Dancing in Arbitrariness

The clock seems stuck and this night has been one of the loneliest nights of my life but I guess, one of the most rewarding. The world whirs in anticipation while I quest for answers as to why things are happening now beyond my farthest imagination.

I don't want to hurt anyone, at least not on purpose. I only love because I know no other way. Although the past years for me unfolded like a train at full speed, bouncing off the rails at an increasingly massive hitch-- bridges were burned, relationships damaged, betrayals, promises were broken and a resonating evil wishes whispered in the air. If there is a time of looking back and regretting, it will be now, in between the dying moment and the one yet to be born but I have decided to drown that moment in some brandy clandestinely kept in a small flask in my bag and I am mixing it with my ordered Caramel Macchiato.

Depression begins to settle while I gradually get drunk despite watching South Park saved in my usb in a lame attempt to amuse my self while eating lettuce and carrots. But I didn't want a lettuce for a coffee ( ssshh..with brandy ). I just wanted to chop it up and chop it up and I have this thought about sharp knives. This is inept, evil and irritating so I stopped thinking about it. I know what I want this very moment. I want to crush someone's face with my bare hands and push his head between his legs and kick his ass.

I'm feeling agitated and pour more brandy on my coffee. I stopped South Park and retrieved my files and amorously look at the lovely pictures that once put me in an unknown bliss--the sweet smile, the happiness beyond those smiles, the lovely places we have been, the warmth and passion that I can still recognize thinking of those times. Then my eyes were burning hot and it wants to burst with tears but I have to control it. I'm in Starbucks. People might think I just broke up with my boyfriend or a lover just died. ( Well, he died long time ago and I already cried a dam full of tears).

So pure. So serene. What damage did I cause this man who looks so handsome in white? Who got no intentions but to heal? His eyes traveling to me as I gaze into one of the loveliest pictures I took of him. It stares back with an unsettling intensity like a transcendental meditation and I am yearning to hold hold him in real right this very moment. I want to bury my head on his chest and feel his arms wrap around me, way of saying that everything is going to be fine.

But I just feel so dirty and I feel so mad. Every inch of my aching ego wants to kill. What I couldn't stand was being stuck inside my head. Endless bloody power games, going on and on and on... I felt like the inside of my head were being torn and punched apart and everytime they'd settle, there'd be another punch and another fucked-up argument to fix. Bang.

Right now I'm in an inexorable mess, unprotected from any harm. He can leave anytime and I have nowhere to go. What am I going to say anyway? That I had a few demons and doubts? Like lots. Anything revealing I told him of my self can be taken against me or use it to give himself the power over me. The world is judgmental and because that is the standard. Only the weak are weak and the strong forbear, the strong rule.

But I trust. I trust this man and I am scared. What scared me most is the awful knowing that I couldn't will my self to escape.

My borrowed body vibrates. I look down. My head is getting skittish. I can't decide what side of the road shall I take now-- to let go or to hold on. Im depressed but not desperate. I stick to the verge, looking meek. What remains leave no trace, the untouched silence of space.

Longing

It has been
long and
Bony since
your willing
ways since
those thirstful
days of
summer nights
and Burning Beds

It's been
too many nights
of being with

to now being suddenly
without

MELANCHOLIA

Beyond my bedroom in my parents' house was a windowless inner room good for nothing but a library and it was here where I imagined my kids doing their homework. It is still the same bare room years back and since I moved here again permanently almost two years ago, I want to make this a library. I needed books-- so that I could live their characters' lives, not mine and i needed a room beyond this virginal white bedroom in which I sat spending almost empty nights, seeing a queen size bed sleeping alone. I always ended up sleeping between my twins whenever I am in my parents' house.

I am like staring to a blank white paper waiting for a blot to appear so i would know where to start. Impossible it might be, reality comes on its way. The fantasy production of make believe should be dismissed just like what I see on weddings of happily ever after. It is hard to deal with someone who is not getting along with your same plane of thinking, someone whom you need to explain things endlessly and still cannot get it inasmuch to need a man who could not selflessly love me as I love him. No time for alter egos anymore, I have more shit to deal with. Only time can tell if something will turn out well.

During the long stretch between separation and divorce, I had read a lot. I read about how much better it was for the children if an end was brought to an unhappy marriage. I had read that staying in a relationship for their sake is a crime against nature.

It was then I started to write, I learned it as my way of coping up aside from listening to music. I can turn hate and anger into a more beautiful lyrical prose.

Talking. I was talking all the time because I have to survive and there was no Japanese who would not want to practice his English. And because I have the gift, if it is, of instant intimacy! Add up those moments when you and a stranger connect, I thought to my self and you can turn them into a life of your self.

Ah, this was one of the good times I said silently, this coming together with someone I would never see again and both of us looked toward the sky hunting the Big Bear and the Little Bear. But as we did, I realized that my children having grown up under the sky in which the only star one could rely upon is Venus, and I was sick with longing.

No. this is not a life of chasing stars and the little accumulation of epiphanies, not life for me.

Evenso, there were moments when I realized that my kids are wanting to grow up fast because adulthood meant emancipation. I have cried over R in the past who is now a stranger to me whose once razor edged contempt is now but a rusty blade gone to waste. Disapproval edged my voice when I spoke to him days ago, in a once in a blue moon occasion-- to tell me that the petition to migrate to the US is now on process. That he is going to take the kids along with him permanently. Crazy shit! Power. Money. The tempting opportunity to be in the US. The bugger even had the guts to "invite" me to tag along with our " family". Bullshit. As if he and I aren't under legal battle over the kids and as if I want to live in the US! I once denounced my citizenship just to become a naturalized Filipino and now here he is mocking me even more.

I had never thought about whether R and I could have given the twins a better home. I thought only that I would die without them. Some people said I gave too much of my life to my twins. Parenthood, I realized was a life sentence. My children could run away from me. I could not. My children were free to hate me, I was condemned to love them. The truth is, I would have no life to give anyone were if not for them. Without them, I might have been a flaccid and as shapeless as a jellyfish.

Then I never thought of meeting someone whose glees and blurts were almost the same as mine. Soulmates as I seemingly device the torture, I have seen the passion not the same compared to the way R looked at me on our wedding day. I believed that this someone represents absolution. I should have toppled the edge of this fascination.

I had lived outside the world where animals went into the ark by pairs. It was a world I had lived since I was young and for almost a decade where I was an anomaly. Although I was ambivalent about moving back in turning circumstances into crisis, this might also mean losing my connection to this man who could be a lesser writer but not a lesser lover. I could overlook some imperfections but not a rotten prose style. I should have hold a time to deliberate.

He was more of a man incomparable--more than a myth. But in this moment of stillness, I realized that all journeys, the final one too for all we know are circular. And I have a personal demon to overcome.

Ambiguity on Beliefs and Otherness

Reality is the crucial term in the structuring of the universe. To some, responding to the pressures of evolutionary theory on the one hand and historical Christianity on the other tended to redefine the universe in terms of belief. In what sense do words picture or reflect reality? In what sense do words picture reality?

After watching a series of video clips about the existence of truth, creation and evolution, I made an affair with commotion and shut my self from further suspension of disbelief. No other indoctrination would make me thwart what I opted to embrace for decades now. I cannot hold my mind in complete silence.

Believe me, I tried long to believe the existence of a Supreme Being. I am trying so hard up until now that amidst all the tortures, distractions, sufferings and injustices, He, who keeps an eye to us all, loves us so much. These things were all accounted in the Bible which I regard as an article of faith, a part of a religious belief system that doesn't fit the way we think when we think and live scientifically where we are supposed to ask for evidence for all challenges and beliefs. Smart people are good at rationalizing things they came to believe for non smart reasons.

Perhaps, the apparent way to resolve the problem is to make it an affair of time: the symbolic intensity of reasons and realities modulates into a more discursive affair. The world can mirror only the self for the egoist, the problem is to discover what line of consistency and depth are there in the range.

In this regard, I rather unravel my self in the silent formless awareness that I am trying to observe from within.

Chronicles of My Last Year's Journey

Writing a journal is like psychotherapy and maybe my way of coping up. I don't write anything in particular. My topics are usually about annoying things about capitalism, my own theories of the world, emotions, being a woman and my most favorite topic: HIM.

Recap or not, I still want to write this in an attempt to transcend my emotions with words full of descriptions, affection, fondness and cherished memories.

I met this man the very first time 10/10/09...and he was wearing a yellow shirt and this was the same shirt I thought he would be wearing when I saw one his photos in his site wearing that same shirt! ( So much about the shirt, next topic please).

Well, the real action begins fifteen minutes after we met in the airport when we took our cab on the way to the condominium which will become the silent witness of our affections in the next three weeks of our lives. The lyrical streak, the prose, the semi-fiction journals and yearnings I have written in the past, the denials and lame attempt to mask his identity in my writings but actually, he is the reason why I was writing those...the melancholic and almost obsessive mawkishness just trying to tickle his almost unmoved aura...aaahhh...those moments of uncertainty if the planned meet will really happen.

And the kiss.

He was really here! Of *coursh, the strange familiarity like the first ray of sun crawling in our senses that was indescribable.

The first week of his stay was a bit chaotic not because of our cultural difference but because of my despotic schedule in the University. We both stayed late at night helping me finish my stuff and we both have to endure the annoying sound of masking tape and icky sticky glue when we have to paste some cut outs. But of *coursh, my most favorite and probably him, was the union of flesh in between those tedious tasks I remember the sweetest.

We went to the Manila Cathedral, Intramuros, Manila Ocean Park and dine in some fancy and posh restaurants in the metropolis in between free schedule while completing my academic requirements. I even had him ridden the metro train and walked past the sidewalks in EDSA. He was almost like wanting to get an oxygen tank because of the noxious emission of buses and cars conquering the main roads of Manila.

This is Manila my dear, I told him. He was seeing both sides now and maybe even pondering in between being a tourist and figuring out what it is like to live in this place on a daily basis.ust for a thought.. but I know, he was thinking of these without any prejudice.

Real trip, real vacation started 18th of October in Caramoan. A really tedious travel by air, land and sea! But worth it. There we experienced a total sound of silence. Imagine, just the sound of the waves, the wind and our heartbeats. We were awed by its beautiful landscape and unspoiled surroundings that seemed to be a twilight zone not wanting to go back where you really live.

Next stop: Bohol. Gosh! We were ten minutes late to check in our less than ten kilos baggage and we were not allowed to get in even with puppy-eyed faces and kilometric sweet english lyrical streak. Cebu Pacific is really strict ( or greedy?) when it comes to penalty and surcharges when you fail to get before checking time! So, it was like paying double for the airfare and we were thinking of canceling the trip. But after "googling" of what Bohol has to offer-- the tarsier, the Chocolate Hills and the beaches were really irresistible. So we rebooked our flight. Just two days of stay but we actually enjoyed it specially the tarsier videos he took :)

last stop: Boracay. We still haven't found any hotel to stay before we can actually get there. I told my self: it is not peak season. we will definitely find a good one and we actually did! Thanks for the help of the trike driver who took and helped us get a good hotel. The whole trip from Caramoan up to our final stop went pretty well. The weather was good, the people we met along were nice ( except for most drivers who would price us big for a transportation contract..those bastards! grrr....good thing my Shogun doesn't look like a foreigner at all not when he start to speak, the twang is really there, hahaha!). We never had any negative bouts or paranoia of being trapped because of the weather. Never it happened. All went smoothly.

The actual journey as I call it was when we were talking about spirituality, our own viewpoints of the world and how we perceived things when they happen, happening and is going to happen. We had these discussions in our bedroom, in Starbucks, in the couch, in the restaurants, in the waters when we took a dip, when we sat to have a Coke..everywhere... just like whenever we feel like it to kiss, hihihihi.

10/29/09: thanking the heaven and our angels for making us meet. The actual journey has just started when I acknowledged something metaphysical, of their presence, their role in my life. The water he whisked and poured upon me... the very feeling, the emotions, the tears... those made him more loved, more adored and respected by this lost soul. There were still so many things I want to jot down but only the walls and room 1900 bear witness to that subliminal joys and passions we shared. Most are kept in our memories and heart.

People search their whole lives for one moment of what we shared together. Once in a while, right in the middle of our ordinary life, love gives us a fairytale. Shared love gives us the strength, need and desire to conquer obstacles that would otherwise prevent us from being together in the future.

I sent him this sms before: Why does everything have to be so hard sometimes? maybe because if it was that easy, we'd never know if anything was worth it.

But I know in my heart, the journey with you is worth more than any treasures in the world, my dearest.

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*of coursh is actually the phrase of course. I just used to tease him coz being dutch, he pronounced it this way.

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