El Dorado

I remember a dream in my childhood

There was a captain of a fleet of ship

A voyage towards chests of fame and gold

To grip tighter to a shaken kingship

In the way he made himself a believer

As the sunset sunk deeper behind him

Right is where the wheel is to maneuver

Although the end is like the devil’s grim

Poked in the head he woke up as a start

And realized that his kingship was thrown

Now a captain left with a struggling heart

Paddled in the dark, weary and alone

A dying light at hand, a heart that hopes

Facing sunsets was the last thing in mind

Finding the end of the line, the boat gropes

A hoping heart may stray, but ‘tis ne’er blind

Lady, will you be waiting at the end

And muster for me the courage to fend?

Between the Lines

It started on our firm’s anniversary night and it seemed to end at the end of this one.  This is a document to tell the tale of what happened between the ends of the line.

The first night she was stunning, with her yellow and black dress wrapped like nothing around her body.  Her eyes were bright hazelnuts as she stared at the camera before them.  Her hair wasn’t red.  They were colored dull brown - shimmering in the bright lights.  She left me breathless.  She was gone for the night.  I smoked the first and the last (I hope so) sticks of menthol cigarette of my life.  I drowned in the cold and bitter bubbles of kegful of beer.  I tripped my way home with two companions.  I was not thinking of her.  I never knew I will be thinking of her.

          A lot of days passed.  I was still not thinking of her: of her loveliness, of her fine beauty, of her grace, of her eyes, of her everything.  These were the days when I put a lot of savings on finding my way back to the boondocks and cherish the long-days-of-work-is-over sweetness.  I was still not looking and longing for her.  I do not know exactly when the time when I began to miss one thing.  I was pre-occupied with the thought of having to spend a little time with my family again that I missed what I never thought was worth missing.  She was out of my mind when I was going back to the city’s lights.  My heart was beating for no love, save for the life, family and Him. 

          I went down to the bus stop that started to take the daily dreamers to good life at about seven.  My mind was sleepy and my heart was normal.  That was a normal scenario.  The first three buses took some about two hundred people that came before me.  I followed the suit of the last person who filled the end of the longest line that I ever experienced in my first year of working.  Someone stopped behind me; then somebody took the end of the line behind that someone behind me until the end reached the corner of España and Padre Noval, right in front of that photocopying house that I know exist not.  The line moved as the fourth bus took some fifty persons away.  I’m I guessed the thirty-fourth person in the line and the next bus that will come will have me at last.  The fourth bus became out of sight as it rounded the corner and headed south.  That was the time I was wondering what had me last night.  I was recollecting my thoughts about a certain dream of which none of the feeblest wisp of her silhouette crossed.  Dropping the unremembered dream, I trailed the tiny woman in front of me towards the fifth bus.  It took about only three people after me.  Thanking, I sat on an empty three-seater with my mind vacant except for the yearning to sleep for at least three-quarter of an hour.  Two ladies filled in and we were good to go.  As the fifth bus started to move away, I was drooling into the deep swirling nothingness of a short sleep. 

          The trip was at least ten minutes before it reached an hour, but it felt like three minutes or something.  My mind awoke regretting to the boisterous reality of the eight-hour Makati.  I feel nausea hitting my way but did not come.  But the pain of lack of numerous amount of sleep and the clear truth of not getting some in the next few months are like bullets in the ass that will come through your mouth eventually.  But the ugly truth was still no her in mind.

          I walked down Makati Avenue and short-routed through the parking area of a building that until now I still don’t know the name (or was it Makati Stock Exchange?).  Knees wobbling like a Nick character, I pushed my way across Ayala Avenue, put my ID on and strutted (or walked head drop) to meet the Manong Guards.  Usual stuffs were processed for the diminishing streamline of people presenting their laptops.  Here’s the real deal: for people having classical laptops, owners tend to pull a corner of their thing on subtly and show the identifying number; however, for people having their freshly out of the manufacturing laptops, they seemed to brandish it like a discus.  Moaning comes afterwards, saying “what a laptop!” and swearing, “I wish it did slip off!” 

          I am on the latter side.

          Obviously, I didn’t know how to recall the way how I have begun to wish for that girl after that night.  All I know that there was one time in the shuffling mood of the office inhabitants I notice her and there it started, like a phoenix rising from the ashes, like the first drop of sunray on my face. 

Fast forward:

She has a boyfriend.  I saw them, holding hands as they swaggered their affections on a street side of the city.  I don’t know what I felt that time.  I just felt that the future memories that we would create started falling away.  My heartbeat has gone lazy and flat lined.  I felt flitting at random in a sort of a vacuous lonely world.

Before that, I said “Hi!”  I leaned to the possibility that she would hi back.  She didn’t.  That left with a million possibilities that would rather result in to a trillionth of possibilities that my mind has to think of yet.  Days passed and there was nothing else left waiting for.  But as a song goes, “I hope she takes her time ‘cause I don’t waiting on a woman.”

Now, I really want the singer dead.  It took a lot of time, you know, waiting on a woman that didn’t exactly make an intention to get back.  It’s like billowing a balloon to its limits but didn’t burst and you’re left with no air that you wish you just die. 

Yet, thinking of the situation in a quite mature manner, like the behavior of a tweener in the body of a nineteen, I didn’t give off the impression to be answered back.  What’s a “Hi!” from a stranger to a stranger?  It’s empty.  It results to empty results because it begins with empty beginnings.  It’s like trying to seduce an ant with a pinch of salt.  The ant won’t bite, not because it has no teeth (it has pincers, you know) but because it is not seducing. 

A month I think before the fast forward:

She’s looking back in secrets.  I saw her as I secretly stalked her with a pair of dreamy, stalking eyes in the office.  I felt elated.  That is answering back.  Her eyes were like saying, “Geroff!” though.  But I don’t mind.  I didn’t ask her to look back and she just made it.  So, that would make me rather victorious like Severus Snape (The Half-blood Prince, Chapter .  After a day, the whole gang that she was in was now working afar, like some ten tables far from where our table stands in.  I guessed that was because she suggested it.  And, oh, by the way, before that, they were working in every empty cubicle that their eyes lay on.  So, that will not make it “after a day.”  To be safe, please read the fourth sentence before this as this: After some days….

This will be updated if words ended in my head as a result of a few office readings.  (This is not the end of the story so the loving is ending yet.)

It Will Arrive Like a Holdup Man

The night of Thursday of the midmonth of July 2008 at the twentieth hour came a thief that stole the possessions of the non-expecting, leaving them of nothing but raw slashes on their uncovered skin by a rusty knife.

This is not metaphorical. This is real.

That night was a revelation of how imbalanced the world has been and the contradictions that resulted from it. That night there were lucky and there were not. There were unfed and well-possessed. There were the silent and the courageous. That night I realized that material things don’t matter when life itself is the payment. But somehow, there were persons that night who would risk something more valuable, as life, for fake riches that cannot be brought to heaven or hell. That night there were people who gripped the easy handles of knives to get through the struggles of the whispering hunger. That night was the night of all lessons. That night was learning. That night was an experience you can selflessly trade off, but you rather keep it for some reasons you still don’t know. That night I thought of all the persons I love.

A question interrupted me: What if I died that night because I’ve given more importance to keep that iPod rather than paid attention to that man’s pointed, impaling thing. I’m sure it’s not worth the risk. But, somehow I managed to get through it. I say that was because of a seemingly divine help. What I care about now wass that how the thief could get through the night, and the rest of his life regretting a hideous act. I guessed that was not my problem anymore.

11:48 pm

July 17, 2008

The Wind Through the Open Door: A Will to a Friend

This is not this time.

This is long time gone.

This time he’s had enough of his world

He was searching for the truth in his actions

He was contemplating it’s again his fault

That he was right again all along

Like it did before, like it will do tomorrow

But the answer came as water to fire

It seethed only anger that made him decide

“I’ve had enough of his world.”

This time he will be crying

Like he did before

Like he never did imagine his life

For he cared only for loving the world

And receiving some loving back

He did not know the hurt that was breaking him

That he bleeds when he’d say you’re not bleeding

You feel nothing at all

Tonight, he will moved out into the open

Like a wind through the open door

Leaving into the vastness of the random world

Starting back like the steps of the unborn

After a second to forever, that door will be still

Inviting for some gale or a breeze

Or it will be closed, like he passed through it

The walls reverberate his country songs

He seals this with the mark of his death

And until he finds nothing more than himself

He will come alive and haunt him

And he will laugh

It’s time for him to laugh

He had always cried from that day on

He never seemed to notice

But he cried from that day on

9/17/08

11:55 pm

Not Letting Go of This Holding On; Holding On to This Letting Go

Here Comes Goodbye

Do you hear me, talking to you?

Across the sea of all the faces that try to part us,

Saying things unexplained, unconfirmed, unproven.

Do you see me, looking at you?

You don’t even stare now, although I know that you feel me present.

What’s wrong with the idea of loving you?

We being together?

Do you believe them, and their hearsays?

Don’t you believe on the things you yourself feel?

Because right now, I don’t understand this beating heart.

I tried to be far from you.

I succeeded.

That’s when you’re not near, when I can’t see you personally.

But, when at times that I see you, it all goes back, like hero to zero, from a single point to full circle.

But I haven’t had the heart to say things to you.

I just can’t pluck the courage.

Can you pluck the courage for me?

Of course, that will be inappropriate.

But one thing, I’ll never forget you, and the way you make me love like this.

It felt good.

It felt bad.

I’m hurt.

Can you picture me now, my heart is bleeding.

The loving dagger is pressing deeper through my heart than I have ever imagined.

I just don’t want to see you, so I can go on not missing you.

But you know I can’t do that.

But you’re letting me do that.

You’re trying to make me let go of loving you.

You are nearing to success.

I’m barely hanging on.

But I am HANGING ON.

“If it’s a broken part, replace it.

If it’s a broken arm, then brace it.

If it’s a broken heart, then face it.”

-Jason Mraz

 Details in the Fabric

 We Sing, We Dance, We Steal Things

The Cubicle Dream

The last fortnight that I had not seen her made me alarmingly paranoiac.  I think it was something that I said the last time (the first time I directly sent “Hi!” on her message box) I messaged her.  I can’t remember when I did that.  I just remember why.  I just thought I had to do it.  I ought to do it, if that’s the one thing that I can do to start knowing her.  But it seemed not working at all.  I might be damn hallucinating when I saw her looked at my direction the last time I saw her.  I’ll be damned if I saw her even smiled at me.  The punishment that I have to deal with the last fortnight was to adore her omnipresence in my mind. 

The days passed by. It ended with a dream about her: a dream that I wished would be endless.  Endless it wasn’t.  I should not be writing anything now on this short page of what I call a miss-you sponge if it was endless.  I hope it can carry all the things heavy that live in my heart, the sponge.  For this is only the start of siphoning off everything that I felt inside about her, everything that I hid inside that adored her.  There is more to draw off.

The cubicle dream.

Well, it really was a dream, a very vivid dream that was.  I was feeling every emotion what a real life me would have felt if it was really happening. 

I was sleeping to start, sleeping in my dream.  I was sleeping in my dream right in front of the cubicle that she used as seclusion from the stares of me when we’re in the office.  But I guess the real deal about that was just to make herself undisturbed (by the stares of me).  Maybe she got distracted and she can’t work.  Or she got distracted and elated and she wouldn’t want me to notice that she felt elated when she was distracted by my stares.  Oh boy, that’s hugely arrogant to say things like that.  You should be humble and keep everything at pace.  She won’t like that.

Shut up!

You told me. But I bet it won’t do any good.

Fine.

Okay. That dream.  I was sleeping, or pretending to be for I knew she was in that empty cubicle working.  It was weird (well, everything in dreams is weird).  Isn’t it weird to be sleeping in the office with your sleeping bag laid in front of the cubicle?  I must have been kicked out of the office no moments as soon as a manager or a partner caught me so.  But it was a dream, and weird things happen in there.  So I laid there without the feeling of uneasiness and all the negative things you feel when you’re in the arms of your working environment. 

I pretended to sleep.  Moments later she sneaks a stare at me.  My eyes began to tremble.  She was staring and walking or gliding at the same time towards me.  She stopped when we’re hairbreadth near.  My eyes shut open.  Someone cast a spell in the air and a weird thing happened again.  She was now the persona of her officemate smiling at me.  I knew her.  I talk to her when I had time to.  I think I smiled at her.  And then the scene became hazy and it had gone back to the scene where she was staring at me.

I woke up, or pretended to be waking up.  I greeted her “Good morning, beautiful,” and I woke up to the stale embrace of my mouth and reality.  The last time that I saw before I woke up was her secret smile.  Oi, how in the world have you seen a secret smile?  You’re pathetic.

What in the world do you care about for, huh?  I am you.  You should act like me.  Let us be one.  Yeah?

Okay.

And stop answering back!

You asked me.

I didn’t ask you to reply!

Okay, okay. I’ll shut it.

Thanks.

Anytime.  (Alter-ego grinning.)