getting cold again.

It doesn't rain as much as it used to, but the rain still falls and it still is cold. Then I wonder if the statement of those facts would do something instead of me just sounding foolish. Because everybody knows that. Everybody.

That perhaps saying those things would change some thing in my mind. Trigger some chain reaction in there that would make me explode. Instead of this slow burn. Slow undying burn.

And again it does not do anything and I make the mistake of speaking again. Reluctance losing out to the need for something to happen. Which is why most of the time I keep to myself. Things are less complicated that way. Less complicated in the way that other eyes will see. I am okay with my complications, though okay would not be the right word, I know.

I watch for rain. then I lose myself when it does. Yes, it is still cold. Unembraceable.

irindahan.

inda man.
inda ko man kung tano arog kani ang maagahon.
inda ko baga.
inda ko kung tano halawig pirmi ang mga biahe.
inda ko kung mauran atsan.
inda.
inda sana kung aram mo.
inda ko talaga.
inda ko sa mga sinabi mo kadto...
inda, inda; kaya lang giroromdom ko pa.
inda ko kung ika iyo man. inda ko sana.
inda ko baga.
inda kung nagsagin sagin lang,
inda kung garo mayo lang
inda kung pasil ingirit
o kung mas pasil lingawan.
inda sa inda mo,
inda kung kaniguan o bako
inda kung pasali lang o totoo man nanggad
inda.
inda ko saimo.
inda man saimo.


basta.

don't cross the streams.

It isn't that hard to feel, unless you mean pain, let Atlas shrug this off if he can. It isn't even an effort to fight it off because some part of you will still feel. So, I just let it go at that and found out that, it was in a way, how to escape. I should have just fought it off then, continuing would have been more easier even broken. Even if I knew that a broken vase can still be further broken.

But as it is, I am now here and the strangeness of Manila, as I have known before, wouldn't be of help; it just made me more detached. The rains I have been in are halfhearted at best; and if it doesn't rain, then I remain, unmoving and waiting. There is no one here, no one, except myself, and this time I need more than myself.

I know I have to go home, that I have to miss you like I have never missed you before, hoping that there would be clues left for me in the sadness of it; that I may sometimes feel that I am living another life, that it would be this detachedness that I have to understand and balance at the same time. I have to go home, even if only in the physical sense of the word.

Like because I can never have your embrace again, and because that is home too.

when i'm fighting sleep somewhere around 3 in the morning

and thoughts like miniature angels float and defy gravity above me, almost within waking reach but only almost, only almost and they leave a faint impression of what those thoughts would be, fully formed and fertile. so I struggle to wake and push my shuffled music to a higher crescendo than before but the angels instead only lose form and only reveal reality behind their fading shapes. and as I wish for that borderline consciousness again as my music starts to fade into the background.

I think I see you there, a hazy outline, going in and out of focus, a ghost in my periphery, somewhere to my right, somewhere near enough to reach.

like moments after a dream, when you are real enough to touch and just before reality punches through that skin of longing.

it's nearly morning and i am not looking forward to anything.

just breathing, watching the window turn a shade lighter... and a shade lighter. these moments of clarity won't last and they come with a price but i take it as they come grateful enough for another perspective; even if it all comes back the same, the view from another angle gives it a fresh new layer of hope and misery in varying degrees.

then these moments pass and I am left with an added wonder to my mysteries, then go on continue on longing for something beyond songs and poetry. beyond touch and breath. hope is one of the very few things left me, and it is a terrible companion; not cold at all, though heartless among other things.

i look forward to missing you again. yes, hoping. like always.

upon going back.

The bus trudged along and I sat watching the on-board movie, and saw the silhouette of someone embracing someone in the squeeze of how it was to be saved and how it was to be found again, and I looked out the bus window a heartbeat later, burnt and almost like I was watching something that didn't feel right. something that was more closer to home than I wanted to. something more closer. perhaps something that I wanted revisited. That like a real burn it lingered and I had to look out of the window and the sun was there like a misplaced memory; strange and familiar at the same time. And warm. so warm.

But I had to return to the movie and so closed the dirty window curtains that stank of the countless trips from this place to that place and saw my reflection for a brief instant, like a glimpse of a face I haven't really seen for a long time then I was back in the cold and hurried darkness... then wondered if my mind was still there, or like that memory had also misplaced it somewhere and I was only watching on autopilot.

These trips are always too fucking long, and if the on-board movie doesn't get me, then the passing scenes outside the bus window will. there is no escape.

by god, I miss your embrace.

to absent friends and companions.

for there were slivers of life, of the lives like secrets that we shared, mostly trivial by this age, perhaps forgotten and faded; secrets not because there was something to conceal but secrets more akin to mystery, that the rest of the world could never hope to understand, those secrets that we kept like they were toys from childhood, like some bookmarks in between the pages of the books of our summers, now almost like fading fringes of a glorious dream except that that these memories persist, instead of just going away when we see our faces again, recognizing places in our faces that have been touched by time, that have been touched by our absence from each other, we ourselves ultimately surprised during those first few seconds after meeting that we can only smile and hold each other, as if for reassurance, as if in a dream, then certainty imposes itself and we find the time, however short, however brief to catch glimpses of those mysteries again, that however tangled and however far our worlds have expanded we are still given the chance to meet. hold hands. hold gazes. hold the visions of a past clearer; that for some have gone ragged and indistinct.

so mobile numbers are not quietly exchanged, business cards noisily passed around and the proximity of addresses argued like proofs that the past of some time ago have not gone quietly into the night of the irrelevant, inconsequential like discarded teabags or nail trimmings. all pointing to the realization that there was evidence of a great life from a point in our lives back then.. when they converged like branches from the same tree.

and our lives themselves were of the same tree, that in a way, in a lovely way we have grown with each other almost by reflex, however far away and however strange; having converged on a plane all of our own back then, and every time we meet after.

the morning sad.

now that early mornings are colder, it sets the chances of holding the mind tableau of longing and constant frustrations more easier. something that the heat of summer could never do. the irony. that the colder it is the more I grow emotionally warm. meaning it is more easier to pine away into reverse somnolence. a four-hour sleep seems too long sometimes. there is also the fact that my media player is working again. more fuel for the fire.

then the rains come. and I go supernova.

as I burn, I doubt if I will even leave ashes behind. ashes for the next phoenix. emotions are like that. always getting reborn and the more I change the more they stay the same. I can only embrace my pillow tighter. devoid of a central nervous system. and that skin. those eyes. and arms. only fibre and a two week old stale pillowcase. only a wish against hope, enough to push the reality to its borders like the morning light edging the dark curtain of this room, a little push and the pillow is you. a fleeting high and the hangover's a cruel bitch.

i miss these kind of mornings.

like rain.

if you ever feel the need to be loved... and sleep with a smile again.

even in this heat and there's only a tired fan to lull you to sleep.
if ever, just in case.

a little distraction once in a while.

since there are ways that summers can leave you frozen. Neglected even.
and the internet is just plain cold despite itself.

if ever, just in case.

Let me. warm you again.

like the constant ocean where I can fade out everything.

The ocean, like a friend's certain smile, that I haven't seen in a long while. This infinity where I can reach out and hold myself together, briny air and tides coming and going.
This is a feeling that I have right now, and because my mind is a little bit easier to be with.
And this is also a time again where everything's about to fall away, that you can see the seams and the threads holding them together coming apart; but the thing is, at the same time, everything seems so much clearer and it is not hard to say that after a long while it seems that this is the breather before everything goes big bang again. And time is an illusion since I don't know how long this will last. Maybe after I watch the ocean again then it would all come tumbling down.

But it will be easier to pick up the pieces.

nice! pfft.

You two would have hit it off, like old friends, once you had picked a topic to geek over. Probability being like 99%, the 1% I surrender to Fate. Unassuming geeks, both of you, though Nald's always a dead give away for geekiness. Pfft girl isn't so noticeable, but her eyes light up in a certain way when she hears some particular keywords, and she wouldn't be so silent anymore. It would have been so great, wouldn't it, if the two of you met.

I miss my two punny friends, yes, major pun intended. I miss them terribly and even more because the world wide web has that distinct way of reminding me of both your presence and absence at the same time. I would have liked to hear both of them laugh at the same time, and tell them after, that they laugh louder now more than ever, though Fey's still do need a little work; and thank God, that men didn't acquire that habit of slapping your arm when they are laughing, Nald has big hands, you know. Fey can slap my arm all she wants while she laughs. She has small hands.

Facebook, in particular, is certainly insensitive, when it suggests that I say hello to both of you, when it suggests that I reconnect or that I should catch up with any of you (I'll pass on that last suggestion, of course). Come on. I am still not okay, truth be told, of accepting that you are both now memories that I would never get to refresh again with new ones. I guess, I could comment all I like on your past notes or say something on your wall, but the thought that I would never get an email notification from any of you is, I guess, sadder than hell. It's a bad idea to go rereading over both of your blogs, really a bad idea when I miss you both. Even if both of you write so well. (that I know, and hundreds of other souls know that as well.)

They both wanted to learn the violin. Only one of more than a hundred paths that they would have shared, given the chance. The two of you had so much in common that I wonder why despite the relative distance, your friends (me included) overlooked the singularity of the two of you knowing each other.

Like me, you two loved the reassurance and the freedom of walking aimlessly, of taking our souls for a breather when Life happened too much in our lives. I cannot begin to imagine where our conversations would go if we all had a long aimless walk together. Plus some rolls of film and cameras. And for you, Pfft, I will have nothing against lomography if you were the one taking photos.

I have the two of you to thank for, for certain obscure films, authors and indie bands that I wouldn't have known despite myself, if the two of you haven't told me. I also think that you two would be the quietest moviegoers I would ever be with, and the most loquacious after the movie. Thanking you though for that part is almost trivial if I think about how we were part of each other's lives despite the vastness of this dissociated world, that the two of you are among the few people that also share those same passions that I have, and gave me more reasons why passions are better if shared among souls that you call friends, and know that in your passing, I will continue to write, not only for my own reasons but also because you'd want me to.

And also because it's not really easy when you two visit me here in the office during times like these and there's really no defense but to write, or tear up miserably, enough for my officemates here to notice.

- for Fae and Nald; my two sorely missed, loved and iyo, parehas kamo corny, friends, who both loved words; the spoken, the written, the painted, the photographed, the filmed and most importantly, the unspoken. And this is also for me; for that elusive catharsis that I need, to see you both woven already in the fabric of my memory.

Ma Fae Clarisse Badilla Barandon
Ronald James Paglinawan Panis

boy, you two sure have long names palan.

youever.

I can finally see the evening again, see how the lights slowly light up by themselves even before the last light gives in to the dark and finally, the wind blows cold again. All these things envelop me, almost like an embrace, a coming home; and I have to stop myself there because the word embrace in remembrance will filter down to you. But embrace and home both feel equally mutual when I think about you. It's just that I don't want to go through that path this early in the evening. Then, again, did I ever win against my memories? Always and ever the fool, because there are times when I fool myself. (I remember every single one of those times, why I wanted to fool myself, and why I succeeded)

I have been thinking that I have never seen a broken heart before only a broken man.

of waking.

Tonight the stars will be all there again, colors fading in and out the more you look at them. Like eyes, like eyes that are forever seared in my mind and it rained yesterday because March is a fateful month, and perhaps it is the only month possible for our planets to align; even enough to think that perhaps your stray thoughts might wander along the path I am on, as my thoughts, they stray but I know where they always end up.

Also,

it was cold this morning and I think it was the cold; and the cold warmed me enough that I could miss you again, unhindered and without the interference of my mind. Without the need to recollect and to hold the memory scent of your neck. Missing you was just there, suddenly there; pure longing and soft madness.

it does not matter if it is mid-afternoon.

You are liable to hit, like tachyons going past through anything. Right now I am being bombarded by you and for respite, I can only close my eyes for a moment then remember to breath, deep. If i am not careful, I'll break again and it might take the better part of a day before I can think straight, think straight in the way that normal reality moves.

And in the meantime i am caged again, but I cannot see the bars nor do I care when most of the time I do not even notice, and i can only stay in this state of mind, that for lack of a word, I'l call happiness; but only as a matter of preference.

Reality does not work like the reality that i have in my mind. I can only hope it does. i dare not watch any movie at this time or read any book, or even read what I have written before because they will all eventually lead to you. Like gravity, relentless and .just there.

I miss you. I cannot say that enough, I cannot feel that enough; the same way how I feel about you is constant.

keeper of my heart, queen of my mind.

and all the cliches come true, they come true and I turn to liquid as I hear them repeat themselves over and over again.

and it happens again.

I need to be away from everything, for this time. For just some hours and some odd minutes. For some time, for a chance to while away forever, or otherwise I'll be stillborn and vacant, watching the stars and think only of drifting away inside my mind.

It is of an impending implosion inside me, of melting, of something inside starting to claw its way out along with the promise of immolation for this progression, but without the assurance of ever coming back as myself. If only I can call myself sad, then it would be an easier ordeal. Temporary and just a prolonged state of mind, a reverse amphetamine that will only last for some time.

There are a lot of things I miss, that I long for, or wish for; fervently enough that it I cannot mistake reality for what it really is, so I have a lot of daydreams, enough to compensate and to keep my imagination alive. I go overboard sometimes that there are mornings when I cannot remember my dreams.

This has to be done in the coming days, the sense of urgency is stronger now and there is a fear losing something if I cannot find a way to burn.

And because of the impossibility of being in your arms, the ocean is the only place I can think of where I can be.