laum

06/21/10

*

 8/6/10

to the drizzles,

 

  

i was watching you from somewhere quiet, adrift and lonely. on a piece of paper, i repetitively scribbled ‘tell me i am designed to hope. tell me why.’ thank you, you fell. it was a bit depressing inside there. people sitting next to each other without even smiling or talking or asking each other, ‘oh hi why are you here? perhaps we have the same reasons for leaving.’ you know what, i have been thinking about this certain place full of umbrellas. one person under each. when you arrive there, all you need to do is pick an umbrella and a person and spend the rest of the day with that stranger. but hey, the security guard was awesome. he was cheerful and charming all the time. i wondered what he had for breakfast.so let me tell you this, i had a small talk with the ID photographer. he was asking about my tattoo. he told me he wanted to have his design inked near his heart. i told him, ‘good spot’. for a second, i wanted to ask him how it feels to take pictures of people while discouraging them to smile. and there was one young woman who sat beside me. she looked sad. so sad that her tangles could even tell me she traveled that far. so i asked her where she’s heading to and she shyly told me about this plan of hers to work in Jordan. i wished her luck but at the back of my head i wished for her to change her mind. i hate it when i hear people say ‘i got no choice’, i hate it more when i am the one saying that line. it sucks. 

and there was this chubby boy. asking loads of questions from his mom. he wore this tight shirt. i was fascinated of the idea that the fabric might tear apart when he’s going to eat lunch. he reminded me of Kujhuan, 6 years old. my oddest little sibling. you should know by now that he has been making me smile due to the following reasons:

* he asked me once, “manang, why is it that in school, we draw and color stars yellow but when i gaze at them straight above, they appear white?”

* when we were at the beach he pointed out clouds that were heart-shaped.

* last night, he was giggling at a mosquito killer coil moving. he told us that he’s surprised—it’s dancing to the beat of the music from the TV.

* he thinks Dream Theater is a great band. he hums Beegees, Lady Gaga and other songs that are 5 decades older than him. when he sings them, they all sound Cantonese.

* he collects bath soaps, sells non-biodegradables to junk shops, talks to animals and asks me until today why i had my head shaved last year (&would never be convinced of my consistent answer)

 

dear drizzles, i really don’t know what to tell you straight that’s why i am blabbering. i just want you to know that you calm my soul. you made me recall that story i read somewhere that there were railroads built even way before the trains were discovered. so this morning when i walked alone feeling humid and restless i knew the rain would fall. it did not. and you, you fell. 

and in a still of time before 10 am and 11, someone asked me what made me special.

i wished i had something smart or impressive to say.

so i answered, ” i am a dreamer. and i truly believe i am designed to hope. especially when it’s more practical not to.”

 

dear drizzles, someone offered me a stick of cigarette. it was easy to refuse right there and then. the stranger suggested to me to buy an umbrella. we talked about umbrellas and i shared my dream of an umbrella country where on arrival, you choose a person holding it to share the rest of the day with. or share a lifetime. or a forever. whatever mushy. she told me i sounded like a strange dreamer and that it’s sort of funny. she had this pink lipstick and two Watson’s plastic bags. she mentioned that she was waiting for her parents who spend too much time in the groceries. we took the same major back in college but went to different universities. she was a hardcore talker.

 

that place was depressing at first. but the more i spent time looking into people’s eyes, i saw hope. and that’s all that mattered.

i stayed at three different places today. the first was DFA. the second, an office of this wonderful NGO. third, a corner near a shopping mall where everyone’s busy fornicating with materialism.

 

suddenly missing summer mornings,

Tin

 

*

lagyo

06/1/10

*

it was the summer of 1999, you could smell the sprouting of tropical seeds, the laziness of carabaos praying for a little rain, teenagers lining up for affordable traditional circumcision. two kites were up, sliding with the mid-afternoon breeze. At 30°,the sun shone on the plastic-made kite.

flightless birds by: Onigs

Rey spent an entire hour creating it. He owned a skateboard and raised a parrot as his own baby. Though he was raised by affluence, he spent his most cherished childhood memories in a poor community near the mercado publico. there, the houses hid the luscious meadows, a humble mountain range and a pool of mud and water. On the other hand, Narj spent just some minutes to finish her paper kite. It was made of paste, newspaper and barbecue sticks. Her parents owned a soldering hut which stood beside a one-seater barber shop. the shop was most popular. the place operated daily— filled with flat tires, bloated machismo and soiled hands. The rays of the sun left this maddeningly innocent glow on Narj’s eyes that day. It was summer of 1991. He was her first dream boy. Flying kites with him did not mean: the earliest reminder of soaring, the possibility of wingless flights, her ache for the idea of falling without bruises and the concept of letting go (because she keeps on failing in this area. tremendously.) Narj is now a mother of two. I see her doing some 2nd-hand shopping every Thursday (because I am a hardcore ukayista as well). I don’t know if she believes in stories the real owners relay to you. Rey is living his life somewhere now. I don’t know how to describe him. 

She had this long hair, long eyelashes and fat laughter. He sent me a Valentine card when I was in Grade four. In a corner of my soul, I have left a room where we never grow up. never will.

At the back of our house, the fields of green are gone. A hospital was built. and oftentimes, I am the first one to hear the crack of mourning when the ambulance stops crying and someone is dying. (and eventually,dies.)

 =

Summer of 2010, she sat on a park bench. the university gave her this serene nostalgia: everything sepia and wonderful. like licking old envelopes once more, tasting the years that have gone by even without having to read through the letters. surrounded by trees, she could almost get lost in the firmness of their trunks.she named them after the following: Napoleon Bonaparte, Mahatma Gandhi, Bono, Henry David Thoreau, Francis Bacon and Santos. perhaps everyone knows about those male legends. she knows Santos the most. By heart. Santos is her lolo. it was about summer of 1990 when he made her her first kite. contrary to what most kids do, she got used to tying its short thread to a long stick. She held the stick tightly and waved it with bursting glee and pride. later, she realized that kites are more beautiful when they are up and away.

now—Away can give her this feeling of uncertainty but believing is most realized when challenged by distance and gravity.

“Buenavista!!!”, the student assistant called for her amidst the humid day and a line full of enrollees. She left a suggestion note: “I hope your mood does not mean something deeply sad. Smile.” Leaving the oldest university that day gave her this hope in bloom. She walked past the old fences. the yellowbells were not dangling with beauty but there was something budding inside of her—she could even feel how her hair scatters if ever she throws her self for a freefall. 

pulling her neckline a bit, she felt the gentle pain near her heart, she grinned at the sight of a tattoed kite and the words: payaso (in alibata). träume. and palagyo.

 

.

indis

05/25/10

*

(photo by: J.E. Restrepo)

 

her mother likes sitting in front of the TV set—watching the ending of movies with the names/texts walking by. she likes things that seem to end but they actually don’t. Vivian is a keen cook. She fell in-love with a young man who wrote for the school paper —then eventually became her husband. At 18, she taught Kristine how to write the first five letters of the alphabet. ABCDE. Kristine had a hard time writing the letter B.later in life, that particular letter would stand out for she redundantly uses it now in words she’s nearly-addicted to such as: beautiful, beginnings, blowing bubble, blurs, been  and ben.

 

In 1999 (29th of November), Vivian gave birth to Kyla. At 1 year old, the little girl has exhibited reading prowess. At 10, she plays the guitar in such a way that her nose grows bigger than its regular size, her lips shiver a bit and her fingers tango blindly. Kyla has the knack in mixing and matching clothes. She does not do it on purpose but it sometimes appears that she does.  Kristine reminds her to pay attention to guitar-playing because she’s paying for every session. It’s a sort of emotional blackmail. Kristine hates emotional blackmailing. She even told Jaime that she could have been somewhere else if not for these false attachments she has (bonds that have been developed and stiffened by time, tears and saltwater).

 

Jaime is Colombian. His grandfather owns a coffee farm where Jaime used to spend his younger days lying on the fields and dreaming about galleons and galaxies. He moved to Florida at 14 and took Arts as his major. He likes eating barquillos without having to break their thin bodies. He takes each piece slowly from the plastic. He does that because of his fear of failing architecture. Jaime will never forget the day when he came out of the closet and told his mother about it. His mother is a teacher. She is volatile and spontaneous and she actually loved bringing them to swimming pools when they (him and his sister) were younger.Jaime thinks she did that for the therapeutic effect. Today, Jaime challenges buoyancy. Kristine thinks it has something to do with his childhood and the feeling he got when he closed his eyes at the belly of the waters. He takes polaroids of random surprised people and spontaneous captures of umbrellas.

 

Jaime and Kristine met one day. they have shared long walks and talks. for days, they walk while they talk. in lazy times, they pretended to walk while they talk.  Jaime reminds her to chase her dreams just like how someone chased his and found her one day. He told her that he wants to move to Canada in the near future but before that, he still would love to go home (Colombia) then probably,visit Italy. He is not sure if Italy can make him feel at home too. Maybe, yes. He is sure though that he wants to breathe art daily–take it in like sweat, shower of the sun and age. He announces that more than anything else, he is happy to be a citizen of the world,gay and just- himself.

 

Kristine spent two days just in her bedroom with a bottle of water a week ago. She likes old things: all the tiny possessions that people have given her. She likes reading old messages to swallow the moment when that person thought about her (while writing) and the same day the person forgot about her (&stopped writing). She cries when little kids sing so well on TV. She cries when she remembers emotional heights trapped in short time frames. She laughs with her self a lot but loves laughing with  someone else beside her. She finds it difficult to get her poetry published but she is finally starting to scribble her own aims raw and real through her soul and soles. 

 

 On the 27th,he’s leaving for more stories upnorth. She’s visiting the jump-off point of some changes in her life.Perhaps, they’d keep their plan of visiting Brazil. Maybe, they’ll keep writing and she’d still be talking about love and how mornings turn colder. but he will remind her about how life leads you to places and people that can reflect how beautiful you are…

 

if and only if you chase your dreams and free them with faith.

fate crumbles.

 

 

 

 *

uyat

05/18/10

*

 

yes, your hand in mine…

*

 

so i am not writing this because there is jackfruit near my reach and that it is your favorite fruit. and im not writing this because i have grown this fondness of this  little bones covered with feathers. i write because i miss you and i miss you in such a way that i sleep the nights feeling this unwrapping of fabric, skin, sweat and breathes. the bus we took was filled with people i always noticed when i was alone. there was someone preaching. there were mothers and sons sitting so close without talking to each other. there were students starving and wanting to arrive home for lunch in no time. there were sad people and i did not look at them because i was looking at your lips. and you were looking into mine. i miss looking at your lips and how we could just talk for hours and just share silence on the same manner that we could chat about mornings, societies, being so different yet so alike, education system, madness, magic… and blitzkrieg (& my dream all-female, all angsty metal band). the bus we took gave us this perfect view of the clouds and how we admitted things we can kill for like freedom, love, emancipation and getting lost. we were not there to judge nor to pluck each other petal by petal and see the core. but yes, we were there to find each other. and in finding you, in finding me (despite the many walls we’ve tried to build brick by brick), we found our kind of dream that we silently thrown in the sky and never hoped to fall back…in return. but IT STILL did.

 

i miss you. and i don’t know for how long this shall last. i don’t want to think about it. i miss most the way you laugh at my accent when i am attempting to express something exaggerated, the manner your eyes wander on my face when we were so close that we almost sniffed each other pore by pore, the way i tell you “been stumbling down and suddenly you make me feel i can fly” and your face says “awwww” and we’ll just hug and sigh, the rawness of your frown when you’re disappointed or i did stupid things that were against your principles. i miss this little boy’s face full of wonder and adoration when i tell you about ordinary people and special moments—ordinary moments and special people. i miss the feeling of being with someone with a beautiful soul that everything else in the world felt colliding in rhyme and wine. i miss you. i miss us. i miss how you remind me that life is not unkind for those who are weak. how you appreciate me more when i’m willing to be vulnerable.

 

the bus that we took was red. there was a Martial Arts movie playing in hisses. there was an old man stealing glances at you, he was pretending to read the local news. maybe he was reading about the elections. there were two kids stealing glances at you, amused by your strangeness. the bus we took was not too slow and the clouds that day were free and fluffy. the night ago, the sky was pregnant with stars and there were fireflies. we said we were not ready for tomorrow. the bus carried you. i think we carried on from the different terminals we arrived at. i don’t know why buses came to be or why dreams were not taught that much via the academe. 

 

but in the place where we found each other, motion sickness was not a deal. gravity could be tamed. and there, im happy i met you. and that, for a lifetime, i won’t forget how you have taught me to flap the wings i once traded for a roof and some hinges and chains.

 

 *

sanga

05/12/10

*

“Life was raging all around me and every moment was magical. I loved all the people, dealing with all the contradictory impulses - that’s what I loved the most - connecting with the people. Looking back, that’s all that really mattered.”

 

(Irene, 19, mother of two and her kikiaman)

 

nothing can take the place of  every kindness and friendliness street vendors, security guards, drivers, konduktors and everyday people have given me. im always inspired by every Filipino who finds dignity in providing the needs of their families be it material or not. i always cherish the short yet moving talks i share with young people who work for burger stands or old men in the bus all excited to tell me their tales. one thing i am very much proud of being here is the irreplaceable fact that no matter how challenging the times are, i belong to a happy race. or better yet, a nation that always tries to chuckle.

 

(Benjamin from Oldenburg, Germany and Tagay from Malapascua, Cebu)

 

surprising and magical arrivals of people have melted my heart, have even proved me not only once, not twice— that there is so much mystery and surrealism in the world. but in the end it all boils down to one TRUTH: life is beyond beautiful. it sucks balls sometimes but it always fondles you in ways you never expected but ways that CAN make you better than you have ever imagined. and in this spehere of flights and departures, being able to brace that space for arrivals can somehow keep you grateful despite the thin air between dreams and realities.

(beloved gboy and Karen)

(amigo Ani and sis Kai)

 

and there are people who were born to be your family and friends. you feel blessed when one day, you realize that they love you not because they have to but JUST BECAUSE. they stay. they shake you to discomfort due to conflict of interests but they are still there when the whole place flew away and you’re left in the cold.

 

(singgit kids )

 

(youngest playmates )

then, you find your self surrounded by little dreamers. reminders of your very self. happy kids. that more than mingling with them in a house of 7, you learn with them outside the school classrooms and inside the heart of the spirit of community, social responsibility and childlike awe.then, you begin to ask your self: can i share more? or can i dream more than what i am supposed to? 

 

then you nod.

 

because after all the splashed masses of land, the pristine waters and warm shores, the mighty trees and the summer-browned meadows all over, it’s PEOPLE and your hearstrings with them which make you believe:

there is no other life to waste because you’ll make the most out of what you have now. 

 

.