at dahil kailangan ko to.

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

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

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

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

reunions.

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

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

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

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

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

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

everything burning.

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

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

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

Highway 54.

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

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

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

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

These are the days.

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

CK's digs.

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

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

for some time, for some time and forever.

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

three nights. (disquiet, beer and some reflections)

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

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

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

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

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

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

-o0o-

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