today and yesterday

One of the perks of being an orphan is that you can do almost everything you ever dreamed of doing when your parents were alive. You can drink as many Slurpees as you want, even if you have been coughing and sniffing for three whole days. You can dance in the rain and see your brother watching you surreptitiously from an open window before he joins you minutes after. You can stay up late, watching Somewhere in Time over and over again and no one will come up to you, serving sermons on gilded platters about health and the dangers of romanticism. You can sit and stare at absolutely nothing for hours and no one will come to envelope you in a furious hug, saying that for them, you exist. You are loved.

******

One of the moments when I wished I had a digicam or any camera of any sort was yesterday, when, upon leaving the apartment, I saw a large orange tabby glaring at me from a neighbor’s doorstep. It was so beautiful and sleek that I was really tempted to steal it and hole it up in my room for a day.

******

The new owner of my father’s ancestral house was kind enough to let us take some furniture from the house. He said that it would help us remember. I wonder if he thought that he was doing us a favor.

Here are some treasures that I found:


1. I unearthed a writing table from my uncle's old room. It probably was an antique mahogany sewing machine (sewing table?) that belonged to my grandmother, which was later fashioned into a kind of writing desk, now unpolished and a bit dusty. I fell in love with its intricate foothold patterns that scrolled and unfurled, like so many wild vines.

Time to take out my writing cap. I will not be blamed for future Dickensonian entries.


2. I also found my mother's other painting- a still life composed of apples and peaches and round patterns swirling on large jars.

Her name on this one is C. Usebio. My mother rarely signs her name on her paintings. She said she used other names on most of them. This will make the ones she sold in Japan and the other paintings of hers hard to track down, even if I do get to become a billionaire. She has had too many lives, too many secrets lost in the wailing wind.

********

Two books that I've read over the weekend:

1. Lady Oracle : Margaret Atwood

The reason I enjoy Atwood books is because I believe that I am a narcissist. No matter what people say, everyone likes seeing themselves in black and white, in another person's clothes, hidden in a heart. Atwood's characters successfully elucidate parts of me that, to use a cliché, I have never chanced upon before. When I read her, I feel that I am on a treasure hunt. In her characters I see my plots, my hands, my tired, black heart.

2. The Wayward Wife and Other Stories: Alberto Moravia


Two movies that I've watched (they're really good. but don't take my word for it.):

1. My life without me - Isabel Coixet

"I am classically in love!"

2. Garden State - Zach Braff

"What's the word that's burning in your heart?"

***********


You won't feel pain immediately after a fall. You first think about what you would've done better if you haven't stepped on that particular railing. You were forewarned but you decided to be a regular troglodyte and risk it. A few minutes after the fall, you feel your knees go slightly numb. You lift your skirt an inch and you see pinpricks of blood adorning flesh. You press a finger to the scar, lightly trace its irregular pattern. You laugh at your instability - at your penchant for accidents happening even before the journey. You try to divert your attention from the discomfort so you watch the wipers on the windshield mechanically move from side to side, as if the movement will heal you, will make things disappear like rabbits in top hats. After a while, you notice that the pain has stopped. You imagine yourself victorious. You are a riot of dry autumn leaves spinning around, finally happy. But you lift up your skirt an inch and see how red the prinpricks still are.

only a phase, these dark cafe days

after i've bawled my eyes out for roughly an hour, i groggily went out of my room, my mouth sulky with so much sugar due to the meringue pieces i've been consuming while listening to the ramons and being clinically pathetic.sweets never really do compensate for desolation, no matter what the hersheys ads say. if anything, they make you feel weaker, more pliable to assaults.

so i forced myself to sit in front of the TV and just flipped channels. there was nothing good on, as usual. as i sat there, feeling so out of sorts i started crying again, i realized that this was definitely the saddest year of my entire life.

i am more lost than ever.

******

last wednesday, i watched the prestige with a couple of my officemates. funny how i finally identified with a lead character and she ended up hanging from a ceiling in a room full of birds.

******

this afternoon,i looked in the mirror and did not know who i was.

******

i finally realized that i have no right to be so smug about where i am right now. every action that i'm against may very, very well happen to me so i should just keep my meddling mouth shut.in this day and age, when everyone else seems to find solace in strangeness, it's very risky to throw stones.

******

Two poems by Yehuda Amichai that are fitted for the nearing occasions:

Memorial Day For The War Dead

Memorial day for the war dead. Add now

the grief of all your losses to their grief,

even of a woman that has left you. Mix

sorrow with sorrow, like time-saving history,

which stacks holiday and sacrifice and mourning

on one day for easy, convenient memory.

Oh, sweet world soaked, like bread,

in sweet milk for the terrible toothless God.

"Behind all this, some great happiness is hiding."

No use to weep inside and to scream outside.

Behind all this perhaps some great happiness is hiding.

Memorial day. Bitter salt is dressed up

as a little girl with flowers.The streets are cordoned off with ropes,

for the marching together of the living and the dead.

Children with a grief not their own march slowly,

like stepping over broken glass.

The flautist's mouth will stay like that for many days.

A dead soldier swims above little heads

with the swimming movements of the dead,

with the ancient error the dead have

about the place of the living water.

A flag loses contact with reality and flies off.

A shopwindow is decorated with

dresses of beautiful women, in blue and white.

And everything in three languages:Hebrew, Arabic, and Death.

A great and royal animal is dying

all through the night under the jasmine

tree with a constant stare at the world.

A man whose son died in the war walks in the street

like a woman with a dead embryo in her womb.

"Behind all this some great happiness is hiding."

A Pity. We Were Such a Good Invention

They amputated
Your thighs off my hips.
As far as I'm concerned
They are all surgeons. All of them.

They dismantled us
Each from the other.
As far as I'm concerned
They are all engineers. All of them.

A pity. We were such a good
And loving invention.
An aeroplane made from a man and wife.
Wings and everything.
We hovered a little above the earth.

We even flew a little.

******

because forgetting, even for a moment, is a wave of vindication:

Drinking Song

Silvia Curbelo

In every half-filled glass a river

begging to be named, rain on a leaf,

a snowdrift. What we long for

precedes us. What we've lost

trails behind, casting

a long shadow. Tonight

the music's sad, one man's

outrageous loneliness detonated

into arpeggios of relief. The way

someone once cupped someone's

face in their hands, and the world

that comes after. Everything

can be pared down to gravity

or need. If the soul soars with longing

the heart plunges headfirst

into what's left, believing

there's a pure want

to fall through. What we drink to

in the end is loss,

the space around it, the opposite

of thirst, its shadow.

******

All I know of you is in my memory; All I ask is for you to remember me. -Suzanne Vega, Rosemary

******

it's best to end things with joni mitchell lyrics:

THE LAST TIME I SAW RICHARD

Joni Mitchell

The last time I saw Richard was Detroit in '68,
And he told me all romantics meet the same fate someday
Cynical and drunk and boring someone in some dark cafe
You laugh, he said you think you're immune, go look at your eyes
They're full of moon.

You like roses and kisses and pretty men to tell you
All those pretty lies, pretty lies
When you gonna realise they're only pretty lies
Only pretty lies, just pretty lies

He put a quarter in the Wurlitzer, and he pushed
Three buttons and the thing began to whirr
And a bar maid came by in fishnet stockings and a bow tie
And she said "Drink up now it's gettin' on time to close."
"Richard, you haven't really changed," I said

It's just that now you're romanticizing some pain that's in your head
You got tombs in your eyes, but the songs
You punched are dreaming
Listen, they sing of love so sweet, love so sweet
When you gonna get yourself back on your feet?
Oh and love can be so sweet, love so sweet

Richard got married to a figure skater
And he bought her a dishwasher and a Coffee percolator
And he drinks at home now most nights with the TV on
And all the house lights left up bright

I'm gonna blow this damn candle out
I don't want nobody comin' over to my table
I got nothing to talk to anybody about
All good dreamers pass this way some day
Hidin' behind bottles in dark cafes
Only a dark cocoon before I get my gorgeous wings
And fly away
Only a phase, these dark cafe days.

today, you are golden

Great Art
Lawrence Raab


There's so much I don't want to look at,
big religious scenes especially,
big historical battles,
almost anything, in fact, containing
large numbers of people.

Three or four people—that's the right number
for a painting. Then you can think
about what they might mean to each other,
why they're standing around that beach
at sunset, walking toward that mountain.

Or they're at home: a woman sewing, a child
playing, a dog, a man at the door,
much more ominous, I'm sure, than the artist
intended. And I like that, imagining
this isn't what I was supposed to feel,

the way I'm pleased with small imperfections,
stains and wrinkles, erasures particularly,
where you sense the artist changing his mind.
And sometimes a shape's been painted over,
although the ghost of it remains.

In Vermeer's Girl Asleep at a Table
she leans on one hand, dreaming
perhaps of love. Behind her there's a mirror
in which nothing is reflected. Once,
x-rays have shown, this was a portrait of a man.

And we would have understood, given
the conventions of the time, he was the subject
of her thoughts. Why take him away?
It's better, I want Vermeer
to have decided, not to show that much.

Let her keep her dream to herself.
Let the light be our secret.

I'll come running


Even if Ms Paltrow's acting skills in this movie left a lot of things to be desired (come on, how hard is it to LOOK blank and devoid of any real ideas? you'd know what i'm talking about IF you read the book), Great Expectations really was a good movie.

Argh. Blogger is making me soooo insane. My links are all so screwy.:(

I'm really moving on to BETTER pastures. Prolly Wordpress will do. I was practically salivating when I saw how easy it was to maintain a blog there.

Soon, anyways. When I have time and have decided to make the effort.

By the way, check out PLUMA, our group blog. As of today, it has no posts yet (just registered 5 minutes ago) but try checking it out after a coupla days.

More than anything, it is always the death of someone or the end of an event that makes you stand still and listen to your own solitary insignificance.

----------------
It somewhat saddens me - the fact that I cannot even make an effort to wake up early in the morning to jog. I, instead, go to the gym now to make up for lost days. Thirty minutes on the treadmill, for me, does not constitute a real run. You miss out on a lot of things- the first kiss of fresh air, sounds of people waking up, the day slowly unraveling.

We still have the best mornings. Upon waking up, everything seems to have that old, blurred quality, as if you were stuck wallowing in an old photograph. And in the photograph, whispered promises of better things - an untangled life, a greater good, a future happiness. This is probably why a lot of Filipinos are incurable optimists. (This is not meant to be taken as a compliment)

-----------------

My friend A, who works for a monthly, was asked by her boss to do a write-up on a boy, all of 12 years old, who is an advanced chess player, a talented instrumentalist, and a wunderkind of sorts. This boy has ADD. But A (who became a blood sister of mine during our days at the Journalism Department at UP) is supposed to write about how normal this boy is when really, there's nothing usual about him.

So I ask her, what are his interests, what are the games that he likes to play?

She tells me he has no friends.

Okay, I ask, favorite breakfast? Crispy meteorites? Salty Mars men?

Nothing that special. Sausages, I think.

Oh okay, that's normal enough.

It's hard enough to begin an article, she says, and now I'm stuck with an opening paragraph that
has the word sausage in it.

Sounds juicy, A.

--------------
I do not appreciate my having memory lapses at this day and age. Especially in the business that I am currently in, I cannot afford to have misplaced adjectives and spilt infinitives.

Note to self: Resume reading the dictionary.

----------------

Margaret Atwood on writing:

“I look back over what I’ve written and I know it’s wrong, not because of what I’ve set down, but because of what I’ve omitted. What isn’t there has a presence, like the absence of light.

You want the truth, of course. You want me to put two together. But two and two doesn’t necessarily get you the truth. Two and two equals a voice outside the window. Two and two equals the wind. The living bird is not its labeled bones.” – Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin

-------------------

The perennial question: Which would you choose, what you want or what you need?

I think you choose this - the thing that you want - because it is something that you have not owned; a treat that you can’t have on a regular day like you would something as usual and expected as a toothbrush. A need is a given, a sum of laid out parts. You consider its consistency a weakness, something that you can do without. And you say, I’ll get it tomorrow or some other day or next year because you know that you only have to look sideways and there it is – on shelves, inserted in books, stuck in the limbo of your neglect and its love.

With something you want, there will always be that element of surprise, that strange perfection, an urgency that overwhelms. It is the grotesque apple, the calming hour, the sudden crisp smell of cinnamon when you close your eyes. It is devoid of banality because it is unknown and oblivious. It weaves itself in and out of your cup of regret. Tucked in your shirtpocket, drowned in your cigarette smoke, wrapped in your blind faith. In spite of all this, you reject its presence in your life because you are afraid of saying yes to weakness yes to probable events yes to upheaval.

Still you reach for it –this thing that you want- and keep it hidden from everyone else. You can’t let other people see you hanker after it, what with all the private hunger going on.

----------------

At the gym, there is a trainer named Jayne. She looks so much like her. Or what I imagine her to look like. This infuriates me most nights but I refuse to be taken in by my recollections. But seeing Jayne here is like having her around, in the flesh. It makes her less of a myth, which frightens me. My imagination has gone amok. She is squished under the leg crunch machine or helplessly pinned down by one of the more muscular weightlifters, her eyes reduced to little black x’s. But I decide that I’m being too cruel and am doing Jayne an injustice. I am sure that she is a lot nicer and doesn’t lack the necessary characteristics to qualify as a human being. She smiles patiently at me when I can’t complete crunches. The smile hangs on her face like a dangerous ornament, a curved amulet.

------------------

My former Journ classmates from UP and I are collaborating on a blog account that we’re planning to put up soon. The ideas that we have gathered so far are both stimulating and refreshing, to say the least. Most of my Journ batchmates have managed to pursue their/our craft (sniffle), so I’m sure they are better writers now than they were before.

I’m not going to mention the specifics yet since we haven’t sat down and discussed everything. Everyone involved wants to do things right, especially since this would ,again, involve writing for the public.

------------------

It’s almost summer. Can’t wait to enroll in a workshop.

-------------------
Admittedly, I am not longer a Sexton fan. But there are really some poems of hers that still strike me numb.

Like this one:

For Johnny Pole On The Forgotten Beach
Anne Sexton


In his tenth July some instinct
taught him to arm the waiting wave,
a giant where its mouth hung open.
He rode on the lip that buoyed him there
and buckled him under. The beach was strung
with children paddling their ages in,
under the glare od noon chipping
its light out. He stood up, anonymous
and straight among them, between
their sand pails and nursery crafts.
The breakers cartwheeled in and over
to puddle their toes and test their perfect
skin. He was my brother, my small
Johnny brother, almost ten. We flopped
down upon a towel to grind the sand
under us and watched the Atlantic sea
move fire, like night sparklers;
and lost our weight in the festival
season. He dreamed, he said, to be
a man designed like a balanced wave...
how someday he would wait, giant
and straight.

Johnny, your dream moves summers
inside my mind.

He was tall and twenty that July,
but there was no balance to help;
only the shells came straight and even.
This was the first beach of assault;
the odor of death hung in the air
like rotting potatoes, the junkyard
of landing craft waited open and rusting.
The bodies were strung out as if they were
still reaching for each other, where they lay
to blacken, to burst through their perfect
skin. And Johnny Pole was one of them.
He gave in like a small wave, a sudden
hole in his belly and the years all gone
where the Pacific noon chipped its light out.
Like a bean bag, outflung, head loose
and anonymous, he lay. Did the sea move fire
for its battle season? Does he lie there
forever, where his rifle waits, giant
and straight?

I think you die again
and live again, Johnny, each summer that moves inside
my mind.

updates

Birthday bash

Last Friday, M, a co-worker of mine, and I left the office at around 9pm, went and paid our bills at Slimmers World, and decided to go out and celebrate her upcoming 24th year of existence. We went to Gilligans at Festival and were appalled by how crappy the place looked but since we were too tired and lazy to even think of going to ATC, we decided to rough it out.

We sat on a couch and were talking our way into a frenzy when she noticed that there was this man, three o'clock, who was taking pictures of us. Of me, in particular. He kept aiming his cam at us and we were motionless for a while, stay or go, we couldn't decide. The place was packed with people and we wouldn't be able to find another seat. We were expecting our drinks so we decided to stay put for awhile, glancing from time to time at the weird man with the weird mustache in the weird overalls.

So finally, after 10 minutes, our request to be relocated was granted. We specifically stated: a seat as far from masculine activity as possible. When we got there, we couldn't even really talk since the showband that performed that night had their instruments up so loud. After our few pathetic attempts to restart our previous conversation, we decided that it would be better if we called it a night. So we went home, slightly disgruntled and very tired. Our feet ached and she laughed when I said that I felt like I was really 80.

Funny how taxing it is to unwind these
days.

Once there was a way, to get back home

It says on the receipt they gave me, in exchange for my P100 bill (that I was hesitant to let go of), that I commited an infraction against a particular indecipherable ordinance written on the receipt.

I jaywalked. I don't know if there is such a word, but that's what I did. I thought it was okay, really, because there were three of us (all women. tsk, tsk.) crossing the street. The stringy policeman, who looked so much like the mangongotong in the Pugad Baboy Strips, said to the women, Hoy bawal dyan. He even laughed a little. To my surprise, he asked me to stop and chat awhile. He said:

"Hindi mo ba alam na bawal tumawid dyan?"

I was skeptical, to say the least. I really did not need to go through this conversation with a policeman who looked like he hasn't bothered to shave for a week since I only had roughly three hours sleep 'cause I went to The Outlaws' gig in Katipunan. I was a bit irritated and decided to play the dumb provinciana role I usually use to get
myself out of particular scrapes that I generally commit in the city. Inspite of all my sordid attempts to look dumb and innocent (o yes, they are two different characteristics), my plan was foibled. I decided to lay it to him straight so I told the freaky Pugad Baboy character look alike that I did not have money on me. And I said, with the cheekiest voice that I could muster at seven fucking thirty in the morning:

"E bakit yung mga babae, tumawid tapos pinalagpas niyo?"

So basically, my horrid attitude did me in. He called in a restback, a policewoman who looked like she wrestled when she was younger. He said Woman, take care of this worthless infidel, and she took me by the elbow and led me to the third floor of the Muntinlupa City Hall. I yakked all the way to the third floor and I was so aware that I was already making a nuisance of myself. I truly applaud her restraint. She talked to me calmly, guaranteeing that she would make sure that next time, all violators would go through the same process. Because I am the spawn of two loveable but extremely skeptical people, I told her outright that I did not believe her. Then she said that just because others were let go doesn't negate the fact that I violated one of their ordinances. She left me on the third floor, staring at a woman
surrounded by dilapidated chairs in an otherwise empty floor. She shoved the receipt at me and held out her hand.

I wasn't mad because I was fined for a violation that I clearly committed and I am glad that the policeman wasn't the usual mangongotong. It just felt so unfair - the way he let the other two women get off without so much as a reprimand and I was stuck with walking all that way to the friggin city hall alone.

But I paid the P100 fine. Was still mad afterwards.

---------

After my horrendous experience, I walked to the bus stop (ever so careful of pedestrians, this time) and my heart absolutely sank when I found out there were no air-conditioned buses. I will not feel guilty about sounding ditzy. Really, I needed a break. Since there were no buses of the sort that day (according to the conductor), I decided to board the ordinary buses. After I paid the fare, I fell asleep.

I woke up to the sound of spattering raindrops. Everyone else were closing their windows. I left mine defiantly open. I faced the window, closed my eyes, and felt the raindrops fall on my cheeks. The bus radio played The Platters' Only You. I felt like I was four again and alone in the house on a rainy afternoon. I remember holding tea parties for my books. I smile and sigh a little. Can't wait to get home.


--------
Overheard a woman calling her daughter 'Nil Anne'. That's the way she pronounced it, anyway. Fancy naming your daughter after nothing.

Names are wishes, Papa believed. You are a slate. Someone else's history is written on you. Eventually, when you are strong enough, you will have your own story, written on someone else's bright face.
--------

Antonio

So, when I arrived at the apartment, my brother's friends were there, eating lunch and laughing. Such happy boys.

I kiss my brother on his shoulder (I sadly cannot reach his face and he is not too keen on stooping) and he introduces me to his new girl. She is a slight person, has a small frame ( so like Mommy, before she had me). I think of her as shy, but perhaps she's just not accustomed to strangers. But I won't be one for long.

I am happy that Anthony has found someone. Not that there's anything outwardly awful about being alone. Actually, I would've preferred that he be by himself for awhile so that he could have time to do some thinking without some other voice clogging his questions that only he can answer. But I guess, nowadays, especially since Christmas is almost here, it will be hard for either of us to be alone.

Anthony actually takes more after Papa. Ma's stoic soldiers. My brother, so far, has had only three girlfriends. He will be turning 21 this November. Like Papa, he has
never had a roving eye but they both appreciate/d seeing beautiful women. And they were/are both very frank about it.

Anthony is not much of a charmer. But he has an earnestness in him, a sincerity that I think appeals to women.

If there's one thing I'm proud of, it's the fact that I was raised by and have grown up with such achingly faithful men.


I am happy that Anthony has emerged out of the rut that his ex left him in. I am happy that he has lived up to one of my father's most fervent hopes - that we both be undefeated by other people's shortcomings; that we never wait for anyone, no matter what the consequences would be. One can only hope for so much, after all.

Round Robin

I am beginning to wonder why I find it so hard to rouse myself out of bed these days. Is it because I feel so light lately (FYI for those who are not in the know: I am finally dieting), that even the mere idea of getting out of the house seems preposterous? Or is it because I am finally ready to admit that I am tired of the place I am headed to?

----------

I also wonder why my being on a diet is such a big deal around here. Yesterday, two of my officemates came up to me and kept snickering and giving me unsolicited advice like : don't starve yourself, it's not like you'll be committing a mortal sin if you eat chips, blah blah blah. This irks me. a lot.why do people feel the need to take it upon themselves to insinuate their petty little concerns into my life?

----------

So today, M told me 'You look better now. I think it's working.' Thank God. Not that I was about to give up on myself.

----------
Yesterday, too, my good friend, MP told me, ' Let's you and me get out of this dingy office.' Our office is anything but dingy but we decide to leave our cubicles anyway. We get two cups of free coffee from the vendo and step outside. We feel the cold air on our faces and remember that it’s almost January. We are suddenly pensive, as if someone, or something, is about to leave us.

----------
Speaking of departures, my supervisor up and left us. She is now working in the other site. Funny, when she was here, I wondered what I'd feel when her voice no longer existed for me. I was appalled by the fact that I didn't feel anything. Zilch. Nada. Zero. Then I remember - this is usually how i respond to departures, to inevitable losses. A barrier redeems itself in my mind, saying that it doesn't matter. Things will remain separated. I believe this, at first. Afterwards, on some random morning, while reading a book or staring at the living room lamp, I cry for no reason.

----------

A gem that I found through the poemhunter site. Written by Yehuda Amichai (a favorite of Langston Hughes), translated by Chana Bloch:

Forgetting Someone

Forgetting someone is like forgetting to turn off the light
in the backyard so it stays lit all the next day

But then it is the light that makes you remember.

--------------

When in doubt, restart

--------
I owe my father an apology for feeling, for the first time in my life, the need to be like other people. Is it really all that bad, Papa, to be on the safe side of things for once? (In my head, my father says, Surely you mean insipid. Foolish can be a good word. Not safe. Never safe.)

----------------

Someone sent me this email yesterday. It's an excerpt from one of Murakami's books, Kafka on the Shore:

"At any rate, you--and your theory--are throwing a stone at a target that's very far away. Do you understand that?"

I nod. "I know. But metaphors can reduce the distance."

"We're not metaphors."

"I know," I say. "But metaphors help eliminate what separates you and me."

A faint smile comes to her as she looks up at me. "That’s the oddest pickup line I’ve ever heard."

"There’re a lot of odd things going on---but I feel like I’m slowly getting closer to the truth."

"Actually getting closer to a metaphorical truth? Or metaphorically getting closer to an actual truth? Or maybe they supplement each other?"

"Either way, I don’t think I can stand the sadness I feel right now," I tell her.

"I feel the same way."

-------------

B told me this interesting anecdote (antidote?) yesterday about an ex-boyfriend of hers. I call it "Actual Conversation with a Lemming."

EB: Miss ko nang alagaan ka, puntahan ka senyo. Tapos nood tayong movie.

B: Yeah, but we can't do that anymore 'coz we have both moved on.

EB: Saan?

----------------

Marguerite Duras on desire:

"I acquired that drinker's face before I drank. Drink only confirmed it. The space for it existed in me. I knew it the same as other people, but strangely, in advance. Just as the space existed in me for desire. At the age of fifteen I had the face of pleasure, and yet I had no knowledge of pleasure. There was no mistaking that face. Even my mother must have seen it. My brothers did. That was how everything started for me-with that flagrant, exhausted face, those rings around the eyes, in advance of time and experience."

--------------


Check out Harvey Finkle's photographs in his series, The Readers:

--------------

It's always best to end things with a song:

Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses
U2

You're dangerous 'cause you're honest
You're dangerous, you don't know what you want
Well you left my heart empty as a vacant lot
For any spirit to haunt

Hey hey sha la la
Hey hey

You're an accident waiting to happen
You're a piece of glass left there on the beach
Well you tell me things I know you're not supposed to
Then you leave me just out of reach

Hey hey sha la la
Hey hey sha la la

Who's gonna ride your wild horses
Who's gonna drown in your blue sea
Who's gonna ride your wild horses
Who's gonna fall at the foot of thee

Well you stole it 'cause I needed the cash
And you killed it 'cause I wanted revenge
Well you lied to me 'cause I asked you to
Baby, can we still be friends

Hey hey sha la la
Hey hey sha la la

Who's gonna ride your wild horses
Who's gonna drown in your blue sea
Who's gonna ride your wild horses
Who's gonna fall at the foot of thee

Oh, the deeper I spin
Oh, the hunter will sin for your ivory skin
Took a drive in the dirty rain
To a place where the wind calls your name
Under the trees the river laughing at you and me
Hallelujah, heavens white rose
The doors you open
I just can't close

Don't turn around, don't turn around again
Don't turn around, your gypsy heart
Don't turn around, don't turn around again
Don't turn around, and don't look back
Come on now love, don't you look back

Who's gonna ride your wild horses
Who's gonna drown in your blue sea
Who's gonna taste your salt water kisses
Who's gonna take the place of me

Who's gonna ride your wild horses
Who's gonna tame the heart of thee

---------------

country daisy juxtaposes

peter mccormick, i know why
you do not love me.
it is because i am normal.
mediocre, if you may.
i know that you've seen me put the
tissue roll face up. my knees are bowlegged
and scratched a bit. when i was in highschool, i won the science
prize for best in original manuscript.
i whistle in the dark. i believe in God and go to the church regularly to pray for lost souls like tommy harris who painted the town billboards red
last may. i do not drink aspirin. i paint molehills out
of obtuse planets. there are days when i like singing
in the rain. i am a cliche, a round robin.
there are no secret crannies that i plan to take you to.
with me, there would be no nameless lovers
popping out of nowhere, like they do in cinemas.
i have never been to the Pentagon. i have a difficulty
playing scrabble and am comfortable talking in txt lnguge.

oh, peter mccormick, my malady is this:
i am not at all banal. when i wear my hair a certain way
or don a new pink blouse, do you not notice that i am as unique as everyone else?

For M

they whispered about her infront of her children.
they claimed that they remembered her, or rather

the christmases when everything she bought them
did not fit. this was a sign, they say, that she never bothered

to know them - why their feet were made of
sand and stone during the times when they

were children. she was a mystery to the youngest sister for she ran off to a convent and said prayers to a god

whom she denounced years after, finding
the right footstool for her faith

and knowing somehow that she
would always be better than who she was

then - a hollow child who breathed her life into words and dreamt of gold to fill herself, instead of mopping the floors and helping mother

create kamote sweets to feed the rich. rich is what she wanted to be. imagine the length of chances, the various lives she can lead.

her dreams were monsters, they say. she was undone, disgruntled, reimbursed from gods she did not acknowledge. her children hear them whisper that she died of wanting,

of having known hunger. it is late and they decide to move on to the part of the narrative when it is already night time. in the scene,

she has snapped. she is commanding everyone to move out of the house she had bought with foreign blood. she screamed at their mother. imagine that.

disregard the fact that all her life, there were no arms around her. disregard the fact that she was a stranger to them - a stray wound that everyone forgot existed.

this is their favorite memory of her - she lying on a yellow sofa,
death leaning over her shoulder. she is whispering that she is sorry

but by now, she doesn't know that she's even saying it. or to whom. it was the morphine talking, carelessly moving around,

finding resurrection in her veins. it told her stories
of grandeur, stories that she passed on to her frightened children.

in her passing, her sisters do not remember her loving notes.
they do not remember her smiles that said see me. know that i am here.

but they are reminded of everything else - the smell of weakness on her clothes, fistfuls of her tears, her loss. they smile a knowing smile.

her children, orphans now, do not say a word. they traipse
down to their newfound sadness and wonder if it is

all true. but when they dream, they see the bright blue flame of her body. she advises them not to hurry towards her.

in the morning, they remember their hearts, so constricted with love that again, they are emptied out.
---------------------

this poem is for my mother, who always smelled of summer rain.

Come, I will tell you

the one true story of my life.

you might find it disconcerting because it does not include passion.

there are no descriptions about daffodils rising forward; no solace in boredom.

my life is made of soft velvet.

it is a story that begins with smoking fat cigarettes at dawn and ends while chasing new promises around corners.

in it is a dew drop mixed with the milk of the cities and the slow waiting of harbors.

my life is a lover who has forgotten about the way i smell.

it is a hand let go, suddenly.

indeed, there are deaths of remonstrations.

there are swift songs of the wind.

in it, too, is a crease on a page and hole in the nook.

it is me saying o yes, innocence with cherries on top please please god.

my life is a cat that licked the rest of the cream. it was always a hungry little bugger.

at times, it is a window. you must not use it as an alleyway.

there are always pictures of me walking against traffic, carrying salvation in a purse.

i am a mountain of kisses and a grave of clocks.

(you are in it. you wake me up sometimes.
and with my eyes open, i look surprised everytime i realize that I am still here.so much so that my mouth opens, gapes into a balloon that is flying towards something, always farther away.)

so you like sad songs?

It won't do

to dream of caramel,

to think of cinnamon,

and long for you.

It won't do

to stir a deep desire,

to fan a hidden fire

that can never burn true.

I know your name,

I know your skin,

I know the way

these things begin;

But I don't know

how I would live with myself,

what I'd forgive of myself

if you don't go.

So goodbye,sweet appetite,

no single bite

could satisfy...

I know your name,

I know your skin,

I know the way

these things begin;

But I don't know

what I would give of myself,

how I would live with myself

if you don't go.

It won't do

to dream of caramel,

to think of cinnamon

and long

for you...

I for Infuriate

Things I am furious about at this very moment:

1. My blog template

I have never pretended that I was even slightly knowledgeable about tech stuff. But this is rather stupid - worrying about how my page looks like to people when I'm already so fucking worried about my writing. I really don't need this. Look at my page. Some entries are not aligned, some dates of previous entries are missing. Then there are these annoying icons of what looks like a pencil and an envelope. Danged eyesores. I've tried deleting these icons but I can't find them in the Template section.

For the love of Christ, I just want to fucking write! :(

2. The irrevocable gum under my shoe

Again, you kid yourself. Your strength does not lie in anything other than the irresolute FACT that you know you would always, always have someone stupid enough to fall back on. I would like to quit breaking my neck over you but sometimes, I would have to admit that it's rather fun being utterly disgusted by your complete lack of scruples. Makes you wonder what all that education was for.

3. Work during the weekends

'Nuff said.

4. Lack of time/ place to write

Can't here because it is a workplace. As I've been reminded a gazillion times before - this is not a place specifically designed to satisfy my artistic needs. No effing kidding?

Exactly!

A Game of Anonymous Names
Ian Rosales Casocot


1. She, in her old age, now counts her "I love you's" out like a miser's spare change, and you wonder somehow how love can be like that, always under a scowl, afraid to bloom to trembling truth.

2. He was the one who kept heads spinning in his ambiguities. Even after he has explained himself, there it still was -- mystery wrapped up as a beautiful boy. Of course you fell for his quiet smiles, the way the light turns soft brown in his eyes, and the way his words roll out, when he speaks, with such sweet, precise enunciation. Maybe you even love the way his hair, kept trim (and always under a cap), shies up, close to forehead, to a curl. You keep your ground, though, with practice. You know this can't lead anywhere.

3. She tells you she has never seen heaven like this, in intoxication, and away from home. She is beautiful and sixteen. "You are an angel," you tell her. When she smiles, you find yourself longing for a sister.

4. He is inconstant, but is always bliss and pure joy. His body is home. Of course you hate him for your falling deep into his eyes, and knowing that while you pretend you are strong, you can easily get lost without the comfort of his becoming familiar, like life.

5. She, in her sweet abundance of beautiful flesh, stumps you with sudden intimate moments. She knows, doesn't she? is your eternal question, a refrain that soon gets lost in both your bubbles of laughter and sad joys. You hold her hand, and silently you wish her well, and then you wish her love as well.

6. He has become a stranger, a spiteful man without context for his sudden black moods. You wonder how that can be, how a beautiful summer can suddenly turn upside-down for somebody you once knew as friend and ally. You realize, seeing the blankness in his cigarette eyes, that nobody really knows anybody.

You write somewhere, on a piece of blue paper: "Every man is an island. There are waters of separation between us, our lapping waves the only means with which we touch each other -- inconstant, and frequently breeding sadness. We are all connected by our disconnections."

"poverty's a secret the country knows well." - angelo v. suarez, juan de la cruz meditates on his idiomatic expressions in cubao a few years after the beginning of the new millennium

News Flash

People do stop waiting, at one point or another.

And the pendulum swings

I've been thinking about deleting my friendster account for some time now. This has made me think of moving instead.

Harhar.

--------------

Hide-and-Seek

Someone hides from someone
Hides under his tongue
He looks for him under the earth
He hides on his forehead

He looks for him in the sky
He hides in his forgetting
He looks for him in the grass
Looks for him looks
Where he doesn't look for him
And looking for him loses himself.- Vasco Popa, translated by Simic

booster

You Should Be A Poet

You craft words well, in creative and unexpected ways.And you have a great talent for evoking beautiful imagery...Or describing the most intense heartbreak ever.You're already naturally a poet, even if you've never written a poem.

What Type of Writer Should You Be?

Because she wants to touch him,
she moves away.
Because she wants to talk to him,
she keeps silent.
Because she wants to kiss him,
she turns away
& kisses a man she does not want to kiss.

He watches
thinking she does not want him.
He listens
hearing her silence.
He turns away
thinking her distant
& kisses a girl he does not want to kiss.

They marry each other--
a four-way mistake.
He goes to bed with his wife
thinking of her.
She goes to bed with her husband
thinking of him.--
& all this in a real old-fashioned four-poster bed.

Do they live unhappily ever after?
Of course.
Do they undo their mistakes ever?
Never.
Who is the victim here?
Love is the victim.
Who is the villain?
Love that never dies.- Parable of the Four Poster, Erica Mann Jong

Here's where the story ends

People I know, places I go,
make me feel tongue-tied
I can see how people look down, they’re on the inside
Here’s where the story ends
People I see, weary of me showing my good side
I can see how people look down
I’m on the outside
Here’s where the story ends
Ooh here’s where the story ends

It’s that little souvenir of a terrible year
Which makes my eyes feel sore
Oh I never should have said, the books that you read
Were all I loved you for

It’s that little souvenir of a terrible year
Which makes me wonder why
And it’s the memories of your shed that make me turn red
Surprise, surprise, surprise

Crazy I know, places I go
Make me feel so tired
I can see how people look down
I’m on the outside
Oh here’s where the story ends
Ooh here’s where the story ends

Oh the devil in me said, go down to the shed
I know where I belong
But the only thing I ever really wanted to say
Was wrong, was wrong, was wrong
It’s that little souvenir of a colourful year
Which makes me smile inside
So I cynically, cynically say, the world is that way
Surprise, surprise, surprise, surprise, surprise

Here’s where the story ends
Ooh here’s where the story ends- Here's where the story ends, The Sundays