Then again, I don't know why it still hurts.

Summer of “(500) Days” is incomparable with the lady beside me.

Ayaw kong magbigay ng red roses.  Naisip ko hindi naman iyon kailangang-kailangan lalo na't wala pang “tayo” at wala pang gumagawa ng paraan upang maging "tayo."  Naisip ko baka kasi ‘di mo 'yon magustuhan at lalo ka lamang matauhan na hindi ako bagay sa ‘yo.  Pero gusto kita at ‘di ko lubos maisip kung bakit patuloy ako sa pagkakagago sa paghihintay sa takdang panahon na maibahagi ko sa ‘yo kung gaano na kalaki ang sukat na kinuha mo sa puso ko. 

 

Ayoko’ng magbigay ng red roses.  Ang alam ko ‘pag nagbigay ako non, pinipilit ko lamang ang sarili ko na makihalubilo sa overcrowded na daigdig ng mga may kairog sa araw na iyon.  Kung hindi pa ngayon ang panahon para bigyan kita ng panahon para bigyan ng red roses wala na akong magagawa doon.  May iba pa namang paraan para maipakita ko sa iyo ang kung ano man ang dapat mong makita mula sa akin.  Kaya nga ako nagsusulat dito para isipin mo na kahit wala kang red na matanggap sa araw na iyon, maiisip mo na pinagpuyatan ko ‘to at ito ang naging dahilan para mamula naman ang puti ng mga mata ko ng matapos ko ang entry na ‘to (which hindi nga), despite sa tambak na deadline natin sa SGV.

It is three minutes to midnight when I came closer to reality.  I’ve been contemplating about the consequences of being closer to reality before but many times I, like turning down a win-win grocery offer, put myself away from it, hoping that things would still work and things will also come closer to reality. 

But things turn to some things as those three minutes slip away.  Before you knew it, you are left with nothing – and with no time.  As midnight ticks to life, choices become apparent.  Waiting versus now.  To love or be loved.  Your love to her or her love to you.  Which good outweighs the other good?  The good that brings rain or the good that rains?  Midnight parts the day and night.  The night fades now.  The day rises.  Forget the past, welcome the present.  It’s for us to know what the future holds.

Love

Oh.  This is overly banal.  What you think, guys?  Better not discuss it.

Shift

Sometimes there are things in life you ought not to find.  Reasons: one, it’s hidden (very well hidden that is); two, it’s not there (not anywhere, not nowhere – inexistent); and lastly, it’s someone else’s (and he has kept it very well hidden).  For these reasons, or for one of these reasons, it is very much human to look for some other things definite or search for some things that’s there but we are still yet to know (or sneering in-your-face at us and we still not know it).  We are creating feelings that soon in our earnest wishes will become true, that soon everything will change for our benefit. 

True.  Change.  It changes everything.  It is inevitable.  Change, even, changes changes.  (Now I like that.)  We grow calluses in our work.  Our eyes will turn blur as we age.  We bring the house down (literally) when we’re mad.  It is change that we change – minds.

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?

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 8).  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.)

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

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

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