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siya

 

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she likes seashore naps and the view of everything from the bus window. she likes tiny moments and the small spaces between faces when people talk.

 

sometimes, she wakes up to that odd feeling of being a fallen leaf, an old tree, an azotea or a waitress somewhere-- talking to a taxicab driver about that random song on the radio.

 

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 ---

 poetry as visual art

 powets do kick ass

 iPud (ako, too)

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and this. a proof that:

how you see LIFE is how

you actually see YOUR self.


 

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maddening spurt:

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 “The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes "Awww!”

 

-Jack Kerouac-

 

[

05/13/12

 

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found a spot near the sea.

modernpatadyong.wordpress.com

 

 

Posted by modernpatadyong at 7:49:00 | permalink | Comments Off

sangyad

04/20/12

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/

 

 

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.”

 

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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). 

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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.

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i am currently writing this in a house with two blind parents. Andres and Joji. touching. it is so magical every time. 

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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”

 

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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. 

 

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Listen to Yndi Halda’s “A Song for Starlit Beaches”. 

 

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oh, i MIGHT have to live in Saigon/Ho Chi Minh/not-so-well-known city in vietnam for a month. we’ll see.

 

 

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Posted by modernpatadyong at 8:51:00 | permalink | View this entry

alwan

03/14/12

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(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.

 

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Posted by modernpatadyong at 8:29:00 | permalink | View this entry

dyip

03/8/12

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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)

 

One random Thursday night, I decided to join a dinner of fish, travelers, crepes and sangria. Nigel and me shared a long walk and a cold dyip ride. He wanted to describe something but stopped and could not go on. I told him moments like that are beautiful. then, looked away from where I sat and mentioned about life as a circle. 
 
As we walked I touched his sleeve and exclaimed that I want to have a Howl in my life. I would not mind if he goes home with strong feathers, we’ll live in a moving castle with super strong legs. He sighed, “that would be great”.
 
I was holding the straps of my tiny backpack, he hid his fists in his pockets.  He found himself standing infront of his hostel, in front of a stranger who fell half-inlove with him after twenty three lifetimes. 
 
“hope to see you tomorrow”
 
 
he said.
 
He was still standing there as I folded my legs and started a small talk with the driver of the taxicab.
 
 
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Posted by modernpatadyong at 17:50:00 | permalink | View this entry

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

 

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Posted by modernpatadyong at 15:48:00 | permalink | View this entry