa ribok kang atop.
sagkod kita, imbong na lang gabos
asin kugos.

we'll slowdance in the rain.

I'll watch rain fall all over you like a hundred thousand kisses made real
then let our hands slip together over each other, sliding over the wetness
if we shiver at first, then we'll embrace and we'll be our own warmth for just that little while.
and after the coldness passes, we stare at each other's eyes again like this is the first
or perhaps the last.

we'll taste the rain as the music in our minds start to play
and it will be warm rain gathering on our skin, collecting in million little reflections of us
we'll move slowly like this afternoon rain, languid and unhurried
emotions rising like black and white photos, old and familiar and lovely.

for a little while we will have our time in this afternoon rain,
and dancing to the music we played a long time ago
a certain song that our drenched bodies move along now
to dream of forever in this world and the falling rain.

we'll keep on smiling for as long as the heavens break down above
and close our eyes to keep in a memory, in remembrance
of one rainy afternoon we slowdanced along with the falling rain.

you autocomplete me.

There are some odd times I google your name, usually during early early mornings, and I make a silent secret request that a single correct hit would come up and hyperlink me a little electronic story about you, one that I haven't heard before and one that would make missing you a bit more reasonable; something that I can explain by myself; why I pushed the back button again in my mind, instead of just a repetitive F5. Just a little something to make me get over this pining away, until the next time your memories come phishing my current memory banks; that I flicker to safe mode in order not to crash again. Then I make the request again and get the usual 404 code and I try all the search engines for just a ghost of a whisper of your name, any electronic trace of you with a recent timestamp, anything, anything but the residual images and data crashes of years ago.

The 404 codes defragments me just by reading it, because the lines make you hope when you'd rather not, when you'd rather want a dead link and not continue believing the line that it is just "temporary unavailable". Then a 410 loads up sometimes and I depress the power button for the longest time until everything blanks out and the LEDs turn from green to orange then fade out entirely, and I start to envy the instant purging of its memory banks. To turn myself off without saving, just blank out, out of the grid.

But eventually I turn it on and myself; and I am again looking at my static user interface, knowing that if I go deeper in the interface, all user rights and all the defaults are in your name, even if I am the administrator. And I go to google your name again, ready for the results and the letdown.

Then suddenly a 302; you, streaming and live.

gusto mo kwento.

One late evening with my three-year old daughter, Rain, both of us staring at the ceiling.

Gusto mo ng kwento?

A couple of nods

Gusto ko.

Okay, may kwento ako...tungkol sa...angel, alam mo yun?*

Angel.

Nods.

Isang araw may isang angel, lumilipad ang angel, parang bird...at may pakpak ang angel, alam mo yun?

Silent stare.

Alam mo ba ang angel? Teka, hahanap ako ng picture.

Nods then holds my arm

Angel.

Okay, sige. Yung angel lipad lang ng lipad dahil may hinahanap siya.

Hahanap?

May hinahanap yung angel, hinahanap niya yung love niya kaya lipad lang ng lipad yung angel.

A smile.

At lumipad yung angel papuntang e-...

E-mall!

at lumipad din papuntang LC...

LCC!

pero hindi pa rin talaga mahanap ng angel ang love niya. Lumipad din ang angel papuntang San Felipe.

Slipe.

at lumipad din siya papuntang Canaman dun sa sa...

Sala!

pero wala talaga yung love niya dun.

Wala?

Sabi ng angel pupunta siya ng Cathedral, dun kay Jesus, magppray siya.

Ingay si Jesus?

Oo, di puede mag ingay dun sa church. Gusto mong pumunta dun?

Gusto.

Smiles, nods.

Tapos yung angel nagpray kay Jesus, at may sinabi si Jesus kay angel, "Lipad ka lang, angel." kaya lumipad ulit si angel palabas ng church at pumunta sa siya sa school ni papa, dahil baka nandun yung love niya pero wala dun, kaya lipad siya ulit papunta ng Tar...

Tarlac.

pero hindi naman kasama ni Mommy yung love na hinahanap ni angel.

Mommy.

Kaya lumipad ulit siya papuntang Baguio, dun sa bun...

Dok!

Lumipad siya papuntang bundok, nag jogging si angel, pero wala talaga yung love niya, asan kaya yung love ni angel?

Asan, papa?

Lumipad si angel papunta ulit ng e-...

Emall.

Dahil baka nandun, baka nandun sa mga books, nagbabasa yung love ni angel.

Smile again.

Pero wala talaga dun, kaya sabi ng angel punta na lang siya ng dagat dahil hapon na. Alam mo kung ano ang dagat?

Just a stare.

Ang dagat, swimming dun di ba? Dun sa maraming tubig.

Dagat.

Nods.

Pumunta si angel sa dagat tapos color yellow na lahat dahil hapon na, alam mo kung ano color ang yellow?

Nods.

Tapos may nakita yung angel sa dagat, may nagsswim dun.

Smiles and I hear a bit of a laugh.

Lumapit ang angel dun sa dagat sa may tubig at tiningan niya kung sino nagsswim. Nakita ni angel ang isang sirena, alam mo yun?

Just looks at me smiling.Yung sirena, walang paa, may buntot kagaya ni...

Fishda!

Oo, parang si dyesebel. Okay, ng makita ni angel yung sirena lumapit pa siya tapos nabasa na si angel sa dagat, at lumapit din yung sirena kay angel at sabi ni angel siya, siya ang love ko. Nahanap na ni angel ang love niya, love ni angel yung sirena.

I hear her laugh.

Lumipat si angel kay sirena tapos nag embrace sila, at hug din ni sirena si angel.

As if on cue she hugs my left arm to and continues to smile.

Hug sila?

Oo, hug sila tapos umilaw, may liwanag na parang light...

(I point at the lampshade).

Ganun sila...a ilaw sila.

Nods.

Tapos habang may liwanag sa gitna nila, lumipad silang dalawa pataas, papunta dun sa clouds, dun sa mga birds, hanggang naging stars silang dalawa dun, dun sa taas. Nagi ng stars si angel saka si sire...

Sirena.

Hugs my arm again, then laughs a bit.

Tapos na yung kwento. Bukas naman ulit. Okay?

Okay.

O, maganda ba yung kwento?

Ganda.

She smiled at me and then with her small arms, tried to reach for the ceiling.

Gusto mo bang yung kwento?

'yoko, nahihila ako e.

Huh? Nahihila ka?

Oo.

Ano yung hila?

Hila...Hila! Hihila ako.

And all the while as she was saying this, she was smiling and hugging my arm.

Pero maganda yung kwento?

Oo.

Ahhh.

(realization dawning upon me) Nahihiya ka?

Hihila ako e.

E, ba't ka naman mahihila?

Hila ako.

Dahil ba nagembrace sila?

Nods, smiles then hugs me now.

Teka, hindi ka naman nahihiya, kinikilig ka, ano?

A nod and she laughed and tried to sit up to go to her sleeping mom in the other room.

Okay, kaya pala ang hila. Higa ka ulit dito.

She does and I embraced her, like a mermaid.

Now, I miss the cold rain and I miss the warm embraces. hugs. hands. exhaled breaths and the curl of your lips.

* the story was partly inspired by this.

"Sino love ni papa?"
"Si Dyesebel!"

Rain being the mythological character at this point.

sana umulan.

dahil sabi niya maraming nangyayari pag umaga, pag madaling araw
at kulay asul pa ang nasa labas ng bintana
at dito sa kaharian ng ating mga kumot at dalawang unan
naglalaban ang lamig ng nobyembre at init ng ating katawan.
at alam naman natin kung sino magwawagi ngayong umaga.

at maguusap muna tayo,
tayong dalawang pinasingkit ng pagtulog; nangungusap na parang ayaw ipakita ang bibig.
at sa maraming dahilan kung bakit dumadampi pa rin ang ating mga katawan sa isa’t isa;
sa mga lugar na dapat mapunta

sa atin na muna ang umaga. dahil ito lang ang kayamanan sa mundo,
ito lang ang puede munang isipin. at gawin.
dahil mayamaya lang puputi na ang asul sa bintana.

at alam ko puede rin nating isiping gabi pa at madilim, madilim pa ang lahat.
at tayo lang ang nakakakita, at tayo lang gumagalaw, at tayo lang ang humihinga.
dahil ito na lang ang oras na natitira sa atin.

At lahat ay puede.

I should be writing poetry.

I seem to have become my number one critic, and nothing seems to get past the first edit. I ended up reading what I wrote from years ago and wondered how I could have written those words, and turn of phrases. I know that the only way to do this again is to do it.

I remember something I wrote back then, it goes like:

"You're the addiction that cannot feed me anymore, the rest of my life has just become the withdrawal syndrome."

and it haunted me enough it almost became a mantra. And remembering it again the other day, I know I should be writing poetry.

until we are naked and pure.

There was a time I said goodbye to the stars, it was the same time I also said I will forget writing, and I decided to elect myself to grow up every chance I got. I was hurting and hurting bad; and I think it was showing, even as I tried to cover it up. I stuck with old friends but it hurt more, and every part of Naga that was familiar was rubbing me raw. Ateneo was the worst with its wooden chairs, lovely golden afternoons, the sometimes empty classrooms and students looking for a Crispin Maslog. I never wore my uniform again and listened to songs of the late nineties in my room and drank rarely as alcohol pureed the hurt to pinpoint accuracy.

I found new friends, souls who made music and I also played the guitar again, and this time I heard music coursing through amps and more amps. I wrote sparingly and without soul but knew that I didn't know if this what I wanted. I started dancing along with the music, along with my friends, rockers all. We danced, hearing the bass drum thump on our chest and mirrorball reflections crawling along our bodies, I remember sweat trickling down my back and tried to remember in order to forget. I remember the citrus cologne of one of the backup singers of the showband playing as she danced along with me on the rickety stage of Planet B. I was there sometimes screaming for an encore in the smoky haze of the club and the name of showband escapes me if I try to remember. But I guess, there was just really no escape from you, as I went looking for a ride home later in the dark hours before morning. The stillness of the night always got to me first before I managed to enter the house.

After some time the alcohol treated me differently and at times allowed me drunken stupors of numbness, but still I mouthed your name silently in the dark before I drifted off to sleep, seeing you in the dark and alcohol daze. Later that year, numbness took up permanent residency and I could see myself in the mirror again instead of the blurs and hurried glimpses. I discovered exhaustion was a better avenue for a dreamless sleep but I couldnt do it everyday so turned to playing my music loud to drown out the silence. You were a perpetual ache by then and still my mind thought about you in the present tense.

Before I graduated I realized that I had learned to laugh again, but had forgotten writing for the most part. I saw my old friends again and there it was, I remembered that this was the life I used to live, and it was good to immerse myself in it again but it was not coming home, not really. Home was somewhere, home was somewhen, home was past tense. I guess I knew I had grown old by then. I became something I didn't consider myself, I had become normal. Even if you still struck like lightning sometimes. But I was conscious that I started to give a damn again. And I loved and cared the best that I could. By this time I had a daughter who loved me even if I only saw her a little more than 60 days a year. There was a reason to live again, something worth dying for.

Sometime ago, I read Journey to Ixtlan again, and there were things that scratched and moved in my mind ever so faintly and when Solitude came for a visit sometimes, she always talked about how I saw things differently back then, how I even played the guitar and sang offkey, and how I loved to dream; then recently, just before she faded away, she would put her hand on my chest and point heavenwards which always left me wondering. I picked up the pen again and wrote, trying to look for the meaning of what Solitude did, to no avail. Then it will rain again and I will find myself alone and she'd be there and do the same thing before going. At times, I will find myself staring upwards and see only the orange nightglow and searchlights that were not searching for anything.

Then I heard a voice again and my mind moved like a child waking up, not really sure of where it is at first but as familiarity comes crashing down like breaker waves, smiles and picks itself up and looks for its mother. I stared up and saw the stars again and I said hello for the first time in years. Some days later Solitude passed by and looked at me wistfully, went away without saying anything and left me smiling alone in the dark.

I had forgotten myself. I had forgotten my heart most of all.

I have to remember and then I will wait for the rain to wash me away, wash away the skin that I have led myself to live in, to believe in for so long; I will have my time in the rain, and drink in everything again until naked and pure.

dopamine, it was the dopamine and this is the crash.

I'd really like to turn the lights off now, and resolve to stay in bed, sitting and looking out the darkened windows, just let the ambient light outside filter in, like early strands of white hair when you're still way off thirty. I'll turn up the fan a bit higher because I need the cold, and the opening screech as its blades come to life will be the opening riff for the rest of August and Everything After. They say blackholes have gravity so strong that even light cannot escape it and this room is so black, not entirely to be blind but black enough to miss the light of late afternoons in Ateneo during Sundays and summer weekends. I find myself being pulled down. As the chill picks up, I lie down and stare at the ceiling I know is there but cannot see. I'm only pulling myself inside myself in this dark.

Some kind of dam broke apart over the weekend, right at that moment I was still sorting out my thoughts, a mid-year inventory of various psychological disturbances and uncategorized learned behaviors. I never learned how to swim, and I guess there never really was a conscious effort to try to, when the dam water came rushing over. I could hear your laughter in my mind, crystal and almost there, as I tumbled along with the current and deeper and drowning.

My eyes will get used to the darkness in a while, then perhaps the shadows will get more defined, see them pooling into each other and as it gets colder, the contrast of black against black gets more noticeable. The sensation of sinking that I'm sinking deeper in my bed gets stronger.

running our fingers through my mind.

and remembering the way your black tresses went passing through my fingers, my mind going back through time, leaving neon contrails behind, going back, going back, swimming in it now and breathing it in, then it hits, I'm there and something inside my chest explodes, and I close my mind for the moment, letting it all sink in, letting myself sink until there is no up, no down, only the weightlessness of passed time and the blackhole gravity of the accessory emotions, I gaze at you again and see you smile, I have your scent again, coiling up inside me, growing, and feeling your teeth nibble my tongue as we kiss and then darkness and then light as I regain my vision then I see your eyes in the golden afternoon sun, glistening and rolling as the ocean we watched all afternoon one certain summer day, but I go back to your hair, liquid darkness in my hands, that I kiss traveling to your neck and I see you closing your eyes, both of us becoming warm water and joining, joining in a pool of memories, seeing each other, scenting each other, hoping for some hope of touch, of feel, of the embrace to take us home again, together and casting off the shell of a lifetime of solitude.

This bill is obscene,

and way out of line.

SBN 2464 is currently pending. I can only hope I can have time to write about this, having been too busy and too spaced out to think the past few weeks, I can't even think of a proper title for this. Fahrenheit 451 might be an obscure allusion but if you know the novel, then please read this bill. (here)

Kahit hindi ka nagbblog o writer o pintor or artist, basahin mo pa rin to.

bunk bed blues.

I lay drifting in and out of sleep, waiting for the light of my mobile phone to turn itself off and let the darkness of the room be whole again. I have more quiet moments now, some few stretched spaces for thought and lady Solitude; sometimes she comes unexpected and invited and we talk, about how there might subtle differences of how rain falls there in Naga, as the rain here in Manila even seems rushed when it comes to leaving, or we sometimes compare memories of warm water slowly flowing over our body. Then I after some time I realize I am talking to myself in the dark.

It is raining, and I sit here in the dark, on my bed, looking out from the dirty window screen of our apartment and on to the heavens slowly falling outside. I can feel the cold, and I bury my feet under the comforter, silently wondering if it would be so good to have you here to talk to, though the darkness and cold would conspire for those conversations to turn to dialogues of the body instead. But I'd dearly settle for an embrace at this moment; that embrace to take me home; that place forgotten by space, so far back in time and only visited in memory and unexpected mnemonics of smell and touch. But there is only the darkness and the rain falling outside for now; along with some quiet discourses with my present thoughts and side long glances to the warmth of the past.

That home and familiarity being the ultimate temptress for the lost and broken; the discontented and misplaced; the sensitive and unembraced; the weary and those caught in the web of time.

Having been one or the other at one time or another, I usually give in to temptation for that is the time that I find myself again.

waking the dead.

I was still lost somewhere, replaying Jennifer Connelly's face in my mind, her nose and jawline being central; then I was running late for work and being haunted by some scenes in the movie. The early morning overcast sky embraced everything in its dark, cold endearing arms, and I stopped to stare, finding a weird kind of solace in that grayness before a LRT Leverisa bus came.

Some scenes were still there in my mind, and the movie's accompanying feeling of loss and resulting redemption just became my morning coffee. Perhaps a mild case of seasonal affective disorder. just perhaps, since this kind of season holds its own internal joy for me.

Jennifer Connelly mentioned something about ambition in the film, she said, "Ambition is the ice in the lake of emotion."

a long time coming.

I have watched more than a dozen rains fall and then dry out since, and me even hoping for rain in between. It is still Manila, changing and unchanging, wondering how many lives since then have met, went together or went astray in between those downpours. Friendships and romances, little passions shivering in the strangeness of these cities that is Manila. Some flames spluttering and going out in the cold to black embers hoping for some warmth and raging against the chill, most often ultimately dying. Then there are some passions that burn bright enough for others to read their stories in the dark.

Been home and back again, so much promise there and me wanting only to stay, to hear stories being told instead of me telling them, except when Rain asks me to tell her stories about dragons and their breath of flames. Been home and we burned three nice lovely flames, our own fireplace for warmth against the cold of unexpected downpours. Had to leave again and leave only with the memory of their eyes, warm and expectant for another return. Going back here, I can only burn, and burn still.

Here in Manila I have to cradle my thoughts like babies, the unwritten and the untold for this place is no refuge. And thoughts only find refuge with their own kind, I think sometimes this is the reason for some fortunate lives meeting and melding together and finding solace in each other's thoughts and burn their own kind of flame. We can only hope their flames burn steady and brighter, in whatever shade of passion.

Tara Santelices.

In some little way, this is to help.

Please sign this petition and tell others who you know about it; be it a blog post, or a forum topic or that casual conversation with a friend.

http://gopetition.com/petitions/justice-for-tara-santelices
(if this link doesn't redirect you please copy and paste it your web browser address bar)

and a little prayer for Tara won't hurt a bit, in fact, it would help so much.

If you want to know more about Tara, just search for her name in multiply, or google. or here. Many people care, I hope you will too.

dikit na tabang pero kung kabali ka, madakula.

mga lakad sa siyudad na kinaladkad ng bumukadkad na edad.

Kabilang ito sa mga ligaw na palagay, sa mga di inaasahang pagtanto na napapadaan habang naliligo ka, habang nakaupo sa trono, habang bumibisita ang katahimikan pag patapos na ang inuman pero hindi ka pa lasing, habang nasa sasakyan at trapik o minsa'y habang naglalakad ka lamang. O kadalasan kahit ano man ang ginagawa mo, at kusang dumarating na lang, na parang trangkaso.

Kadalasan na ang biruan ng, "Gurang ka na" or "Nagugurang na talaga kita." (loosely translated as "Matanda ka na") sa amin apartment, na kadalasan may koneksyon sa inuman. Nasa kalendaryo pa naman ang mga edad namin pero dahil siguro sa medyo may kutob na kami sa mga susunod o kadalasan tinutulak na kami papunta dun, kung hindi ng tadhana o kaya ng mga magulang namin mismo (o ng mga kabatch).

Sa tuwing uuwi ako sa Naga mas natatanto ko ang paglipas ng panahon at ng buhay. Nung una siguro yung mga duda na talagang lumilipas ang panahon ay puede pang palampasin, o wag na lang pansinin at di mo muna ikkwento kasi baka ikaw lang nakakaramdam nun. Pero pag nagtitipon ang barkada unti unting lumalabas na rin ang mga gantong usapan. At pag nagkikita kayo ng mga kakilala o kabatch na hindi naman talaga kayo close pero close enough para magusap, tungkol sa buhay palagi ang tanong.

"O, anong year mo na?"
"O, sain ka ma college?"
"O, anong year mo na?"
"O, sain ka nagtratrabaho?"
"O, may agum ka na?"
"O, pira na aki mo?"

Ika nga ni Enteng, mga ilang taon na nakakaraan, dati raw birthday party ang kadalasang napupuntahan, ngayon kasal at binyag na. Kaya siguro ngayon sanay na kami, o minsan sinasabina ito na ang tadhana at lasapin na lang muna ang buhay ng kasalukuyan na kumpara nung dati ang tadhana ang nilalabanan. Uunahin na muna ang hindi mabalot ng lungkot ang pamilya at sarili, na kung puedeng masaya habang nabubuhay. At minsan lalabanan naman ang tadhana.

Nang minsan sa pag uwi ko sa Naga, habang naglalakad. May nakita akong lata ng sardinas, 555, sa gitna ng kalsada. Walang laman at nakatayo. Napangiti ako ng sandaling yun, naalala ko nung naglalaro pa kami ng tumbang preso, o minsa'y "inserektos". Gutom at sugat lang aalalahanin mo nun. Nang malapit na ako dun sa lata, sinipa ko ito na parang pagpatunay sa pagunita ko sa nakaraan. Lumipad ng ilang metro at ayun tumba na siya, sabay ngiti ulit ako. Tapos may narinig ako.

"Naman si tsong! Ta Sinipa pa"

May apat na bata sa likuran kong nakatingin sa akin, yung panglima tumakbo na para kunin yung lata. Dahil dapat hanggang gunita na lamang pala ako. Di na ako kasali sa mga laro nila, at oo, tinawag na nga akong "tsong".

Pag uwi ko maglalakad ulit ako sa Naga ng kaunting panahon at maghahanap pa rin ng kwento.

isang nais.

may naligaw na samyo ng ginisang bawang akong naamoy kanina, habang tumatawid ng EDSA at patungo sa trabaho. Mabuti na lang holiday (oo, may pasok ako) at madaling araw dahil nakalimutan kong bigla na nasa EDSA nga ako. Kaya nga kahit nabasa ko pang nakamamatay tumawid dito, isa lang nasa isip ko kaninang umaga. Tapsilog.

Busog ako pero eto na naman yung mga pagkakataon na yun, mga pagkakataon ng mga masidhing paghahangad sa wala na.

Di na ako makakatikim ulit ng tapsilog na ganun, na naamoy ko pa sa isipan ko ngayon. Kahit umuwi ulit ako sa Naga, at puntahan ko ang karenderya na yun (na kahit ang pangalan di ko na maalala). Wala nga pala yun kainan na yun, ginawa ng dorm ang lugar pero wala ng tapsilog na ganun, kahit magbukas at nandun pa yung kainan dahil nga iba ang tapsilog ng nakaraan. Iba ang halimuyak at lasa na naalala. Bawang, sinangag, pritong itlog at tapa. Apat lang na sangkap (walang atsara na kasama), pero di na makayang maulit ang nalasap nun.

Siguro ito rin ang dahilan kung bakit tiwala ako na kapag walang mapili sa menu tapsilog na lamang. Pamilyar ang lasa at yun na yun, na kadalasan may atsara ng kasama. Parang paggunita na lamang sa tapsilog ng nakalipas.

At dahil sa amoy ng bawang, tapsilog ang hapunan ko mamaya.

For thinking that there were degrees of how hard life can be, and thinking that this is just the easy hard.

I fell again, and understood some mighty mighty wrongs in assumptions, ah, since realization is a bitch and she bites straight through the skin and on to the bone. I continue staring out of this high rise window and sees some sort of familiarity, it's still raining out and I have no chance of doing any runs in the downpour, I have to work and find some sort of continuity of my life in the flat monitor screens in front of me. Perhaps there are answers somewhere in that grayness, even as my laundry stays damp and mildewy. I pull the blinds down and return to the monitor screens, thinking when was the last time I ever wanted coffee. Or perhaps, I just need some time for myself. I return to the window for my fifteen minute break and stare into grayness again, hoping the buildings weren't there to ruin the scene.

As my birthdays come my heroes also slowly die, and still I continue staring out of this window and into the rain. I feel there's a need to be lost again, then I can find myself, and have some time enough to love myself.

esoteric one.

I had been gone for so long.

There was no going back to Ixtlan. It may have all changed when I finally realized that, a sad and wistful transformation more than a decade ago. Now, my reserves are getting depleted and I have to gather myself after having been scattered so much like dandelion seeds all over the place, and I have to do this unknowing and without any purpose and without the unnecessary encumbrance of emotions.

Something distinct again. and a murmur of thank yous to some songs for making me see and remember. There is another reason why I miss myself now.

the new painful words...part deux.

Five days ago I just needed pixie dust to fly when I thought about the four days I will be home. To be embraced and to close my eyes and surrender again.

Tuesday evening and everything went like clockwork; no traffic, there was a bus waiting and slept most of the 9 hour ride home and got off the bus right in front of the house where the two ladies that made my world spin were probably still sleeping. It was 5 am, and as Naga embraced me warmly my glasses misted over.

"Dating ka na." and Rain smiled at me, half asleep. With her, between me and Love, I surrendered.

Time stopped running and instead walked and enjoyed himself. For four days and it was good to think again and say hello to my mind, it was good to love and be loved again, it was good to embrace and be embraced again. Life is kinder during these times and it was good to remember and appreciate the simple reasons for living and to continue living.

And so for four days, I simply lived.

On the evening of the fourth day, I couldn't fly anymore.

Coming down from the bedroom, Rain saw me carrying my knapsack. "Alis ka, Papa?"

I answered yes, and went to hug her, right after telling me. "Kain pa muna, e."

We ate longganiza and buttered corn for dinner, like it was breakfast. Just after I put on my knapsack and kissed her mom, Rain looked me and asked.

"Iwan mo, Rain, Papa?"

Twice.

I said no and it came out as a promise.

They waved me goodbye at the gate right after. Something inside me hurt like hell.

cold chicken for breakfast, 4.30 am.

The fog of sleep rose and started to dissipate like cigaret smoke. It was still dark but it was a losing battle to the eventual morning, so went down and tried to shake off the last traces of sleep. I went out and looked at the sky, nightglow and all. The heavens spoke of rain, and the desire for slumber. Shivering, I knew that it was just this kind of cold that can raise memories of the kind of warmth under the covers. So, I ate cold rice and even colder chicken and knew that the chill of the bath was strange comfort instead of pining away in bed. On my way to the office the storm just came closer.

The rains are bringing my spirits up, this is the time of the year again when it is a comfort waking up to rain falling. I have always felt summers were forlorn, only brightened in some spots by the sudden reunions of familiar faces. Perhaps it is just the way that the rains are a better lubricant for my thoughts, and even emotions. They slide more easily. And it is easier to have conversations with myself.

The week has been spiked by brushes with memories, a brush in the way that the fingers of someone loved can brush the back of your head down to your shoulder. In the course of writing memories and imagined future memories intermingled that it is easier to look forward a few months at a time. Even now, I am looking forward to rain falling outside our room.

I guess it's time to write stories again.

All about the In'ernet.

Here's the continuing saga of my spam.

My junk e-mail is starting to develop a personality. It is now trying to insult me:

what a stupid face you have here davidemmanuel.alano
davidemmanuel.alano is a moron
You need to improve your little friend

And a hint of blackmail:

We caught you on tape davidemmanuel.alano

Then it has started to wisecrack:

Close encounters of the nude kind
Honeymoon on moon

and this:

The Loin King

(of course, that cracked me right up, even here in the office)

...

Going through the sites where I usually spend a lot of time I stumbled upon this news:

goddamn. Diablo 3 is on development. what in the world am I gonna do when I can't even buy my own PC. ohmanohman.

to the lady in new york.

Been browsing through the book, and through my memories eventually. There's this seeming question: do you pick up where you left off, or start all over again, like there never was a memory of it. It has lain beside me now since I picked it up from the post office, and I still I am not sure whether to start on the first page or somewhere else, or whether to read it all. It's old really, it even smells different. But, yes, thank you, it's not really that you owe me, at that time, I was sort of glad you were reading it, or was about to read it.

"...to the last hour of my life, you cannot choose but remain part of my character, part of the little good in me, part of the evil. But, in this separation I associate you only with the good, and I will faithfully hold you to that always, for you must have done me far more good than harm, let me feel now what sharp distress I may..."

Those lines stopped me from reading any further more than five years ago. Reading them again, I was waiting for that sort of familiar twinge of pain somewhere in my chest area. I can only muster a halfhearted perhaps; that that feeling had all been sussed out some years past, you see, she still hits like a jackhammer sometimes.

Perhaps I should leave off reading the book altogether. And read more science fiction instead. Then again, I suppose I might leave it all up to you, like inspire me and I'll finish the book once you get past these lines. "...I saw no shadow of another parting from her."

But thank you still, for letting me hear something from the years past, and the now.

gamol on a saturday night.

A sunday and I'm staring again, the infinity of gray in the office only broken by some afterthought of colors in a few places. I've been home and back again. A blur and Manila is in harsh analog focus again; back to the grime of vehicles and drying spit in the streets, and the myriad personal bubbles going their own ways. I walked around yesterday and ended up being smothered by people, a Sargasso without the mystery, and the seaweed of commerce. And always found myself drawn into bookstores for refuge and that semblance of silence.

Going back to the apartment, I ventured a question to myself whether I am finally welcoming the embrace of Manila or if I should finally go home. Yes, home.

The question went unanswered as I lay down finally to sleep and it's still there hanging in the aether, looking at me.

...

I never knew that walking around Megamall could stress me out. Or perhaps it was because of some reflections of myself I saw as I walked past the windows of the mall, alone, and carrying a white plastic bag with four thin used books inside.

I slept for eight hours.

thought patterns.

When we were never twenty, tripping over words and class schedules, we thought big and moved small. College and all the things that fell into place; as I look back, like pieces from different jigsaw puzzles that never really fit. Then I think of Jackson Pollock. A smile. The colors were good next to each other.

The two score or more paradigms for life that back then we named and believed and the number often increasing when were drinking, I can't really remember now. Rather, our own kind of twisted ethos that we never thought about consciously but we now call our own here in this city. A shift every time we come home to Naga, or spend some time with anyone other than the five of us. Shift. Shift. Our very own dogma.

With my face just a little more than an inch from the doors of the MRT, I am looking at the familiar and always strange sight of EDSA. I am nearly thirty now, and looking outside I am conscious again of the strange sort of tiredness I feel, that has been there a few years now.
Some sort of decadence. As much as I like how that word sounds, it is not a likeable word in definition. Stagnancy. Then I get off the train and make another promise in the cold air of morning, something about tomorrow and the coming tomorrows after that. Wishes, tinged with a light shade of frustration desperation. It is hard to move through the detritus but it still feels good to move.

In the darkness of the apartment I see the four sleeping and lying in the refuge that is sleep. I think now, everything is just a matter of waiting. Even death. These are all just fabulous moments in between; all those conversations and fights and silences, the time spent looking for a semblance of permanence and companionship with or without the added help of chemicals. Sometimes just that small talk to help tide the day over.

Not long now before I also turn to the refuge of sleep, I quietly understand that we have our own paradigms. Then unconsciousness now, an inward dream of my life companion and daughter.

Gestalt.

- for my friends and roommates.

on your mind.

Something about this afternoon is taking me way back to the Jesuit Residence, where a host of my memories reside along with old friends, loves and faces not that easy to fade. Reading through the past and the way others write now is making me see how far I have fallen. The thing is I can still remember the exact shade of the sun when I fell, It was a slow fall, it was falling on the side on the mountain not a drop from the sky. Pain beyond anything the name pain is given. I never really had writer's block, I realize now, I simply chose not to write. I used words and phrases like "post apocalyptic confusion", "memory" or words to that effect most of the time, to reflect my current state of mind at that time. A lot of things were scraped from me during that fall, a lot of things. Stupid fool. Stupid crazy fool. Insert smiley here.

Yes, I have picked myself up, without even realizing that fully, then also spent a considerable amount of time walking around aimlessly. Some times looking at the mountain, wondering if I should climb back up again. But I lost my way I think after that and also lost the mountain from my view. So, I just walked and found myself on a mountain, and found it to my liking. If I fall this time, it would be a straight drop down. Fatal.

This has been a lifetime ago, I have just been looking everywhere for the single major reason that took up more than fifty percent of the pie of not really writing.

So, I have come around again, even if I still listen to mostly the same songs. I will write again in the meantime, pick up where I left off. There's such a thing as transcendence.

a veil of vagueness, a sense of numbness and a general feeling of tiredness.

I see sunrise again outside the windows, three months to a year everytime. I'd like to pull the blinds down now, there's nothing new except that it's good to see the sun when she's this gentle. I'll be trudging home again in a little more than an hour. bus, mrt, jeep then an uneasy sweaty sleep. I hardly remember my dreams, it must be the heat or I drown it out with my uncoordinated thoughts. I am wasting away, I guess. Writing and creating something new with my hands seem to help but when my mind tires the feeling comes again.

Or there's just too much noise here. Someone I know has grown uncomfortable with silence, and turns on the TV just for the noise. It turns out that being uncomfortable with silence is much more common than I thought. But I miss silence, and it is one of the easiest things to find Solitude in. And one of the rarest things here in this city.

Almost everybody I know has been warped by work (me, included of course), even if a very few can contest that the work they are in right now is the one they like. It's not that hard to lose yourself, to change without yourself ever knowing, in a sense to forget some parts of yourself. To repeat myself: most of the time the only things we know now are things that we don't want or the things that we must avoid, the things that we truly want are just getting out of reach, or ignored because it is a much harder thing to strive for. We are not who we are anymore. We change even more unconsciously. The only way we can know this is through our old friends, lovers, exes, favorite companion, parents and only if we listen. And I add: ourselves. nosce te ipsum, even if introspection is a difficult thing to do here in Manila.

Perhaps dreams may also have something to do with it. And also its absence, moreso its absence I think.

I just need a big hug right now, and something new, yes, something new.

daytrip.

On the bus again, this time going back to Manila, a daytrip and I was finding it hard to sleep. The sun was at her most importune mood and kept coming through the curtains, then there was the radio which besides the songs being played was at the "bisyo na 'to" frequency. Damn. It took me awhile to suss those things in the background. I was singing a song intermittently and smiling all the while trying to recreate the ditty in my head, and going back to the few hours I was in Naga.

It's been awhile since I have been to Naga, not just months but years now. Just like the song I was singing, intermittent, and it was not really coming home but a sort of a revisit every time, and every time always secretly wishing to stay there, even with all the changes. It is home after all, even if it gets smaller and smaller for every year that I stay away. It is the same each time I come down from the bus, time slows down and I breath easier. There is traffic now, but never what we have here in Manila, after all Naga doesn't have traffic lights. I guess I miss the place more than I am conscious of.

There's a bridge down somewhere in Quezon and we are taking the long and scenic route to Manila. I guess I'll be late for work then. I find myself singing the song again.

"Chickading, chickading, may isang chickading na dumapo sa sanga, dumating ang isa..."

C'mon now, aside from Naga, I also miss my daughter.

riding in bus with storms.

On my way North I kept trying to remember the lyrics for a certain The Jerks song, and knew that I was riding my way into the storm. Looking outside, it felt warm inside the bus and I was wearing my jacket. This is when rain suddenly forgets to be gentle and becomes something else entirely. I never went down the bus during the stopovers. I wanted to be comfortable, I guess and wanted to sleep and hug the real Rain instead and it was a few hours and a short dream away.

The storm wouldnt let me have that dream, much less the sleep I wanted and instead made me brood like the weather. So, I caught up with myself and had a few words with a raving mad version of Solitude. Watching the hundred ravines as the bus wound itself up Baguio didnt help either. In between those visions of death by crumpled seat and flying glass shards, I wondered if the only things I knew were the things I didnt want, that the things I did want and want to be were indistinct, covered by haze. Like personalities in a dream, or lyrics to a song I havent heard in a long time, or the movie dialogue that would have been perfect for the moment or just that certain definition for a word that you know in your head but cant explain properly. Frustration.

And the storm outside expressed more angst. Raged, that it was more punk than grunge.

I sat inside the bus and stewed in my mind, unraveling a few years and some neglected dreams, looking at them, like dry analog negatives of some past vividness; faint dim outlines of dreams I once thought were going to change the world. Yes, youth, and the accompanying sense of immortality at times. The description of those dreams are still sandwiched in between words in my old journals.

Then I was at the bus station. A woman slipped coming down from the bus, scattering water and I rushed to help but I guess she could take care of herself. Or I was just too far away. Or I just wasnt fast enough. Then the storm hit me, cold and unwavering. So, I pulled my collar up, and smiled grimly.

If it was just rain, I would have walked to take some edge off the things that were still running in my mind.

I got off the taxi and was met with a kiss and looking up there was Rain at the top of the stairs wearing socks on her hands. "'mig, Papa, 'mig". Smiling.

The haze was gone, it was distinct and clear again. There are things in life I know I want and have.

junk mail.

I was going through my routine deletion of spam, looking for any e-mail that might have had the misfortune of being dumped along with the refuse, when reading along the subject lines:

I caught you naked davidemmanuel.alano
You need to improve your little friend
Big or small, it's your choice
Get a bigger sausage today
Increases your energy and decreases appetite!
Become a super-hung giant
Let yourself look spiny
Awaken her bedroom senses
It's driller time!
She comes like Hoover dam
Legendary tales of your sausage
The Most Powerful Man in Sex

and this one gem:

Beautiful samples of grandeur

I guess, they put in more than a little thought to those spam after all. hehe.

I need a < br > again.

Day time. Another futile attempt to tryst with sleep. The only consolation being today is a Monday = dayoff, but the ominous truth that Tuesday=start of work week, is just a few hours away doesnt really offer any additional consolation. Though by Wednesday I would get to embrace Rain, hopefully even if for just a few moments and that will get me through for at least ten days. Thinking about those two days brings me back to my daily routine of wishes.
I wish it would rain. I wish I could be there with the two. I wish I would have the time to think limited only by sleep and my daughter wanting me to play. I wish we would be in Naga. I wish I'd have that SLR, and all the lenses I could want. I wish we have a house now. I wish I could have all the Magic cards that I want, but I'd settle for the Power 9 and the original duals, then again I could just wish to win in the lottery and the last four wishes will come true. Other wishes being sub rosa, I just have to

As I said daily routine...

But somehow it helps me get along. and besides it also forms part of my impetus to write.

-o0o-

I wonder if I can do portraits again. those written portraits...

favorable weather conditions.

Hoping for rain, I can only look at the few scattered clouds in the horizon. And I am looking out the office window again, like looking out the window of a very tall unmoving bus. There are feelings of despondency mixed in with the frustration this time, nothing that a good straight 8-hour sleep can cure. I mean, really. I guess having an average of barely four hours of sleep will show its effect over time. But I am thinking clearly for the first time in months, and being able to write without really forcing it. When the rains come, I think things will rock.

I havent seen a good movie in days and I also haven't read a book in days, but no withdrawal symptoms there yet. I think being alone in the house for two days now has a sort of a calming effect on the nerves and if I could stop moving around once I get home I think Solitude will come and maybe we can talk a little or just stare at each other's eyes. Like lovers who have reached an impasse in their relationship, just too much thinking about tomorrows, when the time could be better spent touching, holding hands and moving that stray hair somewhere back into place. Or running a light kiss on the nape. Relax and melt. Sleep together.

may nabuyong uran.

Haloy naman kang huring akong nakamating mauranan, pero mas lalong haloy na kang si nagpauran ako; na naglakaw-lakaw asin minati ang lipot kang uran. Suudma, mala baga ta narupit akong kang uran, ta kung nahaloy pa ngani tigtatakig na garo ako sa lipot. Agua de Mayo palan idto kung siring. Maray daa sa lawas, nakakabulong sabi ngani kang mga gurang. Nagiromdoman ko logod si lola, ta sa hiling ko may puede pa siyang idagdag, o background story kumbaga tungkol sa inot na uran kang Mayo.

Kang nagpapa alang ako kang bado sa restroom mi sa opisina, sa may hot air dryer, napungaw ako bigla. Nahihiling ko pa man dikit si uran na padagos lang sa luwas, nalilipudan kaya si bintana ning raot na pintuan kang si cubicle. Pigdalan ko na muna logod si uran sa luwas, ta iba man ang vantage point pag nasa taas ka kang onseng eskalon. Nag aragi sa isip ko si mga lugar na pirmi kong naagihan, ang Ateneo de Naga kang bako pang university, si mga harong na nagkairistaran mi, mga inuman, sagkod kung sain sain pa sa inerokan kong lugar. Sa pagdungaw ko sa bintana, sabi ko iyo talaga harayoon na kaming maray kang mga bistado ko, mga kasupsupan ngaragngag, saka mga padaba kong hali man sa Naga. Harayoon bako lang sa lugar, o isip sagkod pati pag agi kang oras. Iyo, kapungawaan lang ni sagkod dikit naman na pagmawot na makabalik giraray.

Nagbalik na lang ako sa pagpaalang ta piglilipot na ako.

at dahil kailangan ko to.

Ninais ko na namang iwan ang double deck ko na minsan ko lang matulugan, tanging mga bag at kumot ko lang ang palaging nakahiga. Iiwan ko lang naman ng pansamantala, siguro mga ilang araw at ilang gabi rin. Bago ako pumunta ng trabaho kanina dumaan ako ng double deck ulit at medyo inayos naman at tinignan si Angel Locsin na para bang mangungulila ako sa mukha o katawan niya, si Angel na 5 feet by 3 feet na poster sa dingding na pinacking tape lamang upang dumikit. Regalo ito ng isang roommate ko isa pa naming roommate, pero parang destiny na makakatabi ko talaga. Hindi ako nag bye bye kay Angel, ini off ko lang yung ilaw. Sa salas, nag bye bye ako sa isa ko pang kasama sa bahay, na nandun lang sa sofa at dinaramdam ang sirang tiyan na daw, sa tingin ko may hinihintay lamang siya.

Ilang araw din namang walang Internet, o computer, pero sa tingin ko di ako makakatakas sa tadhana, dahil kahit saan may computer shop. Kanina habang papasakay ako ng bus, hindi mabaho at malamig ang simoy ng hangin sa EDSA. Weird, kasi kung hindi mainit, may ibang amoy naman ang hangin sa EDSA. At di masyadong trapik, walang pila sa bus papasok ng The Fort kanina. Swerte.

Sasakay na naman ako ng bus mamaya at makakalimutan ko na muna lahat; double deck, EDSA, trabaho, turnaround time at ang poster ni Angel, lahat...lahat na may taktak Manila. Pansamantalang mas maraming puno ang makikita ko kesa sa mga building. Bukas ng gabi makakatulog ako na hindi kailangan ng electric fan, at kung maswerte wala akong maririnig na trapik, sasakyan, busina o trak, siwit ng mapresko at malamig na hangin lang. Di ko muna makikita ang pink saka blue ng MMDA, relax muna ang nearsighted ko na mga mata sa dami ng green dito. Puno at dahon.

At pag nakita ko na naman yung dalawa, at malamang habang tumitili yung maliit, masasabi ko na naman na talagang kailangan ko to.

reunions.

The gray outlines of the city are becoming more defined as morning slowly breaks and the dreams of the sleeping are slowly retreating like the shadows, reality breaking in slowly, intruding without reluctance. Inevitable and slow. My stomach is sour and burning, reminding me to take care of it, and my mind comes back to what I have been thinking about, that I will be going home to be welcomed by the silence of the apartment, I surmise only Christian is sleeping and we will not be seeing each other awake for some days again. Che might have left work, or perhaps still sleeping. I will be the only one trying to sleep in the other room. Don and Budoy having left for Naga both. It will not only be the heat bothering me this time, something else clawing in my mind like a trapped feline. Don, besides wanting to recharge his emotional batteries (his words to that effect) has to go see about Budoy, discharging his emotional batteries in an impromptu family reunion. Budoy's father passed away just yesterday, reality breaking in suddenly. Inevitable and harsh. And this is the silence I will be sleeping in. This would be the silence I would be going home to before I even try to sleep. It will be a few weeks before the apartment have a reunion of sorts again, before then it will mostly be a few weeks of queer, sometimes uncomfortable silence.

Perhaps I should go home also and recharge my emotional batteries. I am counting four days.

it's been so long since I have seen the ocean.

To see infinity again, and have some hope that I'd get to touch base with Solitude again. I'd be sleeping off the harsher part of the day and perhaps wake to mid-afternoon, where it hurts the most. I can see the fading sunlight in my eyes already. Now, I wonder how much of a social obligation do we have about mingling around.

But no bananafish this time, even if I found and played those two songs that I played over and over and over and over again during some past summer. even if sadness permits some sort of introspection. This is another time. I am just looking for a time with myself and my mind. some time enough for looking things over.

Who knows, you'll be in my mind for some time. Yes, you. and just thinking if I could get to know more about you.

everything burning.

Being here until morning is giving me a certain feeling that I should be somewhere, doing something else, thinking about something else. Just hoping that it'd be more of a definitive feeling enough that I can put my hands around it, give it more tangibility, that it would not be a neuron misfire as a result of sleep deprivation. After I go home, it would be a good idea not to space out when the summer heat might be giving me hallucinations.

Still my neural pathways have been busy more than usual and I take it as a good sign, but magis then, so think more.

Methinks, this is still a way of putting things in perspective, it's just that the summer heat is a bitch.

Highway 54.

Going back is a bit a heady, like dark beer after weeks of iced water. By bus, the way here to Manila has been reduced to scents, noise and images, of recollections in between sleep and stopovers:

A fellow passenger was peeling more than 5 cucumbers and eating them right after the other. I can remember the scent, and the way they crunched as he ate them and how small the knife he used in gingerly peeling them. I kept checking the green bag on the overhead rack for signs of its impending fall on my head. The smell of grilled hotdogs waking me up through my empty stomach. I could identify three different languages being spoken and the bus conductor spoke all three of them in his high-pitched singsong voice. The passenger beside me was ingraining his customized message alert tone in my mind, like an aural fingerprint.

With my eyes closed, I kept coming back to my recent memories and unconsciously closing off the impending polluted welcome of Highway 54, I was still beside my daughter, taking in her scent and traces of unscheduled meals on her face. She, in her sleep, seemed undecided whether to embrace me or her mother and didn't keep a single position in the space of an hour. I was watching my world sleeping together, exhaling in different regularities.

And looking out the bus window, Manila was slowly encircling me again. And the traffic of income was suddenly there, obnoxious and noisy. I knew I was back when the first wave of heat hit me when I got down from the bus, when the slickness of garbage was sliding under my shoes.

These are the days.

(I was hoping I could write more, but the thoughts though forming would turn to smoke. I guess those thoughts would be more at home on paper)

CK's digs.

I am going to my own fortress of solitude. I want to see the sky again, without the heat of the sun.

I am getting out of the grid. to discover kisses again and curled sleeping fingers.
get caught in a light drizzle and feel the earth beneath my feet.
and hear the laughter of my daughter.

for some time, for some time and forever.

for now, I wish you cold evenings, and warm embraces.

three nights. (disquiet, beer and some reflections)

I'm trying to collect and piece together fragments of the last three nights; the fading and the weird convoluted design of the tapestry by those three recent evenings because it has the consistency of a dream right now, which I hope would get clearer as I write.

The first night was a celebration of some sorts and I think a prologue for reflection. Though we kept dipping into the stories of the past years, how our paths had went, how others twisted and turned, we still came back to the possibilities of the future, At the risk of sounding much too serious than it actually was, we were actually laughing most of the time, and there was sunlight was when we turned ourselves in for the day, dreaming of the different paths that we had taken and happy when our individual paths met and crossed for some time. Saturday was a road trip and promised of adventures, and collected stories.

And woke up to Sunday, and the remains of those stories and promises. And Sunday night had a different theme, it was about the present and it run haphazard and tragic, and wove around love and the need for companionship. And yes, about the seeming and apparent loss of it. And the kinds of hope that we clung on to, hopes that we wrap around ourselves in during those times. And of the kinds of despair we clothe ourselves after we discard those hopes like previous garments. And how after some time we wear some bits of pieces of those fabrics, interwoven and side by side, those hopes and despairs. And though only one of us wore black despair like it was second skin, we knew how form-fitting and snug that felt. And his tears never came that night, but they will come, and keep on coming for some time, eight years is, well, a long time. And he'd be black for as long as he'd feel like it, but I guess the primary colors will creep in after some time. And we slept, feeling the frailty of our bodies against the intoxication of alcohol and the indifference of love sometimes and what our bodies tend to do in excess of those things. And woke up Monday, looking at the remains of that Sunday, the ugly aftermath of unwashed dishes and nuked emotions. And as he declined an adlib for beer and the eventual emotional bypass surgery, the contrast of white and black in his shoes perhaps mirrored his current state of mind, in the context of hope and despair.

This is the reason why beer the next day, at past three in the afternoon tasted funny and sublime, bitter most of all. I guess the news of a seeming loss of an eight year love could do that. Our present cast of characters drinking had changed, and we still couldn't help but think and imagine our personals ifs and perhaps, and ended chalking it up to the uncertainty of everything and absence of any assurance. The concept of destiny tarnished a bit under the afternoon sun. The day wore on and everyone knew we were drinking more than we should but the food was great and it lifted spirits up, not that it really needed some lifting. But the taste of beer stayed the same, still funny and sublime and perhaps more bitter. Thinking about it, I wonder if Monday night was about the past, as we settled more comfortably with the stories of the years gone; old great loves notwithstanding and the accompanying emotions that we each silently remembered and then came out as stories and laughter. Then we slept, because a bit of our age was showing around the edges when beer consumption was concerned. The plastic modular table was a scarred ghost town of beer, dinner leftovers, cigarette burns, watery soup, liver gravy and those discarded emotions that were picked up each and every time we noticed that they were lying around.

I slept a dreamless sleep. I wondered about my drinking companions if they too had the same slumber. or perhaps they had nights of disquiet and rage that the resulting dreams were unrecognizable from their present reality. or if they had lovely dreams, of old loves perhaps. I wonder...

I guess I had to write about this and even if I left most of what transpired hidden, I know that I should leave what I have written unedited lest I regret pushing the delete button. A hard rain falling Monday night would have been the perfect thing to end it but I guess we had to make do with the angry purr of our old electric fans as we fell asleep. Drunken and a little wiser, only if we could remember the stories and connect the right emotions as they happened.
I miss Rain and my Love, that is certain and despite all the uncertainties.

-o0o-

for Che, Don, Joy, King, Noy, Pat, and Zar. In no particular order and not according to the amount of beer and Mountain Dew partaken. Yes, I took the time to alphabetize.