I'm trying to remember how I met you in my dream and what we were talking about on the floor. Or where we were and who was driving the car where we were holding hands.

I don't know your name. But you look like you could be a Luke, or a James, or maybe even a Steve.

Not all that glitters is gold

I dreamed of you last night.

Sometimes I remember when we used to hang out in nightclubs, when we left everything behind on our beds, along with the last couple of wardrobe changes we threw on the sheets and whatever books we had been studying earlier that night. I'd put on makeup with what little I know about it and try to convince myself that I look pretty in a short black dress, although my bulging limbs and my post-teenage acne scars were probably screaming their objection.

I remember when you danced with me, your breath reeking of beer but your neck smelling like pine trees. The music pulsated loudly in our ears, threatening to pop our eardrums, but I could only hear the primal cry of my heart, Now! Now! Now!

When we were in high school, everybody thought we would be together eventually. I thought so too, but time has a way of being disagreeable and cruel, and though I faced you with my heart in my hands, eager to offer you all its affection, you simply embraced me and told me we were just friends. My tears tasted bitter in my mouth, but what did I know about love? I was fifteen and stupid.

But then we grew up, and you called me out of the blue, saying you just got home and you wanted to "catch up" on old times. We hadn't seen each other for three years. I had lost weight, my acne had exhausted its term on my skin, and for the first time in my life, I didn't have to convince myself I was pretty—because, finally, I was.

When we met again, we weren't the same. Gone was the golden boy who made everybody laugh and who had so much vigor and passion that our friends made you the envy and trophy of our circle. You had lost your luster, and mine was only beginning to shine. You tried looking to reclaim your glory in others, but I was sick of the pulsating music, sick of the sweaty bodies and the smell of fuck and alcohol, sick of the shallow epicurean delights afforded by your lifestyle that has left me empty and hungover and miserable the morning after. I had outgrown you. I had outgrown the world. 

So I went back to my books and read with the kind of vivacity that I remember having when I was eleven, when the library was my wonderland, when the only friends I had were plain princesses, parading animals, and morbidly martyred saints. It was the best version of myself, the one I had lost to cynicsm and pride and envy. But I am slowly becoming kind to myself again, and I have rediscovered the love I had for the church, for whom I had once thought of becoming an eternal servant.

I still think about it. Whenever I see nuns or priests, I still feel a burning urge to run to their arms and cry unrestrainedly, to beg them to take me with them, to save me from this gradually declining world and give me the peace of the Divine. Maybe I should've gone ahead and filled that application to join the Capuchins that  I mysteriously found on one of my books. I wonder where I would be now if I did become a nun (perhaps it's not too late). The thought is somehow funny and always makes me smile, but now I'm almost certain my life isn't destined for the convent. Wherever that might be, I can only be grateful for where I am now and keep living.

Today I prayed to God to let me give up. My heart is so drained and screaming that it wants to expire.

I have no more left to give, no more fight in me.

It makes me sad that the people who remind me that this city, which I have grown to despise with a passion, is still beautiful are strangers. And you, who have promised to help me, who are supposed to be  a friend, only hurt me.

And now you have threatened to become a stranger, an empty thing with no life or laughter.

You have grown old in your heart, someone I don't care to know.

So really, what else is there? There is no poetry, no joy, no sign of Destiny. Just cruel words and mind games and stubborn people who have stopped at their wounds and cocooned themselves around it, watching it fester instead of opening up to be healed.

This is not the life I want to live, not the person I want to be or want to be with.

Today I am giving up.

I must have smoked more cigarettes today than I had in two months. The Hail Marys have come and gone from my lips, but still my heart feels like a mass of filth and ruin, screaming with the violence of a tempest that picks up more strength as it moves viciously over the dark waves.

It was my birthday yesterday, and already I've hidden in more than one cubicle to cry out the tears stuck in my throat. Every day brings more agony than the last, and the more I kneel in front of the Crucifix, the deeper it cuts. Where is the rest you promised? Where is the joy that makes all of this worth it? Why did you bring me here only to put me through this storm? Why don't you save me? Why don't you save us?

Christ, where are you?

untitled

The idea of death is very appealing to a person who is suffering. Perhaps not actually taking one's life, but playing with that possibility—just to get close enough to death to get a little feel of his dark cloak. It somehow numbs the pain a little, like how sleeping with your windows open when you go to bed helps you sleep, dreaming of meeting the asphalt twenty feet below.

Or when your lungs are already struggling to take in air, and there's the comfort offered by a cigarette. Or just sitting on a chair, one hand caressing rosary beads and the other stroking the barrel of a gun.

Death is so seductive; and suffering so painful, so exhausting, so tiring. How much should a person take before it is acceptable, redeemable, to give up? To say, "That's it. This is as far as I go. I can't go any further. I've had enough."

at the bottom of everything

"Where are we going?" she says to the old man beside her seat.

The airplane shakes violently from one of the failed engines, for which the pilot has apologized three times. The old man turns and looks at her. "We are going to a party."

She smiles.

"It's your birthday party. Happy birthday, darling."

The plane rapidly loses its altitude, and people start putting on their oxygen mask. One mother scolds his son as he refuses to put down his Nintendo. The passengers at the back are passing shots of bloody marys.

She looks out the window and sees the Pacific ocean reaching out its arms to her. She remembers her mother watering orchids, her father painting their walls orange. She thinks of smoking a cigarette, but it will probably get wet.

"I'm happy just because I am really no one."

She closes her eyes, and her skin meets the salt of the sea. Her lips part into a smile. She thinks this is the adventure she has been waiting for.

Stranger

Here it is again, that strange resentment for everything that surfaces every once in a while. Perhaps it's just PMS, but I find everything and everyone hateful.

I haven't been able to read in a while. Not because I don't have the time—people make time for things they really want to do—but because I can't. I'm looking at my books now, and they feel alien to me. I want to throw them one by one across the room, tear their pages, and burn them until they all evaporate into smoke. Why are they here? Why do I feel like they are not mine, that somewhere along the way, they have made me unworthy to peruse their pages?

The truth is, I want to be friends with my books again, to hold them and not feel rejected. But why do I feel this way? I miss reading so, so much...please, Lord, let me read again. Please.

I feel so lonely. Please...

Beethoven

I can almost see you sitting on the piano seat by a window. The curtains are dancing gracefully to the sway of the morning breeze, and you are there, looking out.

What could you be thinking? You must be thinking of flowers. I am thinking of flowers too.

I feel a strange kind of joy in my heart. It's the joy of finding you alive and seeing you happy. It doesn't matter that I can't hold you or see you.

You do not belong to me. You belong to the flowers and to the sun and to the sky. You belong to the earth and to the force that makes it grow and wither. You belong to the sea and to the tempests that ravage it. You belong to the calm that silences it. You belong to the stars and to the moon and to the night.

So let us both think of flowers and of all the things that are made alive. Go play Beethoven's Ninth Symphony on that piano and be reminded of the joy that our sufferings sometimes make us forget.

Yes. I don't think I would mind very much if I just stand looking at you like this, from afar, without seeing your face. Are you smiling or crying? It is enough that I can see what you are looking at, and that what we are looking at is beautiful.

The flowers are especially lovely today.

Fake Plastic Trees

I've started smoking again.
And listening to sad songs.
And crying.

Please go away,
whatever this is.
This storm, this fatigue.

Sometimes when people ask me if I'm okay just for courtesy, I'm tempted to jump into their arms and cry. I feel like I'm hanging on to something that is constantly trying to shake me off. And I am tired of holding on. Why am I still holding on?

save me

I just realized, after months of trying to quit smoking and failing, that I am miserable.

I have lost something, which I thought I would recover over time, permanently and completely. I feel so angry almost all the time, and I can't enjoy the things that used to sweep me off my feet in joy. I have lost the ability to write, and now I'm afraid that I am also losing the desire. 

So many people have taken their lives recently, and I had to wonder if I would ever come to that point of hopelessness and worthlessness. The pains that I have hoped would heal gets bigger and bigger, eating away at my heart, my love for people, my sense of self-worth.

I have begged Christ not to leave me, to please, please stay with me, but he seems to disappear through the storm. And I am like Peter, drowning in my fears, screaming, "Lord, save me!" I am trying to remember Christ and his face, the way he looks at sinners like me with mercy and understanding. But Satan's hand is pointing at me, and I can't see Christ anymore. 

Please, don't go away. Don't leave me.

But why do I feel so alone, so cut off from the rest of the world? Why does the joy I find in his company, in the laughter of my family, in the care of my friends, dissipate too soon? I want to go back to that time when I feel happiest staying at home reading all day. To that time when I enjoy movies best when I watch them by myself at the cinema. When I can walk around without being scared of being seen by the wrong people.

I am very, very tired. I want to disappear.


"Take courage. It is I. Do not be afraid."
"You can do this. You're God's champion, remember?"
"Never forget your first love."
"There are people who care about you."
"You are loved."
"You are not alone."

Enough. Enough now.

Muse

She has gone for so long, perhaps too long. She has indulged me at times with whispers of her ghost or glimpses of her shadow, but I had not seen the complete splendor with which she has always graced my soul whenever I felt the need to summon her.

Now she's here. And I suddenly don't want her.

She looks the same. Same shoes. Longer hair. She looks a little disheveled, perhaps even malnourished. She looks at me with tired eyes, her breasts robbed of the suppleness that always seduced me. The roses that once grew on her skin have all but withered, leaving only a pale and barren expanse of limbs, torsos, fingers, and a face haunted by the memory of a smile.

I don't know what to do with her. I don't know what she wants.

I want to tell her to go away, but I can't. It seems that I still love her, even if she has lost the light that made her so beautiful. The sea in her eyes has almost dried up, but she reminds me that there is always hope in almost—the ocean, like her heart, will beat again with bounty, and the sky will breathe life into her like it always does when she finds herself suffocated by its vastness.

Where did she go? I stop myself from asking because it doesn't really matter. What matters is that she's come back to me. My prodigal muse has come back.

"Welcome home," I tell her with a kiss.

Was it a smile that moved between her lips? Maybe so. She looks too weak to smile, but I owe it to myself to wonder.

No thanks

There's this guy who works in the finance-lending office near my apartment building, and I was buying some stuff in the convenience store next door.

"Hi," he says.

I look behind me to make sure I'm the one he's talking to. No one else is there. "Hey," I say out of politeness.

"You're really cute."

This immediately makes me uncomfortable. I choke out a hesitant thanks.

"Do you wanna go out?"

"No, I'm busy, and I don't know you."

"I'm K**."

"Right."

"I have a car outside."

I look outside and see his Toyota Avanza. I roll my eyes in my head and force out a smile.

"Do you go out often?"

Please go away already and let me buy my fucking chips.

"Sometimes."

"Where?"

"Anywhere nice."

"Do you go to IT Park?"

Do I look like I live an Amish existence?

"Of course."

"Have you been to Figola?"

"A couple of times, yes."

"Well, I'm one of the owners."

I guess that was supposed to be impressive.

"Do you have a boyfriend?"

"No."

"Can I have your number?"

This about does it for me. I couldn't hide the irritation from my face anymore. He stops, startled by the acidic reaction that resulted from his question, but he brings back that smug look on his face. "Can I have your number? We can hang out sometime."

Please fuck off and annoy someone else. I roll my eyes, this time for real. "No thanks."

I run out the store, annoyed that I didn't even get to buy my chips. I guess in this day and age, if a guy has a car, owns a club, and has fortunate looks, every girl is entitled to go out with him. But fuck you, jock, who think you can get every girl you think is "cute" because you have abs under your shirt. Fuck you, business owner, who think you can take out any girl in your newly washed SUV because you have ten digits in your back account. Not every girl wants you.

 I definitely don't want you.

Sketches

I haven't sketched in a long time, let alone actually paint. I have long forgotten the principles of chiaroscuro, the dynamics of mixing and creating colors, the rudiments of drawing out meticulous detail that the human face demands on art. What is left of me is just this chaos, these aimless curves and lines that collide and collapse over each other to find, on good days when the light is pleasant, a recognizable form. 

I don't even know what made me draw that. I think I did this after watching a random romance on TV. (I'm still only just a girl—no matter how disgusting romantic clichés get, they will always pierce through my reason and make me swoon.)

This I made after devouring a book of erotic Filipino poetry and art. Let's just say this is the more decent option of dealing with the literary catharsis.

Of this I am particularly proud because it turned out rather well—I didn't expect I'd get her cheekbones right and the way her facial lines cast shadows on her jaw. It's not very good by academic artistic standards I'm sure, but compared to my other drawings, this is easily one of my best. Hannah Arednt is one of my most favorite female philosophers, and when I saw that poster of her biopic I knew I just had to have a piece of her myself. I couldn't quite capture how she holds her cigarette though, so I just settled for that darkly shaded mess of a hand. 

I only ever draw when I can't write, when words fail to describe the temporary fever that I find overwhelming when I see a face that makes me stop. The way a smile painfully curves, the way skin sinks into facial recesses, the melancholy twinkle in the eye, the robust contour of a nose— sometimes there aren't enough valleys and flowers to turn them into poetry. They have to take shape through my hands, no matter how flagrantly I disregard artistic conventions of shadows and light and proportion. 

I guess there are just some benefits of chaos.

On the Sand

Sometimes, you gotta take your book places.

“One benefit of Summer was that each day we had more light to read by.”

― Jeannette Walls, The Glass Castle

French Lessons

I had better start opening my French books again. It feels horrible to not be able to construct a decent sentence anymore. Thinking about it now, I wonder why I stopped in the first place. Maybe because I've given up hope of being accepted into a comparative literature program in a US university. And it somehow scares me that I'm not even bothered anymore, that I'm starting to entertain the idea of not leaving for postgraduate studies altogether. I guess I'm slowly losing sight of the point of needing to pay outrageous sums of money to study about things I can read about at home (I can't believe I'm saying this). And the way things are at universities today—the mechanization of the humanities, the academic approach of study that I now find superficial—it takes away the original beauty of literature and makes of it a mere specimen to be clinically taken apart and analyzed.

Poetry supplies beauty in my life, and reading saves me from falling into the traps of boredom and nihilism that postmodern mentality elaborately but surreptitiously orchestrates. Do I really need a degree from a fancy university to prove to myself that I can understand and appreciate literature? Of course I don't. A child can read Peter Pan or Robinson Crusoe and appreciate the beauty of its language and reality without needing to associate it with pompous and complicated ideologies.

Marxism, feminism, structuralism—there was a time when I genuinely found joy in studying them. I felt pride whenever I read something and could immediately identify the theories with which I could approach their text. I loved how well I could use words like bildungsroman or iambic pentameter or factive heteronomy and reveled how people seemed to be so impressed whenever I did. But after a while, I found that I was slowly losing the joy from reading because I was always consumed by a priori thinking. I approached everything I read as if they were frogs I needed to dissect in a laboratory. I hated it. So I stopped reading altogether.

What resuscitated my heart for literature was philosophy and theology. Through it I rediscovered the depth and meaning I guess I've always looked for in poetry and prose. I read Shakespeare, Austen, Dostoyevsky, Kafka, Orwell, Camus with newborn eyes and felt a deeper kind of appreciation for the humanity with which they informed their works and admiration for the beautiful poetry through which they fashioned their language.

Alors, est-ce que tu parlez français? 

Petit un peu. 

Do I still want to learn French? Bien sûr!

But not anymore so I could arrogantly splash "I speak French" in university applications. Not even so I could brag to anyone that I can articulate rolled r's. But just because I genuinely want to. It's such a beautiful language. And besides, I've already started reading Camus's L'Etranger in French (although this was over a year ago when I still can read past two sentences without consulting a dictionary), why not just finish it? 

So yes, this summer, I will start opening my French books again. 

My Favorite Bukowski

and of course, this, which made me laugh and fall out my chair (almost):

The Dream of a Ridiculous Girl

The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, Petrov (1997)

I know it's a bad idea to read Dostoyevsky when you're depressed because he doesn't exactly tell happy stories. The magic of Dostoyevsky's books however has always been in their honest and childlike depiction of reality. I use childlike not in the sense that it's good for children or that it's simplistic but childlike because he always seems to imbue a certain innocence of mind in his language.

There are only a select number of books that I can read when my mind is reeling with unhappy thoughts and my chest bombarded by unwholesome feelings. One of those is Dostoyevsky. His stories are always a forceful slap in the face that eventually become a gentle caress. "Look this way, at reality, for all its sufferings and joys. Face it with honesty and humility," he seems to be saying.

"The Dream of a Ridiculous Man" is about a nameless man who has been trying to shoot himself every night for the past couple of weeks. He has irrevocably decided to do it tonight, but not before meeting a little girl (see painting) who desperately asks for his help, which he refuses. He goes home that night thinking about her and feeling ashamed of himself (although he justifies his refusal to help). He falls asleep on his armchair and this is where the dream begins (if you want to know what it is, read it yourself; it's only five chapters long).

A dream! Was it really a dream? Could the human mind formulate a dream so elaborate, so chronologically solid? Whatever it was, it changed the ridiculous man when he woke up and made him even more ridiculous. He saw an earth that was uncorrupted by sin and fell in love with it but at the same time witnessed it turn into the same world that he had wished to leave using his revolver. The strange thing was that he found a new appreciation for this corrupted world, a kind of love that is consubstantial with suffering. A sad kind of love, if you may.

Dostoyevsky has once again cleared my vision polluted by the unsatisfaction and selfishness endemic to sentimentalism. This story reminded me of how much I loved the world and the people in it—the silent splendor of nature, the fluid existence of humans and the mysterious looks in their eyes when they think. They are all beautiful. Reality is beautiful.

I woke up today feeling grateful. I looked at the children who rode in the jeepney with me and was amazed at the wide-eyed wonder with which they looked at everything. At that moment, I wished I could be like them, that I could see the world again and be enchanted by its wonders. I realized that it's really all you need to be happy: to see reality with the eyes of a child.

And what does it matter if I get sad and lonely sometimes? Isn't that only testament to my humanity? What does it matter that I suffer if it allows me to love deeply and truthfully? So thank you. Thank you, Dostoyevsky, for waking me up and making me realize that dreams, no matter how ridiculous, are sometimes necessary to face and appreciate reality.

Self-Crushing

The mind of a writer, or those who think they are, is frightening. There always seems to be a cloud of depression and self-doubt looming above you, imprisoning you in the mindset that you're not good enough—or ever will be. You read books and get the courage to rise above whatever emotional stupor you're battling only to sink bank into the void.

Sometimes I wish I was one of those who can enjoy swimming at the surface, who never think what the deeper waters hold and who do not desire to go there. They always seem to be happier.

What destroys me is the pain brought by words. Especially if they are cruel, especially if they have been said by someone I love. It is easy for me to forget a punch that it is for me to forget a verbal insult. A stranger once called me fat and ugly when I was in fifth grade, and I carried those words with me until I was well into college. Even now they still haunt me although I have heard them refuted a hundred times. With a word, I easily fall apart.

My mind sometimes scares me. And sometimes I wish there was a way to shut it all out, to go to sleep and never wake up again. Sometimes I wish I never wake up.

I read the stories of other people who write and have begun to wonder if this self-crushing inadequacy, if this chronic depression is endemic, maybe even necessary, to those whose lives lie in the vertical axis where words reside. The world is joyful—why can't I see it sometimes? Why am I always trapped inside a catastrophic train of thought that makes me so sad?

Someday, I told myself when I first decided I wanted to write, you will be good enough. Not perfect, just good enough. Good enough to face reality. Good enough to love and be loved back. Good enough to write. What I'm realizing is I'm never good enough, and perhaps I will never be.

To my eleven-year-old self, I'm sorry. I'm sorry that I didn't grow up to be the person you dreamed about. I'm sorry that I'm such a disappointment.

Be Free

I don’t know what freedom looks like, but I’m guessing it looks a lot like a bird. Or dandelions. Or anything at all that sails on the wind. It would probably smell like the earth on mornings, especially after it’s been raining and the sun has just come out—moist and soft and warm. If it could sing, it would probably sound like the calm breaths of an ocean at dawn, a majestic kind of silence that only manifests itself in very special moments.

No, I cannot be sure about any of this. I am not sure how my senses can perceive freedom. But I am sure of one thing: I am free.

And you. You don't need a certificate or a government or a religious sect to tell you that you're not free. You were made free. In your heart you must know that, that in every situation you have a choice. You can't ever say "I don't have a choice." Just the fact that you can say that you don't have a choice already says that you do! So make good choices. Make choices that will not hurt you or the people around you. Educate your freedom with truth and exercise it with love. Don't just be free. Be good.

How To Be Alone

If you are at first lonely, be patient.

If you’ve not been alone much, or if when you were, you weren’t okay with it, then just wait. You’ll find it’s fine to be alone once you’re embracing it.

We can start with the acceptable places: the bathroom, the coffee shop, the library where you can stall and read the paper, where you can get your caffeine fix and sit and stay there, where you can browse the stacks and smell the books. You’re not supposed to talk much anyway so it’s safe there.

There is also the gym. If you’re shy, you can hang out with yourself and mirrors; you can put headphones in.

Then there’s public transportation because we all gotta go places.

And there’s prayer and mediation. No one will think less if you're hanging with your breath-seeking peace and salvation.

Start simple. Things you may have previously avoided based on your avoid-being-alone principles: the lunch counter where you will be surrounded by chow-downers, employees who only have an hour and their spouses work across town, and they, like you, will be alone.

Resist the urge to hang out with your cellphone.

When you are comfortable, eat lunch and run, take yourself out for dinner to a restaurant with linen and silverware. You’re no less an intriguing a person when you are eating solo dessert and cleaning the whipped cream from the dish with your finger. In fact, some people at full tables will wish they were where you were.

Go to the movies where it’s dark and soothing, alone in your seat amidst a fleeting community.

And then take yourself out dancing, to a club where no one knows you. Stand on the outside of the floor until the lights convince you more and more and the music shows you. 

Dance like no one’s watching because they’re probably not. And if they are, assume it is with best human intentions. The way bodies move genuinely to beats, is after all, gorgeous and affecting. Dance until you’re sweating and beads of perspiration remind you of life’s best things, down your back, like a book of blessings.

Go to the woods alone, and the trees and squirrels will watch for you. 

Go to an unfamiliar city, roam the streets. There are always statues to talk to, and benches made for sitting gives strangers a shared existence if only for a minute. And these moments can be so uplifting and the conversation you get in by sitting alone on benches might have never happened had you not been there by yourself.

Society is afraid of alone though, like lonely hearts are wasting away in basements, like people must have problems if after a while nobody is dating them.

But lonely is a freedom that breathes easy and weightless, and lonely is healing if you make it.

You can stand swathed by groups and mobs or hold hands with your partner, look both further and farther in the endless quest for company.

But no one is in your head. And by the time you translate your thoughts, an essence of them may be lost or perhaps it is just kept. Perhaps in the interest of loving oneself, perhaps all those “sappy slogans” from pre-school over to high school groaning, were tokens for holding the lonely at bay.

Cause if you’re happy in your head, then solitude is blessed, and alone is okay.

It’s okay if no one believes like you. All experience is unique. No one has the same synapses, can’t think like you. For this, be relieved--- keeps things interesting, life’s magic things in reach. And it doesn’t mean you aren’t connected and that community is not present. Just take the perspective you get from being one person in one head and feel the effects of it.

Take silence and respect it.

If you have an art that needs a practice, stop neglecting it. If your family doesn’t get you or a religious sect is not meant for you, don’t obsess about it.

You could be in an instant surrounded if you need it.

If your heart is bleeding, make the best of it.

There is heat in freezing, be a testament.

—Tanya Davis