Labor N' Love

Katext ko kanina si Allan at napag-usapan namin sandali--ano ba naman ang mapag-uusapan nang matagal sa SMS?--yung tungkol sa crush ko na nakilala niya bago pa kami nagkakilala.

Di ko na siyempre ikukuwento ang buong detalye dahil di naman importante. Pero dahil sa simula pa lang, napakita ko na ang pagkabahala ko sa pagkakaroon ng someone to watch over me, sabi niya,

Antayin mo lang kasi. Wag na mag-anticipate ng kahit ano para masorpresa pa rin.

My gosh, Allan, I thought you were a poet! I thought you knew a thing or two about language!

Pinag-aantay mo 'ko, tapos sasabihin mo, 'wag mag-anticipate? Duh, "antay" and "anticipate" are synonymous kaya?! Although I kinda get the point naman. Parang waiting without expectation ('Pag binabasa ko ulit, parang ang labo pa rin.) Ay, mas better: 'wag magmadali/mainip, 'wag mag-expect.

Although alam ko na naman talaga ang lahat. Klarong-klaro sa 'kin ang lahat--ang problema, sanhi at solusyon--ganito lang talaga tayong mga tao, kailangan ng kausap.

Nakita ko kasi kanina yung crush ko sa Alabang Town Center. At ang sabi ni Allan, it's a sign. Sagot ko naman, hindi sign 'yon. Maliit lang talaga ang ATC, kako.

Which brings me to my favorite conclusion, na trinatrabaho talaga ang pagmamahal. That it's not just a gift that falls from the sky whenever you have an open mind, heart, hands and shirt; or grows from underground without tending. I can't think any other way, dahil kahit sa pamilya at kaibigan, ganoon din naman, kailangan ng effort. Pag-aalala't pag-aalaga. Careful dapat. That's my--what's the expression, "two cents worth"? May halaga pa rin pala, kahit papaano, ang opinyon ngayon. Di ko na nga lang natext 'yan kay Allan, kasi naubos na ang load ko. Nagnanakaw kasi ang SMART. Oh well.

Iridescence

Ang favorite color ko yung nag-iiba-iba ng kulay.--An audience at the World Pyro Olympics

That we appreciate each other despite moods, theirs and ours.

Forgive and accept with reason, but reason withheld.

Laugh, jest.

Discriminate, create.

Continue desiring iridescence, despite safeties.


* Photo from the World Pyro Olympics website.

Travel advisory

1.
Horoscope for week of December 29, 2005 from Rob Brezsny:

In his book The Disappearance of the Universe, Gary Renard quotes the counsel of his teacher: "A jet airliner is always going off course, but through constant correction it arrives at its destination. So will you arrive at yours." Remember that advice throughout 2006... My analysis of the astrological omens suggests that you will be frequently straying from the path of your highest destiny, and yet that's exactly what needs to happen in order for you to reach your highest destiny. Forced to keep making regular adjustments, you will tone and strengthen your willpower, which is essential to you achieving the goals that really matter.

But how to distinguish the highest destiny and therefore notice if one has strayed?

2.

Travel
Edna St Vincent Millay

The railroad track is miles away,
And the day is loud with voices speaking,
Yet there isn't a train goes by all day
But I hear its whistle shrieking.

All night there isn't a train goes by,
Though the night is still for sleep and dreaming,
But I see its cinders red on the sky,
And hear its engine steaming.

My heart is warm with friends I make,
And better friends I'll not be knowing;
Yet there isn't a train I'd rather take,
No matter where it's going.

Oh the friends I make and the better friends I'll not be knowing!

And them who will never know me.

3.
From the introduction of my current reading, The Twenty-One Balloons by William Pène du Bois:

There are two kinds of travel. The usual way is to take the fastest imaginable conveyance along the shortest road. The other way is not to care particularly where you are going or how long it will take you, or whether you will get there or not. These two methods of travel are perhaps easiest to be seen by watching hunting hounds. One hound will follow his nose directly to his prey. Another will follow his nose in a roundabout way to molehills, empty rabbit holes, garbage cans, and trees; and perhaps not pay any attention to his prey even when he happens upon it. This second way of getting around has always been pointed out as the nicest for, as you can see in the case of the slower hunting hound, you are able to see more of what is going on in the world and also how nature is getting along.

4.
'I shot an error into the air,' said Irene Warsaw.

Dressed in light

I just received my 13th month pay yesterday. I love money, because it is so concrete, so useful and manageable. I know exactly what to do with it.

I bought the gifts for people whom I feel like giving something to. (I like the bows, nightglitters and untying. I like opening, ripping, finding. And despite dedication and signature, a trace of anonymity. That piece of self ungiven—because unresolved—in the present, beyond touch and thought.)

Since late October, when I come home from work, I pass by the line of trees dressed in light along Ayala Avenue. And every time, I keep hearing Yourcenar's words about stars whose brilliance dazzle but keep you cold. Like knowledge, like gold.

And so my wish for everyone is the same wish I've constantly been wishing for people I care about. That we may be blessed with light that both clarifies and warms.

Time Is Always For The Wishing

We'd been planning to go to U.P. since we learned how make gimik together, but only consummated the desire yesterday.

It took Louie and Althea's birthday and sheer spontaneity (or as Althea mentioned, not planning) for it to happen.

We also celebrated Cherie's return from her Harry Potter gig from the U.S. We missed her for three weeks and thank god, Cherie came home safely, prettier and pinker than ever.

I felt so spent yesterday. Spent much money, time, energy, laughter, words and silence in exchange for genuine enjoyment.

By the way, the picture on the left was birthday girl, Althea's, idea. She wanted a Beatles on Abbey Road pose. Only we're walking towards the other direction and it was nighttime (so the sun won't come till about 8 hours later) and we're not on Abbey Road and we're definitely not the Beatles. It's my favorite picture, though, so far. I always thought that Beauty is a math movement.

Another Anne, another Canadian, not just any other poet

Phantom Limbs
Anne Michaels

'The face of the city changes more quickly, alas! than the mortal heart.'
—Charles Baudelaire
So much of the city
is our bodies. Places in us
old light still slants through to.
Places that no longer exist but are full of feeling,
like phantom limbs.
Even the city carries ruins in its heart.
Longs to be touched in places
only it remembers.

Through the yellow hooves
of the ginkgo, parchment light;
in that apartment where I first
touched your shoulders under your sweater,
that October afternoon you left keys
in the fridge, milk on the table.
The yard--our moonlight motel--
where we slept summer's hottest nights,
on grass so cold it felt wet.
Behind us, freight trains crossed the city,
a steel banner, a noisy wall.
Now the hollow diad!
floats behind glass
in office towers also haunted
by our voices.

Few buildings, few lives
are built so well
even their ruins are beautiful.
But we loved the abandoned distillery:
stone floors cracking under empty vats,
wooden floors half rotted into dirt;
stairs leading nowhere; high rooms
run through with swords of dusty light.
A place the rain still loved, its silver paint
on rusted things that had stopped moving it seemed, for us.
Closed rooms open only to weather,
pungent with soot and molasses,
scent-stung. A place
where everything too big to take apart
had been left behind.

I've been quoting Anne Michaels for how many times already (as in here and here), yet I haven't posted a complete poem of hers. This is her due space.

A Certain Strength, Some Certainty

PISCES: "Belief is the end of intelligence," says philosopher Robert Anton Wilson. The moment you become attached to an opinion or theory, no matter how good or true or beautiful it might seem, you're no longer fully open to the mysteries that life brings you. Your perceptiveness wanes and your understanding shrinks. This is always important to keep in mind, of course, but especially so this week. A wave of raw truth is headed your way, and yet you will miss it completely unless you take a vacation from your beliefs about the way the world works.--Rob Brezsny

They say as you grow older, your stands become firmer. I am afraid of that time.

Some say we always change our minds, but not the fact that we are right.

If there is something I'd like to be proven wrong about, that is the death of the ideal. While I see, and by stream of logic figure, that something is incessantly building then gets destroyed, I wait still for that one wholeness that sustains and not merely survives.

If I fantasize, it is both because I understand something's distance from reality and I am creating a blueprint of something that is palpable in time.

A Report On Today's Weather

1. How do you tell someone you want to eat alone, be alone sometimes, if not most of the time?
2. That question, that anyaya, is really a courtesy invitation anyway.
3. What if they really like your company? It's not that you don't enjoy or appreciate theirs, you simply prefer being solitary.

4. September may well be my month. I may well be like a pomegranate blistering at its core. Hahaha.

5. You're pulled in so many ways, truly. Or that different parts of your body go toward their own desired directions.
6. How you never wanted to be common. Never the okay.
7. But all along fitting your self into those easy identifications--graduated from this university, works here, goes home to this city, does not smoke, drinks sometimes--to be easily identified, of course.

8. Suddenly all food at Mini Stop taste great.

Ghost Hunter, Human Fighter

This Dance of Distance

Looking for the ghost in your closet makes it go away.

Although it's more on facing your fear, it's not that simple right now--these fears and phantoms.

That lesson on why we should remain distant from each other: when too close, we break each other's myths of each other.

¤

A Lead Role In A Cage

WISH YOU WERE HERE
Pink Floyd

So, so you think you can tell
Heaven from Hell,
Blue skies from pain.
Can you tell a green field
From a cold steel rail?
A smile from a veil?
Do you think you can tell?

And did they get you to trade
Your heroes for ghosts?
Hot ashes for trees?
Hot air for a cool breeze?
Cold comfort for change?
And did you exchange
A walk on part in the war
For a lead role in a cage?

How I wish, how I wish you were here.
We're just two lost souls
Swimming in a fish bowl,
Year after year,
Running over the same old ground.
What have we found? The same old fears,
Wish you were here.

That lesson in categorization: "we stereotype people so as to make them manageable to us." And that is not entirely bad, for it is not necessary for us to delve into each other. It is a means of knowing how to treat someone for the immediate now.

There is this person, in the file cabinet of his mind, he seems to place every thing in "unfiled."

Oh how we manage

This day marks the second anniversary of this little online journal.

What I've figured? That despite my efforts in going against it, this—just like any other blog—is no more than a mere chronicling of angsts and quirks.

Focus In Digression

I finally visited my friend's cafe along Xavierville, Katipunan yesterday. It was one of those rare times when I had gone too far commuting. Quezon City's altogether another planet for me.


First the joyride

It was my first time to ride the LRT2 and shallow as it may sound, I was thrilled. The Katipunan station was like a subway. What a train and train ride. I could only hope the LRT from Baclaran to Monumento would be as neat and big and helpful. LRT2's one of those functional places that helps you help your self. It treats you as the intelligent human being that you are.


The hunger from a long journey filled by one of those necessary verses

Asking the Kitchen

for work is like bartering with any
lover: cut and be cut; warm
to be warm. Whisper, toil; tables will
breathe, fill, sharpening the palate,
your style.

--Cindra Halm

Then the lunch

There were so many things going on in my head while I was having lunch with my friends.

1. There are so many nice clothes, accessories, gadgets and furniture I want to buy, but can't.
2. This friend of mine, who owns the cafe, is not that close to me. Yet she is the one who constantly keeps in touch. Yet she is the one who has every effort and concern to find out how am I doing, telling me my company is missed.
3. So many filthy things around. Not that I lose my idealism, my romanticism, but given this garden of bullshit for a social world, I'd take evil anytime over ignorance. More on that thought soon.
4. Who's this person who said "only permanence change?"
5. There's a surplus of food at home. Too many food at home and I'm afraid there'll be 30 days and nights of drought.
6. The pesto's very good and cheap, but when will this lunch be finished?

Back in those times, it was all about philosophers having coffee at Starbucks discussing how many angels could fit in a needle's eye

1

When Starbucks opened along Taft Avenue near La Salle, I never imagined myself going there, but not because I didn't like the place. I think I was a sophomore when it opened (shit, the time should be clear in my memory as it wasn't so long ago). First, I knew I didn't have enough money to have a snack there—well that's the first and only reason.

I eventually learned to go there—eventually habitually—when I started hanging out with new friends from Malate.

My allowance then was P100 a day (or P150?—stupid memory!) Because I was the one doing it, I wasn't surprised with myself. My parents, on the other hand, were baffled. I'd be out all night and when they thought I had already gone to Tagaytay or Baguio, they'd find out I was just there at Starbucks—there for about half a day. And they'd ask, How do you manage to hang out at Starbucks, where do you get the money? I didn't know exactly.

My staple Starbucks snack consisted of maple oat scone and coffee frap. This I know clearly: the maple oat scone was just 40 pesos. The coffee frap was around 80 p—I'm certain it didn't go over a hundred pesos.

There was a term when I had Saturday classes from 8am to 12 noon. After class, I'd immediately go home, but I'd stop by Starbucks first to get food and then eat it on the bus.

Those bus rides were some of the best moments of my life: noontime—I just attended something meaningful in the morning and there was still the rest of the day to complete, to look forward to—I was alone with food I enjoyed, seated yet moving still.

2

'The broken hearts club' (indirect quote):

We try to know another and we have coffee with them and talk and eventually have sex with them if we like them, but we can also have sex first and see if we like to eventually take this person out for coffee and talk.

Anne Carson, 'Autobiography of Red':

Sex is a way of getting to know someone.

3
'...My hands are better.'
—Amanda Paige (context: sex)
(I'm having neither sex nor long hours of 'coffee and conversation' with someone, in the meantime. In this world of fiction, meantime stretches to years.)

Whenever I hear about people who cannot eat alone, I become perplexed.

Maybe I was too young when I learned solitude's magnificence. Not that I didn't have friends. In fact I kept telling stories on how easy it was for me to make friends when I was in grade school. I barely had to try.

I gained from Althea (or to construe her statement) that perhaps a person couldn't take being alone because he couldn't take the company that is himself, he couldn't take the conversationalist that is him.

4

There are no more maple oat scones. I've asked Starbucks again and again about it and it's funny, because I actually thought my obstinacy would bring it back. But, hey, Starbucks, if you, by some chance, is reading this, please bring back the maple oat scone.

5

There are fewer and fewer people who have the time to stop. Everyone has to go and do and get something fast.

Nothing in particular

If I could marry this weather. I can't stress it enough; too bad I don't know how to write it.

Amazingly, though, it's not the cold that has made me want to snuggle in bed, but the temperature that has pushed me to work. I've accomplished so many things today and I'm not talking about a mere sense of having done something, but a heightening of your sense of self.

Therefore this night tonight....can never be a subject of this specific conversation.
—Pattiann Rogers, 'In General'

And then the time to snuggle in bed.

I Know Now How It Feels When The Dead Lives

The tragedy of this world is that no one is happy, whether stuck in a time of pain or of joy. The tragedy of this world is that everyone is alone. For a life in the past cannot be shared with the present. Each person who gets stuck in time gets stuck alone.*

By accident--call it adverse serendipity--I read my name in one of the journals of an old friend. The anecdote involving me was appended as a footnote on a more recent entry.

That friendship had been one of those that bursted with so much color and delight, that then gave in to fading. That you couldn't figure why and you tried reviving the liveliness only to end up with disappointment. And you know now nothing about it will be the same. You know now there's no more chance of making it any better.

Reading my name, I shivered, imagining the distance not just of time, but of emotions and the way we see each other. I was there, under heap of new friends, circumstances, extremely radiant joys and darker tragedies. That act of him remembering me, what I used to be, even for a mere moment, what we used to be, what was then--what was then doesn't exist now. Memory's a completely new planet.

I want to believe now that most good friendships are meant for the breaking. And that is not a fact to be sad about. I want to believe these are people that make your story move forward--sure they are a part of you, but you must not cling onto them. They have their own stories to continue.

And thus till now the theory remains relevant, what this world requires of us is just attention. The best laughs I've had are with that person. He did his part: he made me feel like I had something important to say, that I had a funny a joke; he introduced me to Anne Carson and David Mack.

The force of the written word. Seeing my name inscribed, bringing to mind all that sign carries with it. Conscious of how he was seeing it. And now this feeling of needing the proper expletive to express (or in truth, to hide) this strange furious sensation of knowing what was then doesn't exist anymore, but can't find it.


_________________________
* Alan Lightman, Einstein's Dreams. In a chapter where the texture of time in this particular world "happens to be sticky.... Individual people become stuck in some point of their lives and do not get free."

'Saktong-sakto

Rolando Tinio
AKALA KO

Akala ko, para nang piyanong
Nasusian ang iyong kalooban
At naihagis ang susi kung saan,
Hindi na matitipa ng sino at alinman
Ang mga tekladong tuklap, naninilaw.

Dahil dumating ka isang gabi:
Naupo sa may pintuan,
Tahimik na naninimbang
Sa mga bagong pangyayaring
Nagaganap sa iyong harapan.

Sa manaka-nakang sindi ng mata mo,
Parang puno sa lihim ang dibdib mong
Ayaw siyempreng ipaglantaran
Sa mga nakilala noon lamang.

Hanggang ngayon (linggo na ang nakaraan),
Nakabalabal ka pa ng sariling panginorin,
Lumulutang sa sarili mong ulap,
Parang kakahuyang pinid ang sanga at dahon
Nang huwag mapasok ng liwanag
Buhat sa kung-anong daigdig o pintuan
Na hindi mo kilala at ayaw pang subukan.

Para sa akin ang líriká na ito.

Hildegarde Flanner

MOON AND MOTOR

The glide of moon along my fenders flowing
Is like a motion milking upon light,
So rapt and pallid does it lap and draw
From silver sources crescent with the night.
The earth is pouring off her liquid miles
Whose waterless water is the way I feel
Coursing on the desert, every sense
Collected and yet fluid at the wheel,
While cylinder and floating cylinder
So perfectly receive the plunge of power
That night, and rumors of capricious night,
Time’s own, the frictionless anointed hour
Wait on the motor mystical that drives,
Lean to the fury lovely and repose
That are the piston’s plunder and the sum
Of tranquil labor that an engine knows.


¤


POEM

At least and still at lingering last we can
Console ourselves because this earth is ours,
Though we could never hurl the hurricane,
Nor weld a hill, nor soft unlock the showers,
Nor rivet the diamond under the abyss,
Nor add the desert up, nor crumble the frost
Over the flower’s face. Remembering this
The warm security of pride is lost,
For we are dull mismasters of a huge event
And cannot think who tutored us to fail,
We ruin so quick, and hope is nearly spent;
But faint at intervals, benign and frail
A courage whispers, just this side of fate,
Cling earthward, inward, do not abdicate!

The Third Who Lay In Our Embrace

Woman to Man
Judith Wright

The eyeless labourer in the night,
the selfless, shapeless seed I hold,
builds for its resurrection day --
silent and swift and deep from sight
foresees the unimagined light.

This is no child with a child's face;
this has no name to name it by:
yet you and I have known it well.
This is our hunter and our chase,
the third who lay in our embrace.

This is the strength that your arm knows,
the arc of flesh that is my breast,
the precise crystals of our eyes.
This is the blood's wild tree that grows
the intricate and folded rose.

This is the maker and the made;
this is the question and reply;
the blind head butting at the dark,
the blaze of light upon the blade.
Oh hold me, for I am afraid.

Dearest Marie, this is for you. I hope you read it well. I wish you well.

A Silence Precise

In times of change, learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.--Eric Hoffer

When I say, kumusta?, I do not mean it as a greeting, acknowledging your presence, informing you of mine.

When I say, kumusta?, I stop and wait for an answer. I have decided to make a fragment of your life my concern. I will not ask if I do not care, even if I know you.

Thus trust is never about another. Trust is always a trust in your self, that no matter how the world will respond to your behavior, you know in your gut that you are prepared to regard it.

The Fullunabridgedverbatim Transcript Of My Conversation With Neil Gaiman

ME: Thank you very much.
NEIL GAIMAN: You're very welcome.

Good job, girl. Good job.

Tekkie Me

I am not one to believe the best things are for free. But I'd take what's free any time.

It was in my senior year in high school when cellular phones became so fashionably necessary, and in the blink of an eye, the cell phone had been as ordinary as a pen and a hanky. Everyone had them. I didn't have one then. Until my sophomore year in college. I had my first authentic gimik. I hung out with new-found friends at the Remedios Circle in Malate till 4 AM. Going home, I expected a full hour or two of reprimand from my parents, but I received the silent treatment instead. The next night, I became the new owner of a Nokia 3210.

I'm not crazy about cell phones. Nokia features such as games are wasted on me. My average text messages sent per day is roughly 1. I have never—ever!—consumed my P300 load in two months. I hardly make calls. If I need to call someone, I look for the nearest pay phone. For 5 years, my Nokia 3210 has stayed with me—till its backlight's dysfunctional, till it can already be considered vintage, Jurassic. I would still hold on to it, if not for my Ate.

From out of the blue, she gave me a very old model of a Handspring Treo. The display's still in black and white, but it doesn't matter; a part of me can endure without color. It's a nice toy and it's once again for free. I appreciate it because it functions as a palmtop and cell phone and you can access the internet through it.

With this new gadget comes one of my most favorite activities in the world: organizing, personalizing.

My phone book's a bit of a revelation, there's so much space. My date book's no surprise, there are no dates. The only game I enjoy from the 5 games available is Hardball (which is really a version of Arkanoid, which reminds me of yesteryears with Nintendo).

Now this is the part where I'm supposed to be wrapping up this entry and express some sort of epiphany. There is none. I don't know. Call me. Gift me with a laptop.