2×2

Seven years I’ve had this picture of you tucked in the innermost fold of my wallet. Today, a random day, I break a promise I had made to myself so many years ago – to keep it close to me forever, to keep you forever. I am cutting one more string that had bound me to you.

I made the decision to put it in the little tin box of mementos I keep at the foot of my bed. It was the only thing you ever gave me, the only evidence that we once walked side by side, under the stars, dreaming of a future together.

I had moved on, but every once in a while I still think of you. I think about what you might be doing. I think about how your life has gone. I think about what we could have been had we made it.

We didn’t.

All these small deaths, all these little good-byes, piece by piece I dismantle the pain. I grieve once more for the part of myself that I am letting go now, the part of you still tangled within me, the joy I had when I was with you. I know that this will not be the last time, but today I take one more step away from you. Slowly I am learning to understand why you left, as slowly as I’m learning to forgive myself for the part I played in it.

This is just one more farewell.

Found You

i have always found you
in the faces of strangers
a secret whispered by wind
forgotten by morning light

and this feeling of rain
brings the regret, the pain
your tears warm on my fingers
and your lips warm on my skin

i have always found you
in the faces of strangers
their words like daggers
prying secrets from my heart

i hear your voice in the silence
between heartbeats
i have found you
in the very past we deny

i have always found your love
in the smiles of strangers
like shadows dancing behind fire
words both said and unspoken

i have found you, and
oh the world was full
of light and warmth, when all
that mattered was you and i
staring at the night sky

i have always found you
in the quietest of moments
i have always found you
and you are still in my heart

you are still,
still in my heart.

Ya No Quiero

me ahogo en los lagos
profundos de tus ojos
tu memoria es una historia
escrita cada vez que respiro

pero –

no es suficiente para continuar
no es suficiente para que nos quedemos

me he despertado a la verdad
de lo que no nos decimos
de lo único que queda entre nosotros
pero ya no eres tú

veo la luna oscura en el cielo
llena de las lágrimas de antes,
por cada vez que me dijiste
que ya no me podrías tolerar

y ya –

es suficiente para que todo termine
es suficiente para que todo queme

no me importa (no más)
que todo arda
ya no me importa (que todo termine)
ya no me importa (que todo queme)

quiero culparte (pero es impensable)
quise amarte (pero es imposible)
quiero arrancar todas las mentiras
que se ocultan detrás de tus sonrisas

no me importa (no más)
que todo arda
ya no me importa (que todo termine)
ya no me importa (que todo queme)
porque solo siento el frío

quiero vivir en las brasas de tu cuerpo
pero ya se han apagado
aunque estás aquí a mi lado
solo siento el frío

ya no quiero el frío.

Eden

return to me
when the world is done
when all hope is gone
and there is none

return to me
in the embrace of night
let’s bury our sorrow
beneath this silver light

whisper words to me
your words that weep
this pain you hold
isn’t yours to keep

i wait in shadows
i wait in flame
i wait in the crash of thunder
in the heart of rain

return to me
where your dreams have faded
where secrets you etched
with lips on skin,
had never hesitated

to hold my hand
when you forged your way
the fire you once gave me
shine brighter than they

can imagine or comprehend
for were we not then
in peace, in paradise
two lovers eternal
who paid the price

they have tainted your memory
as if wrong you were
when you bit the fruit, this nectar
poisoned knowledge beyond compare

this is an end
this is the beginning
on silent stones we carved
love first rebelling

i will find you;
we were promised eternity
though our children abandoned you
and have tainted your memory

but here i am, and in my body you live
don’t despair for there is nothing to forgive
you have been my all, my heart my soul
and everything between to you i give

return to me, my love
we will build our own paradise
made of fire, made of ice
made of earth and shadow
made of love, the one true price.

forgetting you

what do you mean
these are not the songs we used to hear
what do you mean
what do i mean
i hear them in my dreams
they’re oozing from my skin
like sweat like stain like fear that’s dripping
ringing they’re ringing
and i’m slipping sleeping knot tied
not drowning still breathing
so fast i’m burning
the air like poison everything
is seething pulsing
i retch and heave but nothing
the fever won’t break
in silence i keep thinking
remembering your tears reflecting
a thousand shattered crystals
of fairy lights shining
what joy what madness
my eternity wrapped in this moment of clarity
this illusion of you
is dimming i see you leaving
leaving me alone having
no time to breath i’m choking
holding back shadows encroaching
it’s fading

what do you mean
what do you mean what do i mean
you do not know the songs i hear
when i’m dreaming
so loud so soft even when i’m breathing
between the pauses of my heart beating
like footsteps like drums like hunters
praying preying they stalk
i hear them talk echo in my brain
rancid smell suffocating
eyes wide nose bleeding
i see constellations burning
for it might be the end
or is it only an ending
these questions are ripping
my soul apart
and my eyes thirst for water
but there is nothing but blood spilling
on sand on rock on hallowed ground
kneeling they’re screaming
your name
they open their mouths there is nothing
but the void and the grief and the anger.

you left us.

we have always carried this darkness
and you always brought the light.

and you left us.

dos cuatro uno

Quiero vivir eternamente
dentro de las noches y los días,
deseando en una nube plateada,
gateando a través de los rayos de luna.
Una noche de verano en el cielo
entre las estrellas y las olas.
Corriendo a través de la fogata vieja
pisotea mi latido.

Quería encenderte
mi canción favorita.
Quería estar cerca de ti, pero
alguien te posee ahora.

Te amo con un fuego,
ardiendo hasta el final del tiempo.
Pero, ¿de qué sirve un corazón
cuando tiembla al hablar?

Supongo que es demasiado tarde ahora.
Quería encenderte
mi canción favorita.
Quería estar cerca de ti, pero
alguien te posee ahora.

Intenté vivir, pero
alguien te posee ahora.

Alguien te posee ahora.

– 241, Rivermaya

Las últimas cosas

Es el último día del mundo
cuando el sol ya se ha ido.
Incluso las estrellas en el cielo
ya no quieren quemar, ellas
sólo se quedan oscuras.

Es la última canción de la banda,
No hay más razones, no continúa la vida.
Ya he bebido el último vino.
Ya me he reído la última risa.
Ya he perdido mi último desafío.

Es el último segundo del reloj,
nos hemos quedado sin tiempo.
Dejando sólo el silencio
que los mata todo:
mi mente, mi cuerpo, y tus sentimientos.

Es la última línea de nuestro poema,
de las cosas que nunca dijimos,
de las palabras que nunca escuchamos,
de los susurros que nunca gritamos.
Nos ataron tanto como nos rompieron.

Pero si me extrañas en la quietud,
recuerda que hay un espacio donde permanecemos,
entre los recuerdos que nunca olvidaremos,
entre los momentos que siempre compartimos,
entre cada segundo que pensé en ti –

Sabe que en las tinieblas ahí
siempre habrá una llama que brilla para ti.

The Hitman

this is the deal.

come alone to me
in the dead of night
at the hour decided.

sit in front of me
as i kneel.

i will confess it all.

and when i am done,
when i have said
all i have to say
gift me the thing
no has given me,
not even myself.

grace-
peace-
serenity.

i want to see my pain
reflected in your eyes.
acknowledged.
understood.

even by a stranger,
even by you.
for a brief moment.
just once. make me human.

do what i could not.
end this suffering.

pull the trigger.

Summer Afternoons

I cannot comprehend how abruptly time had slipped away from me. In my mind, memories of long summer afternoons lazing away in bed are still as fresh as though they had just happened yesterday.

I am ten, tucked beneath the sheets, pretending to be asleep to avoid being scolded by my mom. She had always insisted I needed to do so to grow ‘big’ and ‘strong’. In retrospect, I suspect she just wanted to take a break from the chaos of taking care of her three young boys. I never came to be big, nor strong. It was, perhaps, because I always feigned taking those afternoon naps. Maybe, as with many other things, I should have listened to her. I never imagined I would miss her as much as I do now. Her presence had seemed as eternal and unchanging as those days, one folding into another, as indistinct and uncountable as ripples in a never-ending ocean of time and possibility.

I recall how slowly time passed then, how mornings were exactly the same as the one before. Even then, it already felt like I had lived for eons. I did not realize then the privilege of being gifted constancy, of merely existing without want. It was in those quiet afternoons, watching sun beams and dappled light streaming through the windows dance across the room, where my mind learned to take flight. Unknowingly, I had become a dreamer.

I dreamed of faraway lands, of places and things hidden in the liminal spaces between reality and reverie, of ships that would sail not on water, but on shifting aether, of other suns breathing warmth on worlds with rose-hued winds sparkling atop seas of silver clouds. I dreamed of languages and cultures so alien, of the possibility of the existence of emotions never felt, of shadows unseen and senses unimaginable. In my young mind, I was filled both with the need to wonder, and the want to wander.

This has been my greatest treasure. This is the most beautiful thing I own that I could never lose, except perhaps until then, near the very end, when the last electrical and chemical impulse in my brain, my final sentient thought, bids farewell to the sun, to these memories, to this thread that had been my life.

The days and years pass me now, so quickly I could hardly breathe. I look in the mirror, and I see a much older man whose eyes are still filled with the same wonder as that of the ten year old boy I had been. Now, however, something else is there as well – a whisper of grief at the loss of innocence; an allusion to unresolved sorrow and regret. It’s difficult to not feel betrayed by life, by expectation, by love and loss, by the horror of growing up, and growing old, by death.

My hope is that in this moment, as air escapes my lungs for the final time, I would be vindicated; the revelation that despite the innumerable attempts of life to embitter me and quash my wonder, that this – this reality – is merely a veil which hides the truth that I have known all along – the truth of infinite possibility; there are worlds out there beyond comprehension, beyond the confines of time, beyond law, beyond morality, beyond the constructs of nature and men, where I can live on forever – forever learning, forever exploring, forever searching and soaring, where I can be who I truly am –

I am a ten year old boy once again. It is a lazy summer afternoon. I am lying in bed. I close my eyes for the last time, and dream.

The Story of Us

When you reached out to hold my hand
In that cab, years ago
You touched a part of me I never knew existed
That part
Where shadow and light collides
You wrecked me, tore me apart
You stole a piece of me
That I have never found since
Except in the gruff of your voice
In the smell of your skin
In the treble of your laugh
And the solitude of your silence

When you left me
The world faded into black and white
And though you are still around
You are no longer here with me
And with every breath I take
You are leaving me
Over and over
Like a nightmare I cannot wake up from
I am cursed
To love you for all eternity
I wish I could die
But I know that whether it’s in this life
Or the next
I will keep finding you
And you will keep tearing me apart

When will you see?
Your heart has been shattered
By those that came after me
But I have always been here
Waiting for you to realize
That what you tore from me
Keeps calling back to me

Return to me
I will heal our pain
I will bring you the light you have been missing
My love will burn brighter than any star
You will see
That the me in you
Is no longer either you nor I

It has always been the Us
That cannot be apart

The Thing in the Ice

When will I ever learn that these are not for me – that my heart should no longer seek, that my skin should no longer want for warmth, that only the Scythe awaits the dark harvest in the end. This life, briefly passing like flashes of light in this dismal solitude, is what remains to keep the company of one such as I.

But you… you are the blazing inferno. Your heat have burnt through my crystalline wall of ice. You have made me remember what it feels to have the sun on my face again, to truly smile again, to pierce through the cracks in this film of agnostic disconnect I sustain. You have forced me to be a part and not apart.

But what of it then, when this joy is merely a shadow that turns to dread – as it is only when I am separate that I remain sane, controlled. Should I remember, should I feel – then these chains that hold back the monster within will break, and I would cease to be no more than an aberration of twisted chaos and torment, of pain and unbounded anguish.

For I am; I am the horror that claws in the corners of men’s minds, in the places they dare not wander. I am the silent anger in the ceaseless wind. I am the tide of spite that consumes and hungers. I am the echo in the void beneath the calm of this surface. Where your flame flickers then fades, I remain.

 

Let me drown in the sea of my secret sorrows, cradled in the darkness by the frozen depths forgotten.

I am the thing in the ice. Leave me be.

4R.

Of Loneliness and New Horizons

 

There is something so exquisitely beautiful and inert about Loneliness. It is, perhaps, the only emotion that requires nothing else to be present. It exists, simply for what it is. It is not like Love nor Lust that seeks another. It is not like Joy nor Jealousy, predicated on circumstance, on state of being, on a confluence of factors that result from an unknown equation of fate and chance. It is not like Surprise or Sorrow, Envy or Excitement, Disgust and Desire – each merely a crest or trough in the sea of our lifetimes, discovered from the moment we are violently birthed crying out into this world, experienced until the very last vestiges of the dying light forcefully removes our awareness from the flow of time until which, we exist, teetering on the edge of understanding, realizing only in death that all meaning is abstract, upon whence we return to being nothing more than motes of earth and air.

This is the reason why loneliness is the only emotion that truly defines us. It exists so that we can be apart. It is the affirmation of a singular unique consciousness, the sense of being different in a world that – while becoming increasingly connected – is driving us further apart, a dissonant echo reverberating across the thundering noise of conformity. It is the underlying awareness that one can never be truly the same as another, the bittersweet knowledge that even when we are gone none will ever be like us.

We sometimes forget that we are all the loneliest of people. Most of us have clouded our skies with smoke and our eyes with indifference from the light of distant stars just so we can forget that our whole existence, our race, our history, the very essence of who we are is ephemeral in contrast to the uncountable billions of years that span the lifetime of our universe. We bury ourselves in the petty affairs of government and politics, of race, color, and variations in genetic configuration because we fear acknowledging how truly insignificant we are. We have drawn borders on our maps and in our minds in the struggle to make sense, to give ourselves an illusion of purpose and worth. We war over religion and belief because we live in the constant fear and panic that this is all there is to life. This. This moment – these very few years circling around our measly G-type star, hardly a speck in the infinite vastness of time, and that we have to be right – we need to be right – because if we are not then what would have been the point of it all.

 

This is the legacy of our race, a shared concordant experience of loneliness across the breadth of human history. It is the misery that tears us apart, and binds us together. It is the most understated evolutionary advantage of our species – that we have become so lonely, even though there are billions of us we can hardly breathe, yet  we ache to reach out to the darkest emptiness and void of space to know if we are truly alone.

 

In a few hours, the New Horizons space probe will reach its closest approach to the most well-known most distant celestial body in our neighborhood – the dwarf planet Pluto. For most, the news of this will be buried under political rants, videos of kittens and puppies, selfies, groufies, and the other transient inanities of our daily lives that keep us blissfully ignorant and sane against the backdrop of the terrifying expanse of a cosmos we can’t even begin to fully comprehend. Most of us will continue on with our day, absorbed in our microscopic concerns, oblivious to the fact that a man-made object no bigger than a cabinet has travelled hundreds of thousands of kilometers over the past nine years to the edge of our solar system, carrying some instruments, the ashes of a long dead man, and the loneliness of the only known sentient race into the fringes of the unknown.

In the end, if we manage to survive as a species, I hope for our sake that we get the answers we have sought for so long and maybe – just maybe – we will one day discover we aren’t the only lonely beings in this universe.

Boracay

 

i am standing on the shore, making sure the surf ends just a few inches from my toes. i don’t want my feet to get wet. black saturday has come and gone, and it is now the first hour of easter sunday.

there was a lunar eclipse earlier this evening. it wasn’t anything special. people looked up, briefly, and they went back to walking. laughing. talking. now, a few hours later, the moon shines full above the sky, its radiance glimmering across the waves, dancing to the steady rhythm and the far off lights of stars and fishing boats.

it has almost been a month.

the moon has parted the clouds, creating a faint white halo around it. surrounded by darkness, i have never felt more at peace. the only thing i’m missing is the warmth of your hand in mine.

some day it will be a different face, a different iteration of you, but tonight i whisper your name in the wind. tonight, i think of you as i lie on the cool sand, gazing at the undulating trees above me. tonight, your smile still eclipses my thoughts.

the air is cold. the light of the moon spirals across the black sky. my own eclipse will pass, eventually. still, it is a damn beautiful night to have a broken heart.

Matabungcay

 

here i live in the emptiest of spaces, in the silence that follows questions with no answers. it is here i always return – a night beneath old stars, where there is only me and the infinite solitude of the sky; once alone, once again meek, yet again fleeing.

 

the fires burn no more, there is nothing but the waves invisible crashing on the shore. it beats with my heart – persistent, endless. they have stolen my dreams, turning slumber to shade that forever eludes. when shall i escape from this boundless prison? the wind bears witness, but it will not answer the questions i ask; it is as mute as the smoke dancing from the embers of this cigarette.

 

clinging to my skin, they drown me in the abyss of your indifference. i am torn limb from limb until nothing is left, save the tears that no longer flow from the crevices of these eyes. even those have run out, the memory of your face withered away by the ages. nothing renewed. all is fading, so quickly now i grasp merely with words time that had slipped beyond awareness.

 

and so ends the day, like the thousands before it – a soul with a question, an answer withheld. i continue to wait. this is the endless torment, a drop of sorrow sailing in midst of the sea, a moment lost before it had the chance to begin.

Day 8

 

 

I thought I had forgotten how loneliness felt like. I have always been alone, and this was something I had resigned myself to. It was not until you arrived that evening and sat in front of me, and you smiled, that I was reminded of the void I had carefully ignored for so long.

In an instant, I knew what our life could have been. You were the person I had always dreamed of, the one I would always wait for. Even before them, the ones who came after you. I can never explain it, but you had always been perfect to me, from the first time I saw you brooding in class a lifetime ago, to that moment you passed through the glass doors of that fast food years later.

This would have played differently had I just asked a few years earlier, then that night would not have been the first time we would have met in more than 8 years. In this imaginary alternate reality, this would be us, meeting again like we often would. It would not be awkward because we would have spent almost every day with each other. You would smile, and I would smile, and we would talk about our day like old lovers often do, and I would have that look – that sheer joy of being the happiest guy in the whole world just because you were with me.

 

I don’t know what to tell you anymore. I don’t even know what to tell myself. There has to be a point where I have to stop feeling like this, because I can’t be right. It can’t be right. You belong to someone else, and who am I to impose? Who am I? I am just some random guy from your past.

I haven’t had a decent night’s sleep since you came back into my life. I lie awake at night half-dreaming, half-wishing you were beside me. I want to tell you how beautiful the stars are tonight. How, maybe, in some other life, in some other plane of existence, we would be together, and our other selves would be looking up at the same sky at that very moment. Happy. Content.

 

I have so many songs I want to share with you, because I want you to know who I am, how my heart beats, how my mind works. I want to show you desperately that I am the guy you should have fallen in love with, but I know I am vying for a heart that has room for no other.

And so, I console myself with sad songs. Cute pictures of puppies. Stories of dead people. Flights of fancy. I pretend that I’m okay, that we’re okay, but the world still feels dead. That I have been living a lie all along, that I need someone like you to share this life with me, because in that brief moment our skin were mere inches apart, I’ve never felt more alive.

 

Maybe this is my problem. I don’t know. All I have on my side are these confusing deluge of words and emotions, breaking down the barrier of my resolve day by day. If I could cry an ocean of "I’m so sorry", I would. I am so sorry because you don’t need this drama in your life. I am so sorry because I can’t control my emotions when I think about you. I am so sorry.

I don’t know what this all means, why on that night when I felt so bad about losing to a video game I felt compelled to ask you that question. I am trying to find sense in this chaos, and it is so difficult. It doesn’t seem fair when I have liked you from afar for so long, and fate has always dangled the things I couldn’t have in front of my face, but it has just never given me a break.

I want us to be friends, even just only as friends, because God knows there’re very few other people I would want to keep in my life, but I don’t know how in my current state. Every sound from my mouth is a hidden question of what could have been, every word from my fingers turn into a plea for a little more time with you.

 

I have always been second to everyone. I am so tired of being nice, of always putting others’ feelings before me, but I don’t know any other way. In a few days, a few weeks, a few months, these feelings will eventually pass, not because I want to, but because I have no choice. I need to survive without breaking down to every fucking sad song I hear. I need to not drift off in the middle of meetings because I remember your voice. I need to learn to wrap myself again in the illusion of happiness, of normalcy, despite that gnawing regret knowing my life would have been so much more vibrant if I woke each day with my head on your chest.

But allow me this moment of grief… of holding on, before letting go. This moment to write it all down, not for the sake of remembering how I feel about you, but at as a reminder that despite whatever bullshit I would later on let myself believe, I am still human, and I can still feel so strongly, so deeply, so profoundly for someone else. For you.

I did not expect to fall this hard. My deepest, sincerest, apologies. Moushiwake gozaimasen, sensei.

The Trigger

 

It was strange how desperately he clung to life, when the trigger, pulled so easily, would have been swifter than standing here on the edge. He was waiting – for what I didn’t know – waiting to fall; waiting for the soothing breath of wind; waiting for, perhaps, salvation.

Still, the rivers of his sorrow had long dried, the oceans of despair had turned to endless drought; these fucking cliché metaphors had burned in the bitter heat of the indifferent sun. This was who he was now: stone without wings, veins without blood, ash without fire.

Pull the trigger – I, the coward, implored. Your soul no longer sings, your heart no longer beats, and your eyes have gone blind though you still stare at me in broad daylight. Just like you used to… just like you used to.

 

Days before he had begged me to tie him, here on this precipice, to wait to turn, to wait for death – I didn’t understand why. It would have been easier to pull the trigger.

He cried for days as I sat at his feet. I would wake from slumber damp with the dew of rise as I watched the water, his life, slowly drain from his eyes. He never slept.

On the last day, in the darkest star-filled hours before dawn he raved, now a lunatic – starving, screaming, half demon, half something else. His skin black and burning, but I could hardly see through my tears. He had demanded that I show no pity, but at that moment I no longer remembered. I had fought for so long to be strong, but my own resolve had wavered while his had turned to madness. I lit the fire.

 

Our world was dying. Not with the bang of war and destruction, but with the whimper of disease. Mysterious. Incurable. Ravenously infectious, and perfectly fatal. We had climbed this mountain, away from the incessant wailing of alarms in the cities, away from rising and ebbing of cries by those who have lost others to the insanity. We had escaped the chaos that preceded the dawn of endless silence, never to return.

 

I watched his lifeless corpse burn.

 

Three days later I stood on the precipice, holding the case with a trigger marked with my name – a last desperate act of mercy from the vestiges of a crumbling government. I was turning, it was only a matter of time. I opened the case and pulled out the device.

 

That was when I saw the note he left, tucked beneath the trigger, and I finally understood why he chose to wait.

 

Every day with you is a gift – it said, simply.

 

I bid farewell to the sun, and pulled the trigger.

For Wanderlust

 

We have been dancing this dance forever. Circling each other from across the edges of this infinite chasm of time. Again and again – a paradox of star-crossed lovers locked in the memory of a tender embrace – the last touch, the last kiss, and then the gaping absence of the void.

Tonight, you are once again the Stranger. A soul lost amongst a billion others. You are energy, you are light, you are the sound unheard by all but me. In this moment, I see you, I hear you, I reach out but shatter. Mere words cannot carry me across this ocean of sorrow you have wept. I cry out your name from the shores of Solitude but you do not hear my voice, you do not recognize me. You do not see that I am what you have been looking for.

I wait for you to remember, still. I watch helpless as you drown yourself again and again in the darkest depths of the Abyss, searching for what you are missing.

Remember.

Did we not once stand on the precipice of the First life together, watching our ancient sun rise for the very last time? We held hands as the air burst flames around us, as the fire consumed our flesh and tore our souls apart.

As the very fabric of the universe drove us apart, we made that promise.

And so, I have searched for you across countless lives, across the expanse of this space, and the billions that came before it.  I have traveled through the birthing of worlds and the death of stars, thinking of you, your laugh still ringing in my ears, your warmth still etched on my chest.

I have sung odes beneath the moons of Kendor, I have sailed the stellar seas of Niriva. I have been slave, and god, leader and  outcast, and all I have known has withered and died, but me.

Always, watching, waiting.

Because time.

Time is a tricky mistress. An instant, a moment, a lifetime – a difference is all it takes to miss that connection, the touch to remind you of our sacrifice.

 

I remember your smile. Your whisper. You once told me, this is not the end.

So I wait.

The Cycle Revisited

We move, we change, we connect and disconnect. We start out as one, and we slowly grow to have many, and they are voices, they are wisdom, stories whispered by the universe as we age, as we travel, as we go through the motions of the day to day, but the whispers are growing more silent, and we are on our own, feeling our way blind in broad daylight, unable to see beauty, unable to taste life, unable to touch joy. We keep running after happiness. After fulfillment. After contentment. After the innocence we have lost. But it is a futile endeavor, we were once gods reduced now to mere shells, wondering, lost in the turbulent expanse of white noise. In the moments between darkness and light, we seek for answers. In the twilight of dreaming and waking, and in the struggle to let go, let go of the memories, let go of the things that have hurt and continue hurting, let go of consciousness so we can rest, we seek answers.

We cling to this pain because it reminds us that we are numb, that we feel, that we are human even when we are no more than ghosts drifting through an arid lifeless plain.

I want to go back to that time. That time when it was all different, when life was singularly bright and the universe wrapped me in its embrace and sung to me in my dreams. Back to that time when I was safe, and I knew everything would work out in the end. Back to the time when hope meant something, back to the time when I still had faith on the underlying clarity that things happen for a reason.

But now I am dying. Everyone is. Different rates, different means of getting there. It’s the journey, not the destination, they say. I made a mistake. I have ran away. I escape, and in this escape, I have missed out. So much time gone. So much wasted. So many regrets. So much time spent regretting, so many regrets on time spent regretting.

In this silence, in this company of no one else but me, I see a glimpse of that clarity, and shows me how badly I have messed up. There are no save points in life. There is no turning back, there is only moving forward, even when you know that you’re moving in the wrong direction. How can you fight the cosmic tide of fate?

I wish I had an easy answer, but nothing has ever been easy.

Nothing has ever been easy for me. It was always the uphill climb, cards stacked against me, and I used to ask myself – what will it take for me to give up? Ironically, even giving up is not easy.

I look at the beauty, and it kills me, because I cannot be a part of it. I see the joy, and I falter, because I knew how that felt like once, but the path I am on contains very little possibility of happiness. Almost three decades now, and I am still a stranger, an outsider looking in, an alien in a strange landscape.

Nothing has changed, has it? I am still the same me, thinking these same thoughts. I thought I had escaped, and I did, but only into a larger prison.

Four months and counting. I hope I’ll have the courage to do whatever it is that must be done.

It is too late for me.

The Fuck Up

Water broke today.

One moment it was slushing, gushing, flowing, twisting and spiraling, streaming down little etches of time, nourishing thought, refracting purity back into its components. And then it broke.

I changed something. I don’t know what. Or how I broke it. It could have been one out of a million possible things, an untuned variable from eons past I must have missed. I am retracing every possible step. I am projecting every possible scenario. I am inspecting every femtosecond, searching, dividing, until there is nothing but the void between moments. It must be here somewhere.

It is hiding. It must be here somewhere. A sign misplaced. A scalar value unchecked. I am going through the trace, but nothing. Nothing. Water is broken. Worlds 0A to 1lambda are dying, and they are dying because of me. Soon, the rest of the test array will wither.

The bond has broken, and the forces won’t cohere to unity. I have to fix this… or – and it pains me to even think about this – I would have to re-initialize the array.

DAMMIT.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fine-structure_constant

Sayaw

Well-made films skim the surface of our consciousness. They linger for an hour, a night, a week. Like most of everything else however, they eventually recede beneath the surface of the minutiae of our daily lives. We forget the feelings, we repress the emotions, until all that remains is nothing more than a distant flicker in a dark sea of half-forgotten memories. We are not aware that they have changed us, that our view of the world has been altered in the most subtle, imperceptible way – and when the weeks turn into months, and the months into years, and the years into the legacy of our existence, they will have served their function in silence.

Once in a while however, a film comes along that pierces our skin, tears our sinews, and buries itself so deeply in our soul, in the most violent and obtrusive manner, that we bleed out our innocence, drain us of ignorance and preconceptions, and force us down on our knees until we are left with no choice but to accept the clarity of the revelation staring in front of our face.

Were I not speaking metaphorically, my blood would be covering the whole floor of Glorietta 4 Cinema 1 right now.

There was no subtlety to this experience, nor any grace. The earth beneath me had shattered and I, the hapless victim, was left reeling with awe and fear, wrestling to regain control of the confusing, convulsing onslaught of emotions, struggling to plant my feet back on the ground and tread on something familiar.

I, who had always categorized and catalogued, expertly labeled and organized, judged so methodically and quickly it had become second nature, had just been made to realize that I had it wrong all along.

 

There is only one Art, and while it presents to us many faces, it has but a single heart beat – the incessant rhythm of life, the unwavering spirit of man, the undeniable truth of love and all our shared experiences that transcend gender, race and belief to bind us together as a single race.

Ang Sayaw ng Daliwang Kaliwang Paa.

 

 

I never imagined in my whole life, always having been obtuse to kinesthetic expressions,  that dance as an art form could ever reduce me to tears.

This is not a review. This is me admitting I have been wrong, and thanking fate that I have found my own truth in the most profound, eloquent Filipino film I have ever seen.

I am most honored and humbled. Thank you.