Thursday, December 09, 2004

Backlogged

Backlogged I have so many stuff that i wanted to post for the longest time but for some reason i can't seem to find the time have them published. All i want to do is sleep and hope that when i wake up this horrible season will be over, and that it will be new year's already. i hate christmas season (sorry, guys, i'm being the grinch again, i know)

but

i want to congratulate karen for landing that position at PS. you go, k!

i want to congratulate ailil for finally realizing that there could be life after what's-his-name...lesbians for life tayo bro! (the hell with brad..he he)

i want to thank jaymee for those vcd's that i ordered. you really made my day. i'll get the rest of them maybe next week. and good luck sa Acquaintance Party niyo. I've been hearing that you're having a hard time organizing the stuff, but you'll make it. Veteran na ang LitSoc sa mga half-baked plans...he he...

- - -
I'm such a high-pressurized sentient being right now, i feel like i'm levitating with every step. how long will this last?

Thursday, November 25, 2004

Love You Karen!

Love You Karen! Like my new blog lay-out? That's the doing of my dear friend karen. Thanks so much, kiddo! By the way, I know that my tag-board's like a sore thumb but tag-board.com is pretty fucked up right now so i can't edit the colors. Please bear with it for a little longer, okay? And jaymee, if you happen to drop by this blog again, thanks so much for the cd's. Get well soon. And karen, I'm so praying to all the powers that be right now that you get the phone call that you are waiting for. Love you friends. And, Ailil, you who are feeling so burnt out right now, if you can't stand the heat, get out of the oven. he he. Go Incredibles!!!! To Jhamie, the silent intruder of our blogs, thanks for reminding me of that video of my fave film on sale! To Joi, who would never visit my blog, I would like to greet you a belated very happy birthday!!!! Also to Sir Oca. What else? Oh, yeah, Ima get myself a new phone one of these days. i'm so excited that finally, i'm gonna upgrade but also sad that like, everything else, i had to replace my trustworthy Nokia 3310 who had been with me through good and bad times. ch-ch-ch-changes....

Monday, November 15, 2004

Murmurs From the Nightshiftee

Mumurs from the Nightshiftee First of all, I would like to commend my dear friend Ailil for being dead inside. Not trying to be cryptic here, it's just that I feel so proud of myself for finally converting someone that being dead inside is one of the most lethal way of protecting one's self in this high grade bitch of a world.
but frankly, being dead inside is hard to achieve. it would take every ounce of self discipline and conditioning to learn how not to just care. unless my memory still serves me right, there is also some kind of process that involves achieving this status that i've been gloriously into now for the past couple of years.

first, i've been mute. unable to speak. unable to write. i have the ability for it, yes, but not the capacity. because that was the hardest part. it was like pushing an ill-fitted corkstopper into the mouth of a wine bottle. it had been like that. it was a slow and painful death. all that air, filling up my lungs. no more room left to breathe. that's how i died. i died quietly. without any sound. i didn't even put up a fight. i welcomed death. and it welcomed me.


that's as far as i can remember. looking back, after the period of not feeling anything, all i see through my grotesque kaleidoscopal memory are casual bed-hopping, and beer slugging activities, that frankly, was not as glamorous as one might expect.

people would often ask me how did i ever manage not to ever feel anything, how i could take everything so casually? i just shrug. it really still is a mystery. maybe it's because of the painful blow that i've received that killed every nerve in me, instantly. often, i would just softly say that i've become used to it that i rarely remember what it felt like to feel. i don't even know if i still have that capacity to feel. it gets lonely, yeah. but just like everything else, it will someday end or you just have to get used to it.

i already receive my ultimate test but i won't go into details over it, but if you like, you could read all about it here.

people could call me bitter. a narcissistic bitch. a hag. or whatever the hell they would want to call me. it doesn't really matter. i'd still be dead inside. and the dead don't feel.


Wednesday, October 27, 2004

Ang Disyembre ko ay Malungkot

Ang Disyembre Ko Ay Malungkot It's cold now. December is fast approaching and do i ever know that because everyday a Winpop appears on my PC at work, reminding us of how many days before the season of commercialism commences. hah.


Thursday, October 21, 2004

Fetal


Fetal (written while ensconced in the Pod)

If the room temperature is cold, you should feel my insides. Someone can blow a kiss into my mouth and his breath would condense into tiny icicles down at the back of my throat. It would leave a trail of tiny pinpricks of slivered ice, embedding themselves into my internal organs.

I was thinking of the fetal position just a couple of days ago. People would just naturally assume this position after receiving and trying to absorb the harshest of blows. Why, psychiatrists even have a fancy name for it, ‘psychological regression.’

We retreat. We cower. We tuck our chin into our chest and fold our knees into our abdomen then we hug ourselves, clinging on for dear life. The same way that we were during the nine months we spent peacefully swimming inside our mother’s womb. If our mothers had only known that we would be let out in this bullshit of a world, maybe they’d have think twice before conceiving us.

My knuckles crack every now and then. It competes with the sound that my sleek, black keyboard makes after every character typed. A clack followed by a crunch.

I would not be able to withstand this coldness even if I am already frozen,

Nothing could really pummel you down more than a love that withered before it even bloomed. It’s your utter powerlessness that makes it harder…there is nothing that you could have fought for from the start because it was already over before it had even begun. How can one get past that?

How can one attempt to recover from a heartbreak that never existed (challenging Sartre, are we?).

Even as I was writing this, I could hear my head laughing heartlessly at my heart.

Wednesday, October 06, 2004

Pissed Off

Pissed Off I seem to have a knack for pissing people off lately (people at work, to be exact). Being one's self is becoming a dangerous proposition, I belatedly realize. I was just so used to being whenever I am around friends that I keep forgetting that my officemates are a whole lot different people and some may find it hard to accept who or what I am or some may find my lifestyle and personality a little uncompromising for their taste.
The thing is, I wouldn't really care if it were up to me. Heck, I piss people off just because I like pissing them and seeing them pissed. It's just different, that's all. I mean I could call Mai a frigid, cradle snatcher and I'd probably get away with it. It's different at work though, because it's hard to supress my monstrosity.
Self-doubt would then seep into the the, uh, 'parchment cracks' of my already-sluggish mind, un-caffeinated bloodstream, and perpetually growling stomach. Not a pretty sight, huh?
I've lived in this world long enough to know that you just can't please everybody so you just have to live even if your mere presence makes the other person's stomach churn. Hear that, Chel? Just live and work. Let them (her) hate you in peace.
(Whew, finally feeling like my old self again.)
- - -
What's with the funeral and life theme songs? Everyone that I know has one. I probably should jump on the bandwagon, huh?
Wild Horses
The Sundays
Childhood living is easy to do
things you wanted I bought them for you
Graceless lady, you know who I am,
You know I can't let you slide through my hands
Wild Horses, Couldn't drag me away,
Wild, wild horses, Couldn't drag me away...
I watched you suffer a dull, aching pain
Now you decided to show me the same
No sweeping exits or offstage lines,
Can make me feel bitter or treat you unkind
Wild Horses, Couldn't drag me away,
Wild, wild horses, Couldn't drag me away...
I know I dreamed you a sin and a lie,
I have my freedom but I don't have much time
Faith has been broken tears must be cried,
Let's do some living after we die
Wild Horses, Couldn't drag me away,
Wild, wild horses,
We'll ride them someday
Wild, wild horses,
We'll ride them someday

Sunday, September 26, 2004

Breakup, Makeup, Shakeup


Breakup, Makeup, Shakeup It was an old lover’s birthday a few days ago. Closure came earlier this year, and since then we have never exchange any more words after trading “I’m sorry’s” and “I loved you” those many months ago. Four days ago, I broke the mutually imposed ice blue curtain of civility and sent her a short but somewhat evocative greeting through Friendster. I didn’t realize the ramifications of such a move and for the next four days, we have exchanged brief messages that I now realized is slowly intensifying the closure that I so badly wanted since we broke up. Short messages as they were, I started to find out what’s going on in her life and vice versa. No, it does not prick my heart anymore as it used to whenever I see the picture of her and her new love (my replacement) on her profile. I held back from slinging sarcastic one-liners and I managed to write replies conveying some semblance of warmth and friendliness. Amazingly, the constricting pain that has been lashing my heart for quite some time is gone now. This is my closure, and I accept the finality of it.

But dear friends, first let me tell you how it was.

When this love affair ended, I was broken, completely. My whole being shut down, and even if my friends were telling me how brave I was for not succumbing to pain, I knew that there was something wrong. Looking back, I’d rather had myself wallowed for a while instead of trying to move on immediately, without feeling anything. For me, that’s worse than being broken. Because when you’ve stopped feeling anything, it means that you’re all used up and it’s going to be harder to recover from that. When you’re used up, there’s nothing to fix, there’s naught but space. And how could one fill such a vast space like an empty heart?

Alcohol can only do so much.

Because love is self-annihilation, it does not really matter if your relationship with someone ran a total of 10 years, or 8 months, or 10 days. When you’re in love, you cease to be yourself and you tend to love selfLESSly.

When you caress your lovers at night, kiss them in the morning as they saunter off to work, or even when your tongues lash at each other during moments of anger there is always an exchange of essence and somehow these things would bind you to that person, making you one and integrated that it would be hard to distinguish the one from the other, thus obliterating any veneer of self-existence.

It dawned on me that it’s perfectly all right to be broken.

We are pieces of puzzles, like that old love song says. You put them together and some would not fit, but some would. Sometimes puzzles get scattered all over as turbulent relationships do and the broken pieces had to be refitted once again. And it’s okay. Because you have absorbed so much from that person, when you separate, you have to break so that you can shake off any lasting imprint of that person from your being that will make moving on harder for you.

I have been the letters inside the Boggle Case. I’ve been shook up, turned upside down, and rattled so badly that I thought I might never be the sam(n?)e again.

Recently, I’ve started feeling again. It was just a warm feeling at the tip of my toes. The merest of shivers but that was enough. Slowly, I am freeing myself of this atrophy that has been keeping me from breathing. I am not so dead inside anymore.

Ladies and Gentlemen, congratulate me, I’m out of the coffin.

Friday, September 24, 2004


The Bang Bus Gang!!! (actually lahat sila nagyoyosi pwera lang ako)

(me, james and anne, gette and mumsy)

Thursday, September 23, 2004


This is Arnold...I think he's cute, see? I will get him drunk, one day!!! Bwahahahahaha!



My Wacky Co-Workers!!!!

(Jaja/Arnold/Anne/Engel/Arman/Gette/Greg)



Saturday, September 18, 2004

The Grand Design



"I will never be one of those soulless, corporate robots working the 9 to 5 job"

I believe that these were the exact words I uttered to my dear friend Ailil while we were on the research stage of our thesis earlier this year, prior to graduation. During that time I never saw myself working beyond the classroom or even 5 meters away from my PC where I write most of my works.

Lat Monday, my first day on the job as a CSR at ePLDT Parlance, I looked at myself at the washroom's wall to wall mirror, and I believe that I felt the same thing Jhamie did when she started working at Nucleuss. I cannot believe that the person on the reflection was I because I was wearing this white long sleeved polo and black slacks and a pair of black pumps to match. It was like seeing Joi wearing a football shirt. The reflection was a far cry from the girl a few weeks ago that used to walk down the Mega Strip wearing shorts and flip-flops. Heck, I hang out at Starbucks wearing old and torn jeans and it was not because I liked to challenge the dress code. It is just the way I am but now I am actually working in an establishment where we are required to don office attire, Monday to Thursday. Weird City.

What some people would do to earn the big bucks.

It's not as if my job is really THAT horrible.

My training is a combination of Speech Class 1 and 2 from high school and America 101. Hell in two days I have managed to commit to memory the 50 States and their postal codes than the names of the senators in the Philippine Senate. What a hoot.

My officemates aren't that bad either. In fact they're great.

I was griping to Ailil last week that I was so bummed at now being included in the shift that Meann and the rest were on. I kinda ended up eating my own words, as usual.

But the sight of this girl who looked a lot like Jennifer Aniston changed my mind. Ha ha, just kidding but it was part of it, yeah.

Our trainer is a real live DJ and naturally he has a great voice but he's only 23. He has this Jude law thing going on. He's
nice although I was late yesterday and opened the fire exit even though it was forbidden. Ick. What a way to end my week. I almost got a memo form that.

I have an officemate that everyone calls mumsy because she's
the oldest, like 41 and she's like the mother in our group because she's so sweet and she treats us like we are her kids. There's
this guy Arnold who talks and acts like Speedy Gonzales, really funny. There's
Gette who looks a lot like Angelina Jolie (whatta babe, Ailil!), and stands 5'10. There's
Greg who is gay and a cross between Jigs from 3LIT and Gil from 4LIT. Man, I cannot help but laugh every time he opens his mouth. He's hilarious. There's manly Arman and childish Engel. Anne, a guidance councilor from the International School and she sucks at geography, like me. LOL. The bonding that we share is lot like the bonding that my Freefall buddies and me used to do.

Which reminds me, Freefall, wherever the hell you guys are, we HAVE GOT TO GET TOGETHER, GOT THAT?

Did I mention that my shift is from 2pm to 10pm? Perfect for gimmicks.


The thing is, I was so ready to write-off this job as something like even the most nitwit person can do, a no-brainer kind of stuff but I ended up learning so much and I am having a blast too.

And I AM, after all, earning the big bucks. Who am I to complain?


Monday, September 13, 2004

Apologies For My Silence

For those who had been trying to contact a seemingly dead entity for the past few days, I apologize. I have just been in a weird funk lately and I seem to have no energy left for other things except for trying to stay stationary and playing dead. It was so nice to just lie still and be motionless for hours after moving all over the place for so long. I have finally watched all the movies that I wanted to see for the longest time but could not because I have been so busy doing stuff for other people. I have finally fulfilled my promise to my nephews and took them out two days ago. I am now flat-broke, but who cares? I am gonna start working later and I'll be *,000 bucks richer for it in fifteen days.

Let me just go back to bed for a few more hours. After that, I am going out in the real world.

Monday, September 06, 2004

Drought


So this is what dying of thirst meant. Even with the faucet turned on, and despite the rivulets of water spouting from it, enough to satiate one’s need to alleviate the caustic pain of accidentally swallowing boiling milk or a shot of pure Johnnie Walker[1] or cooling down a deprived and parched throat surviving on stale saliva, there is still the unquenched parchness of something more than my throat.

No, that is not the thirst that I am talking about, but I wish it were. The kind of thirst that can be quenched by a swig of San Miguel Strong Ice (always the beer of my choice), or a glass of freshly squeezed lemon juice or maybe even my tongue slipped out of my mouth to taste the first few drops of the rain as they fall.

I wished that this thirst could easily be slaked just like that. A can of cherry cola that stings the throat or the alcohol laced with the chocolate-y sweetness of Bailey’s[2] that, when allowed to permeate the slumbering senses, could induce sexual yearnings. I had hoped that the tears that used to stream out of my ducts would be enough as they splashed on my cheek, slides down to my corner of my mouth, pain tasting salty pain.

I wish that a space on the bed would be filled up to accommodate this craving. The dent on the rumpled sheets is noticeable now more than ever. How long has it been since it was warmed by flesh? How long since the bed springs creaked not just for a mere fraction of 24 hours in a rented room.

Some nights I would just wake up and mutter at the emptiness. These are the days when a cretin friend starts to look attractive or days when I consider answering those ‘wanted: pen pals’ regardless of their age and I get scared.

The pang for companionship never ceases instead it settles into my gut and it is nothing like an antacid can cure. I can tuck it inside my newly washed linen sheets and keep it in my drawer, but for how long? Soon someone would spread it open and even the folds would not be enough to keep it.

I used to wake up from nightmarish dreams and scream then a hand would snake out form under the covers, patting me on the back or cradling me into the crook of her arms, while murmuring some comforting gibberish and incantations of reassurance. I have never felt so copious during those times.

I should’ve known that after the abundance, famine and drought would follow. Now it makes biblical sense. Seven years of superfluity, to prepare for the next seven years of wanting.

I should not have wasted the plethora of love you had given me, I wish I had the prudence to have them stored like grains of wheat on granaries for these years that follow, like what Joseph the Dreamer did. I would have had something to survive on now that I am on my second year of drought. But it has run out, just like everything, everyone else. Damn hindsight.

Five years left. Five years. By then, I would have had drank about a tank of beer but the thirst will linger at the base of my throat. Mixing with the alcohols’ bitterness is the sour bile that had settled there a year and a half ago. That does not sound too bad. At all.

Here. I’ll drink to that.

---

Endnotes:
Why is it so hard to write when one is happy?
[1] A popular brand of scotch, sold in different flavors.
[2] The original Irish Cream

Friday, September 03, 2004

Mea Culpa


I blame no one. I blame myself for this emptiness that swirls in core of my being. I blame myself because I am bleeding but I do not feel it. I blame myself because if someone performed CPR on me, blood would gush out of my already punctured lungs. That is how dead I am. But I do not know it yet.

Let me divide my life into two. The past seven years that I breathed and lived and swallowed you and the upcoming years where I would attempt to exhale, kill, and regurgitate every dent of memory you left in my brain and my empty heart.

How did I arrive at this moment? Staring at the endless stretch of road before me. With no one by my side. I squint but I do not see the end. There is dust everywhere. I choke. It stung my eye.

I should not have left you when I did and I should have let you go when I did not.

Do you realize that since you left I have been living in monotony?

I wake up, fold the sheets, eat my breakfast, then lunch and dinner where every bit of food I ingest float harmlessly inside my body because my organs have already started dying one by one.


One would peer into my eyes and see nothing but space. But space is good. At least if some people returned what they got or borrowed from me, I have somewhere to place it to.

The only organ functioning in my body right now is my vagina, but for how long? What will be left of me then when I have lost my ability to come?

Will I be a walking corpse, all skin and bones with no vital organs?

Still I do not blame you.

It pains to admit how afraid I am to feel again.

My heart is on its last artery. When you left you cleaned out every ventricle, vein and chamber I am afraid there is nothing left for me to give. Not even for myself.

Broken. You left me broken. Scattered. Dismantled.

But I still have my legs. I could still stand.

The road is still before me. I could still walk.

How could I have forgotten? I have always been stronger than you. You, who have always needed to have someone at your side. I have managed to survive for so long without actually living. Live.

That is not such a bad idea. As soon as I am able to close my wounds, I would live.

I blame myself for not giving you strength, for you to survive the upcoming years without me.

Wednesday, August 25, 2004

In My Past Life I Was A.....

Quiz Me
chel tamayo was
a Successful Gladiator
in a past life.

http://quizme.stvlive.com/pastlife/quiz.php




In My Past Life I Was A.....Oh yeah. I always knew there was a reason why I chose Tomb Taider for my thesis...(aside from the, uh, babe factor of course)..but there you go, i was a succesful gladiator in my past life...

Tuesday, August 24, 2004

Chinese Water Torture

Chinese Water Torture You can throw me right now in the middle of the Pacific and I̢۪ll float. Guaranteed. Even if I do not know how to swim. For the past week I have drunk enough water to fill up our huge water tank just so I could start working already. Goddamn medical requirements. I could actually hear myself sloshing with every move. I'm the human jell-o. Come on take a bite. I jiggle. I am green. Fa-la-la-la-la-la-la.

Monday, August 23, 2004

Follicle



Follicle
I just gave my brother our semi-annual haircutting sessions yesterday. For every six months, I moonlight as a barber giving my brothers a trim or a new style, for free. I honestly do not know what brought that on because ever since my brother came home from Singapore late last year, I’ve been giving them these haircuts because they’ve been too lazy and too cheap to go to the barbershop.

I watched hairs fall onto the ground, then swept and gathered to throw away in the trash. I watched my brother brush off the bits of hair that got stuck into the folds of his t-shirt, his neck, and arms because if he won’t, then he would have to suffer the itchiness it would cause and he would have to undergo the agony of scratching it till it goes away and his skin would be raw by then.

How you could set the time by how long your hair or nails grow. It’s the most latent way of telling us that time had passed and how. My hair now almost reaches the small of my back. Scrutinizing it, one could see the ends split, needing a trim badly but I’m in no hurry to cut, unlike some other people. Have you ever realized that that wear and tear in our hair are a life’s worth of pain resulting from the harshness of the elements and not taking care of it properly?

I prefer the discretion of it against the tic-toc of the clocks that are strategically hung around our house. I feel that somehow, like the curse of the Deathwatch Beetle, I’m doomed every second that passed by. Those cuckoo clocks that cluck every hour (yet sounds like a Banshee wailing to my ears) announces another fraction of my life gone by and that I will never capture again.

Immortality. We all crave that do we?

Like the hairs that are cut from us and the nails that we clip that are swept and thrown represents the years in our life that is now lost.

So we take precautions in to prevent these damages. We try to live cautiously.

I have a friend who still can’t cross the street at the age of 22. Even I, when I reached my 21st birthday realized that I am not as invincible as I think I was when I was younger. I became more responsible, for myself and for others and in return I became more frozen. I tried to retreat in the corners because open spaces have this big potentiality of getting your heart broken, or becoming disappointed. The bigger the space, the bigger the risk.

But I still think that we should do something that we are most afraid of, even if it paralyzes us or worse, kill us. Everything in this world is a risk even if you think that you are safely ensconced in the security of your house. Paralysis can be cured with therapy and conditioning but death. Death, we cannot do anything about it but at least we could earn our bragging right in the afterlife, wherever that is.

Being frozen from far too long is a risk; we may get stale. Then it would all be for nothing.

I told Karen a few days ago that we humans tend to survive without actually living and having said that out loud, I was horrified at the thought.

Tomorrow I’m going to the salon. I’m going to have my split ends trimmed.







Wednesday, August 18, 2004

Footbridge


Thousands of people ride the MRT every single day. Maybe more than 10,000 purposes and more than 10, 000 destinations from 13 stations, whether purposely intended or the result of aimless meanderings from 5:30 am-9: 30 pm.

I do not usually ride the MRT whenever I go to Makati. I prefer the frenetic commute riding the LRT, masochistically bearing the sweaty, odoriferous, and noisy trains instead of the zooming Metro Star Express. As convenient (and clean) the MRT is, I am afraid of getting caught in its granite maze of stairs, escalators interspersed with shops, restaurants, and thousand of pounds of metal rail tracks and thousands of voltage of electricity.

Did I say the word destination? Destined. Destiny. From the Latin word destinare meaning ultimately. But do not I extol the virtues of existentialism in my daily life?

It was an uneventful ride, really. I knew where I was going, what I’m going to do when I get there. But getting there was a whole different story.

Have you ever looked into the eyes of a stranger for a minute or two, then suddenly finding yourself drowning with both feet planted firmly on the ground? All of your instincts are telling you to run away and never look back because if you don’t, you would find yourself in trouble faster than you could say heartbreak and deeper than the Y-incision of an open heart surgery that could kill you if handled by an unskilled surgeon.

That is what my gut feeling told me when I saw you approach while I was waiting for the train to arrive. Did our souls somehow recognize each other, which is why you’re face seemed so familiar? I was so sure that I’ve met you before (I just don’t know when and where) that I knew that I could reach out and trace the contours of your face and kiss you fully on the mouth without any words exchanged. Was it the way your backpack was slung casually over your shoulders or the shy smiles that we bestowed upon each other for what seemed like a million years? I don’t know. I don’t care. All I knew was that I intended to keep on drowning for as long as I could.

You could have chosen to sit not beside me but you did. I could have let other people sit between us but I didn’t.

For 10 stations, we sat beside each other. I was leaning towards you, and your hands lingered on my knee, leaving indentations on my skin as if there were no fabric that bars our skins from meeting. I caught you smelling my hair, lingering on my nape, your warm breath tickling me. I reveled in the feeling. Passengers who sat across us would think that we are lovers, sitting so close to each other that not even the merest sliver of shadow could ever pass through. They would never know that we have exchanged not one word but this connection is better than any words ever uttered. Every station that passed by signals the end of this clandestine encounter. But I knew that if we alighted on the same station, this was fate, spitting at me in the eye and kicking at me in the teeth. And we did.

At the escalator, on the way up, we were again side-by-side, like the stiff groom and bride getting nailed with rice as they were marching on the aisle. That was the last sign I was waiting for. Why I turned away and did not ask for your name or number, I would never know. I’ve reached my destination and so did you. I never knew which one of the numerous exits that you took but as I was crossing the footbridge, I looked back, somehow wishing that you followed me. But you didn’t.

Did someone conspire against me so that my appointment was moved and that I rode the MRT instead of the LRT?

The return journey was the most difficult of all. My usually relaxed and bouncy steps were replaced by the heavy thud of my sneakers. Instead of climbing the stairs (which I usually do for exercise), I took the escalators. I did not want to drag myself, loaded with disappointment and regret. I bumped 9,999 other people but I might as wheel have been in a solitary confinement. Each time the train stops at a station places more and more distance between our bodies, but not our psyche, that much I’m sure of.

Every door that slid open and closes sounded like a death knell. Heavy and unforgiving. No more second chances. Never had I been more sorry to reach the last station of the MRT. The sky was dark and the rain was threatening to fall, but this time I did not mind it. Yes, let it rain. I hope it washes off the acrid bitterness and caustic longing that lingers in my gut.
Thousands of people ride the MRT everyday, and somehow it was so inevitable that I found you. Only to lose you at the end of the line.

Sunday, August 15, 2004

Strung-Out

ust came back from Robinson's Place. I'm supposed to be tired, but am not..Have you any idea how difficult it is mobilizing 20 people at once when you're at the mall? Scary. Some relatives of mine are here right now, from California, taking a three week vacation. We haven't seen them for years and years so everybody was eager to play "welcome wagon."

Somebody had this idea that we go bowling (which we did rather horribly) and eat out, then hit the bars of Malate. Can you imagine that with 8 adults and 12 people with ages ranging from 13-50+? I didn't think so. Luckily, it rained so hard so the 'gimik' was out of the question. I'm just so tired playing the Tourism Bureau (playing the human map to everywhere else that they wanna go) these past few days, I just want to hit the sack and sleep for, like, days.

Tomorrow, they want to go swimming and i dont even have a decent suit...don't this people ever rest?


- - -
I'm so pathetic. I hate acting like a lovesick fool. I thought I was beyond this crap. Long-distance relationships (even if it was just the pseudo-kind) suck!!! I cannot believe how I'm eating my own words, I'm starting to choke on it. Poor, disillusioned Chel; acting so high-and-mighty, pretending she was in control. It was so big of me, telling people how to run their relationships, when in fact, I'm more clueless than them...maybe even more vulnerable so. Just look at the poem that I posted... Somebody please shoot me!

Saturday, August 14, 2004

The Sogo Motel Yahoo Group

I received an invitation to join the Sogo Motel Yahoogroup (ardee! stop laughing!!!), and on a whim I joined. I actually had no idea how that came about...I didn't even know such a group existed. Anyway, I checked out the thing, and god! It was fuck central! I was just laughing and laughing as I was browsing out the site. There were actually members who posted their numbers for SEB's...hoy, I'm not giving anyone an idea...i just find the whole thing hilarious...don't worry, I'm deleting din my membership. I just had to see for myself what's going on in there. LOL!


ayan, for your benefit, dear friends, eto ang URL niya: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/sogomotel/

feel free to visit, malay niyo, dito niyo nakita true love niyo...ha ha ha! basta ako...masaya na ako.

Thursday, August 12, 2004

Extracted (Part 2)

Okay. It is done. Over and done with. Now finally, I can start working and I can now break the monotony that is my life. Funny, this time it didn't hurt as much as the last time and the whole procedure lasted only 30 minutes. Frankly, I think every dentist in the world has somehow memorized all the bull crap in the world because he kept reassuring me that it would not hurt, which of course it did. I was tuning him out, ignoring the lies that roll off his mouth like undulating green snakes. In my mind I was singing Tori Amos' "A Sorta Fairy Tale" while he was slicing my gums open and wrestling my tooth out.

Still waiting for the anaesthesia's effect to subside...mouth still full of blood-soaked cotton. I'm liking the taste of my own blood more and more.

No One's A Mystery by Elizabeth Tallent

For my eighteenth birthday Jack gave me a five-year diary with a latch and a little key, light as a dime. I was sitting beside him scratching at the lock, which didn't seem to want to work, when he thought he saw his wife's Cadillac in the distance, coming toward us. He pushed me down onto the dirty floor of the pickup and kept one hand on my head while I inhaled the musk of his cigarettes in the dashboard ashtray and sang along with Rosanne Cash on the tape deck. We'd been drinking tequila and the bottle was between his legs, resting up against his crotch, where the seam of his Levi's was bleached linen-white, though the Levi's were nearly new. I don't know why his Levi's always bleached like that, along the scams and at the knees. In a curve of cloth his zipper glinted, gold.
"It's her," he said. "She keeps the lights on in the daytime. I can't think of a single habit in a woman that irritates me more than that." When he saw that I was going to stay still he took his hand from my head and ran it through his own dark hair.
"Why does she?" I said.
"She thinks it's safer. Why does she need to be safer? She's driving exactly fifty-five miles an hour. She believes in those signs: 'Speed Monitored by Aircraft.' It doesn't matter that you can look up and see that the sky is empty."
"She'll see your lips move, Jack. She'll know you're talking to someone."
"She'll think I'm singing along with the radio."
He didn't lift his hand, just raised the fingers in salute while the pressure of his palm steadied the wheel, and I heard the Cadillac honk twice, musically; he was driving easily eighty miles an hour. I studied his boots, The elk heads stitched into the leather were bearded with frayed thread, the toes were scuffed, and there was a compact wedge of muddy manure between the heel and the sole -the same boots he'd been wearing for the two years I'd known him. On the tape deck Rosanne Cash sang, "Nobody's into me, no one's a mystery."
"Do you think she's getting famous because of who her daddy is or for herself?" Jack said.
"There are about a hundred pop tops on the floor, did you know that? Some little kid could cut a bare foot on one of these, Jack."
"No little kids get into this truck except for you."
"How come you let it get so dirty?"
"'How come,' " he mocked. "You even sound like a kid. You can get back into the seat now, if you want. She's not going to look over her shoulder and see you."
"How do you know?"
"I just know," he said. "Like I know I'm going to get meat loaf for supper. It's in the air. Like I know what you'll be writing in that diary."
"What will I be writing?" I knelt on my side of the seat and craned around to look at the butterfly of dust printed on my jeans. Outside the window Wyoming was dazzling in the heat. The wheat was fawn and yellow and parted smoothly by the thin dirt road. I could smell the water in the irrigation ditches hidden in the wheat.
"Tonight you'll write, 'I love Jack. This is my birthday present from him, I can't imagine anybody loving anybody more than I love Jack.' "
"I can't."
"In a year you'll write, 'I wonder what I ever really saw in Jack. I wonder why I spent so many days just riding around in his pickup. It's true he taught me something about sex. It's true there wasn't ever much else to do in Cheyenne.'
"I won't write that."
"In two years you'll write, 'I wonder what that old guy's name was, the one with the curly hair and the filthy dirty pickup truck and time on his hands.'
"I won't write that."
"No?"
"Tonight I'll write, 'I love Jack. This is my birthday present from him. I can't imagine anybody loving anybody more than I love Jack.'"
"No, you can't," he said. "You can't imagine it."
"In a year I'll write, 'Jack should be home any minute now. The table's set -my grandmother's linen and her old silver and the yellow candles left over from the wedding -but I don't know if I can wait until after the trout à la Navarra to make love to him.'"
"It must have been a fast divorce."
"In two years I'll write, 'Jack should be home by now, Little Jack is hungry for his supper. He said his first word today besides "Mama" and "Papa." He said "kaka." ' "
Jack laughed. "He was probably trying to finger-paint with kaka on the bathroom wall when you heard him say it."
"In three years I'll write, 'My nipples are a little sore from nursing Eliza Rosamund.'"
"Rosamund. Every little girl should have a middle name she hates."
"'Her breath smells like vanilla and her eyes are just Jack's color of blue.' "
"That's nice," Jack said.
"So, which one do you like?"
"I like yours," he said. "But I believe mine."
"It doesn't matter. I believe mine."
"Not in your heart of hearts, you don't."
"You're wrong."
"I'm not wrong," he said. "And her breath would smell like your milk, and it's kind of a bittersweet smell, if you want to know the truth."
- - -

Wednesday, August 11, 2004

Mother Ship

I was back at UST 2 days ago. Meeting some friends. Exchanging stories with former professors who gave me the warmest of hugs and kisses. Stirring up old ghosts. I never actually acknowledged how much I missed the place. How much I missed learning. How much I missed everything that represents being a student.
Strange, the things one miss when deposited in a space so big she does not know what to do with it. Suddenly I long for the cramped spaces. Somewhere I could just curl up in until I die from claustrophobia instead of drowning in this vast and empty cosmos they call freedom. Now I have time on my hands but I know not what to do it. I missed those frenetic moments in my life where my brain could implode any minute from reading too much Fanon and sleep was a luxury that I rarely can afford.
Bottomline: I wanna be a student again.

Monday, August 09, 2004

AWOL lifted

AWOL lifted ha ha! im back! i still have the sniffles though and i still hack every now and then but otherwise, i'm not so nauseous and vomitty anymore!

Saturday, August 07, 2004

Break In

hay naku. i kept remembering gelo's poem about the benches that were stolen at Roxas Blvd (remember how indignant i was, ailil? ano nga ba title nun?). anyway. i woke-up at exactly 8 in the morning, then when i was on my way to the john, nasalubong ko yung gf ng utol ko. she asked me if i was aware that something happened at around 2am and i replied that it was pretty unlikely because during that time i was heavily sedated due to the heavy amount of decongestant, cough syrup, paracetamol, and antibiotic that i was simultaneously taking.
it just so happened pala na someone broke into our house and attempted to steal our antique metal patio chairs. buti na lang my kuya had the presence of mind to check it out when he heard one of the chairs scraping...so they only got one instead of four.
god.
what's wrong with these people?
never mind.
dont answer that.

Wednesday, August 04, 2004

When Peter Met Wendy


Fortunately she knew at once what to do.

"It must be sewn on," she said, just a little patronisingly.
"What's sewn?" he asked.
"You're dreadfully ignorant."
"No, I'm not." But she was exulting in his ignorance.
"I shall sew it on for you, my little man," she said, though he was tall as herself, and she got out her housewife [sewing bag], and sewed the shadow on to Peter's foot.
"I daresay it will hurt a little," she warned him.
"Oh, I shan't cry," said Peter, who was already of the opinion that he had never cried in his life. And he clenched his teeth and did not cry, and soon his shadow was behaving properly, though still a little creased.
"Perhaps I should have ironed it," Wendy said thoughtfully, but Peter, boylike, was indifferent to appearances, and he was now jumping about in the wildest glee. Alas, he had already forgotten that he owed his bliss to Wendy. He thought he had attached the shadow himself.
"How clever I am!" he crowed rapturously,"oh, the cleverness of me!" It is humiliating to have to confess that this conceit of Peter was one of his most fascinating qualities. To put it with brutal frankness, there never was a cockier boy. But for the moment Wendy was shocked.
"You conceit [braggart]," she exclaimed, with frightful sarcasm;"of course I did nothing!"
"You did a little," Peter said carelessly, and continued to dance.
"A little!" she replied with hauteur [pride]; "if I am no use I can at least withdraw," and she sprang in the most dignified way into bed and covered her face with the blankets. To induce her to look up he pretended to be going away, and when this failed he sat on the end of the bed and tapped her gently with his foot.
"Wendy," he said, "don't withdraw. I can't help crowing, Wendy, when I'm pleased with myself." Still she would not look up, though she was listening eagerly.
"Wendy," he continued, in a voice that no woman has ever yet been able to resist,
"Wendy, one girl is more use than twenty boys." Now Wendy was every inch a woman, though there were not very many inches, and she peeped out of the bed-clothes.
"Do you really think so, Peter?"
", I do." "I think it's perfectly sweet of you," she declared, "and I'll get up again," and she sat with him on the side of the bed. She also said she would give him a kiss if he liked, but Peter did not know what she meant, and he held out his hand expectantly.
"Surely you know what a kiss is?" she asked, aghast.
"I shall know when you give it to me," he replied stiffly, and not to hurt his feeling she gave him a thimble.
"Now," said he, "shall I give you a kiss?" and she replied with a slight primness,
"If you please." She made herself rather cheap by inclining her face toward him, but he merely dropped an acorn button into her hand, so she slowly returned her face to where it had been before, and said nicely that she would wear his kiss on the chain around her neck. It was lucky that she did put it on that chain, for it was afterwards to save her life. (From the third chapter of "The Adventures of Peter Pan")




- - -

At this point in the story, I would assume that Peter and Wendy have already looked into each other's eyes...and saw what even the most seasoned and professional fortune tellers could even fail to see sometime...narcissus and the river gazing at each other, seeing themselves reflected like a deck of cards shuffled accordion-like on a table covered with red cloth. Finding their counterpart...their equal, to drown in it, if only for the briefest moment in the liquid pools that stares back at them. It's not easy finding our other half, is it? The person who could complete ourselves like Romeo to Juliet whose tragic union united warring clans or Abelard and Heloise whose affair caused the former's castration and the latter being sent off to the cloister where they would spend the rest of their wretched lives loving each in utter silence for fear of God's punishment. Isn't this the most delusions of all delusions? That we needed someone to complete us. The need to complete the pattern wholeness and integration. But people don't complete us. We complete ourselves because if we do not, then the quest for love becomes the quest for self-annihilation; and then we try convince ourselves that self-destruction is love, which is a lot like mistaking dependency for love.


So what did Wendy do? In order to keep Peter, didn't she gave him up, got married and had kids of her own?

Her brief interlude with Peter (which seemed like forever suspended in heady clarity during that time) passed in time. And it always does, unfortunately. The fresh bruises of a broken heart would feel tender at first; pain would rack it even during the gentlest of touches that one might never let anyone near it again. But eventually, the angry purple bruise would become reddish, then it would yellow like the colors of the rainbow transforming it back to the color it began, and with it, the ache subsides. Then we forget about it. Sometimes, we'd even forget that we ever had hearts; that it is still there in the deepest recess of our body, beating. Until the next time we fall in love, that is. And when we fall in love again, we wondered how we could've forgotten it and then we would realize, that maybe this time, our hearts are stronger, better because we cannot fully remember the time before.

What had love had ever done for us but disappoint us? Or is it the other way around by looking for it in the wrong persons at the right time and vice versa.

Sometimes, we want to lose ourselves to this one person, that for a glimmer of moment we cease to be ourselves. That we be transported to heaven on borrowed wings. Only the tic-toc of a clock stuck in an alligator's belly would ever remind you that time exists. But borrowed wings can also melt like Icarus' plunging to his death in the sea surrounding the island of Crete.

I guess Wendy would just have to grow her own wings.

AWOL

hi friends. i'll be gone for a couple of days...weeks, maybe. i've been really weak from battling the flu....i'll just sleep it in for a couple of days. at least.

Leaving the Motel (W. D. Snodgrass)


Outside, the last kids holler

Near the pool: they'll stay the night.
Pick up the towels; fold your collar
Out of sight.

Check: is the second bed
Unrumpled as agreed?
Landlords have to think ahead
In case of need.

Too. Keep things straight: don't take
The matches, the wrong keyrings-
We've nowhere we could keep a keepsake-
Ashtrays, combs, things

That sooner or later others
Would accidentally find.
Check: take nothing of one another's
And leave behind.

Your license number only,
Which they won't care to trace;
We've paid. Still, should such things get lonely,
Leave in their vase

An aspirin to preserve
Our lilacs, this wayside flowers
We've gathered and must leave to serve
A few more hours;

That's all. We can't tell when
We'll come back, can't press claims,
We would no doubt have other rooms then,
Or other names.


- - -



for j



Monday, August 02, 2004

Everybody's Favorite Aunt


flaming peach and the rest of the litter. Posted by Hello



I dont know why I have this aversion to children. well not all children really. the only children that I can tolerate in this lifetime would be my three nephews(see photo above). that's about it. they're the only children i know that can make me give up both of my kidneys to ensure their happiness. otherwise, anything that is below four-feet, drinks milk from a feeding bottle and has a hard time pronouncing my name, i steer clear of.


i used to think that marriage and having kids of my own is the be-all and end-all of my life. as part of the propaganda that my mother and the institution, that i call my high school, instilled in me when i was young, that was my ultimate goal in life: find a good husband, bear and raise his kids and that's it.


but i didn't want to. i know i didn't.

the more i grew up, the more i'm around children, the more i'm certain that i didn't want one. that i would never want one.

call it selfish, call it immature but having children is not an insurance for happiness or security or pain. pregnancy is an arrogant decision. how else would you call undertaking responsibility for something which you're not sure of? it sounded so much like abdicating your control...the usurpance of your life and territory.


i'll never be ready for that. all i can envision myself 10, 20 or 50 years from now includes a red pen for marking papers and a black pen for writing syllabi and lesson plans. maybe i'd still be in love with the same person i would have been in love with when i reach the age of 25.

but for now, i'd settle on being someone's favorite aunt.


- - -


Empty
by Erica Mann Jong
Every month,
the reminder of emptiness
so that you are tuned
to your bodyharp,
strung out on the harpsichord
of all your nerves
& hammered bloody blue
as the crushed fingersof the woman pianist
beaten by her jealous lover.
Who is she?
Someone I invented for this poem,
Someone I imagined.....Never mind,
She is me, you~tied to the bodybeat,
fainting on the rack of blood
moving to the metronome~empty, empty, empty.
No use.
The blood is thicker
than the roots of trees,
more persistent than my poetry,
more baroque than her bruised music.
It gilds the sky about the Virgin's head.
It turns the lilies white.
Try to run:the blood still follows you.
Swear off children,
seek a quite roomto practice your preludes & fuges.
Under the piano,the blood accumulates;
eventually it floats you both away.
Give in.
Babies cry & music is your life.
Darling, you were born to bleed
or rock.
& the heart breaks
either way.


Saturday, July 31, 2004

What Freud Thinks of Me

What Freud Thinks of Me Okay, again, I got this off Nat's blog...if you want to take the same test, click on the title to go to the link.

- - -
Freudian Inventory Results
Genital (70%) you appear to have a progressive and constructive outlook on life.
Latency (46%) you appear to have a good balance of knowledge seeking and practicality.
Phallic (70%) you appear to have issues with controlling your sexual desires and possibly fidelity.
Anal (50%) you appear to have a good balance of self control and spontaneity.
Oral (33%) you appear to be stubbornly and irrationally against receiving help even when it might be the more intelligent option.
Take Free Freudian Inventory Test

- - -


Freuds theorized that there are 5 stages of psychological development. At the oral stage the main issue is dependency, at the anal stage the main issue is self control, at the phallic stage the main issue is sexual identity, at the latency stage it's skill development, and at the genital stage its creativity and productivity.
Freud theorized that psychological problems are related to problems during one or more of these stages. For example, being too cared for or too neglected causes someone to be orally fixated, too much or too little control causes someone to be anally fixated, insufficient parental role modeling causes phallic fixation.
An orally fixated person is either irrationally dependent (expects what they want to just appear) or irrationally independent (always refuses help).
An anally fixated person is either irrationally self controlled and servile to authority or has no self control and is compulsively defiant of authority.
A phallicly fixated person is either a sexual compulsive (sexually innappropriate/promiscuous) or sexually repressed.
Freud did not classify any latent fixation but I think it is as plausible as those at the other stages. I speculate that people that like to learn and acquire knowledge without any purpose or people that are compulsively non curious represent both dysfunctional ends of the latency spectrum.
The genital stage is the final Freudian developmental stage and according to Freud people don't all succeed at this. Freud believed the ideal for human happiness is to be happy in love and work, problems in one or the other cause unhappiness.
Like any personality system, Freud's developmental levels are just a theory, so, be speculative about your results.
- - -
this had really been a good test...i just had to laugh about the questions on my fidelity...i've always been faithful and look what it turned me into (lol)....and i always will be, i still consider it the lowest thing one can ever do to a person (do i detect i hint of bitterness in here? ha ha, only real friends would know that)...anyway, as for the rest, the survey was accurate enough but kinda too, i dont know, vanilla-ish of me. i never knew i was this cut-to-the-chase person. i guess living with 5 very difficult persons in all shapes, age, and sizes have taken out the excitement out of my life.

Friday, July 30, 2004

Pancaked

My family was eating the pancakes I prepared for merienda with gusto. Stories and comments flew freely from mouth to mouth that were dripping with amber-colored maple syrup swirled with lemony yellow melted butter that releases a feeling of hope and warmth that rises unto the ceilings, floating out the windows streaming with afternoon sunlight after a downpour, with each bite of the fluffy cake.

They have no idea what had transpired when I was preparing the pancake 30 minutes ago that my family were now devouring happily, oblivious to my inner turmoil.


- - -

I made sure that the ingredients were ready. All of them stacked neatly, beside each other at the blue-tiled counter like soldiers in line formation, awaiting orders from their captain, maybe wondering who would be the first to die at this battle.

I cracked the egg on the side of the bowl. It sounded like someone's heart breaking. Next came the water, then the pancake mix, and then oil. Contrasting ingredients that resemble a morning after sleeping with someone you hardly know then waking up in his bed the following morning.

Furiously I stirred the ingredients, forming them into a lumpy batter, like the face of the moon seen through a powerful telescope at nights when there are no clouds.

I stirred until my arms ached, until the lumps disappear in accordance to the steps in the recipe. At last, the batter was now as smooth as a statue made from flesh-colored alabaster.

I opened the stove and waited for the griddle to heat, staring at the batter as I do so. How could something this mellow come from something as chaotic as ingredients thrown together in a bowl, coming from all directions, dropped like a kamikaze bomb, creating destruction.

I dropped the first batch of pancakes to be cooked, then it all became a blur of flipping, spreading margarine, drizzling maple syrup, and then stacking them like kiddie alphabet blocks, each cake dangling precariously on the edge. Some were burnt, because I left them on the griddle too long than what is asked for. Some were cooked prematurely, that when sliced, uncooked batter oozed out. But it would be a waste to throw them all out. So we had to contend to eat them even if they were cooked poorly, even if they do not taste good, that's why blueberry and raspberry jams were used to offset the unwanted taste. Yet some were cooked to perfection: gleaming brown on both sides like a farmer's broad back that glistens underneath the heat of the afternoon sun.

Why do I get the feeling that this is just more than a simple pancake that we were eating? This is my life that they were devouring. All twenty years of my life were thrown in that mixture, seeping its way into the folds of the batter that was stirred, then cooked into the hot griddle for everyone's verdict.

Were they happy? Were they satisfied? Is that distaste I saw in my father's mouth as he bit into a particular burnt portion of the cake? Does my nephew thinks it taste good or was he more interested in throwing pieces and crumbs on the floor? My mother, the champion bruiser and cooker in this family, what does she think of my cooking? Does it live up to her standards? Can I ever eclipse her legendary cooking prowess? Fact is, I don't really care.

I'm more concerned about the stack of plates that is ever growing on the kitchen sink. Dirty plates that are now calling my name, begging to be washed and placed in the dryer.

Sigh.

I picked up the sponge, pour soap on it and gave it a short squeeze. I opened the faucet, releasing a torrent of clear water and proceeded to wash each plate, one by one.

Monday, July 26, 2004

The Quest for Ardee's Holy Grail

Since I’ve just finished reading Dan Brown's "The Davinci Code" i think that this was an apt title for today's entry. I know, I know, I’ve said that I’ll be on-hiatus for a while but I just couldn't turn away a friend in need. Maybe after this we'd be even-steven, huh, ardee?

- - -

What if, suddenly and without meaning to, your life fell into place, like a 10,000 piece jigsaw puzzle set in the likeness of Davinci’s Mona Lisa put together after laboring on it for weeks and weeks. What then? Would you savor the accomplishment by having it framed, with a gold-plated border and hang it where people could admire the it all the time so you can brag that you did it without any kind of help in only a matter of weeks. Or would you disassemble it again piece by piece losing interest in it then just chucking the pieces back into the box where it would just become some child’s plaything where it would get discarded too as soon as the child loses his taste for it.

Someone confided in me that he’d just found his inner peace after losing it and searching for it years and years ago. I was happy for him, truly I was. I’ve never so much envied him as he said that after being lost for the past couple of years, there he was, suddenly at peace with himself and to those that surrounded him. While I, holding no less than a college degree to my belt with some minor accomplishments on the side, still feels as if I’m not making any headway at all in the grand design of my so-called life. After battling emotional demons, getting heavily scarred from it in the process, my friend has sought and found calm. He is at peace. He is tranquil. Or so he thought.

His was the voice of reason. Not one people could count to him for advices, words of wisdom, and a listening ear. He would not offer half-baked advices, he would just listen and to those people who needs it the most, people who had so much to say but no one to say it to, that was enough. Even I had been guilty of foisting my trivial, sometimes not-so-trivial concerns, and he had been there. Always. Like clockwork. There were days when I would not hear from him for days, weeks even, but he'd call whenever I need him the most (usually Sundays).

But I’d forgotten that even those who listen needs to be listened to sometimes.

He is human after all.

And human wants and needs for his survival. Even if there was nothing to want anymore, because as I've said to him, sometimes it's the chase we want. And if we do get what we wanted, what do we do with it? Is it the same thing that we wanted in the first place? Should we have it framed, for the entire world to see or should we keep it in a box, tie it with a red ribbon and shove it under the bed?

It's a vicious circle, isn't it? We want what we cannot have and when we do acquire it, we long to be what we were before we got what we thought we wanted (I’m sooo confused right now). One can easily wish that he need not grow up, get older and die ultimately or not fall in love and get hurt but if, on some strange circumstance his wish be granted, where should he go then?

We were designed to be forever discontented. As a child, we long to eat gloopy Hershey’s bar and peanuts M&M's from morning til night until our teeth and stomach would ache we would ask our parents for a glass of warm milk or a plate of peanut butter sandwiches. It would go on and on until we get older, us, wanting to live our lives the way we wanted to. Wanting immortality by clinging to our material, emotional, and erotic wants. But suppose we earn all the money there is to earn in the world, fallen in and out of love, and fucked our lives away, what do we do then? Should we voluntary wish for death to come and take us away from all the superficialities that we thought we once wanted?


Friday, July 23, 2004

for Phoebe

For Phoebe
boys are cheats and liars
they're such a big disgrace
they will tell you anything to get to
second base-ball, baseball
he thinks he's gonna score!
if you let him go all the way...
then you are a
horticulture studies flowers
geologists studies rocks
the only thing a guy wants from you
is a place to put his
cock-roaches, beetles
butterflies and bugs
nothing makes him happier than a giant
pair of jug-glers and acrobats
and dancing bear named Chuck
all guys really want to do is
forget it, no such luck!


- - -


about ardee:
ardee, whom i call phoebe/pheebs/angelo/fag, and who also goes by the name dylan is my one and only fag (aside from ryan, that is). we met through a mutual friend (karen) 2 years ago. i never knew that we'd be this close...because what brought us together originally was our love for the show 'charmed.' now phoebe knows me more than i know myself...(he's a shrink-in-training that moonlights as an eRep)...and god, ardee, is much of a whore than i am (rolling on the floor laughing!!!). phoebe and i could talk for hours over coffee or bottles of San Miguel Strong Ice and never run out of things to talk, diss, or laugh about. phoebe and i have this weird intution thing between us and we've proven on more than one occasion that we could read each other's minds. we both like older men, and as far as i know, we've never lied to each other. as mentioned before, phoebe knows more stuff about me than most people i know (including myself) and vice versa. phoebe is my fag, and i am his hag. =p
miss yah, pheebs! see you tomorrow!

What Type of Poetry Are You?

What Type of Poetry Are You?

got this off natasha's blog and this is me:

I'm the limerick, mired in muck.
I refuse to be bored or get stuck.
I like to offend, But not, in the end,
As much as to thwart expectations

ha ha..funny but accurate...


Extracted (part1)

ouch...im still hurting...gagging over a mouthful of cotton soaked in my blood. karen commented i must be in vampire-heaven right now, but my blood doesn't taste sweet. it tastes of salt mixed with copper. but it's not so bad. a bitter way of reminding me that bliss is not everything, that it could be found even in the deepest sorrow. you have to taste pain and it will not get better, despite what everybody says. you will have to keep biting the blood-soaked cotton until it cannot absorb anymore or your own blood runs out.

Thursday, July 22, 2004

Benched


I sat on this bench, easily ambushed by memories. The smell of grass will always be forever trapped on the fringes my nostrils. The scent of the moist earth after a downpour is like you, gone after a few seconds but the scent will linger, getting stronger every time, short-circuiting my senses.

This is where I first met you. I was garbed in blue and white, and yours were purple and black. How we clashed, even then, I just didn't realize it. Back then, three years ago, the bench that I'm sitting on was just a bare wooden plank, battered as my heart during the tome and I sat on it as long as I could, as long as it can held me.

First game trepidations sank through my dry throat down to my gut where it settled in my already butterfly-filled stomach.

Then the shrill sound of the referee's whistle sliced through the tense atmosphere. I clenched my fist, and coiled my stomach, this is it. My first game, and I was ready. Or so I thought. You were running towards me, dribbling the black and white ball on your feet. I got my first look at you.

Scoring an easy goal against me, I knew right then, I would never win against you, that much I'd admit. You were always too fast, always one step ahead of me like Atalanta and her suitors, outrunning them but not out-cunning them. But there was no golden apple for me to throw for you. I was just as swept away like countless of star-crossed lovers that were talked about in books and songs and paintings.

I remember waiting for you in this same bench, watching you as you train. Admiring how agile you are on the field, how fast you are until you are nothing but a blur and I couldn't see you anymore. I remember how the ball would make an arc over the field as your spikes connect with it with a thud, like the same sound my silly heart always makes whenever you're around.

I remember how your cheeks would get pink from the exertion and how I would hand you a towel and bottled water, which you would drink from as if you'll never drink again. I wished then that you were drinking from me, or me, for that matter, that way our souls would commune for a brief hour before you sweat and all liquid would dispel itself from your pores. Sometimes I close my eyes to savor your scent (your shampoo or cologne, I never could tell) as it wafted from you and I was certain that that must've been forever I smelled.

We used to eat in the carenderia that I don't eat in anymore. I used to walk with you on the dark streets of Gelinos, stopping at the door of your dorm, where our awkward goodbyes and indefinite shrugs were drowned by the singing drunks from the pub nearby and the students milling out of the campus, talking about the day's test.

No, I do not pass there anymore. I go by a different route now. I rarely see you and by now, you must've broken already countless hearts, took someone's breath away without intending to. You could do that to me, you know. You used to have such power over me. But I had to keep my spikes on the shoe rack and hang my blue and white uniform on the closet someday, and that's just what I did.

Tuesday, July 20, 2004

Yanking the Plug


If I had my way, I’d move in with you in an instant. Maybe even marry you if given the chance. I’d have let my life be swallowed in yours; I would gladly merge myself in you as the smoothest of silks cling to my skin after every bath. I will wear these clothes, as you will engulf me in the unsafe-security of your life. So that we’ll be bound to take each step together, every side steps however which way made together. We could be each other’s shadows and maybe I’d stitch you to myself like Wendy stitched Peter Pan’s unto himself after keeping it folded beneath her own silken dresses in her antique drawer.

But if ever that would be the case, someday I’d have to un-stitch every poorly stitched edges until my hands get calloused from doing so, to atone myself for sins that you and I have both done. Someday, I’d have to put you away, have you folded and tucked in my bottom drawer, have it locked and keep the keys in my pocket because by then, the once-comfortable shadow I’ve worn might be in tatters and shan’t be worn anymore.

There’d be no vine-covered cottages for us, where we would’ve spent each day of our blissfully wretched lives even though I already know the plot of the garden we will plant, every seed to be planted, every plant to be cultivated, every stem to be grafted.

There’d be no domestic animals for us to feed and keep even though I know that we will adopt two blue-eyed, white Huskies: one male, one female named Sam and Lighting respectively. No cats would be allowed because I’m quite allergic to it, I wouldn’t want to sneeze each time I pick them and die on the floor hacking nor find my bedposts scratched because of its territorial issues. Sea creatures are definitely allowed; I could stare at them for hours until I’d find myself with a diamond-patterned shell on my back hiding from curious-lookers.

There’d be no kids for us. No bassinet to paint, no formulas to fix at 4 in the morning, no incessant wails reverberating in the walls of our vine-covered cottage. Although I would have wanted to named our kid Eric if it’s a boy or something romantic-sounding like Guinevere if it’s a girl.

There’d be no bed for us to share, no table to dine-in even if I’ve been thinking of getting oak-made furniture (because oaks are supposed to last a long time) and I would’ve matched our sheets with the curtain’s color which would’ve been robin’s egg blue complemented with white. Our kitchen would have to be yellow with hardwood floors accented with old and mellowed red bricks with big windows so sunlight could stream through while I fry the eggs over-easy for breakfast.

If I had my way. But I don’t.

I don’t even know your face nor caressed your morning stubble nor kiss you the way I would. If I had my way. You’re just a faceless voice connected to me through this white wire that keeps getting tangled in me as I walked across my own kitchen (colored white for sterility) to grab a cold beer from the fridge. Twisting and turning I futilely tried to release myself until I had to yank it out of the plug. And the line went dead.

Monday, July 19, 2004

scheduled for surgery



im scheduled for surgery this thursday..damn molars...aargh!


- - -

over lunch, we (mom, nitwit brother, me) were talking about my impending surgery this thursday and, weirdly enough, i told them that i am not scared. both of them scoffed, not believing as the procedure, which will take about an hour and a half, would include slicing open my gums, sawing the crown of my tooth in half before pulling the root then stitching it up. what made this procedure twice as hard is the direction of my tooth growth which is horizontal, therefore classifying it as an abnormal. oh, and did i mention that the same thing goes for my other molar as well. oh yeah, i'll be undergoing the damn thing TWICE, if you can believe that...oh well.
as previously mentioned, my mom and the freakazoid, were bewildered by my indifference to the pain it might cause. it's not a big deal, really, i'm more pained by how much it would cost me (2500 a tooth, ugh!) ...good thing my new job would pay me really well...LOL...