my leg is killing me, thank you for asking.

I have to realize that it is going to be me and my pillow yet again and that part hasn't changed much in the past seven years. it seems rather empty now that I look at it even with the sweet short intervals in between where I don't get to sleep there; the thing is I still go back to it, I still have to go back to it. Perhaps the cold weather is just making it more pronounced or perhaps just more recognizable for what it is. Only that there is a reason why I am here with that empty bed and a pillow that I mostly use as something to close my arms over.

Right now. there is just too much and as a case in point, lately I have come to realize my old current work interferes with these daily epiphanies that I think would have made me better but then again along the motions of going to work, the work itself and going from the office to the aforementioned empty bed, there also are epiphanies that I happen upon, like what is the difference then. And then I come back to my situation and wonder why I have only been here not somewhere else, except that I know the full reason why I am here. I have to recognize that truth of getting the answers to my questions because I think this one of those times that the abyss just looked back. I may perhaps be overthinking it again, then again I may just missing the truths that stare me in the face every day. Missing a piece is a good thing when one needs to be alive.

I am now in that haze after recalibrating my thoughts about certain things that I have continually done and knowing suddenly that there might be other ways that I could have done it. In that haze it sinks in again that the better way for all these is someone to converse it with, and share that empty bed. Going through this is just plain scary, and all of us wants to make it through anyway. There is no use if there is no one to affirm that. Just yourself is never enough. I can blame the weather for all I care, but that truth will also burn right through it.

(and I guess this goes out to all of the persons that I miss and pine for; those conversations that I cannot remember most of the time where they end)

all this evening needs is rain falling.

Looking at the days inching closer to the 23rd makes the months that have went past more real; enough to put the nearly 12 months of those days to make a year, when time a few months ago never seemed to move. I know that everything that has been is real, I was never a fool to deny that part except that I knew there was one thing that I could deny for the most part, my emotions about it all.

I knew that you wouldn't be around forever, but with that same breath it would be so great to have a little more time to spend with you. There is nothing that I would have wanted more tonight, as a prelude to the anniversary of your passing.

And then it begins to rain outside, and I can't help but rain also. (with the almost dry heat of the day I didn't think there wouldn't be any chance of the heavens breaking down in tears.)

Yes, perhaps I shouldn't deny myself anymore. I can hear you say now, that we will get over this in time. I have to start working again on the things that I know I should have done more. And I hear you again saying that everything gets better with practice.

I'll be there in a week, Pa, with Mama saka si Topsy, then kumpleto na naman kita.

this is from one of those books that we dog eared with reading, Journey to Ixtlan.

The Definitive Journey

… and I will leave. But the birds will stay, singing:
and my garden will stay, with its green tree,
with its water well.
    Many afternoons the skies will be blue and placid,
and the bells in the belfry will chime,
as they are chiming this very afternoon.
   The people who have loved me will pass away,
and the town will burst anew every year.
But my spirit will always wander nostalgic
in the same recondite corner of my flowery garden.

(by Juan Ramón Jiménez, translated by Carlos Castaneda)

Miss you, Pa

smell the flowers.

You have to wonder sometimes where this is all going someday, even if wondering seems like staring into something endless and black. I happen across the traces of some lives that I have lived with, and loved; them having been a part of my memory and history without ever insinuating their presences, the wind just blowing them in, and having stayed there -- with me -- as if they have always belonged there.

(They were just like flowers in my field; one moment nothing was there then there they were, putting out roots and after some time they were in bloom and the field just wouldn’t look the same without them now.)

They are mostly in the music I play or listen to, photographs that have mostly faded from my mind that pop up somewhere, a postcard, certain turn of phrases, some old films on a rerun, mid afternoons, the stars or when the rain falls and the lulls in between them. They are just there, even if I'm not looking.

And these vestiges of times glorious and golden, after the initial ache of missing those souls pass, will sometimes lead me to some subdued thoughts of where exactly are we leading ourselves into, if there even is an end to all those roads that we have traveled on and forks that we still have to take, if ever there will be a chance to smell those flowers again, or perhaps we have just always been the captive audience of our collective imagination.

It is good that these thoughts are not the lingering kind; only exercises for the mind not a monster that I should battle with because the flowers that are still there are at most only short-lived and I should always find the time to stop and smell them.

stories abound.

The thought of just where I should start has occupied my mind for so long, that there is this feeling sometimes that I might actually be afraid of starting on this path. Tonight... as the thought crossed my mind again, and as I read along someone else's words, I think the whole time I was just waiting for the right time to start.

The stories are waiting.

It's nearly time, then I will let things flow again. I don't want to wait anymore.

no surprise.

This is rolling with the blow; that I not set myself up for a second one because the pain is still there, real and pulsing. And also not to deny anything that has been and for anything that still lingers. I go home to the night again, and the rains are finally coming, perhaps there is hope for me yet. There is nothing more difficult to the body than the relentless sun and a restless mind. It is with a reasonable perhaps that I surmise that perhaps June has finally faded to this month. I always wondered when that would finally happen. I have to wonder again if that would also mean being unstuck out of that moment I have been in for ages.

This also means that I can stop the world again if I wanted to. Anytime.

silences in between raindrops.

They were there, waiting and staring back at me. I could hear their laughter, like how could I forget. How could I ever forget. For a long time, it was just too much sun and heat. Too dry for emotions, too dry for anything to get a good grip and now, hearing them laugh, it was not hard to get caught up in it. How could I ever forget. It is nice to smile inside again, it is akin to being embraced by you. And the rain is doing that to me today. There is no rush for the sun, no need for the heat, it is good to feel cold again.

And as they fall I continue to gaze at the ripples of coolness, as they fall and wash over my world.

breaking down with style.

I always have had trouble going through this wall, and the thing is I know it isn't there at all; nothing keeping me at all from whatever was beyond that unpassable border. Except that in this situation, knowing isn't worth jackshit. I just didn't know what to make of that wall, of whatever it was. I couldn't put my mind's finger on what it was. Was it made of emotions or memories. Or just psychoshit that I made up unconsciously. Whatever it was, it was an unknown, and things were easier if I let it be, if I took it for granted and just kept on breathing for the sake of living. Easier said, and I know it bothered me more than I would like to give it credit for. It certainly took me long enough to say hello, and finally recognize it for what it was.

The wall was me, voices and all. demons and all. inconsistencies and all. I was right that it was never there at all.

I am moments away now from stepping through and sentimental as hell, I think I would like a look back.

Then I am through, and the air here smells like the ocean.