surprise me.

Browsing through the web and looking at some self portraits that a girl made; her photos reminded me of you, the nose being the mnemonic and as I look back, going through the photos of you that I took in my mind, there might be some truth to what I just suspect - that somehow the shape of your nose has changed. You see, it has been years since, and I am not really sure, perhaps this one of those things that just grows on you, and only by looking at photographs can we see that some parts of ourselves have changed, that we have changed, in some subtle way that sometimes we doubt if that change is ever there or drastically if scars are involved.

(Or perhaps the way our eyes look, that perhaps they have changed.)

I love photos, especially when I can hold them, like the way I can hold you if I wanted to; if you wanted me to. And sometimes it's black and white, and all the emotions are there, even if I can't see your nose sometimes in the pictures.

for temporary reprieves and temporary secret places.

Perhaps there is still the matter of beating hearts and the occasional irregularity of blood pressure during certain times of the day, or probably perhaps more during elevated stress situations when certain things are brought to mind. Or that the reclusive shadows during mid afternoons are bookmarks for some earlier time and I keep rereading those pages.

Even as I continue to continue, I lose track of time and in my mind, I know it is still June even if the calendars around town keep saying November is nearly over. We all keep our own illusions, one way or another, and yes, because they are fleeting and the harder you try to hold on to them the faster they fade and the harsher that life fades in after. I think only those who have lost their mind know the secret of holding these illusions together, and forever hold, what we term as the real, at bay. I don't know if June is an illusion, it is very real.

waiting for daybreak.

At 3am in the morning when the visible streets are mostly empty, the trees here in the Fort are lonely, bathed in the pale orange, almost yellow light of lampposts; and only the occasional headlight of a passing vehicle as it washes over them that the green briefly shows, then it's back to tangerine monochrome sadness. Standing still in this early day scene betrays a concealed longing for somewhere as self-possessed as this place at this time or even the closeness of someone; a warmth in this cold, the silent assurance of a clasped hand and the refuge of an embrace.

There is a sense of beauty in this isolation, and always wary of the effect of its strange attraction to that certain part of my soul as there is a chance of losing myself. Solitude is always good lay, and perhaps something that I cannot live without; for in her company the world ceases, I find my space again without the confusions of time and obligations, that there's a meaning to all these recent distractions, a sense to whatever confluence of emotions that I am in. This is a beauty that I have always understood and appreciated, and as the cold of this morning intrudes and fails to make me shiver, I let go of Solitude and come back to this scene of forlorn streets and sodium vapor lamp-loving trees.

There is this one other thing that I have also become aware of in the past years, that in the ebb after Solitude goes away, I start to miss you.

musings.

there are some times when I am near you
when I want to lay my head down on your stomach
during those afternoons
when the sun forgets herself,
and know that if I did, I'd turn and look
at you and
wonder if you'll look at me in silence,
muss my hair and smile.
if you did then
I'll continue on looking
and we'll watch the afternoon
grow older and colder
and we'll stay warm
wrapped in each other
by then.

finding it easy.

going back to yourself,
going back to a seven year old familiarity.
I am strangeness now.
to you.
perhaps.
perhaps.
you're still warm to me.
embrace like pillows during rainshowers
aniseed kisses everytime,
and the beauty
of old frayed sneakers

is making the terrible truth
of being in gray buildings
with windows that never open;
for any wind
to let you feel the reality
of things that we can not see,

more colder.

I saw your eyes.

There. There. Unblinking and staring.
Perhaps not me. Not me.
Then you saw. Then you knew.
Me. Me.
You tried to blink. Perhaps impossible.
So moved. Hid. Tried to blink again.
And struggled to still the tremblings.
I felt. You felt.

Find a way. Find me.
We will be lost. Together.

06:53:55.

I might have gone and almost forgot August, like there was for some reason that August was more than just a blur of emotions and remembrances; and it is only a stray thought, for I count every passing day since sometime last June. It is September now, and I am only waiting for the wind to turn a little more colder and for rains to be more common than things that make me remember you; but I guess, in comparison that would make the rains a rare occurence, even if it fell every day.

For just little while from now, time would come full circle and if there is some significance to that truth, I can only wonder and then breath, and fall to my routine of written sighs. Or I could say that I was just dreaming, though this would mean that I have just woken up, and now will want to fall back to the warmth of sleep again, to will myself to slumber in the hope of catching up with the fading dream. And in that futility, weave my own and make myself warm for some time; even if it gets colder everyday, but you see, there is no reason to stop because then if I can abandon my dream, then it would also be possible to give up on myself.

And also because some things are real however you may want to ignore it. And being real, it will always find a way.

these are the days.

These days when my mind can fool itself and myself in the process, when I forget what I should be feeling, or what I should be doing next as I step through the bathroom door, when I keep being reminded of things of the past year like reruns on tv that seem to have made itself a part of my routine, when focus is myth, and concentration is heartbroken because of that fact, when emotions are so scrambled that even pain becomes white noise too easily which I blame on the little chance for Solitude, or sometimes I think that every thing is just hitting me from all sides that it is almost impossible to see straight into tomorrow, and I am going blindly into the future again, like a kid again; these are the days, these are the days when I forget to live and forget to breath in or breathe out or even stare in wonder at some thing or any thing that I have not seen before, days when I seem to be losing myself in the background of my own thoughts, yes, these are the days I am not aware of my possibilities, and going blind in the illusions of impossibilities that I fool myself as potential realities, as something that with enough action and thought and feeling and wanting and longing will come out of the ether fully formed and wanting to be embraced. These are days of forgetting, of going through the sludge that my mind is creating out of nothing and out of every dream that I have; and these are also days of remembering.

These days when I am not me.

being in a calm pool of water and the sound of nothing when I submerge myself.

My mind is trying to forget itself for some time now, and just letting some automatic part of myself run itself. Most of the time I am content to just watch, and I turn to routines in a show of support for my mind. I wake, eat, go to work, go home, eat a bit then sleep again. Like trying to bury something bigger than the hole I dug for it. But there are days when my mind succeeds and it is a small comfort and it is finding it easier with each every success, and I try to make the hole bigger.

It's just that... it's only a matter of time and a matter of Solitude then my mind will remind itself again of itself.

And the rains and the coldness are not helping at all because when my mind returns we are hardly complacent with each other, most of the time I know it isn't an easy companion.

By then, I am alive again and realizing it has been the longest June ever.

some thoughts.

During quick showers, rushed meals and short bus rides, when there are temporary slivers of solitude where you come and scratch my mind; like epiphanies, like temporary limbos where the stories of commerce and economies don't belong, where in the suddenness of those briefest of transitions, I have you.

Only that there is only so little time before I notice that I have finished washing my hair, that it's time to brush my teeth and that I am nearing the bus stop; and I have to be on my workstation and be someone else again.

So make me think, make me think of other things, of other things besides being with you again when having thoughts about you is NSFW.

come back.

The rains have moved back in, and there is solace in overcast skies again. They have come back along with the cold of early mornings, and the accompanying desolateness of daybreak when it is still dark, when I hold my pillow close in despair of that fervent want for warmth. I remember the singularity of your embrace as having the same effect of being home again.

There is the feeling of being adrift again as the constellations I knew have moved, as reality has shifted ever so slightly in some places and a major upheaval in other places. The feeling of dislocation only gets stronger now and I have pull to some of myself back in, as there is a feeling that there are some parts of me that I will never get to be familiar again; and for the longest time in days I have been waiting for some thing inside me to thaw, for some part to move, for gears to turn again, for the feeling that I'm fading only keeps on getting stronger these days.

The weariness gets stronger, and I don't bother with sighs anymore; but at night I still look at the stars and whisper to them endearments or pleas, perhaps both, and in differing intensities.

I know like the rains, I have to come back.

always.

It was a late afternoon on a Saturday and it felt like Sunday had come early; an air of idleness that came along with the lazy traffic and the avenue almost seemed lonely for the lack of passersby on its sidewalks. I stood at the end of the avenue and stared at its other end some distance away and I let my mind wander as the sunlight grew golden on the walls of the university and contrasted with the blueness of the sky.

A slow wind was picking up and I took it from there as a sign for a good time to walk. A deep breath and I took my first step. There was a vague sense of sadness as my feet slowly warmed up to a lazy easy stride; it was the first time in months that I had taken a walk by myself for no reason whatsoever.

We always walked whenever and wherever we found the time for it, and late afternoons were always the best time. Perhaps it was the sound of our feet hitting the ground at the same time that gave an impression of comfort, of that silent connection and managed to take the edge off of everything, then again there was always your warm easy presence beside me during those walks. Now, the sound of my feet as it struck the concrete sidewalks was lonely in comparison; and saying that I knew lonely was an understatement. As I slowly neared the corner of the avenue, like clockwork, I wondered about how you were , and vainly tried to focus on my walking instead. And that time my mind didn't wander again but easily stayed with you.

As I reached the other end, I turned to look around with a sort of detachedness that one felt when reliving a memory, I saw the avenue again and it was almost desolate as before. There was this sudden flash of yellow from my periphery and I looked casually at someone across the street. She was wearing a yellow shirt and had her back turned but there was a feeling of apprehension along with the slow dawning recognition that it was you.

It was you.

I was just staring; staring and tight-lipped as you held out your hand, not to me but to someone and the two of you held hands like it was the most casual thing to do, and of course, it wasn't your brother. Then you turned around and saw me and we were staring, staring and tight-lipped.

You were lovely, and I can still remember your cute protests telling me that you were not, everytime I told you so. You were so lovely, more so under the late afternoon sun, just like this. Just like this beautiful golden afternoon. I haven't seen you wear yellow for a long time. I felt something stir inside me and I was shifting, moving on to my side.

KAMEHAMEHA!!!!

And I started walking again. It didn't exactly feel good but it would be a lot easier now and I will miss that part of the avenue where they stood and after this, I knew I would always miss you.

june will bleed into august.

I remember a promise attached with this coming month, spoken in a fever and welcomed in the dark, and later written down; perhaps more to feel the words forming and becoming real rather than as an afterthought. As fervid as these promises go, it has been ages since, since the words of those promise were spoken, and not repeated again. Lately, they sometimes repeat in my mind; chantlike, fading in and out, and without any apparent mnemonic to remind me. There are some early mornings when I wake up hours before I am supposed to wake and I hear the words again; and after that I don't get to sleep again. I also end up writing most always, just to take the edge off. It helps a little, but the words will stay with me for the rest of the day after that.

I wonder if the past weeks were part of a cycle I was once familiar with, intimate even to the point of calling it my life. Perhaps I haven't just been somewhere familiar lately, even if some of the places I had been to were comforting; by comforting I meant those places reminded me of something familiar, of somewhere familiar, and evoked some sense of a happier time or even just something to that effect.

Now, it's only a few hours before August, before I start crossing out the 31 days, then the months will become years again. I have forgotten about July already. I sometimes imagine it is still June.

5.

1. To see you walking in near dark, in that short distance between your house and the highway, hearing your footfalls along with the wind coming in from the fields in a cool singsong whisper; you, under the light of a billion stars and the light from the lampposts.

2. To hear you talk when I am not one you're talking to but know that I'm listening; a welcome intruder, an aural voyeur and you smile at me invisibly, I smile in return, sharing secrets in our minds and conversing in hushed silences and breaths.

3.To taste you, in a surprising return to memories of some distant summer and those lulls during rainshowers that we watched fall in watery clamor.

4. To smell your hair during the late afternoon when we are resting and just watching the grass grow shadows and as the skies go psychedelic with indigo and crimson fading into pink, this is when the scent of your shampoo is almost a memory and you are everywhere inside me as I inhale and watch you, tired and longing for something else beyond tiredness, as your grin suggests and you embrace my upper arm as if for balance.

5. To feel your touch again, your fingers trailing secret silent paths across my face and down to my neck then I also make my own spontaneous map with my fingers on your face and arms as we become cartographers of our bodies and deem ourselves rediscovered and found again.

journals.

because I have rediscovered writing on paper again, even when my fingers can hardly keep up with my thoughts, with my internal arguments and flashbacks.
because ctrl+z isn't possible with paper, because it doesn't care about misspelled words, because even by candlelight it is possible.
and it is one of the only few true moments that I can be with myself.

but I always find myself straying to the digital...

EADGBE.

I find you in songs these days
taking some of the words for my own,
reading them as oracles
as portents long gone,
long come true
and as echoes
of a dream
made real
and they keep playing
playing in my mind
with an aftertaste of you
from every verse
to the chorus
the lyrics trip lightly on my mind
and continue on playing
right through the seconds
before sleep
that upon waking
I press play again,
and repeat
and find you
smiling
in between
the opening riffs of our songs.

pungaw.

sa mga mortugong pagmati
na nagkasurupugan, na pigsusuruway ang hiling
ta kung ano man na rason kang pagmati na bagul na daa,
na pirmi na lang nagkakairinot ang mga taon saka mga dominggo
sa pag agi, sa pag sangli kaya dagos pigtatarakig na
sa lipot kang rayo sagkod mga ngirit
asin urulay sa tahaw kang pagpangudto,
na may tarom ng kaibanan, kang mga pagmawot
na pigtatarago na lang siring kang raot na alahas.

mortugo, mortugo daang pagkamoot
na tinutubuan na ning mga ugat kang mga tanom,
na dai man mapundo sa pagtalubo asin pagtahob
sa pagkamoot. sa pagkamoot
na yaon lang, na nagmamawot
man lang ngani talagang giromdomon;
para mag imbong, mag init
sagkod mamati liwat ang pungaw,
ang paghanap sa kugos
asin init kang palad pag minadutaan
kabali na ang girok sa paghinghing,
asin kugos na siring man sa dalan pauli.

no more mixtapes.

because there are times when poetry can kill the romance
and it is not just about knowing the right time,
the right mood, and the right word to say.

any more than pushing my luck by feigning hurt

then it becomes imperative to know that
sometimes it is about knowing when to embrace or not to,
or just brush that stray hair playing in your face
and then resisting the urge to kiss.

sometimes I only ask you how your week was,
and not buy you anything.
except ice cream that I leave in the freezer
without telling you.

the time of mixtapes is over;
but there are other ways,
always other ways
when poetry fails.

pointers about relaying the sad facts of a loss.

• Pronouncements concerning loss should be given more tact, more care and even empathy, aside from the given sympathy to the person being told. The measure of comfortability should also be of an importance, if possible, the person should be sitting and go the extra mile to have a glass of water ready and within reach. Being sensitive is a rule of thumb always.
• One should also take into consideration the time when the pronouncement would be made, do a little research as to what hour the person usually starts his/her day. This would be the period when a normal person is on a natural high therefore usually tense in some level or another.
• Afternoons are considered the best time for relaying the sad information as the body generally is more sedate during this hours. It is absolutely and never advisable to wake the person (or upon waking) and tell him/her the news immediately, or upon as there may be danger of hysterics that may result to shock or temporary catatonia.
• Evenings are okay but let us draw the line beyond 10:00 pm.
• Tone of voice and how we say the news should also be taken into account. It is sensible if it be delivered without a hint of excitement, or without too much dour sadness that it might give off the wrong signals.
• It is entirely possible to say it; through context clues and body language, so that the person can infer the right conclusion even before you have finished. This makes it easier on both parties since this means that you have successfully prepared him/her for the truth. You may leave as discreetly as possible after this. The person concerned may show his/her emotions by crying immediately but always in control, take this as a good sign. If said person makes known his/her gratefulness by saying thank you then it is a job well done.
• Hysterics definitely cannot be left discreetly or by themselves. If this situation is foreseen it is always prudent to bring someone else that the person is comfortable with and let that him/her tell the news themselves.
• Now, there are always instances where one cannot tell the news personally and one has to resort to some other means. First choice would be through a phonecall, a choice which if the above advice was followed can also be appropriate enough since this doesn't necessitate an encounter.
• But unfortunately, the first choice is also the only alternative, if one takes into importance the person the news is for.
• E-mails are definitely harsh, moreso if sent through text. That is almost indifferent to the point of cruelty.
  
  

Apparently, you haven't read these pointers. No, not at all, apparently.

Telling me that I'm about to die emotionally through text isn't really beautiful.

dérive you.

There's this pull, sometimes urgent and sometimes almost vague, to just drop everything going on in my life, just step out of it and into myself again and go walk around, drift around, wander around almost aimlessly and feel that much alive again.
And have conversations with myself again, some sort of hellos to an old friend who has been always there inside me.
So I take the road, even for the while of just a few hundred minutes.
Upon giving in to the pull, I become untethered for some time, for hours, unbound from the concerns and paranoia that the constant proddings of routine have. This is a sort of detached happiness, for want of a better description.
I remember having been this way since high school and if I could I brought a camera during these directionless walks. The photos, when I stumble upon them years later, also serves as more fuel to the fire.
I also see you in some of the photos, and it is momentary nuclear fusion.
Walking around, this is how I became intimate with the streets and the sidestreets of my city back then, and the people that lived and were living; they that walked around in Naga, they that made their lives and filled their lives with Naga, they that fell in love and fell out of it, they that were made mad and found themselves again, they that cared and just continued, they that just went through it like unfamiliar tv channels; they that couldn't wait to leave Naga (and now wish to come home again), they that wanted to grow up so fast, they that wanted to be young again, they that only measure what they have lost, they that forgot and only remembered some certain years in their lives, they that only had music in their heads, and all the usual suspects that I have met, known, love(d) and didn't have the chance to know that peopled Naga. I saw their eyes, I saw them and lived and died figuratively with them and with some quite literally.
I saw the dust flying in Quince Martires during summer days. I saw children that grew up too fast. I saw contentment and ambitions caged inside the blacks and browns of the eyes of the people in Naga. I also saw despair and glorious hope alongside them. I knew that we were one of those people and that we could always leave Naga, but Naga wouldn't leave us anymore than we could forget ourselves. Just before I left for Manila I also saw Naga start to change. Sometimes I think that perhaps it was just me at that time but I have more reason to believe, that it happened at the same time.
I gaze at the photos again and feel myself burn, burn in the way that your fuel could only make me.
The pull, we found out was something shared and it was more beautiful when both of us felt the tug and we went along like fallen leaves on a stream. And we talked incessantly along the road, streets and sometimes forgot where we were. There were also our silences, that were just as lovely. There just wasn't a camera for every time that we were walking on concrete, on drying grass, on cracked asphalt roads, on sand and on cold wooden buildings, but I still kept those pictures in my mind, something that no photograph can compare to.
I still walk around, even if Manila isn't Naga. It is still therapy for the soul even if we aren't together. Even if everything here is strangeness above all, it still reminds me of you.
When I am back home in Naga again, let me dream of us together, drifting away again in its streets and going back in time with clasped hands, and veiled desires as we walk.

connections.

I stumbled around cyberspace, with a fervent need to find something interesting enough to distract me, to take me into altered states where I can take for granted my current thought processes that were taking a life of their own, the underlying emotional structures almost visible now.

"Not now, not now, not now..." I told myself and massaged my head and continued on with clicking the links that would take me beyond my usual circle of data and the usual network trash. I tried to go beyond the webcomics that had characters with the same smile as you, with the childlike humor that comes out in that burst of laughter and your eyes will disappear for a moment. Downloading was like watching paint dry and I know that in the space as I watch the peers come and go my mind can betray me and come looking for you. I looked at the RPGs on my shelf but shrugged. It would only led to mental exhaustion and there was only one reason why I would play that way. The hangover from playing is almost inescapable, sleep being the only way. So I trudged on and somehow found myself reading about horse-headed anthromorphic creatures and large beings with a predilection for cigars. I read on and got engrossed despite my current self.

Inside, a part of me grew a smile. So, I continued to read and clicked on balete...

"A banyan is a fig that starts its life as an epiphyte when its seeds germinate in the cracks and crevices on a host tree (or on structures like buildings and bridges). "Banyan" often refers specifically to the species Ficus benghalensis, though the term has been generalized to include all figs that share a unique life cycle. The seeds germinate and send down roots towards the ground, and may envelope part of the host tree of building structure with their roots, giving them the casual name of strangler fig. The "strangling" growth habit is found in number of tropical forest species, particularly of the genus Ficus, that compete for light. Any Ficus species showing this habit may be termed a strangler fig."

Then I stopped and knew that I had lost.

"No, you don't strangle like the balete, you don't... rather you embrace and I can't die in that embrace because it let us live instead."

It was me talking inside myself, knowing that it didn't need any citation and the thought took me like the pull of the ocean; and as I went under asked myself - balete... balete... I was reading about balete...

Not you. Not you.

And as I feebly felt reason and logic give way, I knew that I was wrong again. I should have recognized that your hypertexts were everywhere.

dog-eared.

I went and took refuge in science fiction and children's books, it was a good idea. For the first 10 pages at least; then everything went, more or less, downhill from there. But I continued reading and plowed on through a dozen books before I realized I was driving myself into a reading stupor again and only felt alive when I was flickering through the pages, and into the fictional lives of the characters I was reading.

Fiction, fiction... just fiction, I kept telling myself that after I finished one book after another. But then it was not hard to read about my life, in the brief snatches and sudden sentences that meant something or someone that hit me one way or rather hit me emotionally six ways from Sunday. Then it was non-fiction, and there were excerpts of my life there. Even when the part had a zombie in it, or a witch or an armored bear; or an eight-legged alien. I had to put the book down and stare somewhere else before I feel the pull of my memories, which would defeat the entire reason of why I started on my reading binge.

Sometimes I start reading another book entirely.

A week ago I knew there was no way that I would be able to stop reading until something stopped me and broke me down. Something to break me down into reality again. It took the last three books to finally do it and I caved in and just let myself go; I was untethered and adrift again, and hurting bad as the emotions came hurtling back and like demons were there again.

Then this morning Haruki Murakami fell out of my cabinet as I was looking for a pen. I know this is a really bad time for his stories but...

images.

I still felt warm and dry as I went out of the house and braved the rain, and cherished the little jabs of cold on my face, raindrops that also blurred my glasses. I stopped near the gate and out from the rain for a moment then watched it fall, it had been falling intermittently since yesterday. I saw it running around my shoes, falling from the faded tarpaulin eaves of the carinderia across the street and I saw it hitting the canvas covers of the tricycles, yearning for passengers in this cold and at this time, and I saw rain dripping down and slowly disintegrated some dog shit into dark brown pieces, and mixed in with the rainbow colors that the leaking diesel made as it went from tricycle to street. I stepped out and into that rain, hitting me fully as it gained strength and added chill, but I felt warm. It was okay again to remember because it was cold and there was you inside me again. There was no sky, only grayness and falling cold.

This was how the rain fell, as I made my way through the wet street going to EDSA, littered with discarded pieces of vegetable and uncollected trash, and the morning reluctantly and ever so slowly woke up.

The golden arches of the McDonald's across the street turned a dull yellow as its lights were turned off, and I looked up beside me and saw the green and orange colors of 7-11 still brightly lit up. Everything outside the taxi was gray, drained of color and desolate that I lost myself as I looked over the haze and horizon of Guadalupe Bridge and Pasig River. I lost myself, in the colors of memory and of summer from ages ago. Then I was looking at the LEDs of our building's elevator changing and I stepped off into the dimness of our floor, punctuated only by the bright green blink of the sensor near the door. I waved my proximity card and heard the sharp ping of the sensor and involuntary took a deep breath entered into another gray world, where cyberspace is the most often the only source of color. It was still raining outside but the sound wasn't there as I sat on my chair, and the gray outside had hues and shades more varied than the whole floor of my workplace. Then I got lost again, staring at the rain.

I miss our colors. I miss the rainbows that were there when were together. I miss our own
psychedelic world. I miss you.

balcony.

us kissing in the darkness of a theater
slipping from the fiction playing in front of us,
sliding into the reality of the heat
that the absence of light was giving us
as Hannibal Lecter's voice lost its chill
as the violence on screen meant nothing
and vanished in the thunder of blood
running through us
running us through
then
we left
before the credits went and told
how everything was an illusion,
and before the darkness revealed.

we left
and fled into our reality
spontaneous and true
physical and warm.

may is a hurting month.

Like before, like no other else and like nothing can ever be, will ever be.

The rains that fall are double edged and soothes in remembrance but then also leaves you so deeply bemired and bleeding that there is no thought possible, but they are better than the expanse of heat and strangeness that is Manila, though they don't fall every day.

Walking on the way to the bus stop, as dead dry grass gets blown in my path, their scent hits me some moments later and there is a strange realization that my mind has forgotten about this month, but my body hasn't.

As I look on, at the few days that are left for this month, despite everything it means, I am more than a bit reluctant to see it go. And I admit, I would want it to last a bit longer; when hope at this time produces emotions that are not exactly warm and fuzzy; because in fact it borders more on the bleaker and the blacker and biler side of the four humors. It is also summer and there is no escape when sleep is uneasy and shallow, and the dreams vivid, and real until you wake up, taking so long to fade and they become a solid memory instead of an impossible reality.

In those dreams, your scent is true, and lingers even as I wake alone in a bed for one, and sleep once past cannot easily be embraced again. This is May, and it is ending, and there never is another instance for recognizing that time is passing... that after living for so long finally grasp how time really works, and that there is no loophole, and it cannot be fooled.

Perhaps May might bleed into June, perhaps I would get to miss you more as the months go on.

where do we go from here.

You just told me it would take a little silence. for now. with no apparent hint of a consequence within a timeframe and nary a clue if that statement was already intimate with forever. or perhaps I just didn't understand then. I don't know if gave in too soon, and used logic to decide. But I guessed not, only wanting you to be beautiful and I did not want rain in your face. Not to trouble, not to disturb and to just let you be. Even if I wanted your embrace. At that time.
And at this time. And
Everyday now.
And mostly at night. And just after I come home from work.

I do understand, my mind does. Entirely. My mind, my mind does...
But the other part though surreal is even more real, and only wants you.

I just have been to the cold and back again; and being there I still kept crossing out the passing days, keeping time, keeping count, that... that it would mean my life if I didn't; if I didn't keep the faith; if I didn't think slash feel about you.

And that is the easy part, mostly effortless. It was stepping on the brakes that was problematic.

Now, I am all twisted up as I can ever be.
and even just reading the wiki summary of the The Science of Sleep can make me cry.

dream catcher.

perhaps you fart whole galaxies
a whole slew of star systems
every time, after every meal
of someone else's dreams;
of dreams fed nightly
on a steady diet of falling stars
and fervent wishes,
of imaginations now slowly
measured by logic and reason.

no need for a fork, or a knife
to carve, to cut them in manageable pieces.
whole, they are eaten whole
and the sound that they make as they...
as they go in your darkness
cannot be described
cannot be painted
and they light up like fireworks
as they bravely go on their last hurrah
but only another feast for you.

love me like a monster.

You asked me to do another one of those impossible things, and I said a reluctant yes, with no intention of doing whatsoever what you asked, even if I could help it.
Stop worrying about me.
I mean how could I... when this kind of things concerning you is like breathing, involuntary and needed to live.
Stop looking at me.
I know what you meant by saying these things, and besides I also know the reasons why you continually say them almost as an afterthought, but your voice trembles ever so slightly, almost imperciptible that sometimes I think it's all in my mind. Then you turn away, as I continue go on looking.
Stop thinking about me.
When sometimes it's all I have; and when, during my days off it's all I do. Lack of sleep is also beautiful sometimes.

I wonder if you say these things because sometimes you have nothing else to say. I know I have those kind of moments too. Or perhaps it is just that mild kind of exasperation, with things that we sometimes imagine to be possible.

These are just the everyday things, everyday affairs that take me back and the daily order of
circumstances that I cannot find my way out of, and I'd always want to be lost, always; while I'm in the longest meantime that you are not here. Shampoo scent and all. Not here. At All.

I sometimes I take a lot coffee breaks but not for the coffee. Restrooms are okay too, more so during graveyard shifts and there is small window there where I can see the darkness and between the neon and the few cars wandering below, I wonder where the horizon ends or where the sky begins. Then it all comes back to you as I see my reflection on the double glass window, hazy in the dim light of the restroom.

Stop being this way.
Don't you see, it's futile; besides your smile after is always a dead giveaway.

You are like the smell of cotton candy that has permanently stuck in my memory, I guess.

my 42.

another sign I have to ignore when I haven't seen the stars in nights
and the prophets of doom are getting more restless every day;
and that part where the rain is joy sublime
falls during the most opportune time when I'm boxed inside concrete, steel and glass.
The paranoia sometimes really feels old
and equally compares to what I feel when I see the rain;
those personal reverse Back to the Future episodes.
And by the time the clouds drift into other shapes,
I have agreed with Randall Munroe again
that wanting something doesn't make it real,
even if you manage to fool yourself somehow.
The resulting coldness being the only consolation as the rain fades away.

Then I remember Fox Mulder's poster in his basement office and know that I do.
And so, I go on continue wanting anyway.

trance is one of our words.

this afternoon, knowing that I cannot drown out the clamor of my thoughts, knowing that I cannot move you into the background, knowing that there are intimations of paradox in our worlds that had suddenly merged, knowing that there are chances of going back to the void, I have to stop knowing; and forget and only feel.

I press play instead and feel the woofers hum before the music comes on, then I play it loud enough to drown out the world and even the sound of my breathing; and as the bass thumps against my chest, and I forget reason, and logic becomes unbound three minutes into it and I close my eyes and see you there.

Then there is no heat of summer, and I only feel the syncopations going through me, going through me, layer by layer and pulse by pulse. I let go and forget myself, and go on folding time and go on folding space to keep somewhere where even most memory cannot follow. I keep moving and I have no idea of where, I go where the music goes and my heartbeat keeps rhythm like an internal mix of its own. This is not vision anymore because I can see in the darkness, and when I open my eyes it is the same. So I keep them closed and go on shifting and moving and somewhere along lose the certainty of gravity, the certainty of realness and the certainty of almost everything in the daze of this 4/4 beats. In this exquisite deconstruction and abstraction, that is now beyond beauty, I forget almost all.

But the body reminds and you are there and we move, our bodies glistening, holding, twisting around each other, liquefying in this trance, and going where we have been before but forgotten now in this dream that has forgotten to fade, because we are now our own strange attractors, dancing into our very own fractals.

by the window.

One afternoon, I saw sadness sitting by the window staring into space, calm and expressionless as if contemplating happiness. She looked o so lovely there, by her lonesome that I wanted to go near and hold her hand but I think it wouldn't be proper. It wouldn't look good at all. So I sat down just a few meters away and watched her, painted by the afternoon, her gaze still unwavering. I could see traces in the immediate air from the longing in her breath and and the way she stared outside, it seemed she gave off the dreaminess of a subdued pain. She grew lovelier by the minute, and every second of this melting mid-afternoon, or perhaps hours, it must have been hours, I can't be sure. So I continued to lose sense of time as I gazed at her, unmoving in that sedated yellow light coming in from the window; my mind unravelling alongside.

Wished I had a camera.

And almost forgot the one in my head so I took pictures and stored them in my mind for some future time; a slideshow just for times like this certain mid-afternoon - when I'm like her and I'm missing you.

cheezepaper returns.

We were there, all of us, this one afternoon, this one time and looking at pieces of paper where we wrote random adjectives and nouns, and which we later fished out of that glass jar coming up with these two string of words: 'cheezepaper returns' and 'broken digital candies' like a portent of a future event. Perhaps we just wanted a band name because there was a big chance that we would be performing before a crowd. Cheezepaper Returns won over the more pop sounding result. Later the Returns was dropped and I have forgotten what the reason was, perhaps we just wanted something more succinct. Short and unforgettable even I almost forgot that one bit part.

In retrospect and since recently as I was writing about those times, our lives at that time and those souls that I grew up with, some of the details came back in bursts of clarity that though remembered also faded like a dream. But for some time as I held those memories and I also wrote them down and it helped. And I also know that at that time we didn't just want a band name. We also wanted something to call that intangible thing of being part of something. So it was Cheezepaper.

It has been more than a decade since and cheezepaper has also become a verb for us, but in the end, we know, it would always be that noun, that something that we called ourselves. Sometimes we speak of it if only to evoke that time after that fateful afternoon, of the years after that and how our lives had been. Even if only in our minds now.

Once a cheezepaper, always a cheezepaper. So it goes, yes, so it goes.

from left, Fiel, Ninoy, Bonks, Nald, Jao.

these eyes are nearsighted but they are still meant to admire you.

Don't let them just wither away here, vision mildly decaying year after year. Resolving pixels on my monitor screen in place of you, seeing digital words and virtual images so limited by the contrast, brightness and RGB control. This pair haven't seen you for so long, they have begun to see you everywhere; like ghosts of varying degrees of translucency and desaturation, all lingering suggestions of your beauty both normal and paranormal. From that giant eye of an actress in a billboard to the slightest variance of the jawline of the the girl sitting across me in the commuter train I take everyday. Lingering. Lingering. All striking my photoreceptor cells with the same force of how your memory boots me up in the morning.

Everyday a constant barrage of you, when you are not really there. Visual information overload. And, no, I just cannot close my eyes.

The darkness of my room is a tricky refuge when it hits me as a good idea for escape. And when my eyes adjust to the darkness, in the absence of color, there is nothing to remind; except that in the darkness there are things other than me. In the shadows and light deprived spaces of my room are my classified intelligence photos, satellite images of you filed under reveries and ultimately the memories driven by an internal combustible engine I call my imagination. The darkness isn't safe really when dreaming is another realm of looking for you. Escape only comes with sleep, dreamless sleep, provided by sheer physical exhaustion.

It's been too long, been too long squinting at the first sight of the early afternoon, or the mid-morning sun, some sights that are accompanied by involuntary moisture sometimes. Every day is this. Every afternoon is this. Every night is this. The world is so lomo, underexposed positives and photoshopped reality when I want a full color, life-sized and all of the possible 10 million colors of you. I have had enough of pseudo representations of you, please satisfy the saturation points of my eyes again.

Let me see you again, because my eyes they only make up the first line of a whole range of appreciation for you and they are barely my whole arsenal when it comes to loving you.

some day.

Perhaps even closer than Friday somewhere in the month of let's say, August, some weeks before your birthday you would let me take you to the edge of the ocean; that perhaps the world will let us take ourselves to the ocean and you would hold my hand again as we walk along the shoreline, because we have never left wet temporary footprints in the sand before except in my mind. Perhaps the grittiness of wet sand between our toes would be a lovely memory to have, along with the waves making only a shushing sound when the tide is out.

Perhaps some day, because I missed you.r eyes just moments after I woke up this morning.

a distant memory.

There was this one night -- I remember you wearing a white shirt and faded jeans, just flip flops and your hair tied in that knot. It was getting late and you had to get home soon. We passed through a convenience store on the way to go look for this orange soap and it was there that this memory got stuck. You, under that harsh fluorescent light, looking upon two rows of soap and shampoo, then you looked at me, a smile across the distance of a few shelves of household products and cosmetics. I called you, some moments later, but not by your name, and you held my hand as I got close enough, silent and grinning.

I wonder now, if this memory is just too distant it already borders on fantasy. But I distinctly remember your smile and I think that is all that matters for this remembrance to be true.

It was not a cold night, it was warm. Like us.

some cool evening.

I woke to the sound of light rain falling, and as I opened my eyes in the darkness, I doubted my ears. I got off the bed some minutes later and saw rain spatters glistening on the window of the parked tricycle outside our room. I had another doubt whether to call it rain at all, as the wetness from the concrete outside was already fading like fragments of a dream. It was just one of those two minute rains, that fell before summer, and it was just going to make the night more humid. But still it would have been good to see the beginning of that rain fall, however fleeting it was. It would have been good to stare it for some few still moments. I got ready for work and left not trying to think about it.

Almost two hours later,on my break and as I was reading a recent text message, the rain came. It fell hard; shameless and inviting. Cold and so missed, like it hadn't fallen for eight years and I was a dry, cracked ground, eroding in the summer wind grain by grain. When I saw the rain dancing on the black asphalt streets I had to fight the urge to walk slowly somewhere where the rain fell the hardest and the coldest. I really wanted to. I would, if not for the circumstances of work and obligation. It was just a few minutes shy of a new day, and the darkness was only broken by the light coming from the lampposts and the orange and green fluorescents of a nearby 7-11.

I watched a few meters away from the downpour and as the wind picked up, some errant drops would shower on me and I smiled like a child. I watched and smiled until the rain ceased to be a rain and only its slickness and wetness remained shining on the asphalts and the marble floor of the entrance to the building I was working in.

I read your message again, and felt you falling inside me like rain. A long time coming. I have really missed the rain falling, along with me.

something like.

it feels like a little of something,
like something familiar,
like some taste of sorrow
and a slice of almost pure joy.
I feel it is a little something
like desire

it feels a little like love, baby
a little like despair
of everything that we are
mixed in with hope and lust
and yes, it is feels a little like love.

it feels a little like when I am near you
and our skin kissing each other
it also feels like that time I watched you
ride away in the evening wind

it feels a little like love, baby
a little like perfectness
of everything that we are
mixed in with you and me
and yes, it is feels a little like love.

it feels a little like when we are
looking for each other when
distance is so real
and just a little embrace
then we are ready to die

it feels a little like love, baby
a little like being complete
of everything that we are
mixed in with your eyes and mine
and yes, it feels a little like love.

baby, I guess this is love.

okay ka lang?

I had to put off writing for a while, I was too far gone at some point and purposely writing about something else would only eventually make me succumb to your gravity and drag me raw against the gravel-covered street of your silence. For a time it was all downhill from there, and after a week I waited for the numbness that I know would come at some point, after having been here a number of times already.

Only this time I wasn't afforded that numbness and somewhere promptly forgot how to smile without being conscious of it. The absence of rain only made things feel worser than it was. No cold to turn to for a brief respite from all this silence and my sledgehammer reveries, as no hour passes without you staying inside my thoughts, like you owned them. And you are.

I have to wean myself from music again, it really goes well with all the emotions roiling inside me and everytime I turn the volume up I forget myself and only you remains. It gets harder to pick myself up after the music stops and the world reminds me that I have to be up to speed with its revolutions. I stay in bed for some time and ignore everything to continue revolving around you instead. When the darkness has embraced me long enough then I move and fall into routine.

Then I read "musta?"

I almost close my eyes as gravity calls and as I heed that call, again.

and like an afterthought, I remembered a line from a book saying that the rictus of pleasure closely resembles the rictus of extreme pain, enough that one can be interchanged for the other.

some rain.

as of late, like nearly half a year, sleep eludes me now during bus rides.
I only keep staring outside and my mind blurs like the scene passing outside.
like the road names, like the street signs, like the public schools devoid of children
like the rusty bucolic decadence of some homes and junk shops that appear out of the rural landscape
and like them, time also blurs and only the sun passing overhead will remind me of change.

on my way here to Manila, the rain fell, silent and secret at first
then like all eventualities, came and became;
and thus painted the bus window to translucency
but you were already on my mind long before I saw the grey clouds;
precursors of automatic remembrances and longing

since as of late, slumber has been replaced by something more important.
in between the rides and during the miles, sleep is a forgotten obsolete notion
when it concerns you and hurting for you.

that old insensate feeling.

I have just been looking at feathers in my hand, for the longest time; all of them scattering now and getting lost from each other in this rare wind that had began to pick up speed and strength a minute ago, or it could be hours. Weeks, perhaps. I have feeling that it has been weeks. I cannot begin to move and strangely the ground has grown to be comfortable. I tried to be close to the sun, and even armed with the foreknowledge I flew high enough and the reality of distance took over and so I fell, and gravity embraced me like a long lost lover. I hurt all over, and I still get to wonder why I have still haven't crumbled along with the feathers in this breeze. The feeling of sedation had set in except for some parts where the hurt just got all concentrated. I have to close my eyes in a few moments, in this pain without release.

The feathers were gone the next time I opened my eyes and my mind now is on fast forward, going to Friday, imagining things about this coming Friday. I will be walking again; walking on old, different streets that I haven't seen for some time. It is just Tuesday, and it seems forever in between. But I still have to live even if it maybe a mere reflection, I only have to be somewhere for sometime in order to do that and not look at the sun for sometime, not to look and remind myself of the futility of her distance despite the very warmth. I haven't slept in a month, perhaps Friday might be a little less cruel and allow me some, perhaps even throw in a three-minute dream of the sun and her possibilities.

because dreams, dreams, they aren't born of reason.

"Oh, you can't help that," said the Cat: "We're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad."

martianlove.

To peel off some layers of memory. Slow and leisurely unwrapping of the years. The dear and beautiful parts where we burst into flames and died out just as fast. Like after a tryst, you walked away sudden and without a word. Then nightly you dreamed in high definition about me and about us. Our grounded emotions wanting to be picked up and carried inside our clothes like perfume or that cologne that smelled so like the smell of rain coming in our room. For all the places in our mind that in recent days we had discovered again, those secret joys of our own, all our own again. Old, timeless stories making us smile again, after being kept, deliberately neglected and during some days almost forgotten. The keeping that we thought... futile and unneeded for those memories, our emotions had proved the otherwise. Then overcome and carried away, we smiled and knew that the best and precious things in our lives were always free and just an embrace away.

give me a reason.

I'm sorry... since almost akin to a preprogrammed thought pattern, you're still the first thought when I wake up and you're still the last thought on my mind before I sleep; and sometimes even during sleep itself, you're there along with the shimmer in your eyes, like small oceans with the sun caught drowning in its waves.

You're...you're... you know, these are not really easy things to say over the phone, in text messages or more, in e-mails, even in these posts that I know you never read or when we get the chance to converse again in a promised next time that we see eye to eye again. We'd prefer to let silence wash over us during those moments and that silence only to hold us nearer; when the moment passes then I can try again.

This is what you are to me, and I guess this is just the way that I am, the way that I made myself, unconsciously around you. I thought there was a choice, between ignoring it and just letting it be. There wasn't.

Let it be, let it be then, please just let it be.

a mixtape for our silence.

These past weeks I silently played songs in my mind along with my media player, and lip-synched their lyrics. They sometimes slowly carried me to short uneasy naps, or accompanied me in the short lonely bus rides to work, or played like musical scores on my long way back to the apartment in the morning and they gently ripped me apart during mid-afternoons when sleep was never there and I could only miss you.

And so I sang them in my mind and thought of you and us, and some were more than familiar enough that the words weren't memories at all, and with some I stumbled along and learned. As I sang along, I knew some of those songs would entirely speak our thoughts for us if we were listening to them; the words becoming our own, an adlib for our chronicles, filling in the silence.

In our, perhaps, self-imposed silence, it would be so good to hear those songs together, and listen to the words as they come and as they retell our thoughts about each other, and to just bridge the gap of the long prolonged hush that had come over us the past weeks. Please let me hold your hand then, make that instance of touch be our calm assurance that reality is never harsh as we want it to be, as we go over the verses and the choruses of those songs we have heard over the absent years and the new ones that we heard together. To hear those songs together and fill our ourselves with ourselves again.

And I know, even if we don't get to hold hands because of distance or of circumstance, our minds will always find a way to embrace as before and like before; and as linked as before with how we feel, like twins of some sort, of some other weirdness or with our beloved idiosyncrasy when we are together. So that I can get to wish that we can listen to these songs together in some other way and listen to these songs silence this silence away. Then we can just miss each other in a good way, without the need for our own words for reassurance, just our presence and these songs.

some story.

As the phrase "love you forever" was tumbling and going through my mind, I remembered reading a story somewhere and somewhen telling that there is an absolute cure for love. I had forgotten who wrote the story and what the title was, I can only recall that it was in a compilation of short stories; a small blue paperback crammed full of last century's musings about the future. In that story it tells that the cure for love is time, or specifically Immortality.

I guess the premise of that story would deromanticize the vampires of Anne Rice, if not, all of the romantic immortal vampires of fiction and yes, there goes Edward Cullen too. When time stops to affect you physically, it would always be a major paradigm shift, and I am thinking now that emotions or feelings would always find itself rooted in previous memories and the connection of a certain memory to another; and memory being temporal, where do you root your emotions when you have lost sense of time? when time doesn't affect you anymore? Eternal life, as I stop to think about it is certainly overrated.

Because for what purpose or reason are emotions when the persons that you devote them in would always pass, depart and die. Hate is far from the being the opposite of love, Indifference rather is the nearest as it does not even acknowledge that emotion, and perhaps even negates it. I guess through time Indifference would always win and B. Corgan would only sing it more simply, "the more you change, the less you feel".

And if the story was ever true, even in some context, the phrase that had been tumbling in my mind "love you forever" would be a contradiction of sorts, since forever would only intimate immortality and by the definition of forever the phrase would defeat its purpose. But as it goes it is only a story, a science fiction from the early 1900s and it, among many other contradictions in my life, wouldn't really change how I feel, when I think and say that "I love you forever". That story can only make that phrase truer for me.

currently playing E:\Internal

311 - Love Song
Ace of Base - All That She Wants
Amy Winehouse - Tears Dry On Their Own
Arkarna - Block Capital
Ash - Girl From Mars
Ash - Oh Yeah
Backdraft - Sad Mad Ballad
Ben Folds Five - Battle of Who Could Care Less
Betrayed - Without You
Better than Ezra - Desperately Wanting
Big Head Todd And The Monsters - Tangerine
Bloc Party - Banquet
Blur - You´re so Great
Bush - Swallowed
Chain Gang - Tuesday Of My Being Sick
Chicosci - Paris
Coldplay - Shiver
Colin Hay - Overkill
Collective Soul - Burning Bridges
Collective Soul - She Gathers Rain
Color it Red - I Need You Here
Counting Crows - Anna Begins
Counting Crows - Goodnight Elisabeth
Daft Punk - Something About Us
Dave Matthews Band - #34
Dave Matthews Band - Say Goodbye
Deftones - No Ordinary Love
Dishwalla - Every Little Thing
Eric Clapton - Signe
Filter - Take a Picture
Foo Fighters - Best Of You
Fra Lippo Lippi - Shouldn't Have To Be Like That
Garbage - Only Happy When It Rains
Garbage - When I Grow Up
Gary Jules - Mad World
Goldfinger - This Lonely Place
Gwyneth Paltrow - Bette Davis Eyes
H-Blockx - How Do You Feel
Hugh Wilson - Falling Away(Sprite Commercial)
Imago - Akap
Incubus - I Miss You
Incubus - Summer Romance (Anti-Gravity Love)
Indio I - Di Mo Lang Alam
Jack Johnson - No Other Way
Jack Johnson - Staple It Together
James - Say Something
Jars of Clay - Five Candles
Jet Black Joe - Rain
Jimi Hendrix - Fire
Joe Satriani - Cryin'
John Legend - Save Room
John Mayer - Dreaming With A Broken Heart
Joy Division - Love Will Tear Us Apart
Kapatid - Luha
K's Choice - Not an Addict
Lenny Kravitz - It aint Over Till It's Over
Live - All Over You
Madonna - This Used To Be My Playground
Matchbox 20 - If You're Gone
Maxwell - Eachhoureachsecondeachminuteeachday Of My Life
Michael Franks - Mr. Blue
Mighty Mighty Bosstones - The Impression That I Get
Moonpools & Caterpillars - Ren
Morrissey - The More You Ignore Me The Closer I Get
Mr. Big - Promise Her The Moon
Mutiny - Ibaon Mo Sa Limot
Nirvana - Dumb
Noel Cabangon - Nag-iisa, Wala Ka Na
Oasis - Don't Look Back in Anger
Oasis - Slide Away
Pearl Jam - State of Love and Trust
Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here
Popsicle - Histrionics
Radiohead - Thinking About You
Rivermaya - Hate
Rizal Underground - Come Around Again
Sheila and the Insects - Unholy Days
Sheryl Crow - D'yer Mak'er
Silverchair - Miss You Love
Smashing Pumpkins - Mayonaise
Smoking Popes - Need You Around
Soundgarden - Fell On Black Days
Stone Temple Pilots - Big Empty
Stone Temple Pilots - Interstate Love Song
Sugar Hiccup - Womb
Sugarfree - Unang Araw
Switchfoot - Meant To Live
The Beatles - Something
The Black Crowes - Hard to Handle
The Cardigans - I Need Some Fine Wine And You You Need To Be Nicer
The Cure - Just Like Heaven
The Dambuilders - Shrine
The Dawn - Tulad ng Dati
The Jerks - Malayo na ang Puso
The Lemonheads - It's a Shame about Ray
The Offspring - Gone Away
The Teeth - Me
The Wallflowers - Closer To You
The Wuds - Takipsilim
The Youth - Nobody Loves Me
Toad The Wet Sprocket - All I Want
Tom Waits - Hang Down Your Head
Tom Waits - San Diego Serenade
True Faith - Everything She Wore
Veruca Salt - One Last Time
Weezer - No Other One
Wreckless Eric - Whole Wide World

tuesday of my being this.

I lay down again on top of the bunk bed, and watched the light filter in through the blue curtain of our room. I was waiting for the light to fade, for the windows to turn dark again, waiting for the late afternoon to die and shrivel into evening. There was still some time yet, and blue yet was the light coming in and I lay there watching and knew that my mind was not there with me. The occasional breeze coming in and out as it alternately lifted the curtain and pressed it again on the window made it appear like it was breathing even if rather irregularly, as if in gasps, stealing breaths when it can; like some morbid mockery of suffocation.

It is the time of the sun again and her rage is here, becoming a constant inescapable truth every midmorning when I would just be able to sleep. I wish for rain, even with all the accompanying memories that it carries with it, even if it will remind also like a constant inescapable truth but always better the coldness than the heat. Not that the rain would also help with my sleep, it will also allow me a broader view of my mind. The past days I sleep no longer than three hours before I find myself staring, and wide awake, remembering dreams before they pale away to my first thoughts being born upon waking. I am not even surprised of the central theme that these thoughts have, they are always the same. They are the same as the last thought I have before I slip away into uneasy sleep. My sleep pattern is approximating the way I slept some years ago.

The blue has just become pronounced and there are fringes of darkness already encroaching outside the window. I silently go down the bunk bed and turn off the fan, silently wondering again if being busy would be some sort of escape, an unconventional therapy, a vent for the excesses of the mind but I know that once I get there, I would start wondering again if it would have been better to stay here in the apartment and just alternately write and space out, then look out of the front door, craving for rain.

he never saw Molly again.

and you reached in deep again, from all those years, and dragged me back from under the water and watched me as I lay gasping, breathing in air again, and it was being born again.
naked and shivering, I crawled towards you and you cradled me like before and we sat there; quiet and watching the horizon change as we held hands waiting and watching eternity crash along the shore.
our wings moved and they felt a wind rising; iridescent and blinding in the light of the sun, now on its way to a seeming death in the ocean and we flew looking at each other in some sort of surreal vision, only the reassurance of touch making it a reality.
our souls having been forsaken for some time are finding each other again, finding a measure of being in one piece and the stars slowly came out to watch our dance.

for a time, for some time. there was only us and nothing else.

a strategic nuke just went off in my mind and i'm finding it hard to smile.

or even show an iota of any emotion in the proper way that it should be displayed and there's just this sudden need to just go somewhere quiet and gradually fade from there; to just walk for hours and lose myself in the sound of my footsteps and my breathing. To space out without any idea of time passing, without any thought of living and without the very idea of a center.

This is for taking away gravity and bringing it back once I reached cloud height. It wasn't the long slow fall that I imagined, when it happened, it was a straight downward plunge, no slow motion, or graceful descent. Full and deep impact. Just after tonight easy and comfortable sleep would be elusive once again, and fuck if I'd care to look for it, to care for another futile act in my history of desperate futile attempts; all attempts made with full proper knowledge beforehand.

The resulting radiation is caving in my chest at the moment and I'm finding it hard to breath, I thought I had been here before but I was wrong again. This is something entirely fresh and an entirely new world of pain, when my last thought was your laughter and little story about your hair before ground zero disappeared, before I was swallowed up by the passionate force and heat of perhaps a thousand suns in the space of a few seconds.

At this time, I don't even have enough push to wonder what is left, there's just a vague feeling of breathing and being there. When vision returns for a moment, reality fucks me up as I find you superimposed in everything, then I drift away again and so very little remains. Even if this is me, this is you; and this is us most of all. What very little remains belong to the wind and at the mercy of the radioactive wind. I had wanted to die in your arms, looking at your eyes and you. There is just no one here beneath this mushroom cloud.

If I cannot think and feel, am I still...

mp3s for my funeral.

Dirges, elegies, laments or whatever you may want to call them, these are the songs that will follow you to your grave. These will be the songs that they will play on your wake, flowing out somberly from speakers that someone brought in to add more ambience to the funeral parlor, adding more drama to your drama. These will be the songs that will play out from the tinny speakers of the hearse that will bring you to your supposed final resting place, and more often than not, they will play it from cassette players. Almost always "Hindi kita malilimutan" would be played, and the playlist of the usual crud of music that were playing even before you were born or songs you never hear anywhere except in funerals. Songs in the ever lonely minor keys, and songs made only to wring more grief out of sadness. Now, what if someone could just play the songs you were fond of when you were still alive...what if you could, before you ever expired, told the world that they play your playlist in your wake and in your funeral to remember you by instead of those songs...

I dont think I am writing this is out of morbidity or even a deathwish or a penchant for death but perhaps, I should say, insurance for the living. I am not a moviestar, a politician or even a rockstar, I don't think I am even barely popular but I'm sure there would be souls who will come to my wake and walk alongside that black hearse towards my still unoccupied grave and I will be more than thankful if the songs that will be played would be the songs they knew I liked and loved to hear. Small comfort if you're dead but a comfort still. And to those people who came it would be more okay if the last song that will play in their head when they depart from the cemetery would be a familiar tune, instead of Gary Valenciano's voice crooning "Hindi kita malilimutan".

My playlist would always include Counting Crows at the top my list along with Blind Melon. It would be a free for all from there; from Gin Blossoms to Metallica, from John Mayer to Soundgarden to Rage Against the Machine, from Eraserheads to Backdraft, to Indio I; from Daft Punk to Tom Waits. I know could go on for some more and the songs would just go on and they will continue on playing long after I have been buried and started to go soft, I guess there are just too many of them after those first two bands; perhaps I should make my playlist more definitive then. Perhaps I should start writing it down and lower it down to just 400 songs and give that list to whoever would be able on my wake and funeral. Now, wouldn't it be wonderful if they could play the songs you like on your funeral, on your last hurrah before you start turning to dust, before they start forgetting about the color of your eyes...

How about you, have a playlist running in your mind?

the distance to the sun.

A few hours ago, as I sat inside the Fort Bus and resigned to the fact that I was running late, I looked out of the window and everything outside was suddenly in soft focus; all encased in their own glow, or reflected from somewhere. Perhaps it was the surreality of the scene passing outside, or even perhaps coupled with my mood that I was unexpectedly drawn back to the present and found some different pieces that I have been holding in my mind suddenly falling into place. And I continued looking outside and just lost myself in the music I was listening to, not wanting to think at that moment, and felt that sudden unbearable lightness of being carried no weight anymore tonight and some more things in my mind floated away like errant ballons and were gone.

Then I got off the bus, went inside our building and in the enclosed space of the elevator, I realized that I had turned the volume up in my player loud enough to drown any ambient noise and the heady trip that I was having continued. The flourescent lights were also suddenly glaring tonight as I looked over the digital clock that read I was 19 minutes late for my graveyard shift. Then I went online and read an e-mail from you and reread old ones and thought perhaps that there was a habit starting to form somewhere here as I went through the motions of looking for you online. Then work intruded once more.

A quarter of a day later as l looked out of the 12th floor, I saw that morning had calmly intruded through the dark blue of the fading night and remembered that short ride a few hours back in the bus whose windows, covered in a sheer patina of dust and age, were soft focus lenses. Unconsciously, I ran my hand over my head and knew that my mind was still right there and if things were changing then this was just a sort of a follow through, the ripples going out in ever smaller and tinier circles.

I knew this also meant that I could feel again, that my emotions were right again, and that singular prevailing emotion was right back with me again. Alive and flowing through me; making me myself again.

another 160 characters.

Perhaps I wasn't expecting to see more of these, I guess I was wrong then. I found more of my 160 characters; some faithfully rewritten more than half a decade ago, some I saw again from old journals that I haven't read in a lifetime, some were collecting electronic dust in an old sim card, some are words that I know would never get sent and some recent ones I wrote for ghosts and perhaps for myself.

even this far i can see you, the evening wind making you cold, making me miss you like 7 years ago, wishing i had eight arms to hold you and to keep you warm.

before sleep comes,before tiredness wins and before i seek the refuge of sleep,i think of you;your voice,your hair,your skin and let all of you cover over me.

life, at the moment, is waking up in the morning, alone on a cold strange bed, and finding daisies printed on my pillow and missing all of you and your warmth.

have lost & found myself in them. have burned their images in my mind. have made love loving them. perhaps they're closed now, can i,may i kiss them open again?

you know, i would kill for a kiss, a single french kiss from you; and I'll massacre for a naked hug along with that kiss; a genocide if we could make love.

remember rain,remember you.remember oceans,remember you.remember blue mornings,remember you.remember summer afternoons,remember you.remember me,remember you.

no chance for sleep, only trying to ignore the deep want that i was there watching over you. i tried the tv, and saw us there, our lives two movies in a row.

and i'll hold you as i want you;hold me as you want me and we'll slowdance in the music of our warmth,together after for so long, our souls can make love again.

somewhere between naga and the thought of home; between this place and that time, the expected and the not; with only you in my mind together with our escapes.

yes, change; always as a wind, scentless and with clouds, formless and of all shapes. yes, a change is coming; cold troubled air molecules troubling karmas.

an empty house is a cold companion even with cable tv, and i sudden feel more older today, as i kept looking for you as the channels flash on by.

i remember our adobo dinners held like celebrations in different plates and zip codes and how we ate our dinners with each other in our minds and tongues.

just bring me some rain because I'm dying.*

Now, she just stares at me and shakes her head if I ask if it's okay. It's getting harder everytime, and even if she smiles in the end, I know she's right that it is not okay. The sad truth that I have to leave every time I come home, is digging deeper and deeper, oftentimes catching and dragging across my figurative flesh like a barbed hook. When it's hours before I leave and we both know it, I shift my eyes somewhere when she looks at me. But I can only embrace her and feel her frame embrace me back with what love she can muster. Inwardly, I am screaming.

I cannot let her see me crying, I feel that perhaps it wouldn't do any good; just create more sadness in my absence.

Then days after, I know she'll be looking for me, asking where I am even if she knows where; like a heartbreaking sort of an exercise but not exactly to the point of futility, some kind of assurance that there are still answers to her questions and I don't want to think about the time when the answers can't contain that assurance anymore.

And I'll call her in a little while, perhaps after I wake up just to hear her say my name, just to hear her laugh and to hear her tell me about her day or about what happened to her yesterday; then there will be that silence again after she had told me all her little stories, and when she hesitates to ask me to tell my own little stories. I can hear her on the other end, even after she had stopped speaking. At this point, I will be wishing to the point of hallucination that I can embrace her; feel her embrace me even for just a minute of uninterrupted bliss. Then after the call, I will space out and float away, not wanting to feel anything for some spell then come back to this one thought:

I miss you.








* A. Duritz - title taken from a line of "Children in Bloom"

crime rate.

Since there is no escaping this cold, in the different places where we are, I will turn to our thoughts and the memory of your voice to keep warm and most importantly to keep sane. Although in an afterthought I know I should try to avoid the memory of your skin, the memory of the warmth escaping from it when we are close enough, when we are locked in an embrace, or when we are sharing a kiss or when you are there behind me, your face resting on my shoulder; because then I float away and lose all sense of time and space.

Perhaps there never was a more futile attempt as inevitably all memory will trail a path towards it, like silent tributaries joining a river before losing themselves in the ocean.

Still, even if there's some misery in trying, I try anyway, as the cold keeps on going and sometimes relentless but not unforgiving enough that I will not miss you in its chill. Then I smile, as I almost always desperately fail in trying.

As I continue to continue, there's an increasing sense of foreboding that this will only get stronger and even more desperate as time passes; so unlike this cold of mid-January which will fade away like earthly pain come March. And only that ache will remain, something forever stuck in my soul.

For I know the secret in that ache: I get to be with you;
afterwards, the cold can rage all it wants and freeze anything it wants, I will only get to be warm.

And then perhaps Friday, I will get to see you again.

not missing the sun.

you once spoke of hiding the sun ages ago and I fell in love
with the way you spoke those words,
hearing you say them through the phone and I
wanted to see your eyes just at that moment
as those words, those words went to live me with me
like a newly acquired mole on my body; marking it, branding it
and taking it out of the ordinary realm of my emotional skin,
as I fell, like you were gravity personified.
as always with your words,
with your soft exhalations and abrupt interjections,
or those turn of phrases that only you had the unique flair of speaking.
it would always be that and something more than that;
after that first instance you blocked my view of the sun that early June
and forever blended with my life, like dark chocolate melting in our tongues,
always finding the right places to nestle into, the right emotions to nuzzle with,
always the right moments to embrace and always
the right words for the epiphanies in our lives;
entwined, interlaced and forever linked.
and in this early January when rains are like our memories
sliding down from our secret archives
I can only miss you and not miss the sun at all, here with the rain.

new year rain.

the sunlight was coming in muted, and still overwhelmed by the leftover blueness of the last day of last year. It rained at the time the year changed, and I could hear your laughter, along with mine, and it has been too long since I heard us and outside the fireworks were vainly trying to reach glory in the rain.

As the the day struggled to break free of the vestiges of a new year's night, I wanted to hear our laughter again, but I guess, there were more things I wanted other than us being temporarily giddy with our laughter. More things -- a lot of things; the first of them all being you; and I also wanted this new year to be kinder and more surreal than the hard reality that was 2008. But you; really you, most of all.

In my mind, I can see you sleeping. I like watching you sleep, love. I like to look at you when you close eyes. I'm your blatant voyeur and always reckless in telling you that I love everything that you are and I am missing you to the point that I can feel my jaw hurt, along with a major part of my chest.

That rain falling on midnight meant well for us, that rain for a new year; of soft dreams falling and us waking in time for some little wishes to come true, love.