Am I rough enough?

The littlest stuff has been making me pretty happy lately. And why not? It's the season for it. Listening to a lot of The Stones lately, probably why I've been feeling particularly Jumpin'-Jack-Flash-y. For example, the first time I heard this song again:

Well you bit my lip and drew first blood
And warmed my cold, cold heart
And your wrote your name right on my back
Boy your nails were sharp

Don't stop
Honey don't stop

I couldn't stop laughing. And not I-just-swallowed-four-razors-and-I'm-crazy laughing. But really, the nice, I'm-getting-what-I-want-for-Christmas delighted, giddy laughing. Then again, I've been on painkillers these last few days, so what do I know?

Speaking of which, for the second year in a row now, I've found myself sick this Christmas. It was vertigo last year, and this time, I was down with tonsilitis--or whatever infection it was that caused my tonsils to swell, made it painful to swallow or even open my mouth, and therefore caused me to miss the true meaning of the season--food. I know I've been wanting to lose weight, but really? Really?

As to the cause of the throat-infection thing, I have no idea. Everybody else in my family came down with the flu. (Hmmm.... delicious food that's hard to swallow? Or tasteless food that goes down easy? Now I have to ask: Did anybody in my family enjoy Christmas dinner?)

Anyway, to avoid any possibility of a re-run next Christmas, I've decided that some stuff, you just don't put in your mouth.

Speaking of vertigo (Were we? Aherm, now we are, I say), somebody I recently met, upon learning that I suffered from vertigo introduced me to a poem of same name.

*****
Vertigo
iiiiiiJorie Graham

Then they came to the edge of the cliff and looked down.
Below, a real world flowed in its parts, green, green.
The two elements touched—rock, air.
She thought of where the mind opened out
into the sheer drop of its intelligence,
the updrafting pastures of the vertical in which a bird now rose,
blue body the blue wind was knifing upward
faster than it could naturally rise,
up into the downdraft until it was frozen until she could see them
iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiat last
the stages of flight, broken down, broken free,
each wingflap folding, each splay of the feather-sets flattening
for entry. . . .Parts she thought, free parts, watching the laws
at work, through which desire must course
seeking an ending, seeking a shape. Until the laws of flight and fall
iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiincreased.
Until they made, all of an instant, a bird, a blue
enchantment of properties no longer
knowable. What is it to understand, she let fly,
leaning outward from the edge now that the others had gone down.
How close can the two worlds get, the movement from one to the other
being death? She tried to remember from the other life
the passage of the rising notes off the violin
into the air, thin air, chopping their way in,
wanting to live forever—marrying, marrying—yet still free of the
iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiorchestral swelling
which would at any moment pick them up, in-
corporate. How is it one soul wants to be owned
by a single other
in its entirety?—
What is it sucks one down, offering itself, only itself, for
ever? She saw the cattle below
moving in a shape which was exactly their hunger.
She saw—could they be men?—the plot. She leaned.How does one enter
a story? Where the cliff and air pressed the end of each other,
everything else in the world—woods, fields, stream, start of another
iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiidarker
woods—appeared as kinds of
falling. She listened for the wind again. What was it in there
iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiishe could hear
that has nothing to do with telling the truth?
What was it that was not her listening?
She leaned out. What is it pulls at one, she wondered,
what? That it has no shape but point of view?
That it cannot move to hold us?
Oh it has vibrancy, she thought, this emptiness, this intake just
iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiprior to
the start of a story, the mind trying to fasten
and fasten, the mind feeling it like a sickness this wanting
to snag, catch hold, begin, the mind crawling out to the edge of the cliff
and feeling the body as if for the first time—how it cannot
follow, cannot love.

*****
Think about it. Would he have mentioned it to me if I had a different kind of allergy? Hey, listen to this:

Him: You're allergic to cheese?!
Me: Yeah, I have this allergy called vertigo...
Him: Vertigo? No Kidding? Vertigo? You know this poet, Jorie Graham? She has a poem with that same title! It's about this woman who looks down a cliff and she sees cows... Nevermind, I'll lend you the book.
Me: Really? Wow! Thanks!

Now imagine this:

Him: You're allergic to pollen?!
Me: Yeah, I have this allergy, a bit like hay fever...
Him: Bummer!
Me: Yeah.

Some things, you just got to be thankful for, sometimes.

*****
What else? Oh, Oh! In a couple of days, it will be a year since I first published in this blog!!! Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to you, happy birthday, haaaap--- My new blog is turning one! Woohoo!

Now, if only I can keep from... Shhh. Nevermind.

Ahem. New year's coming up! I wonder what's in store for me.

*****
"I'll never be your beast of burden
My back is broad but it's a-hurting
All I want is for you to make love to me."
iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiRolling Stones, Beast of Burden

*****
Happy holidays to all, and to all a good night.

Like a fool, I'm clapping: A Christmas Story

Dear [Put your name here],

When Charles Dickens wrote, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness," ad infinitum, he must have just had a day like mine.

It started out Thursday night. I had just finished a new poem, and having been in a drought for a long time, I was quite happy with what I had. Incidentally, that new poem was an apology, and admission-of-envy of sorts--a reply, really--to two previous poems I had written which reeked of feminism. I am quite at a loss how to explain this about-face, except that I must be older than I really am. Who has ever heard of someone "mellowing" at 26, 27 even?

(So in short, you won't be seeing that poem anytime soon, as I am still ambivalent about what it wants to say, and if it says what I wanted it to say, or if, like a traitor, it took me into a totally different direction than when I set out to write it, and now... I am confused. In shorter: I won't be showing it to you, or anyone else, anytime soon.)

Anyway, I felt good, and on my way home from the cafe, I decided to write in my blog. Upon getting home, however, I was pissed to realize that I had left my trusty laptop/sidekick Charlie at the office, my usual laziness getting in the way of any productivity whatsoever. And as if that wasn't enough, I got into an inane argument with my sister regarding my old, not-quite-that-memorable calculus book. Suffice it to say, my skippy-happy mood evaporated like rubbing alcohol.

The next day, I woke up early to a replay of that argument inside my head. I went about my early morning errands irate, not in the least looking forward to going to work in the afternoon. But as I was smoking on the way to the office, guess who I would meet, begging for a cigarette, but the Angel Gabriel disguised as a friend? The angel began his "Behold! I bring good tidings of great joy!" spiel, and I sat dumbfounded for a second, jaws limp with disbelief--as I imagine Joseph, and no, not Mary, might have looked.

Okay, enough with the Christmas metaphor. Here's the "tidings of great joy" as it would have appeared in a mangled telegram:

Two poems published stop How to be Cold & Turnabout stop Next to Krip Yuson's Rejection stop Seriously stop Laughing

And so it was, that I was walking around campus with my feet a few feet above the ground.

Until of course, my floating foot snagged on an uncooperative, unchivalrous step on the stairs on the way to my apartment, and brought me back--quite unglamourously--to earth. Still, some scars I find awfully difficult to mind.


iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiKwek-kwek and other mysteries,
iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii[Put anyone else's name here]

If you're happy and you know it...

Go away.

Maybe it's the weather, maybe it's PMS (Laugh, and you're dead), who knows? And really, who cares? But I'm in one of those moods.

We had Galera plans for the long weekend. She needed to get away, I just wanted to hear the ocean again. The whole two weeks before this super typhoon was perfect beach weather--blue skies, hot sun, zero humidity. Even the stars were surprisingly visible at night, even if I woke up to smog hovering at the distance every morning. I refused to go for a dip in the pool. Seemed like settling for second best.

Now, it's just clouds roiling and winds trying to lock me in the apartment. It's not raining yet, but everywhere the smell of it, the signs, the threat, threat, threat.

Oh, fuck it. I'm in a bad mood and the skies, biology, even the absence of saltwater and surf have nothing to do with it. And I've nothing but time on my hands.

Who needs a drink?

*****

Pat yourself in the back.

Despite all the drama, everything seems to be moving along well. I'm currently enrolled in two very interesting classes, a Poetry writing seminar, and a Medieval Lit class. I've just realized that I would be happy to spend my whole life reading other people's poetry, but then again, that might be the coward me talking.

I've been running, too. In the mornings, for 20 to 40 minutes 3 - 5 times a week. Isn't that great? This is my 5th week at it, I think, and boy does it feel good. Sure there are mishaps: Runner Nearly Run Over By Crazy Woman Driver. Side Stitch and Blisters Almost Cause Death. Dead iPod Cost Teran Race. Et cetera, et cetera.

(I plan to quit smoking by the New Year, too. But, shh. I'm not sure I can do it yet. So, no promises. Yet.)

Oh, and headlines caused by reading The Shipping News. Woman Dies of Envy at 26 (or 27).

*****

Ask again.

Are you sure we're not at the beach? Listen.

Morning Sea

Let me stop here. Let me, too, look at nature awhile.
The brilliant blue of the morning sea, of the cloudless sky,
the shore yellow; all lovely,
all bathed in light

Let me stand here. And let me pretend I see all this
(I actually did see it for a minute when I first stopped)
and not my usual day-dreams here too,
my memories, those sensual images.

Constantine P. Cavafy

*****

Clap your hands, you fool.

One year forward, two steps back.

The first few months after I turned 25, I kept forgetting that I had grown a year older. Whenever I was asked my age, I would answer 24 and never correct myself. Twenty-five seemed like a bad age, a scary age. I had just come home from Japan then, supposedly after a specialization in Environmental Chemistry, but instead I came home lost, more unsure of what I really wanted to do, and farther from where I had pictured myself at 24, more so at 25. After a few months I switched from forgetting to avoidance. I was no longer 24, I had decided not to like being 25, and so I skipped a year ahead. I promoted myself to 26 without the benefit of another birthday. Ten years from now, I will probably think the opposite the better idea, then maybe I can take a year off that age and that, too, will seem true.

This year, I am really 26 and not much better off. Although I have a new job that I like, getting into another Master's program that I am in love with, and meeting new people, I feel that 26 was last-year-me. And maybe I'm afraid I'll get stuck again, not move forward. When asked my age now, I am confused, torn between staying 26 and moving on to 27. Besides, I like 27--it is three times nine, three cubed, it is the cube of nine divided by three. (Twenty-six, on the other hand, is simply twice thirteen, which can only mean bad luck twice over.) And I like the idea of threes, it hints at generosity, forgiveness, patience. But at the same time, it is organization, and thoroughness: Ready, set, go. Problem, experimentation, conclusion. Hook, line, sinker. Beginning, middle, end.

*****
I have been obsessed with painting my nails lately--both toes and fingers. It seems like a disguise that I assume, a pretence at an older me, a distraction, a defense, a mimicry: like bird's eyes on butterfly wings. And as much as I relish spending hours cleaning and buffing and painting, I am impatient for the two to three coats of polish to dry. As soon as I think they're set, I like to get on to other things--I arrange my stuff, read a book, set the time on a watch, or smoke a cigarette. And so always, always, I end up ruining at least two fingers. Which means I have to do them all over again and ruin the others, or apply extra coats to cover them up. Even my disguises need disguises.

But maybe there is no need to over-analyze this new hobby. The reason for it could be as simple as liking how they look, or a left-over rebellion from my years and years in the chemistry lab.

*****
Now, a progress report:

Remember my reading list over my two-month-now-over vacation? Here they are, and the crossed out ones are what I've read so far:

1. The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne
2. The Longings of Women, Marge Piercy
3. Lord Jim, Conrad
4. Kinkakuji, Mishima
5. Our Father, Bernice Rubins
6. The Shipping News, Proulx
7. Doctor Fischer of Geneva or The Bomb Party, Greene
8. Pere Goriot, Balzac
9. The Art of the Novel, Kundera
10. Love in the Time of Cholera, Garcia Marquez
11. In the Name of The Rose, Umberto Eco
12. In Cold Blood, Capote
13. The Silmarillion, Tolkien
14. The Robber Bride, Margaret Atwood
15. The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck
16. King Lear, Shakespeare
17. In the Skin of a Lion, Michael Ondaatje
18. Accordion Crimes, Proulx
19. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, McCullers
20. Leaves of Grass, Whitman
21. The Stone Diaries, Carol Shields

Plus other stuff I read that are not on the list:

1. Thousand Cranes, Yasunari Kawabata
2. The Izu Dancer, Kawabata
3. The Counterfeiter and Other Stories, Yasushi Inoue
4. Running for Women: A Complete Guide, Janet Heinonen

Haha. I feel good. 12 out of 25, not bad. Not bad at all.

*****

A slag is the remains of a rock after metal or other precious minerals have been removed from it. My dictionary actually qualifies these remains as "waste" material, but my environmental science training forces me to put the quotation marks, or to rephrase the definition entirely, as I have done here. Slag actually looks like broken pieces of a cinder block, so maybe waste is an appropriate term. Still, I remember a crumbling, hollowed-out mountain face in Marinduque on a tour of an abandoned copper mine. They considered that waste, too. But I thought at the time it was the closest I could come to the reality of the Grand Canyon. There was a river, too: Or two rivers that joined up. Both were contaminated with metal wastes where iron made one river orange and copper made the other a mint-greenish color, hot and cool. And when they joined the new river was half orange and half mint for miles. There were potholes,too, full of steaming acid of a deep golden green and enormous backhoes left near hills of unwanted slag. They were all beautiful. Sad and lonely and beautiful. Like magnificent sunsets caused by abandoned, unwanted particles in the atmosphere.

Ba, I am danger!

You'd think 3 years with this allergy and I'd have this thing down to a science. And I have, I have: I can enumerate the foods I'm supposed to be allergic to: cheese, chocolates, alcohol-- especially beer, strawberries, tropical fruits including mangoes, seafood--the list does go on. And I've done enough experimentation to know which of these I am specifically allergic to, and in what amounts:

1. Cheese - Anything over the tiniest slice gives me a vicious vertigo attack. Attacks occur one to three days after intake, and lasts three days, too. No pizza, no cheeseburgers, no fondue, gratins, grilled cheese sandwiches, Cheezwhiz, cream cheese on bagels... you get the picture.
   
2. Chocolate - I can have a little bit, like one Snickers bar divvied up over three days, or so. (Sad, but true.) So unless I pig out with a whole can of Lindt mini assorteds, I'm fine. Chocolate ice cream seems okay, though.
3. Alcohol - Beer, I can stand one to three bottles in one night, although I rather wouldn't. (Seems I've lost my taste for it.) This one gives me an attack definitely, so I prefer another malt product. Whiskey is fine, fine, fine. Or any other hard liquor for that matter. I try to avoid wines and brandy because I'm supposed to be allergic to grapes, too. But I do like an occasional red now and again. Suddenly, I miss Japan where beer and whiskey prices are almost the same.
4. Fruits - Strawberry is a culprit, but I don't get a lot of chances to enjoy fresh ones anyway. Tropical fruits don't seem to have any adverse effects.
5. Seafood - Having lived 2/3 of my life near the sea, and loving Japanese food as I do, I am so grateful I turned out not to be allergic to seafood.

How do I know all this? I told you: I have this vertigo thing down to a science. And three years of experimentation, well, let's just say I could publish a paper on it. Sure, I miss out on a lot of foods-- just Italian mostly. Oh and mexican, too. And pizza. And most desserts. But, as you've probably heard me say more than once (all together now): as long as I'm not allergic to hard liquor and cigarettes... You could say three years has helped me deal with it, too.

So somebody please, tell me why, why, why I jumped at my mom's idea of lunch at Yellow Cab yesterday, clapping my hands in excitement like an idiot (instead of my usual sarcastic remark). Worse, when they remembered and tried to suggest someplace else, I bulldozed over the protests (They were half-hearted, true, but well-meant.) and even walked--no, marched--right into the pizza parlor first, myself. Ate two and a half slices of their meatlovers pizza and guzzled raspberry ice tea, giddy like I was doing something never attempted before, or something petty, but illegal.

And you know what else? I had the gall to be surprised when I woke up a little woozy, my head like a water-filled balloon--early this morning. When I weaved my way out of my room--holding my head in case it fell off and crashed like an aquarium around my feet-- to get my anti-vertigo drugs, my mom simply glanced at me and hmmmmed. I whimpered like an orphaned puppy.

Good thing, I remembered to up my dose of betahistines. But that's all I can really be proud of.

I believe in the scientific method: question, observe, experiment, conclude. Three years I've watched the food I take in. Three years I've experimented with what I can or cannot eat. Three years I've suffered: There was a year in Japan I had three-day attacks monthly. Oh, and my last attack was Christmas. Yep. December 24, 25, and 26, 2005 I was either asleep or trying to sleep. I've made conclusions, such as on the specifics of kinds and amounts of foods I should avoid. I've concluded, too, that sleep is my only escape (Oh, there's the Van Gogh experiment I have on reserve for unbearable situations.), and that most of the time, I can lessen the effects, enough to keep me functional, anyway, if I "overdose" on my Serc.

I have three years' worth of information. Tried and tested, conclusive information at that, where the scientist happens to be the test subject, too. So again I ask, why, why, why? I'm afraid there might not be any answer but brain damage. All that whiskey I enjoyed to make up for pizza must have finally caught up with me.

And you know what hurts the most? While I was eating that pizza and feeling giddy? I think I was giddy more for breaking my rules than any longing for pizza--it didn't taste as great as it does in my head when I imagined it. So now I'm suffering and I can't even say it was worth it. I told you: Brain damage. How pathetic.

Curiosity has not only killed the cat, it has won some lucky sons-of-bitches the Nobel prize. Seems like I don't belong to that category. That thin line between genius and crackpot isn't so thin after all.

Because three is a crowd, and a crowd is good.

Like I always say: when in doubt, waste time. And because I've been tagged. La-di-dah!

THREE NAMES THAT YOU GO BY:

1. Drey/Drea
2. Andrea (when the parents are mad; and in Japan, actually. Did you know that Dorei in Japanese means slave? Dorei-mon is actually the Japanese-Engrish for Slave Mon-ster! Ha! And you thought he was a cute robot cat.)
3. Inday (Haha!)

THREE SCREEN NAMES YOU'VE HAD, INCLUDING THE ONE YOU USE NOW:

1. Dreyers. Yes, the ice cream.
2. sevenfloors. Why? That's when and where it all started, I think.
3. Dreydlocks. Because I've always wanted them.

THREE THINGS YOU LIKE ABOUT YOURSELF:

1. My face.
   
2. I try to be more honest, everyday. Especially with myself.
   
3. I jump and ask questions later more often than not.
   

THREE THINGS YOU DISLIKE ABOUT YOURSELF:

1. My hips.
   
2. I look much nicer than I really am. I'm too polite.
   
3. I jump and ask questions later more often than not.

THREE PARTS OF YOUR HERITAGE:

1. The "Indian" look that comes from being three quarters Filipino and one quarter Spanish.
2. My Filipino grampa is a small-town farmer who, through sheer hard work (and a cold and hard heart), sent all his seven kids to college.
3. My Spanish grandfather was an alcoholic and unbelievably promiscuous. It was rumored that he beat my Lola. He was a good-looking SOB, though.
   

THREE THINGS THAT SCARE YOU:

1. Spiders.
2. Breaking bones.
3. I can swim, but I get panic attacks when my feet can't touch the bottom. Leftover trauma from when I fell off a moving pump boat in Guimaras when I was 12. It felt like I sank 20 feet without touching the bottom: It was dark and the sun a pale yellow overhead like a scene from Baywatch. I had to kick to the surface and swim to shore by myself (no Hasselhoff!). I had Jaws nightmares for a week after, complete with the ominous score.
   

THREE OF YOUR EVERYDAY ESSENTIALS:

1. Glasses/Contacts.
2. Coffee and cigarettes. Sad but true.
   
3. Food.

THREE THINGS YOU ARE WEARING RIGHT NOW:

1. A tanktop.
2. Shorts.
3. Glasses.
   

THREE NEW THINGS YOU WANT TO TRY IN THE NEXT 12 MONTHS:

1. Running. Seriously, and for good. Again.
2. Learn Spanish and improve on my Japanese.
3. Oh! Start my MA in Literature! Yey!

THREE EQUALS TWO LIES PLUS A TRUTH:

1. I've been mistaken for a prostitute.
2. I've been a prostitute.
3. I've been with a prostitute.

THREE THINGS YOU JUST CAN'T DO:

1. Wiggle my ears.
2. Be inexcusably rude and magnificently angry in public.
3. Kill myself.

THREE OF YOUR FAVORITE HOBBIES:

1. Reading.
2. Drinking coffee, smoking, doing nothing and people-watching, or having great conversations with friends.
   
3. I really like to wrap presents. Pretty good at it, too.

THREE THINGS YOU WANT TO DO REALLY BADLY RIGHT NOW:

1. Get a massage.
2. Write, write, write. I haven't written nor re-written anything since I went back home. Grrr.
3. Get laid. Seriously.

THREE CAREERS YOU'RE CONSIDERING:

1. Poetry.
2. Teaching. This is my calling, I think.
   
3. Triathlon. No kidding. Couple of years back I used to train. Before laziness took over.

THREE PLACES YOU WANT TO GO ON VACATION:

1. Alicante; visit my Great Aunt Ito who's really old and alone in a nursing home with Alzheimer's and a broken hip.
2. New York and live it up, ala Sex and the City.
3. Palawan or Batanes. Because I've never been.

THREE TRUE LOVES:

1. Banana splits.
2. Thunderstorms.
3. The smell of brown paper bags, especially if they hold hot bread. Or the smell of books.

THREE FAVORITE ANIMALS:

1. Reptiles. Don't ask me why.
2. Our ugly but adorable mutt, Pudjot.
3. Lions, tigers and bears. Oh my!

THREE REASONS WHY YOU'RE DOING THIS SURVEY:

1. Because there are more important things to do.
2. Every blog needs a good survey, now and again.
3. Because I love Bazooka and I'm disappointed to find that, not only is it 3/5 the orginal size, but the comics (and fortune!) has been removed from its current packaging! Oh, the things that happen in the world today!

THREE PEOPLE WHO MUST TAKE THIS QUIZ:

1. Anybody who feels like it.
2. Anybody who's as bored as me.
   
3. Anybody who's got more important stuff to do.

THREE WORDS:

1. Isn't
   
2. this
   
3. fun?

This shit is almost a palindrome.

Whenever I start complaining that my life is boring, please, please! somebody slap me.

In the last 4 or 5 years, I've noticed that whenever I curse my nothing-is-happening life (which happens about once a year), shit starts to happen. Drama, complications, problems, or just about any one of the your garden-variety psycho stuff(break-ups, hell-at-work, scholarships-to-Japan (haha!), non-scholarship-to-Japan, stalkers, asshole boyfirends, other people's asshole boyfriends, stereo-receivers-being-fried... you know, the usual shit) start to happen to me.

Well, this time around, the shit hasn't exactly hit the fan yet. And since I'm not planning on getting shit-faced, I'm ducking, big time:

My life is great! My life is happ'ning! I feel rrrreeeeevvvved! Yeeehaaw!

Okay, that should do me for now. Cross your fingers.

Imagine me and you

I'm happy. Kind of.

I am, really. But I don't know why, exactly. So I'm suspicious. Ha!

*****

I learned a new word, a couple of weeks ago that I really like: Frangible (frăn'gə-bəl) adj. It means breakable, capable of being broken, given to breakage. I don't know why I fell in love with this word. It seems a marriage between fragile and tangible, which somehow makes the breaking all the more painful, somehow.

Like seeing JC Intal breaking down after Game 3, and being hugged up from the floor by his parents. Frangible. Inconsolable. Heartbreaking.

*****

Ateneo was the number one team and held the best record. UST barely made it to the Final Four. We were on top and they were the underdog, both hungry to prove themselves. But fate had to have its way.

"If this were the NBA, it wouldn't have happened!" my best friend insisted over the phone. I know, I know. But this is college basketball, and the drama, the momentum, and the kind of fate that is in charge of epics and hero-making and idealism had to have its way.

If I were from UST, I would be sure, now, of why exactly I am happy. But I am not, and all I can say is, it had to end that way.

Which makes me think there might be different kinds of fate.

*****

Milenyo, on the other hand, is another story. Not fate. No, not exactly.

It just gets me thinking how fragile we are, how given to break, at any given moment. How frangible.

*****

But, I'm supposed to be happy. Or at least it started out that way. And again, I don't know why, exactly. Me and you and you and me, no matter how they roll the dice and all that.

*****

So happy together. How's the weather?

You just put your lips together and... blow.

Ad I recently saw in Nickelodeon for the popular lollipop:

Chupa Chups: The Pleasure of Sucking.

Yes, I like to suck on a cola-flavored lolly myself. And no, I don't find failure particularly pleasant, but I suppose there's a lesson to be learned somewhere. What about you?

*****

To have never taken a solitary road trip across country? I mean everybody's got to take a road trip, at least once in their lives. Just you and some music.

At least that's what the girl in the movie said. A movie, by the way, that's left me wondering why my life is not remotely movie-like. And I'm not asking for Cameron Crowe either! I mean honestly, who expects to find John Cusack holding a boombox playing Peter Gabriel's In Your Eyes outside their bedroom window? I was kinda a groupie once, but I was no Penny Lane/Lady, and besides, Kate Hudson is Kate Hudson. And no "You had me at Hello." moments either. But.

Maybe just a time when you're in that perfect moment--whatever moment that is--and just have the perfect song play, too. Just a really good soundtrack. Is that too much to ask?

I'm reading this book where these two girls went out on a disastrous double date. On their way home, the guys sit in front, and the girls are stuck in the backseat wondering what went wrong. One of them says, "You know, if this was a movie and there was a score playing, think how great it would look." Mary Poppins had it wrong. It was music that made anything go down a little bit better.

But. I got sidetracked. A solitary road trip, just me and some music. Seems like a plan, which is why I've been thinking of going to Guimaras next weekend. See what I can or can't do, and grab some alone time at the same time: The beach, the sun, the sand. My bikini, sunblock, flipflops and sunglasses. Bunker oil lapping at the waves lapping at the shore...

I've got to get my bags packed and my iPod loaded.

*****

In other news.

The turntable is in good working order. Small miracles, small miracles. My dad isn't here yet, and I don't know when his vacation leave will push through. I've told him over the phone about the receiver, and the first reaction (which is far from the final verdict, I'm sure) was a disappointed "Oh." There's time enough for that, and as the turntable was glad to play, Un bel di vedremo.

See what I mean?

*****

You know how to whistle, don't you, Steve?

Hold me, thrill me, kiss me. Kill me.

Wow, look at her go. Three posts in five days. Unbe-fuckin'-lievable.

*****

Anyway. I have about five days to commit suicide, throw myself in front of a semi, be a victim of reckless homicide, volunteer to keep the peace in Afghanistan, etc. It won't matter any way after September 16th, because my Dad is coming home for a vacation, and he will then find out that I... That his really old, really amazing, really everything stereo receiver and possibly his Technics turntable has been fried.

And I did it. His really old-enough-to-know-better, amazingly stupid, and really in-trouble daughter.

It started out innocently enough. I wanted to listen to my CSN CD, which I haven't l heard in as long as I can remember. (And no, I am NOT that old. It's just that a month ago I went to a Spy gig at Bistro, and they played Woodstock, and Love the One You're With and the whole time I kept wishing they would play Almost Cut My Hair, which is my favorite song after Southern Cross.)

So there I was. I put in the CD in the DVD player, and turned on the stereo component and put it into "auxiliary" mode. Nothing. That Aiwa stereo's been around since forever and the buttons hardly work anymore, it's so old. I figured it must be the batteries in the remote control, so I changed them. I pressed the power button and still, nothing. The CD was playing but there were no speakers, no sound. So I fiddled around the back with the speaker cables. I figured the stereo must've conked out and nobody noticed. (It's basically just my Dad and me who like our music--me rock, him opera--loud in the house. Everybody else's fine with those lame-ass battery-operated radios and well, an iPod.) I took the cables connecting the DVD from the Aiwa stereo, and put it into the stereo receiver reserved for the turntable.

I turn it on, and again nothing. So I checked to see if it was plugged in. Mystery solved. I unplug the Aiwa from the voltage regulator, plug in the receiver in its place. Finally! I fiddle with the volume, but while the CD has been playing tracks 1 & 2 (Woodstock and Marrakesh Express) continuously, all I hear is this static... this buzzing sound. Something's wrong but I can't put my finger on it. The buzzing sound continues and seems to concentrate into a certain pitch, a certain decibel, slowly, slowly, until... KABLAM!

Well, the sound was actually more like a medium-voiced Boom! but, you know what I mean. At first I was in denial. No, that did NOT come from the receiver... which I could've gone on believing if it were not for the thick white smoke that suddenly rose up from inside the instrument. I could've ignored that, too, especially if (and I mean IF) I had been smoking something more... pleasant, I guess, than plain cigarettes, or if I'd put on a different CD, like say, The Who's Tommy, or The Kiss' Hotter Than Hell, AC/DC's Back in Black, Nirvana's Nevermind... You get the picture.

But it was the sharp stinging smell of ozone that cut it. I've smelled enough overheating electrical appliances my whole life (don't ask me why) to know when I'm in trouble. So I shut off the AVR, wave one hand uselessly to dispel the smoke while I suck hard on my cigarette with the other. Panic time. I check the voltage, and here is where the mystery's solved. So, just how much damage to my Dad's equipment, and my brain, was there? Let's just say that I didn't move in front of the receiver for a whole hour and a half, just in case the smoke disappeared but the wires inside were invisibly burning the house down.

(I was chanting, Oh God, Oh God, Oh God, like I was having great sex, except that every now and then that chant would be interrupted by, Please don't kill me, Daddy... Well, maybe that applies, too.) Uh...Ehem.

Finally convinced that the house wasn't burning down (invisibly or otherwise), I checked for damages. I unplug the receiver, and unplug the cables connecting it to the DVD player. I check the fuse area, and as if the receiver wasn't punishment enough, that's when I notice it: The Technics turntable was plugged into the receiver. Oh.My.Fucking.God.

I didn't have the courage to see if it was still working. I just couldn't. Maybe tomorrow, I'll take out one of my Dad's records and try it out. Maybe. I'm just too scared right now. Besides if I'm not sure yet that it isn't working, there's still a chance that it is, that the turntable was spared, right? Right?

It started out with that great, great song, Almost Cut my Hair. Definitely cut my head.

See you on the other side.

Love affair with love letters.

Ottawa, April 6, 1955

My dear,
aaaTime is short. Dr. Shortcliffe says it will be a matter of days, doesn't he? This is not, of course, what he tells me, but what I overheard him saying to you last night, whispering in the corridor, after I was moved to the General. My hearing has remained oddly acute.
aaaMy mind, while less acute, is at ease about financial resources for you and for the children. The house, of course, is secured--for I feel sure you would be reluctant to leave familiar surroundings, particularly your garden--and there are sufficient funds as you know for the children's education.
aaaBut you will want money for travel--why is it we have not traveled, you and I?--and for small luxuries, and it has occurred to me that you might wish to offer for sale my lady's-slipper collection. I am certain it will bring a good price... I expect you will sigh as you read this suggestion, since I know well that Cypripedium is not a genus you admire, particularly the species reginae and acaule. You will remember how we quarreled--our only quarrel as far as I can recall--over the repugnance you felt for the lady's-slipper morphology, its long, gloomy (as you claimed) stem and pouch-shaped lip which you declared to be grotesque. I pointed out, not that I needed to, the lip's functional cunning, that an insect might enter therein easily but escape only with difficulty. Well, so our discussions have run over these many years, my pedagogical voice pressing heavily on all that was light and fanciful. I sigh, myself, setting these words down, mourning the waste of words that passed between us, and the thought of what we might have addressed had we been more forthright--did you ever feel this, my love, my marginal discourse and what it must have displaced?
aaaThe memory of our "lady's-slippers" discussions has, of course, led me into wondering whether you perhaps viewed our marriage in a similar way, as a trap from which there was no easy exit. Between us we have almost never mentioned the word love. I have sometimes wondered whether it was the disparity of our ages that made the word seem foolish, or else something stiff and shy in our natures that forbade its utterance. This I regret. I would like to think that our children will use the word extravagantly, and moreover that they will be open to its forces.
aaaDo you remember the day last October when I experienced my first terrible headache? I found you in the kitchen wearing one of those new and dreadful plastic aprons. You put your arms around me at once and reached up to smooth my temples. I loved you terribly at that moment. The crackling of your apron against my body seemed like an operatic response to the longings which even then I felt. It was like something whispering at us to hurry, to stop wasting time, and I would like to have danced with you through the back door, out into the garden, down the street, over the line of the horizon. Oh, my dear. I thought we would have more time.

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaYour loving
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaBarker

From Carol Shields' The Stone Diaries.

Yes, waiting sucks.

First.
Yes, yes, I have come to the conclusion that I haven't completely gone off my rocker when I decided to ask, "Why wait?" Waiting sucks. And yes, I didn't go about the waiting, nor the ending of the waiting in the best possible way, but that's really all I can find myself to be sorry for. Because now, I hope I'm on my way to where I really want to be, instead of waiting (there's that word again) around for some good samaritan to give me a free ride. Here's to being a student again. Go me!

Second.
One of the things that drove me crazy while I was in Manila, was that my sister had had all my books shipped back to Iloilo. And so after a few weeks of re-reading the few books I brought back from Japan (which I've read a million times over there), I was beginning to go crazy. (I had read High Fidelity from middle to end, start to middle, and then start to end before I conceded that I needed help.) My sister was no help. She considers her Chemistry texts good reading, and doesn't mind rerererererererererereading Harry Potter 5 & 6 or Clavin and Hobbes. Good thing I have friends who still appreciate good fiction.

But now that I'm back in Iloilo (Yes, I went home, what's it to you?), I immediately looked through my books (Immediately after two days in front of the TV, that is.) and decided to create another Reading List. Here they are:

1. The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne
2. The Longings of Women, Marge Piercy
3. Lord Jim, Conrad
4. Kinkakuji, Mishima
5. Our Father, Bernice Rubins
6. The Shipping News, Proulx
7. Doctor Fischer of Geneva or The Bomb Party, Greene
8. Pere Goriot, Balzac
9. The Art of the Novel, Kundera
10. Love in the Time of Cholera, Garcia Marquez
11. In the Name of The Rose, Umberto Eco
12. In Cold Blood, Capote
13. The Silmarillion, Tolkien
14. The Robber Bride, Margaret Atwood
15. The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck
16. King Lear, Shakespeare
17. In the Skin of a Lion, Michael Ondaatje
18. Accordion Crimes, Proulx
19. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, McCullers
20. Leaves of Grass, Whitman

Ambitious, aren't I? Twenty books in two months? This is impossible of course. I can't even do it even if it were twenty romance novels (Hmmm... Maybe I can). Not to mention that I am still in the middle of a book that I've been reading for almost a week now (21. The Stone Diaries, Carol Shields).

Most of the books I've had forever. (The reason I have bought so many books without having read them all, aside from the excellent prices at Booksale, is that I have this fantasy of being 35 and retired(see, how lazy I am?), on a lounger on a beach somewhere with all my unread books stacked on one side and that's what I do all day--read and read and read (sunbathing and sipping mai tais) until I've read them all, then I can die in peace. Weird, huh?)

Anyway, most of them I've had since before: Some are a re-read, others recommendations, plus a smattering of the pretentious (Umberto Eco? Hello!). But the point is, I have a project for the next few weeks, and it feels good.

(Aside.
Incidentally, this going-through-my-old-books stuff has made me remember all the other books that I used to own but now I can't find--if you have borrowed a book from me and still haven't returned it (and have not given it to some girl you were hoping to impress, hahaha!), I really would like to see that book again... please. Even just to touch it and smell it again. Really. All my Kundera--from The Joke to Identity and everything in between, my Shirley Jackson short stories, even my romance novels, and all the others that I've forgotten!!! Ohmygod. I really miss those books.
So, please.)

Anyway. Third.
I tried to submit to the Ateneo Workshop, but I didn't make the deadline. (Fuck, fuck, fuck!) I had completely forgotten about it (too much waiting can actually do this to you). Anyway, being the eternal, irritating optimist, I'm now taking this failure as a sign that my newer stuff aren't that great. Haha. But I did submit some re-written, re-worked poems for publication and I hope, I hope those do better, because I sweated my ass off to rewrite them, and I do think they're good (ehem.) and, it was on time at least. (Please, please, please.)

Fourth.
This is what happens when I have been silent--on paper, on the net, vocally, even-- for so long. I reach a threshold and then I just bubble over. Drey, stop. (I have just replied to the backlog in my email. Ten or so emails in two hours, one in Japanese! Grrr.) Seriously. Stop.

Last. Promise.
One of the five that didn't make it. A re-write of an early morning writing exercise.


Patterns repeat

Like when a girl sneaks
a boy into her room after dark—
her mother had forbidden it

like the mention of the bastard
who broke away at the words
forever, chain, us versus others;

like vines having no where to go
but up walls. Circumvention
creating paths, patterns

that shouldn’t surprise any more.
The light come the morning finds—
an empty bedroom, breakfast for two—

nothing but outlines and shadows,
hints of the unspoken, the silence
of the nights to come.

Why wait?

For the almost month-and-a-half that I haven't been writing here, I have been busy and bored in turns--too busy to write, and too bored with my life to write about it. Either way, it had the same results. Whatever I have churned out lately has been fit for nothing but practicing three-point shots into my waste basket. Not all of them went in, either.

Just what have I been doing? I have been waiting and waiting and waiting. I even know what I've been waiting for:

1. I have been waiting for the poems inside my head to figure themselves out and present themselves in their most perfect versions--ready for publishing--without any involvement from me;
2. I've been waiting for a call from someone who'll say he misses me, when I should be the one to do it, because, technically, it's my turn and it's me that's yearning, and this is the reason I don't do it;
3. I've been waiting for this year to end, so I can quit my job and finally take my master's degree in literature;
   
4. I have been waiting for my life to figure itself out while I wait in the wings for my cue to enter the stage.

Crazy thing is, right in front of me, in letter-stickers on my laptop, is a motto-of-sorts I've assigned to myself years ago--Why wait?

Indeed. It's a paraphrase of my take on regret--another promise I made to myself years ago--to only regret those things I chose not to do. Yet here I am in the sidelines. Again.

And as if my life has decided to go on without waiting for me, it just zooms by with various images I can use to write those poems--a student playing the piano on his desk top while waiting for an exam to finish, his face tilted up, features crumpled in concentration as his fingers pounded on keys not-there and I could swear I heard the music spiralling from that desk to fill the whole room--and as if telling me, "There. There. And there. If you still can't write that, then I'm washing my hands of you." (Read: Maybe poetry isn't for you.)

It zooms by until one day I look up from my lecture and I realize I've fallen in love with my students. Those little brats I've been cursing for their obtuseness, for their youthful arrogance, for the fact that at that age they know as I know it is the world that waits for them. But I look at them, I see them--the stubbornness, the assuredness, that real, real confidence that everything can and will wait--and I find myself smiling even if I insist on bitterness.

And suddenly, I'm entertaining thoughts of staying for more than a year, of maybe finding myself content in this job. And it scares the shit out of me. What do I know about being content and staying there? I've left that place years and years ago and since then I've been more familiar with the constant bitterness that comes from the inseparable combination of romanticism and cynicism. I've known happy and I've known unsatisfied, but what do I know about being in between?

I don't know. Somehow, no matter how much I hate to admit it, there might not be anything for me to do but wait. Ride it out, and wait and see.

Putang ina, alas kwatro na naman.

Or, Why It's Better to Stay Locked Up in Your Room All Day, Watching CSI. But.

First things first.

To a Daughter Leaving Home
Linda Pastan

When I taught you
at eight to ride
a bicycle, loping along
beside you
as you wobbled away
on two round wheels,
my own mouth rounding
in surprise when you pulled
ahead down the curved
path of the park,
I kept waiting
for the thud
of your crash as I
sprinted to catch up,
while you grew
smaller, more breakable
with distance,
pumping, pumping
for your life, screaming
with laughter,
the hair flapping
behind you like a
handkerchief waving
goodbye.

Sounds familiar, doesn't it? This was written in 1988, and I wish I'm as ignorant now as I was then. Hell, I was probably more original, too.

*****

Second.

I don't remember when, where or who exactly, but somebody once said that I wrote poetry that was a paean to relationships, or something to that effect. I had to look up the word paean: a song of praise. And here I thought I was being cynical and unromantic. And now, another one. I don't think I like it, or that it's any good. But a paean? You decide.

Because in the Movies

They always end up together.
Or if they don’t, always
it’s with good reason.

So she left and with good reason,
she thought. She took other lovers
and tried not to

compare. If it was difficult at first,
now there was ocean and time
zones between them,

and both are never still. So what,
if she fantasized about him
showing up at her doorstep?

In her dreams, she’s opened that door
many times over, her face changing
from quizzical—she never expected it,

of course!—on to elation, her eyes
widening by degrees, like her arms.
And the embrace that followed

has been patterned and replaced
by the best reunion scenes
Hollywood has thought up.

And perhaps this practice hurried her
to that future date. Now, she stands still
at the beach instead, wondering

if the waters didn’t flow and fall
over the edge. Of the world,
was it really round?

I swear, when it was still in my head and not yet on paper, it sounded way, way better.

*****

I've had this conversation quite a few times recently, maybe even with you:

You: You always write about relationships, don't you?
Me: Yeah. I get that a lot. Some people have asked, too, "Where's your social commentary?"
You: And you say...
Me: I've tried that before, y'know, writing about what I don't know? It never worked. So I'm sticking to what I know now. Maybe when I have six screaming kids and a budget that just about balances, and I finally know that a can of formula is expensive, and just how expensive it is, then I'll write my social commentary.

But I tell you, it has gotten me thinking. Is this all I know?

Fuck fuck fuck.

Let me be your heroin/e

Perhaps it was lack of sleep, or my frustrations with where-I'm-not, or maybe it's just your garden variety PMS (You notice how these three letters explain away most of our weirdest moments? "See, hon? It's all chemical."), but I was feeling woozy and lost empty inside without the usual spinning-room complement of my vertigo attacks.

So I tried to look for an explanation, but it wouldn't come. Tried working backwards, too: experimented with different explanations hoping it would lead me to identify whatever lack it is I feel but can't locate. It didn't work either.

So I gave up, and tried to forget about it: replied to the backlog in my Inbox, slept for four hours, called my best friend. But in the background, that nagging was still there--like that pain below your shoulder blade during days you know you've smoked too much. So I looked for a word to describe how I felt, and ended up with a whole excerpt:

(Tangina, ang haba ng introduction, ano?)

*****

Heroin/e
by Cheryl Strayed

Three years after my mother died I fell in love with a man who had electric blue hair. I’d gone to Portland, Oregon, to visit a friend, seeking respite from the shambles my life had become. I had thought that by then I’d have recovered from the loss of my mother and also that the single act of her death would constitute the only loss. It is perhaps the greatest misperception of the death of a loved one: that it will end there, that death itself will be the largest blow. No one told me that in the wake of that grief other grief’s would ensue. I had recently separated from the husband I loved. My stepfather was no longer a father to me. I was alone in the world and acutely aware of that. I went to Portland for a break.

I'll call the man with electric blue hair Joe. I met him on his twenty-fourth birthday and drank sangria with him. In the morning he wanted to know if I’d like some heroin. He lived on a street called Mississippi, in North Portland. There was a whole gathering of people who’d rigged up apartments above what had been a thriving Rexall drugstore. Within days I lived there with him. In the beginning, for about a week, we smoked it. We made smooth pipes out of aluminum foil and sucked the smoke of burning black tar heroin up into them. "This is called chasing the dragon!" Joe said, and clapped his hands. The first time I smoked heroin it was a hot sunny day in July. I got down on my knees in front of Joe, where he sat on the couch. "More," I said, and laughed like a child. "More, more, more," I chanted. I had never cared much for drugs. I’d experimented with each kind once or twice, and drank alcohol with moderation and reserve. Heroin was different. I loved it. It was the first thing that worked. It took away every scrap of hurt that I had inside of me. When I think of heroin now, it is like remembering a person I met and loved intensely. A person I know I must live without.

The first time they offered my mother morphine, she said no. "Morphine is what they give to dying people," she said. "Morphine means there's no hope."

We were in the hospital in Duluth. We could not get the pillows right. My mother cried in pain and frustration when the nurses came into the room. The doctor told her that she shouldn’t hold out any longer, that he had to give her morphine. He told her that she was actively dying. He was young, perhaps thirty. He stood next to my mother, a gentle hairy hand slung into his pocket, looking down at her in the bed.

The nurses came one by one and gave her the morphine with a needle. Within a couple of weeks my mother was dead. In those weeks she couldn’t get enough of the drug. She wanted more morphine, more often. The nurses liked to give her as little as they could. One of the nurses was a man, and I could see his penis through his tight white nurse’s trousers. I wanted desperately to pull him into the small bathroom beyond the foot of my mother’s bed and offer myself up to him, to do anything at all if he would help us. And also I wanted to take pleasure from him, to feel the weight of his body against me, to feel his mouth in my hair and hear him say my name to me over and over again, to force him to acknowledge me, to make this matter to him, to crush his heart with mercy for us. I held my closed book in my hand and watched him walk softly into the room in his padded white shoes. My mother asked him for more morphine. She asked for it in a way that I have never heard anyone ask for anything. A mad dog. He did not look at her when she asked him this, but at his wristwatch. He held the same expression on his face regardless of the answer. Sometimes he gave it to her without a word, and sometimes he told her no in a voice as soft as his shoes and his penis in his pants. My mother begged and whimpered then. She cried and her tears fell in the wrong direction, not down over the lush light of her cheeks to the corners of her mouth but away from the edges of her eyes to her ears and into the nest of her hair on the bed.

I wanted it and I got it, and the more heroin we got, the stingier we became with it. Perhaps if we snorted it, we thought, we’d get higher on less. And then, of course, the needle. The hypodermic needle, I’d read, was the barrier that kept the masses from heroin. The opposite was true with me. I loved the clean smell of it, the tight clench around my arm, the stab of hurt, the dull badge of ache. It made me think of my mother. It made me think of her, and then that thought would go away into the loveliest bliss. A bliss I had not imagined.

There was a man named Santos whom we called when we wanted heroin. He would make us wait by the telephone for hours, and then he’d call and instruct us to meet him in the parking lot of a Safeway. I sat in the car while Joe took a short drive with Santos in his yellow pinto, and then Joe would calmly get back into the car with me and we’d go home. On some occasions we went to Santos' house. Once he sat in his front window with a shotgun across his lap. Once he clutched my thigh when Joe left the room and told me that if I came to see him alone he’d give me heroin free. Another time he held his baby daughter, just a month old. I looked at her and smiled and told Santos how beautiful she was, and inside of me I felt the presence of my real life. The woman who I actually was. The kind of woman who knows the beauty of a baby, who will have a baby, who once was a baby.

This is an excerpt. The entire essay can be found in The Best American Essays 2000, edited by Alan Lightman and Robert Atwan.

(Cut-and-pasted from http://www.cherylstrayed.com. See her other work, The Love of My Life, from The Best American Essays 2003, too.)

Turnabout is fair play

Turnabout
aaaaTo a Dad Leaving Home

I have left you many times.
The first, perhaps,
was when I began to root
for a different basketball team,
or argued that Dominique Wilkins
was better at the dunk
than Michael Jordan.
Or was it when I listened
to damned noisy music
and started to slam doors,
muttering that Vedder
didn’t scream as much as Callas.
The next was on my birthday,
when I insisted
on a mean mountain bike
and lessons without training wheels.

But it was in college
that distance became real.
I didn’t have to be back
at my apartment by midnight,
or two at the latest.
I learned that cigarettes are good
with beer. I fell in love—
it wasn’t with you anymore.

You, on the other hand,
have always been home. Waiting—
first, for my dreams to come true,
and then yours. Now

I want to cling and cling—
bow to His Airness, dish the dirt on Grunge,
lock every door against your own quest—
but I remember you said
that to learn to ride a bicycle
takes two people:
One to pedal like crazy
and the other, to let go.

*****

Something I wrote recently, in an attempt to sound more generous than I actually am.

When in doubt, quote other people.

Because love is often not love, and freedom not freedom, and all these words should come with government-issue quotation marks, but then you ask yourself, "Really, what's the point?" And maybe I'm just angry because we look up to Fox Mulder because he's cute, period, and sad that his truth out-there, has become elsewhere--a too-small star we don't even bother to search for during those quiet, lonely nights when we can't sleep.

And because we look for different things in our heroes...

Here are two poems:

Leaving the Motel
W. D. Snodgrass

Outside, the last kids holler
Near the pool: they'll stay the night.
Pick up the towels; fold your collar
Out of sight.

Check: is the second bed
Unrumpled, as agreed?
Landlords have to think ahead
In case of need,

Too. Keep things straight: don't take
The matches, the wrong keyrings--
We've nowhere we could keep a keepsake--
Ashtrays, combs, things

That sooner or later others
Would accidentally find.
Check: take nothing of one another's
And leave behind

Your license number only,
Which they won't care to trace;
We've paid. Still, should such things get lonely,
Leave in their vase

An aspirin to preserve
Our lilacs, the wayside flowers
We've gathered and must leave to serve
A few more hours;

That's all. We can't tell when
We'll come back, can't press claims,
We would no doubt have other rooms then,
Or other names.


Hard Rock Returns to Prison from the
Hospital for the Criminal Insane
Etheridge Knight

Hard Rock was "known not to take no shit
From nobody," and he had the scars to prove it:
Split purple lips, lumped ears, welts above
His yellow eyes, and one long scar that cut
Across his temple and plowed through a thick
Canopy of kinky hair.

The WORD was that Hard Rock wasn't a mean nigger
Anymore, that the doctors had bored a hole in his head,
Cut out part of his brain, and shot electricity
Through the rest. When they brought Hard Rock back,
Handcuffed and chained, he was turned loose,
Like a freshly gelded stallion, to try his new status.
And we all waited and watched, like indians at a corral,
To see if the WORD was true.

As we waited we wrapped ourselves in the cloak
Of his exploits: "Man, the last time, it took eight
Screws to put him in the Hole." "Yeah, remember when he
Smacked the captain with his dinner tray?" "He set
The record for time in the Hole--67 straight days!"
"Ol Hard Rock! man, that's one crazy nigger."
And then the jewel of a myth that Hard Rock had once bit
A screw in the thumb and poisoned him with syphilitic spit.

The testing came, to see if Hard Rock was really tame.
A hillbilly called him a black son of a bitch
And didn't lose his teeth, a screw who knew Hard Rock
From before shook him down and barked in his face.
And Hard Rock did nothing. Just grinned and looked silly,
His eyes empty like knot holes in a fence.

And even after we discovered it took Hard Rock
Exactly 3 minutes to tell you his first name,
We told ourselves that he had just wised up,
Was being cool; but we could not fool ourselves for long,
And we turned away, our eyes on the ground. Crushed.
He had been our Destroyer, the doer of things
We dreamed of doing but could not bring ourselves to do,
The fear of years, like a biting whip,
Had cut grooves too deeply across our backs.

There are things I'd rather do...

I'd Rather Dance With You
Kings of Convenience

I'd rather dance with you than talk with you
so why don't we just move into the other room
there's space for us to shake, and hey, I like this tune

Even if I could hear what you said
I doubt my reply would be interesting for you to hear
because I haven't read a single book all year
and the only film I saw, I didn't like it at all

I'd rather dance than talk with you

The music's too loud and the noise from the crowd
increases the chance of misinterpretation
so let your hips do the talking
I'll make you laugh by acting like the guy who sings
and you'll make me smile by really getting into the swing

I'd rather dance than talk with you

*****

My friend was complaining about a zemi (Japanese Engrish for seminar. Sounds German, doesn't it? "Ve hav ze zemi today. Zis is korekt, ja?") he has to present a in a little while. Something about some algorithm or other, where he has to present proofs, analyze algorithms and conclude something. (I'm a regular fount of information, aren't I? Check it out yourself, you lazy bastard.) Anyway, here's plan A: his presentation is supposed to be two-and-a-half hours long. He plans to bullshit for four-fifths of that time, and leave just enough time for the proof-analysis-conclusion part. Sothathe'llappeartoknowhissubjectwell. And no time at all for any questions his sensei might have. Oops, there's the bell. What's plan B, you ask? He's practicing a twelve-minute song, a capella.

Not unlike that space-filler above, eh?

But it's true. I have stuff to do, but I'd rather go dancing and drink whiskey. Who's with me?

*****

Happy Independence Day! If we can be happy about our state of "independence." But. I don't want to get into that. Maybe it's better this way: I wish everybody independence! And the only independence that matters is that we can say what we want, make our own decisions, and pursue what we really want, without being afraid or apologetic. And if we don't know what we want, then I wish for the freedom to know what it truly is, instead of just waiting for someone to point us to something, somewhere.

It's not mine, and that's why it's sooo gooood...

Tenderness
aaaaStephen Dunn

Back then when so much was clear
aaaaand I hadn’t learned
young men learn from women

what it feels like to feel just right,
aaaaI was twenty-three,
she thirty-four, two children, a husband

in prison for breaking someone’s head.
aaaaYelled at, slapped
around, all she knew of tenderness

was how much she wanted it, and all
aaaaI knew
were back seats and a night or two

in a sleeping bag in the furtive dark.
aaaaWe worked
in the same office, banter and loneliness

leading to the shared secret
aaaathat to help
National Biscuit sell biscuits

was wildly comic, which led to my body
aaaaexisting with her
like rain water that’s found its way

underground to water it naturally joins.
aaaaI can’t remember
ever saying the exact word, tenderness,

though she did. It’s a word I see now
aaaayou must be older to use,
you must have experienced the absence of it

often enough to know what silk and deep balm
aaaait is
when at last it comes. I think it was terror

at first that drove me to touch her
aaaaso softly,
then selfishness, the clear benefit

of doing something that would come back
aaaato me twofold,
and finally, sometime later, it became

reflexive and motiveless in the high
aaaaignorance of love.
Oh abstractions are just abstract

until they have an ache in them. I met
aaaaa woman never touched
gently, and when it ended between us,

I had new hands and new sorrow,
aaaaeverything it meant
to be a man changed, unheroic, floating.

The Drought

Say, if I told you,
I’m listening to sad songs,
songs of departures
and I’m drunk and I’m alone.
Would your chest fill, too
as if with swirling winds
of a storm; your heart,
will it clutch in desperation
as before the tearing?

I have tried and tried,
and I wanted to tell you:
I want to wake up beside you again.
Or, I want to feel the rough
stubble of your cheeks on my skin.
And, I don’t want to forget
the sound of your laughter.

Inside, my chest
is an ocean of tears,
rolling and pitching and never still.
But my eyes are dry,
and my throat is parched.

And we are both silent.

Nostalgia

Here, take a seat
with your grandmother and listen
to her breathing:
Does the rhythm sometimes falter?
And with it your heart too, stutters.

Fast forward to the time
ahead. Days, weeks, months, years
when you sit on this same bench alone.
Suddenly your heart roars in protest,
and you have to stop the hands

from grabbing her; clutching her
to your side to make her stay!
But I tell you, listen.
Her breaths whisper, Be calm,
I am here yet with you.

Take this time
now. Imagine yourself
Odysseus on the shores of Ithaca.
The journey must occur.
And home, home will always wait.

Different Versions

I wonder why it comes as a surprise: It's difficult to write when you've just come from a workshop.

I guess the critic's voice is still too loud in your head, or you hear your poem crying everytime you try to touch it. (Oh god. That did NOT sound right.)

But still. You did something wrong the first time (or even on the seventh, eighth version...) and you need to take a step back before you can get a handle on it again. Or so this is my excuse.

I've been re-writing, kind of. But only those poems that were not tackled during the workshop! Haha. So here's a couple: I think the older versions are buried somewhere in this blog.

*****

Forgetting is an Erosion

So here, now, let me paint you
a picture: There is a fountain.
The girl, her head bowed
as the coin flips in the air,
is in the middle of a wish.

The morning is blue and gold,
and a slight breeze is stirring
the leaves of the trees.
On the corner, the baker’s
wife sweeps their storefront.

With this picture, know:
I am the unseen baker,
as I am the wife.
I am the girl; I am the breeze;
I am the fountain and its eternal flow.

Yourself, re-paint this picture
in your head, in your heart
for I leave all this to the rain.
But as the colors wash
and bleed to nothingness,

picture the coin, that glimmer
of promise suspended,
the wish spoken, though yet unfulfilled.
This is for you, what you want most
to last forever.


How to be Cold

How cold begins: a mass
in contact with a hotter entity.

How at a touch, at an instant
heat is transferred, absorbed, sucked
into the frigid body
desperate for equilibrium.

How my fingers steal
the warmth from your cheeks.

How, at that touch
you flinch
and register nothing else
but the difference in temperature.

*****

There you go. One good thing about the end of the workshop, though, is that for a moment, you can call a timeout to all the criticizing. If only you could get the voice in your head to shut up, too.


PS. This is the ultimate cop-out. I had a poem called Different Versions which got butchered in Dumaguete (I was called a culprit for this one! I think its earlier self was published as Stories or something in this blog). Both need a major overhaul. Instead, I re-write these other two poems which were never tackled, and had the nerve to title this post "Different Versions." Haha. Sometimes I kill myself. Somebody slap me!