august.

they are dropping like flies. dead. 

would it matter if we add one more. 

feelings or otherwise. another dream perhaps. 

I'd very much like music playing while it all happens.

and I want to sleep after.

a long dreamless sleep, where you wake up thirsty after. 

haunted by a nameless longing that never quite faded like the recent sleep.

if not longing, then something akin to loss. loss after almost all the grief has gone.

and only desolateness remains.

sitting on your bed, in this desert

where sand swirls but there is no wind.

timeless. 

LF

my number one supporter 

my dedicated fan.

John Mayer saves me again.

I still get anxious when I press play.
certain songs, certain riffs, certain lyrics are rough-edged; designed to cut straight through anyone's high pain threshold. 

I have to remember, though, that the numbness has taken root, gotten deep over the years. pain doesn't feel the same way as the same pain from before. everything is dulled and easily shaken off. 

what I could have only dreamed of having. for my first heartbreak or loss. and grief.

this is not what I wanted. at all.

resignation.

I sigh my sigh of sighs, thinking that music helps while I watch you in my mind,

my stolen catharsis,  breaking into a smile.

and I am breaking as well, even if music helps, and I watch the horizon go by.
because it is much easier. Much easier to break than to stay. 

I catch you staring, blankly, at something. and you're suddenly beautiful. for the hundred. thousandth. time. and equally painful.

I'll walk a little farther this twilight and keep my mind off things. but not you. and the hundred. thousand. timelines.

break. 

paris.

they say
is a wonder.

but a disappointing wonder.
of dog shit and expensive shit.

do you still want to go? with me. To Paris
at 15 euros for two coffees.

your upside down Louvre,
with that curved Monalisa smirk,
and your silence during my silence.
is Paris.

and free coffees
in the office.

mixed in with your secret spices.

is a wonder.

forgetting time.

I am the one who waits for you.
I am in between remembering that dream and waking.
I wait for you there. 
and wait for you, still.
seconds before you eyes close. 

Killer.

A sudden pang of longing hit me, of riding the metro at night, singing along with Brandon Flowers while fighting the current existential angst. Then I find myself moving along with the crowd having a separate sense of urgency. 

I walk slowly towards inevitability, the curbside lined with thoughts of jumping off the ledge of this certainty. 

The longing passes, except for the ache. Mr. Flowers sang that dreams aren't what they used to be. It's now dark again. I'm there. I'm always there in the end.

If the answer is no, can I change your mind?

I carry it with me.

there's this pain inside.
it slips in and out of time.
displaced, dislocated.
and settles in the same pressure points.
load-bearing posts.
and everything blurs
in the dust of the
post-collapse.
it also gets harder to breathe.

I am afraid of the coming calm.

good night.

effortless pain.
it is suddenly there,
unwanted and unwelcome. honest and brutal.
no blood but flayed still.

timeless, ageless 
but perhaps for the unfeeling.

the wretched.
the resigned.
and the compliant.

the pain is a companion,
a balance for the abyss. that still beckons 
not to stare, but
to leap.
for the faithless.
the guiltless.

but pain is a tether.
and stays.
the abyss can only wait,

like the endless night that it is.

8 centimeters away.

have you seen me lately. 

there's the feeling of fading away again, or something very close to the feeling. 

even if emotions tether me, the sense of vanishing holds a certain allure.
and completeness.

"I remember me
and all the little things
that make up a memory...

and these days I feel like I'm fading away..."

have you looked at me lately. have you held me lately. 


(020424)

cinders.

Like it has always been and I still don't fit in this world, even after more than a dozen world views later. except that it's not even a priority in this sadness, in this burning. nothing takes precedence after your chest caves in and continues to crumble away, only stopping when there's nothing there anymore.

There is still light, but slowly that will fade as I inch inside the very walls that have hidden me. A little over ten years and there is no one left to remind me, of how the stories go, and how the characters went. 

I can finally acknowledge that it is there;
that seeming mental impossibility 

and the stories are all true, after all.

(020424)

sharp.

This path has never been friendly. I have a feeling that it doesn't even care about you in the end. Not one bit. The punishing climb and jagged rocks that serve as handholds and footholds seem to support this. 

We are ghosts still. Hungering to touch and be touched.

It will be another world once we start to bleed. with scenes familiar and strange; all beautiful at the same time. Would we choose to bleed. 

And we keep on climbing while we take the time to decide. Strange purgatorial anticipation.
Will ghosts die if they fall.

days go by.

it's been years, lifetimes, lives of standing still. a safe and a way to live, a way to go on and ignore everything else. even myself, in order to breathe, sleep, move, and walk. then the feeling came; familiar, warm, and reassuring. promises, warm embraces, and perhaps a right way to feel. 

It should begin here. Let my cup runneth over. Let the waves run me under. Let the rain wash over me. 

and still be scared shitless of the ghosts and ghouls of the past ten years lying in wait.

curtain falls.

 Now there's another reason how movies can break your heart, and this time, this time it's not the movie itself, not the characters, not the story, not the intricate turn of events, montage or end credits. This time it's about time. 

The time when that particular movie started to exist and roll through our monitor screen or theater canvas. Whether watched together or separate, the memories are there, during or post-watching. 

Watching reruns are equally devastating. Then the sequels come, and a character moves on. Somehow, I relive your passing and the separateness gets stronger as I watch alone. Only my memories are there.

I die along with these movies and regenerate like Sisyphus, waiting for the world to turn and the next film to watch and an old one to rewatch.  

quiet

I had an unspoken truce with myself that when I picked up the metaphorical pen again I would be going somewhere dark and familiar, that the correct choice would be not to pick up the pen. 

For the past week, memories have been blindsiding me, without any triggers at all. 

For the longest time, I took care not to play certain songs, watch certain movies, or pick up the camera. Even pick up a book.

I have succeeded until now, in a fit of temporary desperation, I pressed play on an Incubus video. It was a song in a playlist I have forgotten I had on YouTube. 

So here we are.

yes (or this involves more than recollection or the promise of temporary salvation from seeming mediocrity or apparent stagnation of my current life.)

during this late afternoon when the shadows shifted and danced, revealing and veiling some parts of your face, in some innocent play of light and sleeping desire, I had moments of missing those parts that I had seen an instant before...now in muted gloom; then they bare themselves again after some indeterminate time and I was happy, contented even for those seconds of forever. I miss that afternoon and all those afternoons, more when February nears its end, and there is that subtle change in the way my eyes see light.

The late afternoon sunlight never looked so good attached to you.

shift + delete.

I guess it was still there inside of me. Not lying in wait, biding its time or just fading away; more like neglected, but still there nonetheless. I have observed it for a long time now and just realized it; that apparently even the mere deletion of files in our hard drives elicit an emotional response, that there is an apparent reason why we only hit the Delete button not Shift + Delete because we will not really be very sure if we want to permanently delete things from our lives or hard drives. The Recycle Bin quietly holds our hopes up for us, the virtual container for an ideal that most often is the root of despair and blogs.

It is extremely difficult for reason to explain why some things are the focus of so much emotion that it goes beyond the physicality of that very thing and from time to time you still find yourself trying to explain it to yourself; logically, you most often fail. Reason tells you that it is just an object, except that we have associated it with an emotion from a memory so much that it isn't about the object or its function anymore.  Is it still about the object then? Or is it about the emotion? Or do they go hand in hand, like somewhere in those words irony and paradox are holding hands.

The sentimentality of things goes beyond physicality now; it involves a lot of zeroes and ones, and involves more than simple computing power for them to manifest virtually, and that sentimentality still manages to tear our hearts. And I think this is the one unspoken truth about the surge of sales in consumer hard drives even as the race for the next big data compression algorithm still goes on:

The sentimentality of memory.

"...because it was the only thing I had left of you."  - Will Hayes

again.

this is not like imagining a ghost. as i know you're there. silent and watching. quietly breathing. with those eyes that remind me of moths and the cause of their demise. and there is the anxiety of seeing you again after these black days of not. the thought suddenly bringing the weight of those days of not touching. no ghost at all, just warmth and reality. only the sooness separates us.

because people are changing.

Finally I cave in. to the confluence of the things that have the tendency to break me down with startling consistency. It's hardly a coincidence that it is the start. of the monsoon season. It rained early this morning and it will be some mercy if the sun sleeps today. I hear stories that the second storm for this month is coming in to port and looking at the sky, perhaps they are true. It would be nice to put on some music after I get home and not think at all but as it is I still have to get this work day over.

There is this surprising calmness now like the moments when you are crossing a major eight lane highway when you can see a car hurtling towards you and you are not really sure if you will reach the other side in time. Then you run, and those moments are. zen.  The sound of your heartbeat will cut in later when you reach the other side. That is the calmness I feel right now, but still without that heartbeat thudding in my ears.

I finally get to watch the rain again and there's nothing like it.

Just to hear it falling on rooftops and concrete walkways and watch it scatter and converge and then get lost as it flows to somewhere, then the wind comes through the window bringing with it the coolness that no air conditioning can ever hope to achieve, that coolness of cool.

And as the rain continues to flow and be scattered by the wind, I know that they are not the only ones falling, flowing, scattering and then gathering again like magic colorless mercury. I finally can embrace myself again, and it is both comforting and something needed.

something long wished for and something long longed for.