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.