puerta

02/22/11

*

photo credit :the guy who introduced Filip Filop to me

 

we had lunches on the shore (white powdery sand, waters that borrow the hues of the sky and that allow you to look INTO the diversity of life in fins and gills). we watched the Stratus(es) and talked about “what if they are just reflections of how people under that particular area feel like…”. we were there on the shore sharing Merlot as we watch the first set of stars— blinked a little blinked brighter. we moved to the balcony— the waves serenaded us as we talked about the many beautiful pieces of this unfathomable universe. we talked about how noble the farmers are and how self-serving-branding-and-boxes steal you from that wonderful intensity of life. from that marrow. 

the sailboats under the endless canvass of pink, yellow, blue-violet and rose. the transition of colors in nature that makes you feel you are here, a speck - keep that awe and respect. the gift of laughter and humor and oddness. the blessing of human connections that pokes you and tells you - ‘there is still a lot out there to see, feel, taste and savor…’ the boundless magic of art, music and love. never doubt.

high on life. high on the appreciation for the simple. [to me, ‘living simple’, is actually about giving life more space to be complex..] high on random acts of kindness.

i am excited about more communion with nature | summer gigs and sessions with Singgit | learning welding and improving on swimming| spending more time with my loved-ones and the humanity out there, in every corner|  every exuberant and witty exchanges with Natalie and Lasse| cooking every random dish for my younger sibs and cousins| take in stories that create mental holes and NOT mental walls…

we were looking at the stars as the dusk began to fade away. and we all agreed- we are but tiny specks in this awwwwUNIVERSE.

 

 

and IN that particular moment, it felt unexplainably awesome to be small. 

 

.

samad

02/18/11

 

*

“hey, you look fresh…like a hot pink bougainvillaea beauty…when did he first got you?”

 

the boy has been sleeping for three hours and a half. before he hit the hay, he was lying wide awake thinking of a particular place- -his bubble thought was yellow and there was a deep well, a seedling and a girl. his peers have known him to be an imaginative, sometimes fucked up, sometimes jolly, sometimes frugal, sometimes lazy boy. he has been visiting a cheap book store and has been secretly skimming on Dante’s Divine Comedy. when he walks around, he always imagines about the owners of those hanging clothes from windows, those people eating alone in food courts (and what’s going on their mind while swallowing every fatty dish), those women in skinny jeans and collared tops convincing him to buy a new phone casing (how they hide their tummy fats and those dark circles aroud their eyes)…those beggars with no arms or legs playing the harmonica or the improvised guitar (and how they cried when they came to consciousness and the leg or the arm is gone). now, he’s asleep for 3 hours– maybe dreaming, maybe lost.

 

“hey… talk to me, please… the oldest scar is not talking to me today for no reason.”

this is the heart scar talking. the heart scar was caused by someone the man met and loved and adored like no other. 

“hello… i am so sorry, i am new and i did not realize that i can communicate with you. just now. i woke up hurt and bleeding and i had no hands to do sign languages with. i am a fresh wound and i feel like something alien or dirty or ugly. i am not sure.”

“when i first realized that i live near his heart, i felt special and beautiful. i have seen some of his scars when he’s naked in the bathroom but they never talked to me. i am more than happy to meet you.  i was disaster when he first got me. sometimes, he’d pound his chest and i would get uglier. so i can relate to you. sometimes, he’d cry and i grew fatter. weird weird times”

“nice story. i am 4-hour old.he was too excited when he was biking again after a long while. fell down and got me.well, i am not sure if he was hurt or sad when he saw me. he seemed not to mind, he just wiped some sand away from me and splashed me some water.”

 ”i have a feeling you will look browner soon. in a couple of days, you will grow some helmet and after a week or so, i will not see you again. i am envious. i have been here for so long. i have written a lot of poems, listen to a lot of songs and got carousels in my core everytime he was starting to feel happy for some time. but yeah, i still look like a swamp of red and tears. people are complex creatures. there were months when i was almost gone but there were weeks i was hurting daily”

“sorry i have nothing to say. i cannot understand you in any way.”

“well, he got you by accident. he got me by some odd human attachment. maybe if i were caused by a knife or a broken glass, i should have disappeared. but he carries me anywhere he goes. sometimes, just for laughs, i jump and wave hello to people he is with so that they can see me and tell him about it. but they can’t recognize my voice.”

 ”ok. do you know then how you were born? when i was born, i just saw a bike, a sari-sari store and brown men laughing.”

“i wish i can recall. all i know is that i started to hurt when he was about to sleep one night and he started to squeeze the pillow. i wanted to help him but i am just a wound and wounds do not have hands to hug or sings to lull humans to sleep.”

“ok. have you seen someone who looks like you? i feel that you are experienced and well-traveled.”

“hmmmmm… aha! one time. he met a girl. the girl has big eyes and they always sparkled. i even thought they were luminous fish swimming to and fro. the girl has big hands and storng arms. i felt she hugged him sometimes. when they met, she hugged him hesitantly. when they eat something, she wanted to touch his nape but she was scared. i saw a similar wound under her collarbone. it was 3 years old.”

“how did you know? because you are wise enough to tell age?”

“we talked.”

that seemed to be the briefest line the wound near his heart spoke. it was a contemplative pause. the stars were out and his mother was tiptoeing to the kitchen, looking for something to wash her face before sleeping. 

“the girl’s scar was old but beautiful and attractive. i don’t know if he is a he or a she. so let me call it an ‘it’. maybe, we, wounds have no gender.. it said something like this, like a poem i wish i wrote:

 

they were like crabs—

he was the crab that climbed above her when they were younger,

the sea was always beautiful and the sunset glorious. one day, their shells slipped but 

they managed to climbed over one another. one gloomy day,  your crab hurt mine, terribly.

maybe it was time for him to live in another sea. 

your crab left. i grew. but one day, i became a scar and not a wound anymore. years and 

tropical rains healed me. and one summer, your crab came back and they were laughing again.

 

and you, why do you still look fresh and swollen and wide?”

 

“i did not know how to explain it. but i told the similar-looking scar that i am sometimes a scar–but i am also sometimes a wound. ambivalent, confused, hurting. then out of the blue it smiled at me and said:

 

i realized there are many different wounds/scars:

* those you inflict to others. they sometimes surface and re-surface. (weird immortality especially) when someone is sad or bored.

* those others caused you. they can be blown away by time and they can look like stories in due time.

* those that you inflict to yourself. 

* those  that you get by accident.

 

 

the man woke up in a balcony. he could see the tin roofs in the village from where he stood, calm and at home. a woman in plain white tee hugged him from behind, grabbed his waist with so much affection. she kissed his chin. she kissed him with an unexplainable fervor. she is a graceful dancer just by the way she held his jaws whenever they kiss. she has pink ankles and clean armpits. she has an oval scar on her right knee.

 

.

silak

02/14/11

*

 
  

 

“i spent an entire week not getting over the rejection. i am a Law graduate, i am smart, I have represented the country in Asian youth conventions but i did not pass the final screening as Management Trainee.”, he rest his back on the maroon couch of the glass-walled coffee shop. There was an ESL teacher having coffee with a Korean student, a sun-tanned Boheme-looking girl ordering latte and there was a guy playing a love song ten steps outside the cafe. 

“life has a magical way of teaching us to be humble. it hurt me that time but i realized that i am never too big for something or in comparison to someone else. and i liked that lesson.”

 i wanted to hug my friend of many years. whenever years pass and i wake-up wanting to catch up with someone i badly miss, it always becomes a moment of exuberance. these days, the sun is so close to me. living near the sea always makes me feel lucky. as break times from work, i usually sit on the shore to read a book, take a dip, listen to my favorite bands or just take a nap after watching the waves and the clouds. BUT that day, sunshine was in front of me: bones and flesh and a big heart. 

we were both part of the university student council, the university as well as the college debating team… when he was busy with international conventions and so forth, i was busy heading the Social Science Club and Political Science- organizing debates, heading jail visits and Artian activities. we were both young and idealistic. i saw how competitive he was while i always braced laid-backness. he was in the library for research, while i cut classes because there were days when i felt melancholic and lazy. we both liked our Socialist Government class and The Amazing Race. sometimes, he’d remind me that i lack focus. which is indeed true. i was passionate about certain things— radicalism, reading literature, going home too early for the weekends to go to the beach, writing tawdry poetry.

six years after, as we sat facing each other, i found the same old good friend who likes Sandara (who is obviously never my thing), who likes to talk about geopolitics and world issues but who’s humble enough to admit and to listen if he does not know a thing about an Icelandic band on the rise. i found the same friend who (like me) loves books and page-smelling. and i found a beautiul soul, one of the most-celebrated talks and another fuel to be in-love with earning a life (& a living) and be-friending its dragonflies and demons.

 ”it’s great that you were able to experience how to wash those plates and how to serve barbecue. you’re more appreciaitve of others. it’s like sitting on that dining table and thanking the farmers. i’m proud of you. i’m happy of what you’ve become. though sometimes, we don’t reach our goal, the process of experience that we go through is already meaningful”

 

☀

 

“To love others or being loving to people is very good and enriching I think. The most important part is though to be happy for yourself and to give one all the time one needs. If we manage to be happy (like in our lives), we’ll enrich the people around us even more and we’re able to preserve that for a long time not only a short period.”

 a kindred soul wrote this to me after sending me a message of typos because the train was shaking too much.  we shared intense conversations every time chances permitted us. we had different childhood. i grew up in paddies and muddy roads. the kindred spirit grew up from a first world country. the moment i got back home, i missed our talks. i may have beautiful things here: the sea, the daydreaming spots of greens, the slow speed of life and of changes. my kindred spirit makes it a point to write me thoughts. to write me that they had 3 days of beautiful weather, to write me that their family walked under the sun and that i have to enjoy life- enjoy the current wow of now because the past happened (and it was meaningful) and the future is exciting. the kindred spirit once asked me why i was smiling alone at the sight of the evening lights from the bus window. 

“i like this shared comfortable silence…dear confidante. suddenly, i feel very hopeful.. care to give me another chewing gum?”

i was actually silent. but that was i wanted to tell. i just closed my eyes instead.

 

☀

 a man married to a woman who has been helping the Mangyans:

“I want a young man from here to say “I am Mangyan” with pride. I want to make a sad comment though. Those Pinoys who have moved to the US, when asked, “Are you a Filipino?”, sometimes, they answer hesitantly… sometimes, sadly, they have become Americans. They want to. Badly.”

 the couple built a school for them. built a center for health and hygiene. built a home and a better life.

 

☀

 

Olivia from Ghana calls me. She forgets about our time zone. She thinks I am so lucky to be a Filipino. to be where women are much acceptable  even when they grow stronger voices. 

 

.

 

 

.

tabuan

02/9/11

*

 

 

he was beautiful with his age. at first, i did not notice

because i was taking pictures of my companions.

the flight, delayed - the airport offered us

bottled water. i grabbed one, walked past him and did 

not notice. someone told me “look at him, that man, he’s been 

staring at you smiling…”

i took a gulp, tilted my head and saw him, handsome and

older and clean formal clothes. i paused a bit and i was

confused if i needed to smile or nod or do both.

his eyes were summer skies looking down the intricacy of 

Grand Canyon. i just saw those blue skies in pictures, and perhaps,

it’s safer to say that his eyes were like the skies above

the Grand Canyon in photos. i’m not sure. but im sure he was

beautiful. maybe, he had a lovely wife and funky kids. maybe, his first 

child listened to Guns n’ Roses for a week and watched old clips

of Kurt in Youtube. maybe, he’s single and sad and he’s flying to Europe to 

find love, money and to just stare at the stars. i can never tell.

he said a gentle hello to me and i had this feeling that he wanted to shake

my hand but i felt too tiny in front of him and i was cold so i shoot my fists

into my jacket pockets. in the plane, i was seated a seat in front of him

and he was still, staring at me. i wrote a poem on the tissue, i think it was about

the houses i could see from above and the idea of having a dinner with a family 

in Netherlands just by falling down from the sky and rolling down from a roof.

i had a feeling someone was staring at me and when i tilted my head, i saw him.

he was beautiful and aged and odd. i said, “hello” and maybe, he realized i have been

wondering about him and his stares.

 

“Hi.”

“are you Indonesian?”

 

“No.”

“I am a Filipina”

 

“Oh! I am so sorry. I am going to Germany as well.”

“You? working there?”

 

“No. just for three weeks. too bad. But yeah, grateful for that already.”

 

I liked the hesitation in him. I liked how I saw him from the lids of my sight,

just observing of how i wrote down my tumbling down the roof poem.

 

“I am sorry if I cannot stop staring at you.”

 

“Nah, it’s alright. It won’t kill me, will it? you’ve been to Indonesia?”

 ”Yes. I fell in-love with the archipelago and with an Indonesian lady once.”

 

and for a moment, i forgot about the fruit juice in front of me. and that it has been 

served and that i was thirsty minutes ago. i forgot about the roof poem i was writing

and i just look at him quietly, smiled gently,

“maybe, she remembers you sometimes too.”

 

“i hope. but, well…”

 

 

all of a sudden, i was in another airport and met a Filipina abroad who had another piece of story.

 

*

dungaw

02/4/11

*

 

train of thoughts in the bus

 this is the comfiest seat in this yellow bus and im going to the city because i am meeting Natalie and Shaun and we will walk around Calle Real or hang out at Book Latte or just  stand and eat bananacue in a sidewalk somewhere and i am sitting here now enjoying the paddies, ricefields and the wind ah the wind it is blowing the thin trees along the highway and there are men with big tummies sitting joyfully on waiting sheds i cannot hear what they are talking about but i can see their mouths and teeths from where i am their arms rest above their bloated stomachs what a beautiful sight i always like happy people and oh so adorable two old women with red umbrellas floral and dotted holding hands and their lips murmur something delicate and important and then there areyoung guys drinking rum in one table near a hut and two feet away is a young guy alone sitting on the bridge thinking deep thinking far maybe thinking about dreams or sex or love and the conductor smiled at me he has nice teeth i did not bother to look at the punched numbers because i know i am going to pay P53 it’s windy today and i love it is hould have worn skirt so that i can feel the wind more on my knees when i am walkingbut it might fly higher and i might just feel embarrased anyways i am reading this book The Daydreaming Boy and i adore it every page is like another life and another parcel of Lebanon it is like being there at that moment when he dreams of a Palestinian girl and the way they did it fast and fierce and the way he describes how the sea looks from the balcony and then he just smokes one two and three and i went back to my busmates and the way their head jerk off when they sleep and i cannot stop asking if who they are and what they are up to and why they are going somewhere South

 

 ☁