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.