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.

F5.

Yes, refresh. There are things that have been going on inside my mind for I don't know how many months now... more than 12 for sure. And when I say my mind, my emotions and even faith are all lumped in there together, it's my central processing unit. There is no concept of separateness, like logic and emotions when they are part of the same as what they have always been. It's just calling it the mind does not exactly capture it. Like soft rains when you're missing someone. Words are most always inadequate when it comes to describing what goes in our minds. And there's that word again. Mind, mind you.

F5. I found the refresh button of my mind; when I wasn't looking for it, when all this time I was looking for some sort of explanation as to how life had just happened, or how emotions are always different every year, even when you have the same name for each and every one that you had felt. I think it was just that my mind wasn't itself, and I felt sure that if I knew the reason why it was that way, it would be okay, that it would be the answer to itself.

F5. It was just that button, not that button farthermost, uppermost button in the right corner. It was not that goddamned button at all. It was not. It was Refresh and it wasn't just a flicker of the screen. It was flickering back on. Pretty weird to be knowing this and making this barest smile to myself, on an afternoon where I am weak with hunger, barely two hours sleep for the past 25 or more hours, with no sign whatsoever of any rain, and with the rent coming up, there are people I miss enough that it hurts everytime my mind touches on their memories. And I still managed this smile.

Refresh.