randomania

2010-08-24T01:29:00.000-07:00

This country of beauty and madness as an old ditty from ze '80s goes. Or Beauty and the Bus, like a faerie tale gone wrong. Oh.

2010-08-24T00:51:00.000-07:00

I've always imagined flowers to be smart.

2010-07-27T23:49:00.001-07:00

While squandering a good chunk of lunchbreak reading and smoking, I realized how escape is impossible without something to escape from. For this, I am grateful for work. For this I am grateful for this world that allows us to imagine rocketships and time machines and parallel possibilities and multiverses and manholes and secret doors.

2010-06-16T22:43:00.000-07:00

To Thursday

You are happening
and hip almost

weekend almost
swaggering out

of here now you

2010-06-15T02:51:00.000-07:00

a loose leaf, given to flight with the slightest of the wind's provocations

2010-06-11T03:51:00.001-07:00

The Possible Tree

Swallowing a santol seed, I turned to my grandfather and asked
if I would die. He laughed and said darling, santol does not kill.

It only grows into a tree with branches as thick as these –
he flexed his farmer’s arms for emphasis – sprouting out

of your ears. Now whenever words escape me or a song
bursts into a quiet chorus, a furtive finger finds its way

into both canals, checking for leaves. I wait for the world to grow
still. Long after discovering science and frailty, some of us continue

with the story and find out that every event leads to silence, all music
aspires for silence, the interior of sound is silence, already silence

is within us silent and unseen, there is a silence waiting
in an abandoned house in the field, in the shaking walls of the heart.

Back to the Future!

2010-06-11T03:44:00.000-07:00

If the devil is 6 then God is 7 / This monkey's gone to heaven
- Pixies

7 months and a job and a lifetime later, I find myself back. Just like that, like the prodigal son or the alcoholic dad come home or that dude from The Beach civilized and clean again in the city or Lazarus come back from the dead.

I can't quit this life/style just yet. So Jesus and Satan will have to bid some more.

2009-11-05T22:41:00.000-08:00

A Fantasy

I'll tell you something: every day
people are dying. And that's just the beginning.
Every day, in funeral homes new widows are born,
new orphans. They sit with their hands folded,
trying to decide about this new life.

Then they're in the cemetery, some of them
for the first time. They're frightened of crying,
sometimes of not crying. Someone leans over,
tells them what to do next, which might mean
saying a few words, sometimes
throwing dirt in the open grave.

And after that, everyone goes back to the house,
which is suddenly full of visitors.
The widow sits on the couch, very stately,
so people line up to approach her,
sometimes take her hand, sometimes embrace her.
She finds something to say to everbody,
thanks them, thanks them for coming.

In her heart, she wants them to go away.
She wants to be back in the cemetery,
back in the sickroom, the hospital. She knows
it isn't possible. But it's her only hope,
the wish to move backward. And just a little,
not so far as the marriage, the first kiss.

Louise Gluck

2009-10-29T23:00:00.001-07:00

Loud Music

My stepdaughter and I circle round and round.
You see, I like the music loud, the speakers
throbbing, jam-packing the room with sound whether
Bach or rock and roll, the volume cranked up so
each bass notes is like a hand smacking the gut.
But my stepdaughter disagrees. She is four
and likes the music decorous, pitched below
her own voice-that tenuous projection of self.
With music blasting, she feels she disappears,
is lost within the blare, which in fact I like.
But at four what she wants is self-location
and uses her voice as a porpoise uses
its sonar: to find herself in all this space.
If she had a sort of box with a peephole
and looked inside, what she’d like to see would be
herself standing there in her red pants, jacket,
yellow plastic lunch box: a proper subject
for serious study. But me, if I raised
the same box to my eye, I would wish to find
the ocean on one of those days when wind
and thick cloud make the water gray and restless
as if some creature brooded underneath,
a rocky coast with a road along the shore
where someone like me was walking and has gone.
Loud music does this, it wipes out the ego,
leaving turbulent water and winding road,
a landscape stripped of people and language-
how clear the air becomes, how sharp the colors.

- Stephen Dobyns

2009-10-28T06:37:00.000-07:00

Bookworm

A worm ate words. I thought that wonderfully
Strange -- a miracle -- when they told me a
crawling
Insect had swallowed noble songs,
A night-time thief had stolen writing
So famous, so weighty. But the bug was foolish
Still, though its belly was full of thought.

- by an anonymous poet from the 10th Century, translated from Old English by Michael Alexander

2009-10-28T06:17:00.000-07:00

I know, I know it's nothing serious but I'm really glad he pulled through. I'm really glad he pulled through...

(photo from: http://www.philebrity.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/06/morrissey_rock.jpg&imgrefurl)

2009-10-28T05:51:00.000-07:00

The Cinnamon Peeler

If I were a cinnamon peeler
I would ride your bed
and leave the yellow bark dust
on your pillow.

Your breasts and shoulders would reek
you could never walk through markets
without the profession of my fingers
floating over you. The blind would
stumble certain of whom they approached
though you might bathe
under rain gutters, monsoon.

Here on the upper thigh
at this smooth pasture
neighbor to your hair
or the crease
that cuts your back. This ankle.
You will be known among strangers
as the cinnamon peeler's wife.

I could hardly glance at you
before marriage
never touch you
-- your keen nosed mother, your rough brothers.
I buried my hands
in saffron, disguised them
over smoking tar,
helped the honey gatherers...

When we swam once
I touched you in water
and our bodies remained free,
you could hold me and be blind of smell.
You climbed the bank and said

this is how you touch other women
the grasscutter's wife, the lime burner's daughter.
And you searched your arms
for the missing perfume.

and knew

what good is it
to be the lime burner's daughter
left with no trace
as if not spoken to in an act of love
as if wounded without the pleasure of scar.

You touched
your belly to my hands
in the dry air and said
I am the cinnamon
peeler's wife. Smell me.

- Michael Ondaatje

2009-08-21T19:01:00.000-07:00

2009-08-19T18:41:00.000-07:00

li'l girl blue, bikes, and animal costumes. kinkeeey.

Spot the Difference

2009-08-11T18:37:00.000-07:00

2009-08-10T04:21:00.000-07:00

Shot Glass

I'll never forget the day, this beautiful woman
right out in the office said I was "sneaky":

I didn't know I was sneaky: I didn't feel
sneaky: but there are mechanisms below our

mechanisms, so I assume the lady was right:
living with that has not helped my progress

in the world, if there is any such thing,
progress, I mean: also it has hurt my image

of myself: I have used up so much fellow-
feeling on the general --- all of which I have

forgotten specifically about, as have the
fellows --- no offices, no clear images or

demonstrations --- I don't understand why that
one remark holds its place ungivingly in me:

and now to talk about it, admit to the world
(my reading public, as it happens) that I am

scarred by an old, old wound about to heal and
about to bleed: this may do confessional good

but I will no longer appear perfect to others:
conceivably, that could be a good thing:

others may be scarred, too, but who wants to
be like them: one should: perhaps I really

do, because lonely splendor is devastatingly
shiny but basically hard and cold, marble

walls and glistening floors: one comfort,
which I am reluctant to relish, is that the

lady is now dead --- surely, I am sorry about that,
she was a person of intelligence and

discernment, which is one reason she hurt me
so bad --- well, but I mean, she won't hurt

anybody else: she probably did enough good
in her life that the Lord will forgive her:

I am trying to forgive her myself: after all
she left me some room for improvement and

a sense of what to work on...

- A.R. Ammons

time for a jeepney dance ditty

2009-08-05T19:50:00.000-07:00

or two

or three

2009-07-27T04:07:00.000-07:00

Miracle in Katipunan Avenue

a dead snail
squashed by shoe
starts to pray for Karma
and Godzilla

Faith Manifest(o)

I will never die on the cross
or under a tank or sprawled
on a tarmac. I will never make peace

with the heaviness in my hands
and the enemy that dies from it.
I will never chant the name of a country

like an open prayer. I will never sing
about anything more than my small pain.
I will never see the world in its entirety.

I will never take aliens to my leader and
they will never take me to theirs. I will never
be torn by the jaws of a tyrannosaurus rex.

I will never tire of free beer and Saturday
nights and jeepney rides through the squalor.
I will never pull my penis out from a beautiful

woman and exclaim Oh! I will never be Scarlet
Johansson nor would I wish to be except
when she's singing karaoke with Bill Murray.

I will never meet God although I have rehearsed
my lines. I will never be a cockroach with wings
built to outlast an atomic bomb at least until

the next life.

2009-07-16T21:06:00.000-07:00

The Plan

I will pack the few things I have
earned through living and go to X.

I will hail a taxi and brave
Manila traffic. I will make it

in time for my flight. The driver
will not mutter under his breath

when I give him the exact fare.
I will get a window seat, stare

at the clouds, and wonder idly
about the sad work of water,

hauling itself off the earth.
I will have time to wonder.

My boss will not be there to look
through the glass of his office.

I will look below and wave goodbye
to nothing. I will sleep for hours.

I will wake up to a new smell
as the plane touches down

on the island whose natives,
with skin browner than mine,

will welcome me with a dance
to music I will not understand.

I will sit on the sand and watch
the rain crashing into the sea.

I will never leave.
I will never leave.

Maundy Thursday

2009-06-24T21:54:00.000-07:00

(môn'dē) [Lat. mandatum, word in the ceremony], traditional English name for Thursday of Holy Week, so named because it is considered the anniversary of the institution of the Eucharist by Jesus at the Last Supper (that is, the mandatum novum or “new commandment”). In some churches, Jesus's washing of the disciples' feet is symbolically reenacted. In Great Britain there is a survival in the distribution by the sovereign of special “maundy money” to certain of the poor at Westminster Abbey. In the Roman Catholic Church, Maundy Thursday is a general communion day; a single Mass is sung, in the evening, and a Host, consecrated for the morrow, is placed in a specially adorned chapel of repose. The altars are stripped bare until the Easter vigil mass.

- the word according to Columbia Encyclopedia as seen at Answers.com (http://www.answers.com/topic/maundy-thursday)

There are enough problems now without sin. Also I have no understanding of it. I have no understanding of it and I am not sure that I believe in it.

"Ay," he said...There is no translation for this word and perhaps it is just a noise a man might make, involuntarily, feeling the nail go through his hands into the wood.

- a coupla lines from Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea

It's all this water making me think of sharks and Jesus Christ. And Transformers. Off to the cinema then come hell or high water. Or this:

Wasakman.

2009-06-18T00:05:00.000-07:00

The River Of Bees

In a dream I returned to the river of bees
Five orange trees by the bridge and
Beside two mills my house
Into whose courtyard a blind man followed
The goats and stood singing
Of what was older

Soon it will be fifteen years

He was old he will have fallen into his eyes

I took my eyes
A long way to the calendars
Room after room asking how shall I live

One of the ends is made of streets
One man processions carry through it
Empty bottles their
Images of hope
It was offered to me by name

Once once and once
In the same city I was born
Asking what shall I say

He will have fallen into his mouth
Men think they are better than grass

I return to his voice rising like a forkful of hay

He was old he is not real nothing is real
Nor the noise of death drawing water

We are the echo of the future

On the door it says what to do to survive
But we were not born to survive
Only to live

- W.S. Merwin

last of summer

2009-06-08T03:28:00.000-07:00

keep your cheeks dry, beach bums, summer ain't over yet - because it never began. yep, the universe pounded over its roof which is also itself (to horribly paraphrase Amado Bajarias' storm of a poem Happiness in Other Planets) the past coupla months. if you ask me, am all for this erratic weather; at least it makes things interesting, even fashion. imagine girls in bikinis and rain boots. or guys in leather jackets over tank tops ala 70s/80s action stars. sexxxay.

this is really just formalizing it but lemme begin this brooding-in-your-bed season with an old one by Cake. pour on, universe.

We know of an ancient radiation
That haunts dismembered constellations
A faintly glimmering radio station

While Frank Sinatra sings "Stormy Weather"
The flies and spiders get along together
Cobwebs fall on an old, skipping record

Beyond the suns that guard this roof
Beyond your flowers of flaming truths
Beyond your latest ad campaigns

An old man sits collecting stamps
In a room all filled with Chinese lamps
He saves what others throw away
He says that he'll be rich someday

We know of an ancient radiation
That haunts dismembered constellations
A faintly glimmering radio station

While Frank Sinatra sings "Stormy Weather"
The flies and spiders get along together
Cobwebs fall on an old skipping record

as them cheesy old djs used to say (or sadly still say), "This one's for you."

2009-05-31T20:32:00.000-07:00

Track of our Lives

2009-03-24T20:06:00.000-07:00

By this guy who splices scenes from old movies and pastes them together into music videos. Check him out at http://www.youtube.com/user/matthiasheuermann.

2009-03-24T19:16:00.000-07:00

Laughter

In the beginning was laughter,
the Lord’s, and in the end…

We could claim we began with
laughter, but that would be a lie.

Our kind can only start with sorrow.
Laughter is as varied as the weather

and as predictable: patter of fingers
on a baby’s belly, beam of TV

on the faces of late night lovers,
warming drinks held by the lonely

and willing. Laughter can be carefree
or nervous, or dangerous at times.

Laughter is contagious and
laughter is the best medicine.

Laughter is the sound we make to
drown out the heart’s monotones.

Let us all laugh, then, all the way
to the bank and beyond, to that place

without laughter. The world has never
laughed with me enough, or maybe it has --

silently, all along. Laughter, to you I offer
this humble tummy. Laughter, have mercy.

2009-03-17T22:42:00.000-07:00

Stranger

Today a stranger
in my bed.

These arms are easy to open.
This heart does not promise
violence. Who are you?

Today you are my master
or I am yours. Let us take turns
shaking this head.

Today the wings of a maya
stop beating over rooftops
and it is let down. Today it starts

wandering without a sound
because it has no ears. This
has nothing to do with us

or everything. If you are
wrinkling away, then take
me with you. The woman

loved one of us last night.
Let us hear her some more.
Today oh stranger, yes.

2009-01-28T17:31:00.000-08:00

I wish Bunuel was still alive. He made this film about nothing in particular. The title itself is a nonsense. With my stupid, pseudo-scholar, naive, enthusiast, avant-garde-ish, amateurish way to watch 'Un Chien Andalou' (twice), I thought: 'Yeah, I will make a song about it.'
- Charles Michael Kittridge Thompson IV a.k.a. Frank Black

got me a movie
i want you to know
slicing up eyeballs
i want you to know
girlie so groovy
i want you to know
don't know about you
but i am un chien andalusia
wanna grow
up to be
be a debaser, debaser

got me a movie
ha ha ha ho
slicing up eyeballs
ha ha ha ho
girlie so groovie
ha ha ha ho
don't know about you
but i am un chien andalusia

debaser

Thanks to this Pixies site (http://dag.wieers.com/debaser/debaser.php) for the quote and extreme S&M photo.

Haynaku

2008-12-10T20:41:00.002-08:00

Your hands open and spreading -
how some things persist
like wildfire, or wildflower.

Paano mag-ipon ng bulaklak

2008-12-10T20:41:00.001-08:00

Isa-isa mong pinitas na
parang gusto mong isaksak
sa baga mo at kaloob-looban
lahat hanggang wala na.

Paano mag-ipon ng baka

2008-12-10T20:34:00.000-08:00

Pa-burger ka naman. Burger,
burger, burger.

2008-12-08T18:07:00.000-08:00

Liban sa atin
ang mundo.

O bulaklak -

huwag pitasin habang bubulung-
bulong ng pagmamahal, pagdadasal
na utal-utal o apakan
ang damo, 'di ka inaano

- ano'ng salita.

Set 'em Balloons and Fish Free

2008-11-29T20:59:00.000-08:00

"Nice one!"
- Adie, Bagets

Like boozing like there's no tomorrow and waking up the next morning without a hangover. Like the closing credits of a sitcom you pray won't get cancelled. Because I can't remember the last time Saturday was that much fun, this goes down as a Sunday I don't wanna kill myself. Or other people for that matter. And on a good day this plays automatically in my head:

Australia
The Shins

La la la la
La la la la
Laaaaaaa
La la la la

Born to multiply
Born to gaze into night skies
All you want’s one more Saturday
Well look here until then
They gonna buy your life's time
So keep your wick in the air and your feet in the fetters
'Till the day we come in doing cartwheels
We all crawl out by ourselves
And your shape on the dance floor
Will have me thinking such filth I'll gouge my eyes

You’d be damned to be one of us girl
Faced with a dodo’s conundrum
I felt like I could just fly
But nothing happened every time I tried

Wooo, ooooh!

A duotone on the wall
The selfless fool who hoped he’d save us all
Never dreamt of such sterile hands
You keep them folded in your lap
Or raise them up to beg for scraps
You know he's holding you down
With the tips of his fingers just the same

Will you be pulled from the ocean
But just a minute too late
Or changed by a potion
And find a handsome young mate for you to love

You'll be damned to pining through the windowpanes you know
You'd trade your life for any ordinary Joe's
Well do it now or grow old cause
Your nightmares only need a year or two to unfold

Been alone since you were twenty-one
You haven't laughed since January
You try and make like this is so much fun
But we know it to be quite contrary

La la la la la la la

Dare to be one of us girl
Faced with the android's conundrum
I felt like I should just cry
But nothing happens every time I take one on the chin
Yeah Himmler in your coat you don't know how long I've been
Watching the lantern dim starved of oxygen
So give me your hand and let's jump out the window

(from the album Wincing The Night Away)

* * *

Cats Sing Karaoke
Part I

There is a pond right in the middle of the college I go to. Really. If one were to measure the dimensions of the college grounds with a fork he will find out for sure that, from the pond, it’s 750 forks to the edges of our world in all directions. Believe me, a classmate once did it. Out of whatever it is that compels young people to spread our arms out wide and embrace madness. A lunchtime she was having cake, according to hushed accounts.

Halfway through dessert she jumped from her seat, licked the white icing off her fork – some would claim it was chocolate, although this came about much later than the vanilla version – and started measuring. It was a really hot Monday, near 40 degrees so it must had been the heat. In a matter of weeks she became a legend, her name whispered again and again in breathless bafflement over cheap rumcokes in countless student watering holes surrounding the campus.

We were never in the same class after that term so I rarely saw her and when I did, she would always be eating and the glint of her fork would scare off the curious cat in me. I was afraid of her jumping off her chair and using her fork to measure me. It didn’t matter if she did it figuratively and said Hey, your character’s worth is this or that number of forks, or literally, with her declaration that my bloody heart was, after all, much shorter and softer than a fork after ripping it out of my ribcage. One can never know with these crazy types, I thought. And so she went on with lunch as the rest of our world wondered.

***

One could count on the energy of the bored, and soon the episode was bumped out of our collective consciousness with more news of college kids being their college kid selves. So and so split his lip in a fistfight with so and so, so and so fell in love with so and so who was with another so and so, that senior got the ax for cursing this Philosophy professor who gave him a failing mark in a critical paper on Objectivism. The professor, it turned out, was a firm believer of Ayn Rand. Nothing much exciting happened to me, however. The highlight of the term was my dropping out of Statistics class and joining a music club to kill some free time. I could have completely forgotten about her had it not been for two dreams I had shortly before summer vacation.

I can recall the minutest details even now. In the first one, cats the size of people are boozing around a table and singing karaoke by the pond. On the table are live Koi fish writhing in the absence of water, their orange scales glimmering like wildfire under the full moon. Then one of the cats, the boss cat I assume from his size, grabs a Koi with his snow white paw and shoves it into his mouth. It is dead silent despite the cats’ singing and I try to make sense of the words formed by their mouths. Their throats quiver whenever they swallow. I woke up drenched in sweat I did not know my body could make in a night, until then.

The next day went as usual with the dull drum of classes, breaks, and club meetings. It was not until I was eating lunch by the pond and looking at the fish swimming in the clear water that I remembered. Helplessly, in confusion, I started looking for her in the lunchtime crowd. As I stood up I saw the midday sunlight flashing on her fork. I allowed myself one quick, deep breath and brazed myself for her.

* * *

Why did you do it?

With slow, painful tenderness, she put her fork down and proceeded to stare at me blankly.

The fish should be freed.

I’m sorry?

The fish are in grave danger. They should be freed. Was trying to show them how far. That’s why.

What are you talking about?

If not they’ll die in there. The Cat King and his devious plans…

Cat…king? Just then I felt our world sinking somewhere dark and faraway. A deep breath betrayed my struggle for air. Why? What is he planning?

The Feast of the Paws is fast approaching. Cats, you must know, feast on fish.

You mean you’re worried about the cats? Here? In the campus? I heard myself bursting into laughter. Oh, you have nothing to worry about, those are just normal, everyday cats. Scared to death of water. They won’t go near your Koi. To emphasize my point I laughed again, only louder.

You don’t understand. You don’t hear.

I started writing a letter in my head warning school authorities of how crazy or drugged-up she was and how, accordingly, she should be expelled from the college. Out loud I asked her why, of all things, she used a fork.

It was the only way could show them. How far. They asked. Could have used shoes but didn’t bring an extra pair that day. So told them, this many forks.

When are you planning the escape?

Tonight. Before the full moon.

I sat there wondering whether I should tell her about the dream or not. To tell her would be to join in on her madness, I thought. So I decided, to my later regret, to say something else.

You do know that, uh, freeing the Koi would be considered theft of school property and that you would be suspended in a best case scenario?

She picked up her fork and went back to lunch, effectively ending what would be our first and only conversation. I would never see her again.

Post Break

2008-11-10T04:49:00.000-08:00

Raring to go, like a roller coaster after a blackout.
Welcome back world. Bring it.

2008-11-10T03:41:00.000-08:00

Houses

We are creatures of habit
and habitat. Meaning

point out four corners to border
my life and I shall have a house,

to confine all the inhabiting
I shall do inside. Meaning

I am wild.
Meaning I am a bear

with hunger and this morning my
merciless mouth opens to greet fish

welcome, after a daily dip in the river.
Then I rise, shake this body dry, all this

fur. Then I walk around the forest for fresh
air, meditation, the occasional human,

circle the area thrice and satisfied
that no fire nor hunter will take me

I head back to the cave and close
my eyes. Then it is dark, usually

but sometimes I see a cage as large
as the world and inside I am happy

prancing under and under a burning sun.
Sometimes I go beyond the forest to places

I will never see, walk around a city
or ride a cab instead, order coffee.

Sometimes I visit another planet, but
now I see fish from this morning visiting

me. They are slipping past my throat
into my belly. They are saying thank you,

we were tired of swimming
in the cold. I am saying

you are welcome. Now rest.
Meaning point out the four corners

of my grave and when I die, I shall
not stretch my limbs out too wide.

2008-11-06T01:43:00.000-08:00

A Cleansing

Was it good washing his feet.
Was it like holding cold, dark
heaven. Was it worth soiling
my hands. My hands

were soiled once. A village of hands
held. Threw stones. Was this body
that received the cross.

Was what I felt. Were those men
diseased and dying and walking
after him. Were those my hands
tender and opening.

i wanna learn german so i can sing this to ya

2008-10-22T07:14:00.000-07:00

translate that, fucker.

Synchronicity, Baby!

2008-10-05T09:09:00.000-07:00

Feel Noli Aurillo strum your pleasure with his fingers Friday nights at mag:net Katipunan. Described by regulars and first-timers alike as "one of the best, most entertaining guitar-players they've ever seen," Noli covers what you miss (or as in the case of his kolehiyala fans, completely missed out on) hearing on the radio -- from Beatles ditties to Neil Young tear-jerkers -- when not playing his own lilting compositions. He even calls karaoke-crazy audience members to sing with him onstage on lucky nights. On luckier nights, hear him talk about "synchronicity" and the universe over beer. All for free!

Here are some photos of him and, uh, three college kids enjoying his music:

Noli Aurillo, Acoustic Hour, 8:00 p.m., Fridays, mag:net Katipunan. Maki-synchronize na!

Hu U?

2008-08-24T21:02:00.000-07:00

Click this 'cause a dead man once said "Know thyself" when he was alive and these days, all it takes is five minutes.

Spontaneous Idealists are creative, lively and open-minded persons. They are humorous and dispose of a contagious zest for life. Their enthusiasm and sparkling energy inspires others and sweeps them along. They enjoy being together with other people and often have an uncanny intuition for their motivations and potential. Spontaneous Idealists are masters of communication and very amusing and gifted entertainers. Fun and variety are guaranteed when they are around. However, they are sometimes somewhat too impulsive in dealing with others and can hurt people without really meaning to do so, due to their direct and sometimes critical nature.

This personality type is a keen and alert observer; they miss nothing which is going on around them. In extreme cases, they tend to be oversensitive and exaggeratedly alert and are inwardly always ready to jump. Life for them is an exciting drama full of emotionality. However, they quickly become bored when things repeat themselves and too much detailed work and care is required. Their creativity, their imaginativeness and their originality become most noticeable when developing new projects and ideas - they then leave the meticulous implementation of the whole to others. On the whole, Spontaneous Idealists attach great value to their inner and outward independence and do not like accepting a subordinate role. They therefore have problems with hierarchies and authorities.

If you have a Spontaneous Idealist as your friend, you will never be bored; with them, you can enjoy life to the full and celebrate the best parties. At the same time, they are warm, sensitive, attentive and always willing to help. If Spontaneous Idealists have just fallen in love, the sky is full of violins and their new partners are showered with attention and affection. This type then bubbles over with charm, tenderness and imagination. But, unfortunately, it soon becomes boring for them once the novelty has worn off. Boring everyday life in a partnership is not for them so that many Spontaneous Idealists slip from one affair into another. However, should the partner manage to keep their curiosity alive and not let routine and familiarity gain the upper hand, Spontaneous Idealists can be inspiring and loving partners.

* * *

On my little planet

a creative grad pic. Can't wait to get far,
far away.

(Thanks to Corin.)

2008-08-10T03:07:00.000-07:00

When It Is Over

I am not there.
In a field feeling grass cut
my ankles dancing lightly

alone or not. Or disturbing
quietly clouds' shadows on even
green, spreading out in reflex

as I sleep or distracting
the intent beating of the universe
by being an erratic striking

thing, but not there. I am lost
to you where the soil is expecting
storm, or flowers. I am not telling.

EDSA 22

2008-02-25T19:39:00.000-08:00

10th EDSA Revolution Anniversary, nung may Yano pa

Whatever Possessed You

2007-11-30T07:41:00.000-08:00

Goodbye my love
Heaven has been wronged
Now our young bent arms
Don't seem quite so strong

November and all the frost bites
Deep as the snow flowers plowed
This bed is colder than blood or bone

Never knock on my door
Whatever possessed you, aaaaahhh
Somewhere there's an emptiness
Hold me tightly, I wouldn't dream of it

Beware my love
This tongue is a dying flame
My lies may fall like an acid rain
Maybe the sleet was in silently above the roads
You loving angel, you're skin and bones

November and all the frost bites
Deeper than the snow flowers plowed
This bed is colder than blood or bone

Never knock on my door
Whatever possessed you, aaaaahhh
Somewhere there's an emptiness
Hold me tightly, I wouldn't dream of it

- The Care

2007-10-26T04:56:00.001-07:00

Opening the Animal

There were moments I found true freedom

In sin. To be exact, three: my wife walking

Out of our house and into another, a place I

Only imagine because I have heard nothing

From her since; masturbating one morning

To a naked, forgettable girl winking at me,

It seemed, from some magazine; and this man

Butchering a cow another morning, years after.

Opening the animal with a soundless, falling

Motion seemed to be a holy act, a blessed

Release: the cow, heavy with more love than

Its body could contain, was freed – how it reached

Down towards earth; how it rejoiced in the meals

It would make; how it longed to finally become

Grass. The man learning, with each fall of his

Hand, the weight of death – how he has to give

And receive, eventually. Among these, I remember

The girl with the forgettable face the most. I wonder

About her spread-eagled limbs, how they made her

Look like she was falling away from herself. I wonder

If she has since moved on to greener pastures: how

She might be home right now, making someone

Supper. I wonder where I put her picture. But mostly

I wonder what it was she was seeing with her one

Closed eye, when the camera shutters flickered.

Was it a vision of her own body stretching out

And aiming for the world, and farther, into the future –

a man and a beautiful, blessed house she will never leave?

depressives, rejoice!

2007-10-26T04:31:00.000-07:00

and everything after

2007-09-14T09:59:00.000-07:00

August and Everything After: a Poetry Reading (and Marian Poetry Society launch)

2007-09-14T09:50:00.000-07:00

working 'em imaginary goatees

with Sir Joel Toledo a.k.a. Sensei and Ms. Mookie Katigbak

intermission

soggy Saturday smoking

2007-08-01T00:44:00.000-07:00

.
.

(Thanks to Cor and Closa, shooters extraordinaire.)

It's back

2007-07-19T02:40:00.000-07:00

shakshigishigishakshigishigiwhoooowaah...

Hullo, dear four or five friends and millions of secret readers. Just got home from a two-month trip through the time-space warp on Shaider's electric blue bike (Mighty thanks, mister space policeman! Had a blast. Don't forget to call! :p).

Now back

to regular programming:

Kraftwerk Zahl Ein

2007-07-19T02:09:00.000-07:00

Syntax

Is the thing you first learn, twisting text,

Scrabbling words: A B.A.

Language and Literature

Student with a sure hand turning

The world quickly over, over

That semester I was inspecting the fallen

Cracked face and all

The while insisting on order

On the page.

Later you are in a cold room

Watching, world-wary sophomore,

Your country’s history dismantling on TV,

A documentary, how it was arranged

Into tricky poetry: Aguinaldo is not the hero

We were made to believe and keep

In our pockets, the precious face on five-peso bills

And they were not

Benevolent, only themselves: an empire

Expanding, but surely noble in trying

To glue back the world together

How they wanted.

At the turn of the last century,

An assembly of twenty houses.

Kafagway was discovered on a mountain

To be ten degrees cooler, igniting

In the heat-hating settlers’ heads

An idea: smooth the slopes with systems of streets,

Train trees to grow in grids, carve a city

On the mountain’s plain face, build a lake.

Commemorate the drowned. Name the creation

After the old village word for moss:

Begyiw. Open its arms to benefactors

And later, to summer

Vacationers who would take it, slowly

Apart again, like so many bachelors

Of arts. Later you leave,

Graduate, the room, mountain.

Later you are looking at the structures

Across an office window and the random

Punctuations of trees in between

So that the city is rambling on and on and on and on and on and

I still do not get it. You are ordering

The words. Be still.

Relax. What you are doing is usually starting: sorting your life through

The page. Later you will let yourself out and in

The world. For now, write

History. Make it

Scrambled and twisted like your country's. Feel free.

Only now there is a kid tearing open

A book way after classes and dreaming.

He might be yours in the future,

Which should be good. But this is getting ahead

Of yourself.

(Thanks to Sir Joel, Waps and Arkaye)

2007-05-25T06:03:00.000-07:00

Words like violence
Break the silence
Come crashing in
Into my little world
Painful to me
Pierce right through me
Can't you understand
Oh my little girl
.
All I ever wanted
All I ever needed
Is here in my arms
Words are very unnecessary
They can only do harm
.
Vows are spoken
To be broken
Feelings are intense
Words are trivial
Pleasures remain
So does the pain
Words are meaningless
And forgettable
.
All I ever wanted
All I ever needed
Is here in my arms
Words are very unnecessary
They can only do harm
.
Enjoy the silence

- Depeche Mode

Reception

2007-05-03T01:02:00.002-07:00

He would watch television soon after waking, catching up on the world lightly spinning
.
and headily, with the latest news soon forgotten and washed over wars and stars brutally
.
fighting for air time beauty soap commercials breakfast shows morning mass broadcasts
.
take all tragedy cruelty comedy beauty barrage garbage god in without blinking perhaps
.
only seeing static, both cataracts were growing worse, into a translucent screen showing
.
only shadows, blurred pain. Out of nowhere he would chuckle out of cue, missing punch
.
lines, while someone got left behind by the love of her life, a politician danced and sang
.
in a campaign ad, another typhoon drowned another poor province, ending credits rolled
.
and every time I would bite the ache back and laugh with him. I remember getting asked
.
how I saw death. Someone turning the TV off, I said and it seemed so witty at that time.
.
I would watch him as snow slowly came into the picture and ask to hear one more story
.
about him, the war, grand old films, the ground orchids he kept, wanting to stay tuned in
.
but he would only look at me and absently smile. During the funeral rain fell right on cue
.
and messed up the reception so badly I saw almost nothing, only people planting flowers
.
deeply in the grass. Yet whenever I rewound, replayed the episode I would always hear
.
a light laughter, on particular scenes, like when they opened his box for a last screening
.
of sorts, then the rain of flowers. Like I am hearing it now, soft and scratchy and surely
.
not of this world, this electric wound, as I switch to a station-less channel and patiently
.
search among the static, stars and planets for him staring at the screen as I am, waving.

for Lolo Kanor

Sci-Fi

2007-05-03T01:02:00.001-07:00

It was about how each time we turned
the aircon on, or drank soda cold
from the ref to quench this heat
or, prepping up for a party in the ‘80s,
sprayed our hair stiff, we punched
holes through the ozone and let a bit
more sunshine in. Just how much
Robert Smith contributed to this
I don’t know. Luckily, the scientists,
saviors of the day, found out before
we turned toast. They banned CFCs.
I remember how as I kid I almost
flunked a final because I couldn’t
spell Chloro Flouro Carbons. It also
showed people being sorry in the whole
wide First World. They took the invention
back, siphoned it from car engines
and other machines using these metal
digital leaches, safely stored it somewhere
else, the postmodern shamans, sucking
the poisonous substance from this
throbbing urban heart. I remember God,
the universe and here we are at its center
warring with ourselves, both the virus
and the cure. I was counting
on shamans and their newfound magic,
science before we all self-combusted
but who was I kidding – who prepared
the potion in the first place? I fetched
another plastic bottle of iced cola,
flicked a burnt cigarette butt out the
apartment window, flipped channels
and, knowing exactly what I was,
raised my arms up high like an antenna
calling for aliens to blast me quick,
welcoming the heat.

Erasure

2007-05-03T01:00:00.000-07:00

When you treaded mountains together.
Because you renounced your god
Marx, and have become one of
the people you used to laugh at
smoking in Session together
Remember. when you treaded mountains
with him it wasn’t you being Jesus just
you being drunk and dreaming
of revolution; not to save
but be saved. Safe in your urban ways
years later, you still dream. Sometimes
when the traffic is bad and you have time.
You wonder if he’s one more of the missing
they parade in rallies, his face a relic,
testament, argument, the equivalent
of an ad poster. You wonder
why he deleted you from his Friendster©
friends a month ago.
Was he trying to save you
from being tagged “Terrorist”
and dragged into the cause by
not being friends with you anymore
or do you think too highly of him? and he
has become your God and condemned you
middle class. Here in the country,
the traffic’s always bad.
Your pointer finger taps your chest
you can’t bring yourself to beat
anymore, searches for Backspace
there. between the quiet beats. of
some sad mtv© generic. you know
he’ll never sing. again.

2007-05-03T00:58:00.000-07:00

Digital Deaths

It had girls in various stages of undress
and decay, this video I caught in the net
while paddling from the beach that was
this computer café. They resembled fish
I gawked at as a kid who went with his
mom to the market after Sunday mass,
cut up and bleeding, scaled, their gills
scooped out so I was sure they were
beyond saving, the girls on screen,
shots of them interspersed with scenes
of the band playing a song about them.
I marveled at how death is nothing
but death, only bodies in music
videos. While beside me a boy cries
out as he dies and dies and dies again
in an online game, outside the world
is plugged in to this electronic vein
sucking the blood out of those living
and dying in digital, I am visiting
your blog, a graveyard for your words
unread and wishing I brought flowers,
mourning the radiant epitaphs.
.
.
Comic Aging

You always arrive in the studio
first, the more popular of the cast
being fashionably late, keep in mind
the few segments you will be in
totaling less than ten minutes
but still you wait for hours until
show time. And still you wait
your turn for the bright lights,
canned applause. They call you
out for one of the main portions
along with the other hosts and you
excitedly ask a staff if she could
please put more powder on your nose.
You walk out and wave at the crowd
clapping at someone else, an upcoming
comedian whose wisecracks you
find offensive and you do not get
why the bastard is suddenly so
loved. Throughout the competition
you try to loosen up contestants,
asking silly questions and making
sillier faces and feel a twinge every
time someone answers wrongly.
Meanwhile, the bastard is cracking
up the house again. You deliver
a joke you made up that morning
while waiting in the dressing room
and nobody laughs. The klieg lights
start to feel oppressive and you
wipe your eyes with a wrinkly hand.
You look out at the audience,
afraid they might have noticed.
Seeing nobody looking back, you sigh
and pine for the old days, how they
cheered. If only you could watch
yourself. If only you could watch
me here in the couch rooting for you,
remembering, old clown,
big baby, I love you
three times
a day.
.
.
Ghosts

We were checking the mountains
for ghosts. Watch out for flickering
light, moving shadows, warned one
of us shaking in sudden awareness
of the cold, possible encounters.
Submitting myself to the spirit
I pushed off the cliff and let go
of your hand, hovered over land,
brushed the edges then plunged into
the blackness of forests, the heart
trembling with discovery. Then I felt
something jerk me up and toss me
to solid ground, and when I looked
I saw your hand firmly around mine.
There are other things to worry about
you said and we all fell quiet.
We were thinking about the men
who wandered the vicinity while
we ate dinner with striking miners,
their M-16s, and the pockmarked face
of the mountains. Fearing the worst,
I wanted to cry but you took my hand
and thumped it against my chest. I want
to tell you how that night I heard
beating chants, epics echoing from beyond
the trees as I strayed from the group,
before you found me. But I have drifted
farther than you could have imagined,
thinking of a radio script for acne
cream here in the office, looking out
at the tall, flat buildings, and you
have been gone for years.
Opening a window, I lean against the
black sky without wavering and see
myself falling on the passing traffic.
All this time I have always felt
your hand, that now I have no fear
or wonder or even flowers
on my desk, only confessions
to make, this version of faith.

entry

2007-04-21T02:35:00.000-07:00

have recently gotten into reading your words
like they were letters, you write to fill me in
on your day, how you are, the edges of space
between we find comfort in, keeping distance
measured, exact, the continents in their place,
checking for small earthquakes, keeping still
as solid rock, your words, when beneath they
are liquid fire, relentless, roiling. and printing
them, in larger font for easy reading this time,
so i can carefully fold them up and keep them
in a box, maybe tuck in a shirt pocket for luck,
a charm, a paper amulet against the elements:
too much rain or sun seeping into my chest
can easily stunt the sapling heart, you know
how crazy the weather can be, this country. or
have you forgotten, when temperatures drop
to nothing, you pile on your jackets against
such sentiment, the snow, and work without
dreaming of warmer days and streets, sudden
rain, me, or anything to keep the cold from
burrowing into the marrows of your bones,
the words you bleed and update everything
you left with. faithfully, i hold them closer
and feel every letter, punctuation and space
collapse from weight and the rocking beats
and beneath the debris, the liquid core of
things unfold and flow through the cracked
skin, something gradually....................... wilt.
as you tiredly tap away at the keys, i hear
you play a secret song. each breaking beat
for me, alone when really the whole world
tunes in, friends and sad strangers and the
wife back home storing away the groceries
and logging in, longingly, to this electronic
......humming.

The Living Word

2007-04-12T18:39:00.000-07:00

We are walking weird streets this
Wednesday, with sporadic shuffling
feet. We are lurching forward one minute
and holding back the next in a beat
characteristic of those who have tripped
terribly, scraped knees and want to dream,
secretly, again. I've never been to Taft
I tell you and you start pointing at things,
cardboard houses and kids, their jutted ribs,
college kids rushing to pristine buildings,
a pantomime guide letting your fingers speak,
ramble on until you mutter That's why. All I
understand is you make the third world
pretty. The gutter muck is sparkling, the dark
sea waving. We are toeing the edge as Jesus
walks on water trailed by lovers holding
hands. Our feet are dry and cracking
but we still smell the brine, however
faint, in our breaths, sometimes, how we
choke. We are catching our breaths,
sitting on some sidewalk. You are telling
me how you two broke up. I am remembering
how quiet it felt on the train on the way
here, only the insistent, rusty clanking
heart. You are asking if I believe in God.
On weekends, we teach kids the living
word and help build houses, you are saying,
if you want you can join us. It would be fun.
C'mon...I am remembering Neitzsche.
God is dead and I was there at the funeral,
looking up from the pulpit and madly
laughing until teachers dragged me away.
I was eleven. He would die on me again
and again: through Marx, the masses, friends,
workplaces, my ex, like two days from now,
on Good Friday. I believe there is no
greater pain, I am telling you. Yeah, those
children not knowing faith, you are shaking
your head, bead after bead of your sweat
flying and landing on my face, thighs and I
feel blessed, you are rising from the pavement,
face set against the debris of the fallen
city and I know He has risen, once again.
We are walking back to the station. Street
vendors are shouting wildly, bracing
themselves for when everyone flees
for beaches, the calm, hungry weekend.
Somewhere, a boy is bowing his head
to a customer. You are looking around
as if straining to hear a sudden secret
prayer.

On a monobloc outside my house

2007-03-21T03:15:00.000-07:00

and drinking and getting
drunk. I am celebrating.
They are singing happy
birthday to you to me to
no one, really, to simply
sing. It brings them back,
memories, a lot of them
unpleasant, like clowns.
One made me blow
candle after candle
until I ran out of breath.
I’ve hated clowns since,
how they smile. How
they are smiling now
and singing, because it is
my birthday, one of many,
I drink and smile back
at you at me at no one
really, and accept this
is how future days will be
this is how future days
will be this is how future
days will be. An old drunk
on a monobloc, candles
burning out, an absent
singing in his house.
Make a wish, they are
cheering. I am closing
my eyes and wondering
how I managed to acquire
a roomful of strangers
all these years, all these
candles I am blowing
bring me farther from
you pressed against the
classroom wall softly
listening to me sing
when I had yet to forget
music. How we sang the
day away in the haze of
those dreaming in karaoke
houses, cut classes to
lie on grass, hold hands,
and watch the trees rise
to a gradual prayer,
the quiet lives of birds
tucked somewhere,
read each other books.
Later as I walked you
home I wondered how
our own would look.
How we would grow
a garden out of our city
apartment, how many
rooms, how to spend
the infinite afternoons
we would surely have.

(tapos na, haha!)

wanted: book lender

2007-03-21T01:30:00.000-07:00

been reading Milan Kundera's The Art of the Novel, in which I stumbled upon notes on Hermann Broch's The Sleepwalkers. Now I'm intruiged and begging anyone who happens to have a copy of the latter to lend it to me.

Liked these lines in particular: "It is always the adherent of the smaller value system who slays the adherent of the larger system that is breaking up; it is always (s)he, unfortunate wretch, who assumes the role of executioner in the process of value disintegration, and on the day when the trumpets of Judgment sound, it is the (wo)man released from all values who becomes the executioner of a world that has pronounced its own sentence."

Bang!

horro(r)scope

2007-03-15T06:31:00.000-07:00

March 14, 2007:

One lazy day won't put you off course forever, so kick back a little and forget about the rules you've created for yourself. Once you do, you will be able to find joy in being normal.

hahaha! "one lazy day" eh? see this is why horroscopes are, at best, a joke.

and to base the future on light lightyears too late? really now.

Quatrain Exercise

2007-02-21T18:53:00.000-08:00

Soothsayer
In the sprain of my mind
your words are a soft, lightly woven gauze.
I have always doubted feeling good.
An ache of coming days. a mere pause

Churches
In the God of my mind
your silence is a sour prayer.
I was eleven when I stopped believing,
creating worlds we might die in.

***
Steps:

First line: Fill in the blank:
..................In the __________ of my mind
Second line: Write a phrase/sentence combining two or more senses (Synesthesia).
Third line: Write a factual statement.
Last line: ...a statement about the future.
Last step: Find a title for your work.

Fun.

(Thanks to Sir Joel Toledo.)

dead stars, etc

2006-11-29T19:17:00.000-08:00

After having been a Language and Literature student four years and a lifetime ago, it's hilarious how I am now taking my first official Lit class. Just goes to show how good I am at procastinating.

For our first lesson, the prof made our class read Paz Benitez' Dead Stars, a short story that is regarded to have started the trend of writing modern fiction in English here in the country. It's about this man realizing what he'd been keeping his heart vacant for for eight years was not really an emotion but a memory of an emotion, long gone.

The metaphor of memories being like light from things that either exploded or turned into black holes millions of years ago must had been exciting back then. It surely made me say "oh cool" to myself three quarters of a century later.

Things I learned:

1. Deus ex Machina means "God in the Machine", not "Machine of the God", as I'd always thought. It is meant to mean a critique on how the conflict in a story is so conveniently resolved, by an outside force.

2. Not to attend a class the first time drunk.

***

The short fiction triggered an exchange of messages of metaphors of stars with a friend that went as follows:

friend: Uh huh, lying down, wondering how the stars keep dangling over what appears to be a whole lot of nothing.

me: And how're the stars treating you?

friend: Some aren't where they're supposed to be, some have lost their way; the rest, the oldest have just been there all the while...and this all happened lightyears ago. =)

me: Each sparkling, fleeting destiny being played out before our eyes. The past reaching into the future. The night sky's but a history book with infinitely large pages.

friend: Stargazing as time travel. So horoscopes dictate futures with history. Then I'll say, "Oooh, stars! Pretty!!"

me: History determining the future in more ways than one. Too-late warnings. Old, cold light.

friend: Each glow a portent of dying, and the luminous lifecycle before it.

me: As we, warding off our own oncoming burnout.

We then moved on to topics of greater urgency, such as him going to Baguio over the weekend and me asking him to buy me chocoflakes and cool cheap accessories as pasalubong.

***

Saw a show on National Geographic on how Nostradamus' notorious quatrains are but clever retellings of past prophecies, perfectly explained by him having lived during the Renaissance when revivals were big.

Stars, says the show, were also Nostradamus' favored tool for divination.

"Stargazing as time travel. So horoscopes dictate futures with history."

"History determining the future in more ways than one."

A scientist interviewed in the show explained that eventhough stars' gravity and light do affect the earth it is with such minimal force, much less than everyday objects (like, say, light bulbs), to have any substantial effect on earthling future.

It is sad the older I get the less relevant stars become.

***

Now I look up, and nothing.

commas

2006-11-22T03:46:00.000-08:00

When I was a child sadness took little test bites
of my soul.
Torturing nurturing
never swallowing whole.

***

squeezing into floating fleeting spaceless space faceless faces
, my created selves

***

Everything determined, by declaration.
This, is a great day.

According to Paolo

2006-11-15T02:00:00.000-08:00

and all the men and women merely

2006-09-30T20:10:00.000-07:00

Directed a school production of Ang Pinakamakisig sa mga Nalunod sa Buong Daigdig,Ms. Risa Jopson's adaptation of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World, which was the final exam for theater class. Since I've no previous experience in theater whatsoever oh save for the time I played a drunk partee girl that gets raped in an interschool theater fest november last year, I found it surprisingly, seriously hard.

The closest thing to directing I see myself doing is maybe making films. I don't like playing god. Or rather, I don't like playing god so...for a lack of a better...directly. Like telling actors how to move around on stage. Makes me feel like they're objects. I'd rather make movies and control people from inside their heads. haha, of course i'm maybe kidding.

Or rather I'd rather watch. Watch people. Someone once said I live by looking and listening and staying still. Omniscience over omnipotence.

But yeah. Now come the cliches.

The play turned out great. I learned a lot from the process and even made good friends with many of the talented people i worked with. Am pretty proud of our class. A lot of 'em are potentials. A lot of times felt like being in actual theater school. Plus, the playwright came. We've met before through my sister, so I was shameless in asking her how she found the play. She said she liked it because she saw a lot of new things in it. I couldn't but smile.

I ended up on a rooftop with my brother and bestfriends, drinking beer, laughing, and watching the rain fall like curtains. "All the world's a stage..."

2006-09-18T03:46:00.000-07:00

Sleep and Tristan Tzara

To stretch your brain
awake with shots of caffeine
and punch holes through the sleepy
blanket of rain falling stretching over
all our sleepy houses and not a wink
despite the pauses, blankness, is to keep
yourself connected to this wretched stretched waiting
waking...Waking. .......Waking : Extended Long-Playing
pain

- 09180600000000000000000000000000

2006-09-06T06:00:00.000-07:00

Witch-Wife

She is neither pink nor pale,
And she never will be all mine;
She learned her hands in a fairy-tale,
And her mouth on a valentine.

She has more hair than she needs;
In the sun 'tis a woe to me!
And her voice is a string of colored beads,
Or steps leading into the sea.

She loves me all that she can,
And her ways to my ways resign;
But she was not made for any man,
And she never will be all mine.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

To be sent this message through this floating, fleeting labyrinth. Awwww.

2006-07-20T05:23:00.000-07:00

getting old:
being told
names of thoughts
you thought you thought

Nihilism Simulacrum Dada Postmodern Existential Absurd Mad

getting old is
getting is old

"All truly wise thoughts have been thought already thousands of times; but to make them truly ours, we must think them over again honestly, till they take root in our personal experience."
– Johann Wolfgong von Goethe

2006-07-07T23:35:00.000-07:00

Act One

Table-edge straight, I'm one who never found
girls pretty save for when envy
hits and always made them fast boys wait.
But now I want a lover and I want him gay,
and if you happen to be in a mid-life-identity
crisis, I want him you, specifically.
You could talk all day about Shakespeare
and dead white plays in our classroom
that is your stage, and I would only
quietly sit.
We could flit around cafes. I would try
and drink up all the art, which
solely wakes up all your hearts
and not feel sleepy.
We could lie around in bed
and trace the line uttered by
some god between where your body
ends and mine starts.
We willl forever be apart.
We could lie and laugh
about the men of our lives.

(for Tuxqs)

Deus ex Machina

2006-07-02T19:51:00.000-07:00

Because of all the coming and the going and the staying in between.
Your leaving ............................ is the machine of the god is the end
..................
...................of our non-beginning

2006-07-02T05:57:00.000-07:00

Something To Talk About
Badly Drawn Boy

I've been dreaming
Of the things I've learnt
About a boy who's bleeding
Celebrate to elevate
The joy is not the same without the pain

Ooooooh...

Ipso facto
Using up your oxygen
You know I'm shallow
Calling out for extra help
You've got to let me in
Or let me out

Oooh something to talk about
Oooh something to talk about
Oooh Oooh Oooh

I've been dreaming
Of the things I learnt

About a boy who's leaving

Nothing else to chance again
You've got to let me in
Or let me out

Oooh something to talk about
Yeah something to talk about
Oooh Oooh Oooh

2006-06-26T02:42:00.000-07:00

In between the last time I was here which was around a month ago and now, I was wasting 6 hours of my life in line to watch The Da Vinci Code, drowning in beer what remained of the summer, cooking caramel rice krispie puffs i'm not sure what to call it, haha, with my brother, bowling in my sister's 20th birthday party in between swigs, screaming my soul out in gigs, watching Monk/Seinfeld/Simpson episodes on replay, bumping into familiar thoughts while watching a play, Godot Where Is U?, on a Friday, staying up late staring at blank pages, writing nothing, reading everything, liking unexpectedly Bob Ong and his Stainless Longganisa, and liking it a lot, forgetting to comb my hair until it was but a giant knot, and remembering or maybe even learning for the first time how to make a joke.

Just updating you with recent non-events in my life since i've been lazy. Oh, and promising to write here at least once within every 24 hours, in the hopes of some geek checking my blog out from some parallel universe and actually caring.

Till again. ;)

"Where Is My Mind?"

2006-05-18T03:15:00.000-07:00

Nihil

2006-05-09T03:04:00.000-07:00

.
"A true nihilist would believe in nothing, have no loyalties, and no purpose other than, perhaps, an impulse to destroy."

"For Nietzsche, there is no objective order or structure in the world except what we give it."

See poem below.

Finally a structure of unstructure for my thoughts on non-structure.

Fun.

What Follows

2006-05-09T02:30:00.000-07:00

Soon we became encumbered
by weight, but then it was never more
than another rule we wanted
to break. It was a windy day
when after struggling with balance
they launched their carefully-calculated
dream. They must have never felt so free.
The gate was ten feet tall why
ever did we evolve from monkeys then
again the body was a limit
that waited to be proven fake it was
the rigid schedule we could't take.
The exactness of beelines
to classes. The square ness of the rooms. Boxes
and boxes. We climbed over
the ten-foot line and launched
our lives, knowing only after,
the fall. Soon we became acquainted
with broken bones, this weight,

and how we obeyed,

we and the brothers Wright.
Even in flight.

...an old poem 'bout how we can't but live based on what we can't know. ambot.

Parallel (Creation Story no. ____ )

2006-05-08T03:20:00.000-07:00

...and then our world goes pop!

The Haiku of Adam and Eve

2006-05-08T01:49:00.000-07:00

And on the seventh
day he rested. and we start-
ed to play Create.

Inspired

2006-05-07T19:34:00.000-07:00

In a vintage-inspired dress in a convenience-inspired store

"Nothing of us is original." -- Chuck Palahniuk, "Invisible Monsters"