Tuesday, September 28, 2004

yosh!!!!

turning sadness into kindness
your uniqueness into strength
believing that you should be able to do it
again and again

- sweetest goodbye -

After a 14-month grudge, I decided to live. I decided to live despite what I knew the world had to offer to me...because I knew somehow, that living in an imperfect world is worth it. And so I dared to rise up from the flames of my demise and start living once again. Here is a letter I wrote to someone I wish to remain unnamed:

A decision has been long overdue and procrastination has overstayed its welcome. One can not live in the past, one can not live on a selection of fleeting moments that bleed you dry. It is logic that galvanizes me to motion, to destroy an empty rage sired by a lie and impregnated by a ghost in a shell. Incubus. How cruel life’s humor is to make the shoe fit.

I do not want us to part with grudges against each other but I do not want us to be friends either. There is more to tragedy than hurtful words, more to tragedy than the rhetoric of silence. There are wounds that are beyond healing- surely by now you agree with me that panaceas are nothing but myth. There are happenstances that eat your soul.

I let in the possibility of a relationship between us, not of an ordinary and a merely circumstantial kind, but something deeper and more intimate, though I knew it could hurt me- and throughout the time tended to pre-empt it with my secret pain for that very possibility of pain—I say admittedly. Further in the obscurity (if not mystery) of our relationship is the uncertainty, not the natural kind for a relationship, but of a misplacement caused by the reality of technicalities—that is the only (if not the usual) anchor of realities to the ‘bigger reality.’ Again for so many times, I felt lost. I did not know where to put myself. I did not know where in the map of truth was I to place myself. I had nothing unbiased to hold on, but to the very thing you are shunning—the handle of technicality. My feelings had nothing to hold on. I had no other choice. But, despite its absence, I gave in to chance. And I waited. Even if I knew that I could never lose something (or more appropriately in this case, someone) that was never mine in the first place. Never in the sense that truly mattered. How could I, when I was unjustly robbed even of that?

It was true and you were annoyed — and it might have discouraged you —when I told you that you could not have two things at once. Didn’t I tell you that if you want to hold on to one thing, the only possibility for you to grasp it is to let go of something else? I never wanted to be the bearer of bad news, but I guess the situation called me to be the carrier of sense to someone who shielded himself with supposed ignorance and indecision, be it ignorance and indecision to time, to circumstance or to hurts - heaven forbid you be faced with a situation that demands instantaneous cost-benefit analysis. Your speech and act -they said it all. They gave word to the things that you did not want to say simply because you chose not to. Choosing not to choose in the excuse of indecision when the situation desperately calls for a decision is in itself a choice, is it not? Even if it was a choice to abdicate a great responsibility and leave the situation vulnerable to a nonexistent fate. Have you not noticed that we are condemned to choose? For it is a piece of our existence’s reality – to face the inescapable choices that we are saddled with, with or without our consent. We may not have chosen to be burdened with a particular choice, but we nevertheless have to make a choice. There is no reality except in action - or in some cases, the lack of it.

I did not trust you not because I doubted your sincerity, but because of your very sincerity to your emotions. You give in to everything that you feel, however strong or weak, however long or short-lived. I understood it because I too am guilty of the same crime. And I wondered, if to you I was real or as ether—just another part of your dreams, the ones that you keep at arms length. For this, I did not even know if you saw me then, really saw me as me.

If you say that you did not dream your emotions that time, I would understand you. You cannot possibly dream what you feel, feelings are felt for their degree of reality (relative of course, to one’s paradigm of reality) and persistence (in the sense that there is no false emotions)—and I know the truth of this. But for somebody who grew up around people whose very emotions, real and persistent, betray and hurt the ones closest to them—the emotion that one day loved and ever after rejected the same object, a person of emotions is a willing slave to his emotions, and can be loyal only to his emotions. Never can I trust emotions not to hurt, and inevitably the person steered by it.

I do not wish undone the things that have come to pass. Whether I am better off or not, I can not say with certainty. And it is best if I do not indulge in thoughts that are to my perception, flimsy. There is no point in lingering on the what-ifs, the shoulda-woulda-couldas for the detail that any argument that I could come up in its grounds would be a point that is blatantly contrary to fact. The only thing I am certain of is that I was changed. Do not pity me, it is much too late for that. I can do without it for I am a person who does not sway with sympathy. But just because I do believe in the injustice of that form of coercion (I prefer to be more objective), do not ever wipe out the possibility that I can contend without. I simply chose to argue without- even if the shit already hit the fan, when reasoning with sympathy would have been the most effective means to point out a fallacy in your constructed argument.

I believed in our attraction to each other, that is, in our meeting and togetherness, so I chose to engage in the relationship in spite of its unacceptability by technicalities and rules. Admittedly, I played frivolous at first (I knew you saw this)—I did not know to what I was reciprocating, and to frolic was the safest, most probable assumption (and it may be true that the ‘romance’ started as a play). You were the first to put in romance, I just had to let it happen even if it was only for frivolity. This was part of my unconventionality. But as more time, gestures and emotions were given in, as little by little I could not help it, parts of me were revealed to you, I had only to be serious—I was beginning to share parts of myself to you transgressing my privacy and independence to my unease. For me, it was a form of surrender. But still I did not know to whom and to what. Come to think of it, it is a shame that it had to be thus.

The blow was not at all soft. There was nothing in me to cushion it even if I had lived with the possibility of inevitable pain or the hovering threat of it, whether it be me or someone else who would bear it. And I guess, it was better that I had to be the one deemed less even if it was for the wrong reasons, even if it was because of faulty argument. Blame it on bad synapse feeding immediate sensory perception into faculty of reason. I am not rationalizing. Although it disagrees with being a cynic and a critic at birth, take me as someone who does not rationalize, at least one who didn’t during the composition of this letter.

In truth, I could not understand your perception, at the same time I doubted your truthfulness. How could one deny the truth from someone and be convinced that it was out of care? How could you say you care for someone and refuse that someone something we all know she should know? Then you told me you love me. I thought it was a joke. I did not know to whom you were lying. To XXX, to me, or to yourself-in all sincerity I think it was the latter. How can I trust my well-being to somebody who cares enough for somebody to lie to her, and who loves somebody enough not to give her peace of mind at least? Do you see my point or do you refuse to see it like the many moments you refused to see? When I told you in the movie theatre that I could not go through with things given the current situation, I was not merely asking for reassurance, I was asking for a part of the truth. The truth at least, of our intentions for each other- of your intentions for me. How could I look at it in any other way? I am sure that you are literate enough to read between the lines. But you did not give me that. Simply because you refused not to. But I waited still in my distress. I thought it was too harsh to demand from you something you could not give — as of the moment. I guess I was wrong to even think that. I should have known better. I guess love makes fools of us all.

History, by its intrinsic nature, is always a one sided account. And with grace borne of understanding, I willfully submit to its injustices. She will know me as a thief, as a wrecker of relationships as she so frantically puts it, for eternity – an eternity whose endurance of which weighs on your shoulder. An eternity that I speculate you will bear. Language will leave me with silence. Gravid with eloquence and possibilities as it may be, it will be silence nonetheless.

The time of my contemplation about certain truths has come and gone. I am now moved to seek my own bliss. And so, I ask this of you, an entity to negate what you told her at Eastwood’s Tower: closure. Not just any closure. But the full length of its truth, or more appropriately, your part of it. I am not good with ad baculum nor with ad hominem. As an acquaintance, a friend or however you see me fit to be with regard to you, give me at least this. I have never asked you for something this grave and it is my ignominy that I should ask this of you. But your truth in our little encounter is imperative to my better health, not to mention crucial in the judgment of a circumstance I am faced with.

P.S.
Night’s passion, with its nocturnal residents enlighten me that god must exist.(albeit not the one Christianity shoves down our throats…)
My faculty of reason tells me that I will never understand it/her/him.
My heart whispers that I was not designed to.

Sunday, September 19, 2004

PPA - the series

it's been too long since i last saw you. too long since i felt the warmth of your skin. since i last saw you smile. since you last made me smile... four years ago, we knew nothing of each other. and now, we know nothing of each other again. the world does not stop for my grief. and it urges me not to stop either. then, i drew comfort in knowing that we sleep beneath the same canopy of stars. now, there is nothing but the void of the night. then, the night held such promise...now, it holds nothing but bouts of insomia that last until 5 in the morning. in my surrender, i swallow a bitter pill or two and drug myself to sleep, knowing that tomorrow will hold no special sunrise. it is the same empty existence day after day. this is the only real time that i wish for death's scythe. for i know now that it is the only sweet repose i may be allowed. for even in slumber you haunt me. in my sleep is perhaps the closest i could come to you now. if i only have a stong cause, a good unselfish cause to make me work again... that would indeed be mercy.

if there really is only one person for us, then i know now that i have lost him despite my denial.

MY IMMORTAL
Evanescence


i'm so tired of being here
suppressed by all of my childish fears
and if you have to leave
i wish that you would just leave
because your presence still lingers here
and it won't leave me alone

you used to captivate me
by your resonating light
but now i'm bound by the life you left behind
your face it haunts my once pleasant dreams
your voice it chased away all the sanity in me

these wounds won't seem to heal
this pain is just too real
there's just too much that time cannot erase
when you cried i'd wipe away all of your tears
when you'd scream i'd fight away all of your fears
and i've held your hand through all of these years
but you still have all of me

i've tried so hard to tell myself that you're gone
and though you're still with me
i've been alone all along

Saturday, September 18, 2004

bottling all my hopes in a store-bought scent

there are some things in me that are plainly ineffable. my principles, my opinions and my truths among them. and yet, i have always prided myself with the fact that describing things is what i do best. events to words. moments to words. even words to even better words. it's a glaring cliche, but i'm a writer (the rationale of an excessively and overly articulate, literary life) and being such entails that nothing should lie beyond the scope of my descriptive capacity.

but i find that there are things that can only be felt. there are things that exist and remain eternal even without proof. there is an irrevocable cognizance whose veracity lies with the gravity of its sentience - an entity beyond even the nomenclatural capsule of science! it's just like what the fox said in Antoine de Saint-Exupery's The Little Prince... what is essential is invisible to the eye. because we know these to be true even without evidence that science calls real.

and these things that i sense only with intuition, these things that psychologically hasten my heart to the point of defense mechanism's conversion, these moving truths that leave phantom pains when met with my ignorance and arrogance... these i know to be true for they undoubtedly change me (however minute and however invisible to the sight of others). and change always implies a reaction. my reaction to powerful things that i can not give form with words. i find that there is just too much of these things when i feel them that giving them word is an impossibility. for try as i might, there will always be aromas that i can not write with such promise, colors whose hue i could not write with such boldness, and motion that i can not write with such animation. never can i write such an ambiance that presents such awe. and so, i choose not to desecrate such perfection and beauty with my lacking.

if in my arrogance, i defy my faculty of reason and try to capture it with my eloquence, always, there will be something missing... how deep the shadow was in the drama of light and shade i witnessed it, how the moment i found myself in shifted from inconsequential happenstance to serendipity and then to crystal clear clarity... these things will never be in the letters that give shape to my words. they elude the loops of my a's, e's and o's. they lie in the blanks of my whitespaces. they lie in the void that give shape to my paragraphs.

and so i chose to give word to these things, my simple truths, not with the stroke of ink on paper but with a mark that holds much more authority... a simple implication of its reality and its veracity.

Wednesday, September 08, 2004

room mate

"Some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's goint to happen next. Delicious Ambiguity!"

That's the text message my room mate unexpectedly sent me one morning. Groggy from sleep and battling an imminent hangover, I managed to key in a few poetics of my own. Unable to fall back to sleep, wicked sandman has left me to the daylight yet again, I lie in bed for a while trying to orient myself to the day at hand. I linger on the subject of friendship and dally. I see the concept in slow motion, like the contained colors suspended and gracefully undulating in a lava lamp ...I admit shamelessly that I have only a few people I can call my friends. But I keep them close. How good things are do not lie on quantity anyway but the veracity of the relationship itself.

My roommate and I are both Libras. Which is probably why we either talk our our throats dry or we never speak a word at all during our 'chance' encounters. Well alright, not really chance encouters per se' but chance encounters in the sense that they are the encounters that my roommate and I wish to galvanize. She and I always have a protocol (as to the origin of the protocol, I have no clue). And handshaking of sorts to verify if one wishes to engage in an encounter. An on-the-fly hello, a wordless offer of fridge crumbs and colas. It is in these few seconds where the beauty of our friendship lie. For these few moments are devoid of expectation and devoid of malice. How the invitation is met has no merit in our friendship. Whether it be met with welcome, a polite decline or even an occasional cold shoulder, it never mattered. Warm welcomes are usually followed by verbal spars, heated arguments and eventually sheepish grins. At the end of it all, it boils down to respect. Enough to say your end of the continuum and enough not to push it. Enough to listen and consider. Enough to consider otherwise.

During times of disinterest for interaction, the encounter is patiently delayed without a trace of resentment. OK, perhaps a split second grudge but nothing more. Privacy is utmost and we never pry unless beckoned. Regardless of the reception, the essence of our ineffable relationship endures. I always reckoned that there is more to friendship than words...that people can communicate just as articulately and eloquently with silence. That action has as many tones, diction and idioms as utterances. And we have both proven that being taciturn from disposition has its values... as one who is innately taciturn may now and then make an effort at sensible, substantial conversation - a relief and a luxury in a world filled with spindoctors.

There is another thing that I find wonderfully unsual and cordial with our relationship. 'Delicious ambiguity' as she so eloquently put it. The strap from our tether unwinds. We have each other without staking any real claim. For we are accountable to each other only to the extent that we want to be. Give and take without the complexities and guilt. NO! Purely giving and taking to one's discretion - as one's objective intellect sees fit, a process borne not in disregard to morality but a reference to the innate benevolence (good and evil is a pregnant idea that has its entrapments to the unwary) one feels once affection is established. A certain loyalty that is won only by the attraction one feels when one sees the real person. An attraction that comes after seeing the vulnerability of someone and the decision not to dominate or malign. Having without owning.

Kudos to Cathy! A trusted confidant and friend. For seeing past our tantrums and mood swings. For seeing beyond my defenses and the giving me the grace of privacy without my asking. Here's to the bliss of anticipating the uncertain. Here's to more verbal spars and glib quips that provide relief to the toils of day. Here's to more dialogues and further contemplation on the woes of life that make it worth living. You always knew that I was the face that drowns day with the hope of night. ^_^


Sunday, September 05, 2004

thesis paroxysms

thesis. it must be the bane of every CE student's life. especially if you chose to specialize in robotics! sux. i remember nervous flicks on the lighter, grinding teeths, glares, fights and the eventual triumph. those were the days when i was running on empty.

now that it's over with a nice silver mota, i have to say i'm being a fool for admitting it but there will be things that i will miss like hell about thesis.

1. the a/c that threatened to freeze us all to death. either that or kill someone with it's spit. especially pugo, angel and bok whose tables were unfortunately within its range.

2. the stupidity of kia. for slipping time and again on the a/c's pool of spit. 'ang dulas! ang dulas!' you never learn do you?

3. a makeshift bed of the lab's chairs. you don't care anymore when you're that weary.

4. the "dread lord's" aura. god. seeing your face never fails to ruin my day.

5. gossip that pops up whenever a thesis group reaches a 'dead end.'

6. tori's wailing. ahh.. err... singing.

7. monopoly and scrabout. any takers?

8. naruto fridays and anime marathons. why is it that everytime it's friday, people seem to come to the thesis lab an hour earlier than the usual 8 o' clock? nani!!!! anousa-anousa! baka. gambare naruto-kun!

9. illegal lan games: tft, starcraft & diablo. finally. we found good use for the school's resources. thanks to kyle for being our look out.

10. lunch. here's to the perky lady's vm meals and manang's tapsilog. (god save me from hepa)

11. the demons that frolic. kyle, lucifer by survey. and monch. here's to 'healthy' discussions devoid of pretense. to matching meals and the daily sprite litre.

12. damn good company. monch. momo. pokimonch. duo-sama. momo-sama. who would have thought that you had the ability to make me laugh? XD

and of course...

13. DARIHL our thesis. 'you goddamn robot! walk damn you! walk!' seeing you grow up to become who you are now... it's fulfilling and i find myself having a case of mommy syndrome despite great reluctance. here's to whatever relationship we had.. s-m (you being the sadist of course...) or love-hate. come to mommy!

god. i never thought i'd hear myself say this. but not knowing that i shall never again be a part of these things leaves me with phantom pains. i find myself wishing that we could have made things last a bit longer... here's to the hope that life's malice will entwine our paths again in some indistinct future. until our unlikely reunion, keep safe.