eavesdropping

I am in the front seat, beside the driver of a passenger jeep. To my left sits the driver's friend holding fliers of luxury condominiums. He eats peanuts from a tiny paper bag while admiring his acne scars in the side view mirror.

“Pare, don't you know that peanut is food for the brain?” he bellows in Tagalog to the driver. Without looking at him, the driver replies, “But you don't have a brain!”

The jeep turns right and a famous beer factory comes in full view. Cases of beer are being loaded into huge trucks parked within its premises. Acne Scar guy, again, shouts to the driver:
“Pare, look at those trucks! They're brimming with beer! Anak ng puta (Son of a whore), I'd love to have just one of those!”
“Oh, you're such a bore when you're drunk. You're always catatonic,” the driver says, making his best impression of Acne Scar guy's catatonic state. “I'm better than you when I'm drunk. I'm always happy.” Me too, I think. I mean, come on, what the heck is alcohol for if not to bring happiness to humankind? The gods created it to palliate the sufferings of the people.

I need a drink right away, I say to myself. It is obvious that Acne Scar guy also needs one. When the jeep speeds past a chain of shanties, vulcanizing shops, beauty parlors, and gas stations, he looks around and faces the driver again.
“Pare, there are always drinking sprees on this street, no?”
“We'll have ours, too, when Oktoberfest arrives. We will go to Ever,” the driver says.
“But that's not where they celebrate Oktoberfest!”
“Oh yes, stupid! It's celebrated everywhere, as long as you have beer.”

We stop at an intersection. Further ahead, the road rises up into a wide fly-over. Three girls wearing shorts approach the driver and thrust the sampaguita (fragrant Philippine flower) garlands they are selling. One of them, the eldest, who must be around fourteen years old, is wearing eyeliner and eyeshadow. The two younger girls, who are unbelievably pretty, resemble each other; sisters, no doubt. The girl with make-up smiles and holds out her empty hand without saying anything. The driver hands her some coins, payment for the garlands he has taken the other day.

“Buy this one too,” she demands.
“I've got no more dough,” the driver replies.
“You don't have to pay today. You can pay tomorrow, same arrangement.”
“No,” he is stern. He notices the youngest of the girls, who coyly holds up her flowers to him. “This girl's beautiful. Come here, pretty little thing!”
The girl approaches and automatically hands him a garland. The driver takes it and pays for it.
“Oh but take mine, too,” the girl with make-up says.
“No, I can only buy one today,” with that, the driver steps on the gas and the vehicle speeds up. I notice that the two pretty girls are barefoot as they walk away.
“Pare, those girls' mom must be very gorgeous, no?” I am relieved that Acne Scar guy hints at a desire for the mother, not for the kids.

The jeep traverses the flyover. Traffic is getting heavier. Acne Scar guy suddenly croaks out a line from some cheesy song. His voice is hoarse but loud and clear.
“You have a good singing voice, so full and rich,” the driver comments.
“Oh yes, pare! Wait till you hear me belt out 'Skylight Pigeon,'” and he shouts the first few bars of the song, as if sarcasm were a compliment. A minuscule piece of chewed peanut darts out of his mouth and lands on my right arm. I discreetly wipe it on my pants so as not to embarrass the singer. He notices it anyway. And he is not embarrassed.

I get off under a steel overpass painted in searing pink. The jeep zooms away, billows of smoke trailing behind it. I head toward the sidewalk, ruminating over the romance of public transportation in this country.

i died

In a dream, I stand at the end of a long hall whose sides are lined with huge glass windows that let in the early afternoon sun. There are two rows of sewing machines. Humped over them are workers busily running cloths under their crude machines' rhythmically stabbing needles. I am wearing a dark suit without a tie and I watch them with apathy.

I see three bullets suddenly zoom from nowhere and hit me. I feel the bullets rend my clothes and lodge themselves into my flesh. They are neither hot nor painful, just icy. The speed with which this happens is almost cinematic. Like worms seeking comfort from some imagined persecution, the three bullets slowly inch their slimy bodies into my muscles. I feel every tissue tear and every ligament snap loose.

I fall on the concrete floor face first, dead. I know I am dead because my heart has stopped beating and my body has turned limp. I can feel my blood freeze inside my veins. I lay there for a while until my left forefinger starts twitching. A woman notices me, approaches me, and feels my pulse. “He's still breathing,” she shouts. There is a flurry of rustling skirts and slippers scraping against the polished floor as the workers rise from their boring task to attend to me. The scene slowly fades into darkness.

I limp out of the heavy sliding door of my deceased grandmother's ancient, crumbling house. I am supported on either side by two friends whose faces I don't recognize. They are in a mad rush to get me to the hospital. They are bawling commands left and right, urging everyone to make haste but I don't see anyone except the three of us.

I remain calm and disinterested, still not feeling the pain of the bullet wounds. We reach the garage and one of them opens the gate, which creaks at it swings. A 1940s cab pulls up. One of them says something about the car being too small for us. They bawl orders again but I don't understand them. We nevertheless get inside the car and cramp ourselves at the backseat like Jews on their way to a concentration camp. I feel tired. Just tired.

I remember seeing the road through the cab's windshield. The sun, somewhat milder now, lightly bathes the asphalted road with yellow light. It jars my vision.

And then I wake up.

let's beat street kids to death, they're not human!

I was reading John Bayley to while away the time as I queued for my ticket at the train station. He was talking about his boredom as a bourgeois kid in a golf course somewhere in Littlestone, England in the 1930s. His hobby was to collect used golf balls and bury them in the sand like crocodile's eggs.

This childhood nostalgia was cut short when I heard a commotion. A few paces from where I was standing, a security guard lifted a long cane and brandished it in the air. A boy, a street kid, wearing a soiled, oversize blue shirt and a pair of blackened shorts, cowered on the ground beside him, refusing to stand up. I thought the guard merely wanted to scare him off the train station's premises because beggars weren't allowed there, but he grabbed his scrawny arm to make him stand and whacked him hard on the butt. The child pretended it didn't hurt. Not a sound came from him but the impact sent him sprawling on the floor. He covered his behind with his grimy hands.

The guard forcefully dragged him away and sent the cane whirring down again. I'm not sure which body part it hit because I turned away and looked at the violent scene again just in time to see the boy grimace in pain. Still, not a sound came from him. His face was again stern and resolute, the grimace having faded as soon as it appeared. The people who were impatiently queuing for their train tickets craned their necks to get a better look. Some women gasped. But most of them surveyed the incident with curiosity, if not with indifference.

The guard dragged the boy toward the stairs, beat him some more, this time more vigorously, and hurled him down the steps. The boy, of course, did not fall as he got hold of the railing and clung there like a cat under attack. The guard turned away and walked proudly back to the station. I heard some unintelligible cuss words from the boy and then something flew and hit the guard's nape. From afar, it just looked like an empty plastic bottle of water or something lighter. Infuriated, the guard turned and ran toward the stairs again, his stick and his truncheon ready to attack.

They exchanged curses and threats. He, no doubt, hit him again with his two weapons because I saw both his cane and his club rising and falling from behind the low concrete walls of the stairwell.

Having beaten down his enemy, the guard hurriedly went back to his post. He had the air of a soldier who had just done something patriotic for his country. Apparently, the boy wasn't ready to surrender. He ran up the stairs again and shouted in Tagalog: “You son of a whore! You can only do such things because you're a guard! You wait and see!” And he let loose more Tagalog expletives.

I got my ticket and walked with big strides toward the turnstiles. I had seen and heard more than I should. I stowed Bayley's book inside my bag, suddenly losing interest in reading about the travails of rich, English school boys.

crater

I only felt solemn awe when we finally reached the summit of Mount Pinatubo. The sun had already sunk but its last rays were still emanating an eerie glow from behind the mountains, extremely faint but sufficient enough. It gave the whole place a misty but ghastly appearance, like a lurid dream you wouldn’t want to wake up from. The lake that had been formed inside the crater during its last eruption was hemmed in by rock mountains all around, creating a deep, irregularly shaped basin of still, pinkish gray waters. After drinking in the scene while the cold mountain air lashed at my cheeks, I hurriedly put out my camera and whored in front of it with Noelle, Eric, Glenna, and Allan before darkness finally sucked in the whole scenery into its underbelly.

I wasn’t so keen on joining them in this trip because I had just had my dental implant screwed into my skull. I was afraid that I might get so tired walking it would bleed, or worse, come off. However, after consulting with my implant dentist, I finally said yes at the last minute, causing Glenna to conclude that, in any trip, I always say I wouldn’t go but I push through on the eleventh hour. I’m glad I did. I have never camped yards away from the crater of an active volcano before. This was the first time.

It felt like we were hobbits on our way to Mordor to cast the ring into its fiery bowels. Around us was a vast expanse of rock and sand. Dust rose in billowing volumes. The sides of the mountain range seemed like they had been cleanly sliced off by some enormous knife, revealing the powdery filling within. In between these mountain ranges, we trekked through a wide desert-like path that, only a few years ago, was raging with lahar from the summit. I wondered if lahar could really be so powerful as to have this singular effect on something as huge as a mountain. I kept imagining chocolate encrusted marshmallows that had been cut in half, only, in this case, the chocolate was green and the marshmallow light gray.

Boulders as big as houses were strewn all around. A stream, which widened into a sprightly river and narrowed into a trickling brook at some parts, flowed along with us. A natural guide toward the crater, I suppose. Just follow the bouncing, gushing waters and you’ll get to the top. At some parts of the stream, we could see greenish brown deposits that were remnants of its volcanic origin, no doubt. It was a constant reminder that we were on our way to a volcano, not just any other mountain.

The way was fairly flat. We only climbed when we were quite near the crater; the path was a narrow strip of water-soaked boulders flanked by lush foliage. As Noelle said, it was a hike with “no assaults” at all. Despite Eric’s advice not to drink water during the climb (I forgot why exactly), I still gulped from my metal flask. I couldn’t help it. It energized me. Water was to me what lembas was to hobbits. Sorry for the constant allusion to Tolkien’s epic but that’s what I was reading at that time. Yeah, I know, it’s too late to jump into the Hobbit trilogy bandwagon.

There were still Aeta communities somewhere in the mountains for we bumped into some of them on the way. They had surveyed us with either boredom or curiosity. Here go the stupid tourists again with their cameras, they must’ve thought. There was a cave from whose aperture peered a family of Aetas. I’m not sure if they actually lived there or were just taking a respite from the beatings of the horrid sun. Allan later said that our guide pointed to a human skull half-covered by sand and said that it was an Aeta who had perished in lahar. The Aetas are short, dark-skinned indigenous people with strong white teeth and huge Afros. They were mountain dwellers and hunters until Mount Pinatubo erupted in the nineties, unleashing tons of lahar that ravaged mountains, houses, cattle, and people. They were said to have evacuated to some site which was under the care of the government. But like everything that is government-run, this settlement didn’t have anything that could sustain them so they had no choice but to go back to the mountain and start anew atop the bones of their kinsmen.

We paid for a military escort in full battle gear, something that was compulsory for all trekkers. This was obviously just a money-making scheme, according to our guide who was a native of the place. The military saw something they could possibly milk for some cash that’s why they demanded that they become part of it. I couldn’t understand what the heck they attempted to protect us from, not unless skeletons of wild animals that had resurrected from their sandy graves regularly prowled this area. Anyway, this gives you a rough idea what type of government we have in this part of the world. When the escort started getting friendly with us, chatting us up beside our tent and accepting offers of refreshments, I got really uneasy. I don’t trust men in uniform. That’s something you’ll learn if you live long enough in this country. Noelle, an erstwhile activist who had battled against riot police in many anti-government rallies, later commented that the soldier and his armalite also made her uncomfortable.

But that didn’t spoil the fun of course. Eventually, the guy went off to a tent which his ilk pitched, leaving us in peace as we serenely listened to soothing guitar music from Noelle’s ipod plugged to a tiny speaker. Tone it down, Glenna said, we might disturb the tent beside us. We did and the music became even more enchanting, a soft undercurrent eddying in and out of our hushed conversation. The air was chilly and the stars burned vigorously. Other groups had already set up camp near us. The darkness was just broken by flashlights and battery powered lamps glowing from within the tents. Eric, as usual, was in charge of cooking our food. With a black, tie-dyed sarong (a large rectangular piece of cloth) draped around me, I silently enjoyed the place. I never said this to any of my companions at that time lest I sound like some new age mystic, but I really felt at peace with myself and with nature at that moment. And to think that we were on the edge of a crater that could erupt any minute.

The next morning dawned hesitatingly. Sunlight brushed against the mountain tops at first and slowly crept down to the lake. Despite that, the water didn’t shimmer. It still appeared misty to me like watercolor washes in an impressionist painting. We went down the lake to wash our feet. The water was still icy. There were tiny bubbles in some parts which suggested that there were creatures in its depths, or vents, or, damn, was it starting to boil? For something that’s boiling, this was pretty cold. The other campers soon went down by the bank too. One foreigner took his shirt off and plunged into the lake. I wanted to do that but the water was so damn cold. And besides, we had been warned not to stay in the water for more than twenty minutes, otherwise its sulfur content or whatever substance it has, will burn our skin. Although at that time, I sort of didn’t care anymore what the elements could do to my skin. The dust and the sand had already wreaked enough havoc on our pores as our sturdy four-wheeler braved the roughness of the terrain during the first half of our trip the day before. It’s free face powder, Glenna commented.

The truck crossed shallow rivers and trenches, and braved sharp rocks, leaving a trail of disturbed lahar deposits swirling in its wake. The ride was an adventure in itself. There were times when I felt that the vehicle would topple over and send us rolling on the sand. But it never did. The tires were huge and strong, the driver experienced and determined. For a time, the drive seemed endless. We could see nothing but grayness and some greenery up on the cliffs. After about two hours (believe me, it felt more than that) we finally stopped at the foot a moss covered boulder where we met our other companions, the other group that was set to conquer the volcano’s summit, too. They were pretty organized. They formed a circle for a short briefing, to which I listened, and followed it by a prayer, about which I didn’t give a hoot.

They were fairly slow because it was a large group and some of them couldn’t walk fast so we decided to overtake them and walk ahead, thereby making us the very first group to reach the summit that day. It was exhilarating to arrive there without seeing tents that could mar the view. All I felt was awe. Solemn awe. Standing face to face with an enormous opening into the depths of the earth is not something I get to do every day, much less admire something that has caused so much anguish, pain, death, and suffering to hundreds of people. As the horizon slowly dimmed, the crater took on a somber, misty appearance, showing its most ghastly face at the last dying rays of the sun.

swollen

Five days after I banged my forehead on a glass wall at the company party, I could still feel it slightly swollen. I was way too drunk to recognize who laughed at my booboo. I didn’t care, really. If it had happened to any of them, I would’ve guffawed more boisterously. All I knew was that I hit the damned glass wall too hard because when I turned, all of them were looking at me. And possibly laughing, too. I wasn’t sure. At any rate, it was a swell party that left my forehead swollen. Funny, but that’s exactly the image that flashes in my mind when I think about that party: swollen.

It started docilely like a prayer meeting as people arrived dressed in black, white, or both at the hall decorated with black and white balloons. Obviously, it’s a black and white party. But I love stating the obvious, so there. The chandeliers were deliberately not turned on. Only tiny downlights provided soft, sleepy incandescent glow to the whole place, which, at that time, seemed more like a fund-raising event in the country club of botoxed matrons. Anyone can look like a botox image model without booze. At that time, wine wasn’t overflowing yet, it was merely trickling, droplet after seductive droplet.

A chocolate fondue fountain was flowing by the entrance, which was flanked by two buffet tables laden with miso soup, sushi, sashimi, tempura, and some other Japanese mutations, blueberry cheesecake, some really tasty noodle thingie, and fish, I think, and some shit, hell, you can’t expect me to remember what the heck they served there. I puked them all out five hours later in the restroom at Starbucks, after having asked for directions from four unbelievably sober officemates at the other table, who, seeing that I was as bloated with booze as a lactating cow’s udder (wouldn’t it be nice if udders squirted tequila instead of milk?), coaxed me to speak French. The American goaded me to speak Tagalog. Freak show mode. But I digress. Where was I, oh yes, the party. At dinner, my wine glass magically filled itself up every time I emptied it. I made a mental note to remember who catered this party. If ever I would throw a party, I want my guests to do the backstroke in a pool of wine. Later on, somebody from HR passed around vodka in a funky bottle that looked like a dildo. I just gulped whatever was handed to me and continued to dance like a hippopotamus with a bad case of hernia. Did I mention I had colleagues who are part of bands that have regular gigs? There, now I did. So there, I danced, hernia and all, and I only have a vague recollection of who exactly I danced with. All I remember is that they were either in black or white. I dragged one of them up the stage where we danced some more, and yeah, there were cameras all around. I whored for the cam whenever I saw one. I borrowed a white, feathery halo from one of the organizers and wore it the whole night. Horns would’ve looked better on me but I don’t want to be a walking cliché. When everybody else was losing all their inhibitions, I decided to keep mine intact and pretended that I was holy. One wore a stuffed panda on her arm, one wore a white wig, and the big boss had a huge Afro. And I mean nest-of-a-fucking-ostrich huge! By this time, I had no idea what songs were being sung by the performers. All I knew was that I was dancing and camera-whoring. I grabbed the camera from a friend, went up the stage, and photographed the singer’s bare foot. I don’t know what else I took photos of. For a while I felt the place was bobbing up and down. That was the time when I was jumping. Or was I? Maybe everybody else was, except me. I gulped some more wine and downed the fresh glass of vodka given to me. Yup, the place was really moving. This was the swollen part of the event, I guess. From there on, it was pretty much downhill. Some people were already leaving to continue the party at some club. I caught the managers line-dancing onstage. I was too wasted to notice the other wasted people around. I hugged some coworkers goodbye and headed out to Starbucks to puke. At the coffeeshop, I was the only one who was that drunk so I shut up and dozed off as they took pictures of me, which are now plastered all over the Net. At some point, I remember having said that I would never drink wine again, ever! But of course, we say stupid, nonsensical things when we’re drunk. And that’s my standard line whenever I feel like puking. At least, I’ve learned my lesson. And I’ve learned it hard. Glass doors and alcohol don’t mix.

knots

When strangers meet, they don’t normally talk about forever. The most they will do is go over the perfunctory hellos and how-do-you-dos with as much emotion as ritualized introductions allow. They don’t have an inkling that, later on, they will stain the sheets with sweat, saliva, and other fluids of passion, and by the time it happens, they will have tied more knots than they could ever hope to untie in one lifetime.

guava tree

You won’t find me sitting on a tree branch and drinking in the breeze, soft against my skin. Those days are long past. Too far removed from what I have become. Like the last time I climbed down the guava tree in our backyard, never to climb it up again, not so much because I outgrew the tree as because the tree grew weary of my presence. You know too much for your own good, it said. Innocence is the prerequisite of childhood fantasy. And I was losing that, inch by inch. Was it not the point of education? To erode innocence and replace it with doubt? Or did I equate innocence with ignorance and antagonized the two?

To put me to sleep, my grandmother used to sing an ancient folk tune that spoke of a huge moon and a woman yearning for her lover, while I thought about my playmates who were out in the sun, playing backyard football. My grandmother noticed that I wasn’t in the mood for a siesta. With a slap on my behind, she sent me off, murmuring some cusswords which I had yet to learn and enunciate properly. I felt guilty then. I wasted her time and her saliva. It was not easy to sing songs like that. And it was easy to feel guilty back then, when days were long and afternoons lazed around shamelessly.

It was so much fun to be a kid again and be capable of just one emotion at a time. Cry when you’re pissed. Jump when you’re happy. Hit the idiot next door when you’re mad. But everything is ambiguous now. Nothing is classifiable. No definitive answer to anything. Which is what I have always wanted, really. When my diffidence as a child was replaced by assertiveness as an adult, something slipped away so stealthily I hardly noticed it. Or had it been there in the first place? Much of the boy still lingered within, perhaps nursed by my artistic proclivities. It only came out when I felt like climbing the guava tree again, which had long been cut. On its site yawns an ugly hole on the ground which should have been the foundation of a new house my family wanted to construct there.

If I were a poet, I would’ve waxed poetic about all these and romanticized even the guavas that dangled in that tree. But I am not. And there is not much to sugar coat anyway. Childhood memories are intrinsically sweet, until reality grows like an incurable pimple and nothing is the same again. Beliefs get flushed down the toilet, emotions become more complex, songs no longer speak about a huge moon and a yearning woman but of an evil sun that whips the ground until it breaks and gushes forth black mud, thick and ugly like a child’s rhyme swelling epical with a convoluted plot and twisted characters, each desiring to bring down the other in a mad rush to get to the top and to feel some semblance of an emotion, like that feeling that one gets while one sits on a tree branch, feet dangling, face upturned—drinking the breeze that is soft against one’s young skin. But that tree exists only in one's memory.

music and rust

“At least you made it sound like music,” I commented. My friend smiled. The French horn swelled like pus, and then receded, sucking back in every note as if it were a shy child. Only the piano accompanied the soprano onstage.

“The pianist's rhythm is wrong. That's not how I wrote it,” my friend said. He had arranged all the songs for this book and made them sound like they weren't disjointed Lego blocks. When he was commissioned to do this, all he had received were crudely transcribed melodies. He fixed the harmony, added accompaniment, and straightened up the rhythms. The final products sounded elegantly polished. There were parts for flute, piano, French horn, and a choir. He was not allowed to touch the words though, which grated against the glistening music. It was like having rust in your milk.

“Pretty didactic, no?” my friend murmured. His talent, apparently, goes beyond music, he can also make the most understated understatements. “I'm thinking of writing new lyrics for one of the melodies,” he added. He could probably present it to the 86-year-old composer/lyricist who, after having met him for the first time that afternoon (they had only communicated through email prior to that event), said that she would have more work for him. She has more songs that need to be arranged. She needs all the help she could get, no doubt about that.

After the event, the audience flowed out of the small auditorium toward the lobby where cocktails were served. I spotted some high profile personages in the academe and literature. The old composer/lyricist was herself a distinguished person when she was younger.

At the lobby, high-heeled matrons swarmed around us. Introductions were made and congratulations were thrown in. My friend meekly smiled as professors and school officials commended him for a job well done, vainly suppressing their astonishment at how young he is. “Are you still a student?” one of them asked. “No, ma'am,” my friend simply said. The lobby sagged with the weight of excited chitchat. Waiters scurried in and out, serving drinks and some finger foods. My friend was dragged back into the auditorium to be introduced to the composer/lyricist. The choir and the musicians beamed with every flattering phrase they received. Some stray camera flashbulbs punctuated the crowd like sequins of a fully-beaded ball gown. Guests started queuing by the buffet table as manufactured laughter ricocheted against the ceiling. I took some food and melted into the wall.

the blender within

When words come out bland, I let my mind wander in some hard to reach corner of my being, hoping that it would find some gleaming phrases there. All it finds, however, are pieces of scrap metal strewn on the musty floor, rusting away but refusing to be thrown into the garbage bin. Some memories can be adamant like leeches. Or are they indeed memories? Or mere wads of thoughts that got stuck there after I have put off a major cleanup again for the umpteenth time? Cleaning up is a nasty business. How can I defragment a soul that frowns upon categorization? Everything is so mixed up in there I'm starting to think it has some sort of blender that eternally grinds down everything—memories, thoughts, ideas, emotions—to a mush, unrecognizable in its gooey viscosity. Now if you could find some words in that mess, lucky you. I can't. My mind should wander elsewhere.

the eyes of a father

It was like the old times. My high school friend and I chatted animatedly about politics and business. Our conversation swung from being highly contemplative to mildly perky. He related his experiences when he supervised the construction of mobile phone towers in war-torn Mindanao (Southern Philippines), how the rebels in the boondocks demanded that his team of civil engineers pay revolutionary taxes to be allowed to continue their construction; how they were forced to hire gun-wielding rebels as workers; and how one of them actually discovered a murdered man on the site. There was even one instance when one of his colleagues, also an engineer who spoke Bisaya (local dialect widely spoken in Mindanao), overheard two armed boys talking:

“Can you shoot the guy working on top of that tower?”

“And what would I get if I did that?”

“I'll give you a pack of cigarettes”

The engineer, horrified at what he had heard, spoke to them in their own dialect and offered them one pack of Marlboro each in exchange for his colleague's life. The boys, fortunately, readily agreed and left.

I said he was lucky he didn't perish there. He had tried to blend in, he said. He had worn shorts and faded shirts at work so as not to attract undue attention to himself. That was just a minor inconvenience he had endured so that he could return in one piece to his wife and hyper-active little daughter in Manila.

We proceeded to speak about the economy, corruption in government (sorry for being redundant), businesses we could put up, and the unimplemented law that requires the demolition of buildings older than thirty years. He spoke in a quiet voice, still with his familiar lisp. He was more articulate than he had ever been. Despite his lack of sleep, his mind was still clear. Such conversations are best accompanied by clinks of beer bottles and punctuated by crisp laughter. This time, however, I was merely gulping water from a transparent plastic cup and he sipping coffee, our smiles were dry and somber for we were seated in front of the tiny coffin of his four-month old son. Wreaths of flowers, two mass cards, and an inflated Dalmatian dog swamped the white, gold-trimmed coffin, making it look grotesquely puny in their midst.

“Look at his eyes,” he said, pointing to a large picture of the boy on top of the coffin. “Those are the only parts of his body that weren't punctured by tubes at the hospital.” The boy's eyes stared back at us in all their innocence. They were big and bright but they didn't sparkle with dreams yet. They never had the chance to.

This was the only time I sort of missed my friend's corny jokes, for which he had been infamous way back in high school. We used to pull our collars up to our foreheads to conceal our faces, in mock shame over his horribly corny retorts. We even coined the adjective “belty” in his honor. This was in reference to the Circum Pacific Belt, the string of underwater trenches and volcanoes in Asia, which we were studying in geography class at that time. He undoubtedly oozed with the corniest lava there was.

“The doctors told us that 85 percent of those who have this condition survive. My son was part of the 15 percent who didn't. He put up a good fight, though. I knew he did.” He stared blankly at the coffin, a faint, sad smile twisted on his lips. I didn't really want to speak about his boy as I knew that he had told the story to every visitor at the wake ten million times already. It's hard enough to go through the experience once, it's horrible to relive it repeatedly in a narrative. But he didn't stop talking so I silently listened, my eyes involuntarily drawn to the ribbons pinned on the coffin's lid. There is consolation in giving shape to grief through words.

“We did some research on the net regarding his condition,” he continued. “In a way, we were prepared for whatever would happen. I'm not sure if our own research scared us more or prepared us further. All we knew was that we didn't want to give up. We won't just sit around and watch him slip away like that.”

He was unusually calm and composed, enunciating every word with clarity. Would that I have the same fortitude to face sorrow. It wasn't helpless resignation that I saw in his eyes. It was brave acceptance. The kind that one sees in the eyes of a soldier who knows he is about to die and yet pushes on, valiantly. A lost cause is only arrived at by cowards.

“At least my son won't experience how grim this world is.” After having spoken about the government, brain drain, and unemployment, we both agreed that the boy had died blissfully unaware of how ugly the world is. But he would also be regrettably incognizant of how his father stood by his side every single step of his painfully short life; how he clasped his tiny hands and whispered prayers into his ears; how he marveled at his (the boy's) bright eyes in those rare moments when he actually opened them at the hospital.

I was wrong. This was not like the old times. This was something else.

and then it comes thundering down

The rainy season in Manila is both harsh and silky. With the first rumor of rain, decaying buildings leer and shanties yawn upwards to welcome the free shower. Tricycle tires unabashedly displace puddles of mud, splashing them against the Benzes and BMWs of the affluent or the pretentious.

Cusswords are exchanged on the street like pleasantries as holes the size of moon craters magically appear on asphalted roads, further screwing up the already screwed up traffic and inducing armpit sweat despite the cold weather. Half-naked boys with their soapy rags clamber up cars and frantically wipe their windshields until they become dirtier than they have originally been, and then they ask for some loose change.

Children cavort in the streets as only children can, dancing, shrieking, calling each other names in a language that is a cross between cherubic parlance and thuggish slang. It is like a pagan celebration, a paean to the rain god for relieving his bladder onto the parched earth.

The rain has its own language, too. It murmurs sweet drizzles that tickle galvanized roofs held in place only by huge rocks, pieces of hollow blocks, and spare tires. When its fickleness reaches its peak, it thunders and pounds and stomps with a deluge of malicious words that pour down and rid the gutters of cigarette butts, candy wrappers, and used condoms. It does not relent. Like a matron in the throes of menopausal lunacy, it charges on and on, lashing at everything on its way until what's left are tiny, crystal droplets on fresh leaves that trickle down if you so much as breathe on them. Clear water streaming down the gutter like a virgin brook. Fresh, pristine puddles that hold the luminous sky on their greasy surfaces. And crinkled, mucus-filled noses that release their wards in passionate and intense sneezes.

Ah yes, tomorrow will be another rainy day.

dead face

I’ve been tossing and turning in bed and it’s already half past fucking four. Sunday mornings ought to be hazy and glittery as the hangover of the previous night starts to kick in. But no, I’m here, in my room, totally sober, trying to figure out ways on how I could doze off after counting three thousand, eight hundred sixty-four and a half sheep. I tried reading Harper Lee’s Pulitzer award winning novel but the letters just swam on the page like a bowl of dyslexic alphabet soup. So I got up to stare at my face in the mirror. I got scared with what I saw. Except for my shifty eyes under my bushy unibrow, I looked dead. This is how I would probably look inside my coffin—parched lips, dry skin, and glassy eyes (assuming that the mortician forgot to forcefully close my eyelids). I tried making faces but they all seemed as dull and lifeless as Jennifer Lopez’s acting. Now that’s really bad. Maybe I can become a Hollywood actor and contribute to the betterment of the human race by starring in B movies with plots only morons would applaud. That’s a good thought. But it doesn’t fare better than counting stupid sheep. Maybe I should try banging my head against the wall. But where’s the fun in that? If it were, say, my neighbor’s head, I would relish the experience, maybe even consider it divine. Or am I just envious of my cocaine-sniffing neighbor who is snoring his innards out while I’m still wide-awake, my face getting puffier every minute and looking more like a drug junkie than he ever could? And is the sky brightening up now or is it the hallucinatory effect of lack of sleep? I have to get back to bed. Now.

can the dawn be this bland?

The jeep sped through so fast the trees lining the highway melted into one long greenish blur. The horizon was bleeding purple streaks. Several kilometers down, Manila was still twinkling with specs of white light against a background of black mud. The smog hovering above it made the city seem less carnal. Everything tends to look so calm from this vantage point. Even a lynch mob would look like a quiet throng of termites going about their normal routine when viewed from above. No excitement whatsoever. No passion. No histrionics. No drama.

The skies were slowly blushing pinks and purples as the sun agonizingly tore its way up, ever so slowly. Carbon monoxide perfumed the cool air with mystery and hate. The houses along the highway slip by like insignificant weeks. Weeks that are littered by unrealized dreams and shelved projects that eventually decay in my closet, weakly wagging their tails for attention. I have long stopped keeping track of events because it keeps me boxed. The memories of which keep on sauntering back like they wanted to hang out with me.

I cannot say that I am dejected nor can I claim that I am ecstatic, like this delicious dawn. This feeling doesn't even come close to ennui. Such ambivalence can eat up the soul. It is infinitely better to feel some strong emotion, any emotion, and wallow in it than feel the silence of undecided thoughts. The soothing calmness that comes before a tidal wave can be unnerving. It kills more ferociously than the wave ever could. I do have some minor distractions, pinches of excitement, and slight surprises. But as a whole, the days just breeze by and I float with them, disemboweled, an ordinary tree lining the highway, smugly content in melting away into a greenish blur against a horizon that has just spit out a young, clueless sun.

scales and arpeggios

I had my first piano lesson last Sunday. And I never thought it would be that stressful. It was not because of the teacher. No, she wasn't Helga the Barbarian with thick-rimmed glasses, stiffly coiffed hair, ill-fitting dentures, and a long-sleeved blouse with ruffles on the cuffs. And she didn't have a stick to whack my fingers with. She was just wearing a tight-fitting shirt and an extremely short pair of shorts. Appropriately so. It was a blazing late afternoon. Dust particles lay suspended in the rays of the sun dilating through her apartment windows. None of these rays reached the bench upon which I was sitting. The upright grand was tucked in a tiny air-conditioned cubicle below the stairs. Inside that box, I labored hard to get those damn arpeggios right. And that was the source of all my stress.

My main problem was incorrect fingering, which she identified right away. She told me to work on legato passages and be sensitive to the emotion in a musical phrase. Every phrase, like in spoken language, starts with an uphill surge which climaxes into a passionate summit and then goes downhill again, which she called the “decay.” Now that's something I could really use.

Years ago, there was a piano teacher who came to our house to teach my nephews. I asked her if she could give me lessons, too. She willingly agreed but she wanted to hear me play first. So I sat and played Beethoven for her. After nervously listening to me, she said she couldn't possibly teach me because I played “too well” for her. She recommended another piano teacher, “the maestro”she called him, who could handle advanced students. Of course I never got to meet this maestro and my nephews never got to learn how to play.

Last Sunday was the first time I actually sat up for a lesson. It was comforting to know that my teacher knows what she's talking about. I had watched her play with an orchestra during her graduation recital. Her execution is clean, her notes distinct. I said to myself that if ever I would formally study the instrument, it would have to be under her. Her eyes lit up as she spoke about the pieces she would give me. She tossed some names: Bach, Mozart, Espino, Mendelssohn, and perhaps Chopin. She was already contemplating on making me play a full Haydn sonata. Just thinking about it overwhelms me. That afternoon, she made me play something from Hanon's Exercises for the Virtouso Pianist. She skipped the first 49 pieces and asked me to go straight to Exercise Number 50. This book only has sixty progressively difficult technical exercises. My poor fingers got confused with the alternating thirds, but I think I managed to pull it off. And then came the annoying scales. It was so confusing I felt like I was playing the piano for the first time. I can't believe I had studied complicated pieces on my own before and I can't even finger the scales right. She was patient enough to guide me through it, sometimes touching my hand, her rough palm grazing against the back of my hand; sometimes humming the melody which I needed to distinctly pluck out of the clutter of the arpeggio lines. If the room weren't heavily air conditioned, my armpits would've sweated a river. She asked me to study Daquin's Le Coucou as my homework. You have to follow the correct fingering, she said, otherwise you won't be able to play it well. We would also have some advanced Czerny exercises and more scales next time.

I excitedly went home that night and practiced until midnight, the prospect of playing a Haydn sonata titillating my ego.

sometimes i become a god

I need alcohol.

When my brain throbs with pain, I know at once that my dendrites are supplicating to the gods for wine. The lambanog (native conconut wine) cocktail a colleague prepared last Friday finished off a long workweek with a bang. By the time the concoction ran out, fireworks were already shooting in my head and my bladder was discharging yellowish excesses by the bucket. I need that. Yet again. Especially now that my head pulsates like an sex organ yearning for fornication without a condom.

I'm not alcoholic. Far from it. Prior to the binge last Friday, I hadn't had anything to drink for a long time. I just love the sensation of getting drunk. Not crawling, bring-out-the-leather-whip-and-handcuffs drunk. Just moderately drunk. I'd like to keep things in moderation. Anything in excess deadens the mind. And mine has died a couple of times before. There's no need for repeated agonies. I'm compassionate like that. I let the worms I saw in my avocado yesterday inch away like free citizens, ready to infest another fruit or some leftover pizza in the garbage bin. I dared not kill them even though they decided to make their presence felt at the most opportune time, after I had already finished half of the damn fruit. It is their nature to burrow their slimy bodies into fruits and cause screams from the squeamish. What right have I to end their existence just because my mind has been conditioned to regard them as hideously revolting? Only gods can be that cruel. And I am no god. Not yet, anyway. I am a mere mortal whose brain longs for the promise of vodka.

Priests are so lucky they get to drink on the job and nobody gives a hoot about it. I haven't seen a Catholic priest in a mass for quite some time. A friend once lamented that she hadn't gone to church for a month. I said I haven't sat through a church service for over eleven years now. She, and the rest of my friends, laughed. They probably thought I was kidding. And I cannot blame them. In this country, to go against the grain is to get ostracized. Freak. Weird. Demonic. Heretic. I've been called several names before. None of them stuck. My complex spirit cannot be pigeonholed, nor can it be dampened by comments floating from the wastelands of parochialism. It can only be drenched by tequila until its filmy clothes cling onto its body like leeches. Imagine my bliss when I went to Europe and found out that everyone else, including those with stinky armpits, thought like I did! And they regularly had wine for dinner. Even the school canteen I usually ate at served Beaujolais, albeit not the best kind. I bet that's how heaven will be like, wine gushing forth from streams while naked people cavort in wild abandon by its banks. The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, of which I am an official member, describes heaven as having a huge beer volcano and a stripper factory. No wonder cherubims have paunches and archangels have dreamy eyes. But I don't dig beer that much. I was told wine doesn't give you a paunch. That's why I'm all for it. It merely chips off shame and drowns out logical thoughts until you're ready to take your pen and write sacred texts. But I go way beyond that when I am drunk. I become god incarnate, magnanimous and vengeful, silently surveying the mortals as they busy themselves in their inconsequential lives, mildly disturbed that they don't care being watched at all even as they go through the dull rituals of foreplay, each thinking of cheating on the other until their hearts beat in rhythm with the throbbing of their brains, their dendrites supplicating to me for just a drop of wine, which I willingly dispense like piss toward a yawning urinal. And then I'm left alone, with my own throbbing temples and supplicating dendrites, still in front of my computer wasting valuable time writing this stupid post.

I need alcohol.

cow dung, human feces, dog shit

I sink deep into the couch, its faux leather notwithstanding. I instantly become drowsy. I only slept two hours this morning, half of which was spent chasing hopping clocks on stilts in a surreal dream. I’m not sure if I still have the strength to masticate the ham sandwich I have just ordered. I don’t eat pork and they don’t have salad. A ham sandwich with bits of wilting lettuce is the best compromise, which, by the way, is something that I seem to be doing more often as I grow old—compromising, not eating ham sandwiches. It’s a siphon that sucks out one’s essence until one becomes ordinarily bland and inane like a soap opera.

I bury my body deeper into the comforts of the black, cheap leather, which faintly smells of dried sweat and fossilized conversations over coffee. You suggest I formally take piano lessons. I’ve long been thinking of that. My brother issued post dated checks for that when I was a kid. I rejected them all, partly because of my arrogance (I studied solfège on my own at the age of 13 and played the first movement of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata at 15), partly because the damn checks couldn’t even cover half of the tuition. You suggest I contact your friend who is taking her master’s degree in Piano. I might just give it a try, like all the other things I have tried without actually knowing the grimy consequences. I need more of that, stuff that don’t give me a clear vision of what lies ahead. Risks can submerge my head into a well full of liquefied cow dung, human feces, and dog shit. Alluring. Sensuous. Nauseating. And in the process, I come out refreshed. The mind discards rust when challenged with something hideous and banal.

My teeth, braces and all, hurt at every bite of the sandwich. I should’ve settled for just a glass of iced tea, but even that cannot irrigate my arid throat. How come we’ve never visited this coffee shop before, I ask. You mention that you have just found out about it. This place is so shabby yet comfy, I comment. The paint peels off from the walls lined with tacky mirrors like it were some disproportionate motel room. The overhead speakers blare cheap music from a popular FM station with a crass DJ. The ordinariness of it all magnetizes me. I know I have hated the ordinary all my life, because I thought I wasn’t ordinary until I saw that I had the same appendages as everyone else and my spinal column does not support wings. Everyone is entitled to delusions of grandeur at least once in their lives. And vegetarians should also eat ham sandwiches when coffeeshops have run out of salads. I like this place, you say. You say something else but my mind drifts slowly into a filmy world of floating carcasses. I hear nothing but the last few discordant chords of the piped-in music.

the night my balls shot out of my mouth

If I hadn't stayed up all night to watch four episodes of Rome and three of Heroes, we wouldn't be speeding along the highway like crazy, my father getting irritated as I egged him on to drive faster so I'd get to the office without another tardiness record. His normal driving speed is slightly faster than a hearse at a funeral procession. This was way above his personal speed limit.

I did want to sleep early last night. But the damn DVD player kept on playing and I couldn't stop it. I was helpless. Worthless piece of crap. Sleep, at that time, wouldn't have been restful anyway as my mind was swelling with thoughts of superhero exploits, wily political maneuverings of would-be Roman emperors, and bloody campaigns of ambitious generals. My sleep would be haunted by blood anyway. I might as well let the damn player do its thing and continue watching. I didn't want another nightmare like the one I had last Saturday morning, in which, I found myself in a crumbling church at midday. The priest was standing by the altar, motionless. A handful of people were also standing in between the pews, when, suddenly, the light of the sun was blotted out, completely plunging the ancient place into darkness. I instinctively ducked to take cover, I'm not sure from what exactly. When the light came back, I instructed the sacristan to check on the nails of the rickety, wooden stairs of the choir loft. The devil was there, I said. It had loosened one of the nails while the light was out, to weaken the foundations of this church (it doesn't make sense, I know, but dreams won't be dreams if they weren't absurd).

So the sacristan made his way toward the choir loft. But before he could even go near the wooden structure, a huge, black arm rose out of the pews and held him by the face. Its hand was so big it almost covered half his face. Seeing that he had been blocked thus, I hesitatingly advanced, my balls jiggling up my mouth, to check the stairs myself. To my great horror (by this time, my balls shot out of my mouth to hide somewhere else), I saw a fifteen-foot woman ducking in between two pews. Her long Sadako-inspired hair was covering her face and her massive arms were resting on the pews. For a complete minute, my heart stopped beating, undecided as to what exactly I should do, stay there and await my doom or run from this oversize woman who was having a bad hair day.
I woke up right after that. I stared at the ceiling, scared and breathless, wondering where the hell my balls went. As if on cue, my mobile phone rang. I almost smashed the freaking thing with my fist. God, I was so scared my intestines almost squeezed out of my rectum like that of a cat's after having been run over by a fire truck.

It was Michelle trying to wake me up for our lunch at Velasquez Park in Makati City. Lu, who is on summer break from her studies in Paris, would be there, and so would the rest of the gang. I scratched my balls to see if they were still in place, took off my clothes, and hit the shower, hoping I won't see a 20-foot transvestite wielding a knife there.

allow me to undress you

I won first place in the French poetry writing contest of the Alliance Française de Manille last summer. It was in celebration of the Printemps des Poetes (Spring of Poets), an annual international event held in French-speaking countries around world. I don't know exactly why they brought the event here when we're clearly not a francophone country. The only French thing that is popular among the masses here is the French fries. And it's not even French. It's merely an American abomination.

In a simple but elegant event at the lobby of Alliance Française in Makati, I read my poem in front of foreign dignitaries in their designer coats and ties, artists in their faded jeans and shirts, and writers/university professors in their boring plaid shirts and slacks. And of course, my supportive friends were there, too: Michelle, Dax, Dionne, Joven, Jera, Bianco, Oliver, and Riva (thanks so much for coming, I hope you enjoyed the wine). Two long buffet tables held food prepared by the embassies of France, Egypt, Switzerland, Czech Republic, and Cambodia. Wine was overflowing at the bar and the air was thick with snatches of conversation in various languages.

Among those who read their poems were Gérard Chesnel, the French Ambassador to the Philippines; Virgilio S. Almario, National Artist for Literature; Gilles Vigneault, Secretary for Immigration at the Canadian Embassy; Geminio H. Abad, professor emeritus and fictionist at the University of the Philippines; Cesare A.X. Syjuco, multi-awarded multimedia artist; Alfred 'Krip' Yuson, writer and Palanca hall of fame awardee; Virginia R. Morena, playwright; Jaroslav Ludva, Czech Ambassador; Vim Nadera, UP professor and renowned performance poet; and Adrian Cristobal, a distinguished writer.

The program was opened by a kundiman (lyric Filipino love song sung in the classical style) duet by two opera singers. The woman, dressed in a splendid sequined Filipino gown, slowly descended from a long staircase while singing Minamahal Kita (I love you) in a milky soprano voice. The tenor waited onstage, singing his lines in response to the maiden's yearning. Such drama and pageantry can only be pulled off by the French.

In between songs, dances, and gulps of red wine, we read our poems. I have actually written this poem for Anouk, a blogger who interviewed me in this blog a long time ago. She asked me to write a four-line verse in French to woo her. Since the theme of the competition was Lettera Amorosa (Love Letters), I decided to submit it. I just added more lines. It luckily won. Because of my limited knowledge of the language, I tried to keep the poem simple so it sounded kind of amateurish. But what the heck, here it is. A rough English translation follows:

Permets-moi de te deshabiller

Je n’écris pas comme un écrivain très doué,
cueillant des mots lumineux au vent
et les échelonnant pour créer des poèmes
qui vivront après ma mort

Je ne pense pas comme un philosophe
dont âme vole avec les oiseaux perdus
et plonge dans la profondeur de l'océan,
en chassant la vérité qui n'éxiste plus

Je ne sais que je vis dans mon monde,
seule et isolé,
créant mes vérités, dechirant ma foi, bricolant mon idéologie

Mon cerveau raconte n’importe quoi.
Mes mots ne blessent que le vent mourant
Mais je peux te déshabiller et lire ton âme.

Allow me to me undress you

I don't write like a gifted poet,
plucking luminous words from the air
and stringing them to create poems
that will live long after my death

I don't think like a philosopher
whose soul flies with lost birds
and plunges into the depths of the ocean,
chasing a truth that no longer exists.

I only know how to live in my world,
alone and isolated,
creating my truths, destroying my faith, and making up my own ideology
My mind speaks nonsense
My words scathe nothing but the dying wind
But I can undress you and read your soul.

candlestick

It's nice to wake up to the chirping of birds outside my window, whose casements are only flung wide open on weekends. On weekdays, my room is like a prison cell in a dungeon. Thick, foam-lined insulator panels board up my glass windows, which are further darkened by heavy drapes. Only needle-thin rays of the sun filter through the small openings left uncovered by the panels. I have been doing this since I learned that total darkness helps my body produce serotonin while I sleep. Since I sleep during the day, I trick my body into believing that it is still night time, thus the insulators and curtains.

That morning was a totally different affair. I slept with the window wide open the night before. It felt refreshing and liberating to wake up with a cool breeze blowing from the trees instead of the oppressive coldness of the airconditioning.

But I didn't actually sleep well. I kept on thinking of the antique candlestick I wanted to buy at the mall. I saw it last week, got smitten by it, but didn't buy it because I didn't have cash and the store did not accept credit cards, after having been duped by a woman who bought several items using a fake card.

It was made in the 1930s, the saleslady had said. She didn't sound too convincing but judging from the rust, the dirt, the material, the craftsmanship, and the style of the piece, I would say it was made way before the 1930s. Now I'm not into antiques and I know nothing about telling the age of a piece through its apparent dirt, let alone understand the intricacies of deliberately aging metal to make it look old, but I had a strange feeling this was old. Really old. It smelled like it.

It stands thirteen inches tall. Made of heavy metal (I don't know exactly what type), it boasts of an exquisite design which smacks of the regal symmetry of classicism. It has a concave base ornamented by four acanthus leaves whose upturned tips reach down to form four legs. This base supports a corinthian bud opening out to a ribbed pillar which tapers up toward another corinthian-inspired, urn-like structure ending with a basin that holds the candle.

I have this fascination for candle holders, especially the classic, antique, standard-fare-on-your-grandma's-altar type. I don't know why. I just love having them around. I told my colleague once that I was probably a medieval, Catholic monk in my past life. I love spooky Catholic iconography and I adore old candelabra. The first one I had bought was a simple affair. It was silver-plated but its style is quite modern. It has three arms of varying levels, which grow from a plain circular base. It still stands on top of my piano, now all black, the silver plating having faded long ago.

I had also bought another silver-plated, five-branch candelabra months ago and it has stood on our dinner table since, commanding undivided attention from those who see it. We usually light all its candles whenever we eat something with vinegar. Its five tapers effectively ward off huge flies (resident insects of tropical countries) which are naturally attracted to that sour condiment. We only have to put up with the heat. It's like having a burning bush at lunch.

The new candlestick now stands on the other side of my piano, looking impressive and imposing. It looks so heavy and massive that my mother thought it might scratch off the piano's gleaming surface. If somebody had tried to mug me the day I bought it, I could've easily whacked his head with it and he would've died on the spot. That's how heavy this thing is.

I kept on imagining that this piece had some history, that it was part of a crumbling colonial mansion which had seen gruesome murders. Before I went up to sleep that night, I looked back, half expecting the specter of a woman in her nightgown standing before the candle holder, trying to reclaim what is rightfully hers. Unfortunately, not every candlestick comes with that added attraction.

summary

My friend, Riva, showed me her old planner at her condo during one of her parties. Stapled on its pages were show tickets, bus tickets, fliers, and other pieces of paper that trigger memories of her studies in London.

“Don't you find it strange that your life can be summarized by a small planner?” I asked her.
She said she wouldn't exactly put it that way. These pieces of paper represented memories. These were imprints of her past.

Why indeed did I not see it that way? I myself had been going crazy trying to leave imprints of my mad existence in small notebooks, on my laptop, and later on, in this blog. Hell, I even keep the ticket of my first visit to Fort Santiago way back in gradeschool. Have I, in my mad rush to get on with the drudgery of work, forgotten to leave some pieces of myself behind?

One look at this blog will tell you how much I've neglected my chronicling duties. This blog was almost on the verge of nonexistence. Oblivion does seem comforting at times, especially when intrusion into one's privacy has already gnawed away portions of one's personal space. But I have learned to thrive here. I have loved offering myself naked to the gods and demons and all the other boring creatures in between. I have stripped my clothes off in this blog, both figuratively and literally, to expose my soul. You have, so far, been seeing me in all my nakedness, excess hair and all. The sublime and the hideous have all been mixed up here like jello and mud, each enhancing the flavor of the other.

Will I stop summarzing my life within these pages? I don't think so. Not while my alcohol-marinated dendrytes are still functioning. Not while I still find cathartic pleasure (or masturbatory delight, if you will) in exhuming my thoughts and laying them down on paper. Not when so many events, both forgettable and blissful, are taking me into a cycle of ennui and excitement, turning, whirling, rolling my consciousness into the mildly sour folds of transcendence.

I am back.