Home
sangyad
04/20/12*
/
i.ph is shutting down soon and i might need to move scribbles somewhere else. there is a rusty mailbox with maya poop outside and someone has been writing me poems.
2 days ago: “I was sailing to tiny Higatangam Island, getting invited by oh so old but wise Barangay Captain Jesus for lunch, finding paradise among palm trees. Still remember that heavy, humid, hot, april air.”
-
most of the time, i get calls from Bendigo, Daegu and Moscow. it feels good to receive such calls because the sound of Spring - is somewhere outside the window. it makes me think too how magical language is (and the limits of it as well).
-
sailors found my shore and couch - we shared lives and grew an inch deeper. there was Joel and Dana (the tree and the seahorse) - we met in Asipulo in a Civet coffee farm, then reunited here in my city over long walks, dipping with hundreds of plankton and dirty kitchen talks.
there IS Claudio who found me and i found in front of a bakeshop. my dandelion friend.
there was this man at the airport who made me point my favorite place in this archipelago and i pointed an empty imaginary space. because the place is not down in the map.
-
i am currently writing this in a house with two blind parents. Andres and Joji. touching. it is so magical every time.
-
beach trips. Le Art Cafe nights and shared shisha. sometimes, Cerveza Negra. flamenco and dancing almost naked alone.
-
a madman from Denmark but currently in Spain is exchanging cybermails with me http://singingmice.tumblr.com/ - the password is “alwaysarriving”
-
deviant Art has given me my 4th DAILY DEVIATION for another poem http://klit-shy.deviantart.com/#/d4bk6ls. i rarely wander around in that old place but it feels different whenever i can and i want to.
-
Listen to Yndi Halda’s “A Song for Starlit Beaches”.
-
oh, i MIGHT have to live in Saigon/Ho Chi Minh/not-so-well-known city in vietnam for a month. we’ll see.
*
alwan
03/14/12*
(for you not-so-little-boy-who-is-so-animated-when-storytelling, for inspiring me to write the unknown lands between solar systems. Again.)
Fish-eyed boy, peeled-off paint
“Yes, in a fleeting night when God played the ukulele and sang us purple skies”, said she.
The little boy’s eyes welled. From them she could see - summer-burned leaves, dandelions and a seahorse.
She has been working for the post office for seven years. She developed this fascination for air mails when she was 9. It was by that time when her parents exchanged snail mails. She would read her mother’s letters for her father secretly. They were all kept in an aparador with six drawers. She would pull the 5th drawer gracefully, like untangling a brassiere or combing an infant’s first few hair. She prefers regular parcel over speed deliveries because they remind her that somehow life can still be slow. She can memorize post stamp prints to such extent that she sometimes dreams of them, talking to her. At the most silent point of the day, at 3:40 PM, she would take a nap and would wake-up to this great feeling of nostalgia and loss.
The little boy does not look like from a nearby pueblo or ciudad. He has stories of the ocean and the womb of the earth in his eyes. He was looking for a public library but a baker told him to go to the direction where the post office is. “Small, peeled off paint and a woman with eye bags”. This description and some hand signs. He grew this affair with old atlases. Sometimes, he would draw maps in mid-air and imagine places that they never show. He murmurs things like: “It’s not down on any map. Real places never are.” and “Do places dream of people until they return?” Then in his most quiet moments, he spreads his arms, closes his eyes and throws his body into his parents’ bed. Because it is soft and it feels like the ocean.
“Is this the library, Miss?
“No. Post office. But, hello.”
“I am looking for maps.”
“Are you lost or something?”
“I am actually found.”
“Too profound for your age. But hey because it’s too rare that I get curious visitors like you, I can help you with the map thing.”
“I like maps because I like to feel that there is so much to see, that there are people somewhere who do not look like me. Or rivers and lakes that catch people’s loneliness, glee and boredom. It’s interesting.”
“Snail mails give that feeling too. They are like birds. Whenever people send something to somewhere, I can’t help but imagine what the place looks like and what food people eat there. What poetry there is in those scribbles, shared.”
“Or what these people actually sound like- ra ra ri ri or chung ching chang chang. By the way, are you not sad that not most people go here now?”
“After waking up from a nap in the afternoon, I do feel sad always- it’s the most bizarre time of the day for me. But most of the time, I am comforted because there are people like you who drop by and it’s special. As if I get fueled again for the next four months or you can never tell, four years more or for life”
She clumsily ran her fingers through old folders. Looking for something that has been there for years but could not be found that easily.
“Miss, you look like reading Braille. Or reading someone’s body in the dark…”
“Yay! I found it. This one’s for you, little dreamer. A very old map of Panay Island.”
The boy held it softly in his hands, sniffed the old paper tenderly as if inhaling the aroma of coffee from a terra cotta mug. Like taking in sea-sprays when summer is close to the end.
“I am grateful, Miss. Very. And in exchange, I am leaving you this.”
Something small and imperfectly round wrapped in Manila paper.
“This will lead you to someone that you have been longing to be with.”
The boy left with the map, he walked slowly, and the whole post office could even hear the sound of parting – that small space between his heels and the floor. She tried her best not to tear the paper wrapper. She dislikes tearing things apart.
From the little gift, she found her own forehead. Her moles. Her thick hair. Her whole face.
“…a mirror”
The electric fan spun slower, you could hear the rust.
*
dyip
03/8/12*
Life is a circle
coming and going
leaving and returning
we feel unchanged when we come back from a trip
we feel we are regressing
and often some do
I followed the rabbit into the hole
and had many adventures there
I met a lot of people
special and with beautiful souls
But life is more like a spiral
It’s a circle (when you look at it from above)
but…if you rotate it, you will see it has dimensions
you are not really returning to the point of origin
the things you saw and the people you’ve met alter you forever
and you can’t go back
circles come and go
they enter your lives like waves on the shore
people are circles
they touch you and enter you
and then they leave
but they come back if your arms are open
so I know some of you will enter my life again and again
you are a circle
as am I
and our circles will touch
in space
and time
again and again
and every time they do
I will smile.
19/July/2006
Nigel is in Taiwan now. His mother sent me one of his sketches when he was in Uruguay. His family lives in San Francisco. He feels connected to painting, playing jazz guitar, bossa nova, surfing , jamming, cafes, food, cinema, puzzles, games, physics, stories, コタツ, improvisation, cursing in Latin, paradoxes, existential philosophy, zen, and tea. He reminds me of this poet from Argentina who was looking for someone who can fly. We actually met in a Miyazaki dream. Or well, am not sure. Maybe in Harajuko where we both walked different directions with our eyebags. We both like fireflies. Maybe all people do (so I am sorry for writing that in such a selfish light)
Pula
02/26/12
Dearest Big Sister (written in a more unsure manner),
I heard you are flying again today. If you are up there, can you look down and find me? I will wear a red shirt so you can easily see me. Will you also take a train? Take a photo of the chimney or the railroad.
Kuj
(written in an unsure manner)
Like dew on a leaf, I felt the veins of the earth. Skin on the cold water, solitude submerged – with no human forms in sight. Only the vines which crawl downwards, trying to touch the big rocks, only the hanging bridge that leads people from mountain to mountain, only the passing birds, sometimes in twos – sometimes in flocks. I was there: small, grateful, confused, found, finding. Is it possible to leave a piece of your heart in places you go to? And after all these years, am I walking with missing pieces clothe by bones and brown skin? Will I be walking around to empty my soul more to really live? Or after all, I am just a part of a circle?
Flow. WO/ANDER. Soul connections. Addicted to that feeling.
People, wherever they are- in mountains or cities or slums or concrete jungles, they open their heart to you to tell you how lucky you are for being somewhere else. For being somewhere where they are not. And you tell them, it is a matter of appreciation or a matter of leaving. Some of those you meet are just happy to be where they are. And some are more than glad to drift and be a part of something unfamiliar yet connected to them. Wherever that leads, no one knows. Most of them try to get by, every waking life.
I tried to open my eyes under water. There I saw tiny bubbles which reminded me of breathing. I saw tiny singers – those that I only see when I take my homeward bound bus. When it is raining.
Kuj (in tired letters),
I am sleeping on the airport floor at 2am. 2 hrs on a jeep rooftop yesterday. I wish I am taking some aircraft that does not emit bad air but yeah, I got promo ticks. I’ll try to find you later at 8:57 AM. Took the MRT days ago and did not like it. No photos there, sorry. Will you visit me if I decide to live near the mountains/forests/seas?
Excited for your questions,
Nang T
