I moved to Baguio.
Currently, I cannot shower without turning the heater on. I brew and drink coffee by the minute to keep warm. I eat fresh produce, take note! fresh and not wilted-leafy-has-beens, from the market + endless supply of Good Shepherd ube jams and matcha filled marshmallows — I’m charmed.
Polysemic. Mutable. Contingent.
These three words were the first words I mentally recited in my mind this morning. I was looking for our broom, you see.
The floor needs sweeping.
I’ve been absent-mindedly looking for it for three days now. It seems to have vanished. Not that those three words have anything to do with the missing broom. But silently humming them while I search every corner of the flat made the chore less annoying.
It doesn’t make sense does it? The words I mean. Why such strange words would comfort me. Well so does the missing broom! It doesn’t make sense for it to hide itself. If this is a game of hide-and-seek, that plastic thing is winning.
The room feels abandoned without it.
So there it is.
In the form of a shapeless wonder.
In the voice of a silenced whisper.
In a space between love and fear.
How many times did I try to find you in front of me only to be eluded of your meaning.
I see you yet I cannot figure you out.
I touch you yet my fingers cannot caress you enough.
I drink you with my eyes and I bled for wanting more.
I will cry rainbows for you.
I will encirle my solace
I’ve never wondered why we are friends. You, on the other hand, asked me —-and I mustered a half-baked excuse of something I could not remember.
Maybe it was the crazy “cutter” days of joys that we had in high school. How you terrified Jeffrey then. Or maybe it was the carefree attitude I had. Like how I was never really bothered by your psychotic fits (remember, how you would silently threaten anyone with anything sharp?). Or maybe, it was my shallow personality that never really needed any deep reason to laugh at anything silly no matter how corny the jokes are (not that you throw jokes anyway–but i laugh still). Or can it be the books? Aaahh! must be the books indeed! Before we got intellectual and funny with Carl Sagan and Tom Sharpe, it was harlequin romance novels then (and Fabio on the covers). When I got so hooked up, I wouldn’t leave my room and my mother thought I was into drugs. I think your mom, on the other hand, stern and strict, told you to pack it up and give it away.
That and the Sailormoon trips we indulged in after classes. Our mutual love for Mamuro Chiba was borderline nuerotic but it illuminated our path towards advocating anime galactic peace. We found our first advocacy. Continue reading
So maybe I am feeling nostalgic today.
I woke up to a foggy day. Something to do with things being white and blurry that makes you recede back in your thoughts. The mind is a dangerous place to explore on your own…It’s how people commit suicides without them meaning to –it’s as if they just got carried away only to find that they either come back limping for the rest or their lives of they give their earthly space for the living. The earth is suffering from overpopulation too, they might as well do the right thing and fade away.
Not that I feel like taking my own life. I care (well not enough anyway) neither for the growing population nor climate change, I am hanging on to dear life. I am selfish like that. And yes, I silently cuss and mutely ask for death when I walk on the effin cobblestones they have here in Lacoste but so does everybody. If God was so obliging, he could have gotten rid of us, but pathological shallowness does not count as a reason to obliterate. Continue reading
To sleep in my own bed.
To yawn so early and hear familiar voices.
To listen to silly stories that I will forget
but will always remember how hard my laughter was when I heard it.
To sing vernacular songs.
To hum private fantasies and get lost in dreams
without thoughts of anything.
To not rush.
To read until i fall asleep.
To wake up to the smell of breakfast.
To be with old friends.
To visit places I’ve forged kinship with over the years.
I could smell the scents of memories as it wafts at me in my every visit
as I try to imagine the city embracing me as I slowly caress it again with my eyes, with my hands, even with my laughter.
It makes me smile to know I’m safe even if it is not completely true. For nobody is safe in this world but it is of comfort to feel it anyway.
I’m home and it brings a smile to my face.
Everything is relative. My philosophy teachers in college made sure I understood that. Like if I receive a D grade –it is not an isolated random act of hatred on their part but because I turned in a crappy paper because I was too lazy to read a two page-article that I know is hard enough that I would need three days to digest it, but dumbly skimmed it in three hours hoping for a strike of genius to hit me square in the forehead while my eyes glazed over the words used in sentences I cannot, for the life of me, figure the meaning out. Ha! I wonder what hallucinogenic drugs these people were taking that made them write such effin convoluted articles. Continue reading
I promised BWL not to burn my Hong Kong flat…I don’t remember promising anything else. Relax, the gaping hole was not something I did. The repairman had to change the pipes because I broke the water heater (and the space heater, and the kitchen fan). They were fixing it. Thought they were done when I took a shower. turns out I am not supposed to turn pipe on! I flooded their work area.
Anyways, I didn’t realize that until I went to my room to get clothes. Everything was wet including the socket–this realization prompted me to get dressed quickly and leave the apartment before they come back to yell at me. Sorry!
A Joint Exhibition with China Photographers Association, Beijing Institute of Photography Correspondence, and Shenzhen Institute, Hong Kong Region at the Main Hall of The Hong Kong Cultural Center last Feb 18-19.
I submit for your inspection one Gregory House: medical genius, head of diagnostics, (once a) vicodin addict, and a narcissist who choose only one case per week according to what interests him. His cunning and biting wit balances his cold calculations of patients as he diagnose them of their illnesses.
For book lovers it would be easy to spot Sherlock Holmes in Gregory House. For those who have not heard of Sir Conan Doyle’s most beloved fictional character and best detective of all time, let this be your introduction. Continue reading
Recent Comments
13thWiTCH on Dining at Forest House Bistro and Cafe, Baguio
it has lots of interesting places to explore Henry. Food is also more varied than that in Davao. Next...Henry on Dining at Forest House Bistro and Cafe, Baguio
I've never traveled to Baguio. After reading your post, I am inclined to take a trip. This restaurant...13thWiTCH on Japanese Tunnel and the heritage of Mintal, Davao
oh that is interesting! you are right, that can be one way of preserving it while passing on a cultural...